Is Freedom usually the most important post-Medieval policy tree?

[malitano]

Military Tradition is pretty awesome but the rest is crap. Upgrading is pretty cheap already so the Professional Army SP is better spent elsewhere, the basic policy itself is really bad, Warrior Code is ok if you get it very early but otherwise meh, Military Caste is utterly useless and the worst of all happiness policies. Discipline is ok but nothing very special because the bonus doesn't stack afaik

I never picked up any of the Honor policies I didn't need for Military Tradition

doesn't upgrading get very expensive later on? I think I remember upgrading frigate to destroyer at around 400 gold each.

 

[SilverKnight]

Discipline is ok but nothing very special because the bonus doesn't stack afaik

Unlike flanking, Discipline doesn't stack, you are correct sir.

SilverKnight

 

[Nunya]

I haven't tested it, but with Police state, why do you need to build courthouses? If you have -50% unhappy in all occupied cities, and being occupied (ie annexed without a courthouse) doubles unhappiness, then doesn't police state mean that annexed cities are just like normal cities?

The happiness breakdown lists unhapiness from occupied cities and population of occupied cities as seperate from unhapiness caused by number of cities and population. Because of that I assumed that Police state will eliminate 50% of additional unhapiness caused by occupied cities. But I haven't made any tests so maybe you are right.

Don't you get more happiness from piety + order, not to mention the +5 production bonus per city? With the higher happiness, you can have more/bigger cities, which is like getting a science bonus anyway.

Order and Rationalism aren't mutually exclusive. And Free Thought gives +1 Science per Trading Post. In a city with a Library you get +1.5 Science per population. So 3 worked Trading Posts are equivalent to +2 population in terms of Science production.

With Theocracy a size 15 city has a population unhapiness of a regular size 12 city. So let's say you can grow +3 pop per city which gives +4.5 base science per city. The city would only have to work 5 Trading Posts in order to come ahead in Science with Free Thought instead.

And of course your average city size will tend to be lower than that. At size 10 a city only has to work 3 Trading posts in order to be better of with Free Thought.

 

[bryanw1995]

I was looking to go down rationalism instead of piety this time. Unfortunately, I conquered too many cities and used the 60 turn persia/taj majal wonder years to convert all of them. I'm on my 10th SP and it's ~ 5000 culture for the next one...

 

[asix79]

I was looking to go down rationalism instead of piety this time. Unfortunately, I conquered too many cities and used the 60 turn persia/taj majal wonder years to convert all of them. I'm on my 10th SP and it's ~ 5000 culture for the next one...

If science is the primary focus, it'd help to use the research as an advantage -- and build The Cristo Redentor as soon as possible. After researching Telegraph, and building the wonder, it reduces the cost of all future social policies by a third.

 

[DaveGold]

It can be worth switching to Honor mid game once you can see total war looming across your Pangea Map.

 

[The Tollan]

If you're running a military game, why would you really need specialists or culture?

Just trading post spam and buy a huge army and roll over the world. Their specialists and culture bonuses won't save them.

I agree with your point but unless you need choices from the Rationalism or Order trees before moving into Freedom then it may still be very good to unlock Freedom to reduce unhappiness in the empire even in a military game after getting the some Honor policies and perhaps some Patronage. If puppet states run as many specialists as non-manual controlled cities then there would be a lot of unhappiness to be eliminated from Freedom.

I can see how the other Freedom policies (except perhaps Civil Service) would not really be needed in a military game though. While Autocracy's cheaper army would be helpful, I find that unhappiness tends to be a huge problem because of population size and would probably be more important than a cheaper army. Relying on trading posts helps though but perhaps the Maritime city states would still result in a need to reduce unhappiness. I haven't run a game yet where I did not have one or two farms per city though so I cannot speak with complete experience on the topic.

 

[The Tollan]

I do think Piety can be a useful tree. It seems to work well with India and Persia. Although Rationalism would work well with India, if you go with all Piety SPs then you would have a massive straight -70% reduction in unhappiness from population (if the bonuses are directly added together) with the SPs and Indian UA. You would also get some culture from surplus happiness. Free Religion would basically have paid for the culture cost of two SPs. This could be viewed as meaning that acquiring Piety plus all its SPs would only take the equivalent of four SP cost increases (though Free Religion would have no other effect than the free policies).

So Piety would seem a solid choice with India as you could reach extremely high levels of population. Your technological progression rate and great person generation rate would be very extreme with all those citizens.

The effects of Freedom on specialists would need to be take into account though. I did run a small, quick test with India and it seemed like specialists give no unhappiness (either that or it takes a huge amount to give unhappiness) if you get Freedom. However, it seemed to be impossible to force non-specialists population unhappiness to zero (even with only a capital and enough policies to theoretically cut the number to zero).

 

[Cincinnatus C.]

I love Freedom because it lets you build a tundra/ice/island city that doesn't work anything, gets it up to 6 pop quickly, then pays for itself in happiness (although you do need a few buildings first (lib+temple, probably a market eventually), which you probably have to buy unless you have merchant navy or communism). Also great for curbing growth (although civil society is counterproductive in that respect).

Do Civil Society/Freedom affect unemployed citizens? I wouldn't think so, because with all the bonuses a citizen would be adding +1 food (functionally) +1 hammer and +2 science while costing only half happiness with no limit to the number you can assign. It'd be like getting an unlimited number of plains tiles for free. I really wish it were easier to get engineer slots, even as weak as they are right now.

 

[Nunya]

Do Civil Society/Freedom affect unemployed citizens? I wouldn't think so, because with all the bonuses a citizen would be adding +1 food (functionally) +1 hammer and +2 science while costing only half happiness with no limit to the number you can assign. It'd be like getting an unlimited number of plains tiles for free. I really wish it were easier to get engineer slots, even as weak as they are right now.

Yes, the policies seem to also affect unemployed citizens. I tried it out in my current game and removing two dudes from a their mines gave me +1 and increased growth. Throw in the Statue of Liberty and you get one hell of a specialist economy.

 

[Cincinnatus C.]

Yes, the policies seem to also affect unemployed citizens. I tried it out in my current game and removing two dudes from a their mines gave me +1 and increased growth. Throw in the Statue of Liberty and you get one hell of a specialist economy.

Indeed. An unlimited number of +1 +2 +2 slots is certainly something to respect, especially at half unhappiness.

 

[Marshall Thomas]

I would say if you can run a large number of specialists, yes. I think Freedom & Civil Society is stronger than Rationalism & Secularism, but nothing prevents you from picking that up later, too, with your cheap artists generating culture for you. Plus, I find I sometimes like to pick up Theocracy so Rationalism is out of the question there.

Autocracy seems incredibly underwhelming considering that it locks you out of both an early expansion SP tree and a strong later tree. The only really useful bonus is the cheaper unit upkeep with the cheaper buying of units being good but not great (I find I don't usually have to buy so many units once I have an army set up that I can upgrade).

The -50% unhappiness from occupied cities can be gained through Planned Economy, the second policy in the order tree, which incidentally also halves unhappiness from your own number of cities as well (or does militarism decrease the unhappiness from pop as well?). Total War seems pretty useless, 33% for 20 turns is not enough of a bonus to even pick it in my opinion, unless you're struggling for your life. Becoming Russia is ok but probably not needed if you're warmongering anyways.

The #1 reason why taking Autocracy doesn't make a lot of sense at the moment is, however, that the AI is so weak at waging war that you simply don't need any bonuses for it. I would almost always take Order over it given the choice. In fact, I think Order should lock you out of Liberty and Freedom, too, so you have to descide to go the fascist or communist route or the democratic and libertarian route.

I think that Order should lock you out of Commerce (state economy/communism vs. free market/capitalism). But I think that the Commerce tree needs to be much improved; right now it's too weak.