Is there any point in choosing anything other than tradition when starting off?

If i ever choose anything other than Tradition when beginning a new game i just stagnate, my borders don't grow, any advantages Liberty may give are cancelled out by barbarians eating my settlers, if i make units to protect my settlers that's even more stagnation for my Civilization, as it's time spent not making buildings, Religion is the same story, Honor although nowhere near as good as Tradition is the only one that confers some worthwhile benefits in an early game like the better attack against barbarians, but Tradition just seems to trounce all these.

So, when is it ever viable to choose something other than Tradition when starting a normal sized map with continents? When is choosing religion or Liberty preferable to the safety of Tradition? I just can't seem to make any of the alternatives work for me better than tradition in the early game and i don't want to always keep starting my games that way.

 

In my experience you ALWAYS want to at least open tradition - even if you're going full Liberty, the opener (fast border growth) is too good to pass up, and it gives you the flexibility to grab Legalism later if you want 4 free culture buildings; or Aristocracy if you're going to focus on Wonders; or Oligarchy if you are having unit maintenance problems.

 

For most liberty starts, I'm usually very light on scouting. Once I find three-four good spots to put down cities, I pull my warriors back for barb duty/worker protection until I can make more warriors/archers. It's always a delicate balance between settlers/workers and a defensive army. All the opening starts have opportunity costs.

I'll agree with you and say tradition has the least opportunity costs though. It's pretty solid.

Piety is a great auxiliary tree if you want a quicker, more powerful religion. I've yet to have a wildly successful piety-only start but I haven't played Byzantine yet =-p

Honor is all or nothing. You either take a capital asap, or you're just wasting sps.

 

When exactly Tradition became no - brainer and obvious opener, was it BNW and trade routes?

I remember period of total Liberty domination and relative Tradition - Liberty balance

 

Yeah that's what i'm thinking too, later i can branch out elsewhere but always starting off with the same thing shouldn't be that way in my opinion, there should be situations where religion or liberty would be more viable at the beginning, it would make things more interesting, i get annoyed when i open up the four choices and yep, it's Tradition AGAIN...great.

 

I have played several games where I fill the Liberty tree entirely and ignore the Tradition tree. It may slow down your opener but it makes getting that first great person quicker.

This strategy is usually employed when I am attempting a militaristic type game with early conquest and the great person is used for a great engineer for a specific wonder, or in another case, to finish off my religion with a great prophet as Theodora.

 

If barbs are a real threat, I might open honor first.

 

Other than to play around with different strategies, which can make the game more fun, I don't see any reason to start with something other than Tradition.

It's strange, as an earlier poster mentioned, Liberty used to be the no-brainer, then there was balance and arguments could be made for taking either of them, and then the devs just kept favoring Tradition more and now it's overwhelmingly strong in my opinion. Free culture buildings & free aqueducts in your first 4 cities, your cites grow faster, it opens up a better wonder, you get the ability to purchase great engineers with faith (while Liberty can't buy any great people with faith). Plus, going tall is just much easier than going wide now.

 

Am I missing something? Don't you want to complete what you open up. Sounds like many of you open up categories and then choose which ones work best at certain parts of the game. I have never played this way. I will open Tradition and then complete it and so forth. What are the pros and cons.

Brew God

 

This decision is very situational. In some cases I see I can benefit from a certain policy and I get it just to help me develop. For instance, I play random maps and size for the game setup and when I see a map with 10 CIVs or more I go straight for Forbidden Palace, which means I have to pick Patronage. This gives me a Diplo victory help in case I am losing in tech, war or culture.

Commerce tree is one that I usually pick only some policies from to help with money. Rationalism I always get all. Tradition as well. Sometimes I get tradition and some stuff from liberty. It depends on the game.

 

I'm playing as Japan and founded my capital next to an Atoll. It gave me +2 culture, so I opened piety first so I could hurry up and get a religion with good benefits. After I opened up Piety, I went straight Tradition.

 

Unless you are Germany (Honor) open up tradition.

 

On maps larger than Standard, Honor is handy, You can keep a couple of units busy killing barbs and getting gold and culture for quiet awhile. One game I kept pretty close track and averaged over 3 culture per turn, plus a GG and all the gold(didn't track that) and got all my units 2 levels of exp. Large and Huge maps take quiet awhile to fill up, where standard maps seem to fill up to quickly. It also allows you to easily protect your cities from stray barbs, those horseman can tear up a city and keep healing as they go. I forgot to add that I play exclusively marathon

 

I have been working on a strategy using piety as the opener. The goal is to get the first religion, and hopefully, enhance the religion before too many other civs get one.
Choose follower beliefs that give you buildings, Pagodas etc. Get the reformation belief
that provides tourism for buildings purchased with faith. Expand like crazy. A good route
to a cultural victory.

Note: I do play on king level, I don't know if this is doable on higher levels.

 

You should always start tradition if the map is standard or smaller. On a standard map all you need are 4 cities and tradition buffs all of them. On larger maps you'll need double that so it's not as strong.

You should never ever ever open Piety. I'm playing a game on immortal where I tried to open Piety. I'm the Spanish and I reset it enough to where I got Mt. Fuji near where my second city was going to be. That's 6 culture, 6 faith, and 4 gold, there isn't a better wonder for trying Piety.

I got pagodas and mosques and sacred sights reformation. I have a ton of faith and I'm spamming cities now, but I'm so far behind on tech it's just not going to happen. Piety is just pathetic.

 

Specifically because of the horrendous rate at which barbarians spawn (even without Raging Barbarians being selected) I _always_ open up Honor as my first Social Policy. It's like having barbarian radar, which allows you to not have to maintain city garrisons all the time. What few military units you have (augmented by several Scouts which hopefully acquire modern weapons from ancient ruins fairly quickly) are enough to explore and run patrols to pounce on barbarian camps when they first appear.

After that Honor SP initiation, the next two I pick up are the Liberty initiation (primarily because it unlocks the Pyramids which is a crucial Wonder to build) followed by Citizenship (tile improvement 25% faster AND a free Worker). You will most definitely benefit for the entire length of the game if your Workers can work faster. And building the Pyramids gives you not only another 25% faster task completion, it gives you another 2 Workers.

Finally, SP #4 is to open up Tradition, primarily to get to Aristocracy (SP #5) and it's 15% faster Wonder construction. Being proficient at building Wonders gives you two things: 1) All of the abilities and benefits provided by Wonders, a 2) the amount of time and effort other civs has wasted because you reached completion before they did. Time spent building Wonders that they never complete is time spent NOT building more useful things like units and buildings.

 

My housemate's got a fairly nice Liberty game. She builds a monument and gets a free Worker to chop GLib. Then she works towards Currency, settling a load of desert hills and using a GE for Petra. Then it's Pyramids and warmongering with strong archery units, using her workers to keep one turn repairing improvements for endless pillage & attack cycle.

 

I'm fairly convinced liberty is stronger, provided there is space. The trick is there is less margin for error. It's easier to make tradition work, liberty has to have more things go right.

 

The general rule of thumb was always: Liberty if you have room to expand, Tradition if you don't, and Honor if an early war is inevitable. As others have pointed out, Tradition has generally been healthily buffed since then...

There are also some civs that you may make an exception for. I'll open Honor for Germany/Aztecs and do a Liberty-Piety mix for Egypt/Mayans

 

In my latest game, I opened Tradition, then opened and finished Liberty, and since I have opened up nearly every other branch, but not finished any of the others. I like the diversity and "situation awareness" (what I need at certain points in the game). But of course my latest game is on Prince, so not sure how well this would work out on higher difficulties.