Is there ever any reason to pick Tradition?

[Laz0r]

I am finding in every game I play Tradition I am left with a bad taste in my mouth. In most circumstances where there are at least 4 city spots I can claim I would rather take authority over tradition as I can end up snowballing way way faster due to the fact every settled city ends up having much more production and therefore makes combatting unhappiness and building troops much faster. This also applies for progress too, who's benefits are less front loaded and more spread out through the game. Not to mention I have had problems growing due to unhappiness being more of an issue in my Tradition games than my progress/authority games thereby making the growth focus of tradition pretty much useless when progress and authority cities can grow larger before incurring empire unhappiness.

It feels as if the game is designed around maximizing production, and therefore happiness and other yields, as much as possible in order to snowball and punishes staying peaceful what with the bonuses to food, science, and culture that counteract the only benefits tradition has over other policies which is growth, wonder spamming, and GP all of which pale in comparison to the benefit had from much more happiness, better infrastructure, and more cities conquered/enemy civs gimped.

Anyways, and besides for civs that get bonuses for being Tradition, is there ever a reason to pick it over Progress or Authority?

 

[stii]

Traditions bonus being more front loaded is in general what you want if you are going to snowball. Having one super city makes it a lot easier to generate great people and build wonders. You don't want to wonder spam but the best ones are very powerful.

Authority is very good if you can attack someone early but that won't always be possible for various reasons.

Progress is fine if you don't get attacked but if you do the lack of any defensive bonuses makes aggressive AIs very dangerous.


I do agree that war>peace but you can take authority as the second tree as the second tier ones aren't very exciting.

 

[Laz0r]

Traditions bonus being more front loaded is in general what you want if you are going to snowball. Having one super city makes it a lot easier to generate great people and build wonders. You don't want to wonder spam but the best ones are very powerful.

Tradition may have good early frontloaded yields but it is definitely not a good snowballing tree. Earlier and more great people, wonders, and non-production yields do not stand up in snowball potential against having every one of your cities able to produce units and buildings quickly, and thereby having potential to gain more cities much faster. My point remains, that Tradition is far more difficult to snowball with due to lack of production, and because it's main bonus being better great people bulbs only are really worth using after half the game is already played.

 

[chicorbeef]

There are a few civs very suited for Tradition (eg. Arabia, Korea).

Tradition has stable per-turn Culture and in general tools that suit Culture Victory well, with Great People bonuses and indirect bonuses towards wonders (a strong Capital will have an easier time building wonders). This is important, Progress's culture is snow-bally in nature because it depends on how fast you can build buildings and research techs, and Authority needs you to fight. Tradition on the other hand has guaranteed Culture bonuses, which is made better when you factor in things like the golden age bonus Tradition has.

While it's true that Tradition has less overall production than Progress/Authority, it doesn't need as much production, because there's less buildings to build and you don't need as big an army since you just need a small army to defend a handful of cities.

Tradition secondary cities may run into happiness problems, but you should really never be unhappy in your Capital or in the empire in general and should be able to use the growth bonuses freely in your Capital. Tradition is all about the Capital, it's the workhorse that generates hundreds of Science/Culture per turn.

I don't think Tradition is very good for land-grabbing even with the Capital bonuses. I would rather play Tradition in a game where I don't have to invest too much in defense, because a common issue with Tradition is not being able to focus on wonders/infrastructure because you're getting swarmed. You want to keep your Capital at a relatively high pop early game to work specialists and use the opener, not burn the pop spamming Settlers.

 

[stii]

Tradition may have good early frontloaded yields but it is definitely not a good snowballing tree. Earlier and more great people, wonders, and non-production yields do not stand up in snowball potential against having every one of your cities able to produce units and buildings quickly, and thereby having potential to gain more cities much faster. My point remains, that Tradition is far more difficult to snowball with due to lack of production, and because it's main bonus being better great people bulbs only are really worth using after half the game is already played.

But it isn't earlier wonder it is getting those wonder at all. Having partheon and university of sanoke early is a pretty big boost. Plus other early wonders are easier to get with a better capital.

Early game units are cheap enough that building all of them out of the capital isn't a huge issue and has the benefit of getting the morale buff. Assuming you upgrade comp bows into crossbows you can make 15 of them in 30 turns just out of your capital.

Each GP provides a yield bonus, either providing more later on to blubs or forming themes which can provide quite a lot of culture early on. It is much more awkward to run lot of specialist early as authority.


Like Authority is better if you are effortlessly rolling over everyone but if you are doing that you should probably play on a high difficulty or run harder sub mods if you are already on deity. Or even just play weaker civs.

 

[Fluffball]

I think a lot of it depends a lot on what you want from the game and your play style. I find progress to be the most underwhelming tree since the happiness system which is kind of odd as it used to be my go to tree.

As a rule, war and conquering is by far always the most optimum strategy and easiest to win by so authority does seem to be the go to tree although it does have the down side of being a very one dimensional game and the game is usually won by the middle of the game. And by won i mean you are guaranteed to win but you still have to go through the motions of actually winning and therefore it is extremely rare for me to actually get a domination win.

I have tried various strategies to prolong the uncertainty, outside of outright deliberatly gimping myself, but not much changes. You either destroy all the big opponents early on and no one has a chance to counter you militarily or you save the big opponents till last in the hope of some exciting final battle but for the most part the AI just seems to stall at some point so by the time it comes to the final battle the main AI opponent has no chance against you.

You can technically win a none domination victory by warring but really it is still a domination victory in all but name.

If going for a none domination victory then tradition is a very strong tree. You get a very early boosts to allow you to get a good foothold and then the bonuses allow you to build massive cities and virtually ignore unhappiness but because you aren't crippling all your main opponents games usually are much more uncertain until very near the end or as often happens can really go down to the wire. The main issue with tradition games is the AI is generally particularly poor at the final sprint to victory so if you have any real chance of losing often seems more down to how lucky the AI was at almost accidently achieving a victory but if the stars align for one or more AI's games can be very tense and engaging thorughout the whole game.


As mentioned i really struggle with progress as it should really fit that inbetween stage where you want to go a bit wider but not conquer the world but the issue is tradition is usually much easier to go medium wide, specifically dealing with happiness as you get some many bonus resources that you get very little happiness and if you are going reasonably wide you will (a) probably end up in conflict with at least one AI so warring will make that easier and (b) usually have to juggle between foundiing cities to grab space or growing cities so they are actually worth having, which means your empire is pretty poor for a very long time before you get to bed in and start taking advantage of progress, by which time the AI can be very far ahead and neighbours may already be eyeing you up for conquest and be ahead of you in military techs so you could really do with having gone authority again.

Going authority also has the advanages of saving resources from not having to build settlers and even early game you often pick up a building or two the AI has built which is a huge advantage in the early game and then you have the option to puppet for as long as you wish which drastically reduces empire unhappiness in comparison to expanding with settlers and allows you to expand and improve your empire while controlling unhappiness much easier before you settle in and start building up your empire, plus you have cripples your neighbour(s).

 

[DeAnno]

I tend to find Authority often has an excellent early boom regardless of an actual live early war. You can get a lot of bonus culture off camps, a lot of bonus everything off tributes, a lot of bonus yields off your newly founded cities with the 3rd policy, etc. Usually when I start inland and go Authority my early culture is quite fast and I don't get into the same magnitude of slumps you can get into with Tradition or Progress in the first 3 policies or so. Of course you do need to do something with it after this happens, but you have quite a lot of time to do so, basically until you pick the 4th policy you are just grooving on easy street usually.

 

[SpecifiedUsername]

Are we in the situation from the thread name again? Whenever I go tradition I find myself to be in massively worse position than in progress games. Even with wonders.

 

[CppMaster]

Do you compare Great People and their respective points? Because that's the point of Tradition and it's easy to miss.

 

[rkkn]

Tradition is for great people, ...and sovereignty. Sovereignty increases border growth a *ton*. It changes the culture requirement increase from exponential to linear. I want a lot of land, I'll take 2 in tradition even if I don't want to finish it.
But yeah for taking the whole tree, it's all about those great people. If you don't want to spam those, then indeed don't take tradition. It's obviously not a fit for every build, but it does enable some fun things, like getting a great engineer by the time non-tradition can even work engineer specialists at all, or having bunches of 30-yield tiles in medieval era.

Spoiler :

one's even missing here, since a city state war caught me by surprise, and they managed to pillage my sheep academy

 

[andersw]

Even if go you something else you can start Tradition on a low food start, +2 pop is quite big.

 

[looorg]

Is there really ever any reason not to pick Tradition as the starter? Anyone of them will do. They are slightly different but they are all ok. I find that none of them really impact how I play my early game. In some regard when I start Authority I almost always later regret it -- the units are not needed and for some reason it seems all the barbarian camps keep spawning far far away near the AI and never close to me. So I never really get full utility out of it. It's not really needed to do war-stuff either. Progress is pretty much always nice but still kind of meh. The best part is the free worker and production boost but I can play around that part. I used to almost always go Progress but eventually I found my way back to Tradition and now I mostly always pick it. I just find it works better then the other two. There are exceptions such as if I randomly become Monty then I will usually go authority just cause of the jaguar warriors.

Having a great capital is always beneficial and you'll want to grow tall no matter what and you will want to work all those specialists in the capital. Which pretty much means go Tradition.

Out of the three branch wonders I also like the Tradition one the best, but it could be cause I don't really like early cavalry so I never bother with that so the authority one is out. The Progress one I don't find as interesting as the Tradition one either.

 

[Laz0r]

Is there really ever any reason not to pick Tradition as the starter? Anyone of them will do. They are slightly different but they are all ok. I find that none of them really impact how I play my early game. In some regard when I start Authority I almost always later regret it -- the units are not needed and for some reason it seems all the barbarian camps keep spawning far far away near the AI and never close to me. So I never really get full utility out of it. It's not really needed to do war-stuff either. Progress is pretty much always nice but still kind of meh. The best part is the free worker and production boost but I can play around that part. I used to almost always go Progress but eventually I found my way back to Tradition and now I mostly always pick it. I just find it works better then the other two. There are exceptions such as if I randomly become Monty then I will usually go authority just cause of the jaguar warriors.

Having a great capital is always beneficial and you'll want to grow tall no matter what and you will want to work all those specialists in the capital. Which pretty much means go Tradition.

Out of the three branch wonders I also like the Tradition one the best, but it could be cause I don't really like early cavalry so I never bother with that so the authority one is out. The Progress one I don't find as interesting as the Tradition one either.

Tradition can be more enjoyable to play with but it's certainly the worst of the three. Simply put, more cities and cities stolen from enemy civs, as well as better yields in all of your cities is more conducive to victory than a good capital and more great people. Authority gives you better early and lategame yields by nature of the tree, and of the playstyle of conquering. The same applies for progress but it's basically worse.

specialists/great people aren't really ever a worthwhile investment compared to investing into military power/infrastructure because of how bad all their early yields are or how irrelevant their late yields are. the only exception is GA/GW's which pay off handsomely both in early yields and in worthwhile time post-industrial and are generally worth sacrificing a few cities to perma-work because of how much faster you can get ideology tenents with them.

Playing tall, even on crammed maps, will always ensure winning is more challenging because you're playing against AI who have the same amount of cities plus all the extra difficulty-related yield boosts, meaning you're really pushing your luck. When you have more cities, you can simply outyield or conquer them ensuring victory.

Ergo, my argument is still correct unless I can be reasoned or proven otherwise. Better to eliminate the competition than to let them live to compete with you.

 

[stii]

Tradition can be more enjoyable to play with but it's certainly the worst of the three. Simply put, more cities and cities stolen from enemy civs, as well as better yields in all of your cities is more conducive to victory than a good capital and more great people. Authority gives you better early and lategame yields by nature of the tree, and of the playstyle of conquering. The same applies for progress but it's basically worse.

specialists/great people aren't really ever a worthwhile investment compared to investing into military power/infrastructure because of how bad all their early yields are or how irrelevant their late yields are. the only exception is GA/GW's which pay off handsomely both in early yields and in worthwhile time post-industrial and are generally worth sacrificing a few cities to perma-work because of how much faster you can get ideology tenents with them.

Playing tall, even on crammed maps, will always ensure winning is more challenging because you're playing against AI who have the same amount of cities plus all the extra difficulty-related yield boosts, meaning you're really pushing your luck. When you have more cities, you can simply outyield or conquer them ensuring victory.

Ergo, my argument is still correct unless I can be reasoned or proven otherwise. Better to eliminate the competition than to let them live to compete with you.

This assumes there is always space for more cities. If you only have room for four cites maybe you should pick authority but why would you pick liberty over tradition?

 

[Laz0r]

This assumes there is always space for more cities. If you only have room for four cites maybe you should pick authority but why would you pick liberty over tradition?

Picking Progress would likely still be better for conquering out of four cities than tradition is, but in the case of a peaceful 4 city progress compared to a peaceful 4 city tradition I am unsure if it would be worth it or not because I've never played progress in such a circumstance.

 

[SpecifiedUsername]

This assumes there is always space for more cities. If you only have room for four cites maybe you should pick authority but why would you pick liberty over tradition?

I think that's map script depended. There are nearly never such situations on communitas derived map esp. milae's. You (and AI) more often than not have a space for 8-10, strong, not forced cities.

 

[Fluffball]

I still go for either tradition or authority as a rule but i do try progress occasionally to see if it has improved (for me).

In the simplest terms which i pick is generally whether i am planning to play defensively or offensively for the first half of the game.Once your past the middle game your first policy trees don't really make a huge difference. You should have a strong enough military if you go tradition and a strong enough resource base if you went authority to compete in the end game.


If i am going defensive i find tradition much stronger with me being able to grab lots of land 'peacefully' and building strong cities both defensively but also economically. While it seems counter to tradition i tend put my satellite cities close to my capital as most of my capitals population will be working specialists (i work every specialist if possible apart from merchants) so i actually work very few tiles with my capital, instead letting my satellites work them. Generally i plant any great engineers and scientists so i very quickly have a very good science and production base although i may expend them to rush Great Wall which is my only real must have with tradition as with the quick border growth and Great Wall it can be virtually impossible for the AI to get anywhere near threatening any of your cities in any meaningful way. With the glut of bonuses and resources you tend to get from tradition happiness is never really an issue so you can just keep growing all your cities without much thought.

Usually at the time Great Wall becomes obsolete is the time i start to plan some more aggressive defense. i.e. counter-attacking when i am attacked and looking to take some established enemies cities to stop them harrassing me as at this time i will usually have some well trained troops from all the defensive wars, a couple of generals lying around and a military tech advantage with some key promotions such as extra range or indirect fire. Occaisionally, if i am lucky with my neighbours and the situation i actually have a fully peaceful game.


If i am planning to be more agressive or spawn next to a couple of warmongers i take authority as the combat bonuses just make the whole process much easier and smoother in the early game so you can really establish yourself while exploiting or knocking out close neighbours. Usually the point of starting my third policy tree (which starts to define the advantaes you have in the end game) is where i decide if i am going to commit to full warmonger or just secure my position and use my established power base to puch for another victory type.

 

[stii]

I think that's map script depended. There are nearly never such situations on communitas derived map esp. milae's. You (and AI) more often than not have a space for 8-10, strong, not forced cities.

Sure but that also makes the game way easier. and very far from the basic maps. 6p has space for 4-5 and 8p has room for 5-6

 

[stii]

Picking Progress would likely still be better for conquering out of four cities than tradition is, but in the case of a peaceful 4 city progress compared to a peaceful 4 city tradition I am unsure if it would be worth it or not because I've never played progress in such a circumstance.

What bonuses to conquering does liberty give?

 

[SpecifiedUsername]

Sure but that also makes the game way easier. and very far from the basic maps. 6p has space for 4-5 and 8p has room for 5-6

Yeah right now it's too easy. But I remember a time where this extra space was more of an AI benefit and they could flood you with units and runaway with cul/science. It still happens sometimes.