It's less that Progress is strong, and more that Tradition is weak

DeAnno

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As I start, I'll mention all of this is mostly in reference to play on Deity for humans. I've played a good amount of games recently, often cutting off around t150-200, but long enough to see the general trajectory a game will take. I think the community mostly agrees games are usually won and lost in the first half.

There's been a lot of discussion on the side lately about Tradition and Progress, and how the +50% settler production buff made Progress suddenly become overpowered. While this was a big change, Progress had been something of a redheaded stepchild beforehand, so it's surprising how the tables have seemingly turned overnight. What I think though is that this wasn't the biggest change affecting early balance to happen lately.

The biggest change was barbarians.

Authority obviously profited from the barbarian change. Not only do the much more frequently (and conveniently) spawning camps provide a longer and stronger annuity of yields (remember extra gold from camps is also new), but the Authority barbarian fighting combat bonus is key in the earlygame, letting overwhelmed units hold out just enough to survive in many cases. Knowledge of where the camps spawn is more important now too, so a rogue camp spawned 2 tiles from your borders behind woods gets one or two less turns to surprise you with. It's easy to see why the first hundred turns of Authority are much better, and how that'll roll into much more consistent performance for Authority, even if you don't push for an early war.

With Progress, it's more subtle. Progress doesn't get rewarded much for fighting barbarians, though those hits of 50:c5gold: can be strong early on. But Progress has the tools available to fight them. The first four policy unlocks of Progress (full top and right) give it a lot of :c5production::c5gold::c5science:, and are quite powerful policies in general, with the last two unlocks being one very long term policy and one happiness one that can be easily held off for last. This gives Progress build orders a lot of slack. Progress can generally set up a strong economy while still being able to tech :c5science: to good units and spend the effort :c5production::c5gold: to build a good army. This isn't a hard thing for Progress, it just sort of happens automatically, you don't have to sacrifice much. Progress also loves to ICS its cities at minimum distance, building a tight well connected empire that's easy to defend.

Overall, Progress has the tools necessary to ride out the barbarian storm, but Tradition does not.

The strongest part of the Tradition tree is at the end, in the last two unlocks; the first four policies are by comparison a little weak. Sovereignty gives Faith and an Artist sure, but Faith won't compound any returns at all until Founding around t80-95, and more culture just pushes you along the Tradition tree itself. The GP farmed by the policies takes a while to pay off, everything is very long term.

As a result, Tradition build orders are usually greedy. To build a consistent army early, Tradition often must make serious sacrifices, especially with its very limited ability to make things :c5production::c5gold:. It has enough trouble getting Shrines and Monuments in its secondary cities, much less doing anything else in good time. Even science is a little challenging until unlock 4, and you might find yourself chasing lux and pantheon techs and being left with Warriors and Slingers into the barbarian Spearman ages. Also, if you're going to go Tall long term, you don't want a huge surplus of cities and want to be choosier with economic or defensive locations, meaning you can be spread out more at the start and more vulnerable to barbarians spawning inside of you. You have much less roads early too, so without horses your army will tend to be very immobile.

The long term of Tradition is very good, and we used to see that achieved much easier with greedy orders. You would settle in such a way not to anger nearby AI, play politics carefully, and observe the world situation with a close eye to get ready to spring and make an army and walls all at once, right when it was obviously going to be needed. That's no longer possible, you need it right away, or a random deluge of spawning camps could basically cripple you. This has had really nasty effects on Tradition openings, it just feels the impact of the barbarian change in a more visceral way than Progress does.

I legitimately think Tradition is the weakest opening tree now, from being the strongest as little as four months ago. Authority got a lot more consistent, Tradition got a lot less consistent, and Progress kinda stayed the same, with the settler buff giving it enough slack to have more army and fight off the increased barb waves. The change to make Artistry wider and less entwined with Tradition hurt it too, depriving it of the easy synergies there. It can still easily go Artistry, but it's not as good anymore, and more and more often I see Statecraft as the true tall tree to pick with Tradition now.

What's to be done about it? I dunno, but I would rather see buffs or possibly sidegrades (for more early term value and less late, or more slack and defensive ability) to Tradition than thinking everything can be solved if we nerf Progress enough.
 
If tradition struggles with barbarions the most then how about +1 attack range for all cities?
 
Progress had been something of a redheaded stepchild beforehand, so it's surprising how the tables have seemingly turned overnight.
I honestly think this is the sign that we are about as close to balance between the two as we are going to get. It literally feels like the posts seesaw on this topic. Tradition was the strongest, now its progress, and back again. Tradition got a few very solid buffs in the last round of changes, so that has to be factored in.

Does barbs hit tradition more than progress? Early on....no. A tradition capital is going to build its monument/shrine/and then first warrior faster than progress, assuming equal starts. This is primarily due to the extra 2 pop. And then if you need another unit....Tradition still has you covered. So I don't see a problem for tradition in that super early game.

Where I could see the argument is once you have your 5ish cities, and you basically need to garrison each and every one because there are so many barbs out there (whereas previously maybe you left a few more open). In that scenario, I could see progress' production coming into play, as those units are mainly going to come from your secondary cities. But is that such a change that suddenly tradition is now the weakest of the 3 trees.....I'm not saying it couldn't, but I think I would need a lot more games under the belt before I would say it with confidene.
 
What's to be done about it? I dunno, but I would rather see buffs or possibly sidegrades (for more early term value and less late, or more slack and defensive ability) to Tradition than thinking everything can be solved if we nerf Progress enough.
Please stop buffing the ancient trees. We’re going to end up swamping the medieval trees at this rate.
 
I agree that Tradition is probably the weakest ancient tree now, but not by a large margin. I find the weakness comes more from Tradition + Artistry together. Tradition with either Fealty or Statecraft still works pretty well for me.
Progress also loves to ICS its cities at minimum distance, building a tight well connected empire that's easy to defend.
That's basically how I play with Tradition as well now. I used to play Tradition wide (not as wide as Progress or Authority) and the only problem I had was happiness. But now barbs force me to be more conservative with expansion and it still works well because the secondary cities can work tiles the capital no longer use as the number of specialists increase.
 
Tradition got a few very solid buffs in the last round of changes, so that has to be factored in.
I don't really agree. Tradition lost its scaling GAP/GP and its longer Golden Ages, and got +1 capital working range, effectively +1 sci/city and +1 hammer/GPTI. Tradition capitals don't work a lot of tiles anyway, and have even less need to in the current meta where you want to really bunch cities up more. So the range is a cute bonus but it's barely a benefit really, you might have one extra good tile you'll actually work if you're lucky. +1 sci/city through the Lodges... eh ok whatever. +1 hammer/GPTI... that seems better, but it really isn't that many hammers at the end of the day.

+25% GA length and the bonus GAP were huge, the added GA turns brought in strong scaling yields (including quite a lot of bonus hammers) throughout the game that basically beat those other bonuses for strength across the ages. This was a nerf to Tradition, not a buff.

Does barbs hit tradition more than progress? Early on....no. A tradition capital is going to build its monument/shrine/and then first warrior faster than progress, assuming equal starts. This is primarily due to the extra 2 pop. And then if you need another unit....Tradition still has you covered. So I don't see a problem for tradition in that super early game.
Monument/Shrine (Invested)/Warrior is already a pretty passive start for Tradition, this gets into what I was saying in Greed vs. Slack. Progress gets the slack of a whole free worker at the second policy around t35. Authority is going to be getting a whole free settler at the third which can be around the t50 range (I haven't kept close track but both of those feel conservative timings to me.) Plus Authority is going to be getting a lot of gold from killing camps quickly. Tradition gets none of these early economic freebies, it has to build its economy out of its own blood.

With Tradition I am looking for a start like Monument/Stonehenge, or Monument/Shrine (Invested)/Pyramids, or Monument/Shrine/Worker somehow, or maybe something with a hasty Well. I guess with a lot of bonus money you could go Mon/Shrine/Warrior and buy the worker and maybe not feel that bad. But with Tradition it is always a huge concern that if you are not greedy with your build order you lag and are just mindblowingly slow, and the slowness compounds because everything compounds very fast in this game. That Warrior you get out after the Shrine costs so much for Tradition later on, even worse if you make 2 Warriors to get a team of 3, which is kinda what you need to be able to play defense and offense (ie settling a new city/killing a camp) at the same time with any degree of safety.

It's reasonable to think there has been too much buffing and buffs aren't the answer. But a sidegrade might be, I really was sad that the free Warrior on the Engineer policy didn't pass in session 2, that would've had huge impact and been just what was needed (though a Slinger is more thematic imo.) You could give up some lategame value in those last two strong policies somewhere for something like that and not feel too bad.

Or maybe if you think Tradition should have to buck up and deal, Authority needs a stern looking at too, not just progress. The changes its getting this session will make it better still, that's for sure. I'm not necessarily against those, but I think if nerfs are your appetite both it and Progress could maybe have some of their fat cut away and still be fine. Tall Tradition just feels like it's going the way of the dinosaur to me.
 
Tradition capitals don't work a lot of tiles anyway
I feel you are missing out if you play that way. Try to keep some food ITRs running, my tradition capitals are always the largest city on the planet, with large distance.

Regards
XSamatan
 
I feel you are missing out if you play that way. Try to keep some food ITRs running, my tradition capitals are always the largest city on the planet, with large distance.
I'm pretty sure he does send food to his capital, but OP is about the very early game
 
Interesting, to me the bigest issue of tradition is that it loses steam in the late game, but I may not be playing it right. I favor tradition in immortal but can't find the way in deity, unlike progress (which looked fine even before the settler buff).

The unstacking of artistry certainly plays a role, but I feel like it comes from before. The sizeable increase in late game tech cost combined with the decreased yield of great scientists was a maybe a nerf to tradition/tall. It made raw science from large (progress) empires comparatively much stronger.

If (if?) there were indeed a scaling issue, I would suggest giving a happiness scaling bonus to tradition. I feel like happiness should be the main advantage of "tall", which is not that obvious currently. E.g. the hapiness from ceremony could be doubled. Or something else that scales into mid game, like + 1 happiness for every N citizens in the capital. This could give leverage to either grow satelites or get more golden ages, while remaining capital-centric.

As for barbs, a gentle push could be that units garrisoned inside the capital heal faster. Or free walls with justice to have a little slack.
 
I'm playing immortal Morocco tradition/fealty/industry/ with pyramid now-- with large mapping settings everyone starting on the same continents and one ocean, hot and arid- so I really did not have many individual barbs spawns because of space and aggressive neighbors but I have two city states close and they have had two barbs spawns events and first one early was tough to put down the second one in industrial age was crazy ( I mean crazy awesome) I could not do anything as it spawn right after I started fighting Songhai on other side of map- thank good for the stronger CS and other close players-

Coming off my last game with wide Denmark with progress and terracotta- the time for workers now and with the Kasbahs - it feels like I'm playing on Marathon (LOL) even roads take time. Now bad events are truly bad - I have 15 workers and 7 cites - I love it.

I think it can be difficult to make comparisons ( I realize we have to as it is necessary for balance) but there are so many different variables, play styles, settings, etc. -- I think we all agree honor/domination is easiest or taking out your early neighbor but I wanted to play small and not war or just play much differently than normal and that is what I have ( my non-experience units are getting torn up by Songhai who is the tech leader) I mean I'm actually a bit worried. I have to think much more tactically which is great and it much more challenging than normal - . I think one of the goals of Vox is to allow different types of play which makes it much more interesting and I think is great for replayability - (as warring is awesome but it can get old when you walking over everyone all the time). Playing tall/tradition is certainly different from what I normally play- Early in the game I would have agreed as I thought progress was way better but now Tradition is starting to come into it's own in Renaissance /Industrial and I'm enjoying it immensely.

What a fabulous game!
 
I think it can be difficult to make comparisons ( I realize we have to as it is necessary for balance) but there are so many different variables, play styles, settings, etc.
Or to me the most important one....the start. Frankly your start can have such a big balance impact, it often overrides lesser things. That's why a lot of games are needed to really come to conclusions, ESPECIALLY about the early game.

Give me a good start, and I don't care how bad a tree is, I will often outperform a better tree with a weaker start in the early game. So you need to play enough games to ensure a variety of starts. For example, before I posted my thoughts on Authority I had run through 12 different greece authority starts just to try different methods and see how things were looking over time.
 
Not many people has the time to play the game that many times like you :lol:
 
I think a free warrior/slinger for tradition would fit well, considering the new barb changes. It would make the 3 ancient trees much more balanced. In hindsight its a shame the free warrior proposal didn't pass. Should be proposed again
 
If early game barbarian is the problem, we nerf barbarian spawns, not buff tradition.
 
Tradition AI cannot handle barbs as well as Progress AI, Barbs seem to be a little Problematic to those Policy Civs, Authority Civs seem to handle barbs well. Ive seen Babylon Tradition get complelty overwhelmed have happiness issues and have city states take thier cities after barbs have caused issues. Yet ive seen Aztecs Authority thrive. Ive had better starts with Raging barbs authority than tradition but eventually do regain control with tradition but its a very slow start progress has the extra expansion to allow a little boost later on
 
Well authority tree is the only ancient era tree with bonus related to barbarian, something that tradition and progress fairly lacks. Added with aztecs traits it is not surprising that aztecs authority thrives in barbarian heavy start. I think it is not fair comparing with aztecs authority with babylon tradition when it comes in solving barbarian problem as they both have little relationship in playtstyles and traits. One is heavily favored while the other is not.
 
Uh now I see the long term issue of the early trouble with barbs. Early military is not a linear 10 turn delay, it kinf of flattens your progression curve. I had a semi-isolated, unsassailable, gold monopoly start with arabia, pyramids and petra. If there was ever a condition to try tall-artistry it was this one, but when China launched its nuke while I was in the industrial era I saw there was no come-back. I certainly did some mistakes, and turtling is an inherently risky strategy as you lose means to intervene with runaways, but the margin was so wide I really felt how barbs don't only delay you, but compound the delay. I guess the compound factor is that you miss several more wonders than you should, which makes tall fall behind, which combines with the GA nerfs and the increased late game techs.
 
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