Policies?

[MadMage86]

So, with policies no longer being 'the way to win', will it be easier to fill out several trees faster now?

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

I believe that in MadDjinn's livestream, he said that policy gain is slower at the beginning, but you will be able to pick up more policies/tenets by the end of the game than with G&K. And that makes sense because there are more options now.

 

[Calouste]

I believe that in MadDjinn's livestream, he said that policy gain is slower at the beginning, but you will be able to pick up more policies/tenets by the end of the game than with G&K. And that makes sense because there are more options now.

That makes sense because culture is going to be harder to come by initially now that the Amphitheatre has dropped from 3 base and 3 bonus culture with a specialist to 1 base and 2 bonus culture with a Great Work. But later on Great Works, Resolutions, tenets and policies will boost your culture.

Two further implications:
1) Culture providing pantheons are going to be a lot more interesting.
2) Cultural border expansion is probably going to be a lot slower for the first half of the game, specially for wide empires. Buying tiles is going to a more regular occurrence. It means an indirect boost to America and Russia, and it might make Religious Settlements and Angkor Wat options you might actually think about picking.

 

[shaglio]

2) Cultural border expansion is probably going to be a lot slower for the first half of the game, specially for wide empires. Buying tiles is going to a more regular occurrence. It means an indirect boost to America and Russia, and it might make Religious Settlements and Angkor Wat options you might actually think about picking.

This makes the Shoshone's free 8 extra tiles when founding a city even more epic.