Returning player - Trading Post spam viable?

[Iron Weasel]

Had Civ5 pre-ordered and played up until late October. Matter of fact, I only played for about a week after the first major patch was released on October 22, 2010 - haven't played since then. I did look over all the patch notes from Oct 22nd up until the most recent patch released on March 1st.

When I last played, Infinite City Sprawl (ICS) and Trading Post spam were the "preferred" strategies along with saving up Social Policies and grabbing Patronage so you could go around and gobble up all the Maritime City-States for ungodly amounts of extra food.
How viable is that strategy now?

I also noticed that the Tradition tree was changed pretty drastically from how I remember it. Is it worth taking any policies in that tree now or should the points applied in a different tree?

 

[Udey1]

Time to read some patch notes then. Many updates since you left.

 

[Pazyryk]

ICS does not seem to be the strategy used by Deity players anymore. You can still pack cities in, with a 4 space limit now, but that is certainly not the single optimal strategy now.

 

[Nyanko]

Trading Posts were nerfed, to only give you one gold till you research economics. Also the amount of gold and production one recieved from a new town was reduced, making things much more difficult for the ICSer's meaning that the founding of a new town was worth less for the town, but conversely more for the location where you put the town. As well as that, the distance you could found new cities was upped from 2 to 3. Not sure what the new Diety stratagy is, haven't watched any diety games recently

 

[MadDjinn]

go check my youtube channel for Deity gameplay

ICS - not as big anymore. There's definitely a benefit to a hard REX, but that's not ICS.

TP spam - I still do it with puppets, but it's not a 'do it everywhere' thing anymore. The latest patch did nerf TPs before Economics, but that wouldn't stop a TP spam concept for long. What did help with the latest patch was making the other tiles worth a bit more to not TP spam them. So camps generate gold post-economics. Ivory can get to 5gpt (6 on a river) and so are definitely better than TP.

Other tiles got better hammers (mines = 4 hpt) and plantations get more food at fertilizer.

granaries and stables, etc, also start providing extras for resources, so you're less dependant on a pure gold economy.

Lastly, hammers got a bit of a boost; though gold is still king given some changes to the hammer costs of buildings and beaker times of techs.

 

[Michl2602]

I also noticed that the Tradition tree was changed pretty drastically from how I remember it. Is it worth taking any policies in that tree now or should the points applied in a different tree?

Tradition tree has lots of good policies now.
Tradition --> Legalism --> Landed Elite still seems a great way to go for the first 3 policies.

But the alternative (and any mixture of both) Liberty --> Free Worker --> Free GP of your choice is also strong, so it depends.

Because of Tradition and Liberty both got so strong Honor is taken quite seldom meanwhile.

 

[Iron Weasel]

Thanks for all the heads-up.

I went and played a Prince game on a Small Continents map with all random leaders and ended up playing as Napoleon with Elizabeth and al-Rashid on my continent and Wu Zetian, Gandhi, and Bismark on the other. For some reason (or maybe a lot of reasons), Prince seems to be a lot easier than I remember it being. I was #1 in all Demographics by like 1350 AD and eventually won a Space Race victory sometime in the early 1900's AD. Never really considered myself a particularly "skilled" player, but maybe it's time to move up to King and see if that's any better.

 

[notam]

Imo with king you wount see any changes.Actully gameplay changes from emperor/immortal and next change from Deity.

 

[joncnunn]

Like several players, I go Traditolib. (Grabbing the best policies within both Tradition & Liberty)

Basically this is first base Tradition, then base Liberty and then whatever policy within those branches I think benefits me the most at that time. (Eventually getting everything in Liberty other than Republic and I sometimes skip the wonder and/or free unit support within cities ones under Tradition as well.)

I'm building a Monument early and delaying Legalism until Philo to get some free Temples instead of monuments.

Tradition tree has lots of good policies now.
Tradition --> Legalism --> Landed Elite still seems a great way to go for the first 3 policies.

But the alternative (and any mixture of both) Liberty --> Free Worker --> Free GP of your choice is also strong, so it depends.

Because of Tradition and Liberty both got so strong Honor is taken quite seldom meanwhile.