Right Side Authority: A thought experiment

[DeAnno]

Let's say that you believe the Tribute nerf as it stands now is crippling both the Authority Tribute policy and the Authority finisher, and let's also say that you want to do mostly tall Warfare-as-raiding for kills and pillages and such rather than wide Warfare-as-expanding with lots of city capture. Perhaps you're playing a civ like Aztecs or Vikings that gets rewarded for such behavior.

There's a certain attraction in Opening Authority, then going straight down the right side for the strong combat bonuses which will be with you the whole game. Even the garrison policy would actually be quite powerful as a third policy for generating 1happy+2cpt per city. So you get to your fourth policy and finish Authority-Right, maybe you had some trouble settling out early but you got a lot of strong bonuses with long term power as well as a cool early steroid with the garrisons. What do you do now?

You could take Tradition and Sovereignty, but those are a bit awkward to take as a 5th and 6th policy in terms of some of what they give you. I suppose you could take them 4th and 5th and delay the combat bonus instead, but still (EDIT: This is probably correct, the cpt of those two policies combined is usually ~6-8 by then.) Taking them any earlier invalidates the strength of getting the garrison policy early. It's also a little embarrassing that you mixed two trees and didn't even manage to get both the border bonuses in doing so.

There aren't really any other great options though, because Progress doesn't have a good long term policy on the top level. You could maybe forsake the combat bonus altogether and take all three of Progress-Left instead, or you could maybe take all three of Progress Left AND all four of Authority Right, but then you'd miss two finishers or get behind in tenets by one, which probably would be too rough to bear (maybe Adopt Ideology and then go back for your second finisher after?)

What are your thoughts?

 

[Drakle]

Mixing a limited Authority, with filling out Tradition worked quite well for me as OCC Aztecs. Yields on kills and combat bonuses worked well with strong capital and longer golden ages, triggered by the UA.

I went Authority, Dominance and Tribute. Tribute might have a been a mistake since I didn't do much tributing in its currently broken state. The border growth bonuses were nice, but likely not really needed. My capital was constantly growing its borders outwards. I didn't take Imperium because a free settler was useless and the instant razing from city captures may not work with OCC. I was going to take Discipline and Honor, but I wanted to finish Tradition and go Statecraft for its free strategic resources. And my capital had no happiness issues, and the culture from a garrison was nothing compared to my per turn culture. Honor would have been nice, with my supply cap issue, and warring but I didn't rate it as worth 2 policies.

I filled out tradition entirely. Not sure of exact order, since I think I bounced back and forth. Authority and Dominance were first and second I think.

 

[andersw]

There are benefits of mixing but I feel its usually more valuable to go all in on a strat and its more of a special case scenario.
A lot of the options are short time benefits in exchange for delaying later stronger options, the finishers are strong.
When I've tried mixing I've always felt a bit behind and well you have to decide if it is worth it.
For a warmonger it I think it makes sense to take 1 tradition -> authority for the extra 2 pop, especially if you're in a very food starved hill area, but even then its going to cost you in policys.
(I dont know progress well enough to make calls what to use or mix there.)
There are other options like dipping 2 fealty for the castle happiness, or dipping artistry for guild happiness.
Maybe? it makes most sense to mix in the third policy trees.

 

[tothePAIN]

Best late game 2 policy excursion into another policy Tree is 2 policies into rationalism.

It's worth +7% science, +10% science in golden age, 1 happiness from universities, and a free technology

 

[tothePAIN]

Regarding going right side authority, the left side gives the biggest opportunity to snowball by taking cities. A mere 2 culture per city on the right side would be a little tough to use to get going.

 

[CrazyG]

I've experimented a lot with authority and come to two relevant conclusions for this idea.

First, 2 culture and 1 happiness per city, dependent on having a garrison, isn't very good. You want your units out hunting or bothering city states constantly. I'm nearly always at my supply limit early game, I just don't have the soldiers to leave my cities occupied all the time.

Second, even if you are playing a one city challenge, imperium is pretty good for the science on city capture.

Also, the most important combat bonus in authority is the 15 HP heal on kill. The promotions you get later on are nice and all but really not that important in the scheme of things. If you want to mix trees, tradition + authority works pretty well, mixing anything with progress tends to be a waste of social policies.

 

[kawyua]

the thing with opening authority at all and going down the right side is you have to some reliable way to farm enemies. what i don't like about opening authority early on is you are shoehorned into trying to find enemies/barbs so much.

i find going right down authority is a matter of counting, am i killling a unit one per turn? thats good? 1 per 2 turns? very meh as a policy. less? do not take. you'd much rather get the tradition policy or progress policies.

That's why i find opening authority later and then the science per kill policy where you can reliably get around 2 kills or more per turn as just a good policy, if you are setting up to warmonger.

the tribute policy really really wants 3 of the 25% culture reduction on borders to become super strong, that can be hard to assemble as other civs can take ankor wat or god of the expanse. still, These border growth strategies are relevant even if you are going tall because maybe you might go wider through warmongering. I think this is the only reason why you would want to mix.

imperium i also think is situational. the thing with city captures is that you only city capture after a decently long war and often take multiple in a spree after that. so just take the policy before your first spree of city captures. because if you can take cities, its often a good idea. you really want the justifications of a border growth strat to take tribute in the first place to even think about going for imperium early on, which by itself is an okay policy early on

the unit on a city for 2 culture and happy is really not a good policy whether tall or wide as crazyg said. the only reason why you want to finish authority on the right with honor is because you have your border growth strategy setup. do not take the policy just for the units or the combat bonus, early on. yields are much more impactful then the military fodder impact of honor.

I find the whole tree so dependent on what's going on and why i don't like opening with it. you gotta be like russia or mongolia with god of the expanse to do the whole hybrid tradition with sovereignty and authority opener.

 

[DeAnno]

I find the whole tree so dependent on what's going on and why i don't like opening with it.

I almost wonder if the real thing to do is open with full Tradition or Progress, and then if it seems you'll really be fighting a lot with melee units for a long time Do Authority->Dominance instead of 2 of your Statecraft/Fealty (Artistry seems bottom heavy to me and I think it'd mix really poorly.) I agree heal on kills is a huge effect and that it comes with science for kills is icing.

 

[andersw]

Discipline and specifically The happiness for garrison unit is vital for me playing authority.
How on earth do you manage happiness if you dont take that one?
Do you just not expand past 3 cities?