Social Policies separation for different goals

[Glassmage]

So this is Bibor analysis of the Social Policies from his amazing articles in war academy. Thank you!!!

Tier One - How do I grow my empire?
- By vertical expansion (Tradition)
- By horizontal expansion (Liberty)
- By conquest (Honor)

Tier Two - What Resources I want to utilize the most?
- Culture points and golden age points (Piety)
- Diplomacy points (Patronage)
- Gold/Commerce (Commerce)
- Beakers (Rationalism)

Tier Three - How do I plan to win?
- By being small and staying small (Freedom)
- By being small and turning big(Autocracy)
- By being big and staying big (Order)

What I want to know more is if the 10 policies can also be broken in different ways for achieving maximum potential at specific victory conditions?

This is my take:

Be small and have a lot of food, going tall - Tradition
City spamming, ICS, going wide - Liberty

Cultural Victory - Piety and Freedom
Extra happiness and better great people tile gains and better specialists and better golden age

Diplomatic Victory - Patronage and Commerce
You need money to buy city states, and when you get the city states you get more benefits

Domination Victory - Honor and Autocracy
Military buildings and units focus, then flat out better at war than everyone else

Science Victory - Rationalism and Order
Need more beakers for late techs and need more productions for spaceship parts

Would Piety and Autocracy also a good combination??? Extra happiness while warring and puppeting doesn't hurt.
And Honor with Tradition make small empire more defensive with extra happiness???
What are you guys combinations?

 

[Gehennas]

Actually everything is little more complicated and situational:

Going tall peacefully - Tradition
Going wide with lots of luxuries available (or playing Egypt) - Liberty
Going wide with poor amount of luxuries around - Liberty + Piety
Early rush - Honor + Liberty
Early rush leaving you with a lot of place to expand - Honor + Liberty + Piety
Starting warmongering in medieval era - Tradition + Honor
Starting warmongering in renaissance era - Commerce
Starting warmongering in industrial/modern era - Autocracy + Commerce
Having gold income/CS relationship improving UB/UA - Dimplomacy
etc.

 

[Capt Ajax]

I usually have a small empire (around 8 cities max) and usually start with Honor then Piety then Freedom. I grab some Tradition here and there and usually end up using Commerce toward the end of the game...

 

[vexing]

realistically there are 4 possible goals, one for each victory condition.
the optimal way to play for each vc doesn't change much from game to game. you're almost invariably going to want early liberty regardless of goal, as getting a second city up early is extremely helpful.

for science and diplomacy you'll probably want to finish liberty for the great person to rush build porcelain tower. after that you'll go into rationalism for RA potency and to have the two free techs set up for the end of the tech tree, and open freedom to produce more great scientists.

for diplomacy you may have time to get one or two in patronage to help getting allies when you build the UN

for a domination game you may want honor and two policies in piety to combat unhappiness in your conquered empire

for culture you'll generally want to fill up piety, freedom, tradition, liberty and a less important 5th branch (generally patronage, honor for aztec or songhai).

 

[fmlizard2]

I'm not a believer in Honor or Autocracy, even for a domination game. I seldom have an issue with my units not hitting hard enough or being too expensive. Order is better than Autocracy for a big puppet empire.

The inputs to successful war are and (and to a lesser extent, ). If you can get an era ahead through Rationalism and produce a competent amount of units, you are going to win even if you never instituted a single combat policy.

 

[woodshadows]

I'm not a believer in Honor or Autocracy, even for a domination game. I seldom have an issue with my units not hitting hard enough or being too expensive. Order is better than Autocracy for a big puppet empire.

The inputs to successful war are and (and to a lesser extent, ). If you can get an era ahead through Rationalism and produce a competent amount of units, you are going to win even if you never instituted a single combat policy.

Honor seems to work very good in all aspects of the game for me. It helps in an early war, giving me an edge or bringing me to par with an enemy. Later it saves me a load of money in all the upgrade $ I save. If conquering on a large map the ability to have multiple buildings to provide happiness is extremely useful, as is garrisoning for happiness and culture, which justifies a large army.

Patronage is imo the most powerful tree however. Once you start going down the line and slowly buying off the city states you are very quickly allied with every city state on the map and with the entire patronage tree finished you get loads of culture/science/extra food/military units. The less obvious bonus to the city state alliances is having them as a persistent thorn in the side to your enemy in the time of war. I'm in a game right now where I've kept Oda locked in war with myself and about 7 city states on his borders, I've just been sitting back watching his troop count drop from 1st place to somewhere below 3rd.

 

[Lexicus]

Autocracy just isn't all that powerful, because it doesn't give a happiness bonus for puppets.

I think you guys are underestimating the power of early Honor tree in a domination game. 1.5x experience for units with military tradition is pretty powerful. Promotions aren't as important as technology but they can certainly help. Having a highly promoted army with logistics-promoted archers and siege and March melee units can make fighting much easier.

I will say that I will take Rationalism over Piety for domination because, by the time I've finished Liberty and gotten the Honor policies I want, I usually am in the Renaissance anyway, with Universities built and Public Schools on the way.

 

[smallfish]

Autocracy is pretty powerful.

Which other policy than Fascism lets you get 70 uranium and aluminium.

 

[Lexicus]

In what conceivable scenario would you need 70 uranium or aluminum? An army of a dozen land units with a few air units is enough to conquer the world, provided you have a tech lead. Why pay maintenance on more?

 

[Tabarnak]

Before last patch it was interesting to go either Tradition or Liberty. Now that they cut the Landed Elite bonus for the finisher only, Liberty is way stronger than Tradition. Like vexing said, for all conditions, Liberty comes in first place for the best start possible, but there is some few exceptions. For example, an OCC game or 2 cities. Or playing Aztecs with raging barbs at Deity. But generally, you want Liberty. For later policies it always depends.

I like commerce for huge domination empires(right side). The income bonus can be really huge. For diplo or science i always go for rationalism(and Piety later if i have enough culture). Getting later techs very fast outspace everything else. For cultural victory i still suck but actually, from what we can read in culture threads, the Piety, freedom or rationalism route give the best bonuses.

I never play long enough to get benefits from industrial era policies. I finish the game too fast or i just want the finisher bonus from what i started(which can take a long time)

 

[The Pilgrim]

In what conceivable scenario would you need 70 uranium or aluminum? An army of a dozen land units with a few air units is enough to conquer the world, provided you have a tech lead. Why pay maintenance on more?

In 'Destroy the world in 10 turns' scenario. 70 is an exaggeration, however, you need lots of strategics for late conquest. Stealth bombers for cities and nukes for cleaning the way for melee unit is the easiest way to do it. And you need many stealth bombers and many nukes. And many spare resources for sales and being able to afford all these monsters. Militarism is the strongest in the tree. Combined with Big Ben it's ridiculously strong. 680g for stealth bomber, IIRC. So being small and turning big ->> definitely Autocracy. Goes wonderfully with your favorite Rationalism.

 

[smallfish]

In what conceivable scenario would you need 70 uranium or aluminum? An army of a dozen land units with a few air units is enough to conquer the world, provided you have a tech lead. Why pay maintenance on more?

When you have say 20 enemy cities to wade through, with plenty of units blocking the way, and you want to turn a good chunk of them into fallout so they don't become problematic to deal with?

70 is an exaggeration,

I had 70 once, but that was after conquering the hell out of Iroquois Eurasia.

It was extremely handy when time came to deal with Grecian Americas for that dom victory.

Spoiler :

 

[_hero_]

When you have say 20 enemy cities to wade through, with plenty of units blocking the way, and you want to turn a good chunk of them into fallout so they don't become problematic to deal with?




I had 70 once, but that was after conquering the hell out of Iroquois Eurasia.

It was extremely handy when time came to deal with Grecian Americas for that dom victory.

Spoiler :

That was an earth map. I'm not sure most randomly generated maps even have 70 uranium total.

 

[The Pilgrim]

I had 70 once, but that was after conquering the hell out of Iroquois Eurasia.

It was extremely handy when time came to deal with Grecian Americas for that dom victory.

You don't need that much. Definitely not for dealing with single civ.
But cool screenshot. I've never seen AI's GDR's before.

 

[Bamboocha]

As a matter of fact, what's wrong with Autocracy?
Somebody said it doesn't give you happiness for puppets, but that gives you all the more reason to annex them and rushbuy a courthouse: it means adding another city to your empire and increasing happiness.

In my last Rome game it helped a bundle: I finished with a domination victory and over 50 happiness on a standard size Emperor map. Of course, populism is useful because it gives damaged troops extra attacking power.
Damn, I wonder what happens if you combine Japans UA and the autocracy tree... I guess that makes hurt units even stronger than fully healed ones, a nice way to reflect the Japanese kamikaze attitude in WW2.

 

[The Pilgrim]

Damn, I wonder what happens if you combine Japans UA and the autocracy tree... I guess that makes hurt units even stronger than fully healed ones, a nice way to reflect the Japanese kamikaze attitude in WW2.

Yep. I was a bit surprised this wasn't covered by Autocracy article in War Academy along with some other points.

Its downside is, however, and that's the reason, I guess, people don't pay much attention to this tree, that it comes relatively late. When you start conquest from a get go or medieval, by this point your army is heavily promoted and huge empire generates more than enough cash and science, so no additional boosting needed. Order opening helps with unhappiness instantly, therefore I can see the logic behind picking it over Autocracy. Moreover, the problem with Populism, again, related to courthouse's bug, which makes players (or just me ) reluctant to abuse it.

But it's huge for late conquest. When barracks, armory and military academy are already in place. Take Brandenburg Gate and Big Ben on top of this and you're rush buying stealth bombers with logistics for ~680g. Amazingly OP. You'll wipe out everything way before you have a chance to taste combat boost from the finisher. Which, I assume, come in very handy on larger maps.

 

[smallfish]

You don't need that much. Definitely not for dealing with single civ.
But cool screenshot. I've never seen AI's GDR's before.

Perhaps. Alex was overflowing with units, so much so that the oceans surrounding his continent were overfilled with units of all sorts. Quite a number of them were also carrying atomic bombers. I didn't want to take the chance, so I went with the old adage "no kill like overkill".

And yeah, the AI does build GDRs. That's the best thing about GDRs - they are juicy big, expensive targets whenever the AI builds them, and I'm so glad they chose to focus on them, instead of say... nuclear missiles or B-29s.

 

[woodshadows]

Before last patch it was interesting to go either Tradition or Liberty. Now that they cut the Landed Elite bonus for the finisher only, Liberty is way stronger than Tradition. Like vexing said, for all conditions, Liberty comes in first place for the best start possible, but there is some few exceptions. For example, an OCC game or 2 cities. Or playing Aztecs with raging barbs at Deity. But generally, you want Liberty. For later policies it always depends.

I like commerce for huge domination empires(right side). The income bonus can be really huge. For diplo or science i always go for rationalism(and Piety later if i have enough culture). Getting later techs very fast outspace everything else. For cultural victory i still suck but actually, from what we can read in culture threads, the Piety, freedom or rationalism route give the best bonuses.

I never play long enough to get benefits from industrial era policies. I finish the game too fast or i just want the finisher bonus from what i started(which can take a long time)

Liberty is for newbs/noobs/n00bs/(sp?). Steal workers, buy settlers. There's now two policies that are pointless in that tree. 1 culture per city? Pointless until you're already on your way to victory and have conquered a sizeable realm. That's 3 policies that are pointless. IIRC there's one that is 5% production increase? 5%?? What's that, like 1 whole hammer, or maybe half a hammer? Then happiness per city connected to capital IIRC, again, nice once you have an empire, but kinda underwhelming. So you're taking a shite policy tree all in order to get one free great person in the end, which is the only decent part of this tree and that is one long ass ways away, so by the time you get to it it's not going to give as big an impact as say the first great scientist as babylon.

 

[The Pilgrim]

Liberty is for newbs/noobs/n00bs

Sure. The same way keshiks are inferior to camel archers.

 

[Glassmage]

As a matter of fact, what's wrong with Autocracy?
Somebody said it doesn't give you happiness for puppets, but that gives you all the more reason to annex them and rushbuy a courthouse: it means adding another city to your empire and increasing happiness.

In my last Rome game it helped a bundle: I finished with a domination victory and over 50 happiness on a standard size Emperor map. Of course, populism is useful because it gives damaged troops extra attacking power.
Damn, I wonder what happens if you combine Japans UA and the autocracy tree... I guess that makes hurt units even stronger than fully healed ones, a nice way to reflect the Japanese kamikaze attitude in WW2.

Japan UA does not stack with Populism.