Social Policy #4

duxup

Prince
Joined
Dec 31, 2001
Messages
385
I keep running into the same conundrum when it comes to social policies when I play and I was wondering what other folks would do.

I tend to play with raging barbarians on for some early game action. Also I find raging barbarians combined with Honor's culture bonus for killing barbarians can be entertaining / helpful. When you've got barbarian camps putting out units pretty fast you can hang outside those camps and milk them for culture, sometimes it pays off big early in the game. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has thought of that.

Anyway after opening Honor I don't find the rest of the Honor policies of much use early on so I tend to go to Liberty and take Collective Rule and Citizenship.

After that I'm a bit lost on what to take. Representation to cut down on culture costs seems handy (usually what I choose) but with being just the 4th culture choice that Golden Age seems like it is sort of going to waste. Republic, again I'm not very big at this point so the production bonus isn't that big for me, same goes for Meritocracy. I'll take them eventually but none seems all that important.

I guess what sums it up is that to me a lot of the early choices have some instant payoff that accelerate my early game progress. They seem like easy / good choices. After the first three I'm at a loss as to where to go next. Perhaps I'm missing something.

For the record I usually play on King (dabbling in Emperor and Immortal now and then). I am pretty fond of warmongering I tend to found 4 - 5 cities, after that polish everything up for a series of wars (if I'm not already involved in one) and go from there.

Thanks everyone. :hatsoff:
 
Well I don't usually mix my starting policy trees but when I take liberty I usually pick policies in following order: Liberty -> Collective Rule -> Citizenship -> Republic -> Meritocracy -> Representation

First three are given and since neither meritocracy (probably no roads yet) or representation (golden ages are better with more working tiles) are good early it is logical to take republic next. Small bonus but every hammer counts early game.
 
The cuting cultural cost one from Liberty can be defered; as it's retroactive (your existing cities now add less cultural cost).

But the main reason for delaying the policy induced GA is if your on track to have a natural happiness induced one within 10 turns anyway as anytime you have a GA the happiness counter stops increasing.
 
As for the OP, I think all the early policy trees are very good, especially in comparison with patronage, commerce, and piety except for Organized Religion.
With Honour, you might want the early Great General if you are up against a strong neighbour. Otherwise, going all the way down the right side is very very helpful for a warmonger game. The garrison:) in particular, because it's flexible, will save you from going too far over into the 10 unhappiness zone and copping the 33%combat penalty.
 
I usually finish the liberty tree to get the GE or GS, then focus on Honor. (Deity level play is rough without those military advantages), then only a few left until I run out of time to win anyway.

I take Order if I am low on happiness, Autocracy if not. I will skip Honor and go Tradition until I unlock Rationalism if I am playing one of the science wins.

No other policy tree seems worth it in high-level play, and the money spent on cultural CS can be much better utilized in any but a cultural game.

I would be interested to see if anyone else uses two ancient trees in their (high-level) domination games, I am open to new ideas.
 
Top Bottom