[vanilla] Social Policy: Tradition (vanilla)

[vexing]

vexing submitted a new resource:

Social Policy: Tradition - Social Policy: Tradition

Tradition
A closer look at the social policy branch​

Introduction

Tradition is one of the three social policy branches available in the ancient era. Choosing the tradition tree opens three policy choices: Aristocracy, Legalism and Oligarchy, with the remaining Landed Elite and Monarchy requiring Legalism....

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[vexing]

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[vexing]

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[weregamer]

Abusing Legalism: What to take while waiting for Acoustics?

I really like this approach, but I'm wondering about choices while working toward Acoustics. So far I've been following a culture path with exactly 4 well-spread-out cities early on in many of my games even if I plan to spread more once I have Navigation. (Terra has always been my favorite map in every version of Civ that had it, but I do this on almost any map type.) Usually this means I take Liberty for my "fill-in" policies; the free Settler and Worker, faster workers, reduced penalty for extra cities, and eventual Great Engineer help out even while I'm staying small and eventually the extra happiness helps after I explode.

I have also done a few Cultural victories on Prince with this start, staying small all the way through or sometimes adding some puppets when the AIs insisted that I do so -). But I wonder if there is a better approach for those "fill-in" policies when you can't start Piety yet - for example, does early Commerce pay off comparably to early Liberty when you don't plan to switch to a wide empire later, with coastal production and extra happiness?

I'm pretty sure the right side of Honor would work well, even when staying small. With the free garrison maintenance from Oligarchy, the etra 2 culture and 1 happiness per city would be handy, and another happiness from walls.

 

[vexing]

in an abusing legalism game it's pretty optimal to start with tradition, liberty, and then free settler. askia in particular may want to do tradition then honor openers before starting liberty. for siam or egypt working on filling the rest of liberty for the free GP works well.

for a cultural game you can generally get tradition, liberty, settler, worker and representation before starting on piety. if you use RAs, acoustics can land around the time you're finishing the piety branch.

 

[DaveMcW]

Buildings from Legalism in order of precedence

Monument
Mud Pyramid Mosque (Songhai's temple replacement)
Temple
Burial Tomb (Egypt's temple replacement)
Opera House
Museum
Monastery
Wat (Siam's university replacement)
Mughal Fort (India's castle replacement)
Broadcast tower

Monastery comes before Museum.

 

[vexing]

Monastery comes before Museum.

fixed it. they're at the same cost/culture, i didn't even bother looking for that =0 i guess testing could need to be done to determine the secondary ordering, but it's not overly important

 

[Tabarnak]

So you can pop up Operas before monasteries from Legalism even if you have wine or incense? Did they changed that from last patch or it was always like this?

Well good news, it's easier than i tought.

 

[vexing]

So you can pop up Operas before monasteries from Legalism even if you have wine or incense? Did they changed that from last patch or it was always like this?

it changed. they reduced the base culture from monastery and modified building costs. previously they'd pop before temples.

 

[tommynt]

waiting for Museums to Legalism abuse should DEFINATLY pay off in a well played culture game - the 2 Artists slots right away give a significant boost to cult when u need it most times (when cities are big enough to work multiple slots)

overall nerfing the food gain to be applied to nocap cities in finisher was a unneeded hit to Tradition, before going 3-4 into Tradition was a nice "strat" even in multiplayer.
Now for allomst every type off game finishing Liberty is the way to go which is a bit sad as good games offer multiple "best" ways to play

 

[Tabarnak]

overall nerfing the food gain to be applied to nocap cities in finisher was a unneeded hit to Tradition, before going 3-4 into Tradition was a nice "strat" even in multiplayer.
Now for allomst every type off game finishing Liberty is the way to go which is a bit sad as good games offer multiple "best" ways to play

Yeah i don't know why they did that. Same for sp mode. Liberty is superior in any cases now. Unless you just want to have ''fun''.

 

[binhthuy71]

This production boost works on national wonders as well as regular wonders. The percentage gain stacks additively with other boosts such as marble's +15% or a workshop's +10% .

Just to be sure that I understand this correctly, does the fact that the bonuses stack additively mean that if I take Aristocracy, have an improved Marble resource, and I build a Workshop, my cumulative bonus when building Wonders is 40% in that city?

I have been taking the Tradition opener, then the Honor opener (Barb farming for Culture and promotions), then taking the Liberty opener before I begin filling out the Liberty tree.

Under Abusing Legalism, I have held off taking Legalism until Opera House became available. I have also tried holding off taking it until Museums and even Broadcast Towers. Now I'm beginning to think that taking it for Temples may be best. The cumulative effect of 3CpT game long seems to yield more Culture in total than a later game boost of 4CpT. It also seem to me that the 100 cost of a Temple during the Classical Era comes at a much higher opportunity cost than the 200 cost of the Opera House during the Renaissance Era.

 

[vexing]

Just to be sure that I understand this correctly, does the fact that the bonuses stack additively mean that if I take Aristocracy, have an improved Marble resource, and I build a Workshop, my cumulative bonus when building Wonders is 40% in that city?

yes

Under Abusing Legalism, I have held off taking Legalism until Opera House became available. I have also tried holding off taking it until Museums and even Broadcast Towers. Now I'm beginning to think that taking it for Temples may be best. The cumulative effect of 3CpT game long seems to yield more Culture in total than a later game boost of 4CpT. It also seem to me that the 100 cost of a Temple during the Classical Era comes at a much higher opportunity cost than the 200 cost of the Opera House during the Renaissance Era.

the goal with legalism for a culture game isn't just to get the opera houses, it's to get the opera houses at a time when your build queue can be filled by many other important things like hermitage and sistine chapel; that the opera houses are prerequisites of the hermitage is a key point here. if the timing doesn't work out, and if RA signing is such that you'll be getting archaeology for museums soon anyway saving it for museums can be a valid approach too. saving legalism for broadcast towers will be suboptimal, you'll be much better off using it sooner and saving gold for broadcast towers.

getting up temples early should be relatively easy and your 3 cpt game long is irrelevant as it's only 3 cpt over the turns over the turns before you'd have built the temples.

if you're referring to using legalism in a non culture game, you generally shouldn't be unless you're finishing tradition for the food bonus. the raw culture gains never catch up to exponentially increasing policy costs.

 

[binhthuy71]

vexing, thank you for the clarification. Thank you also for pointing out the holes in my strategy and for explaining the context of taking Opera Houses with Legalism rather than delaying for a more expensive Culture building.

If I keep hanging around I may actually become good at this game.

 

[ezbutton]

I use to think tradition got nerfed so hard from the previous patches that it was often in my best interest to go liberty first. But after I read this article and tried the straight through strategy, I achieved my highest score yet. I think civs with poor food start bias such as Incans and Iroquois benefit the greatest from this strategy as it gets landed elite very early and helps you focus on food as opposed to culture early thanks in part to legalism putting monuments down into the next two or three cities I settle.

For the delay legalism strat, I often end up popping a GS to sync my policy and opera houses but sometimes I'm without GS or my infrastructure isn't set to pop legalism and have to dabble into freedom. I was wondering what tips or strategies you might have or is it on my part to be more observant of my timeline?

 

[Smirk]

First off, great article, thanks for posting.

getting up temples early should be relatively easy and your 3 cpt game long is irrelevant as it's only 3 cpt over the turns over the turns before you'd have built the temples.

But the same logic applies to Opera Houses, the only difference is that being much further along, roads hooked up, fully developed tiles and higher population etc means you are better able to just buy Opera Houses outright the turn you research it.

Also consider specialists, its a waterfall effect, getting those earlier equates to earlier landmarks. In my opinion, landmarks are the best culture generator in the game. After Sistine/Hermitage, each one you plop is giving you 25 or so culture per turn, and not affecting city growth. Also, its mostly unaffected by difficulty or map etc.

 

[IronfighterXXX]

Recently I noticed and it is not included in the text that aristocracy doesn't provide +1happiness for every 10 citizens in a puppet city; only in cities you built or annexed.

 

[MaDaZi]

Hmm, this can be good for Boudicca, if you wait for her Opera House replacement

 

[FeiLing]

I just noticed something interesting in G&Ks:
-Free culture buildings appear in annexed cities only.
-Free Aqueducts will appear in annexed and puppeted cities.

 

[The Pilgrim]

I just noticed something interesting in G&Ks:
-Free culture buildings appear in annexed cities only.
-Free Aqueducts will appear in annexed and puppeted cities.

And here we go again.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=482144