Taking two policy trees from the same era

[dostillevi]

I'm just curious if anyone ever does it? For example, taking Authority and then taking Progress, instead of taking Fealty? I feel like Vox Populi has designed away from this being very viable, but it's still allowed and I'd love to hear from anyone who's tried it recently.

Moderator Action: Moved to Strategy Section. - Recursive

 

[andersw]

You probably lose out in long term but I havent done any math on it so .... but the finisher bonuses are quite strong so delaying or skipping them have a cost.
Here are some strats that have short term benefits,

Food starved capital, go trad opener for +2pop -> progress or authority.
Fealty opener for faith purchase rebate and monastaries.
Hunt for happiness and go 2 fealty (happy castle), 2 artistry (happy guilds) and the remaining 2 wherever.
Similar can be done with imperialism (happy courthouse) and rationalism (happy university), while industry requires 3 policys for happy workshops.

I've played one or two games way back with authority+progress but it was long ago and a lot have changed since then.

 

[dostillevi]

Interestingly I've just started a game where I'm considering splitting Authority and Tradition as Spain. I want to get Tribute for the border expansion bonus (and maybe Imperium at some point), but I've found myself isolated on an island with 2 city states, so the other policies in the Authority tree aren't all that helpful early on. Given the starting position and that I'm playing on a Huge map, domination seems unlikely, so I think a cultural victory backed by a strong religion and swords/bullets might be the way to go, so this leads me to the tradition branch.

If I had to choose one over the other right now It'd be tradition, but I've already got God of the Expanse (bonus to natural tile expansion rate) and I plan to settle a lot, so there's a lot of synergy in Tribute (and I can annoy my city state neighbors a bit).

 

[stii]

I do tradition into authority a reasonable amount. I think taking tradition second is unlikely to be right as it doesn't scale well but the authority opener does scale pretty well if you are planning a mid game war.

The 2nd tier polices aren't very powerful so skipping them isn't a huge loss, but in general they are better than the other options.


You can also sometimes generate so much culture you fill out an ideology and then fill out another tree.

 

[dostillevi]

I do tradition into authority a reasonable amount. I think taking tradition second is unlikely to be right as it doesn't scale well but the authority opener does scale pretty well if you are planning a mid game war.

I ended up opening with Tradition, and now I'm trying to decide when to cut over to Authority for the bonus to tile expansion. I have a high production, high food start so for now it makes more sense to work specialists, at least until I found a religion.

 

[Rosete]

I find that you lose out on a lot of yield when you try to dip into 2 policy trees like that because each tier of the tree also increase the starter bonus (i.e authority bonus gets stronger for each authority policy you got). And I find that although the dipping gives you a boost in the early game, it fizzles out pretty quickly once the renaissance era comes around.

 

[AndreyK]

I usually play large maps epic games with raging barbs, about couple months started play with sixth policy mod. So I mostly start Authority, take Tribute and Imperium, then go for Progress tree -Liberty, Organization (sometime switch those) Expertise, taking Fealty opener as as possible, then I usually try to complete Artistry tree if AI not go to quick with Science (if they have 3-4 techs lead and gaining then I take Rationalism ASAP)

 

[dostillevi]

... started play with sixth policy mod.

What is this mod you speak of?

Anyway, I ditched that game. I was more isolated than I thought, and was far, far behind on science by the time I encountered a neighbor. Didn't encounter anyone until Compass, and I was about as far away from the main continent as it's possible to be, like if I was on Australia and all of Asia didn't exist. Not great for an aggressive civ like Spain.

 

[AndreyK]

What is this mod you speak of?

Anyway, I ditched that game. I was more isolated than I thought, and was far, far behind on science by the time I encountered a neighbor. Didn't encounter anyone until Compass, and I was about as far away from the main continent as it's possible to be, like if I was on Australia and all of Asia didn't exist. Not great for an aggressive civ like Spain.

Sixth policy modmod for VP adds 6 policy in all trees, you can find it in mods repository

 

[LifeOfBrian]

Playing on Deity, I've been hexperimenting with taking progress first and then authority second instead of a medieval policy tree when I plan to play a warmonger game. I'll do that when I pick a non-warmonger civ such as Austria or Indonesia and I can't warmonger early on against the likes of Askia, Siam, Russia,..., but I can do it later on when I get orders, armories, (heavy) skirmishers. Two of the big reasons for completing the authority tree is that I can faith-purchase a lot of great generals that are ridiculously strong with the lebensraum autocracy tenet and that I can purchase mercenary units with full XP. It's been going quite well, I find the combo much better than taking any of the medieval era policy trees that really aren't useful for a warmongering game.

 

[Zuizgond]

I do it all the time. Some trees are not worth finishing and 1 or 2 pts into specific trees to get very specific bonus are really worth it (ex 1 pt in statecraft if you have a large-pop empire or getting the heal-on-kill from the authority tree).

 

[youngsteve]

I had a game a little while ago, & one of the civs (cannot remember which one) completed the whole of Tradition & Progress trees . Not only that but they were the leader going into Industrial Age. Made me think actually.

 

[Melchizedek]

I'm in a game now where in the modern era I have a sizable peaceful tech / policy lead as Babylon but Russia has been conquering everyone and will pose a military threat. I've already got what I need from ideology, and wonder if the next policies should go into Authority.

I think it is well-accepted that taking the first policy in any of the three medieval trees can be useful at times even when planning to finish another tree.

I can imagine going into Statecraft late game for CS and TR benefits, especially if trying to forestall someone's diplomatic victory.

In general, I think the late policies and finishers are strong enough that splitting trees only works in corner cases. Finishing what you started is normally correct.

 

[Melchizedek]

I had a game a little while ago, & one of the civs (cannot remember which one) completed the whole of Tradition & Progress trees . Not only that but they were the leader going into Industrial Age. Made me think actually.

I don't really understand how this would work. Both those trees have some policies that scale terribly. Is there a plausible order that gets through all the badly scaling ones first? In particular, I think the free worker policy in Progress and the top three Tradition policies after the opener would all be terrible if delayed much past when you normally take them. A medieval policy that only gives you a free science slot and a few beakers can't really compete with the medieval policies can it?

 

[stii]

I think it is more likely the AI is ahead because it had huge culture generation so it taking less optimal trees doesn't matter much

 

[BornDownUnder]

I've actually been experimenting a little with recent test games (`250-500 turns, marathon speed) with opening up the Authority tree 1st policy unlock, then opening Progress tree for the 2nd policy unlock, 3rd & 4th policy are usually the first two Progress - Liberty then Organization, 5th policy the first Authority - Dominance. I then generally go back to Progress tree for the 6th policy unlock, taking Expertise.

If I've found to be feeling a little squeezed by the AI forward settling then I switch the 3rd policy unlock (Liberty) for the 5th (Dominance) whilst taking Discipline from the Authority tree as my 5th or 7th, depending on how aggressive the AI advancements are.

I generally find though most policy trees are well balanced and one can play any tree as long as they adapt their play style to suit.

 

[dostillevi]

Having tried this a bit recently, the big question seems to be whether getting the finishers on either tree are highly important, since they'll be delayed (or never gained at all) by picking from two trees at once. It's also harder to manage scaling as some have mentioned. Not impossible, but it requires deeper knowledge of the game and the ability to anticipate the effectiveness of policies very well. Mostly I learned this by being bad at it.

 

[smorgasborgas]

I always play raging barbarians so I get the culture and science from kills from authority and then go tradition

 

[Laz0r]

For ancient policies I hardly ever do it. Most of their best strengths are located further down the policy tree and so there's no reason to pick more than one and delay the benefits. Two exceptions I can think of would be taking the first authority policy on raging barbs and Russia taking the first culture policy on Tradition for the meme spread, but beyond those I don't think I've ever found a reason to mix them.

Medieval policies are a different story though, and both artistry and Fealty has an excellent starter policy, and Fealty has a good gold + happiness policy second. The Statecraft founder was nerfed so bad that now it's not worth taking unless you invest 2-3 policies into it.

Industrial policies are much like ancient tier policies, as their founders pale in comparison to the power gain from fully completing the policies, although in certain circumstances it is viable (like Venice mixing industry and imperialism to get the puppet yield increase + the gold purchase reduction).

I think it would be interesting to have some the finisher benefits from the more bottom-heavy policy trees put into the tree itself and for certain trees to be made more top-heavy to encourage policy experimentation and mixing, but that being said I'm not a game designer so that might just make them unbalanced very horribly.

 

[pineappledan]

The only time I ever do it is with Byzantium.

fealty’s -25% faith cost reduction and monasteries on the opener are IMO the strongest policy in the tree and combine very well with Byzantium’s kit. The rest of the tree just does more of the things Byzantium is already good at, I rarely go warmonger with Byzantium, and fealty doesn’t necessarily help win games, so I fill artistry or statecraft for the rest.