Tradition + going wide

[oPunchDrunko]

From what I've gathered a lot of you guys like to go tall with 4 cities. But what if you pick Tradition and go wide and expand/ conquer? I'm generally a warmonger and I like to expand and war with other civs. I also sometimes try to get a science victory, but that is beside the point.

Does Tradition + going wide go together? Could it be pulled off?

 

[Calouste]

You can definitely do that, but it depends on your starting location. If you have a good starting location, Tradition is the better choice.

I'm currently playing a game on Emperor with Assyria where I settled in what turned out to be a ridiculously strong starting location (river, desert, mountain, 13 resources) and have now finished sweeping up my first neighbor with Siege Towers after some wonder spam.

 

[Silverman6083]

If there is a good amount of lux resources then absolutely! In general, you don't wanna take all the policies you wanna go:
Tradition-Legalism-Monarchy
It works pretty well, the extra gold & happiness helps expansion immensely
From there you have 2 Main options(though others will work)
Liberty: Probably full out right side first for the benefits, since your cap will be pumping out settlers
Piety: If your playing the religion game(I'm looking at you Ethiopia) then Piety is the way to go. The happiness benefits(Ceremonial Burial, Asceticism, Pagodas, etc.) will offset the happiness issues, and the cheaper build time to Temples, which will then increase gold(offsetting that issue) will be awesome. Also all Reformation beliefs, well not all, but most are INCREDIBLES so yeah.

 

[GoStu]

It absolutely works. I like doing it as the Aztecs, using Tradition to build a strong core, and then slowly creeping out by conquering neighbors.

It takes a pretty wide empire for Liberty's happiness bonuses to rival Tradition's, and Tradition is generally a pretty safe bet for your core.

 

[Redaxe]

Tradition is arguably a valid policy tree for going wide. It covers you well up to the 4 cities with the free growth, aqueducts & monuments.
But each additional city will still get Oligarchy (so that's a free military unit for every city which can save quite a bit of gold + the 50% ranged combat strength - which is great if your backstabbing AI neighbours decide that they've had enough of your expansion)
And you also get 1 happiness once you reach 10 citizens in that city - ok it's not quite as good as Mediocrity but it still helps.
Plus more cities will mean more faith which will ensure you can buy plenty of engineers once you reach the Industrial period...