Paramecium
Prince
- Joined
- Jul 14, 2016
- Messages
- 346
My thoughts on Tradition:
1. Tradition is mainly about Great Persons and so linked to growth/food to feed those specialists
2. Tradition is highly depending on your surroundings. What are your neighbours? What is the landscape like? Where are your monopoly ressources? Can you defend your territory easily?
3. How many cities do you want/can you found? How much land do you can crap with as few cities as possible?
4. What are your Pantheon choices?
Opinion:
1. As Tradition, your capital is your crown jewel, more than for other policy branches. Most likely all your National wonders will be built in it. Even the Heroic Epic, because after the last change, it is increasing your production depending on population and in the most cases, you will build your wonders in the capital. Further, your first units will be built in the capital so giving them the honor promotion will add further. Those first units are very precious to you. You cant afford to lose them even less than for the other branches, because your other cities will lack free production, they will be behind the general infrastructure compared to the other branches.
Your land infrastructure wont come up as quickly as with other branches. You dont get a free worker and if you want to stay friendly most of the game with your neighbours, you wont steal as often their workers as with other branches. And you dont need to, because you will start to build those juicy farm triangels later on as much as possible and your ressources will be improved by GPI. GPI are really your friends, you will have more than others and the additional food makes it easier to plant on plains so the tile will feed itself, later even pushed by the WC resolution which gives GPI as Tradition +2 food so even GPIs on hills will feed themselves.
After playing a couple of tradition games, forest are not your friends, unlike they help you defend easily or your cities have no mines to work.
In general you can say, you will work high food farms, maybe one to two mines, all your GPI and specialists, specialists, specialists. And yeah, you should priotize rivers, because the windmill is better in the long run and has better synergy with Tradition's growth modifier.
2. Surrounds, I think that might be even the most important part of tradition. What are your neighbours? Aggressive AIs with early advantages? Or peacefull culture and/or science bloomers? What is the landscape like? Do you have a lot of choke points like mountain ranges, peninsulae or river crossings combined with rough terrain? How many rivers are nearby, how many possible farm clusters. For your second cities and further, you want to have them placed on hills for that extra hammer and defensive bonus and on your side of a river. Your army will be in the most cases smaller than others, so make it easy to defend, the better you can do it, the more production you have to put in something else.
3. How many cities do you want to have? That question is not easy to answer. The less you have, the lower your tech and social policy costs are. Because your Capital will have most of your %-modifier, you will have placed all your guilds in there. But where to put the other six guilds? That is depending if one of your secondary cities can feed more than one guild, in most cases you build one guild in your other cities and maybe an additional one in one or two cities with high growth. That part is really difficult to answer, because if you place your cities on choke point, it is very likely you wont have that many possibilties to have big farm clusters.
I would say the number of directly controlled cities for tradition is somewhere between 4-7 cities. For placing your cities, I recommend to just forward cities so far away, that you can place on between it and your capital. The advantage of higher border growth gives you the advantage that you dont have to settle that densily, but in general I recommend that you have some overlap so your cities can share those juicy farm clusters and GPI over ressources. The further advantage as tradition is that you can spend gold on border expansion more frequently than authority because you dont lose potential yields, but you need less than Progress, because your border expansion is faster. In VP I learned that ressources in the third ring are not guaranteed, because the AI will often take those themselves. But you can gamle a little bit, just buying a tile in the second ring and hoping that your next border expansion will grab it just in time.
4. Pantheons are often depending on your surrounds, but not everyone. As tradition, it is better to take one, which doesnt need to improve sth if it is not in abundance or build buildings, which will just take longer in your other cities. With Sovereignity you have an early faith advantage above the other branches and if you aim for a religion, you will build shrines first anyway, those for the first building in your secondary cities the hammer advantage of Progress and Authority is not that big, Progress needs at least 3 SP to have better cities and authority will have it earlier anyways, but both need at least 2 cities more with built shrines before they get the advantage. So in my opinion, Pantheons without active improvement tend to better for a tradition game. In general, you will have less faith in the long run than a big empire, but to get a religion the early faith is important.
Further comments:
How to spend your gold and hammers? Your capital will have those early buildings like shrine/monument/counsil first, it will build your settlers and your first units and first worker. As tradition, most likely you will try to squeeze in at least one early wonder, from my experience the Pyramids and Hanging Gardens are the best in general, because for first, you can save bulding a settler the hard way and loosing the growth during that time and second, the hanging gardens just make it easier to work those specialists early on.
Gold you should spend on rushing those maintances free buildings in every city, buying a worker or more in your secondary cities and if needed because of an aggressive neighbour buying a unit in your capital or the city which will have the Heroic Epic.
My personal tradition playstyle is not to wage aggressive wars, because those need units which can be quite hard to squeeze in early on. Building something like 4 horsemen early on is a BIG investement and if then no AI declares war on you, you wasted hammers.
I have to say that I dont play on deity, so I cant say if it feasable. As tradition, diplomacy is even more important I think, because you dont want to have a crosshair on your back and you want to trade as much as possible, because you tend to have less luxuries and those WLTKD have a bigger synergy with tradition's growth bonus.
So, just my 2 cents ...
1. Tradition is mainly about Great Persons and so linked to growth/food to feed those specialists
2. Tradition is highly depending on your surroundings. What are your neighbours? What is the landscape like? Where are your monopoly ressources? Can you defend your territory easily?
3. How many cities do you want/can you found? How much land do you can crap with as few cities as possible?
4. What are your Pantheon choices?
Opinion:
1. As Tradition, your capital is your crown jewel, more than for other policy branches. Most likely all your National wonders will be built in it. Even the Heroic Epic, because after the last change, it is increasing your production depending on population and in the most cases, you will build your wonders in the capital. Further, your first units will be built in the capital so giving them the honor promotion will add further. Those first units are very precious to you. You cant afford to lose them even less than for the other branches, because your other cities will lack free production, they will be behind the general infrastructure compared to the other branches.
Your land infrastructure wont come up as quickly as with other branches. You dont get a free worker and if you want to stay friendly most of the game with your neighbours, you wont steal as often their workers as with other branches. And you dont need to, because you will start to build those juicy farm triangels later on as much as possible and your ressources will be improved by GPI. GPI are really your friends, you will have more than others and the additional food makes it easier to plant on plains so the tile will feed itself, later even pushed by the WC resolution which gives GPI as Tradition +2 food so even GPIs on hills will feed themselves.
After playing a couple of tradition games, forest are not your friends, unlike they help you defend easily or your cities have no mines to work.
In general you can say, you will work high food farms, maybe one to two mines, all your GPI and specialists, specialists, specialists. And yeah, you should priotize rivers, because the windmill is better in the long run and has better synergy with Tradition's growth modifier.
2. Surrounds, I think that might be even the most important part of tradition. What are your neighbours? Aggressive AIs with early advantages? Or peacefull culture and/or science bloomers? What is the landscape like? Do you have a lot of choke points like mountain ranges, peninsulae or river crossings combined with rough terrain? How many rivers are nearby, how many possible farm clusters. For your second cities and further, you want to have them placed on hills for that extra hammer and defensive bonus and on your side of a river. Your army will be in the most cases smaller than others, so make it easy to defend, the better you can do it, the more production you have to put in something else.
3. How many cities do you want to have? That question is not easy to answer. The less you have, the lower your tech and social policy costs are. Because your Capital will have most of your %-modifier, you will have placed all your guilds in there. But where to put the other six guilds? That is depending if one of your secondary cities can feed more than one guild, in most cases you build one guild in your other cities and maybe an additional one in one or two cities with high growth. That part is really difficult to answer, because if you place your cities on choke point, it is very likely you wont have that many possibilties to have big farm clusters.
I would say the number of directly controlled cities for tradition is somewhere between 4-7 cities. For placing your cities, I recommend to just forward cities so far away, that you can place on between it and your capital. The advantage of higher border growth gives you the advantage that you dont have to settle that densily, but in general I recommend that you have some overlap so your cities can share those juicy farm clusters and GPI over ressources. The further advantage as tradition is that you can spend gold on border expansion more frequently than authority because you dont lose potential yields, but you need less than Progress, because your border expansion is faster. In VP I learned that ressources in the third ring are not guaranteed, because the AI will often take those themselves. But you can gamle a little bit, just buying a tile in the second ring and hoping that your next border expansion will grab it just in time.
4. Pantheons are often depending on your surrounds, but not everyone. As tradition, it is better to take one, which doesnt need to improve sth if it is not in abundance or build buildings, which will just take longer in your other cities. With Sovereignity you have an early faith advantage above the other branches and if you aim for a religion, you will build shrines first anyway, those for the first building in your secondary cities the hammer advantage of Progress and Authority is not that big, Progress needs at least 3 SP to have better cities and authority will have it earlier anyways, but both need at least 2 cities more with built shrines before they get the advantage. So in my opinion, Pantheons without active improvement tend to better for a tradition game. In general, you will have less faith in the long run than a big empire, but to get a religion the early faith is important.
Further comments:
How to spend your gold and hammers? Your capital will have those early buildings like shrine/monument/counsil first, it will build your settlers and your first units and first worker. As tradition, most likely you will try to squeeze in at least one early wonder, from my experience the Pyramids and Hanging Gardens are the best in general, because for first, you can save bulding a settler the hard way and loosing the growth during that time and second, the hanging gardens just make it easier to work those specialists early on.
Gold you should spend on rushing those maintances free buildings in every city, buying a worker or more in your secondary cities and if needed because of an aggressive neighbour buying a unit in your capital or the city which will have the Heroic Epic.
My personal tradition playstyle is not to wage aggressive wars, because those need units which can be quite hard to squeeze in early on. Building something like 4 horsemen early on is a BIG investement and if then no AI declares war on you, you wasted hammers.
I have to say that I dont play on deity, so I cant say if it feasable. As tradition, diplomacy is even more important I think, because you dont want to have a crosshair on your back and you want to trade as much as possible, because you tend to have less luxuries and those WLTKD have a bigger synergy with tradition's growth bonus.
So, just my 2 cents ...
