Tradition guide from beginner to intermediate

[tu_79]

One thing that i never understand is why do you love Lighthouses so much? I mean they are cool, but they give you like 3 or 4 and at best scenario possible. And the problem that they belong to such a useless technology, it doesn't have anything else! Moreover you don't need that food so much cause you don't have happiness for that. Don't you think that going for Trade of Military Theory is just better?

You sure can rush Trade asap, but only for Navy, not for Lighthouses. Navy is incredibly strong if you get it fast. You can easily capture the capital with 4-6 ships and couple of Warriors and Archers, but this is not about Tradition for sure

3 or 4 extra gold for every coastal city, means you can maintain more units until middle ages. It's a safe source of gold, it can't be pillaged. The single gold is doubled in golden ages.

 

[Stalker0]

Another tactic I am shifting too more lately. Don't put your GPTIs in your capital, with the exception of Towns. You can make a few exceptions, but not too many.

That may sound counterintuitive, after all isn't tradition all about the capital? The thing is, your capital is going to be working tons of specialists, ideally every slot you can. This dramatically reduces the number of tiles you actually work, and can get to the point where you can't even work GPTIs effectively.

Instead, I generally setup another city that will work no specialists, and it gets every GPTI. I now have 2 super cities, the capital run on specialists, and the secondary run on GPTI.

 

[CrazyG]

3 or 4 extra gold for every coastal city, means you can maintain more units until middle ages. It's a safe source of gold, it can't be pillaged. The single gold is doubled in golden ages.

You shouldn't be working a 3 food 1 gold tile with tradition. A river farm with no adjacency is overall stronger at 4 food. If you have ocean luxuries, obviously you build the lighthouse and some point, but its not worth rushign in my opinion.

Another tactic I am shifting too more lately. Don't put your GPTIs in your capital, with the exception of Towns. You can make a few exceptions, but not too many.

That may sound counterintuitive, after all isn't tradition all about the capital? The thing is, your capital is going to be working tons of specialists, ideally every slot you can. This dramatically reduces the number of tiles you actually work, and can get to the point where you can't even work GPTIs effectively.

Instead, I generally setup another city that will work no specialists, and it gets every GPTI. I now have 2 super cities, the capital run on specialists, and the secondary run on GPTI.

I like to plant manufactories in the capital, its a really good long term boost in my opinion. Sometimes I will put it somewhere where cities can take turns using it, but I really want my capital to have the option.

 

[Owlbebach]

Another tactic I am shifting too more lately. Don't put your GPTIs in your capital, with the exception of Towns. You can make a few exceptions, but not too many.

That may sound counterintuitive, after all isn't tradition all about the capital? The thing is, your capital is going to be working tons of specialists, ideally every slot you can. This dramatically reduces the number of tiles you actually work, and can get to the point where you can't even work GPTIs effectively.

Instead, I generally setup another city that will work no specialists, and it gets every GPTI. I now have 2 super cities, the capital run on specialists, and the secondary run on GPTI.

I think it is absolutely wrong. Your capital should get all % bonuses thus all GPTI should be there. If you run out citizen - your problem is that you do not have enough food. You should always have 2 or 3 citizen in the capital working best farms you have. Also after the Great Specialists Nerf you to work only Scientists and Culture Specialists, others become good in Industrial or Modern, and by that time you should have enough citizen

 

[Stalker0]

Also after the Great Specialists Nerf you to work only Scientists and Culture Specialists, others become good in Industrial or Modern, and by that time you should have enough citizen

That’s my point right there. You are right I give up some %bonus on the GPTI, but in turn I can work a lot more specialists in my capital early on, giving me more GPTIs early.

 

[CrazyG]

That’s my point right there. You are right I give up some %bonus on the GPTI, but in turn I can work a lot more specialists in my capital early on, giving me more GPTIs early.

This is really contrary to my experience. I can see a strategy of placing academies between two cities, so the secondary city works it early, then my capital works in late game when its grown more and you all the % bonuses going for you.

But usually I just plant them in my capital on every resource there is. That way the capital ends up working just farms, specialists, and Great people tiles. Farms are usually a stronger improvment than a pasture, plantation or mine.

 

[saamohod]

Good points, although the arbitrary use of lower-case instead of upper-case letters makes the text difficult to digest.

 

[Gokudo01]

Good points, although the arbitrary use of lower-case instead of upper-case letters makes the text difficult to digest.

You are right but I read and edited it so many times to be undestandable(english is my third langage) that now I am lazy to edit the lower case/upper case.

 

[saamohod]

..(english is my third langage) ..

In this case your English is pretty impressive. Keep it up.
Your input in the game is very helpful, too.
Sorry for the offtopic.

 

[Hinin]

In this case your English is pretty impressive. Keep it up.
Your input in the game is very helpful, too.
Sorry for the offtopic.

Also offtopic (sorry), but Gokudo01's avatar is from a Spanish/French comic (even if both authors are Spanish, the comic was first released in France) : Blacksad is really a good choice. I recommand it to you saamohod (I'm sure there are English versions here and there).

Also, I just tried to follow this guide (I'm usually not the most efficient Tradition player) while playing Morocco, and it was quite interesting to change the way I think about infrastructure in my cities : I got stuck in the northern part of my continent, with some toundra and a lot of mountains and hills, and playing Tradition while turtling up allowed me to stay relevant even though the odds weren't in my favor, so thanks for the advice.

NB : I also wanted to know how much I could distrupt world commerce with the Corsair unique unit added in the 3/4 UC mod (it can enter rival territory freely and gain yields when plundering TR, so it combines well with the Moroccan UA) while hiding myself behind a powerful ally. Turned out that it is quite effective at isolating potential rivals, since you forbid access to the culture and science transnational commerce can bring, while turtling in your corner (pirate peninsula strategy).

 

[hr_oskar]

So... any hope for an intermediate to expert guide to tradition?

Cause whenever I pick tradition I feel like I just decided to add one difficulty level to my game. Like I'm playing Deity+. It starts out strong in the first 50 turns or so, pumping the first settlers and units out of my capital, but then really starts to slump from there. The lack of gold is particularly painful. The Hanging Gardens are very important but not something I can always count on getting.

I believe I've integrated most of the advice in the original post. I also usually manage to steal workers or harass bad neighbours before they become a serious threat.

Questions the thread hasn't really answered:

1. How many cities in the core empire? (i.e. not counting conquests or later colonies) 4, 5 or 6? I lean towards 5 but have also tried 4 and 6. I like to pump out all the settlers in rapid succession on turns 20-50, while working the first specialists in the capital "for free".

2. How far do you go with warfare? I mean, warmongering is generally a winning strategy. Gaining a vassal or a handful of puppets is immensely beneficial. I understand it's always situational and depends on lots of factors. But do some of the "expert" tradition players here flatly reject conquest as "not a job for tradition - then you should have gone authority"?

3. How about tradition with some of the civs that aren't typically associated with it? Some civs' uniques can really help shore up tradition's weaknesses, e.g. the Inca (terrace farms, amazing defense), Songhai (lots of production, less need for roads, great military), Zulu (super units, more supply limit), Denmark (gold, lots of gold, while weakening rivals)... the list could go on.

On #3, when I consider some of those "not-really-tradition" civs the thinking goes "Oh that would really help with tradition... but I'd be wasting the civ's potential because it can do even better with progress or authority..." So the feeling I'm left with is that tradition is usually the inferior choice. I even get the feeling that Arabia, the most traditional tradition civ, would do great with authority and war mongering, cause it has a great UU and all those GG's and won wars are gonna generate plenty of historic events too. Or in other words, it's a good policy branch based around a bad game plan: turtling up with a tall empire. When expansion really is a much better route to any victory. Like a beautiful christmas tree for your 50 sq meter apartment when what you really want is a 500 sq meter mansion.

I'd love to be wrong and to hear from seasoned deity players here that in some games they look back and say "I'm glad I picked tradition for this start, that was clearly the best choice to support my victory."

 

[CrazyG]

I'd love to be wrong and to hear from seasoned deity players here that in some games they look back and say "I'm glad I picked tradition for this start, that was clearly the best choice to support my victory."

I've played a lot of tradition. Its really tough this patch. The Hanging Gardens go so early and they were a really important part of my strategy. Its probably still viable, and you can still warmonger (attack your opponent really early really fast, take like 2 cities, then turtle the rest of the game)

I think the best way to learn is to play a one city challenge on immortal. Its a good way to establish beyond any doubt that you can compete in science and culture while being much smaller.

 

[Stalker0]

The thing to remember about tradition is that its culture is stronger than progress for the early game. So you will get policies faster, and can move into Medieval Trees quicker.

So for most of the game you will have a policy advantage over a progress player. Every bonus you gains from that adds to the stack.

Further, your golden ages will come sooner than progress. Eventually both can go into permanent GA, but Tradition general gets their quicker. Those bonuses also add up.

 

[hr_oskar]

I haven't really experienced tradition getting through its policies faster though. In my experience all three trees are about equal with that... tradition progresses quite fast to the third policy, assuming I go sovereignty first and work the artist while building settlers. Then it really slows down from the third to the fifth. I take Splendor fifth, which gets me fairly fast to the last policy, Majesty. It's the slowdown in the middle that brings tradition in line with the others, in my experience. Not saying you're wrong, just that my experience has been different.

I'm still convinced that "tall turtle" is fundamentally a bad strategy in VP, for various reasons, which is ultimately the source of weakness for tradition. Notice how through this thread you've all talked more about what tradition can't do than what it can do. Like it's a delicate flower that needs special circumstances to succeed. Progress feels much more uncomplicated and flexible; and authority, well, it supports the best strategy for winning the game. I really want to like tradition though!

 

[CrazyG]

I'm still convinced that "tall turtle" is fundamentally a bad strategy in VP, for various reasons, which is ultimately the source of weakness for tradition. Notice how through this thread you've all talked more about what tradition can't do than what it can do. Like it's a delicate flower that needs special circumstances to succeed. Progress feels much more uncomplicated and flexible; and authority, well, it supports the best strategy for winning the game. I really want to like tradition though!

Lets try to avoid calling something fundamentally bad. Tall turtling was the strongest strategy for a very long time in my opinion, and we've had to nerf great person rewards a ton to balance it (I remember winning culture victories before turn 200). If warfare really is objectively the best strategy, I'd say something is wrong. I personally find those tier 4 promotions too strong, and humans use them much better than AI does.

 

[hr_oskar]

Agreed, "fundamentally bad" is poor wording because a different tuning of game balance could have tall turtling as the best strategy, as you point out. But my experience and impression of VP is that it's a "currently bad" strategy, relative to warfare and expansionism in general.

 

[CrazyG]

I'll pause my game and try to pick tradition in a new one, if it goes well I'll do a photojournal for it

 

[Bascule2000]

Cause whenever I pick tradition I feel like I just decided to add one difficulty level to my game.

I used to play mostly tradition (on King and Emperor) until the recent increase in food costs for specialists. There's not much point to the extra specialists, because it's so hard to work more than a couple of them at any one time. The extra culture from baths etc is nice, but I'm not taking 6 policies for that. I think tradition now is bad, progress is far stronger. If Gazebo's AI games show tradition civs doing OK, I expect that means the AI is bad at playing progress.

 

[hr_oskar]

I used to play mostly tradition (on King and Emperor) until the recent increase in food costs for specialists. There's not much point to the extra specialists, because it's so hard to work more than a couple of them at any one time. The extra culture from baths etc is nice, but I'm not taking 6 policies for that. I think tradition now is bad, progress is far stronger. If Gazebo's AI games show tradition civs doing OK, I expect that means the AI is bad at playing progress.

If you fail to get a significant chunk of extra food for your capital, either with the Hanging Gardens or multiple maritime CS alliances (or ideally both), it gets very hard to employ all the specialists available around the time you complete tradition while also growing. You must keep growing the capital in order to be able to keep employing more specialists later on, to keep up with the increasing costs of great people.

Tradition can be made to work but I find it very fragile compared to the other two trees. It shows in this thread how preoccupied the discussion got with how you need to be very careful with where you settle your cities, you can't be coastal, you need special defensible spots, your army will be weak and tiny, blabla basically your tradition empire will be a delicate flower needing special conditions to thrive. I feel like there's a lot less talk about the benefits of tradition, about how to unleash the beastly power of the tree... perhaps because the power isn't beastly and the benefits are too precarious or small relative to the sacrificies made.

I'm not 100% confident that there is a balance problem, but it sure feels like there is.

Yet I keep starting with tradition every other game, because I really want it to work and I really want to like it!

 

[CrazyG]

So I took India and ended up picking progress on both starts that I rolled.............

I can still rock with tradition on immortal and below. There is an enormous benfit of late game happiness (see all the threads about struggling with happiness). I think the big change that is making it challenging is no science until your 4th social policy, which makes getting to Mathematics quickly rather difficult.