When to pick tradition or progress on higher difficulties

[besset]

Hi!

I play on immortal and sometimes deity. I still have trouble figuring out when to go progress or tradition. Using standard settings on for example pangea map, how do you know when to go one or the other. If you have met like only 2-3 civs at the point when you can pick your first social policy and you can fit about 4 more cities in the terrain you have discovered around your capital (lets say you havent seen any other civ cities), which tree do you choose with that little info? Generally i feel progress is more niche in higher difficulties since the land gets settled much more quickly and that you'd rather go tradition and just specialize in staying tall or authority and take your opponents cities surrounding you. On immortal and higher i very rarely end up with more than 5 cities, is progress even viable in this case?

 

[Minh Le]

Hi!

I play on immortal and sometimes deity. I still have trouble figuring out when to go progress or tradition. Using standard settings on for example pangea map, how do you know when to go one or the other. If you have met like only 2-3 civs at the point when you can pick your first social policy and you can fit about 4 more cities in the terrain you have discovered around your capital (lets say you havent seen any other civ cities), which tree do you choose with that little info? Generally i feel progress is more niche in higher difficulties since the land gets settled much more quickly and that you'd rather go tradition and just specialize in staying tall or authority and take your opponents cities surrounding you. On immortal and higher i very rarely end up with more than 5 cities, is progress even viable in this case?

If my neighbour is easy to deal with and I have good terrain and resources around, I would go for progress. You can forward settling AI even on deity. As progress I would go for Pottery as my 1st tech and spam settler right after shrine. Maybe trapping second and buy an archer to deal with barbs. You can have more than 5 cities like that.
If my neighbour is a crazy warmonger like Monty or Songhai, I would pick Tradition or Authority because its better for defense or even taking the initiative.

 

[besset]

If my neighbour is easy to deal with and I have good terrain and resources around, I would go for progress. You can forward settling AI even on deity. As progress I would go for Pottery as my 1st tech and spam settler right after shrine. Maybe trapping second and buy an archer to deal with barbs. You can have more than 5 cities like that.
If my neighbour is a crazy warmonger like Monty or Songhai, I would pick Tradition or Authority because its better for defense or even taking the initiative.

And if you cant see how far away your immediate neighbours are when it's time to pick your first policy, do you pick based on which civ you met first which is likely to be one closest to you, or does it mean it's a typical progress game if you can't even see other civ borders?

 

[tu_79]

And if you cant see how far away your immediate neighbours are when it's time to pick your first policy, do you pick based on which civ you met first which is likely to be one closest to you, or does it mean it's a typical progress game if you can't even see other civ borders?

Consider the time they took at finding you. Usually a close neighbor will find you in less than 8 turns, even if you can't see its location.

 

[besset]

If my neighbour is easy to deal with and I have good terrain and resources around, I would go for progress. You can forward settling AI even on deity. As progress I would go for Pottery as my 1st tech and spam settler right after shrine. Maybe trapping second and buy an archer to deal with barbs. You can have more than 5 cities like that.
If my neighbour is a crazy warmonger like Monty or Songhai, I would pick Tradition or Authority because its better for defense or even taking the initiative.

If you play a civ that is flexible with the early policy trees like germany and your neighbour is an early warmonger, how do you pick between defending as tradition all game or taking them out by going authority? My thoughts are that if you pick authority, you need to keep conquering after having taken out your neighbour to make use of the tree, otherwise you miss out on yields and might as well have gone tradition, but you might get DoW'ed the rest of the game if you go tradition. It becomes hard if your neighbour is someone like greece with an early UU where you almost have to pick authority, but lets say his cities are hard to conquer because of the terrain (you cant use ranged units or siege units and have to wait until field guns or even later) and you end up with no other neighbours you can conquer afterwards.

What if your neighbour is a warmonger but has no early UU?

 

[Minh Le]

If you play a civ that is flexible with the early policy trees like germany and your neighbour is an early warmonger, how do you pick between defending as tradition all game or taking them out by going authority? My thoughts are that if you pick authority, you need to keep conquering after having taken out your neighbour to make use of the tree, otherwise you miss out on yields and might as well have gone tradition, but you might get DoW'ed the rest of the game if you go tradition. It becomes hard if your neighbour is someone like greece with an early UU where you almost have to pick authority, but lets say his cities are hard to conquer because of the terrain (you cant use ranged units or siege units and have to wait until field guns or even later) and you end up with no other neighbours you can conquer afterwards.

What if your neighbour is a warmonger but has no early UU?

I wont pick authority because my neighbour is an aggressive warmonger with an early UU. For example: Greece, he has a very strong early UU which will make me have a very hard time dealing with even if I pick Authority. Authority in general has good production, culture (from demand tribute), gold, and food but lack science if you cant take cities or killing units effectively. If I have an early aggressive neighbour like Greece, I will stick to my initial policy plan, but I will prepare for a defensive war by settle a good defensive location and priotise building walls. Those civs like Greece are likely to beeline for their UU so their settler will be delayed a bit, I can hurt him a lot by forward settle him so he will have less land to settle (less cities = less units to throw at me).
I will pick authority if my neighbour is an early expansive civ like Iroquois, China,... Im not gonna win against them in the settling race, so I will let them settle and take their cities.

 

[besset]

I wont pick authority because my neighbour is an aggressive warmonger with an early UU. For example: Greece, he has a very strong early UU which will make me have a very hard time dealing with even if I pick Authority. Authority in general has good production, culture (from demand tribute), gold, and food but lack science if you cant take cities or killing units effectively. If I have an early aggressive neighbour like Greece, I will stick to my initial policy plan, but I will prepare for a defensive war by settle a good defensive location and priotise building walls. Those civs like Greece are likely to beeline for their UU so their settler will be delayed a bit, I can hurt him a lot by forward settle him so he will have less land to settle (less cities = less units to throw at me).
I will pick authority if my neighbour is an early expansive civ like Iroquois, China,... Im not gonna win against them in the settling race, so I will let them settle and take their cities.

Ah, that makes a lot of sense. How do you know which civs are expansive and are there any more than those two? And why not go tradition if you cant settle many cities because your neighbours take all the land? If you are a flexible civ that is

 

[Minh Le]

Ah, that makes a lot of sense. How do you know which civs are expansive and are there any more than those two? And why not go tradition if you cant settle many cities because your neighbours take all the land? If you are a flexible civ that is

AIs almost always priotise their unique so if settler is on the way, they will be expansive. The reason why I want to take their cities is to prevent them to be over expanse and run away. An AI with a lot of cities next to you is a big trouble. They will attack you at some point in the game and you will lack the resource to defend if youre too small and behind. I go tradition if my civ has clear synergy (Korea...) and I think I can compete with my neighbour in tech so they wont attack my spearman with knights . Or I will pick authority and attack them first.