Why is tradition so bad?

[Hammer Rabbi]

Thanks for the clarification - most posts are about single player, so I also assume that unless the post is on the tiny multiplayer section, it is single player. I am trying to get more players to experience the game as I believe it was designed - against intelligent opponents. Many of the game elements suddenly make sense in multiplayer - for example what look like lame units (lancers) against the AI become important against humans. Also, the "exploits" (like stealing all the AIs gold through deals, or getting all of the AIs to sign RAs, even ones that don't like you) evaporate against intelligent opponents. And finally, it is more satisfying to me when everybody has the same playing field and victory requires matching wits, not figuring out how to beat a dumb opponent that is given massive bonuses to compensate for not being able to think.

That being said, if people enjoy single player, that is cool also.

i would like to try more mp for the very reasons of no typical cheese, but the 2 times i played it i either got into a game with several connection prone players or a game of quitters around turn 50 when someone completed a wonder they wanted.

i know there are groups you can join to avoid quitters but im not really active on steam for a lot of friends/groups. when i get more patience, i'll try some mp. i need to beat the ai on deity first though.

 

[zyx]

IMO Traditon is weak because of

Legalism comes to early: better would be exchanging it with Ologarchy; granting the next four culture buildings available for free would be better for OCC.

Monarchy should give 2 Gold per 1 Citizen (instead of 1 Gold per 2 Citizen): as a lot of money is important to buy CS for luxury resources and finance RAs.

Oligarchy is only important if you have a lot of puppet cities with units, in all other cases rather useless. It would be better if the city defense had range three or if ranged units could attack over hills from the city.

Landed Elite should give you 7 to 10 pop in the capital at once or in 7 to 10 turns. Because a that big city in the early game is better than a slow but steady growth. It would outperform civs going Liberty in the early stages of the game.

Aristocracy the wonder production bonus is ok, but would be stronger if you have a 10 pop city already. the bonus happiness isn't of much use in early stages of the game.

Why go Tradition anyway?

Tradition lacks the ability to outperform others in science as researching is done by RAs much more effectively than doing it all by yourself.

Tradition doesn't support a cultural win any better than Liberty.

Tradition doesn't grant you any GP like Liberty or Honor.

The Tradition opener is useful if you want to go Honor, but need the 3 culture per turn to improve your capital.

Tradition is for the AI! It is easier against an AI going Tradition instead of Liberty.

 

[apocalypse105]

IMO Traditon is weak because of

Legalism comes to early: better would be exchanging it with Ologarchy; granting the next four culture buildings available for free would be better for OCC.

Monarchy should give 2 Gold per 1 Citizen (instead of 1 Gold per 2 Citizen): as a lot of money is important to buy CS for luxury resources and finance RAs.

Oligarchy is only important if you have a lot of puppet cities with units, in all other cases rather useless. It would be better if the city defense had range three or if ranged units could attack over hills from the city.

Landed Elite should give you 7 to 10 pop in the capital at once or in 7 to 10 turns. Because a that big city in the early game is better than a slow but steady growth. It would outperform civs going Liberty in the early stages of the game.

Aristocracy the wonder production bonus is ok, but would be stronger if you have a 10 pop city already. the bonus happiness isn't of much use in early stages of the game.

Why go Tradition anyway?

Tradition lacks the ability to outperform others in science as researching is done by RAs much more effectively than doing it all by yourself.

Tradition doesn't support a cultural win any better than Liberty.

Tradition doesn't grant you any GP like Liberty or Honor.

The Tradition opener is useful if you want to go Honor, but need the 3 culture per turn to improve your capital.

Tradition is for the AI! It is easier against an AI going Tradition instead of Liberty.

The worst thing is it say you get free culture buildings but you still have to play maintainance

 

[Hammer Rabbi]

yeah the maintenance is irritating, definitely a hindrance to wanting to take it.

 

[Horizons]

On a related note, I find that 'Theocracy' in the Piety tree is totally worthless except for finishing the Piety tree itself (in those situations I choose it as the free policy from free religion). Is that a good thing, to make a policy completely worthless?

 

[FeiLing]

Why is it useless? You'll be having a temple in every city, so it's 10% on your total gold production. Production - that is not your gold per turn but what you produce before maintenance etc (just for clearance). It might sound stronger on paper than it is, however I don't think it's bad at all. I bet most of the time when you take it you'll see yourself with more then +25gpt than before. That's probably more most of the time than the other gold improving policies (8 free units is similar but weaker late game than that for sure for e.g. and +25% in the capital from commerce isn't all that much either, Trade Union eventually on large maps.

Maybe it's just Theocracy being the least favorable Piety policy as it will always be your finisher policy, since you took piety due to happiness and culture bonuses in the first place. You're just 'angry' because you think you don't really need the gold but still want the finisher bonus. The policy however is not really weak.

 

[Horizons]

Why is it useless? You'll be having a temple in every city, so it's 10% on your total gold production. Production - that is not your gold per turn but what you produce before maintenance etc (just for clearance). It might sound stronger on paper than it is, however I don't think it's bad at all. I bet most of the time when you take it you'll see yourself with more then +25gpt than before. That's probably more most of the time than the other gold improving policies (8 free units is similar but weaker late game than that for sure for e.g. and +25% in the capital from commerce isn't all that much either, Trade Union eventually on large maps.

Maybe it's just Theocracy being the least favorable Piety policy as it will always be your finisher policy, since you took piety due to happiness and culture bonuses in the first place. You're just 'angry' because you think you don't really need the gold but still want the finisher bonus. The policy however is not really weak.

However, half of that gold bonus is taken up by the maintenance cost of the temples themselves, I believe they are 2gpt each, so it is really only one or two extra cold coins in each city that has a temple.

 

[trueblue]

however, in any game that im going that deep into Piety I will have build the temples anyway. the extra gold is on top.

 

[grandad1982]

Tradition just can't compete with the free units from Liberty. They allow you to get an advantage earlier and early advantages are more powerful than later ones.

Also it doesn't really help you go tall as the food bonus from the finisher has a stronger advantage with MORE cities.

Honestly even if I go Liberty (supposedly the REXing tree) I will rarely place more than 4 or 5 cities of my own. So why miss out on the free units and the GP by going Tradition?

One of the problems as I see it is that you don't need large cities for science. In the early game population matters for science but very quickly RAs and GSci take over as the main way to generate large amounts of beakers. To balance this somewhat I would make it so that GSci don't just grant you a tech at whatever cost it is, but instead tie the amount of beakers to something like the mean value of techs open or some formula related to empire wide population (I think this is how civ4 did it). Tying it to empire wide pop might make a tall empire attractive as you could spend the that would be used on new cities on new pop instead.

 

[Nevyn]

This is an eye-opener for me.

I typically go for Tradition. I open that and then open Honor to get culture for barbs. But then I go for free monuments and the +wonder while building my settler and then the pyramids. And than start working on Great Library and other good stuff. So I thought I'd never needed a free settler and a free worker on steroids.

Liberty seems like a better option on higher levels where you can't expect to create the early wonders as you have to plan for war early? For prince and king level I think Tradition is still the best option?

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Tradition just can't compete with the free units from Liberty. They allow you to get an advantage earlier and early advantages are more powerful than later ones.

Also it doesn't really help you go tall as the food bonus from the finisher has a stronger advantage with MORE cities.

Honestly even if I go Liberty (supposedly the REXing tree) I will rarely place more than 4 or 5 cities of my own. So why miss out on the free units and the GP by going Tradition?

One of the problems as I see it is that you don't need large cities for science. In the early game population matters for science but very quickly RAs and GSci take over as the main way to generate large amounts of beakers. To balance this somewhat I would make it so that GSci don't just grant you a tech at whatever cost it is, but instead tie the amount of beakers to something like the mean value of techs open or some formula related to empire wide population (I think this is how civ4 did it). Tying it to empire wide pop might make a tall empire attractive as you could spend the that would be used on new cities on new pop instead.

The food finisher bonus is definitely something that favors wide empire's I would make it

Landed Elite (where Legalism is): +3?+4 food in Capital

Legalism: where landed elite was

Finisher: +50% growth rate in all cities +50% additional growth for cities in WLTK

Oligarchy: Garrisoned cities get +1 range (in addition to +100% damage and no garrison maintenance cost)

.... Oh, and Aristocracy ... add +50%?+100% gold for wonder failure

 

[apocalypse105]

The food finisher bonus is definitely something that favors wide empire's I would make it

Landed Elite (where Legalism is): +3?+4 food in Capital

Legalism: where landed elite was

Finisher: +50% growth rate in all cities +50% additional growth for cities in WLTK

Oligarchy: Garrisoned cities get +1 range (in addition to +100% damage and no garrison maintenance cost)

.... Oh, and Aristocracy ... add +50%?+100% gold for wonder failure

Basicly switch the two finishers Liberty is allready strong enough withouth the free great person.


And a free great person more sounds like a tall empire

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Basicly switch the two finishers Liberty is allready strong enough withouth the free great person.


And a free great person more sounds like a tall empire

Well +growth is a serious tall empire need.

but if you mean Liberty finisher=+food in all cities, and Tradition finisher= free GP, that I sort of agree would work.

Perhaps if Landed Elite was +2 food in Capital, +25% growth in all cities

Then Monarchy gets +50% additional Growth in WLTK day cities

Otherwise rebalancing tall v. wide is the bigger issue (mostly on science)
make RP give an amount based on the Raw yields of the two partners.
Cap GS yield based on overall empire pop

Give Universities only 1 slot, (give Research Labs 2)
Give the National Epic a +75%-+125% instead of +25%
(so that GP can reasonably be a tall empire feature)

 

[digitalcraft]

personally I start 1 pt in honor then go liberty. Seems best.

 

[grandad1982]

Hmmm. I think that having bonus food and limited to say 4 cities like legalism is currently would help focus it on tall v wide.

For example:

Landed Elite: +2/3 food in the first 4 cities (maybe a +% of some kind for growth?)

Monarchy: +# for the each of the first 4 cities. You could lower the current +1 per 10 pop to say, +1 per 4/5 pop in your first 4 cities.

Making GP more attractive to settle would deffinatly help as well.

 

[snarzberry]

Hmmm. I think that having bonus food and limited to say 4 cities like legalism is currently would help focus it on tall v wide.

For example:

Landed Elite: +2/3 food in the first 4 cities (maybe a +% of some kind for growth?)

Monarchy: +# for the each of the first 4 cities. You could lower the current +1 per 10 pop to say, +1 per 4/5 pop in your first 4 cities.

Making GP more attractive to settle would deffinatly help as well.

Good ideas. it could be good to use the first 4 cities theme of legalism in other policies.

About great people settling, I was thinking that a policy could be in tradition that had a multiplying effect on the settling of great people in the same cities radius. So the more you settle the more powerful they each become individually. This could be balanced to be very powerful indeed if you focus on that style in order to compete with late game GS bulbing. Remember the cottage economy vs specialist economy in civ 4, it really helped create a deep strategy game. There could something similar with a GP settling vs bulbing approach if settling was made strong enough along a certain strategy line.

 

[grandad1982]

Good ideas. it could be good to use the first 4 cities theme of legalism in other policies.

About great people settling, I was thinking that a policy could be in tradition that had a multiplying effect on the settling of great people in the same cities radius. So the more you settle the more powerful they each become individually. This could be balanced to be very powerful indeed if you focus on that style in order to compete with late game GS bulbing. Remember the cottage economy vs specialist economy in civ 4, it really helped create a deep strategy game. There could something similar with a GP settling vs bulbing approach if settling was made strong enough along a certain strategy line.

I like the idea of the multiplying effect. Its not like your likely to get loads of GSci or what ever in the early game due to lack of spec spots. Well actually you can probably get 3 pretty easily if you focus on Liberty, HS and PT. Babylon gets you 4 GSci.

Making a policy like this the finisher for Tradition would really compete against the Liberty finisher IMO. Making it the finisher would reduce the number of GP due to the unlikely hood of finishing Liberty thus adding a bit more balance.

 

[headcase]

Tradition needs more SPs that are limited to the tallest cities in the empire (hence tall strategy). For example: one gold per population in 3 most populous cities.

 

[snarzberry]

If there was a policy in tradition that turbo charged GP settling if they're all around the same city, then you'd basically always settle them around your capital. They'd end up with massive tile yields which would make that into an uber city. It'd be a good way to provide a competitive tall strategy. It'd require a lot of coding though as they'd have to teach the AI to use it.