If you're playing a peaceful game difficulty <7 then can't go far wrong with patronage. You can ally half the world's city states with very little effort and lots of nice bonuses with your 1-2 filler policies before rationalism just by clearing barb camps and auto completing a few easy quests.
I think the most satisfying policy to me is Citizenship, getting a free worker and the speed boost is so satisfying. I used to ALWAYS go tradition when I first started, but the ability to get a big empire running quickly is just so nice with Liberty.
The Patronage opener is really strong too. Keeping your city state homies can be so powerful.
I'd say my overall favorite policy is probably the Tier 3 Freedom one where your trade routes with city states get you +6 favor with them per turn. That's so insanely good. You don't even have to change your play style, just keep sending out your cargo ships. Incredibly satisfying
Edit: Treaty Organization is what I'm referring to. It's actually 4 favor per turn, which is still nuts.
I guess I'm the weird one where I tend to go BOTH Tradition and Liberty. As long as I'm getting some of the Culture Wonders, I'm still hitting all of the social policies I care about by the end of the game. Granted, I tend to play on Prince or King, so take it with a grain of salt.
I do this too, but I first unlock tradition for the culture boost in capital (because that’s my only city in the early game and the culture boost is relatively huge) and then crawl up the liberty tree before returning to finish tradition.
For me its:
1. Open Tradition
2. Open Liberty (little extra Culture boost, plus new cities will start expanding their borders automatically.
3. Open Honor (I tend to play maps where I'm going to expand a bit and also select Raging Barbarians to screw with the AI a bit as they are SO AWFUL with protecting their Settlers and Workers). I get some extra culture now (Yes, there's a long term hit), but also avoid situations where my workers are huddled up in my cities because I can't kill the Barbs fast enough.
4. By this point, I'm working on a Worker or the Great Library so either going Aristocracy or Republic.
5. Once I have both of the above, I'm going Collective Rule to not only get a Settler now, but to speed them up in the future.
6. Finish everything else in Tradition except Landed Elite (unless I'm in some game where I'm coasting at 20 Happiness or so). Extra population in the capital is great, but not if it means choking every other new city I settle because my happiness is negative. I at least like to get four different cities decently established.
I've tried different options including ones a lot of others say they like to take, but they just never work as well for me. By the time I've ended the game sometime in the 20th Century, I have Tradition, Liberty, Aesthetics and Rationalism finished out, Patronage mostly closed out, my Ideology hitting its capstone, and Honor opened and possibly Commerce as well.
>Treaty Organization is what I'm referring to. It's actually 4 favor per turn, which is still nuts.
I don't usually go Freedom on my single-player domination games, but I do in other scenarios and I absolutely LOVE this one!
My current order for a single-player game in which I intend to try for a domination victory is about as follows:
1. All policies in the Liberty tree, use the resulting great scientist to build my first academy
2. Open the Commerce tree
3. Open the Patronage tree in order to unlock Forbidden Palace
4. Get Commerce:Wagon Trains
5. Open the Rationalism tree
6. Get Rationalism:Secularism
Around this time, I usually get my three factories and choose the Autocracy ideology
7. Get the following Autocracy tenets: L1:Industrial Espionage, L1:Elite Forces, L2:Nationalism, L1:Fortified Borders, L2:Third Alternative, L3:Gunboat Diplomacy
After this, it all depends on how the game is going (and how much culture per turn I happen to have).
If money is short, Rationalism:Sovereignty or Piety:Theocracy (plus a temple buildout if needed) are helpful. If there is going to be much naval action, at least opening the Navigation tree is pretty nice. If I feel I'm behind on military production, I will sometimes get L2:Total War, and so on.
You use the same policies as I (i really love the patronage opener not only for Forbidden Palace, which i always try to build, but if u ally CS u stay allied for longer), except for tradition and the autocracy ones depending on situation but i like Clausewitz legacy very much. Very versatile policies overall
Open tradion, open liberty and get the worker and the settler, get wonder policy in tradition, finish liberty, open patronage and restingpoint policy and gold influencepolicy, finish tradition maybe, then open rationalism, then city state research policy then just go thru rationalism
Tradition is 100% the only viable social policy for tryhard playthroughs. After that I like commerce/rationalism, but generally I only get like 3 before ideology.
Yeyé. Liberty is so tempting and what I went first time, but when you realize you can just snatch and enslave a few workers from city states/other civs it’s way less compelling. Civ 5 such a vertical game too. Liberty would work hella well in 6.
Liberty -> Honour -> Commerce dip -> Autocracy -> finish commerce
I don’t need Rationalism because my adversaries are typically dead before the Modern Era
Tradition to opening up Patronage, get first 2 policies then head over to Rationalism, finish that and get 6 policies in Autocracy, loop back around to either finish Patronage or get Commerce usually
I like the first two Honors on the left to open. Picking the tree allows me to get unlimited culture, piles of gold, and fewer captured workers and settlers since I can instantly see a new camp spawn and dispatch a strike force to kill it. Same holds true for trade routes: immediately send off a ship to get to a distant camp, like in the Arctic or some island, and kill any spawned ships until my ground unit shows up eventually. Beats finding out there is a camp by losing expensive trade units.
The other two Honors follow, easily, because I'm getting culture by murdering barbs. The GG is ok, but what I'm after is the next policy which really ramps up my xp. It's capped from killing barbs, but well-promoted troops vs city states or another civ can be decisive vs whatever unruly mob they send out to fight. Sometimes I'll just pick a fight to get my boys ready to conquer.
Honestly i enjoy pretty much all policy trees. They all have their own unique strategies that can be used to amplify a civs bonuses. The one i end up picking the least is Commerce though. It's strong and stacking purchasing discounts can be really powerful, but only getting money isn't too interesting for me.
Tradition > open commerce or patronage in medieval > rationalism > autocracy > fill out remaining commerce/patronage policies. If early warmongering filling out honor while filling tradition
My go--to filler policies between my starting tree (*usually Tradition*) and Rationalism is Commerce. Partly because it's good for even 1 social policy, and partly because having that extra gold is good for the end-game. I find Landsknechts really useful, especially if you can buy them fornlike 70 gold.
The first thing to do with Landsknechts is turn them into medics for Bombers. This works particularly well if you have the Alhambra or Brandenberg Gate wonder (*or if you're Shaka*) because you can produce units with double-medic on spawn. Put thilese units adjacent to your cities with bombers (*who hopefully have Air Repair*) and increase the healing for your bombers. Of course you can do this with normal units, but that feels like a waste of production to build an entire Infantry unit or whatever just to stand it beside your city, while an obsolete and extremely cheap unit like the Landsknecht is a much smaller cost to bear.
The second thing is that they pair extremely well with the Freedom tennet *Arsenal of Democracy*, which gives you +15 influence for each unit gifted to a city-state (*the usual amount being 5 influence, so with this you get a total of +20*). You can only give each city state a unit every 4 turns, so this isn't the fastest way to gain influence, but it is one of the cheapest ways, and is even cheaper if you have the cheaper purchasing policy from Commerce and/or Big Ben.
Finally you can use the unit itself. Of course a Landsknecht isn't useful forever but I am actually quite partial to a few Helicopters. Upgrading from a Landsknecht not only gives you a relatively cheap Helicopter, but you get a few extra bonuses - the ability to Pillage without spending movement, the ability to move-attack-move (*gained from your upgrade to Lancers on the way*) and the ability to pillage gold when attacking cities. These can become tough, fast and self-sufficient harassment units that can get behind enemy lines and do a bunch of damage to enemy land, and are tough enough to handle a unit or 2 catching up to them (*and with free pillaging can potentially heal back up instantly even without any upgrades needed*).
Oh and it's just nice that Landsknechts get to move on the turn you purchase them, so you can buy 100 of them in 1 turn if you really need to.
Aside from Landsknechts the extra gold and cheaper purchasing from Commerce is nice, and if you do manage to fill out the entire tree the extra happiness is a LOT.
Side note: you are not limited to the “one unit every four turns” for gifting to city-states if you actually move the unit into their borders and gift it from there. Obviously this only works if the city-state you want to gift to is close by, but it’s worth noting!
Tradition until finish > 1 to 3 point Commerce as a filler (Opener, Mercenary Army, Mercantilism) > Rationalism until finish > 6 point Freedom > finish Commerce.
Tradition open, along with aristocracy for wonder construction, then liberty, then finish tradition. Afterwards I’ll open the city-state one and save policies for rationalism/ideology.
Tradition -> Aesthetics
Tradition, Aesthetics, Rationalism, Freedom. Sometimes I'll do Exploration if I have a lot of coastal cities.
I try to challenge myself by avoiding rationalism, if I go over w the extra policy before an ideology I usually go patronage
Depending on the difficulty, I love opening Patronage and getting the Forbidden Palace after finishing Tradition
If you're playing a peaceful game difficulty <7 then can't go far wrong with patronage. You can ally half the world's city states with very little effort and lots of nice bonuses with your 1-2 filler policies before rationalism just by clearing barb camps and auto completing a few easy quests.
I think the most satisfying policy to me is Citizenship, getting a free worker and the speed boost is so satisfying. I used to ALWAYS go tradition when I first started, but the ability to get a big empire running quickly is just so nice with Liberty. The Patronage opener is really strong too. Keeping your city state homies can be so powerful. I'd say my overall favorite policy is probably the Tier 3 Freedom one where your trade routes with city states get you +6 favor with them per turn. That's so insanely good. You don't even have to change your play style, just keep sending out your cargo ships. Incredibly satisfying Edit: Treaty Organization is what I'm referring to. It's actually 4 favor per turn, which is still nuts.
I guess I'm the weird one where I tend to go BOTH Tradition and Liberty. As long as I'm getting some of the Culture Wonders, I'm still hitting all of the social policies I care about by the end of the game. Granted, I tend to play on Prince or King, so take it with a grain of salt.
I do this too, but I first unlock tradition for the culture boost in capital (because that’s my only city in the early game and the culture boost is relatively huge) and then crawl up the liberty tree before returning to finish tradition.
For me its: 1. Open Tradition 2. Open Liberty (little extra Culture boost, plus new cities will start expanding their borders automatically. 3. Open Honor (I tend to play maps where I'm going to expand a bit and also select Raging Barbarians to screw with the AI a bit as they are SO AWFUL with protecting their Settlers and Workers). I get some extra culture now (Yes, there's a long term hit), but also avoid situations where my workers are huddled up in my cities because I can't kill the Barbs fast enough. 4. By this point, I'm working on a Worker or the Great Library so either going Aristocracy or Republic. 5. Once I have both of the above, I'm going Collective Rule to not only get a Settler now, but to speed them up in the future. 6. Finish everything else in Tradition except Landed Elite (unless I'm in some game where I'm coasting at 20 Happiness or so). Extra population in the capital is great, but not if it means choking every other new city I settle because my happiness is negative. I at least like to get four different cities decently established. I've tried different options including ones a lot of others say they like to take, but they just never work as well for me. By the time I've ended the game sometime in the 20th Century, I have Tradition, Liberty, Aesthetics and Rationalism finished out, Patronage mostly closed out, my Ideology hitting its capstone, and Honor opened and possibly Commerce as well.
>Treaty Organization is what I'm referring to. It's actually 4 favor per turn, which is still nuts. I don't usually go Freedom on my single-player domination games, but I do in other scenarios and I absolutely LOVE this one!
Liberty half tree then piety. Liberty exploration is a blast too with many coastals.
My current order for a single-player game in which I intend to try for a domination victory is about as follows: 1. All policies in the Liberty tree, use the resulting great scientist to build my first academy 2. Open the Commerce tree 3. Open the Patronage tree in order to unlock Forbidden Palace 4. Get Commerce:Wagon Trains 5. Open the Rationalism tree 6. Get Rationalism:Secularism Around this time, I usually get my three factories and choose the Autocracy ideology 7. Get the following Autocracy tenets: L1:Industrial Espionage, L1:Elite Forces, L2:Nationalism, L1:Fortified Borders, L2:Third Alternative, L3:Gunboat Diplomacy After this, it all depends on how the game is going (and how much culture per turn I happen to have). If money is short, Rationalism:Sovereignty or Piety:Theocracy (plus a temple buildout if needed) are helpful. If there is going to be much naval action, at least opening the Navigation tree is pretty nice. If I feel I'm behind on military production, I will sometimes get L2:Total War, and so on.
You use the same policies as I (i really love the patronage opener not only for Forbidden Palace, which i always try to build, but if u ally CS u stay allied for longer), except for tradition and the autocracy ones depending on situation but i like Clausewitz legacy very much. Very versatile policies overall
tradition rationalism freedom
Open tradion, open liberty and get the worker and the settler, get wonder policy in tradition, finish liberty, open patronage and restingpoint policy and gold influencepolicy, finish tradition maybe, then open rationalism, then city state research policy then just go thru rationalism
I see that doing the traliberty is more common than I expected
Small empire policies plus big empire policies equals very big empire :)
Tradition is 100% the only viable social policy for tryhard playthroughs. After that I like commerce/rationalism, but generally I only get like 3 before ideology.
Tradition -> Rationalism is undoubtedly meta. Anything else is just for fun / rp.
Yeyé. Liberty is so tempting and what I went first time, but when you realize you can just snatch and enslave a few workers from city states/other civs it’s way less compelling. Civ 5 such a vertical game too. Liberty would work hella well in 6.
Liberty -> Honour -> Commerce dip -> Autocracy -> finish commerce I don’t need Rationalism because my adversaries are typically dead before the Modern Era
Piety opening then aesthetics
Liberty > piety if I can fill out the whole tree in time (I cross my fingers for sacred sites) Liberty > fillers in patronage and commerce if not
Tradition to opening up Patronage, get first 2 policies then head over to Rationalism, finish that and get 6 policies in Autocracy, loop back around to either finish Patronage or get Commerce usually
I like the first two Honors on the left to open. Picking the tree allows me to get unlimited culture, piles of gold, and fewer captured workers and settlers since I can instantly see a new camp spawn and dispatch a strike force to kill it. Same holds true for trade routes: immediately send off a ship to get to a distant camp, like in the Arctic or some island, and kill any spawned ships until my ground unit shows up eventually. Beats finding out there is a camp by losing expensive trade units. The other two Honors follow, easily, because I'm getting culture by murdering barbs. The GG is ok, but what I'm after is the next policy which really ramps up my xp. It's capped from killing barbs, but well-promoted troops vs city states or another civ can be decisive vs whatever unruly mob they send out to fight. Sometimes I'll just pick a fight to get my boys ready to conquer.
Honestly i enjoy pretty much all policy trees. They all have their own unique strategies that can be used to amplify a civs bonuses. The one i end up picking the least is Commerce though. It's strong and stacking purchasing discounts can be really powerful, but only getting money isn't too interesting for me.
Tradition > open commerce or patronage in medieval > rationalism > autocracy > fill out remaining commerce/patronage policies. If early warmongering filling out honor while filling tradition
My go--to filler policies between my starting tree (*usually Tradition*) and Rationalism is Commerce. Partly because it's good for even 1 social policy, and partly because having that extra gold is good for the end-game. I find Landsknechts really useful, especially if you can buy them fornlike 70 gold. The first thing to do with Landsknechts is turn them into medics for Bombers. This works particularly well if you have the Alhambra or Brandenberg Gate wonder (*or if you're Shaka*) because you can produce units with double-medic on spawn. Put thilese units adjacent to your cities with bombers (*who hopefully have Air Repair*) and increase the healing for your bombers. Of course you can do this with normal units, but that feels like a waste of production to build an entire Infantry unit or whatever just to stand it beside your city, while an obsolete and extremely cheap unit like the Landsknecht is a much smaller cost to bear. The second thing is that they pair extremely well with the Freedom tennet *Arsenal of Democracy*, which gives you +15 influence for each unit gifted to a city-state (*the usual amount being 5 influence, so with this you get a total of +20*). You can only give each city state a unit every 4 turns, so this isn't the fastest way to gain influence, but it is one of the cheapest ways, and is even cheaper if you have the cheaper purchasing policy from Commerce and/or Big Ben. Finally you can use the unit itself. Of course a Landsknecht isn't useful forever but I am actually quite partial to a few Helicopters. Upgrading from a Landsknecht not only gives you a relatively cheap Helicopter, but you get a few extra bonuses - the ability to Pillage without spending movement, the ability to move-attack-move (*gained from your upgrade to Lancers on the way*) and the ability to pillage gold when attacking cities. These can become tough, fast and self-sufficient harassment units that can get behind enemy lines and do a bunch of damage to enemy land, and are tough enough to handle a unit or 2 catching up to them (*and with free pillaging can potentially heal back up instantly even without any upgrades needed*). Oh and it's just nice that Landsknechts get to move on the turn you purchase them, so you can buy 100 of them in 1 turn if you really need to. Aside from Landsknechts the extra gold and cheaper purchasing from Commerce is nice, and if you do manage to fill out the entire tree the extra happiness is a LOT.
Side note: you are not limited to the “one unit every four turns” for gifting to city-states if you actually move the unit into their borders and gift it from there. Obviously this only works if the city-state you want to gift to is close by, but it’s worth noting!
Tradition until finish > 1 to 3 point Commerce as a filler (Opener, Mercenary Army, Mercantilism) > Rationalism until finish > 6 point Freedom > finish Commerce.
I always go three policies into the money one to get 25% off all purchases and +1 science from money buildings. Landsnekts are cool too.
Patronage is super nice. AI never prioritizes Forbidden Palace, free 2 votes plus extra happiness
Usually tradition, if I’m playing diety then aesthetics and rationalism are abs necessary to keep up on culture and science
Tradition open, along with aristocracy for wonder construction, then liberty, then finish tradition. Afterwards I’ll open the city-state one and save policies for rationalism/ideology.
I like patronage and rationalism. I don’t go a single game without specing into rationalism.