Going to reform my culture. What are some of the best Traditions?

[jpinard]

There's so many I'm a bit overwhelmed with the choices. So I was hoping you all might post some of your favorite traditions?

[Jx]

Good Question. Waiting for aswers... ^____^

[Kimlin]

Warriors by merit.

+1 Prowess per Level of Fame
Trait blademaster.png Knights gain Blademaster traits more often in battles
Yes Most knighthood restrictions are lifted for characters with 10 Prowess

[The Former]

I really like Highland Warriors (if you have a lot of mountains and hills around). Characters get Rough Terrain Expert more often and some other commander traits grant additional bonuses on rough terrain.

[snuggleform]

By the Sword (ritual) - unlimited kingdom tier holy wars? Thanks.

Industrious - ludicrously overpowered since you can spam level 1 building over and over for insanely fast development. probs will be nerfed. A less overpowered version is garden architects.

Saharan something (regional) - need 1 county of your culture in the sahara kingdom area. +10% movement speed? Thanks

Horse Lords (specific to ohguz, pecheneg, and some others) - +10% movement speed? Thanks

Caravaneers (a lot of arabic nations have it) +5% movement speed? Thanks

Mystical ancestors - Han and many others have it. Can result in silly amounts of renown and abused

Castle Keepers - if you're not into mysical ancestors abuse, this one can give you a fair amount of renown which is always welcome

Philosophers - pretty decent to boost a learning lifestyle, which I do use for a large portion of the game while teching up culture

The rest are sort of meh at best to me. Maybe the ones giving quicker hunts/feasts and powering up hunts/feasts make sense are generally useful. Lots of the combat ones give uncomfortable drawbacks or are too terrain dependent.

[Brandonius2]

I like the city keepers for late game money/development

[jpinard]

Originally posted by snuggleform:

stuff :)

Wow - Awesome! Thanks!

For Industrious, when you say "spam level 1 buildings". What do you mean by that? Do you not get the bonus for upgrading a building? Are you suggesting, cancelling a building and rebuilding and you keep the extra dev? If it's that trick and it's patched, is that Tradition still worth it?

I'm new to this, so can I ask your feeling on a few others if they're good, or would so rarely be a factor as t be useless?

* Expert Artisans
* Mendicant Mystics
* Garden Architects
* Medicinal Herbalists
* Sorceress Metallurgy

[snuggleform]

What I mean by spamming level 1 building is you build a cheap level 1 building, then you replace that building with another level 1 building after it's done (build in the same slot, which destroys the original building). I think it's busted. I reported it in their official forms and spawned a long and nasty conversation where some people somehow think it's not overpowered, but anyways it hasn't been patched yet it still works great.

Expert Artisans is a trap, without a doubt in my mind. It sucks. The vast, vast majority of inspired people come from people outside of your culture, and there is no way to guarantee that one comes from your culture. Even when you press the "commission local artifact" you can't even guarantee it comes from your local culture, and even if it did you still get low tier items from the local guy, you need to recruit inspired people with master/legendary skill from across the world. Same reasoning with metallurgy.

Garden architects is really cool, and is more fair than Industrious. I think industrious will get nerfed at some point, and architects should be competitive with it. Right now industrious gives you development roughly 10 times faster if you max out build time bonuses.

Mendicants I have not tried personally, I can't comment on what the mystics actually do to you. That being said, if you build Esotericism into your faith, you can almost guarantee all your player characters are mystics which boosts your income with this tradition. That's not bad at all at least when you're in the early game and money is still somewhat of an issue.

Herbalists to me is meh, the herbalist trait just counteracts penalties like diseases it doesn't directly increase lifespan IIRC. It's flavorful and ok. I'm not sure exactly how likely it makes you get the herbalist trait it just says "can get herbalist trait without high learning" I don't know the specifics of that sorry.

Oh one interesting one I forgot to mention is Linguists. It gives you a pretty good incentive to actually learn languages. each language you learn is +500 piety, not bad at all when you're a young ruler climbing the piety ranks, and +10% fabricate claim speed. If you're not into doing holy wars and using by the sword, having the extra fabricate claim speed could feel pretty good imo.

And one another one that seems ok to me is Generous or whatever it is. It gives a flat +5 general opinion at the cost of -3% gold income. If you're good at making money it shouldn't be much of a cost and general opinion is just always good for any playstyle universally.

[Avataristche]

Monastic traditions. Get yourself a religion with Monasticism, and succession is no longer a thing. It gives +125 vow acception and buffs temperate even more.

[snuggleform]

To monastic traditions I disagree, because religions with monasticism are feudal and if you're feudal you already can bypass the succession game by attaching feudal elections. In other words it's redundant with what you can already do.

I just had a thought to make artisans/metallurgy usable - combine it with a 3rd tradition that increases poet rate in your culture. Poets can become randomly inspired and when they do they can get any type of inspiratoin. So if you install a Court Poet of your culture, any inspirations you get from it will presumably be boosted by artisans/metallurgy. Without this combination I still view metallurgy and artisans as trash since they only work if the person who has the inspiration is of your culture (it does not mean that if you hire other people if other cultures you get better artifacts just because you sponsor them)

[glythe]

Court Eunuchs is a hilarious one to have if you ever play an eastern campaign.

Capture an enemy King and tortue them; then immediately castrate them. Now they will die early and cannot have more children. If the enemy has a male heir and you capture him he cannot inherit if castrated.

[redned]

Originally posted by snuggleform:

What I mean by spamming level 1 building is you build a cheap level 1 building, then you replace that building with another level 1 building after it's done (build in the same slot, which destroys the original building). I think it's busted. I reported it in their official forms and spawned a long and nasty conversation where some people somehow think it's not overpowered, but anyways it hasn't been patched yet it still works great.

yeah I heard of that method. Another one I came across in my current play through is to spam diverge/hybridise of your culture.
I've been doing this to keep the average development of my culture high to maximise innovation research.
I managed to have my Greek heir make divergent that will be more accepted by my vassal of a bastardised Anglo-Saxon culture (which was about the 3-4 iteration at this point).
the result being my new culture having a singular high development county.
just been repeating the process.

I've never managed to surpass Byzantines in innovations by 1100. with this I've managed to do it with out even realising I was.

I've also been using the monastic tradition, temperate is a fairly good trait to have.
It's even better when many of your vassals like you due to sharing the same trait.
I feel combining multiple traditions that boost the likely hood of getting certain traits is a good way to never have to worry about angry vassals.

[snuggleform]

Yup good point about using diverge to create a single county for you to focus development on. The way to guarantee that you only get 1 county instead of a bunch is to make your heir a different culture and have him convert the capital then click diverge. If you just click diverge when you already own a lot of counties of the same culture, there's a chance that more than 1 of them will convert with you, which will presumably lower the average development.

One tradition I think works for personality traits is the legalistic one that makes more Just; if you combine this with the Legalism faith tenet you'll have a better time pushing out those Just leaders that are considered doubly virtuous to the Legalism faiths.

[Yaldabaoth]

Stack traditions that go well with your terrain type. You might even go around conquering parts of the world, just to absorb unique traditions into a hybrid culture (can just let go of that area afterwards, best with a dynasty member in charge for increased renown). If you live in a hills area, you can really supercharge your culture that way, although it will take some real dedicated conquering to gather all the traditions.

[pauloandrade224]

The practiced pirates tradition is really strong too Once u have a steady prestige income the prestige hits dont really matter and the gold is always insane

[titanopteryx]

I'm a fan of Castle Keepers. Every castle a member of the culture with it owns generates 0.1 renown and either 0.1 or 0.2 prestige depending on its upgrade level. If you have a county that can build a 4th or more barony structure, castles become an alternative to cities because you can put dynasty members in them to farm renown.

Martial Admiration is pretty good because it negates 5 points of prowess penalty. That includes i believe prowess loss from aging so your knights will last a little longer.

Warrior Priests is pretty good because it makes a lot of traits add prowess. Even Pilgrim adds 2 prowess, so if you make your knights barons of cities they'll get 2 prowess from pilgrim pretty quick in addition to 1 prowess per Devotion level. It also makes learning education perks add prowess. So you might use the search for physician decision to look for knights. However I suggest pinning the physician and saying you don't want them, then summon the physician to your court to avoid having to remove characters from the physician court position.

Medicant Mystics can be comboed with that. It makes a random event happen where you're visited by a mystic and sometimes you have a chance to recruit them. They have a learning education trait in addition to a wise man trait, both of which give prowess with the Warrior Priests tradition. They can have monk too which is supposed to add prowess too according to the description. Also you can use these mystics as physicians or Antiquarians. The mystic trait adds to their physician abilities and the high learning works for both. Additionall this makes the mystic trait boost your income by a % if you have it. You might get it from a learning lifestyle event or during a pilgrimage if you get the event where you meet a mystic.

Swords for Hire makes mercenaries of your culture in mercenary courts gain prowess faster. When you make a new culture through hybriding or diverging, it generates mercenary bands of your culture. Swords for Hire makes the knights in them gain prowess faster. So you can get some extra powerful mercenary bands available for hire because they'll have higher prowess on their knights. Swords for Hire also increases the number of mercenary bands generated by your culture by 100%, or it doubles he amount.

If you found a holy order and become its patron, the holy order will have your culture. In addition to traditions that boost its knights you should know it uses a lot of heavy infantry man at arms. So traditions that boost heavy infantry will increase the strength of your holy order.

Traditions that let you summon commanders of various terrain types will let you quickly hire a new marshal if your current one dies or just decides to leave. The gardener one is the same for stewards. Might end up being convenient if you need a replacement now.

Combining culinary arts with frequent festivities if i remember the names right makes you get 50 renown from a feast while reducing the cooldown between feasts by half.