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1. Get the no maintenence and +1 happiness for garrisioned troops first (one is in tradition, the other in honor). To me, those are key early game to help keep costs down and protect your small but growing empire.
2. Depending on what I feel like, I'll bounce around in the first three policie trees. I don't really care for faith or city states, so I literally never get any techs in the fourth and fifth trees.
3. Once I get commerce, I get the half maitenence for roads/tracks. I like building larger empires so keeping road costs down is really nice.
4. If I'm struggling with keeping my people happy in that particular game, I'll get the full commerce branch to get the +2 happiness for luxury resources. If I'm good with happiness, then I'll work on the rationalism.
Not saying that what I wrote above is the perfect strategy, but it seems to work for me most of the time.
If all your cities are coastal (like a small continents or archipelago map), Exploration is very strong; you at least want the opener and the one that give extra production. This is a very viable place to put your filler policies between Tradition and Rationalism. (I usually put those in Commerce or Patronage)
Aesthetics is my least-used policy tree. But maybe that's just me.
The jump from Electricity to Radio is a good place to build Oxford. (be careful with the timing) Unless you know you have enough coal to buy/build 3 factories, this is the quickest path to an ideology so you get the 2 bonus tenets. Depending on the map and the AI's you are facing, Astronomy (for caravels and observatories) and Dynamite are also good places to spend Oxford.
If you go Autocracy, the first tenet you take should probably be Futurism. Then try to get Arts Funding passed in the world congress.
I mostly play on Prince, I've just started doing King, and I find if I'm going for domination, that it's best to wait until late game, not early like you suggest. Simply because on those difficulties, it's easier to get above everyone else in the tech tree. I can get one or two unit tiers above the other civs if I wait until late game, so the enemy units can't even begin to attack/defend against my strong units. I could declare war on all civs simultaneously and still crush them all if I wait until late game.
But I could see on higher difficulties where its harder to rise above everyone else to attack early game.
To put it simply: a strategy that will work on the higher levels of difficulty will also work on the lowest levels. The opposite cannot be said.
To add on the part where you wait until you have several tiers of technology in advance to all other civs: you've already basically won if you're at this point. You could do close to anything there, aim for any victory condition, and it would be nigh-impossible to actually lose. If you ever turn the difficulty up, you'll have to find a way to create such an advantage for yourself, rather than simply wait until the AI's mismanagement makes them fall behind you. Hence the emphasis others have already put here on rationalism as a social policy and beelining for the next science building. You'll need to find creative ways to get back on the multiple bonuses the AI get. If you can do that in a hard game, you'll do even better if the AI doesn't have unfair advantages against you.
there will be countless rounds where you effectively gets + 50% culture
One thing that I would disagree a bit with in OP is that I would argue that Tradition is the only thing you go for before anything until you can beat at least Immortal first. Liberty is only equivalently good if you're a pro.
I'm gonna try to break these down for ya!
1. We don't really like "splitting" our policies at once. Many of the most beneficial bonuses are at the end of a policy tree, so it pays off to finish policies. Finishing tradish/liberty will give you a solid base for any game, but I've definitely seen builds with 2 cities, 3 points of tradition, and 3 points of honor (for the XP boost policy). Tradition gives massive food bonuses (= more science) for finishing the tree, and liberty gives you a free great person, both of which are pretty big early.
To sum it all up as simply as possible, we do its not because the other ways aren't great, but because its usually the most correct. There are viable builds that do this though!
2. I would recommend trying them all out for yourself! You'll probably run into the same problems most people encounter though, faith drops off late game and most people (98% of players) don't know how to leverage a big early army into a vic
3. Yeah commerce does have some nice policies, but its basically contending with the same spot as Rationalism. Once again going back to the line of reasoning that we simply have other things we can do that can help us more
4. Balancing happiness can be difficult! Protectionism is nice, but there are all kinds of ways to get more happiness (luxury resource, buildings, CS relationships), and a lot fewer ways to get more science. Policies are infrequent compared to other options in civ, so we have to maximize our usage of them!
You have definitely brought up some good points!
If I get my way, I don't like starting the world fair until much later in the game. Especially on higher difficulties, players won't be able to keep up with AI advantages when it first becomes available, as well as the number for culture being doubled will be higher later in the game. You are definitely correct though that if you don't think you will get the overall bonus, stop production after getting the free social policy.
Exploration does have some nice policies within it, but it doesn't translate as easily to a vic as other policies in my opinion. The +3 production in coastal cities can be big, and I've definitely maxed out Exploration in multiplayer games before. I would say as people understand more what makes strong strategies strong, they have greater flexibility in making changes to help themselves. You can take Exploration over Rationalism and still smoke your competition if you're making other correct choices.
Aesthetics is an interesting tree. Having a surplus of culture usually means you'll be dipping into other policy trees later in the game, which opens you up to dropping a couple value points in Exploration or Patronage for example.
I hadn't considered or seen using Oxford to jump into an ideology. Electricity to Radio has piqued my interest, I'll try testing it in some games soon.
As far as why I prefer to save Oxford until the end, I have a similar response for as an earlier question. There are far fewer bonuses that gives to science, so we really have to try to maximize the ones we get. Techs cost more science later in the game, and we have less ability to raise our science later in the game. You get more free science by researching a 10,000 cost tech than a 1,000 cost tech. The tempo swing involved with getting an ideology 10-15 turns earlier may be worthwhile enough to consider though! Especially with the ideology free tenents shenanigans
This guy gets it! Gold Star!
Raging barbs definitely make honor better! I also like early honor with a couple civs, namely the Aztecs
Teach a man to fish, etc. etc.
I'd much rather dig into the reasoning behind solid moves than give 100 turns of exact play. All of these strategies are viable on Diety, but I'll be the first to say this thread is not completely comprehensive!
I would agree that Liberty is a better choice for better players. Having more cities and units and more player given actions in total means players with higher skill have more input. More chances to slow or accelerate yourself depending on if you know what you're doing or not!
Its almost stubid not to use it, depending on maptype ofcus
1. In the tech order section, I don't know if you included only ancient techs on purpose. I would also mention Fertilizer as a good tech to get before Plastics, as it usually adds a huge amount of food and is relatively cheap.
2. Pretty much everyone regards Poland as the best civ, not Babylon. Although Babylon is certainly one of the best.
If you made a guide with this information I'd gladly favorite it and use it for reference should I randomly hit a slump or a snag when playing.
Either as is, or if you decided to add more.
Thank you for your post.