Civilization 5 Aesthetics Social Policies
Strategy Guide for Gods and Kings & Brave New World
| Tradition | Liberty | Honor | Piety | Patronage | Aesthetics | Commerce | Exploration | Rationalism |
Aesthetics becomes first available once your Civ enters the Classical Era. This one is essential to Cultural Victory because of its boosts to Tourism modifiers and that you need many Great Works to win over the citizens of other Civilizations. Adopting Aesthetics gives you 25% faster generation of Great Artists, Great Musicians, and Great Writers. These are helpful to all Civilizations, so taking a lone point in this may be worth it to many players. Adopting the Aesthetics Social Policy also lets you build Uffizi, which is a great Wonder for helping a City's culture/tourism generation thanks to its Theming Bonus.
Timing your entry to this Social Policy is kind of important. You want to get there fairly quickly if you're going for the Cultural Win because many of these Wonders are popular, so shoot for Drama and Poetry to get access to this tree, The Parthenon and your Writer's Guild to begin taking advantage.
There are a few things of note here to optimizing Culture when you Finish Aesthetics (which lets you buy the three Great Artsy types with Faith later and doubles Theming Bonuses from Wonders/Museums). You want to get Wonders in as many different Cities as you can, so that they can benefit from the +33% Culture but make one City your primary Cultural center. This means getting some Wonders that aren't culture-based into those other Cities. This will greatly speed the acquisition of new Social Policies, which can keep you competitive in all areas of the game - financially, scientifically, and militarily.
Read the Guide to Cultural Victory to learn more about winning that way. Only those with great interest in that type of Victory should go this route, anyway.
Cultural Centers: Construct Monuments, Amphitheaters, Opera Houses, Museums, and Broadcast Towers 50% faster.
Tips and Strategies for this Policy: You need Opera Houses in all Cities to create Hermitage, and this will greatly help with that while also freeing up your Production Queues and saving some time. If you are going for the Cultural Victory, building these should be a priority for you, so this Policy holds its own.
Fine Arts: 50% of excess Happiness added each turn to the amount of Culture that may be spent on Social Policies.
Tips and Strategies for this Policy: You need a very happy Civ for this to make a difference. It is largely going to help taller empires rather than wide, who may have more trouble pleasing all their Citizens until Ideologies come into play. It's another reason to keep your empire happy, Golden Ages aside. It definitely helps, how much is just up to you.
Flourishing of the Arts: Culture increased by 33% in all Cities which have built a World Wonder and the empire immediately enters a Golden Age.
Tips and Strategies for this Policy: This one was mentioned before. Try to have a Wonder in every City you can. Just one, while the best City takes on the Wonders the AI really competes for. Overall, a great Policy that will also boost the acquisition of new tiles in said City. When you acquire this Policy, be sure to move your Great Works around to the Cities that have built a Wonder.
Artistic Genius: A Great Artist appears.
Tips and Strategies for this Policy: Timing this can help you complete Theming Bonuses, as some are harder to achieve than others. This gives you a Great Artist earlier than you'd likely spawn one yourself. I suggest you use him for the Great Work for this reason. Golden Ages are useful, of course, but so is Tourism, especially that Tourism you can start generating really early to offset the opposing Civs' culture generation.
Cultural Exchange: Increases the Tourism modifier for shared Religion, Trade Routes, and Open Borders by 15% each.
Tips and Strategies for this Policy: This is the big one here, along with the finisher for boosting Theming bonuses. Some Civs can be incredibly tough to overtake with your Tourism, and these 3 all multiply to give the total you're sending at them. Adding another 15% to those 25% bonuses is a great help and will push you to a win. If you just can't take out that last Civ, take their Capital (which likely has their Wonders) and secure your victory while you defend your lands from some potentially angry neighbors.
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