Yeah. Tradition is almost always king in the early game because early growth (i.e. science) is so important. Liberty is chosen when your starting area is crap. Piety for making sure you can secure a religion. Honour and Patronage are almost never worth opening, likely to become filler trees in the late-classical/medieval eras. Past filling out Tradition/Liberty, you have maybe 3-5 extra policies (depending on culture output and whether you're Poland or not) to dump in some filler trees (probably Commerce/Exploration for warmongers, Aesthetics for culture, etc.), then you put everything in Rationalism once you hit the Renaissance. Then everything goes into ideologies. Barring certain civs (e.g. Spain is so much better with early expands into natural wonders) and specific scenarios, it almost always goes Tradition/[filler]/Rationalism/Ideology.