40 pop tradition capital? On deity? Aren't you supposed to be sending your trade routes out to the AI on deity for the huge science bonus? Which is reflective of a bigger point that I have been trying to communicate this whole time: growth is a tool to achieve more important tools, which are science and production.
You finish your first policy tree around the medieval era; this is the same time you get universities. Let's compare a 6 city liberty, with every city having an average of 8 pop, totaling 46 pop, to a 4 city tradition, each city having an average of 12 pop. This is generous, especially considering THE ONLY CITY THAT HAS HAD A GROWTH BONUS UP TO THIS POINT IS THE CAPITAL. So sure, it's easy with tradition to consistently get about a 16 pop cap by this point, at least in my experience with high level single player (apparently the confines of this conversation), but it's also unlikely at this point to have expands with more than an average pop of like 10. Tradition wonder spamming or infrastructure spamming or whatever and slow settler build times means you don't get your fourth expand up until like the mid classical usually, but whatever, so let's pretend by some happy miracle tradition managed to get an average pop of 12, for 48 population. Pretty close right? And both pretty realistic, here the liberty city has only 2 more cities, at the insistence of people who apparently just can't get an expand off. 2 more cities, two less pop. Mind these are suboptimal pop totals for liberty, usually you can get your empire totaling around 60 pop by the time you finish the tree, but regardless. These imaginary empires have respective 48 and 46 population points. With libraries in every city, that means a raw scientific output of 72 vs. 69. Let's say the tradition cap has 16 pop and the liberty cap has 12 pop. This means with libraries a raw output of 24 vs. 18, so the national colleges are worth 12 beakers and 9 beakers respectively. However these are percent-based bonuses and so are not modified by universities, so for our university comparison, the raw difference is 72 vs. 69 and the modified difference is 84 and 78. A 6 beaker difference, definitely relevant. Now let's add universities.
Scientist specialist slots being worked is key to I think any strategy, and this means both in every city; meaning 6 science by 6 cities for liberty, versus 6 by 4 for tradition. Tradition's scientists end up being worth 24, while liberty's are worth 36. These are applied to the raw totals, meaning tradition's is now 96, and liberty's is now 105. The NC adds 15 and 12 now, factoring scientists in the capitals, making the modified difference 111 vs. 117, with liberty 6 beakers ahead. NOW we can count the universities, adding a third of each raw total to the modified total, meaning 32 for tradition and 35 for liberty. The modified totals at the end of the day are 143 for tradition and 152 for liberty. Then something huge and surprising happens: liberty gets its first great scientist, the liberty finisher. Ages before tradition's first scientist unless you're Babylon or somehow managed a high difficulty great library or oracle. With 8 beakers attached, and a modifier of +83%, the academy adds a 14.64 beaker bonus to liberty's modified total. 143 (tradition) compared to 166.64 (liberty). And liberty with a lower overall population, because of raw values.
Tradition's beaker output is 85% of liberty's in this comparison, and liberty's two extra cities means a 10% higher tech cost. Meaning liberty edges out tradition in literal beaker power by the time they both get their finishing policy. A bit of extra growth at the point where your opponent has already achieved so much of a beaker advantage? What's the point? And if tradition lovers want to talk about snowball effects, here's one right here.
Tradition has no early game growth bonuses, and by the time they get to landed elite liberty has more cities down growing more often for more overall population grabbing more raw values. By the time tradition gets its finisher, it's at a point in the game where growth is no longer the most important factor to deciding hammers and beakers; growth early game represents the potential for both of these bonuses, while mid game the potential is realized. Hammers and beakers are both wide values.
Almost every scientific civ favors liberty. The Mayans means more pyramids; Korea means more specialists. I suppose there's an argument to be made with Babylon, but it really could go either way with them. There are very few civs that are specifically suited for tall play, namely like, the Aztecs and Venice. Anyone with a UI or a UB that provides a non-percent based raw yield bonus is more well suited for wide play, meaning the whole situational arguments thing for tradition is rather moot. More cities means more bonuses off UBs, and more land means more room for UIs. I've actually always sort of thought of tradition as for lower level play; isn't deity a lot about catching up on hammers and beakers against an opponent with a lot more than you? So why would you rely on mid-game growth instead of mid-game hammers and beakers?
Maybe I'm crazy, but there's lots of math to be done. This was just a science comparison, we could always do hammers too.
