Liberty Vs Tradition

snarzberry

Emperor
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It seems that, apart from some select civs, there are two generally strongest openings when it comes to Social Policies (feel free to debate this if you think it's wrong). They are;

Liberty-Citizenship-Meritocracy

and

Tradition-Legalism-Landed Elite

Some might throw in the free settler policy in Liberty in some games and as I mentioned before there are other sequences designed for getting a strong building from legalism, but I think these are the two opening sequences that are most in competition for strongest overall.

My question is, if you assume continents/pangaea, standard size/speed and a random civ what are the factors that will push you down each path? Consider your civ, your surrounding map features and the other civs you encounter.

In what percentage of games do you roughly find yourself pursuing Liberty Vs Tradition?
 
I go Liberty almost all the time. Probably 90% or so?

When I choose to go Tradition it is usually because:
- Crappy start with no really good places to expand to(not much food or special resources etc). I had to do this as Russia in my latest game.
- I feel like doing something different :)

I understand that a Tradition(tall) start can be very strong, but I tend to steer more towards Liberty(wide) cause it fits my style better. You could say I was taught to play Civ5 by the likes of Bibor and MadDjinn :p
 
I'm trying to wean myself off of liberty-worker-gp (engineer for settling/oracle/stonehenge/great library or sometimes gs for a key bulb) and I'm looking for more reasons to go down tradition. I play a liberty opening in at least 75% of games now. And in something approaching 100% of games I'm then going down the left hand side of patronage.

In short, my games are taking on too much of a similar feel when it comes to Social Policies. I feel like I have to handicap myself to change that.

I'd like to see the commerce tree in particular buffed so that it can compete with patronage.
 
If i go for a cultural victory i technically go for Liberty.

If i play immortal or Deity i usually go for Liberty.

If i go for science, diplo and/or warmongering i juggle between both depending of AIs around, riversided tiles, semi-isolated...I usually go for Tradition if i can't suck much money from AIs or generate enough from myself(from land around).

If i play multiplayer i usually play defensive for first 100 turns and prioritize production...Tradition is my favorite pick.

I prefer mid-late wonders excepted for high levels where the Great Library or Oracle is very appealing.

Overall, Tradition 80%-Liberty 20%.
 
I find Liberty almost completely useless. bonuses should be 50-100% greater to match those of Tradition. Hammers saved on monuments, faster landgrab, 3 hammers per city (+2 food equals working another hill...), stronger defense against early rushes, huge amounts of happiness and GPT from capital... not to mention the +3 culture from capital means you'll actually get more culture from this than from liberty for a long time.
 
I start with Tradition>oligarchy(optional)>Liberty>Citizenship>Meritocracy. Oligarchy is just in case my neighbors want to send gifts to celebrate our friendship,like a dozen of warriors near my borders.
and I go to tradition first if I want to play OCC(until middle ages at least)
 
I go Tradition-Liberty-Citizenship-Meritocracy as well. I'd thought that was the standard? The GE usually comes in time for the GL/Oracle, and earlier Tradition is better Tradition.
 
I often open Tradition-Liberty-Citizenship-Meritocracy as well. It's probably a few turns slower to get that GP, but you're gaining more culture overall? So I feel for losing a few turns on the front end, you gain a lot on the back end for your next couple policies, allowing you to grab the free Settler if you want, or having Legalism-Landed Elite ready to go right away after getting the GP.

Too lazy to do the math, anyone know if it's posted somewhere, taking Tradition first before going down the Liberty tree versus going straight for Liberty?
 
I often open Tradition-Liberty-Citizenship-Meritocracy as well. It's probably a few turns slower to get that GP, but you're gaining more culture overall? So I feel for losing a few turns on the front end, you gain a lot on the back end for your next couple policies, allowing you to grab the free Settler if you want, or having Legalism-Landed Elite ready to go right away after getting the GP.

Too lazy to do the math, anyone know if it's posted somewhere, taking Tradition first before going down the Liberty tree versus going straight for Liberty?

it was posted a while ago. There's a delay by taking tradition first due to the increased costs of the SPs.
 
I often open Tradition-Liberty-Citizenship-Meritocracy as well. It's probably a few turns slower to get that GP, but you're gaining more culture overall? So I feel for losing a few turns on the front end, you gain a lot on the back end for your next couple policies, allowing you to grab the free Settler if you want, or having Legalism-Landed Elite ready to go right away after getting the GP.

Too lazy to do the math, anyone know if it's posted somewhere, taking Tradition first before going down the Liberty tree versus going straight for Liberty?

If your goal is to get to meritocracy then it's faster to just take the three liberty policies. I can remember making this mistake after the changes to social policies were made a couple of patches ago. Now I consider this opening of tradition - liberty - x - x almost invariably a bad idea. There are exceptions but not for the type of opening we're discussing.

Some have claimed it could be justified if you intend to take additional policies in tradition at a later time, but I can't see this as being a good idea either due to the strength of the policies in trees of the later eras...
 
Tradition if you are building 1-3 cities. Liberty if you are building 3+ cities. Not that complicated.


I do the opposite. Liberty if u stuck with 1-2 cities, Tradition if 4+.
 
I often open Tradition-Liberty-Citizenship-Meritocracy as well. It's probably a few turns slower to get that GP, but you're gaining more culture overall? So I feel for losing a few turns on the front end, you gain a lot on the back end for your next couple policies, allowing you to grab the free Settler if you want, or having Legalism-Landed Elite ready to go right away after getting the GP.

Too lazy to do the math, anyone know if it's posted somewhere, taking Tradition first before going down the Liberty tree versus going straight for Liberty?

Yeah I posted a rough math example showing the time at which you catch meritocracy is more or less the same if you do trad->merito versus liberty->merito

The issue with opening trad is every other policy beyond meritocracy is then delayed in comparison to doing liberty->meritocracy (due to the exponential increase in SP cost - refer to the number crunching thread). The only real gain is a slight speed-up on citizenship

This leads to a very simple conclusion, don't open tradition if you won't spend more SPs in it than just opening the tree.

Personally the only times I do a tradition->meritocracy opener is when playing as shongai and waiting to have 4 cities/mud mosque tech to use Legalism (and then since I'm there I go for LE later in the game)


Anyway On topic now
I tend to use the standard meritocracy anytime I don't pick a map for total warmongering because meritocracy gives extra room to play. For example, any continent map I'll go liberty in case I want to REX before doing a rush to neighbors (or in case I'm alone on the f continent again)

I have been a little scared of LE since last patch because many of my succesful "pacifist" games end up with a bunch of puppets and I really don't want to invest too many SPs on happiness policies in those type of games.

I generally do honor->PA lately when I go for lots of warmongering though. Still not sure it's better than any other but I def like to know I can field bigger armies and still have np mass upgrading when tech kicks in. I for one believe it's an highly underestimated path but I was away for a little too long to put in well developped game examples for it put aside a few gimmick civ specific strats.
 
Deau, could you post a link to your number crunching threat, please?

I usually open with tradition because I usually go with the one city NC start. As I build scout, scout, worker, library, NC I figure that the 3 points come in handy. And right now I'm getting confused...I just looked up the palace and according to the CIV help it provides 2 CpT but why is it that I can only pick the first SP at round 15 as the game starts with 1 CpT? Does that hae to do with population or is the help plain wrong and the palace provided only 1 CpT?
 
The number crunching thread is in the strategy sub forum but this was not where I linked a rough math example of tradition->meritocracy path, if I remember correctly it was in a different "first 3 SPs" thread or the "is honor worth it as shongai"...anyway I'll find the relevant post real fast and come edit this post with the link


*edit1* civ5 help isn't up to date on palace it seems, it is clearly a 1cpt building and has been a 1cpt building since...at least .217 (wasn't playing before then)

*edit2* link to the shongai thread in which I first threw in the basic example to show tradition -> meritocracy was bad if one didn't plan on using more trad policies. Don't remember if I ever bothered putting out a super complete example with tons of possible situations but I doubt I did since the most simplistic case where you go one city and build no culture building is the one that favors the most a tradition opener and even in that very rare case the benefit of it stops between meritocracy and the next SP.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=421305
reply #19
 
I find Liberty almost completely useless. bonuses should be 50-100% greater to match those of Tradition. Hammers saved on monuments, faster landgrab, 3 hammers per city (+2 food equals working another hill...), stronger defense against early rushes, huge amounts of happiness and GPT from capital... not to mention the +3 culture from capital means you'll actually get more culture from this than from liberty for a long time.

90% agreed ;)

It requires a bit more micromanagement and an extra 1-2 workers (because they are slower) but it's a very strong opening and best for science.

However, if I want to REX to more than 4 cities, Liberty is better (imo) because a)you can build settlers faster and b)you can significantly reduce the costs of future policies.
The free GP is always welcome, of course ^^
 
Emp/Immortal, large/huge, marathon

I have been going Tradition lately, Tradition-Legalism-Landed Elite, and often including Oligarchy in there depending on neighbors.
NC start quickly followed by Heroic Epic. Then i decide on expansion. It seems to me this is a very strong start no matter what path you want to pursue.
 
I much prefer the Tradition start, with settling of an additional 1-3 cities after LE and NC depending on the number of good city sites nearby. If I feel that I may lose a good site to an AI civ I will sometimes wait on the NC until after settling additional cities (usually requires being able to rush buy Libraries in the new cities). I just have a very hard time justifying the Liberty path when I don't plan to settle more than 4 of my own cities. I guess I'm just an SP hound. Settling too many cities means a long time before filling the left side of the Patronage tree.

That being said, I have been trying to move up to Deity difficulty and I don't see how you can get away with anything but Liberty - Meritocracy first in order to compete with the AI at that difficulty. Maybe in the rare case where you are completely isolated and don't have any aggressive civs nearby, but even then it still seems critical to get the free GS to bulb Steel so that you can quickly take out your nearest neighbor. Otherwise it is too tough to catch up to the runaway AI on Deity.
 
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