That's it - Liberty is complete utter worthless trash

This isn't the MP forum, no one should be discussing MP here.
Of course 6 mediocre CB's are going to win against 3 high level CB's, I gave the example of 10-20 units for a reason and I even said that quantity didn't matter once you hit the critical number of units. Seriously, before you reply to my posts, read the post and understand it, don't just read the first sentence and fire off a reply. I said, and I'll repeat myself yet again, that the Liberty production bonus might make a difference on the battlefield extreme early game, where the quantity of units might have a discrepancy big enough to matter.

Once you have your 10-20 unit army that's it. There's no more room on the battlefield so increasing your numbers won't help. At that point, having higher level troops is more useful. Also, Liberty's production bonus doesn't mean much if you're using it to expand while your opponent is placing all their production into military buildup. If you place 2-3 cities and then go full military focus, the AI will happily spam an endless number of cities for you to conquer, and workers for you to steal.

Chum said:

You wanna complete the trifecta and say liberty is inferior to piety too while you're at it?

I mean, you're on such a roll here you might as well.

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Actually if I were playing as certain civs, such as Byzantium or the Celts, I'm sure I could get Piety to perform equally well as Liberty in the early game, and then later on, with the reformation belief and stronger religion, it could easily come out ahead.

noto2 said:

Actually if I were playing as certain civs, such as Byzantium or the Celts, I'm sure I could get Piety to perform equally well as Liberty in the early game, and then later on, with the reformation belief and stronger religion, it could easily come out ahead.

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There's very cool guide here about to playing a 3-city Piety opening. http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=521674 I tried it once, except instead of playing at Deity, I played it at Emperor (while I was still a King player) and I used a civ that gets bonuses for religion and remaining small (Ethiopia.) It worked well. I was friends with everybody and continuously had open borders with about half of them. My missionaries and prophets roamed freely thru the lands of AI's that had their own religions and they seemed to respect that I didn't try to convert any of their cities (actually I did try to convert some using trade routes and religious pressure, but that's different)

OTOH, the Celts were also in the game. Boudicca seemed hell-bent of converting me and the other religious civs with her swarm of missionaries. (I herded them around in rough terrain well away from my cities until they went away. The prophets were a bigger problem) The other AI's killed her pretty quickly

I read every line of your post a understood every word. I just find your opinion to be preposterous and not supported by any facts whatsoever. What you are essentially arguing is that in the late game, Honor outperforms Liberty because of the additional promotions. The problem with that argument is that Liberty makes it easier to get to the late game in just about every way. You can't build an army of you don't have strong cities with access to iron and production to build that army. You will quickly be defeated if you don't have roads to move your armies from one city to another. Your units will be obsolete and overmatched if you don't keep up in technology. Your argument neglects nearly every aspect of a complex game where every aspect counts.

SoonerJBD said:

I read every line of your post a understood every word. I just find your opinion to be preposterous and not supported by any facts whatsoever. What you are essentially arguing is that in the late game, Honor outperforms Liberty because of the additional promotions. The problem with that argument is that Liberty makes it easier to get to the late game in just about every way. You can't build an army of you don't have strong cities with access to iron and production to build that army. You will quickly be defeated if you don't have roads to move your armies from one city to another. Your units will be obsolete and overmatched if you don't keep up in technology. Your argument neglects nearly every aspect of a complex game where every aspect counts.

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How does liberty give you strong cities?

noto2 said:

This isn't the MP forum, no one should be discussing MP here.
.

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My guess then is you've come to realize that discussing MP would defeat your argument entirely, so you've decided to pretend that it's irrelevant to a conversation about something being worthless garbage?

sugerdady87 said:

How does liberty give you strong cities?

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Faster infrastructure with republic, faster improvements with citizenship.

I have a question for the experienced Liberty players: When do you build your first settler? Do you wait for the free one and then build a couple more as fast as you can to catch up? Or start building as soon as you have 3 citizens?

Unless there is a pressing reason not to, I wait for Collective Rule. The capital will then build a Settler every 2-3 turns. At size 3 it takes so many turns of not growing, that it's hardly ever efficient.

sugerdady87 said:

How does liberty give you strong cities?

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Production bonuses. Workers that work faster and provide better access to good tiles. An early wonder or Academy because of a free great person. Tradition will help your capital grow faster, but that wasn't what he was talking about. He was suggesting Honor is better than Liberty, which is ludicrous.

Ribannah said:

Unless there is a pressing reason not to, I wait for Collective Rule. The capital will then build a Settler every 2-3 turns. At size 3 it takes so many turns of not growing, that it's hardly ever efficient.

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what, you wait till bigger than size 3

Earlier in this topic someone wrote that waiting till CR is what makes people think liberty is bad and that you should start building settlers early as you would with tradition. I figured he had a point there.

Because yes the few times i considered liberty, i didnt do it because id calculate collective rule to come around 10 turns later than i would normally build my first settler.
(and every 2-3 turns is not really realistic unless you really wait till mid-game. A really nice city with granary and 3 improved tiles at size 4-5 might make say 4 food, 11 hammers which turns into 14 for settlers = 21 under collective rule = 5 turn settlers.)

Most of the time i build the first settler at size 2, sometimes size 3 never later. I just cant imagine later being a good idea. If you wait till your tiles are improved, were talking 20+ turns later. If you dont wait till your tiles are improved, that third or fourth citizen is only going to add 1-2 production anyways.

are stolen workers necessary for early settlers? i mean, after 2nd city you're in the red unless you found on luxes?

killmeplease said:

are stolen workers necessary for early settlers? i mean, after 2nd city you're in the red unless you found on luxes?

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If possible try to settle on a top of a luxury, espescially a hill with mining lux.

Besides that i never really consider what stealing workers is necessary for, i just want to save those 70 hammers either way . On lower difficulties you can steal them early enough though, so then i often build one before the settlers or between the first and second settler.

inthesomeday said:

My guess then is you've come to realize that discussing MP would defeat your argument entirely, so you've decided to pretend that it's irrelevant to a conversation about something being worthless garbage?



Faster infrastructure with republic, faster improvements with citizenship.

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Oh dear, someone might "defeat my argument" at Civfanatics.com, what will my family/friends/boss say?? My life is crumbling before my eyes.

In fact, MP has its own forum for a reason, it's a completely different game and the strategies that work in SP against the AI are vastly different than strategies that work in MP. This is not a MP discussion thread and it is not in the MP forum. I fully admit I do not play Civ5 MP and have zero interest in discussing MP in this thread, especially when the subject is brought up in the manner in which you did so. Are all MP players as pleasant as you? Gee I can't say why MP doesn't interest me...

SoonerJBD said:

I read every line of your post a understood every word. I just find your opinion to be preposterous and not supported by any facts whatsoever. What you are essentially arguing is that in the late game, Honor outperforms Liberty because of the additional promotions. The problem with that argument is that Liberty makes it easier to get to the late game in just about every way. You can't build an army of you don't have strong cities with access to iron and production to build that army. You will quickly be defeated if you don't have roads to move your armies from one city to another. Your units will be obsolete and overmatched if you don't keep up in technology. Your argument neglects nearly every aspect of a complex game where every aspect counts.

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Liberty speeds your expansion up by about the third city. An Honour player can get their 3rd city not too long after the Liberty player. After that, the Liberty player might be attempting for a 4th and 5th city, while the Honour player is building an army. While the Liberty player struggles to settle and maintain their 6th city, the Honour player can already be conquering a neighbour at that time and end up with an empire the same size or bigger than the Liberty player.

While the Liberty player gets to choose city location and gets the 5% hammer boost to buildings, they start cities with nothing and need to build them from the ground up. The Honour player will capture cities that already have things like monuments, granaries, and libraries in them.

After the first war, the Honour player is easily the same size as the Liberty player with the same or better infrastructure. The Honour player, however, has two generals and more experienced troops, and can then continue to wage war.

This being a SP discussion is important. In MP, every human would be on an equal playing field, so of course the Liberty player could out-expand the Tradition or Honour player. In SP Immortal +, however, a Liberty playing human can't even keep up with an Honour or Tradition playing AI, due to AI starting bonuses. So the human player must decide between taking Liberty and barely settling as many cities as their Tradition neighbour, or taking Honour and taking those cities from their neighbour by force, and ending up with a much bigger empire. Of course a Liberty player can conquer as well, and Liberty offers a few wide empire benefits, but an Honour player has the better army for further conquest. Warfare is really the only way the human can compete with an Immortal/Diety AI. At least it is for me. I can't beat Immortal without going to war, and I can't consistently beat Diety. If I play Immortal and try to beat the AI by sitting on my land and playing peacefully, I just can't keep up. I'll lose most wonder races, I'll fall behind in tech, and eventually the AI just gets too powerful.

You still ignore the bonuses from workers. A Liberty player who built the Pyramids is going to connect cities faster and work tiles much faster. Borders will expand faster. And they will get a key early wonder or Academy that the Honor player does not. They will likely have the NC built earlier.

You are very rarely if ever going to play a game on higher levels with no warfare, but you also don't have to completely conquer neighbors.

To bring my 2 cents of experience, I regularly play with friends on immortal and Deity level. Either we are allies (science and other factors are accordingly scaled so that's not much of a buff), or separetly.

My friends are of various play levels, and there is in fact a constant amonst the worst of them.

When they play tradiction, they feel like they are doing alright. They keep their empire happy, they have some gold per turn, and their cities are developping peacefuly on nice soils.

When the few times they went liberty, they feel like they suck, that they can't grow theiir empire, that they are behind, etc.

In reallity, there is absolutely no difference between when they play tradition and when they play liberty. In both cases, I am the one driving the science forward with double their science even before turn 100. In both cases, I am wagining war on neighrboors, bullying them and stopping their expansion. I do drive the game in both cases, only their feeling change, because they only care about what they see, not what they get.

The difference between Tradition and Liberty is that the former makes you feel like you are doing right even if you are not, and the latter makes you feel like you are doing wrong even if you are not. The reason of this is because you look at your happyness and see that your people are angry, you look at your cities and you feel that they are small, you can't build wonders and miss many buildings, etc. But all of these is totally irelevant in fact. What matters is what not you see, but what you get in terms of beakers and hammers, because only beakers and hammers win the game.

For a quick comparison, my last game with one of the best of my friends, he had an insane tradition start with 3 city (+ another capitol quickly conquered), including Petra and natural wonders. By the end of the game (turn 250-300), all his cities were size 40+.
I played liberty with 7-9 very average cities, and I was still able to have the same beakers and hammers as he did. To put it in another way, an average liberty start was as strong as an insane tradition start.

zxcvbob said:

I have a question for the experienced Liberty players: When do you build your first settler? Do you wait for the free one and then build a couple more as fast as you can to catch up? Or start building as soon as you have 3 citizens?

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It's simple really. I always start with 2 Scouts and a Monument if I'm going Liberty. You have the option of Scout/Mon/Scout or Scout/Scout/Mon, I much prefer the latter.

Then, if there is turf for a good Pantheon you get the Shrine, if there isn't you get a third Scout (only on Pangea of course) and then get a Shrine. After that I always immediately build Settlers, unless I am just a few turns away from getting another citizen in my capital.

I never hardbuild Workers before spamming Settlers when I go Liberty, I usually don't build Archers or Warriors either unless I am next to a really aggressive neighbor or have an insane amount of CS barbarian quests. Usually buying them while pumping out Settlers is the better option.

Personally I will always wait until at least 3 pop before building a Settler, but usually 4 pop is recommended. If you got a pop ruin and 3 or more mines even 5 pop is doable.

Maybe the main problem is that you haven't seen enough of the map when you open your first policy to know if you have the space to make Liberty work. I used to open Tradition all the time no matter what, but that's a habit I broke a long time ago. Maybe it actually makes sense, especially if you pop a culture rune, to just open Tradition and wait until you've seen more of the map before gunning for Liberty.

No need to get uncivil guys. As far as MP vs. SP, yes they have some differences, but in general MP players are able to play SP pretty easily whereas SP players often don't do well at MP because they are used to more predictable AI behavior. So to say the skills/strategies don't translate is not true in my opinion. You play liberty on MP essentially the same way you do on SP in my observation. The only difference is you are competing with other humans which honestly expand just as fast as the AI, especially if they go liberty. Exception might by Deity-level AI which get that extra settler. I would say the hammer savings do matter more on MP where you are producing/losing a lot more troops as other humans fight better. It makes your new cities more competitive and the worker savings are even bigger and the science hit is less since you start on a level science field.

As far as honor vs. liberty if you intend to conquer a lot most players take both. In the order liberty-->honor or a mix depending on how early a war opportunity presents itself. It's a rare day you'd only start with honor as it's culture poor and you fall behind on policies. The happiness and culture from garrisons is really nice the problem is how long it takes to get it--killing barbs doesn't make up for the lack of extra, regular culture in the opener.

I did not even think about this but the psychological effects of liberty vs. tradition are probably true. And they come from the fact that liberty is harder to manage because there is more stuff going on. Tradition it is easier to be confident you're taking the optimal path and doing well. Liberty, you're never sure if you're doing well till later if you haven't played it a lot.

It's a rare day you'd only start with honor as it's culture poor and you fall behind on policies. The happiness and culture from garrisons is really nice the problem is how long it takes to get it--killing barbs doesn't make up for the lack of extra, regular culture in the opener.

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I disagree with this; you beeline Military Caste, and you get it pretty quickly from barb kills and a monument. (and by then most of the barbs are gone, so if you went Honor left-side first it takes forever to finish the tree)

If I mix Liberty or Tradition with Honor, I take the left side first for the XP and generals.

I like Liberty starts for all the extra hammers and fast workers, and the early academy. But if someone beats me to the Pyramids and they are too far away to go steal it from them, I quit. In a recent game at Emperor level, the Pyramids went on turn 35.