Ahhh yes I forgot about the 3 science from the NC. But yes you're right you don't want to delay it more than necessary. The key thing is to keep your population growing as much as possible in the meantime. If you are in the top 25% percentile for population in the demographics then you're not going to be suffering from lack of science too much. Early caravans can help out a lot here too with science but their value diminishes in time.
Why Liberty as opposed to Tradition.
- Thread starter strollen2
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Ahhh yes I forgot about the 3 science from the NC. But yes you're right you don't want to delay it more than necessary. The key thing is to keep your population growing as much as possible in the meantime. If you are in the top 25% percentile for population in the demographics then you're not going to be suffering from lack of science too much. Early caravans can help out a lot here too with science but their value diminishes in time.
Actually, India would be really weak with Liberty since if it beelined to the free settler and actually founded it that fast they'll drop into negative happiness.
In addition, India is actually gets a somewhat stronger bonus going Tradition than most other civs, they are designed to have every city grow tall, and that's what the Tradition finisher is for.
Building only a few cities and later conquering a lot plays well to India's strength, but that's actually one of Tradition's strengths as well.
Piety is not intended to be an opening tree. I think the Devs have made that pretty much clear in that they haven't tried to balance it with Tradition or Liberty. In Gods&Kings you used to only be able to open Piety in the Classical era. You should continue to play Piety in that manner as most of the policies don't do anything until later in the game.
If you are going Piety it should be for a wide strategy and after Liberty is opened to the settler bonus then into Piety until Organised Religion. From there you can decide whether to fill out Liberty or continue in Piety to the reformation.
The problem with Piety is the AIs will open it if they are programmed to pursue a religion when they would always be better served doing a hybrid opening with Tradition or Liberty. So it really comes down to bad AI programming in this case - the AI should be told to put 2 or 3 policies into Tradition or Liberty first to get their cities going, then switch to Piety...
Maybe I'm not playing Liberty properly. I still try to grow my Capital fairly tall as I want one city that can pull out the odd Wonder, and City Connection revenue is partially based on the capital's size. As the happiness in Liberty is based on City Connections, I try to pump up my Capital a bit to turn a profit on those forced early connections.
This means I avoid building many further settlers in the Capital as that holds up Capital growth. I know that's squandering the bonus 50% production, but I still find it tough to stunt the capital with Settler spam.
Really how do you get to Astronomy without the NC
. Even with 10 pop capital the difference science output is considerable 18 vs 31.5, like having 2 extra cities.I'm all for opportunistically taking out other civs settler, in the tradition game I took out one Austria. (Brazil, and Zulus are my other neighbors.).
I guess maybe part of my question is when you can't expand because of happiness is there much you differently as liberty than with Tradition. Obviously hooking up the cities is more important than in Tradition all the city connections, military speed are nice in any case.
Really how do you get to Astronomy without the NC
I'm all for opportunistically taking out other civs settler, in the tradition game I took out one Austria. (Brazil, and Zulus are my other neighbors.).
I guess maybe part of my question is when you can't expand because of happiness is there much you differently as liberty than with Tradition. Obviously hooking up the cities is more important than in Tradition all the city connections, military speed are nice in any case.
I often end up building the National College around the time I get to Astronomy. I should try and get it in earlier but sometimes I just don't get around to it. Look I think if you're trying to do a record breaking Science Victory then yes try and get your NC in before you plop too many cities. But sometimes you just don't have the position to be able to peacefully expand using the top half of the tech tree (philosophy > Education). If you have warmongers looking in your direction sometimes you have to sacrifice the early NC to build an army.
Also you do get extra science from trade routes and research speed increases as you discover more civs.
I think it would have been better balanced for Liberty to get that 50% discount from every city, but its okay. As I wrote, I would characterize that bonus as the strongest element of the Liberty tree, even though you only use it for part of the game. I dont think you can afford not to settler spam from the cap. The opportunity costs are too high.
I don't think these are mutually exclusive. I don't build settlers obviously until I get the 50% discount (the only exception would be if I discovered a city spot nearby that was too good to be true). Depending on how many culture ruins you pop this is usually in the turn 30s-40s. That is 30-40 turns to grow that capital asap and get shrines, monument, granary and army out. the 50% discount usually means you build a settler every 3-4 turns. Having some 2 and 3 production tiles in the capital to work are very valuable as this can shave off another turn or two. A city building settlers doesn't starve and production points count more towards a settler than food points.
Once you get those early cities out it is quite easy to catch the capital up on growth. Simply route some food routes back in. And until you get Engineering and an aqueduct in the capital your capital's growth will really slow down once you approach size 10. So at that point without an aqueduct food is losing value...
I would actually support such a change, but only in the context of nerfing both Tradition & Liberty by reducing / eliminating things that help those going the opposite of what these two trees are intended for.
Liberty is good when:
-Your land isn't river friendly
-You picked a civ with an early ''per city'' bonus
-You want to try Sacred Sites
-You want to put 5-6 cities before NC(because it's THE way to play Liberty pre NC)
-You want to build Pyramids and repair/pillage a lot(mean lot of wars)
-You play a large map, low sea level
Or any combination of these.
-Your land isn't river friendly
-You picked a civ with an early ''per city'' bonus
-You want to try Sacred Sites
-You want to put 5-6 cities before NC(because it's THE way to play Liberty pre NC)
-You want to build Pyramids and repair/pillage a lot(mean lot of wars)
-You play a large map, low sea level
Or any combination of these.
Those all make sense,and I since I never play large maps that decreases the value to me. For me personally, I find hard to imagine being able to settle 6 cities early on, just cause I am chronically short of happiness until the Renaissance/Industrial era.
If I do try Liberty again maybe I should go back down to Emperor.
As for my experiment, I went back and play it. It was somewhat academic after about 15 turns the Zulus decide to declare war 4 Impi, a cat, and several other unit went after Cumae. My 2 legions were building roads and in the 3 turns it took for them arrive actually took the city and the archer defender out. Another tradition advantage better defense. My counterattacks were feeble, and I chalked up as relatively rare actual loss. I quit a bunch of games. The AI is seldom able to both want to attack my almost always weak military and when it does almost always fails to take a city.
The main thing to do is get a religion up and going. you want to take Pagoda's and Religious Centre as Beliefs. Dipping into Piety after you open Liberty to the free settler to enhance the value of shrines and temples is also advisable
You get a lot more out of religion and thus whole the Piety tree going wide. But if there is not good space for 6+ cities, stick with 4 city tradition.
I'd actually say that sacred sites spam and liberty are almost mutually exclusive. In order to actually GET the necessary Reformation belief, you must move quickly through Piety, not Liberty. In order to be truly efficient with SS cheese, you need to enhance quickly enough to get two religious buildings as well. There's no time for Liberty policies.
I agree. You need massive faith from the very start to get the religious buildings out asap to have tourism pressure asap. The later you start pressuring with tourism, the less effective they are.
On a different note. A lot of people complain about not having enough happiness to pump out >6 cities before turn 80ish. Well the general rule of the thumb is:
1. You need 1 lux per city.
2. You need to get to colosseums before NC. A turn 120ish NC is not a problem if you have 8 cities.
3. Halt growth at 2 or 3 pop (depending on how many good tiles you want to work) before you have enough happiness to keep growing. Prioritize gold/production tiles. Food tiles are useless unless you have happiness. Capital should keep growing.
4. You need alot of workers.
5. You need to trade luxes
Really how do you get to Astronomy without the NC
I'm all for opportunistically taking out other civs settler, in the tradition game I took out one Austria. (Brazil, and Zulus are my other neighbors.).
I guess maybe part of my question is when you can't expand because of happiness is there much you differently as liberty than with Tradition. Obviously hooking up the cities is more important than in Tradition all the city connections, military speed are nice in any case.
I get astronomy as late as possible. I almost always research ALL med tech (stopping one turn before researching final med tech before researching renaissance tech I want.)
Reason have been: I want to milk out religion as mach as possible before prices going up 50%.
I often do the same. But as in all things Civ it is situational. Recently as Babylon I got everything else but no religion. I had a ton of dye but only a one or two other luxuries. So it made sense to get astronomy early..
CivHeretic
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Liberty/Piety is the required SPs for ICS which is an interesting strategy. If you have never played an ICS game then I recommend trying it.
Pretty much the opposite. Liberty and Piety does have a good synergy. Liberty until free settler before moving to Reformation is the strongest way to play Sacred Sites cultural games. Many threads talk about this strategy.
Going straight to Piety is unproductive due to the huge amount of energy in production of cities(Citizenship) and buildings(+1
and +5% for buildings...2nd policy which i dont remember the name).When you reach Philosophy use your capital to get Oracle to accelerate things. Expect getting Reformation around the turn 100. Start with Monument-Shrine-Temple in all cities.
Best scoring dates are around the turn 120-130. They are all done with 3 policies into Liberty
Pretty much the opposite. Liberty and Piety does have a good synergy. Liberty until free settler before moving to Reformation is the strongest way to play Sacred Sites cultural games. Many threads talk about this strategy.
Going straight to Piety is unproductive due to the huge amount of energy in production of cities(Citizenship) and buildings(+1
When you reach Philosophy use your capital to get Oracle to accelerate things. Expect getting Reformation around the turn 100. Start with Monument-Shrine-Temple in all cities.
Best scoring dates are around the turn 120-130. They are all done with 3 policies into Liberty
Sure, and the thread in your signature mentions two things:
1) Trouble pulling it off on Emperor+
2) Faster results without Liberty.
I could see that in theory the city-spamming goes faster with Liberty but there's a very serious risk of Sacred Sites disappearing to a Piety-happy AI.
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