Can you go wide without Representation?

Hello Everyone,

Representation (In Liberty Tree) Each city you found will increase the 20xCulture5 Culture cost of policies by 33% less than normal. Also starts a Golden Age (if one is already in progress, it is extended).

I want to play games with lots of cities and pop! But I also like Tradition for the initial culture, gold, and happiness in Monarchy!

I also tend to fill Piety since it allows me to get a reformation and use all the extra faith I tend to have sitting around late game.

So simply put - how much do you suffer when you plant more than 5 cities and DON'T have Representation?

Can I go Tradition & Piety and just plant 8 cities?

Depends on map size...but at standard
8 cities=1.7x sp cost
5 cities =1.4 x sp cost

8 cities representation=1.46x sp cost

So representation actually makes policies ~86% as much for 8 cities (which ends up ~5-10% more sps overall because of how costs escalate)

so with representation you get maybe 2 more sps over the whole game (but then you had to use 3 sps to get Representation)

Basically get representation if
1. you are going wide
AND
2. you also want the Rest of the Liberty tree (ie particularly Meritocracy for the happy, since then Representation is only 1 more SP)

GKShaman said:

Hello Everyone,

Representation (In Liberty Tree) Each city you found will increase the 20xCulture5 Culture cost of policies by 33% less than normal. Also starts a Golden Age (if one is already in progress, it is extended).

I want to play games with lots of cities and pop! But I also like Tradition for the initial culture, gold, and happiness in Monarchy!

I also tend to fill Piety since it allows me to get a reformation and use all the extra faith I tend to have sitting around late game.

So simple put - how much do you suffer when you plant more than 5 cities and DON'T have Representation?

Can I go Tradition & Piety and just plant 8 cities?

Click to expand...

Going Tradition and planting 8 cities is a really bad idea. But it's actually not Representation in Liberty that makes it so, it's how long it takes to hand build that many settlers without Liberty's policy that grants a free settler + doubles production rate of the capital while building it.

4 total is the max you should self found (including the capital) with tradition. If you want anything else conquer it form the AI.

Basically you are fighting the Global Happiness model by trying to be both big & tall. You can easily have a Tall empire with few self built cities with a monster size capital and the next three cities big.

Alternatively, you can go wide and have a lot of self built cities that are relatively small.

You can't do both without dropping to Warlord, even on a bigger than standard map.

You can however attach a wide conquered empire to a tall core very easy as long as you take care to manage happiness. Tradition is better for this (unless you are razing every single city you conquer and refounding in the optimum city spots)

You can go tradition and plant 8 cities (you will have happiness problems, but if i.e. you got 8 diff. luxes...), problem is that liberty will plant those 8 cities faster and you gain more bonuses from liberty than from tradition.

Representation is not cruicial at all - if you really need take piety instead, but usually it is better to close liberty.

This is actually relevant as I actually tried this test in the France DCL. Self founded 7 cities as tradition. It requires very careful happiness play and also permanently ally the happiness CS. Taking representation requires 3 additional policies which gets cancelled out by the saving of the SP cost. However, the picture changes if you intend to finish both liberty and tradition.
In that case, you would take trad opener for border growth, then left side liberty until settler. This way you can get settlers out quicker while getting the benefit of both early. After that you finish off tradition for the growth bonus and aqueducts. Even then liberty+tradition is suboptimal play and pretty much only viable for Poland.

I would suggest you actually go liberty+piety play if you really want to try piety.

I'd say it's doable but generally you need
-a high production start (lots of stone or pastures or salt) so you can build settlers quickly
-enough space to expand to (obviously - but you'll probably be planting your expo's later than usual)

You'll miss out on a couple of policies by missing representation throughout the game but it may not actually be as serious as we think. Remember that if you intend on jumping straight from Tradition to Rationalism more cities will slow your accrual of policies so by the time you get to the Renaissance you will probably have aquired less policies so Rationalism will be cheaper anyway
(usually people have 1-3 extra policies to throw around between Tradition and Rationalism)....

The advantage to this strategy is that you still have a strong capital that you can grow (just off Monarchy) even if you're low on happiness you can halt the growth of your other cities temporarily. Liberty is less forgiving in this manner. You also get faith Engineers and with more cities you'll acquire more faith so you'll be able to rush some late game wonders.

I think wide Tradition can be valid in the right circumstances. Think of it this way.
Per City
Liberty
+1 culture
+1 production and+5% production towards buildings (the second part is totally useless)
33% less policy cost increase
+1 happiness (and -5% unhappiness total - second part also very weak. It doesn't help you expand quickly at all; you need 20 citizens before it provides you with 1 happiness)

Tradition
-4 free culture buildings and 4 free Aqueducts (save 8 gpt) and at least 560 hammers. Ok this benefit only applies to 4 cities but so what - it allows your core cities to develop earlier which can support your later cities.
For all cities
+400% border expansion
+15% production towards World Wonders and National Wonders - Nice!
+1 happiness per 10 citizens in every city (ok so it's slower than Liberty's happiness but mid-late game it rocks
-free maintenance for garrisoned unit and a small boost to city defense (1-4 gold saved per city)
+15% growth in all cities

how did devs tested their game? tradition is so much better than liberty and anything

Redaxe said:

I'd say it's doable but generally you need
-a high production start (lots of stone or pastures or salt) so you can build settlers quickly
-enough space to expand to (obviously - but you'll probably be planting your expo's later than usual)

I think wide Tradition can be valid in the right circumstances. Think of it this way.
Per City
Liberty
+1 culture
+1 production and+5% production towards buildings (the second part is totally useless)
33% less policy cost increase
+1 happiness (and -5% unhappiness total - second part also very weak. It doesn't help you expand quickly at all; you need 20 citizens before it provides you with 1 happiness)

Tradition
-4 free culture buildings and 4 free Aqueducts (save 8 gpt) and at least 560 hammers. Ok this benefit only applies to 4 cities but so what - it allows your core cities to develop earlier which can support your later cities.
For all cities
+400% border expansion
+15% production towards World Wonders and National Wonders - Nice!
+1 happiness per 10 citizens in every city (ok so it's slower than Liberty's happiness but mid-late game it rocks
-free maintenance for garrisoned unit and a small boost to city defense (1-4 gold saved per city)
+15% growth in all cities

Click to expand...

So Odd Note on GEs

One game as Russia (had some sweet production due to UA) - I hard built Pyramids and Liberty GE rushed Petra (Both wonders yield a GE point) and for the rest of the game - I kept getting a GE every 20-30 turns. I built the garden and National Epic quickly (Didnt have a ton of stuff to build lol)

From there on I never really need faith points for GE. My religion pantheon was DF which was nice but not broken (not much floodplains). It was just an interesting game.

I didn't realize there was 400 percent border expansion and 15% growth in all cities. Thats wow.

Now my question has slightly changed - Which civ can FULLY ignore religion? This way I can just do Trad + Liberty to keep a empire with strong production, happiness, gold, food, and engineers lol.

But then faith...

GKShaman said:

Now my question has slightly changed - Which civ can FULLY ignore religion? This way I can just do Trad + Liberty to keep a empire with strong production, happiness, gold, food, and engineers lol.

But then faith...

Click to expand...

I'd assume Huns and Assyria.

liberty is an early game tree and full tradition you want asap. theres no sense in using them both

The other thing to point out is that it is a lot more viable planting cities later in the game than it used to be.
People tend to forget that BNW introduced Trade routes that allow you to send production from a city with a workshop to a new city.
8 hammers from a cargo ship kickstarts a late game city very quickly. So it is still viable to plant cities in the mid game

My strategy with Representation/Liberty tends to be this. I fill out the left side of Liberty and maybe Citizenship. Put a couple points in Piety so I can build temples faster and help with religion than go back and fill out Liberty taking Representation.
Generally this means I will already have just had my first golden age and first great person. Essentially taking Representation around the medieval era means you can sorta double up by finishing Liberty after you get your first Golden Age and Great Person.
That is one advantage to Liberty - you don't have to hurry to the finisher.

Representation seems like a good social policy because of the happiness benefits. It seems from what you're asking that liberty could have too much happiness and that you don't really need representation because you already have enough happiness.