OK, I know the title must be an incredibly old question, but ever since the latest patch (the one that added Cocoa and Bison) nerfed Tradition, I can't seem to get this question out of my head. I mean, not that I am complaining about the nerf (I don't use Tradition openings very often anyway), I am just genuinely puzzled... When it comes to Tradition vs Liberty opening, most experienced players around me prefer the latter over the former, and for quite some good reasons; we have discussed this quite a lot, and none of us could understand the reasons behind the nerf. Yet, I have also seen some players that I have great respect for (e.g. Sullla) argue in favor of Tradition, so there must have been _some_ reason, even if that's something not everyone would necessarily agree upon. Could someone please enlighten me on that? (umm, yes, I know that for Enrico and Gandhi, Tradition >> Liberty...)
Here's my humble opinion about why Liberty is the superior opening vis-a-vis Tradition (and definitely by a very wide margin for post-nerf Tradition), and why I don't understand the nerf:
1> Liberty greatly aids early expansion, and Tradition simply doesn't compare on that.
Expand or Die has been the theme for the Civ series; true, in Civ5 it doesn't appear to be so compulsory anymore ("Expand or... um... ok, fine, maybe not"), but just because you can win with four cities (or even OCC, fwiw) doesn't mean it isn't desirable/optimal to grab as much land as you can.
In fact, I would attribute the fact that you can pull off easy wins with, er, traditional Tradition 4-cities opening in BNW to the incompetence of AIs. I still remember the one game back in G&K where I played Ethiopia, pulled off a Liberty 8-cities opening, later conquered two more from my neighbor (Alex iirc, who already hated me) with xbows, then decided to peacefully pursue a Space victory - until Cathy on the other side of the world completed Apollo Program on Turn 171 and had me thoroughly crap my pants. Yes, I suppose I could have done something diplomatically to prevent that from happening, except the map happened to be a quasi-Continents Pangaea, with only one single-tile corridor connecting the two larger continents. I had the misfortune of getting my Scout trapped and killed by barbs in that corridor mid-game, and you would never think you needed early Astronomy on a Pangaea map! By the time I met with Cathy, she has already all but conquered her entire continent...
In that game, I immediately abandoned my Space plan, went full military mode and into Autocracy, and began forcing my way to Russia with swarms of units. It worked out in the end because I had enough land, and thus production (which is rather scarce in Civ5), to do whatever the situation demands. I imagine I could and would have lost that one had I been sitting on four cities...
Fortunately (?) for us players, such things never happen anymore now that we are in a Brave New World. I only remember one single AI entering Modern Era on turn 171 (that was Sejong. Yeah, surprising, I know.
) in BNW, much less discovering Rocketry. Thus we can now generally win the game if we manage to simply survive to the end game with four decent cities on hand; however, I hardly consider it to be the best strategy, since early expansion offers a substantially higher reward, and disproportionally low risk associated with that. More specifically, if you tried both strategy, you would notice the difference around late Renaissance/early Industrial Era, where the research rate of "tall and narrow" openings begin to falter. And whereas back in G&K you can get dogpiled by every AI and their grandmother for "They believe you are building new cities too aggressively!" early game, it is much less likely with the more friendly and peaceful AI in BNW, so much that I have found it generally safe to pursue early expansion in the face of basically anyone except Shaka. Yes, that "anyone" includes Attila, Temujin, Alexander, all the sociopath leaders you can think of!
(Shaka is an exception because because he is the single most formidable opponent on the battlefield in the entire game when his UU comes into play, since his Impi is dirt cheap, utterly destroy Archery units with its ranged defense promotions and 3 movement points granted by his UB, and doesn't think much of Pikes, the usual frontline units the players could field, unlike Mounted units. In short, it would be very dangerous and/or at least not worth it to either fight a war with him or even trying to keep an upset Shaka at bay post-Civil Service, so it is either an Ancient war to cripple or outright destroy him, or a cautious turtle to befriend him; early expansion would not be an appealing strategy.)
With that in mind, Tradition suddenly doesn't appear to be so attractive anymore. When seeking an early expansion, the bonuses provided by Liberty is so massive that I think the edge over Tradition should be basically self-evident. It is what the Liberty tree is designed to do, after all.
So that leaves one question yet to be addressed: what if one rolls a really cramped start, and there is simply no space to expand into?
2> Liberty offers considerable flexibility when compared to all other openings.
We all know that the opening policy trees are each designed with a particular strength in mind: Tradition for going tall, Liberty for going wide, Honor for going warmonger. (Piety for... um... making your game more challenging, plus screwing up the AIs that open with it, I suppose?)
However, among these choices, Liberty would stand out as the most flexible one.
Expanding beyond 4 cities by peaceful means for a Tradition opening is downright painful (not necessarily impossible nor a bad idea, mind you). And I would go so far as to say going for early aggression is very much against the point of a Tradition opening. To me, going Tradition means focusing on early growth at the expense of expansion, then try and squeeze the maximum benefits out of that. An example to demonstrate my point: given otherwise equal conditions, the science output of 4 cities will never compare to 8 no matter what (even with the science penalty added in BNW), not least because growing population requires substantially more food as cities grow taller, and you can only have a fixed number of specialists per city; however, by virtue of focusing on early growth, you end up with a decent early technological edge, which translates into faster Education, = faster Universities, which lets you keep the technological edge, which in turn will let you get faster Sci Meth = faster Public Schools, etc etc. In essence, a large empire has a lot more potential, and for a smaller empire to stay competitive, it must make good for that by having and maintaining its faster pace. Then we have early (Ancient/Classical) wars, which in turn demands heavily sacrificing early infrastructure and growth for military strength. These two just don't get along well.
Honor opening is great for warfare, but useless for everything else. Look, there is exactly one policy in the tree that is not directly related to combat in some way, and even that requires you stuffing an unit inside your city to work. The lack of economic boost (even more so since the happiness on XP buildings got moved to Autocracy) means that once you come out of your early wars, you end up with a sizable and experienced army, and an economically crippled empire (perhaps even on the verge of bankruptcy) with little chance of recovering due to a lack of help from social policies. That pretty much leaves you with only one option: wage more wars. Then for example, if you got trolled in early-mid game by the map generator with terrains like single-tile mountain passes, against which you are unlikely to make any progress before Artillery or planes, then you are officially screwed. Good luck making it to Dynamite/Flight with a handful of 3-6 pop cities and a Granary as the only infrastructure inside them, a -40 gold deficit, a full era behind the tech leader, and several hostile AIs from warmongering. (Again, it's not impossible, at least not always, and it doesn't always happen either; just a pain in the butt when it does.)
Liberty is not so powerful a choice as to make Tradition and Honor unappealing choices; however, not only would it really shine when you are playing early expansion, but it would also work just fine in most other cases. Even if you find yourself boxed in, with the extra shield and free Settler which helps enormously for building an Ancient Era army, you have a very good chance of finding some soil for your plows with your swords, plus, should you decide against attempting to conquer the world, you would have a substantially better chance at recovering from the economic devastation caused by war; and even if an early aggression seems unlikely to succeed for whatever reason, with the free Settler and +50% Settler production, you should end up with more land than you otherwise would, and thus in at least more or less an equal position, if not always better. Even if you somehow manage to roll a map where you cannot grab some decent land with even your free settler, it will still be useful to you, if only to plant a frontline city for citadel-bomb purposes; plus, if this is really the case, you should get more than ample warnings with your exploring units to _not_ open with Liberty, before you get to choose your first Policy. (or second; If you get 20 culture from an Ancient Ruin, it is generally a good idea to choose Tradition opener as your first Policy, no matter which Policy tree you would be going into.)
That being said, since it is very hard to achieve perfect balance, there is nothing inherently wrong with one tree being more general-purpose than the others (in fact, one could argue that it is natural for a Policy tree designed with expansion in mind); Honor is still _the_ choice for playing pure Conquest/Domination, with all its combat boosts, its finisher providing a substantial and steady income for a civ constantly at war, and its XP boost often deciding the game; (against technologically superior foes, as AIs on higher difficulties invariably are, believe it or not, 5 compbows with Range and Logistics may succeed where 50 unpromoted ones would fail!) And Tradition is still _the_ choice for playstyles/strategies that favor tall cities and faster tech rate early-game, e.g. a very good starting position (*cough* Salt *cough*) with the resulting extremely strong uber-capital, or a civ that has an exceptional mid-game UU (Camel Archers, Keshiks, Longbows, Chu-Ko-Nus, etc) that one want to get them out ASAP and roflstomp over the AIs with them, or a combination of the two. They could shape games in a way Liberty couldn't. So it would have actually been fine. No problems at all. Except...
3> The nerf hit Tradition too hard.
This is the part I don't understand. Like I said above, imho, Tradition is about establishing an early lead by virtue of going tall at the expense of expansion, then trying to hold and exploit that lead, i.e. trying to snowball from there, usually by reaching key science/military techs like Education or Chivalry faster. Failing that, you would likely end up in trouble since you lack growth potential, unlike wider empires, by a very large margin.
(For an extreme example, assuming you have full Rationalism tree, a 4-pop city with nothing but Library, University, Public School and Research Labs will net you almost 80 beakers by working all 4 Scientist slots and building Settlers to avoid starving. Adding 4 extra pops in an already tall city, even if it is your Capital, will never compare in terms of science output - even after factoring in the science penalty for having an extra city; yet, growing a city from size 1 to 4 only requires a fraction of food required for growing from size 30 to 34. Of course, it is an abstract and extreme example, and actual gameplay is vastly more complex, but you get the idea.)
That's why trying to establish an early lead and keep things going at a fast pace is really important for Tradition, so important that one would sometimes spend a good 400 bucks rush-buying Library in your fourth city, even with it only having 1-2 pop, just to complete National College earlier; something almost stupid to do when going Liberty but actually makes sense when opening with Tradition. And why the nerf hit Tradition far more heavily than it may initially appear to be. Let's face it, Oligarchy is all but useless in the early game, at least for single player games. Putting it as the second policy in the tree (Aristocracy? umm... nope?) pretty much serves only to delay everything else by one Policy worth of time. So we will begin here.
Putting off Legalism from second to third policy certainly hurts. It should go without saying that snowballing works both ways. Yet this one is not so bad, because the Tradition opener is very powerful (so powerful that you can't be wrong by starting every game with it, in fact), and you can often get 20 culture from Ancient Ruins to mitigate it somewhat.
Things get worse from the 4th Policy onwards. In games before the change, you would usually either grab Landed Elite as your third Policy to grow your capital, then take Monarchy to get some Happiness and start expanding; or alternatively, take Monarchy first to solve the Happiness problem while you train an early Settler to grab a very strong/important/both spot, then take Landed Elite to make up for the lost growth. Either way, you would end up in possession of both Policies, which means a strong Capital + enough Happiness = in good shape to expand. Now, around the same time, you will only get one of them, with the next one likely some 20 turns away. Not only do you miss out on the perfect time window to grow your capital while you train Workers, early units, and building some infrastructure; You are now also faced with the hard choice of sacrificing some growth of your Capital even further (and I feel I should not have to explain the importance of a strong Capital) to secure some Happiness for expanding, or try to make up for the lost growth and likely run into Happiness problems while expanding - which is exacerbated by the fact that, without Worker rate bonus from Citizenship and Pyramids (which is very buildable even on Deity), Tradition workers take centuries just to build a Quarry...
And that's not the end of the story. By the time you get your 5th Policy, which usually used to be Aristocracy before the change, you should have Philosophy and trying to get either the Oracle or your National College. The Oracle _is_ a big deal, given how scarce Culture is now from early to mid-late game (and it being the few early wonders you have a good shot at, even on Deity, unless you have Pacal or Izzy in game), and especially for Tradition opening which is all about snowballing as hard as you can. By delaying Aristocracy, it missed out the single time window in the entire game where it would have mattered the most.
To summarize, the change totally screwed up the pace in the early game playstyle that demands the most out of fast early pace and snowballing, leaving Tradition opening in a pretty sad shape now. Even if I am to play "tall" right now, something like a Liberty 6-city opening seemed much better. Even if I only build 4 cities, where Tradition should be the strongest, it doesn't give much of an edge vis-a-vis Liberty now - I tried a few games, and it generally worked out as I expected. It was already only good at one specific strategy, and now it is even beginning to falter at what it is designed to do. Pretty sad to me. (Plus it makes the Policy tree looks ugly now. >_>)
Again, I am just genuinely curious about the rationale behind the change; I like to think that I missed something about Tradition's strength, and would really like to know that so I can start trying Tradition again. It gets boring after a while playing more or less the same opening for every game...
Here's my humble opinion about why Liberty is the superior opening vis-a-vis Tradition (and definitely by a very wide margin for post-nerf Tradition), and why I don't understand the nerf:
1> Liberty greatly aids early expansion, and Tradition simply doesn't compare on that.
Expand or Die has been the theme for the Civ series; true, in Civ5 it doesn't appear to be so compulsory anymore ("Expand or... um... ok, fine, maybe not"), but just because you can win with four cities (or even OCC, fwiw) doesn't mean it isn't desirable/optimal to grab as much land as you can.
In fact, I would attribute the fact that you can pull off easy wins with, er, traditional Tradition 4-cities opening in BNW to the incompetence of AIs. I still remember the one game back in G&K where I played Ethiopia, pulled off a Liberty 8-cities opening, later conquered two more from my neighbor (Alex iirc, who already hated me) with xbows, then decided to peacefully pursue a Space victory - until Cathy on the other side of the world completed Apollo Program on Turn 171 and had me thoroughly crap my pants. Yes, I suppose I could have done something diplomatically to prevent that from happening, except the map happened to be a quasi-Continents Pangaea, with only one single-tile corridor connecting the two larger continents. I had the misfortune of getting my Scout trapped and killed by barbs in that corridor mid-game, and you would never think you needed early Astronomy on a Pangaea map! By the time I met with Cathy, she has already all but conquered her entire continent...
In that game, I immediately abandoned my Space plan, went full military mode and into Autocracy, and began forcing my way to Russia with swarms of units. It worked out in the end because I had enough land, and thus production (which is rather scarce in Civ5), to do whatever the situation demands. I imagine I could and would have lost that one had I been sitting on four cities...
Fortunately (?) for us players, such things never happen anymore now that we are in a Brave New World. I only remember one single AI entering Modern Era on turn 171 (that was Sejong. Yeah, surprising, I know.
) in BNW, much less discovering Rocketry. Thus we can now generally win the game if we manage to simply survive to the end game with four decent cities on hand; however, I hardly consider it to be the best strategy, since early expansion offers a substantially higher reward, and disproportionally low risk associated with that. More specifically, if you tried both strategy, you would notice the difference around late Renaissance/early Industrial Era, where the research rate of "tall and narrow" openings begin to falter. And whereas back in G&K you can get dogpiled by every AI and their grandmother for "They believe you are building new cities too aggressively!" early game, it is much less likely with the more friendly and peaceful AI in BNW, so much that I have found it generally safe to pursue early expansion in the face of basically anyone except Shaka. Yes, that "anyone" includes Attila, Temujin, Alexander, all the sociopath leaders you can think of!(Shaka is an exception because because he is the single most formidable opponent on the battlefield in the entire game when his UU comes into play, since his Impi is dirt cheap, utterly destroy Archery units with its ranged defense promotions and 3 movement points granted by his UB, and doesn't think much of Pikes, the usual frontline units the players could field, unlike Mounted units. In short, it would be very dangerous and/or at least not worth it to either fight a war with him or even trying to keep an upset Shaka at bay post-Civil Service, so it is either an Ancient war to cripple or outright destroy him, or a cautious turtle to befriend him; early expansion would not be an appealing strategy.)
With that in mind, Tradition suddenly doesn't appear to be so attractive anymore. When seeking an early expansion, the bonuses provided by Liberty is so massive that I think the edge over Tradition should be basically self-evident. It is what the Liberty tree is designed to do, after all.
So that leaves one question yet to be addressed: what if one rolls a really cramped start, and there is simply no space to expand into?
2> Liberty offers considerable flexibility when compared to all other openings.
We all know that the opening policy trees are each designed with a particular strength in mind: Tradition for going tall, Liberty for going wide, Honor for going warmonger. (Piety for... um... making your game more challenging, plus screwing up the AIs that open with it, I suppose?)
However, among these choices, Liberty would stand out as the most flexible one.
Expanding beyond 4 cities by peaceful means for a Tradition opening is downright painful (not necessarily impossible nor a bad idea, mind you). And I would go so far as to say going for early aggression is very much against the point of a Tradition opening. To me, going Tradition means focusing on early growth at the expense of expansion, then try and squeeze the maximum benefits out of that. An example to demonstrate my point: given otherwise equal conditions, the science output of 4 cities will never compare to 8 no matter what (even with the science penalty added in BNW), not least because growing population requires substantially more food as cities grow taller, and you can only have a fixed number of specialists per city; however, by virtue of focusing on early growth, you end up with a decent early technological edge, which translates into faster Education, = faster Universities, which lets you keep the technological edge, which in turn will let you get faster Sci Meth = faster Public Schools, etc etc. In essence, a large empire has a lot more potential, and for a smaller empire to stay competitive, it must make good for that by having and maintaining its faster pace. Then we have early (Ancient/Classical) wars, which in turn demands heavily sacrificing early infrastructure and growth for military strength. These two just don't get along well.
Honor opening is great for warfare, but useless for everything else. Look, there is exactly one policy in the tree that is not directly related to combat in some way, and even that requires you stuffing an unit inside your city to work. The lack of economic boost (even more so since the happiness on XP buildings got moved to Autocracy) means that once you come out of your early wars, you end up with a sizable and experienced army, and an economically crippled empire (perhaps even on the verge of bankruptcy) with little chance of recovering due to a lack of help from social policies. That pretty much leaves you with only one option: wage more wars. Then for example, if you got trolled in early-mid game by the map generator with terrains like single-tile mountain passes, against which you are unlikely to make any progress before Artillery or planes, then you are officially screwed. Good luck making it to Dynamite/Flight with a handful of 3-6 pop cities and a Granary as the only infrastructure inside them, a -40 gold deficit, a full era behind the tech leader, and several hostile AIs from warmongering. (Again, it's not impossible, at least not always, and it doesn't always happen either; just a pain in the butt when it does.)
Liberty is not so powerful a choice as to make Tradition and Honor unappealing choices; however, not only would it really shine when you are playing early expansion, but it would also work just fine in most other cases. Even if you find yourself boxed in, with the extra shield and free Settler which helps enormously for building an Ancient Era army, you have a very good chance of finding some soil for your plows with your swords, plus, should you decide against attempting to conquer the world, you would have a substantially better chance at recovering from the economic devastation caused by war; and even if an early aggression seems unlikely to succeed for whatever reason, with the free Settler and +50% Settler production, you should end up with more land than you otherwise would, and thus in at least more or less an equal position, if not always better. Even if you somehow manage to roll a map where you cannot grab some decent land with even your free settler, it will still be useful to you, if only to plant a frontline city for citadel-bomb purposes; plus, if this is really the case, you should get more than ample warnings with your exploring units to _not_ open with Liberty, before you get to choose your first Policy. (or second; If you get 20 culture from an Ancient Ruin, it is generally a good idea to choose Tradition opener as your first Policy, no matter which Policy tree you would be going into.)
That being said, since it is very hard to achieve perfect balance, there is nothing inherently wrong with one tree being more general-purpose than the others (in fact, one could argue that it is natural for a Policy tree designed with expansion in mind); Honor is still _the_ choice for playing pure Conquest/Domination, with all its combat boosts, its finisher providing a substantial and steady income for a civ constantly at war, and its XP boost often deciding the game; (against technologically superior foes, as AIs on higher difficulties invariably are, believe it or not, 5 compbows with Range and Logistics may succeed where 50 unpromoted ones would fail!) And Tradition is still _the_ choice for playstyles/strategies that favor tall cities and faster tech rate early-game, e.g. a very good starting position (*cough* Salt *cough*) with the resulting extremely strong uber-capital, or a civ that has an exceptional mid-game UU (Camel Archers, Keshiks, Longbows, Chu-Ko-Nus, etc) that one want to get them out ASAP and roflstomp over the AIs with them, or a combination of the two. They could shape games in a way Liberty couldn't. So it would have actually been fine. No problems at all. Except...
3> The nerf hit Tradition too hard.
This is the part I don't understand. Like I said above, imho, Tradition is about establishing an early lead by virtue of going tall at the expense of expansion, then trying to hold and exploit that lead, i.e. trying to snowball from there, usually by reaching key science/military techs like Education or Chivalry faster. Failing that, you would likely end up in trouble since you lack growth potential, unlike wider empires, by a very large margin.
(For an extreme example, assuming you have full Rationalism tree, a 4-pop city with nothing but Library, University, Public School and Research Labs will net you almost 80 beakers by working all 4 Scientist slots and building Settlers to avoid starving. Adding 4 extra pops in an already tall city, even if it is your Capital, will never compare in terms of science output - even after factoring in the science penalty for having an extra city; yet, growing a city from size 1 to 4 only requires a fraction of food required for growing from size 30 to 34. Of course, it is an abstract and extreme example, and actual gameplay is vastly more complex, but you get the idea.)
That's why trying to establish an early lead and keep things going at a fast pace is really important for Tradition, so important that one would sometimes spend a good 400 bucks rush-buying Library in your fourth city, even with it only having 1-2 pop, just to complete National College earlier; something almost stupid to do when going Liberty but actually makes sense when opening with Tradition. And why the nerf hit Tradition far more heavily than it may initially appear to be. Let's face it, Oligarchy is all but useless in the early game, at least for single player games. Putting it as the second policy in the tree (Aristocracy? umm... nope?) pretty much serves only to delay everything else by one Policy worth of time. So we will begin here.
Putting off Legalism from second to third policy certainly hurts. It should go without saying that snowballing works both ways. Yet this one is not so bad, because the Tradition opener is very powerful (so powerful that you can't be wrong by starting every game with it, in fact), and you can often get 20 culture from Ancient Ruins to mitigate it somewhat.
Things get worse from the 4th Policy onwards. In games before the change, you would usually either grab Landed Elite as your third Policy to grow your capital, then take Monarchy to get some Happiness and start expanding; or alternatively, take Monarchy first to solve the Happiness problem while you train an early Settler to grab a very strong/important/both spot, then take Landed Elite to make up for the lost growth. Either way, you would end up in possession of both Policies, which means a strong Capital + enough Happiness = in good shape to expand. Now, around the same time, you will only get one of them, with the next one likely some 20 turns away. Not only do you miss out on the perfect time window to grow your capital while you train Workers, early units, and building some infrastructure; You are now also faced with the hard choice of sacrificing some growth of your Capital even further (and I feel I should not have to explain the importance of a strong Capital) to secure some Happiness for expanding, or try to make up for the lost growth and likely run into Happiness problems while expanding - which is exacerbated by the fact that, without Worker rate bonus from Citizenship and Pyramids (which is very buildable even on Deity), Tradition workers take centuries just to build a Quarry...
And that's not the end of the story. By the time you get your 5th Policy, which usually used to be Aristocracy before the change, you should have Philosophy and trying to get either the Oracle or your National College. The Oracle _is_ a big deal, given how scarce Culture is now from early to mid-late game (and it being the few early wonders you have a good shot at, even on Deity, unless you have Pacal or Izzy in game), and especially for Tradition opening which is all about snowballing as hard as you can. By delaying Aristocracy, it missed out the single time window in the entire game where it would have mattered the most.
To summarize, the change totally screwed up the pace in the early game playstyle that demands the most out of fast early pace and snowballing, leaving Tradition opening in a pretty sad shape now. Even if I am to play "tall" right now, something like a Liberty 6-city opening seemed much better. Even if I only build 4 cities, where Tradition should be the strongest, it doesn't give much of an edge vis-a-vis Liberty now - I tried a few games, and it generally worked out as I expected. It was already only good at one specific strategy, and now it is even beginning to falter at what it is designed to do. Pretty sad to me. (Plus it makes the Policy tree looks ugly now. >_>)
Again, I am just genuinely curious about the rationale behind the change; I like to think that I missed something about Tradition's strength, and would really like to know that so I can start trying Tradition again. It gets boring after a while playing more or less the same opening for every game...
c5food
).
is running out owing to expansion or 
are becoming harder to come by.
opener is massive and leaves Liberty, Honor and Piety for dead. All three ought to have buffed openers.
