Liberty does not work for Deity

How much of a "solution" is it to just adopt all of both trees?

A poor one unless you play Poland. You do not have enough pre renaissance policies to complete 2 trees.

Thalatta said:

How much of a "solution" is it to just adopt all of both trees?

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Never fill out both, as some have mentioned the most you'll probably fill out of both would be to open Tradition for the border growth and then fill out Liberty. However there could be a case made to fill out Aristocracy later on if you decide to do some really serious Wonder building or if you find your civ in danger to pick the Oligarchy if you need a boost to city strength.


Those 2 policies possibly benefit a wide civ more than a tall one depending on how they are used.
Usually though if you are playing wide you can be better served investing some policies in Piety, Commerce or Exploration before Rationalism. Commerce can be useful to get Mercentalism and this can be a really good way to get a cheap army of Landsknechts as another form of expand and exterminate or for defense.
Alternatively if you have mostly coastal cities, maritime infrastructure can be really useful in giving you a noticeable production boost.
Piety can make Shrines and Temples much more cost effective and the extra faith can be used as a bonus system to help your civ in other areas.

Contrary to what a lot of people say you don't necessarily need to invest in Rationalism as soon as it becomes available in a wide civ because you may not always have enough population to work specialists. For instance if you have a lot of cities you can be a real powerhouse for faith generation.
From there you sill out Piety for the Reformation belief 'To the Glory of God' & get access to every Great Person. That can be an amazingly flexible strategy and you can use your saved up faith in the industrial period to purchase Great Writers to burn through the Rationalism tree if you need or Ideologies, Engineers for Wonders, GAs for Golden Ages....
And if you are behind in Science, you can purchase Great Scientists and use them to beeline you to Research Labs or to plant Academies.

I'm uploading these pictures from the game I'm playing right now to add to the debate.

Some important info from the match: no AI has any other luxury to trade with me; I built the border (mountain) cities first, being the King Solomon's Mines my 1st expo; my Cap and Tetloco are the only ones lefting to build a Colisseum.

I don't know if jungle start + liberty is a fail, because in theory, both of them are "long term strategies", so summing up the delay from jungle tiles and the delay from having multiple cities, I think that I got very screwed. Also, couldn't explore as you can see, but I didn't feel like going for it and leaving my civ unprotected.

DocRock said:

Wow that math is really interesting, thanks a lot. That explains the weird feeling why all my borders were so small lately with Liberty. So actually Liberty gives you a small production bonus, the ability to do massive pillage - repairs, a free Great Person, a Golden Age that's difficult to use at that time and an early free settler. Because all the other benefits are not really that great.

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The Great Person isn't free. Actually, before this last patch, even a Great Prophet from Liberty made your STEM people more expensive! It might even still work like that!

As far as I'm aware, after the patch, there -are- no free Great People ever. Every one of them moves the counter up, no matter you got it from Pisa, Piety finisher, Porcelain Tower or otherwise. Bak'tun's aren't free great people, right? Is the International Space Station giving you a free Engine-ientist, at least? I doubt it.

The only exception are the Faith People. They up their faith cost counter.

Perhaps it was evident to many or all of you here, but I know the following result is not obvious to some people who play. All these bonus great people are the equivalent of getting GPPs equal to the current threshold, at the city where the Person will appear. So, it is provably always a benefit (there must be -some- Great Person you prefer to all others at this moment), and it is provably more of a benefit when it happens later. More in nominal terms anyway; the value of the GPPs themselves might shrink.

I mention the first because some people say the Liberty person is a waste to trigger it early. Well, no, not unless you waste it on a person you don't want, which ironically is what a lot of people advocate when they mention Liberal Engineers. You would never deliberately obtain an Engineer over a Scientist by other means at that point, why are you taking an Engineer now?! The policy gives you a strictly good thing - GPPs. Take good ones.
And I mention the second because that -is- the sense in which Liberty GP is a waste, because it only gives you 100 GPPs then, instead of at least twice as much later. Notice finally that while the bonus great person makes the next person take longer to appear, that second person will not take longer to appear than it otherwise would have taken the -second- Great Person to appear after the first one if he appeared normally, counting from now. Indeed, that Person will appear 100 points sooner - or x*100 points sooner, whatever the Liberty bonus was. And all the ones after that. And this means any one bonus great person, even if not free, represents sooner accrual of all Great Persons of that type, and it's faster the later this bonus is.

Bonuses snowball, so you're not just gaining one GP, you're gaininng your game's entire lifetime of GPs ye so many cost points (=turns, since sources of GPPs are few) sooner, including possibly some GPs at the tail end you wouldn't have seem before game over.

So I'm not that pissed about missing out on the "free" part of GPs, just at how wildly inaccurate and therefore inconsistently termed it is.
It's the Golden Age I wish was free.

Bliss said:

I'm uploading these pictures from the game I'm playing right now to add to the debate.

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Next time, please put largish pictures in SPOILER tags.

I don't know if jungle start + liberty is a fail, because in theory, both of them are "long term strategies", so summing up the delay from jungle tiles and the delay from having multiple cities, I think that I got very screwed.

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So, are you just affirming that Liberty doesn’t work at Deity?

Also, couldn't explore as you can see, but I didn't feel like going for it and leaving my civ unprotected.

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That makes no sense. Two scouts should be the first thing you build. Also, scouts don’t help protect your city.

beetle said:

Next time, please put largish pictures in SPOILER tags.



So, are you just affirming that Liberty doesn’t work at Deity?



That makes no sense. Two scouts should be the first thing you build. Also, scouts don’t help protect your city.

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1 - Sorry, I didn't realize.
2 - I don't know, I'm not a player very much used to deity. From reviewing the pictures, I can easily see that I should have more workers by that time.
3 - Because I was playing Montezuma, I choosed to go for Jaguars instead. But yes bad call from my part.

Bliss said:

Because I was playing Montezuma, I choosed to go for Jaguars instead. But yes bad call from my part.

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Thanks, that explains you comment then.