Liberty does not work for Deity

Acken said:

Civ 5 is actually pretty close to balance between the two. If national wonders had fixed costs and did not require a building in absolutely all cities I would consider balance almost reached.

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Yes, national wonders are a key issue - clearly the idea initially was that wide empires' benefits would balance forgoing NWs or playing them late, but balance problems with the National College especially make a mockery of this because the benefits from this NW in particular are too strong.

How about a fixed, high cost and no requirement to have building X in every city, but giving a cost reduction to the NW for every building of that type already built?

TheGuineaPig said:

Something that four-city tradition often is terrible at: culture. Often you just simply don't generate enough, and without the spoils of war cash is short so you can't buy culture city states. Then you get wrecked by ideological pressure, especially if you try freedom.

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That's very familiar. However, every time I go for a culture win, I end up with such a crazy amount of culture per turn, I can't help but wonder how the hell am I making this much, and I'm a quite mediocre deity player One thing I always rely on, get as much trade routes to AI as possible for as much gold per turn as you can. Then take out loans and buy key city states and/or buildings

Also, Liberty DOES work on Deity but not many Civs are really better suited for a Liberty game

PhilBowles said:

Yes, national wonders are a key issue - clearly the idea initially was that wide empires' benefits would balance forgoing NWs or playing them late, but balance problems with the National College especially make a mockery of this because the benefits from this NW in particular are too strong.

How about a fixed, high cost and no requirement to have building X in every city, but giving a cost reduction to the NW for every building of that type already built?

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It would be a good idea. I just don't like the fact that it's skewed the other way, maybe with diminishing returns it would be great. I personally would just make it a fix cost with later wonders costing more and a requirement of the form min(#cities,4).

TheGuineaPig said:

Sometimes I go six or seven cities before National College if I'm in the middle of the map and will be squeezed out by AIs otherwise. It's definitely a slow start but it will start to rebound quickly once universities are up (providing you can stay happy).

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you can't possibly be talking immortal difficulty?!

You can technically even do that on Deity depending on the map.

Fluphen Azine said:

I don't think most players realize that exploitation is part of the game and is meant to be part of the game. Bugs are something completely different and is not meant to be a part of the game. Pillage Repair is supposed to be part of the game and it is not hard to build the Pyramids on Deity if you know what you are doing.

If a player wishes to play with special rules and not take advantage of so called exploits that is the players choice. However, the same goes for a player that wants to exploit or abuse the AI as much as possible which is something I enjoy.

Exploit is nothing new in all the Civ games 1-5. Exploit is nothing new in real life which I am sure we are all guilty of in one way or another.

You also do not need the Pyramids to use this exploit. Yes it will take 2 turns instead of 1 turn but it works pretty good as well without the Pyramids. You only need a band of workers which is easy enough to obtain.

Last thing... The title of this thread is obvious that it is from an inexperienced player since you can make Liberty work playing peaceful as well and have no problem winning on Deity. You will go deeper into turn times compared to Tradition but to say it doesn't work on Deity is absurd. I have made Full Piety work on Deity without going into Trad/Liberty/Honor and it is much harder than going Full Liberty on Deity but very viable as well.

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Yeah I was pretty new to the game when I made the thread. A better title would be "Liberty is sub optimal on Deity 99% of the time"

x2Madda said:

you can't possibly be talking immortal difficulty?!

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I only play on Deity.

If you have units out and active you can secure the space.

I was playing around with this game the last few days, which shows some of the strengths of Liberty as opposed to Tradition. I didn't play this optimally; I'm sure a more skilled player could've taken 30 turns off my win time. This was especially true because I went x-bows before universities, and even with ten of them I couldn't make a dent in any of Carthage's defenses and actually ended up losing a bunch of units in my intermittent wars with Dido. So I wasn't actually able to expand beyond the six cities I settled before my national college, which kind of tanked my science long-term.

The strategy was to expand, build units, GE my National College, get the Oracle and dive into Piety, then go take Carthage's land. The last part fell apart but everything else came together. My religion was food from camps/tithe/mosques/temple culture/itinerant preachers. Unfortunately I missed seeing Mt. Kailash in my original scouting which would've made One with Nature a better pick as I also had Solomon's Mines up north in the tundra.

After failing to beat up Carthage I went three policies deep into Piety before I could unlock Rationalism, ended up finishing both along with six policies into Freedom. Combined New Deal with purchasing great people to make a couple of super-tiles in my capital. The synergy between liberty and piety is really strong and can make a weak empire much stronger. I was making 100+ gpt from tithe by the end of the game. Shoshone beat me to Jesuit Education otherwise I would've taken that. Obviously growth was my weak point, as I had plenty of happiness and not enough science.

Kinda feels like if you're only going to end up with six cities in the end you'd have been better off going Tradition. What did you feel Liberty actually brought to your game? As you mentioned, you felt your growth was poor, which is one area that Tradition really excels at.

A couple things.

1. Only one hill in my capital (that would require buying out to). My settler production would've sucked.
2. Warmonger to my south. Dido and I first went to war around turn 80. Having 5-6 comp bows by then was pretty crucial, and I was able to liberate my ally Belgrade when it fell.
3. Faith pressure. Being able to get my religion out fast made a lasting difference in this game because of tithe. I had six cities by turn 70, which got pressure out early and kept it up all game. Especially without a faith pantheon it was crucial. Once I unlocked Piety my faith could just skyrocket.
4. Warmongering. I actually failed badly at this, but the idea was to take some of Dido's cities. I had 10 xbows, some spears and a horseman when I hit machinery around turn 100. Liberty is great for early production. If Dido's land hadn't been so tough to attack into, or her elephants so prolific, I could've grabbed more room for my empire easily.

Here's another situation where Liberty would be preferable to Tradition.

Got the ol' Jungle Death Start; river system completely covered in jungle, with only one fresh water tile not having jungle on it. The only tiles with immediate production in my capital was a forest gems and a forest in the 2nd ring, and two hills and a deer in the third (obviously too expensive to buy out to).

Thanks to Liberty though, I had seven cities and my national college done by turn 92. Got a kind of crappy final religion even with opening Piety as my fourth policy and having gems faith (went tithe, shrine and garden happiness, preachers). Hit public schools at turn 152, got into modern at turn 164 (had to delay three turns to finish Oxford; cap had low production all game), labs at 196. The only wonder I built was Oracle, to finish Liberty and get my GE for the National College. Policies were full Liberty, 3 into Piety, 2 into Rationalism, full Aesthetics, 5 into Order.

Liberty was instrumental in getting my cities out and my production rolling, and the +25% worker speed was huge as I was in a bad spot to steal workers from AIs (got one from Washington, and a couple from Manila) and had ~20 jungle tiles to scrub off my rivers and resources.

Alex went wild with Gunboat Diplomacy, as usual, and was my main obstacle to winning early: he passed International Games at turn 200 and then subsequently Autocracy as world ideology (I went Order). Put three GMs against him, one against Persia, and then waited five more turns until I converted the Celts.

Messed up some things. Proposed World's Fair first instead of Arts Funding, and so never got the theming bonuses for my Hermitage or Oxford. Missed out on two more artifacts by forgetting about them. Let Greece get out of hand with the city states and world congress.

TheGuineaPig said:

Here's another situation where Liberty would be preferable to Tradition.

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That looks like a well-played terrific game! How many cities were you at when you completed NC? Also, please post the T0 file!

I think I attached the correct file.

I did a 7 city opener. Went three into Liberty, opened Piety, built Oracle to finish Liberty and engineer the NC.

It doesnt. . I completely agree...

A bit of a problem i have with liberty at higher difficulty's is that the most usefull policy's of it take to long to get in relation to when you would want them. Bot the free worker and the settler policy is hard to get fast, like somewhere around turn 20.

Afaik you need 25 + 30 + 60 culture right to unlock 3 policy's on normal map and game lenght? thats a 115 culture to get to half priced settlers if you beelined for it. Afcourse, a capital withought monument only produces 1 culture, you do get 1 extra from liberty but thats not a lot and nothing compared to the +3 of tradition afcourse. Add to that that with tradition you don't need to build a monument as youll get it for free from the 2nd policy, and by that time you can have +6 culture for having done nothing yet.

Afcourse it's hardly interresting to build the monument if youre goign for tradition. For Liberty it looks interresting because you would like like those cheap settlers fast. But lets say that you start with a scout and then a monument, to finish that monument by say turn 12. In that case it would take another 5 turns to unluck liberty, 13 turns to get the +1 hammer per city, and 15 turns to get to the free settlers, so thats a total of 45 turns. On diety, thats too long a time to need to wait for me, ill be constructing my settlers at normal cost by then, and since i don't want to wait for NC too long i'm not going to be building settlers beyond turn 40 probably, so it's unlikely that ill be able to produce a lot of settlers with help of that policy in such a situation. At most only the free settler will be usefull for a last plant probably.

The next policy in consideration would be the free worker but again if i follow the order here then it would just take too long for it to have much of an inpact. By the time ill get the free worker ill probably have stolen or build some anyway.

However, sometimes situations might occur when you can get a lot of early culture, by being a bit lucky i guess. When you can bring back the whole order of oppening policy's in liberty back say another 15-20 turns, then it can be rather extremely powerfull, even on diety i suppose, it deffinatly worked for me on immortal to take a huge early lead sometimes.

Now popping an early culture ruin can do something but it would be better if you can find 2 although im not sure if thats likely. When say finding culture ruin at turn 5 (allowing you to open liberty) , still building monument by turn 12 , that would bring you to extra hammers by turn 16 and then to a free settler by tun 31. It's significantly shorter but still not early enough at that difficulty level imho, turn 20-25 would be much better.

You could be Spain (the luck based mission, still like to play them though) and finding Mt kilimanjaro early or another culture giving natural wonder early. A very situational thing, but it happened to me before. I once had a game on immortal where i found Mt Kilimanjaro early, afcourse as spain i tend to build 2 scouts first and maybe then a monument but i had find a culture ruin soon too. I bought a settler with the money i received as soon as i hit pop 2 and settled it. With an ealy culture bonus like that (let alone the extra city), it was quite esy in that game to get to cheap settler very fast, indeed aroudn turn 20, and then plop another 5 city's before turn 40, allowing timely NC. I did piss of some ai with that expansion in that game but i was too runaway with production from ealy game for them to bring me down.

Such sittuational things might also happen differently. There are other ways to get an early culture boost. Religion can be a sollution in that regard, providing you spawn with the interresting resources nearby for that purposes. As you know there are several pantheons that give you added culture for certain resources, and providing you can get it fast and work enough of those resources early on it might also bring back youre time to get to settlers to around turn 20. Obviously you will need to be either somewhat lucky in scouting or you will need a civ who can get a pantheon very fast like Celts for ex.


For m it always depends on the situation wether i go liberty, and has much to do with how fast i can get culture early to get to hose cheap settlers. If there is plenty of room to expand and a way to get that culture fast, then i will likely decide on choosing that path. When you can get the cheap settlers + free settler by turn 20, it tends to be very powerfull. But in 75% of the games it will be very unlikely that i either can get so much culture so soon, or have enough space to make liberty really worthwhile.

Here is a situational example. You start as celts with 3 forests near you and a number of jungle tiles, among which some with luxuries or bonusses like bannana's or citrus. Lets say 2 bonus tiles in the junle, 1 citrus and 1 bannanas. Because of youre forrest youll get religion in 5 turns. You then choose the sacred path pantheon. With bannanas in the jungle youre city will have grown a pop in 5 turns, so it means you can work both bannanas and citrus from turn 5 for each +2 culture. By turn 9 you unlock liberty, by turn 14 you'd get the extra hammer, by turn 24 you'd get your settler and settlers at half price. Say you aded a monument too, then it would take a turn or maybe 2 less.

The problem afcourse is having the land to expand on diety, if the ai is close theyll tend to settle in youre face.

In my experience, if you go scout-monument (which you should if doing Liberty), the free settler typically comes at turn 38-40 without a culture ruin, and 7-12 turns earlier with one.

TheGuineaPig said:

I think I attached the correct file.

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No, that was Russia (Deity, Pangea).

Liberty is so difficult on deity because ai gets more mad at expansion than at sitting duck tradition, but it is possible to pass because ive seen a deity liberty cleared with maya in gnk. If maya could do it, then why cant carthage.

And tradition transition perfectly to beyond earth anyway.