Wonderwhoring Tradition vs Peaceful? Liberty

This happened yesterday, so here it goes.

I am still a casual civ player, only 400~ hours, but I played a lot the Vanilla version. Btw, I with a friend started a multiplayer game, Duel, Pangea Plus, King, Standard and Raging Barbarians, I as Denmark and he as Siam. We started pretty well, struggling with the barbarians the first 100 turns, after that, it was me against him. Following my warpath, I declared war to Erevan (Potosi in his borders!), 20 turns later, to Cape Town too. With my half of the continent under my rule, my friend was starting to build an army, and, he built nearly EVERY wonder in the game, from the Stonenghe to Broadway. After crossing the other half, I started the invasion of Kizil. At this moment, I was in the Industrial Era and he in the Modern Era. My friend was tired of me, he choosed Freedom (I Order), gifted four or six (I don't remember ir very well) Foreign Legions to Kizil to help them against me. Unfortunately to the poor City-State, I was using frigates and gatling guns and it falled in four turns.

We were talking for Skype. At the same moment when I captured Kizil, I heard an strange noise, followed for his favorite music. My doom had started. With Gatling Guns, some Frigates and the UU of Denmark, I supported GWI, Artillery and Lancers. Five turns after, (how ironic), I was out of the southern half. And now he was using Infantry and Submarines. My forces were anhiliated in the way to home. Cape Town and Erevan were liberated. In nearly twenty turns, all my conquests were gone, my Empire falling agains the boots of the Siamese Republic.

I managed to make peace leaving me only four cities and declaring him winner of the game.

He managed to win using Tradition + Wonderwhoring + Freedom, pissing me, because I always told him: Liberty, best policy! Does exist any form to win against this combination? Is he invincible?

Thanks for reading! And, also, I will aprecciate a lot his help, I really want to defeat him!

PD: This is my first post, I was lurking for almost half of a year, but I can't find the place. (Also I don't know if this post belongs to here, so sorry for that)

PD2: My friend song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAgnJDJN4VA

And sorry for the bad english

If you let a Tradition player survive to Ideologies or Infantry and Submarines in a duel you have lost. Tradition will begin strongly out-pacing Liberty in the Industrial Era.

Good Liberty play will have at least a 50-100% advantage in production around the Medieval. That's when you need to finish the game militarily.

What your friend did to beat you was establish a strong empire first, and that is why he was able to build so many wonders. The easiest way to beat him, as denmark on those settings, is to follow this guide here:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=503931

Or this one here:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=547630

They are more for Domination against Deity AI, but the way your friend plays sounds like these guides will work against him too. Playing music, building Wonders, not conquering until tradition. Use those guides as any player, or even better, play as the Huns and use this guide:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=519905

Multi-player strategy is totally different than Single Player usually, but from what you described these strategies should trounce him good. Or you can really mess with him and use this one:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=559009

That one will teach you how to use liberty to start with 8 or more cities peacefully instead of 2-3 and a massive army, and if he lets you get away with it you'll blow past him in the modern era. The important thing is to remember to keep your early priorities straight though: Scout first, grow your capital, improve your resources, get a military ready, settle your extra cities, prepare for city state quests, build granaries and internal trade routes, build libraries and the national college, secure 1.5 workers per city, Keep a ratio of 2.5 ranged units per melee in your military, grow all of your cities as fast as possible with aquaducts, build workshops and universities as soon as possible, and keep the invaders out. Wonders are only on the to-do list after all of those are either secure or planned to be secure. Everything else comes with more experience.

Aea said:

If you let a Tradition player survive to Ideologies or Infantry and Submarines in a duel you have lost. Tradition will begin strongly out-pacing Liberty in the Industrial Era.

Good Liberty play will have at least a 50-100% advantage in production around the Medieval. That's when you need to finish the game militarily.

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+1 to this.

A while back filthyrobot did an intro to liberty vs tradition in MP, that's a good youtube video to watch. Though because he usually plays FFA he tends to advocate tradition in more starts, in 1v1 it's a bit different.

Liberty gets more early cities up and has more total production, but it doesn't have the concentrated production to easily build wonders, and tends to have more happiness/gold problems than tradition. On the flip side, the per-city bonuses and more cities overall provide you the ability to build more units, and losing a city isn't 1/4 or more of your empire (depending on happiness).

If you're going liberty it's snowball or lose basically, unless your opponent picks honor or piety lol. I love honor as a policy group because it's fun to abuse the fast general + stacked adjacent unit + flanking bonus but it can't come up with the early units or tech rate needed to be legitimately competitive if opponent doesn't throw away units. That is why it is effective against the AI .

Filthy's how-to videos are amazing for multiplayer, it helps with single too. I'd look up Marbozir, Rezoacken, and Madjinn (Probably mispelled that last one) on youtube too, they know their stuff too. One thing to keep in mind with Filthy's videos are that he uses the NQMOD, which changes the social policy tree significantly.

Domination Liberty with only 3 cities is amazing in the early game, since you can focus your build solely on military after building a monument and granary and use the social policies for the worker and settlers. Take a detour to build the pyramids after sending your first army out, and let the destruction begin. Roads are built in 1 turn, and you can build one right to front door of the guy you want to conquer. You have a window of about 80-120 turns to knock out your tradition loving opponent, and then his growth will surpass you and catching up will not be fun.

Peaceful Liberty wide is the opposite, you have to sweat it out for 120-150 turns until all of your cities have grown and ideologies kick in. Then the glory begins and you surpass anything tradition and its 4 cities can bring you. There are many ways it can fail though, so trying this is not recommended until you are a master at 4 city tradition. But it works sometimes, and very well.

I only mess around with Honor on Deity, it's the only time there are enough units to kill to be able to use it. After you fill out all of Honor, Commerce, and Autocracy, the amount of destruction that can be purchased is on a different level. When doing Honor on Deity, you want to take the policies on the Right first, so that you get cheaper upgrade costs. You don't want to declare war on anyone until you unlock crossbow tier units, by then honor is finished and you get money every time you kill something. Commerce is filled next, then autocracy. No human is going to let you kill enough units for it to be useful though in multiplayer, so I would stick with Liberty if you want to kill him with a team of horsemen and chariot archers or go good old tradition if you want to wait around for Crossbows, knights, and trebuchets or more.

I also use Honor on the Huns, and only on the Huns, because it takes no research time to get to horse archers and you need only 1 city. The goal with Horse archers is to get experience as quickly as possible, so that they can fire from three tiles away and twice in 1 turn. You achieve this by taking the Accuracy 2 and 3 promotion, then logistics, then range. Take logistics first always, because it gets you more experience and you can fire and move out of range. You have to open honor and take the two policies on the left, which will get you a great general and 50% more experience every battle. Once you get 4-5 horse archers with logistics and range, in the hands of a human player, they will kill anything in their path until the industrial era.

I only mess around with Honor on Deity, it's the only time there are enough units to kill to be able to use it.

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If you're playing below deity, you won't farm xp or money as fast, but you also won't be needing to do so. If you're just looking for a Pangaea beatdown using an early game UU like horse archers, keshiks, even elephant archers then if we're talking below deity you can probably just multi-front and win outright .

I'd look up Marbozir, Rezoacken, and Madjinn

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They are all quite good as well. BTW, Maddjinn is a fellow co-host on polycast and easily our strongest Civ V player (even though he doesn't play it any more lol, I just started again after quitting shortly after vanilla). I was more civ IV while he did more Civ V, but we've done a co-op LP or two in other games .

Edit:

I find that logistics/range starts to fall off before industrial because the AI gets cities to strength 40ish, and while you can certainly wear those down with a couple logistics shooters it takes some time and stalls you out. It's less a problem if you declare ALL THE WARS and win on multiple fronts of course, because once you've killed everyone's army off you have all the time...

I really don't see how attacking a load of CS's increases your ability to win in multiplayer.

You're conquering cities, sure, but the gains are minuscule compared to them being your allies. Happiness suffers, population of said city drops, and you are unable to use them for their intended purpose - extra food/culture/faith/happiness/military.

Why would you attack neutral parties in a MP game? If the goal is to defeat the other player(s), attack the other players.

Chum said:

I really don't see how attacking a load of CS's increases your ability to win in multiplayer.

You're conquering cities, sure, but the gains are minuscule compared to them being your allies. Happiness suffers, population of said city drops, and you are unable to use them for their intended purpose - extra food/culture/faith/happiness/military.

Why would you attack neutral parties in a MP game? If the goal is to defeat the other player(s), attack the other players.

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I believe it's a workable strategy w/ NQMod Honor Opener. Sometimes you just have no other choice and must take down a CS or two to just have enough land / population / etc.

Well, sorry for not answering before, I had a really busy week but I also managed to play two more games with my friend, and now we have the results! Let's start:

In our second game that I and my friend had, I was Siam and he Assyria. Despite having an inland start, I managed to had the rest of my cities in a coastal location. He didn't founded a city until the turn 100, but I don't wanted to conquer him because I was lacking in money and infrastructure. I followed your advices, made alliances with the city - states, waited until crossbows.

In the turn 140, I had an army of five or six crossbowmen, two Naresuan elephants and two swordman. It was a decent number to invade, so I declared war. Some thing I was not very afraid was my alliance with my city states, when the war started, he bought two city states near for me, cutting my trade routes and starting to losing gold. I kept invading, but unfortunately, he built the Great Wall, and it was very difficult to resupply the units, besides that we were playing in simultaneous turns and... I don't know how to fight wars good in MP. Fast forward ten turns and my gold was gone, including only two survivings crossbows.

The third game happened today. I started as the Arabs and he as Ethiopia. The only problem that he was reduced to only one city because the continent was veery small, altough I managed to build six cities (This is becoming my standard in both multiplayer and single player games, using the great guide of Acken, thanks to him : D) When I was finishing to develop an army, nearly to the Medieval ages, I was still with only an crossbow and a swordmen. The next turn, DOW! What th- (Zerg rush of pikemen, composite bowmen and swordsmen) Mecca failed in five turns! I tried, I swear it, but I really don't like to start wars so early.

So, summarizing, my options are wait until the Industrial Era and using the Ideologies to rule the world or launching a massive attack in the Medieval Era. Or I have the option of snowballing science using liberty, altough I searched in the forum and didn't found anything.

Did I do something wrong? Honestly, I want to be the best liberty player! Sounds a little bit childish, but, I would be very proud if I achieve it.

Cheers! c:

PD: He don't want to use the NQ Mod :c

Acken's guide specifically states that it is for *single* player. I don't know what adjustments you would have to make for multi as I've never played it, but I would expect some significant differences.

Liberty is tricky to play well, in my experience (exclusively single player, obviously). I would guess that it would synergise well with some civs and not with others. It helps with early production, which is why it is often favoured for early war. If you combine it with a civ that has good early Unique Units or complementary Unique Buildings or Abilities, it could work well. But if you get the wrong combination, you could block yourself.

You might like to look at some videos -- they take a long time, but I find them worth a world of explanation. Those by tommynt might be interesting to you because he focuses on Multiplayer these days:

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=tommynt

He is a very powerful player. No sound or commentary, unfortunately, but still instructive.

Trying to be the best Liberty player might be the wrong way to go about things -- for the reason that so much in Civ depends on the situation in the game. If you want to win, you have to take account of all the factors that will influence the game -- the civ you are playing, the civ(s) you are playing against, the terrain, the disposition of everything on the map, unique units and abilities. The list goes on and on. The best players seem to be those that can hold all of the different factors in their heads, take care of all the different "threads" in the game at once, and adjust to take advantage of whatever developments there are in the course of the game. And they tend to be able to foresee what may eventuate before it actually happens. I have found that following a "recipe" can take you down a blind alley because you end up concentrating on what you are doing, and lose sight of what else is happening on the map. And one should never fail to think about what the "enemy" may be doing, or one will get surprises.

Ricardo_Master said:

In our second game ... In the turn 140, I had an army of five or six crossbowmen, two Naresuan elephants and two swordman... Fast forward ten turns and my gold was gone, including only two survivings crossbows.

The third game happened today... The next turn, DOW! What th- (Zerg rush of pikemen, composite bowmen and swordsmen) Mecca failed in five turns! I tried, I swear it, but I really don't like to start wars so early.

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Liberty is not the problem. You friend is just able to psych you out. How much are you guys talking during the game?

Ricardo_Master said:

Well, sorry for not answering before, I had a really busy week but I also managed to play two more games with my friend, and now we have the results! Let's start:

In our second game that I and my friend had, I was Siam and he Assyria. Despite having an inland start, I managed to had the rest of my cities in a coastal location. He didn't founded a city until the turn 100, but I don't wanted to conquer him because I was lacking in money and infrastructure. I followed your advices, made alliances with the city - states, waited until crossbows.

In the turn 140, I had an army of five or six crossbowmen, two Naresuan elephants and two swordman. It was a decent number to invade, so I declared war. Some thing I was not very afraid was my alliance with my city states, when the war started, he bought two city states near for me, cutting my trade routes and starting to losing gold. I kept invading, but unfortunately, he built the Great Wall, and it was very difficult to resupply the units, besides that we were playing in simultaneous turns and... I don't know how to fight wars good in MP. Fast forward ten turns and my gold was gone, including only two survivings crossbows.

The third game happened today. I started as the Arabs and he as Ethiopia. The only problem that he was reduced to only one city because the continent was veery small, altough I managed to build six cities (This is becoming my standard in both multiplayer and single player games, using the great guide of Acken, thanks to him : D) When I was finishing to develop an army, nearly to the Medieval ages, I was still with only an crossbow and a swordmen. The next turn, DOW! What th- (Zerg rush of pikemen, composite bowmen and swordsmen) Mecca failed in five turns! I tried, I swear it, but I really don't like to start wars so early.

So, summarizing, my options are wait until the Industrial Era and using the Ideologies to rule the world or launching a massive attack in the Medieval Era. Or I have the option of snowballing science using liberty, altough I searched in the forum and didn't found anything.

Did I do something wrong? Honestly, I want to be the best liberty player! Sounds a little bit childish, but, I would be very proud if I achieve it.

Cheers! c:

PD: He don't want to use the NQ Mod :c

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As a tip is his capital is on the See just play 3 city liberty and go for a all out rush on Fregats
u can have 8 Fregats by turn 80 and he probobly won't be able to defend that

but generaly it's realy hard to tell what u have done wrong with out knowing the map better
if u wan't some realy good advice share some screens of the game in the forum or explayn the game better over skipe

beetle said:

Liberty is not the problem. You friend is just able to psych you out. How much are you guys talking during the game?

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We don't talk a lot. I mean, when we hang outside, we are a couple of random guys talking about our daily life, but playing Civilization is diffferent. I ask fo his science per turn, he ask me about if I need a commercial route or in the first stages of the game, we join us and destroy all the barbarian encampments, but after that, it's a quiet moment of our lives. (If the war occurs, it's for me, I'm the warmomger, not him )

Ricardo_Master said:

I ask for his science per turn, he ask me about if I need a commercial route or in the first stages of the game, we join us and destroy all the barbarian encampments, but after that, it's a quiet moment of our lives.

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I missed the Skype reference in OP. It sounds to me like you are talking a quite lot actually, or at least enough for him to be psyching you out, as I wrote before. And he was the warmonger in your third game!

It sounds like you're at the part where better decision making needs to be made instead of following strategy guides. Your friend is clearly reading you like a book and preparing his defenses out of sight. 6 city liberty can still be powerful, even on multi-player, but on multi-player you also have to build a monstrous army as well. On single player, you can get away with having an army about 4-5 times smaller than the enemies and still come out on top. Against a human, it has to be evenly matched.

Furthermore, you have to use the terrain to your advantage. One of my favorite tactics (against AI, humans may not fall for this stupidity) is to put 5 crossbows in a pincer with a clear road straight to the city. They run right down the road, try and catch a worker or suicide against the city, and then death rains from all sides. Mountains, jungles, rivers, they all make great spots to park crossbows, cannons, artillary, etc. while you destroy the slow advance.

Melee units are just meat shields, range is king on 1upt. I learned that in advance wars for the game boy 15 years ago. Grit was my man, second only to Eagle. Air units are the best in this game, you can stack 10 in a city, they can kill anything within 7 tiles, and all over the map later. Watch Filthy's new video on air combat, you will see what I mean.

Anyways, you seriously need to play as the huns or the Zulus next time you go against your friend. Horse archers and Impi's are the perfect zergs in this game, they annihilate everything and everyone. Take left honor first if huns then right, and opposite if zulus. Stay peaceful as the zulus until you hit civil service, then zerg zerg zerg. Huns you can zerg as soon as you research roads. Make sure, with both, to take promotions in one tree only. With horse archers, the accuracy line is already opened. I learned that one the hard way, always take one line only.

If anyone else, do liberty left and build second settler after collective rule, hard build first worker before collective rule and use liberty right on your second worker, build two more warriors, two spears, 3 chariots, 2 horsemen, and infinite comp bows. Save money and upgrade them all in medieval so you have 3 swords, 2 pikes, 5 knights, and infinite crossbows. With an army like that, you are well balanced and you can use the map to get your friend stuck somewhere and annihilate him. Or you can at least keep him away and launch a spaceship???

Edit: If my English is not translating correctly, I can fix it. I am a lazy Appalachian american who doesn't even try to type properly. I saw you were in Peru, so if its auto-translating wrong let me know and I will fix it. I assume everyone on here knows English as well as I do, not a good assumption to make when there are over 300 languages out there in use today...)

beetle said:

I missed the Skype reference in OP. It sounds to me like you are talking a quite lot actually, or at least enough for him to be psyching you out, as I wrote before. And he was the warmonger in your third game!

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Hahaha, he almost never invaded me, it was only because the map was very small and I grabbled all the cla-the lands And, of course, we use Skype, altough we used Teamspeak before, when we are only two guys playing, Skype it's more estable. For the next games, I am trying to not to pursue a domination victory, but a scientific one. I'm practicing in a game with Alexander now, grabbing Order and conquering all my continent by the way

Wild_Woojsha said:

It sounds like you're at the part where better decision making needs to be made instead of following strategy guides. Your friend is clearly reading you like a book and preparing his defenses out of sight. 6 city liberty can still be powerful, even on multi-player, but on multi-player you also have to build a monstrous army as well. On single player, you can get away with having an army about 4-5 times smaller than the enemies and still come out on top. Against a human, it has to be evenly matched.

Furthermore, you have to use the terrain to your advantage. One of my favorite tactics (against AI, humans may not fall for this stupidity) is to put 5 crossbows in a pincer with a clear road straight to the city. They run right down the road, try and catch a worker or suicide against the city, and then death rains from all sides. Mountains, jungles, rivers, they all make great spots to park crossbows, cannons, artillary, etc. while you destroy the slow advance.

Melee units are just meat shields, range is king on 1upt. I learned that in advance wars for the game boy 15 years ago. Grit was my man, second only to Eagle. Air units are the best in this game, you can stack 10 in a city, they can kill anything within 7 tiles, and all over the map later. Watch Filthy's new video on air combat, you will see what I mean.

Anyways, you seriously need to play as the huns or the Zulus next time you go against your friend. Horse archers and Impi's are the perfect zergs in this game, they annihilate everything and everyone. Take left honor first if huns then right, and opposite if zulus. Stay peaceful as the zulus until you hit civil service, then zerg zerg zerg. Huns you can zerg as soon as you research roads. Make sure, with both, to take promotions in one tree only. With horse archers, the accuracy line is already opened. I learned that one the hard way, always take one line only.

If anyone else, do liberty left and build second settler after collective rule, hard build first worker before collective rule and use liberty right on your second worker, build two more warriors, two spears, 3 chariots, 2 horsemen, and infinite comp bows. Save money and upgrade them all in medieval so you have 3 swords, 2 pikes, 5 knights, and infinite crossbows. With an army like that, you are well balanced and you can use the map to get your friend stuck somewhere and annihilate him. Or you can at least keep him away and launch a spaceship???

Edit: If my English is not translating correctly, I can fix it. I am a lazy Appalachian american who doesn't even try to type properly. I saw you were in Peru, so if its auto-translating wrong let me know and I will fix it. I assume everyone on here knows English as well as I do, not a good assumption to make when there are over 300 languages out there in use today...)

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Well, we play with random leaders, but if I or him grab Venice, we restart, no matter what Most of the maps we play, are Pangea or Continents, and I need to say that a game with Continents it's very different from playing two guys in the same continent. More barbarians to deal with, more space too, City - States of your own. Actually, I don't manage well to play alone and using Liberty, because it hurts me a lot in the early game, downing my gold to zero and losing science. A plan that I am developing it's: conquer all the city - states in my continent, manage my empire well, priorize the science buildings, grabbing Order and depending on the circumstances, going for a scientific or domination victory. (Using nukes, of course )

If I obtain the zulus or the huns in my next games, I'm sure that I will follow your adivces.

I understand you very well, don't worry! Every man learns, what I want to ask if you understand me...

Cheers! And a great hug for all your help! c:

PD: Do you know about a group where can I play against and practice more? Thanks!

Ricardo_Master said:

Hahaha, he almost never invaded me, it was only because the map was very small and I grabbled all the cla-the lands And, of course, we use Skype, altough we used Teamspeak before, when we are only two guys playing, Skype it's more estable. For the next games, I am trying to not to pursue a domination victory, but a scientific one. I'm practicing in a game with Alexander now, grabbing Order and conquering all my continent by the way



Well, we play with random leaders, but if I or him grab Venice, we restart, no matter what Most of the maps we play, are Pangea or Continents, and I need to say that a game with Continents it's very different from playing two guys in the same continent. More barbarians to deal with, more space too, City - States of your own. Actually, I don't manage well to play alone and using Liberty, because it hurts me a lot in the early game, downing my gold to zero and losing science. A plan that I am developing it's: conquer all the city - states in my continent, manage my empire well, priorize the science buildings, grabbing Order and depending on the circumstances, going for a scientific or domination victory. (Using nukes, of course )

If I obtain the zulus or the huns in my next games, I'm sure that I will follow your adivces.

I understand you very well, don't worry! Every man learns, what I want to ask if you understand me...

Cheers! And a great hug for all your help! c:

PD: Do you know about a group where can I play against and practice more? Thanks!

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I understand you fine too, and playing with random civs is a pain. The cool thing with CIV V is that you only need 3-4 cities to do well. Until its time for war, I'd stick with just those 4 and increase their population as high as you can. Also, do not conquer city-states, focus on staying allies instead. They give you so many great things, I can't even describe how much better it is to ally them than to conquer them. You will see it though, it is a huge priority. Conquering them gets you nothing except a happiness/resource drain.

As for a group to practice again, there are 3 or 4 no-quitters groups on Steam that you can join. I don't have time for that so I haven't joined any of them or found out which one is the real OG No Quitters Group. If I had the time I would join them all but I would be the worst quitter due to life emergencies.