Let's talk Liberty

I haven't tried making Liberty effective, so I can't really help. A friend of mine swears by using a great writer to finish the tree, then getting a great scientist and using it to get Chivalry, then rolling his opponent with Keshiks. Maybe this would work with ordinary crossbows (aiming at capturing border cities), or with ordinary knights (aiming at pillaging all the improvements), can't really say.

I'm always open to being surprised. Does your friend have a GMR account? Perhaps we could get a duel, and he could demonstrate his liberty game vs. me? I'd love to be on the receiving end of a liberty-stomping, because I just can't get it to shine for me.
 
We are currently playing a game and he is leading in a lot of the key fields on the grounds he opened Tradition and I opened Liberty. ..Tradition is unbeatable if you are going to keep 4 or less cities and still works well with Liberty once you have finished the Tradition tree whereas the reverse is not true for Liberty because you need more than 4 cities to justify opening with it to begin with.

It's still early days yet. We're what, less than 20 turns in?

Opening with Liberty requires a vastly different play-style completely, more akin to an RTS where you need to expand rapidly and always maintain aggression which in a slow, turn by turn based game like Civ5 many players are tripped up by and understandably just take Tradition instead.

This is what I keep hoping to see demonstrated (and may still this game!). I want to see Liberty be awesome at something. I've outlined the issues I ran into when I tried it. I tried to go wide and ran into massive gold and happiness issues which basically meant my cities never produced enough science/production to be worth having so many. I'd love to see a game where Liberty out-performs Trad.

Thank you for the post game report Filthyrobot. It seems you came to some conclusions by yourself on where you could have done better and I didn't feel there was much to add to what you already surmised. Byzantium is certainly not a very good pick for a Liberty opener but I find them a weak pick no matter what. 1 extra religious pick really does little to save them and as you experienced first hand she really doesn't have much you can fall back on to help clutch out a victory.

I did actually win that duel, just ;p

I really liked the Byzantium, cataphracts were amazing, tithe+church property was the only thing that keep me in positive gold, and in a duel you're 100% going to get a religion founded, which circumvents one of Byzantine's major weaknesses.

What I didn't like was how weak Liberty felt, even with a religion that provided 3-4g and 3 happiness per city. I STILL was gold and happiness starved the entire game. I'd have expected that Byzantine would have been one of the strongest Liberty civs, since their UA addresses many of the Liberty weaknesses.

There's been some good criticism of my religion picks in the game I posted about, so that probably contributed, but you're not ALWAYS going to get pagodas, so what happens when you've gone Liberty and not gotten them? What do you do then?

Maybe our current duel will shed some more light, I can hope! Good luck!
 
It's still early days yet. We're what, less than 20 turns in?

For me, the thing is I play competitive multiplayer in a lot of games. So I know well in advance what knock on effects both mine or my opponents mistakes will have. At present I need you to make a glaring mistake I can capitalize on using Liberties strengths. The mistake I made was seeing The faith natural wonder (I forget it's name but you have settled on it now) and trying to rush a settler over there. The hammers that went into that settler were a waste and because it was so early, that had the knock on effect that everything I hadn't built up till that point, was not going to get built now because I have other priorities.

I can't "fix" that mistake and I knew it was a gamble to begin with. Sometimes they pay off, sometimes they don't and this is a case where it didn't.


Also in answer to your question, if Pagoda's are gone, their is always Mosques which are 3:c5faith: 2:c5culture: 1:c5happy: and while the happiness is lower the culture is still +2 which is a real boon for keeping social policy timing consistant which is a huge problem with going wide. Although I feel the spirit of your question was more along the lines off "What if the really good stuff is taken?"
You will be happy to hear that in the Fall Patch, Piety will make Temples now give +25% gold instead, although I feel the 10% was fine, if it reduced or removed the gold upkeep of Temples at the same time. This was a similar complaint about Banks pre-G&K where they boosted gold production but also had a gold maintenance cost. It is counter productive! But my point is, taking say 'Temples give +2:c5happy:" would be a good fall back if you miss the better stuff although I feel that is religion in general. The incentive is there to get your religion first so their is genuine choice making in what to prioritize rather than a 1 size fits all approach.
 
This is what I keep hoping to see demonstrated (and may still this game!). I want to see Liberty be awesome at something. I've outlined the issues I ran into when I tried it. I tried to go wide and ran into massive gold and happiness issues which basically meant my cities never produced enough science/production to be worth having so many. I'd love to see a game where Liberty out-performs Trad.

is it so hard to understand that all your problems arent related to social policies but to bad gameplay?
 
is it so hard to understand that all your problems arent related to social policies but to bad gameplay?

I know you're a massive troll, but I'll respond like you're not.

When I play Tradition the game is very, very smooth. When I play Liberty, the game is either very hard or a loss.

I'm not playing better in all of my Trad games and worse in all of my Liberty games, so it seems to me the social policy choices are probably related to the game outcome.

The other alternative, the one I'm posting this thread for, is that Liberty is as good or better than Trad, played in a specific way or in a specific set of circumstances, and that those players who excel with Liberty might be able to describe or replicate conditions under which Liberty is good. So far, no luck.

Also, I did invite you to a GMR game Tommy, but you didn't ever accept.
 
there are LOADS of guides helping u - just read them instead of trolling me please.

If u go for 2 city NC in a duel - u r doing it wrong ...
And if u dont understand how op trundra faith on this map is i cant help u anyway - just the faith from 6 city tiles gives u more as stonehenge
 
there are LOADS of guides helping u - just read them instead of trolling me please.

If u go for 2 city NC in a duel - u r doing it wrong ...
And if u dont understand how op trundra faith on this map is i cant help u anyway - just the faith from 6 city tiles gives u more as stonehenge

Hey FithlyRobot,

I have a "Tommytranslator" when I read his posts. While the tone of his posts sound like trolling to you and some others, he is giving insights about the game that are hard to find. He makes errors in his posts from time to time, but he is one of the best players in the game.

A pantheon that gives +6 faith in the capital alone is quite powerful. This is the difference between a high faith civ and a low faith civ:

1. High faith civ can pick beliefs which buy building that provide faith/culture/happy (like pagodas.) With low faith civs, buying faith buildings mean less great people later. With high faith civs, the buildings are bought in time to pay for their faith cost and then some.

2. By the end of the game, the high faith will allow the purchase of several extra great people over the low faith civ.

3. The high faith civ will spread religion like wildfire, can convert many cities, resulting in dozens extra gold per turn and higher, resulting in thousands of extra gold over the course of a game. If you are on a tundra heavy map, the religion will be an invasive species that cannot be stopped.

5. All of this from 1 decision: pick tundra/faith pantheon!

What tommynt is trying to say is that if the understanding of the power of massive faith isn't developed yet, than there even more subtle concepts that have not clicked yet.
 
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