Liberty does not work for Deity

OK I've really given this a try. My impressions:

I play Large Continents. This is way too little land to consistently found more than 4 cities initially, even if happiness isn't an issue (which it is with Liberty). A Large Earth map actually gives you much, much more room to settle and there I think Liberty has more merits. But the random maps are simply too small. Huge maps might be OK but too many civilizations and CSs mean long turn times post T200.

The policies in Liberty are mediocre for peaceful play. It makes sense for warmongering but warmongering in Civ 5 is inherantly worse than simply focusing on what's important and pulling ahead in sciense. Even warmongering for wonders will probably not be good unless you aim for CV.

The finisher is good but that free engineer will only reallistically snag Borbo or HS as you probably own't go Liberty into Piety to get the GMD. All the other wonders are gone long before you complete Liberty. You could also keep the engineer around for 30 or so turns to get the Sistine Chapel or something like that, but at that point a GS would have put you more ahead. But a single GS is just so paltry compared to the bonuses civs like Babylon and Korea get. You might as well not get it and play to your civ's strengths.

So then the finisher isn't that good. Coupled with the settler policy which you don't really need since you will rarely make more than 3 settlers early on, and later they can be churned out in 2-3 turns. The worker policy is not really worth its cost in culture either. Plenty of workers to be stolen. The Pyramids are OK but they don't make or break your game, unless you want to exploit pillage/repair which I don't.

Every time I've went "wow, I have so many good spots Ima go Liberty" I've been disappointed. I can't help but think how much further ahead I'd have been with Tradition. My latest example is the excellant start as Portugal I described in another thread. Liberty got me no definite advantage over Tradition, yet I lost on wonder hammers, growth, gold and happiness, not to mention city strength and free upkeep for my military.

Bottom line: my experience is that unless you plan to warmonger earlier than ideologies, you better just stick with Tradition when we are talking about Deity.

Well, Liberty works fine with a 3-4 City-Opening followed by conquering a few more. If you want more space without conquering, modify the game settings. Use low water settings, a map without water, reduce the number of AIs/CCs, etc. Buf after all, it's quite random, sometimes you will have enough space and time to expand like crazy and sometimes you'll be spawned between two warmongers. (edit: Ah, and maybe you're just ignoring too many city spots - Liberty doesn't need a "perfect" location with two-dozens of good tiles like Tradition does)

If you don't have anything to do for a great engineer, spawn a great scientist instead - or if you've got a costal city, spawn a great admiral and go exploring.

Overall, Liberty is not as strong as Tradition, but then again... Tradition is just stupid and very easy to play. It's still way stronger than Honor and Piety - and People even manage to win Deity with these two policy trees, so saying that Liberty "does not work" is just nonsense. It's not as ezzmody like Tradition, not quite as strong, but it does work in a lot of cases. You do of course have to accept that you MAY have to warmonger, if you're not getting enough space for your empire.

It's Deity : a roll-dice play. Or you're understanding all game mechanics.

Despite this you can win a game a game with Liberty if you can win it with Tradition.The issue is ideologies pressure. If you can resist with Tradition, replay your game game with Liberty and you'll see no real difference, expect need to build some zoos.

Try something like GS, GM or great admiral (specially on continents maps) as finisher instead GE.

I'm in the end with Tradition on Deity, poor culture unless you have nearby cultural CS. I prefer Liberty. Yes, it's mainly lead to some warfare : 4 cities and 1 to 3 AI caps. It's just deity.

GA because he can sail through oceans? But it's a disadvantage if I want to wipe out many civs on my home continent and not be penalized by the ones I've not met.

Myth and Legend said:

GA because he can sail through oceans? But it's a disadvantage if I want to wipe out many civs on my home continent and not be penalized by the ones I've not met.

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If you're a warmongerer If you're aiming to found the WC might be better. Or possible trade.

I tend to agree: Liberty hasn't made sense for me whenever I play Deity.

You can't trade wit the other continent so early on, unless you have 9 salt you would like to sell off. But if you're not a warmonger why the heck would you go Liberty?

Even if you are one, the free happiness from Monarchy outweighs anything Liberty can give you early on.

It's more early gold from Tradition (legalism, monarchy, oligarchy and ending) rather than happiness for me. I struggle to have a decent gpt with Liberty. With tradition it's around free 19-20 gpt T100 (4 monuments, cap with pop 12 to 14, 4 units garrisoned, 4 aqueducts).

if youd like more settling room, try Continents Plus (or any of the Plus varieties). They move most of the CSs to the edges or small islands to free up settling room. You could get your 6+ cities easier there. There is still the random factor of Continents with their shapes but Pangea Plus always gave me plenty of room if i was loosely choosing to go "wide".

Why would you go Liberty as Portugal? You get bonuses from trade routes as Portugal, so you want to make your capital a really attractive target for trade routes coming in as well as going out. That mean growing it big and getting a Market and the East India Company up asap, and with a bit of luck the Colossus as well, all things Tradition helps with and Liberty doesn't.

I agree completely, I mentioned it a bit in this post:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=526886

The only time I think Liberty would be better is if you have a lot of excellent city spots nearby that have lots of luxury resources that can be worked for coins. And possibly if your capital wasn't that great.

Monarchy gives happiness and coins, which helps with two serious limits on your early game growth. Monarchy also gets better as the game goes on and the capital gets larger, as opposed to a free settler once.

I also talked more about early coin problems here:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=526566

The problem with liberty is that the right part of that tree is rather weak compared to tradition. The happiness between the two just don't even compare. The left part and opener are good though, culture is okay, Republic is awesome and Collective Rule is good.

At the moment in my games it's not a choice between Liberty or Tradition but more between Tradition and Tradition/Liberty mix.

The key word here is "Deity". Where the AI takes up twice as much land right from the first few turns, and it is often not realistic to expand borders by taking cities (e.g., France settling on a hill and pumping out musketeers when you are just getting to pikes).

I find it very odd that most of the fastest wins via Turn Time on Domnation Games Have used a Liberty approrach on Deity. In fact I have seen some very fast wins even on Conts Maps with Liberty Domination in mind. The biggest point of Liberty Warmongering is getting the Pyramids for the easy pillage/repair in 1 turn which is pretty strong IMO.

If you re-roll and re-roll until you get a great start then yes Tradition is stronger. If you go with whatever start you get, Liberty is a lot stronger because you might have no-production starts, be adjacent to Zulus or Aztecs, be forced into early conquest, etc.

TheGuineaPig said:

If you re-roll and re-roll until you get a great start then yes Tradition is stronger. If you go with whatever start you get, Liberty is a lot stronger because you might have no-production starts, be adjacent to Zulus or Aztecs, be forced into early conquest, etc.

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And how would Liberty help you with those?

No hammers: you should work food tiles early on anyway
Free worker: steal from CS or from Shakka if he would be in your face anyway later
Free settler: by the time you get it with an average civ there is only one good spot left to settle anyway. Forward settling warmongers on Deity is a recipe to get rolled over.

If you are forced into early conquest what makes or breaks your game is your usage of comp. bows. But that will be chilled down pretty quickly on Deity as by turn 100 the AI gets to Chivalry and Knights will ruin your day.

And as I said, I don't use the Pyramids pillage/repair exploit.

The main limit with liberty imo is that on deity it doesn't allow you to build wide empires from scratch. The left side of liberty is very strong, especially early on, allowing you to get the NC or 2 expansions very early. But meritocracy and representation just doesn't really cut it for me, and most players tend to go to war while filling out liberty, finishing the game with domination. You can't really settle and build the wide empire because the AI takes space, so you end up taking their cities. I'm at the point where I think liberty is optimal only for global domination, and other cases including conquering a continent and playing peacefully afterwards would be better with tradition, even if only marginally.

@Acken
When you go for tradition/liberty mix, when do you finish a tree on standard maps, if you're not poland? I assume the tradition finisher is better...

Myth and Legend said:

And how would Liberty help you with those?

No hammers: you should work food tiles early on anyway
Free worker: steal from CS or from Shakka if he would be in your face anyway later
Free settler: by the time you get it with an average civ there is only one good spot left to settle anyway. Forward settling warmongers on Deity is a recipe to get rolled over.

If you are forced into early conquest what makes or breaks your game is your usage of comp. bows. But that will be chilled down pretty quickly on Deity as by turn 100 the AI gets to Chivalry and Knights will ruin your day.

And as I said, I don't use the Pyramids pillage/repair exploit.

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When I mean no hammers, I mean the kind of starts that very often happen where you have zero or just one hill, in the middle of jungle, in open desert, etc. These starts happen and most people just re-roll them. But if you actually play them it takes forever and a day to get out settlers, and your neighbour just rolls over you because you don't even have gold to buy them off.

I don't know how you're playing so that there's only ever one spot to settle by the time the free settler comes out. Even without a culture ruin you should have it before turn 40.

Liberty gets you more archers before construction. It generally gets you to machinery faster too, usually around turn 95-100 (I find with tradition it's usually around 10 turns later). These are all fairly big things.

Sessy said:

The main limit with liberty imo is that on deity it doesn't allow you to build wide empires from scratch. The left side of liberty is very strong, especially early on, allowing you to get the NC or 2 expansions very early. But meritocracy and representation just doesn't really cut it for me, and most players tend to go to war while filling out liberty, finishing the game with domination. You can't really settle and build the wide empire because the AI takes space, so you end up taking their cities. I'm at the point where I think liberty is optimal only for global domination, and other cases including conquering a continent and playing peacefully afterwards would be better with tradition, even if only marginally.

@Acken
When you go for tradition/liberty mix, when do you finish a tree on standard maps, if you're not poland? I assume the tradition finisher is better...

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This is an old thread I've moved away from trad/lib especially after patch.

For OP, Liberty gives some acceptable results. It's probably weaker for peace games but the difference is not so big that it does not work.

Acken said:

This is an old thread I've moved away from trad/lib especially after patch.

For OP, Liberty gives some acceptable results. It's probably weaker for peace games but the difference is not so big that it does not work.

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oops just realized the date of the post. liberty turned out pretty good for your china LP, but I'm still not all that comfortable with GE for NC as finisher. Is this a standard practice for liberty or is it ok to choose GS and settle?