Let's talk Liberty

FilthyRobot

Chieftain
Joined
Aug 26, 2013
Messages
76
The goal of this thread is to locate player strategies that can be used to maximize the use of the Liberty tree in such a way that it can compete with well played Tradition openers.

I'm, personally, struggling with Liberty. Let me walk you guys through a duel I'm currently playing and perhaps y'all can offer some suggestions/thoughts.

Skirmish map, 2 player, tiny size. 3 natural wonders, strategic balance. The map is nearly entirely tundra with a mix of plains and snow. Lots of rivers, lots of deer, 8 city-states and a roughly rectangular outline, with him on the west, me on the east and a the city states in the 4 corners. I random Byzantine, he randoms Iroquois.

My capital start is mediocre. I'm on a river, tundra, flatland. One move away is a gem hill, which I move to and settle. I have fur in my third ring, 4 deer in my capital, but 2 of them also in the third ring, and a mix of tundra, tundra/forest and tundra/hill.


The combination of a weak city location, Byzantine and a 1v1 on an oversized map (tiny instead of duel sized) suggest to me I try a liberty start, so I do.

My tech pattern is something like pottery, animal husbandry, mining, archery philosophy/trapping. Opening build order is something like scout-monument-scout-shrine-granary-worker. I also steal a worker early. I go scouting for city-states, potential expansion spots and my opponent. I think I purchase 1-2 tiles early to grab deer/horses.

The liberty settler expand (Adranople) goes down about 6 tiles from my cap, next to a mountain, multi-deer, wine expand.


Meanwhile I get a library in my capital, start work on Stonehenge and take Camps +1 food pantheon. My reasoning being, that my capital, and basically everywhere I look, is massively food starved and there are an insane number of deer, and I have 2 fur in my capital. I take a long time deciding not to take tundra faith, with me basically deciding that the number of un-forested tundra tiles that I'd likely being working anytime soon are too low to bother with.

After my expansion's library finishes I grab national college in my capital, continue working my way through the liberty tree, grab horseman tech, and start heading for universities. Meanwhile I've grabbed 1-2 archers and am hunting barbs. 2 monuments, 2 libraries, 2 granaries, 2 shrines, a stable, 2 workers, 2 archers, 1-2 scouts and my warrior (who is now a spearman). I'm already gold starved and I'm working every gold tile that's in range (the wine and the gems I'm settled on). I build a caravan for city-state trade, but that's literally 2g/turn and isn't near enough. I'm not yet losing research, because I have a small reserve from meeting city-states and killing camps, but it isn't going to be long.

When my religion hits, I grab the +2g/turn and +1g/4pop founder beliefs, and +2happiness for temples. I'm still negative gold.

I start expanding after the national college, the first expand goes on top of a gold. At this point I'm out of unique luxuries on the west side of the map. Wine, gold, gems and furs was it. Besides my first two cities, there are no more horses on the map either (so no more circuses).

I, of course, can't have scouted enough of the map to know this before I've already gone liberty 1-2. My opponent is now ahead of me in every demographic.

I continue expanding, I need cities and population to compete with his Tradition growth, to generate gold for me, and to capitalize on liberty, and I need happiness buildings to fuel the population growth, and a market with a worked specialist to pay for the happiness buildings.

He is spamming wonders, often knocking out 2 a turn, including great wall.


I'm desperately fighting to keep in positive gold, any wonder I go for, he easily beats me to (I only attempted Machu Pitchzu). His capital has, literally, more than 2x my production. My religion nets me 41g a turn, but I'm sitting at +2g/turn.


He tried a push with terracotta army, mass trebuchets and mohawks, which I barely fended off with roads and cataphracts at Ncomeda. I took +1 happiness from shrines and +20% near friendly cities during this attack.

I finished Liberty, took a great scientist, and opened commerce, hoping to get to 1/2 cost roads. Too bad 8 city social-policy cost, coupled with awful culture generation means I had to choose between rationalism and commerce 2.

Meanwhile, he has gone patronage, grabbed Forbidden Palace, and taken a founder's belief for +15 resting influence. Every time he completes a wonder, 2-3 city-states declare war on me from him completing city-state quests.


Now, he's 19 hammers ahead (the best difference I've had all game, at one point he was more than 2x my hammers), 4 techs ahead, and is allies with 6 of the 8 city-states on the board, as well as being host and having forbidden palace. He's netting somewhere around 20-25g per turn.


The best shape I've been in all game was when he was devoting his production to military and I was butchering his units defending.

I'm at 8 cities, he's at 4, his population is 47, I'm somewhere close to 43. Seriously, what am I supposed to be doing as Liberty? How could it possibly have been better than Tradition in this game? At what point was "my advantage" ?


As I see it, Liberty has a number of big problems. They are, briefly:

Space to expand to 6-10 cities that will surpass the tradition 3-4
Gold generation to afford building and unit maintenance
Centralized production to compete for world wonders
Happiness to grow the cities to useful sizes
Increasing culture cost grinding policy acquisition to a halt
National Wonders
Guild and specialists
Actually utilizing the tiles near your cities
 
I'm not good duel player, but from what I understand, you tried to compete him with wonders and go liberty is strategically suboptimal.

Look at Tommyt's video, he applied Liberty in G&K, basically builds the Pyramids with 2 cities, and after NC he spams cities to unhappiness and spam units to pressure the player. The timing of the pressure is critical for Liberty player and the production advantage can easily overwhelm the opponent.

Basically
liberty: early hammer advantage
tradition: early growth (slowing turn into science and others)

Of course this does not work in FFA. But maybe turn the hammers into caravan for internal food and keep happiness in check is the way for liberty in BNW.
 
I didn't try to compete with wonders. The only wonders I went for were the city-connection gold wonder and the ones I have. To be totally honest, if he would stop spamming wonders and actually produce military, i'm 99% sure I'd be dead. Every single hammer I have has to be invested into science buildings, market, and happiness buildings (shrine, temple, Colosseum), and I'm still struggling with happiness.

But, if I had instead only gone 3-4 cities, WHY WOULD LIBERTY HAVE BEEN GOOD?

And, to be clear, I've NEVER been top hammers this entire game, and I've been gold starved all game long, starting from the very beginning and never stopping. G&K had river tiles for gold, BNW has nothing for gold. I've been working every single gold tile in my entire civilization the entire game, built early markets, and worked market slots, AND took 2x gold founder beliefs, and I'm still gold starved.

In comparison, he has 4x aqueducts free, 4x monuments free, and 9 gold from monarchy, when he isnt attacking with military, can save the upkeep of 4 units in his cities (oligarchy), plus he needs less roads to make city-connections and his city connections provide better gold per turn. Oh, and he's easily able to scoop gold wonders with his superior production. For those of you keeping count that's somewhere between 21-25g from tradition, 10-11 happiness, 25% growth in his capital, and 15% growth in all of his expands, plus 0 hammers spent on aqueducts or monuments and not having to buy tiles for the resources in his cities.

I'm devoting my entire religion to happiness and gold, besides my 3 "core" cities have built no buildings that aren't happiness, gold or science buildings, and I have only attempted gold or happiness wonders, yet he is easily beating me in gold, happiness, science, production and population and, despite wonder spamming, has nearly killed me already.
 
I am a long time reader of civfanatics but being only interested in multi-player I didn't have a reason to register until now.

Tradition (as you rightly pointed out) is very strong vertically, that is you make a super capital and all the wonderful things that come with it.

Liberty is very strong when you are expanding.

Let's talk through your play by play, also if you can provide a save file as an attachment, that is always great as people can see for themselves and experiment.

Gem Hill start. Not a bad start, hill gives production and gems give gold. Might have been better to not settle on it so you get more gold when improved but this is a double edged sword regardless of how you approached it. Some people would have preferred to turn it into extra gold, as gold is hard to come by in BNW pre-trade routes.

River is fantastic by the way, the +2:c5food: +1:c5production: from water mill is invaluable for growth. I may have missed it but not sure if you settled next to the river tile or not. Hard to see from the pictures.

I don't get your tech pattern at all. Pottery then AH? Why not pot > writing?
At the point you are at now, it doesn't matter but for an opening it seems like you were undecided unless you were just picking up shrines which is fair enough.
I would have gone onto writing for library/GH for the faster research.

Now we can see where it begins to go wrong for you around here: "My free settler from Liberty" If you are going to REX* then you grow to capital size 2 and hard build settlers. You have little choice, your opponent isn't going to give you good trades, you can't trade with city states and land is power. When you choose liberty you needed to go all in and this suggests you didn't.

Also Stonehenge? You just needed to forget about wonders when you picked Liberty. He will have big population in his capital form going Tradition, as well as 15% production towards wonders, as well as probably working a lot of good tiles. The moment you chose not to start as Tradition, you are giving up those options in exchange for something else.

The hammers that went into SH could have gotten you to city #4 which would probably break even in your happiness. Don't forget to cap them at city size 1. 4 cities, 1 shrine each, -4:c5gold: +4:c5faith:. -1:c5faith: less than Stonehenge but those cities could be working +:c5production: tiles or +:c5gold: and unlike Stonehenge those cities can also do something better; Build military :goodjob:

When religion rolled around you did bad maths and understandably came up with bad numbers. This isn't your fault nor is it an insult at you, Civ5 is like that. You figured more gold per belivers would work out better than the happiness. What you should have done is looked at what was on offer from Pagodas +2:c5happy: +2:c5faith: +2:c5culture:.
That happiness is local but that means those 1 pop cities can now be 3 pop at no extra cost to you. While he was wonder spamming and running circles around you, you could have made an army twice as big as whatever he had and really laid the smack down.

Related, +2:c5happy: from Temples is bad. It is only a choice when nothing else good remains. Temples cost +2:c5gold: to maintain and unless you go Piety, they are not worth building since Pagodas are just all around better. You can build Temples with a view to sell them when they are no longer needed, but in general they cost more than they are worth.
+2:c5gold: isn't bad, you never said you were ICSing anyway but I would have taken +1:c5happy: per 2 cities. In combination with the Liberty +1:c5happy: for every city connected to the capital you can afford more cities and therefore deprive him of land. Each city can shoot so they are like a military unit unto themselves and like I said before, more cities means more places that can produce military units :mischief:.



Now you said you wanted this to be about liberty and many players better than me will be happy to tell you why liberty is fine but as for your points.

1) Space to expand is 'fine'. You need to be clever about where you go and you "need" religion to REX/ICS but for expanding, liberty is fine.

2)Gold generation. This one is "okay" too, essentially you don't build every available building, instead you make a clear goal for what you need now and that is what your cities are targeted towards. Remember you can always sell buildings too. Every city you found will probably be making gold form the local surroundings anyway which gives liberty an advantage since everyone else has to rely on trade routes to generate gold which is very hard to keep maintained in the early game with so many barbarians. :mad:

3)Centralized production. Okay if Liberty had this why would you take Tradition? This would break Liberty. Multiple cities AND the ability to cap wonders?:crazyeye: Liberty already gets +1:c5production: & +5% when making buildings in every city, for cities on hills, that's insane in the early game! Unlike a tall empire, you can have every city working on different wonders but the tall player could not.

4)Happiness. This comes at the bottom of Liberty around the time you probably need it. With size 1 cities you shouldn't be building roads anyway as it will bankrupt you but when your religion picks up steam, that is when you can grow those cities and that is when you can connect roads. If you are ICSing, this is when things get crazy silly. If this was 'on' from the get go, REX/ICSing would be the only way to play with no drawbacks and again Liberty would be the only tree worth taking.

5)Policy cost. This hurts, this hurts a lot. But that is by design. +1:c5culture: per city is pretty good and a monument in every city when you get time, will usually make you break even for the first few turns too; Again you 'need' a religion to make the most of Liberty (think Pagodas). The culture slowdown is working as intended as are the other anti REX/ICS penalties.

6)National Wonders. Working as intended. If you are building a lot of cities, you generally don't need them anyway. They are great to have and you have a choice, expand now and miss out on them or expand later and build them now. Many players grab the national library before they begin expanding unless they are REXing. Sounds like your opponent did similar too.

7)Guilds/Specialists. I don't understand the issue here, sorry. Great people have the same rate of aquisition regardless of empire size.

8)Tile utilization. The player can pick what tiles to work, again I don't see the issue here. It is around city size 40 before you can work all tiles 3 ways outward at once. If you are asking Liberty to have many cities at that size and the means to stay happy to do so then maybe play the game at later eras when happiness is less of an issue.
 
neither of you took faith per tundra tile pantheon?
This is actually WAY more important as sp path on this map ...

Where liberty strugles but can also win the game is happyness/religion - more cities = more faith = stronger religion.
With your religion being in more cities it should also take over opponent one and get you gold from his cities ...

dont get an early library!
Bo should be something like scout-monument-shrine-granny-worker-(unit/worker)-Settler3x- Wonders.
Or add in 1 wonder (pyras/henge) instead of the worker if u can steal workers

The faster u get cities out the faster they can develop themself!

And thats the point - attacking is hard on this map - but growth in duels isnt limited by food usually but by happyness. So u need get HAPPYNESS - aly CS!
And u need also wonders if u cant kill ...
 
I really appreciate the time and detail of your post. I'd like to respond point by point.

Tradition (as you rightly pointed out) is very strong vertically, that is you make a super capital and all the wonderful things that come with it.

Liberty is very strong when you are expanding.

Let's talk through your play by play, also if you can provide a save file as an attachment, that is always great as people can see for themselves and experiment.

Unfortunately, I can't. This is a GMR game, so it's turn based through the hot seat interface and it doesn't auto save each turn like singleplayer or simultaneous multi player. I could save the basemap and upload that, but it wouldn't have any of our moves.

Gem Hill start. Not a bad start, hill gives production and gems give gold. Might have been better to not settle on it so you get more gold when improved but this is a double edged sword regardless of how you approached it. Some people would have preferred to turn it into extra gold, as gold is hard to come by in BNW pre-trade routes.

Settling on gems and improving gems nets the same amount of gold (+3) either way. The benefit to settling on them is that the +3g starts immediately and doesn't require the tile to be worked by a citizen. The tradeoff is that you can't put a mine on it for +1hammers. Personally, as a city-tile, I feel that Gems on the river are about as strong as it gets. Either way, I maximized the gold yield from that tile by settling.

River is fantastic by the way, the +2:c5food: +1:c5production: from water mill is invaluable for growth. I may have missed it but not sure if you settled next to the river tile or not. Hard to see from the pictures.

It's on the river, I'm not sure why the resolution of the uploaded pictures is different than the resolution at which I actually took the screen captures.

I don't get your tech pattern at all. Pottery then AH? Why not pot > writing?
At the point you are at now, it doesn't matter but for an opening it seems like you were undecided unless you were just picking up shrines which is fair enough.
I would have gone onto writing for library/GH for the faster research.

There's a few reasons. First, I wanted shrines (I wanted first pick at pantheon, and as Byzantine, I wanted my religion early), second deer get +1f from granaries, and since deer are my primary growth tiles, I wanted my granary online early. Third, my plan from the start was to use Cataphracts to hold of a xbow push while I teched Universities before Machinery, so I wanted and needed to show horses on the map so I could plan where I needed to expand.

I disagree about the early writing. Between scouts, the monument, the shrine, a worker/granary, a few military to control the barbs (and there are a lot of barbs with tiny size map and only 2 players) and the tech to improve my luxuries/growth tiles there are other early priorities before the library.

Now we can see where it begins to go wrong for you around here: "My free settler from Liberty" If you are going to REX* then you grow to capital size 2 and hard build settlers. You have little choice, your opponent isn't going to give you good trades, you can't trade with city states and land is power. When you choose liberty you needed to go all in and this suggests you didn't.

What is REX? You're suggesting starting to hard build settlers at pop 2?

Also Stonehenge? You just needed to forget about wonders when you picked Liberty. He will have big population in his capital form going Tradition, as well as 15% production towards wonders, as well as probably working a lot of good tiles. The moment you chose not to start as Tradition, you are giving up those options in exchange for something else.

This early in the game tradition doesn't have any production bonuses over liberty. He won't have Aristocracy until his 5th policy, so he doesn't yet have a wonder production bonus. He doesn't have a growth bonus until his 3rd or 4th policy, so his capital isn't going to be larger than mine. Also, if anything, I'll be getting Republic as he gets Legalism (assuming we both hard built monuments, which some Trad players don't do), which actually means that early, Liberty has a slight production bonus.

Again, I'm Byzantine and planning on Liberty, religion is particularly important to that civ, and early faith production goes a really long way.

What are you doing about happiness? You're suggesting I hit pop 2 and start hard building settlers. At pop 2, I have 4 happiness (9base-3city-2pop). The first expand puts me at 0, the second at -4. In my case, settling on Gems gives you +4, but even then, after your second expand you're at 0 happiness with 2 cities at 1 pop and your capital at 2 pop. Where are you getting the happiness for this 4th city?

The hammers that went into SH could have gotten you to city #4 which would probably break even in your happiness. Don't forget to cap them at city size 1. 4 cities, 1 shrine each, -4:c5gold: +4:c5faith:. -1:c5faith: less than Stonehenge but those cities could be working +:c5production: tiles or +:c5gold: and unlike Stonehenge those cities can also do something better; Build military :goodjob:

That's an interesting suggestion, definitely something I'd never considered. Settlers are 9 turns each with a hill start, deer and a bare hill to work, 8 with Republic (although, without building a monument or getting a culture rune, I don't think you get to republic before you've already built 3 settlers).

How are you affording your military, especially early? A worker, a warrior, 2 scouts, a monument and 4 shrines is more gold than your capital on a gem hill (the best starting gold tile). Tradition has monarchy and legalism early for gold, Liberty has no early gold policies, where are you getting gold from?

When religion rolled around you did bad maths and understandably came up with bad numbers. This isn't your fault nor is it an insult at you, Civ5 is like that. You figured more gold per belivers would work out better than the happiness. What you should have done is looked at what was on offer from Pagodas +2:c5happy: +2:c5faith: +2:c5culture:.

Yeah, I'm not entirely sure I did the best job with my religion either. I had planned to address happiness with my religion, but by the time my GP popped out, my gold was in such bad shape that I decided I absolutely needed both gold beliefs.

I did consider Pagodas when I founded the religion. I really wanted them, in fact, but I couldn't figure out how I was going to be generating the faith to actually build them. The logic I ended up adopting was that I'd need temples to actually get my faith/turn up to the point where I could get pagodas, and that I'd take Pagodas as my second follower belief, and then he took them as his first =/.

That happiness is local but that means those 1 pop cities can now be 3 pop at no extra cost to you. While he was wonder spamming and running circles around you, you could have made an army twice as big as whatever he had and really laid the smack down.

So far, basically all of my production has gone into happiness buildings (including temples), gold buildings or science buildings.

Related, +2:c5happy: from Temples is bad. It is only a choice when nothing else good remains. Temples cost +2:c5gold: to maintain and unless you go Piety, they are not worth building since Pagodas are just all around better. You can build Temples with a view to sell them when they are no longer needed, but in general they cost more than they are worth.

Along with pagodas they're the largest happiness boost available from a follower beliefs and they scale with empire size.

+2:c5gold: isn't bad, you never said you were ICSing anyway but I would have taken +1:c5happy: per 2 cities. In combination with the Liberty +1:c5happy: for every city connected to the capital you can afford more cities and therefore deprive him of land. Each city can shoot so they are like a military unit unto themselves and like I said before, more cities means more places that can produce military units :mischief:.

I dunno about the happiness, I currently have 11 cities following my religion, that'd be 5 happiness. But, I'd lose either 22g from church property or 19g from tithe. I'm at +7g atm, either way, I'd be massively negative with both religions tenets.

I constantly battle with this issue of how many cities as Liberty. If I'm going to go 4 cities, I should go Trad, I can hard build settlers at pop 2 just as fast with Trad as I can with Liberty, Liberty hasn't reached collective rule by this time.

If I'm going to go more cities than 4, to actually utilize the liberty tree bonuses, then how many are worth it and how do I afford the happiness and gold costs?

There's no denying land on a map this size, look at the map, he starts 18 tiles from me. Even if I build 4 cities in a row towards him, ignoring luxuries or location, I'm still not denying him land.


Now you said you wanted this to be about liberty and many players better than me will be happy to tell you why liberty is fine but as for your points.

1) Space to expand is 'fine'. You need to be clever about where you go and you "need" religion to REX/ICS but for expanding, liberty is fine.

2)Gold generation. This one is "okay" too, essentially you don't build every available building, instead you make a clear goal for what you need now and that is what your cities are targeted towards. Remember you can always sell buildings too. Every city you found will probably be making gold form the local surroundings anyway which gives liberty an advantage since everyone else has to rely on trade routes to generate gold which is very hard to keep maintained in the early game with so many barbarians. :mad:

I, strongly, disagree here. I'm literally only building gold, happiness and science buildings in my expands and I'm working every single gold tile in my entire civ and the market specialists, and I'm trading with city-states, and I'm losing gold. In my 8 city empire the only gold tiles I have are 1 fur, 2 gems, 1gold and 1 wine!

3)Centralized production. Okay if Liberty had this why would you take Tradition? This would break Liberty. Multiple cities AND the ability to cap wonders?:crazyeye: Liberty already gets +1:c5production: & +5% when making buildings in every city, for cities on hills, that's insane in the early game! Unlike a tall empire, you can have every city working on different wonders but the tall player could not.

4)Happiness. This comes at the bottom of Liberty around the time you probably need it. With size 1 cities you shouldn't be building roads anyway as it will bankrupt you but when your religion picks up steam, that is when you can grow those cities and that is when you can connect roads. If you are ICSing, this is when things get crazy silly. If this was 'on' from the get go, REX/ICSing would be the only way to play with no drawbacks and again Liberty would be the only tree worth taking.

Meritocracy is netting me 8 happiness from city-connections. Monarchy is netting him 9 happiness from population in his capital.

5)Policy cost. This hurts, this hurts a lot. But that is by design. +1:c5culture: per city is pretty good and a monument in every city when you get time, will usually make you break even for the first few turns too; Again you 'need' a religion to make the most of Liberty (think Pagodas). The culture slowdown is working as intended as are the other anti REX/ICS penalties.

Good luck affording monuments

6)National Wonders. Working as intended. If you are building a lot of cities, you generally don't need them anyway. They are great to have and you have a choice, expand now and miss out on them or expand later and build them now. Many players grab the national library before they begin expanding unless they are REXing. Sounds like your opponent did similar too.

I, too, build the national library after my first expand and before the next 6.

7)Guilds/Specialists. I don't understand the issue here, sorry. Great people have the same rate of aquisition regardless of empire size.

It's having a city that has the population to actually work the specialist slots

I'd love to see the Liberty you're talking about in action, as I have yet to be able to get it to work for me. Do you ever record games?

Or would you like to play a GMR game with me? You could play Liberty, I could play Trad, and you could show me how to make Liberty work. I really want to have the option of picking Liberty, but every time I do, it gets massively out-performed by Trad.

I'd love to see Liberty in action, because I can't seem to overcome the gold/happiness issues in BNW.
 
I sent you a message for a game but I figured it would also be useful to do a play by play against the AI using your settings so other people can see and critique. I was going to record and upload to youtube but I actually prefer the way you uploaded your game and talked about it so figured I would do the same.

Some cavaets;

I don't think you stated what difficulty you played so I assumed prince. Sorry if that is wrong.

I also don't think you stated game speed or I missed it, so again I assumed normal and again, sorry if that is wrong.

I will try not to trade with the AI as trading with a human player rarely happens fairly, although it does happen.
 
I sent you a message for a game but I figured it would also be useful to do a play by play against the AI using your settings so other people can see and critique. I was going to record and upload to youtube but I actually prefer the way you uploaded your game and talked about it so figured I would do the same.

Dunno how useful playing vs an AI is to demonstrate multiplayer social policies. But, if you'd like, go for it.

It's quick speed and immortal difficulty (for happiness and city-state strength).

I sent you a GMR invite.
 
I forgot to take a picture pre game >.< Wanted to show the game settings.
Leader Random (would end up being Iroquis)
Quick combat, quick movement.
All other settings as standard. Map is Skirmish, tiny, 8 city states.

turn 0, I move to settle on a hill for the added production, wasting 3 turns.

turn 4, I reach pop 2, then find some ruins which give pop 3 :rolleyes:.
This is one of the worse things that can happen as liberty when early happiness is on a tightrope.

I research pottery to get shrines since I need god's help now :lol:.
Next up is AH for nearby horses. I get really lucky and find 2 natural wonders and both also give :c5happy:, meaning I can expand very quickly!

turn 10, hard building settler one.
Opened with a monument for the culture, as I am going to need it!

turn 15 First policy. This really hurts but the extra hammers from being on a hill is far too good to give up.
Pick Liberty, naturally. I take a step and bump into Geneva. 8 faith, first dips on Pathenon...Or not. Normal speed, need 10 faith :sad:.

turn 17, finish AH and find horses nearby, research trapping to make the most of them. Settler ready in 5 turns.

turn 19, buy a scout with my saved gold. He will come in very handy!

turn 22, settler out, 2nd policy choice is republic. Start hard building settler #2 and
with Geneva so close, a caravan this early would be good, but it will also get pillaged too and I don't have time with so many good city spots in demand!

Speaking of which, Old Faithful falls in the borders of Quebec city (not yet but it will) so I would be better off taking that city over rather than trying to rush settle it, I feel.
Unsure really as I want that old faithful for science and a stolen city is nothing but trouble until courthouses. On the flip side...Fudge it, going to try!

turn 26 meet Kabul, get gold.

turn 27, I need 115 gold for old faithful, as I must settle with it 1 tile out of my borders and then buy it. I settle on gold for happiness in case I fail to get it. Sitting on 83 gold, I need a city state and a miracle. I see some ruins, hoping they give me gold and fast! Just then I notice "This city recognize your military and will give in to tribute demands". MWH HA HAR! 65 gold, Old faithful is mine! Better than expected! The science will be a real boon and the +3:c5happy: is fantastic!

turn 29 The ruins I found are for +50:c5culture:. This, is awesome! 3 turns for next policy now!

turn 30 My scout! uh oh, it is spotted by barbarians :cry:.

turn 31 I finish mining and now have a conundrum. What to research next? I should probably grab Spearmen and Archers for the upcoming war (there is always a war coming) going low in the tree also gets my unique unit. Having not played as Iroquis, this is new to me. Or I could pick up Calender for happiness from a resource in the future. Choices choices. I pick calender. I am going to regret it I am sure, but the option to settle on a luxury resource for happiness is too good to pass up.

turn 32, next policy, taking settler speed up, although I am going to reach happiness cap soon, better to settle now than later.

turn 33, unit upgrade, scouts to archers, nice. I decide to keep my cities close together for the eventual war, 3 turns to move my second city, settler 3 standing by in my capital, hard building another settler.

Turn 36, settle 3rd city, 4th settler almost on location. I am settling on horses, circus gives +2:c5happy:, not ideal but will pay for itself I reckon. AI hasn't founded a religion yet or taken a pantheon so it's looking good so far.

Turn 37, time to commit. I get first pick on pantheon and decide I am going to ICS. This is always risky in MP and I would certainly be keeping an eye on enemy army size
from the foe but liberty is best with a wide empire and you can't get wider than ICS.

Sacred Waters isn't the best but I have 2 cities near rivers, their is also messenger of the gods but I have no roads yet so it wouldn't be worth it right now. One with nature I surmise; I have 2 natural wonders in my borders so that is +8:c5faith:.
This is kind of a big deal, I may take it! Religious Settlements for faster border growth is a handy ability for sure but I haven't found the AI yet so trapping them isn't going to happen.
I decide on One with nature so I can get a religion faster and start the snowball effect quicker.

turn 38, down to global happiness of 2:c5happy:. Next city will be last city for awhile but the faith coming in is awesome! Thanks to my choice of Panthenon, I will get a great prophet in 15 turns. Time to start learning good military units too, time for the barbarian units to go extinct.

turn 40, another settler comes out and a monument was finished in another city. Money will start getting tight now too. I need to lose pop in my capital as well. I decide to stave my capital to size 2, and to start on a caravan. It is going to get pillaged but some gold is better than none and the city state is pretty close.
Also start building Stonehedge in one of my cities for fail gold. This early I have nothing else to build although pyramid research will finish in 4 turns as well as walls, thankfully. I hate wasting hammers but fail gold isn't too bad.

turn 42, starved off the extra pop so capital is now back to size 2. Excellent! :lol:

turn 45, found a city, buffalo creek and...It is happiness neutral? Huh. Wasn't expecting that. Switching capital back to settler, I wonder if the game needs to update or if that really was happiness neutral.

turn 50, my opponent has quite the army. I guess I should start preparing for it and stop building wonders for fail gold now.

turn 51, I build a worker who is immediately kidnapped :rolleyes: love those stealth barbs.

turn 54, recap my worker and I changed my settler to caravan a few turns back because my archer doubles as escort duty so with it chasing my worker, it was unable
to escort the settler. No idea where to settle it but religion is over 200 so a GP will be here soon and then, the ICS can begin in earnest! :goodjob:

turn 56, caravan finishes netting me +2 gold with a city state that shouldn't be too difficult to protect. I spawn a great prophet too so I can get started in religion! I found the religion of Liberty Opener, because why not :lol.
I choose +1:c5happy: per 2 cities because I plan to ICS and I pick Pagodas to help with culture and individual city happiness since city size 2 is needed for libraries.
300 faith for next GP but I will use Liberty finisher for him and now set faith to auto buy Pagoda's instead.
Assuming no changes, 12 turns till next social policy, then the policy after will net me a free GP. Enemy army drops too! Barbarians must have gotten to them. I stock each city to be 1 turn off a Spearman so in case of war I can rush them out without paying
maintenance on them right now.

turn 57 sailing gives an additional trade route so I can start taking care of barbs now I will have some income. GL hasn't been claimed. Against a human player that would have long gone by now! Surprised to see it still around. Going to build a library and then go for pyramids to start improving my land. I also use my gold to buy more archers because barbarians are a pain in the rear.
Or I would but I forgot to research archery :blush:

turn 60, my trade route is predictably plundered. Waste of hammers but the extra gold helped a smidgen. I also catch a glimpse of my neighbors borders! Siam!

Ewww, they can city spam almost as good due to his relations with city states trait. This is probably his 2nd city though, or his 3rd if I am unlucky, we shall see.

turn 61, I settle another city for free in terms of happiness. I decide to pick up horseback riding for the caravanassires. I will wipe Siam out, it will be easier than a diplomatic war. How amusing, Siam went Liberty as well. Regardless that this is AI, I decide to declare war early, to force the AI's hand and make them send units at me. I also buy Yerevan, for both the culture and to waste the AI's time.
They may capture it but it will still kill a few units in the process and they may offer it to me in a surrender deal. against a human player they would just avoid the city state as the unhappiness hit would be hard on the empire or they would capture it and just not care as they could stomach the hit.

turn 66, I am sure that representation now applies retroactively whereas it didn't before. Either way I am going to be building a lot more cities so I take it now
and the golden age will make the final policy come faster too which is also good as by now the lack of happiness is starting to bite, although I have enough for 1 more city.

turn 68, 1 city has a banked Spearman, and I switch it to walls. 2 more cities will bank Spearmen soon too. Rampaging against Siam is not wise now but the fact
they are banked will come in handy soon. I find a natural wonder, Lake victoria, unclaimed. I am going to take it both for the faith I will now get from my pathenon and to stop the AI from having it as it is well.

turn 69, wasn't paying attention and 1 of my cities grew to size 2, no biggie I will starve it back down to size 1. Gotta pay more attention to that stuff :blush: also
sitting on 158 faith, not long before my first pagoda!
11 turns till policy ender but 7 turns and golden age will end so not sure when my final policy will be, probably 15-17 turns. Killing barbs made me allies with Quebec city, one more war ally against Siam. Stops him buying them out too. Quebec give food, not sure how I feel about that but the more allies the merrier. Siam predictably attacks Yerevan and our armies are evenly matched although it won't show as my units are banked.

Spoiler :
Just to recap, Liberty opener, 6 cities, generating +2:c5gold: per turn. 2 Allied city states bump my happiness up as well as finding Lake victoria.
This is going to be a steamroll from here on out.
A real human player would have a huge tech lead by now and wouldn't be fearing my cities, although they would be hard pushed to have as many cities as I do the tech
lead would have been good enough and they would have grabbed some very important wonders too. The fact the GL is still up is a sign of that, as a Tradition
player, I chop that out so fast! A human might have more city state allies than both me and the AI do at this point in time, since they are likely to complete required quests accidentally too and of course they would have opened or bought scouts so the gold I got for finding city states and the bonuses probably wouldn't have been available. On the flip side, an early rush from them would probably fail and because I don't improve tiles, pillaging wouldn't work. They would have to wait and the longer they wait, the more cities I can build.


turn 70, I pick up some ruins and get gold. Surprised there are ruins left to be honest but oh well, again a human would have tagged these I imagine. I put pyramids on hold, looks like a city state is close but not too close to lake Viccy. I want it so better to grab it now. I also finish another monument which brings the final policy even closer and in 1 turn I will have a pagoda for extra culture which I will need! I start stock building archers in a city again, ready for the impending war. My religion spreads meaning I can now have size 2-3 cities which is fantastic as now the science penalty can be reversed and working more tiles means more war tokens money.

turn 74, finally the AI takes the Great library!

turn 78, finish Liberty! Get a GP and choose some more religious buildings and faith spreading abilities.

turn 79, I accidentally chop out an archer when not paying attention causing me to hit 0 gold per turn. I decide to kamikaze them against a nearby barb camp that is now sending horsemen.

Turn 100, don't feel the need for any turn by turns right now so just a quick recap every 25 turns from here out.

Cities with a pagoda I now grow to size 3. I have military units 1 turn from being completed and I am building a caravanasary in my capital along with caravans in 2 other cities to transfer over and to start getting gold. Their is no water on this map so sea routes are out of the question. The AI has an army twice the size of mine but as yet hasn't even come close to my borders with any unit although they also are not suing for peace either. At this point and if you are going to win, this is usually decided at this point. I can rush his capital for a win now as I can produce more than he can in terms of military or I can drag the game out for some kind of victory condition but either way he can't stand up to a quick army rush now, he can hold out for sure but my 7 cities (to his 2) will out muscle him and I can just keep building more units. Something I intend to do as soon as the caravanassary is finished. Building pyramids was a mistake and I should ave cranked out more settlers instead. I see where he is on the map so my goal should be to lock him in and have an army at the ready for the
win.

turn 125, Settling cities fast, I guess you can't bank production for units as all my 1 turn Spearmen are now 10 turns instead. I was not aware of that so looks like I learned something. At +17:c5gold:PT income a comp bowman army can wipe Siam out and at 15 happiness I can take any unhappiness while burning down his cities. Time to
prepare for war. I want to engage by turn 150. Setting all cities to focus gold and build militia.

turn 132, all my cities were focusing on building militia then I ran into a bug/crash. The game wouldn't let me move a unit that demanded to be moved and it wouldn't let me end or force end my turn either. I saved the game and upon trying to reload it? It crashed.

Never had this issue before but needless to say there wasn't much going on after this point anyway, the AI isn't suited for a war and with 9 cities making military it was only a matter of turns before they were wiped out. My first crash in Civ5 since BNW launched, unsure what caused it but none the less, Liberty allowed for fast expansion, being on city #5 by turn 50. Even a human player hates traversing a gauntlet of cities pelting with fire and that early in the game they would have to bowman rush or rush for comp bowman to take a city or two from you.
 
You say that you're struggling with making liberty work as effectively as tradition. It may be because you are not making enough cities or not making them early enough. The point of liberty and its main strength is the ability to expand rapidly. If you don't plan to create more than 4+ settlers liberty may not be the best choice for you. The biggest feature of liberty is the +50% to settler production your capital. Once you have that policy you want to crank them out until there are no useful locations left to settle. Liberty also gives you extra production in every city which is huge. More cities plus more production in each city will give you a large production advantage over tradition. In most games where there is any kind of battle, production is king and decides the victor. For this reason liberty is the best choice 90% of the time in a duel or skirmish/teamer type game.
 
General thoughts:

Recently I was playing as Poland vs AI on King xD. Got a lot of wonders, got education only at turn 110, finished with 237 turn SV. No research agreements at all. What does it mean?
It means that wonders are good. They worth to build. But when there are a lot of ppl [6 i.e.] building wonders becomes very tricky.
Going liberty does not always mean that u should go wide. You can also go 5-6 fast cities and go tall afterwards. If both ppl will go for i.e. fast GL or HG [u need open tradition ofc. in this case], I am not sure that tradition will beat liberty.
Allying CS is good. Always try to do it. Or conquer them. Other options sux in duel for sure.

This game:
I hope it is quick speed [turn 109 and he has Banking, Acoustics and Printing Press?], otherwise I am too newbie to advise u.
At start you should bully CS when possible, it gives a lot of starting gold.
Your religion is very poor. You should take 2 gold/city+pagodas+cathedrals+[depends]. And of course, faith from tundra without forest. By this time you may alredy have these 2 faith building in each city, gaining 24 smiles, 40 faith and 36 culture with no maintaince. Quite a lot? Is it better than that 10-15 food from camps? Obviously, yes. Your culture and faith will be greater than his, which is good for CS quests also.
Now, you r not forced to close liberty. What gives you right branch of 3 policies? Some happiness, may be 10 for your cities. Golden age, free worker and GP as a result. Not so much actually.
As u play Byzantium I think u should go piety after taking settler from liberty and take either jesus education or sacred sites.
Sacred sites will just show him that his wonders are kinda useless and forces him to attack, in this case you should spawn cities as fast as you can. You may get 6 tourism per city, so say 10 cities = 60 tourism, he need 600 culture to beat it - unlikely in early game. You can be far behind in science, but since you have crossbowmens - dont worry, he can not get a decently higher tach unit for a long time.
Jesus edudation will probably give you tech lead. Since he can not rush buy buildings with 20 gpt, when you can buy 1 university per turn.
 
Its really hard to discuss pros and cons of social policies with people not having basic knowledge or understanding of the game.

This seems a bit like the 350 pound American guy saying:
"If my shoes were better, I could still dunk."

not pointing at some1 specific here!
 
So I finished that duel. I took screen shots of a number of the replay graphs. Maybe that can help people identify where Liberty had the advantage over Trad in my game, because I'm sure not seeing it. **EDIT** I wish the graphs weren't purple on black, but I couldn't see an option to change colors =/ Try highlighting the picture to get some better contrast.

As far as I can tell, from about turn 60 onwards, he is ahead of me in every demographic that matters.

In retrospect, I think the point about different religious picks being better is a good one, temple and shrine maintenance cost was brutal all game, and I had to have them for happiness.

Production per Turn:


Population per Turn:


Science per Turn


Known Techs by Turn


# of Cities by Turn


Gold per Turn (remember, I had tithe and church property and he had no gold from religion)


Building Maintenance per Turn (remember, I'm ONLY building science, gold, happiness and shrines/temples 9for happiness)


Improved Tiles


Excess Happiness


Total Harvested Happiness


Culture per Turn:


Total Culture:


Land (his border growth was wild, compare his land to mine, remember I have 9 cities to his 4)


Military Might


Improvement Cost (which are JUST roads and railroads, right?) Iroquois are so strong here, free roads all day long =/


Workers
 
FilthyRobot, may be one day you will read what people write to u.

I was deliberately not responding to you, you know the whole, "If you have nothing good to say, don't say anything at all". But since you insist...

I didn't respond to your post because it was fairly clear that you didn't know what you were talking about. You opened by telling me how you beat the computer on King difficulty; I can beat the computer on King difficulty by repeatedly smashing my face into the keyboard, but that doesn't make it useful advice for fighting other players who aren't idiots.

On a point to point:

FrostK said:
Recently I was playing as Poland vs AI on King xD. Got a lot of wonders, got education only at turn 110, finished with 237 turn SV. No research agreements at all. What does it mean?
It means that wonders are good. They worth to build. But when there are a lot of ppl [6 i.e.] building wonders becomes very tricky.

You're playing vs AI... on King... and you ask "What does it mean?" It means it has absolutely 0 relevance to the subject at hand. It means you've added nothing but noise to the conversation. Playing vs the AI is nothing like playing human opponents, it's an entirely different game. It just isn't relevant. For example, I just recently beat the AI on Deity going full Honor from the start, but that has ZERO utility when discussing a multiplayer match. It certainly isn't an endorsement of opening full honor.

Going liberty does not always mean that u should go wide. You can also go 5-6 fast cities and go tall afterwards. If both ppl will go for i.e. fast GL or HG [u need open tradition ofc. in this case], I am not sure that tradition will beat liberty.
Allying CS is good. Always try to do it. Or conquer them. Other options sux in duel for sure.

This is just rubbish advice. You know the two most powerful Trad policies? Monarchy and the finisher (+15% growth first 4, free aqueducts). If you're talking getting to collective rule on Liberty and then filling out Trad, you're going to be finishing Trad in Ren, compared in Classical like the player who went straight Trad. The timing on those aqueducts is about half their strength. And, he's going to have the extra growth/culture/faith/happiness from city-states (pat 2), while you're going to have... half cost settlers!

If you're trying to outgrow 4 city-tradition with 5-6 "Tall" liberty cities, you're in for a big shock at just how much those free, early aqueducts and +15% growth actually matters. His capital size is going to be at least 25% bigger than yours and his total pop is going to be much larger than yours.

Allying CS is good. Always try to do it. Or conquer them. Other options sux in duel for sure.

Yes, it wasn't like I was ignoring them. It was the fact that he had 45 resting influence with them and city-states perpetually give out wonder quests, so every time he'd finish a wonder, half the map would ally with him (since he only needed +15 for ally). Additionally, he actually had gold early game, while I was gold starved the entire game.

At start you should bully CS when possible, it gives a lot of starting gold.

This is on immortal difficulty, it's possible to get 1-2 tributes early, and unlikely to be any more than that any time soon, especially since I needed my early military for the massive amount of barbs.

Your religion is very poor. You should take 2 gold/city+pagodas+cathedrals+[depends]. And of course, faith from tundra without forest. By this time you may alredy have these 2 faith building in each city, gaining 24 smiles, 40 faith and 36 culture with no maintaince. Quite a lot? Is it better than that 10-15 food from camps? Obviously, yes. Your culture and faith will be greater than his, which is good for CS quests also.

Yah, I think a different set of religious choices might have helped, especially pagodas. I can't recall if he got his religion before me or not, I think not.

I'm still not sure about the Tundra faith, it's UNFORESTED tundra, and even by the end of the game, I wasn't working many of those. Early, that was going to be tops 1-2 faith, mid game, tops 2-3 faith. Pretty much always my cities were working forested deer first and gold tiles (wine, etc) second. Instead, I chose to build stonehenge to feed me faith and use the food from deer to maximize my food tiles, so I could work gold/production tiles too.

Now, you r not forced to close liberty. What gives you right branch of 3 policies? Some happiness, may be 10 for your cities. Golden age, free worker and GP as a result. Not so much actually.

I disagree. Once you're at collective rule you're 1/2 the way through the tree. My next policies are a free worker (when he is still needed) AND 25% improvement speed, a golden age AND -33% increased cost of culture gain from additional cities,happiness from city connections, AND total population, and a great person. You just left off the better half of each of those policies (well, not on meritocracy). Additionally, you need the worker policy and pyramids to get 1 turn roads/repairs, which are incredible in war. Also, 10 happiness is huge.

As u play Byzantium I think u should go piety after taking settler from liberty and take either jesus education or sacred sites.

I very much doubt tourism would have had any impact in this game, the game ended before modern, which is ages before any of the tourism multipliers. I've got my doubts about Jesuit Education too, the game ended before I reached public school tech, and I doubt you're going to have the faith for universities on top of buying pagodas, and that faith is probably better spent on great scientists/great engineers.

You can be far behind in science, but since you have crossbowmens - dont worry, he can not get a decently higher tach unit for a long time.

What are you talking about? Knights are like 2 techs later, and Muskets really soon after, and Arts fairly close in turns as well. Xbows are not a tech you can rest easy at.
 
You opened by telling me how you beat the computer on King difficulty; I can beat the computer on King difficulty by repeatedly smashing my face into the keyboard.
The question is not can u r not. How fast u can? Can u do 250- SV with only Pisa, Porselon and Hubble without RAs? In general you can not, so do not ignore wonders. May be his cap has more production than yours, you can usually guess what wonder he is building and build another one.


This is just rubbish advice. You know the two most powerful Trad policies? Monarchy and the finisher (+15% growth first 4, free aqueducts).
I consider +15% as very weak. It is applied to growth, not to base food production so without river farms it usually gives 1-2 food per city. Not that much.

Yes, it wasn't like I was ignoring them. It was the fact that he had 45 resting influence with them and city-states perpetually give out wonder quests, so every time he'd finish a wonder, half the map would ally with him (since he only needed +15 for ally). Additionally, he actually had gold early game, while I was gold starved the entire game.
You just told me that u can easily beat deity AI, so why you didnt just conquered that CSs then? You were gold starved cause of stupid shrines and temples.


This is on immortal difficulty, it's possible to get 1-2 tributes early, and unlikely to be any more than that any time soon, especially since I needed my early military for the massive amount of barbs.
Why only 1 or 2?


I'm still not sure about the Tundra faith, it's UNFORESTED tundra, and even by the end of the game. ... Pretty much always my cities were working forested deer first and gold tiles (wine, etc) second. Instead, I chose to build stonehenge to feed me faith and use the food from deer to maximize my food tiles, so I could work gold/production tiles too.
gold is located on tundra hills without forest, isn't it? Look at your first screen - you may have 6 faith from these tiles.

I very much doubt tourism would have had any impact in this game, the game ended before modern, which is ages before any of the tourism multipliers.
Actually u should get culture victory ~120 turn on quick speed. Try it one day.


I've got my doubts about Jesuit Education too, the game ended before I reached public school tech, and I doubt you're going to have the faith for universities on top of buying pagodas, and that faith is probably better spent on great scientists/great engineers.
You tried it? I guess no. Buying faith buildings accelerates your faith very fast. With strong pantheon you usually have too much faith which you just cannot spend even without piety.


What are you talking about? Knights are like 2 techs later, and Muskets really soon after, and Arts fairly close in turns as well. Xbows are not a tech you can rest easy at.
U think that if u have 10 muskets u can get city guarded by 10 xbows?
 
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 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 know you are trying to offer your 2 cent and I am not shooting you down in any way whatsoever but 2nd hand anecdote evidence doesn't help the OP. 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. I often open with Liberty and either REX or ICS which is what I feel it is good at. 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.

Keshiks represent a 'rush-down' tactic and while that can be effective or even game ending when played well, a Tradition player will always have the advantage with building wonders and part of that is building the Great Wall which is a huge hindrance to any potential warmonger.

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.


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 know people say Japan & Germany are pretty bad but I feel Byzantium is the worst pick in the game, by far.
 
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