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, 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