Compare Liberty and Tradition, Head-to-Head

beetle said:

I can understand raging barbarians impeding the AI more than player, but I cannot understand it resulting in noticeably faster finish times! The early game is when I feel I need more of a break, but even with a very fast game, barbs (raging or not) are off the map for the last 150 turns. Maybe with a cooked map, like half as many civs so the barbs really have time to populate? Otherwise, I think you would be hard pressed to demonstrate that raging barbs means one less city for even one civ on average. So not even much help for domination.

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I was talking about early rush domination, say games that finish between t100 and t200 and where you are going for speed flat out. The difference between having to plow through 3 expos vs 2 on t50 is significant. You can save 5-10 turns if you do well, and in some maps, even more. For the rest of the victory conditions, it is no good, maybe the exception is a culture game on continents or a warry diplo, as the likelihood of a runaway AI goes down with raging barbs in culture and in warry diplo you have to completely kill the AIs, so even one less city makes a hell of a difference.

nmp0098 said:

That +1 everywhere helps the expos pop borders, and is more culture total once you found your 4th city. I think it’s competitive for total border growth across the empire.

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The difference in border growth with tradition opener and without is huge and no, + 1 culture in each city doesn't compensate it.

Table below for culture cost for border growth (tiles from 1 to 12)

Yes that's because border growth uses an exponential formula and tradition reduces the exponent.

However this slower border growth would work fine with the way I played it in the Korea map, having a flatter size on a wider empire. You don't need a ton of tiles with lower pop.

Bleidraner said:

I was talking about early rush domination... You can save 5-10 turns if you do well

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I am was not talking about this sort of edge case, but Deity games in general, with VC at turn 300 or later. So non-expert play.

Why does raging barbarians make the (early) game easier or harder?

I have made use of the easily available xp for my early units, but with the benefit of hindsight, I think the setting has been making things harder for me.

LB’s quick dismissal seems on the mark to me:

LordBalkoth said:

AI has massive bonuses vs barbarians and unit spam on Deity. They don't really care about the Barbarians, just slows the player down.

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So what if barb camps usually catch AI settlers and workers? The first free settler is the one that gives the Deity AI its strongest buff -- and barbs don't spawn in the first few turns. Unit spam makes the later AI civilians expendable. If raging barbs meant more camps -- and not just more frequent barbs from the camps already in place -- I could seeing it having an impact (since that would result in more territory that was less ICS friendly).

Yes, I occasionally see an AI scout being slowly murdered by barbs. So what? How does that significantly impede the AI?

I think I remember maybe one game where an AI territory was completely overrun by barbs. Yes, that was funny, and I took a particularly perverse glee from that. But one example in one game is not much of sample! Besides, it is not the poorly performing AI that is the challenge for the player, but the runaway. Can you really make the case that ranging barbs hurt all the AIs more the player? I think it has to be the case that raging barbs does more to harm the player than it help him.

Ironfighter, I hadn't seen that tabe before, and I was very wrong. Still, it doesn't feel like I buy a lot more tiles due to slower growth/smaller cities like Acken said. The population explosion is delayed longer too, giving more time before I needed to buy a lot of tiles. I'm just thinking other policies might help more given a different playstyle. My big takeaway is that trying to play other aspects of my game the same as Tradition was a mistake, and part of the reason I soured on Liberty after going about 50/50 when I started playing.

IronfighterXXX said:

The difference in border growth with tradition opener and without is huge ... Table below for culture cost for border growth (tiles from 1 to 12)

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Am I correct to assume that the table is per city as opposed to empire-wide?

My take-away from the table is that the Tradition opener after Collective Rule, and maybe even after completing Liberty, should still be very effective. The reduced border expansion cost is not so dramatic until the fifth tile. So that seems like plenty of time for picking up other SP. Opening Tradition late, but before cities have naturally expanded 5/6 hexes, seems like it is still using that SP to excellent effect. Am I missing something?

Usually in my Liberty games I find myself buying a lot of tiles. In my recent Shoshone game, this was not the case at all, and I never opened Tradition. That table helps explain this too, as the Shoshone UA is actually helping with most expensive tiles. A player still gets a half dozen cheap tiles for each city, going Liberty or Tradition. For Shoshone, that is almost the whole second ring then.

beetle said:

I am was not talking about this sort of edge case, but Deity games in general, with VC at turn 300 or later. So non-expert play.

Why does raging barbarians make the (early) game easier or harder?

I have made use of the easily available xp for my early units, but with the benefit of hindsight, I think the setting has been making things harder for me.

LB’s quick dismissal seems on the mark to me:


So what if barb camps usually catch AI settlers and workers? The first free settler is the one that gives the Deity AI its strongest buff -- and barbs don't spawn in the first few turns. Unit spam makes the later AI civilians expendable. If raging barbs meant more camps -- and not just more frequent barbs from the camps already in place -- I could seeing it having an impact (since that would result in more territory that was less ICS friendly).

Yes, I occasionally see an AI scout being slowly murdered by barbs. So what? How does that significantly impede the AI?

I think I remember maybe one game where an AI territory was completely overrun by barbs. Yes, that was funny, and I took a particularly perverse glee from that. But one example in one game is not much of sample! Besides, it is not the poorly performing AI that is the challenge for the player, but the runaway. Can you really make the case that ranging barbs hurt all the AIs more the player? I think it has to be the case that raging barbs does more to harm the player than it help him.

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Yes you are absolutely right, I would only choose raging barbs on some rare edge cases (really fast dom, warry diplo and culture on continents). Raging barbs do slow the AIs down though, I have empirical evidence of this. The main reason is that the barbs steal workers from the AIs and the occasional settler, and as they spawn more frequently, it happens more often. Another edge case, I remember a domination game in HOF where we were trying to make Heathen Conversion work (don't try at Deity, it does not work. But yes, as a general rule you are absolutely right. The extra experience for the army is not worth the aggro.

beetle said:

Am I correct to assume that the table is per city as opposed to empire-wide?

My take-away from the table is that the Tradition opener after Collective Rule, and maybe even after completing Liberty, should still be very effective. The reduced border expansion cost is not so dramatic until the fifth tile. So that seems like plenty of time for picking up other SP. Opening Tradition late, but before cities have naturally expanded 5/6 hexes, seems like it is still using that SP to excellent effect. Am I missing something?

Usually in my Liberty games I find myself buying a lot of tiles. In my recent Shoshone game, this was not the case at all, and I never opened Tradition. That table helps explain this too, as the Shoshone UA is actually helping with most expensive tiles. A player still gets a half dozen cheap tiles for each city, going Liberty or Tradition. For Shoshone, that is almost the whole second ring then.

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I did the calculations on the Korea game, and Trad opener is better as a first policy, the net difference in turns to collective rule was 5 turns (or 4 cannot remember exactly) and it allowed me to work good 2:1 tiles much earlier. That paid for the delay in collective rule. I guess if you have 3 salts in your first ring the above does not apply, but that is not the norm. EDIT: just realized you are talking about the Shoshone. There I don't know as you very well said the UA may make up for the difference.

Bleidraner said:

Trad opener is better as a first policy

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I have not seen math that supports this assertion. The table IronFighter posted seems to support the idea that Tradition opener for border growth is compatible with waiting a few score turns. Your example with Korea was a few tiles -- so why not just buy them?

Playing Shoshone makes me think I need to pick up the Tradition opener for my Liberty play -- but only after Collective Rule. I don't think Liberty Shoshone needs the Tradition Opener at all.

beetle said:

I have not seen math that supports this assertion. The table IronFighter posted seems to support the idea that Tradition opener for border growth is compatible with waiting a few score turns. Your example with Korea was a few tiles -- so why not just buy them?

Playing Shoshone makes me think I need to pick up the Tradition opener for my Liberty play -- but only after Collective Rule. I don't think Liberty Shoshone needs the Tradition Opener at all.

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There is very little question that with the Shoshone, due to their UA, the Tradition opener is less useful. I was talking specifically about the Korea game. Basically if you do the math, a Trad opener grows borders 3 times in 20 turns (for simplicity I have assumed that you open the first policy on t0) while with the Liberty opener it takes 40 turns to grow 3 tiles. And the divergence gets worse after that.

For the math, 2 variables are at play here, on the one hand the extra 2 cpt from Trad opener and on the other hand the significantly faster border growth as per Ironfighter's table. Combine the 2 and you will get the result I describe above.

In the Korea game, where I was planning to plant 8 cities and build NC by t80 (missed by 4 turns), I had to micro every single tile and needed every single hammer, food and gold that I could get. I knew I would have to rush buy tiles in the expos, especially the Petra expo as I wanted the desert hills asap, so wanted to save my border buys as much as I could, otherwise I would be paying 290 gold very quickly. The Tradition opener allowed me to continuously work 2 food, 1 hammer tiles for the first 60 turns in the cap, and those tiles turned quickly into 2:2 or 3:1 tiles after improvement.

This was necessary as my plan meant that I was continuously building settlers for aproximately 40 turns with 4 pop, one settler 11 turns, I built the first one as soon as I got to 4 pop, then the collective rules settler then another 5 settlers, some took 6 turns some 5 turns, and I built one settler in my expo number 1, Busan. I was able to do this without having to spend a single piece of gold, gold that I badly needed to rush buy my archers, needed to deal with barbs and do quests. Also, I was able to NOT increase my rush bought borders counter and that allowed me to rush buy tiles cheaply in the expos, this was essential because I had to capture some of the luxes and NWs within my borders asap, as I needed all the happiness I could get (8 cities Liberty!). All of this at the cost of delaying collective rule settler by 4 turns.

Eventually, this resulted in a t209 SV with Liberty, which is not as great as Acken's 198 (mindblowing!), but it is a fantastic result for me.

anything below ~220 is a fantastic result in my book. One day...

Yeah I've not got anywhere close to T220 on a 'normal' map, except by Domination, which doesn't count cuz it's the easiest.

My best result was 229 on that heavily cooked Russia DCL

Yes that was my best result too. An insane capital start and so many spots for other great cities. If I could get sub-T220 on a normal map I'd feel really happy

Bleidraner said:

Eventually, this resulted in a t209 SV with Liberty, which is not as great as Acken's 198 (mindblowing!), but it is a fantastic result for me.

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That is a fantastic result! I have much more mundane games (t300+ SV) in mind as I think aloud on this board.

beetle said:

That is a fantastic result! I have much more mundane games (t300+ SV) in mind as I think aloud on this board.

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For sub300, I would play Deity Tradition it is easier. If you are set on playing Deity Liberty then I would NOT take the Trad opener at all it delays critical policies much later on and unless you know how to deal with it, it will slow you down. I am happy to help if there is any part of the science game you specifically want to improve.

adcarrymaokai said:

I already mentioned that any argument with the Shoshone is not an argument at all (or with Poland, for that matter).

I do think the Shoshone are second best after Poland, though very rapid expansion like this with no drawbacks seems to be possible only with Pocatello.

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I've played a few games with the Shoshone, and (obviously) realized they're OP, but I've never played as Poland, is the free policy every era that good or am I missing something here?

sam_w said:

... but I've never played as Poland, is the free policy every era that good or am I missing something here?

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Yes, that is why they are consistently at the top of any tier list. One way to think about that is this: Most UA are roughly equivalent to a good social policy. Poland does not get a unique SP, but does get seven extra SP over the course of the game.

sam_w said:

I've played a few games with the Shoshone, and (obviously) realized they're OP, but I've never played as Poland, is the free policy every era that good or am I missing something here?

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Poland makes it possible to complete both Liberty and Tradition before Rationalism, and you can always pick Rationalism on the first turn it becomes available.

pvtjava said:

Poland makes it possible to complete both Liberty and Tradition before Rationalism, and you can always pick Rationalism on the first turn it becomes available.

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With the Renaissance, Poland has half of its UA still to unlock, so not enough on its own for a full extra tree by then. I don't think Liberty + Tradition is as strong a choice for Poland as just picking SP like you would normally. With Poland, I like getting full commerce plus full rationalism, and then play my Ideology as usual.