Liberty vs. Tradition - Deity Challenge

Manpanzee said:
Wow, your pop distribution is really flat. My current hypothesis with Liberty is that you should pick out a few cities to grow especially tall, rather than having them all about the same size. That way you get much better rush-buying efficiency with science buildings.

For example, let's say you have 120 pop among six cities at the time you hit Labs. You get more bang for your buck if you rush buy 3 Labs in 24-pop cities and build 3 Labs in 16-pop cities than if you rush buy 3 Labs in 20-pop cities and build 3 Labs in 20-pop cities. With Tradition it doesn't matter so much, since you can often buy all science buildings everywhere.

Stuff like this is why I think Liberty still has significant untapped potential. Management of city growth rates is much more complex than Tradition, and you actually have to think about things like pop distribution that otherwise don't matter much.
Click to expand...

Yes there's a lot more possibilities playing this. Tradition is way more straightforward by experience: grow capital.

My idea this game was to have a rather balanced growth overall. So that's why it's flat. I aimed to get between +5 and +10 food in all cities instead of feeding 2 core cities. Seemed like a good idea since we play as Korea and filling slots everywhere felt more important than trying to get a huge core city.

Don't know how I could manage without pagodas though :/
 
But you still have 5 desert hills within Busan's borders. You just didn't buy them. I feel like they are worth investing into.
 
I'll throw a game into the pile here.

I'm of the opinion that Liberty and Tradition are very close -- improving playing skill is far more important for most of us ;) Acken, Ironfighter, etc, can worry about the optimal tree.

Went for a Tradition game. Given the power of the map I'm not too thrilled with my progress (t174 Labs, but I used Oxford and a GSci)

Spoiler :

5 City Tradition Opener:



T150. Radio chosen this turn. I think the extra GPP from Hero of the People is worth burning Oxford relatively early. Note the slight problem with Dido.



I went for the Oracle -> Rationalism gambit (yeah, on Deity) and missed. Didn't even manage to cash in the pre-built Oracle.

Busan has Petra. Seoul has Pisa.

World Fair was an easy win.

A couple milestones:

Edu 102 (slow for this start)
Radio 150 (Oxford)
Labs 174 (GSci)

Very easy game diplomatically. One defensive war with Dido. Otherwise mostly Friendly. I did use two bribes once Hiawatha -> Venice. Once Dido -> Sweden.

A sixth and/or seventh city would be required for a very fast finish, but I expect a finish in the late 220s.
 
Finished the Shoshone map on 256 with a Diplomatic win, a SV would have taken slightly longer, I had all the techs opened. I will give it a go with a 4 city Tradition approach and see how it goes from there
 
I underestimated the closing speed of the Koreans.

214 SV with a Tradition approach. On this map I think I can beat that time with Liberty, but not by too much. Culture is tight and Liberty needs an extra policy.

Spoiler :

With tight culture this move by Dido was not appreciated.



Finished Apollo pre 200, leading to a Trad-Order victory.



I actually think that this 214 is a similar result to the 238 Liberty SV in the Celt DCL game I played - this map is far superior for any approach.
 
Finally got a turn 198 science victory after trying a few stuff with a 8-city liberty game.

Culture, gold and production (hubble apollo) were tight, the science was easy. I finished Apollo, the last policies and exactly the gold I needed on the same turn (196).
Spoiler :


Not sure how much is replicable with other civs. The massive boost in specialist science is a lot.
 
@Acken. This is impressive. It reminds me of very fast vanilla civ 5 games, where ICS style play was still easy, before harsher happiness caps were introduced. How you managed to keep happy AND get the necessary culture is the impressive part.

Do you still go 3 into commerce for this? And Trad opener? (+Liberty, Rat, and Freedom 6). Lots of culture!

In terms of Liberty vs. Tradition I'll quote myself from DCL # 1 "Liberty is competitive with Tradition, even for building, if the land is rich enough.". I think this map backs that up - possible even showing a case where Liberty pulls ahead.

Diplomacy is more challenging with this style of play, eh? Did you get many full value GPT trades?
 
I've never played peaceful liberty on deity so I tried this and finished on T241. It works on this map where you can settle 7-8 cities easily with unique lux but I think it is harder to manage. Maybe I will replay this some day with tradition but luck is also involved. I have a feeling I will finish this ~t220 with tradition.

Spoiler :
Culture and gold was a problem. And happiness was harder to manage. 5 pogodas helped but still it was on the edge especially after ideologies. Nobody picked freedom but me. I could not afford all space parts so I had to build one which took 10 turns or so. And during the game I could afford at most 2 science buildings, the rest were hard built.
Machu and sistine - wonders that I wanted to take in that order with liberty GE were gone.
-10 happy happened on the last turn only and stayed below +10 for the last turns before finish. And btw Korea's +2 science from specialists is really strong with so many cities. My GS bulbs were like 13.5K

 

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Olodune said:
@Acken. This is impressive. It reminds me of very fast vanilla civ 5 games, where ICS style play was still easy, before harsher happiness caps were introduced. How you managed to keep happy AND get the necessary culture is the impressive part.

Do you still go 3 into commerce for this? And Trad opener? (+Liberty, Rat, and Freedom 6). Lots of culture!

In terms of Liberty vs. Tradition I'll quote myself from DCL # 1 "Liberty is competitive with Tradition, even for building, if the land is rich enough.". I think this map backs that up - possible even showing a case where Liberty pulls ahead.

Diplomacy is more challenging with this style of play, eh? Did you get many full value GPT trades?
Click to expand...

I went Trad 1 Liberty 6 Trad 2 Ratio 4 Freedom 3 Ratio 5 Commerce 1 Ratio 6 Freedom 6
The biggest interrogation is indeed if Commerce 3 is better... more buys, easier with the gold, more science. However in that case you have to skip all of tradition unless you find a way to fix the culture (but if you buy more stuff you may actually find time to make some opera and archaeologists). Missing aristocracy means tighter happiness and longer wonders and missing the opener means more gold spent in borders.

The happiness comes simply from luxuries and pagodas (and meritocracy + aristocracy). I was able to sell most of my stuff. Genghis was really happy to buy most of it and once I proposed the world fair only Dido remained unhappy with me.
 
Acken said:
Finally got a turn 198 science victory after trying a few stuff with a 8-city liberty game.
Not sure how much is replicable with other civs. The massive boost in specialist science is a lot.
Click to expand...

:goodjob: though seeing 17 pop cap on 200t really hurt my eyes ;)

I may try this map with tradition after I will finish Shoshone (so not soon - don't have much time to play civ lately :()

However I have one question - don't you think that you could get same or even better result with tradition on this map easier
(keep in mind that tradition don't necessary means four cities ;))
 
Playing also 8 cities I don't think would have been really better with tradition. The reason is that the happiness from meritocracy is approximately the same as the one from monarchy in that situation so I do not believe you'd really be able to use tradition's advantages with so many cities (which is to grow big).
Also you do not have the possibility to make them early with tradition due to needing to make the NC yourself. Here I had 8 cities by turn 60 and the NC on turn 80. Reaching that number of cities with tradition is a headache.

The natural contender is the classic 4 cities tradition. I think it should still beat this mostly because it's way easier to play. But I wanted to see how Liberty can perform in good situation and I'm pretty happy with that result.
 
Finished Shoshone Liberty Map with Domination T204

I was disappointed not to finish this one a lot quicker, but I'm absolutely certain that a better player could get this down to nearer T150ish. I just wanted to prove the point that on most good liberty maps, conquest > turtling.

SPs: Full Liberty (Oracle finish Liberty -> NC T80ish), Trad Opener, Full Commerce, Patronage 2

Never reached Modern, obviously. No guilds or culture buildings. Pyramids, Oracle. All other wonders captured.
 
Nice one Acken! :goodjob:

This is a good sample for Liberty. Remind me a mp game with Babs where i have done approx. the same thing in the beginning. 5 cities Liberty with Pyramids with fast religion then ge for NC. Managed to launch a spaceship(which is very difficult in mp with good players). Gotta love these hammers running! :)

But unfortunately only few maps work well with that tree. Most maps are happiness restrictive and the 5% science penalty can hurt you if you don't grow your cities fast enough. A strong Trad approach will beat that time though.

In GnK mode that would have beat Trad anytime.
 
Well 106 Edu on the first try. I have my aqueducts and my 8 cities planted, and my NC built, struggled with happiness, but mostly my culture is poor and no workshops. I calculate a t220 win for this attempt, so will retire this game and do a second try, as this is not competitive enough. Also I kind of forgot to work in some monuments in the BO, so used tp play Tradition! In the second try I will try to plant the cities slightly earlier, and ally the cultural CS asap. Will also consider targeting a happiness CS to enable this. I will use Oracle for the Liberty closer, it is coming too late for my taste. The wars are unavoidable, but they don't seem to be a problem. What a wonderful map for Liberty. It is only missing a second cultural CS close by to be able to time the secularism jump better.

I have another long flight on Friday, will try to play to the end there. Will also build Petra in the expo, it went really late in the first try, like t104. I would really like a210 result which would be my best ever, but in a second try and with this map, it is possible.
 
Game was really good, only near end I had to win IG to get policy for buying SS parts (besides scholasticism I took also mercantilism).

This map was really good for liberty (lots of space, many lux, etc).
However it's also very good for tradition and tradition >>> liberty in all besides early wars.

Acken did good job with liberty on Korea map, but it look clearly from starting screenshot that with tradition it would be also sub 200, but easier. (Well, I may try this map if he think otherwise ;))
 

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IronfighterXXX said:
Acken did good job with liberty on Korea map, but it look clearly from starting screenshot that with tradition it would be also sub 200, but easier. (Well, I may try this map if he think otherwise ;))
Click to expand...

You and Acken usually beat me by 15+ turns and I finished that one in 214 (with substandard Order), so, yeah, the question is only how much sub 200 you can go ;)

Nice game.
 
@Ironfighter

I have a question for you: with 3 mountains 4 cities is easily enough, but do you think 5/6 cities would be better without the Observatory boost to bulbing power?
 
Olodune said:
@Ironfighter

I have a question for you: with 3 mountains 4 cities is easily enough, but do you think 5/6 cities would be better without the Observatory boost to bulbing power?
Click to expand...

I'm really not sure what is better - additional cities easy exceed 5% science penalty, but it's also less gold from lux,happiness problems, delayed national wonders etc...

However I'm pretty sure that even with six cities tradition still would be better, because science = growth and growth = tradition :)
 
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