Liberty vs. Tradition - Deity Challenge

IronfighterXXX said:

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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Well I'm starting to think the biggest advantage of a small game is that it's very easy to rush all buildings.

I was forced to build most of them in my liberty game. With my wide empire I had similar pop numbers than Olodune, just more spread. While I get more tech penalty I also get a lot more slots.

So I don't think the problem is the lower growth that you miss from trad finisher, I really did not feel it, the difficulty is the gold and happiness. This is where commerce may be even more important for Liberty but then it means border growth and even more happiness issues.

Like I said while I can play tradition my eyes closed, playing that kind of game was a lot more difficult.
You could always try the game when you have time to see how big the difference would be. Or just try Liberty to see how you'd do it.

Well finished my game. t209 SV, 8 cities Liberty using Acken's map. Which is a very good result for me.

I played to 106 Edu, and then started again, so I had knowledge of the map, not a HOF environment.

I played a similar game to Acken's, I went to first to Engineering for the aqueducts. I did not go for Metal Casting before Edu, as I felt I could safely do that later. So, Engineering -> Edu -> Acoustics - > Metal Casting -> Astronomy - > Printing Press. Policy wise, open Tradition, then full Liberty, 2 in Commerce right side, then 3 in Rati, 3 in Freedom, Mercantilism, Free Thought, Freedom to the 5th policy, Sovereignty, Space Procurement, Close Rationalism. As you can see I screwed my timing quite badly, missed the timing of Renaissance for the Rati opener by a few turns, and that haunted me for the rest of the game.

The MC detour allowed me to have time to build the workshops before Observatories, but I can see Acken's point, it probably makes sense to do the detour before Edu and get the extra hammers benefit for the Universities.

Edu t102, first world council t135 (I feel this is late, that forces World Fair on 167, at a time when your hammers are extremely busy, 5 turn earlier is much better), Freedom t158. Plastics 178, late at that point I knew I would not do a sub200, I even debated whether to burn a GS to get Plastics at 169, but felt I would be short on the science front. I believe I was wrong, should have popped the GS. Screwed up the end game a little as I am so used to Tradition, I forgot I could not faith buy GE. Used Liberty finisher and LoTP for GEs, one for NC the other for Big Ben.

Culture was tight, happiness and gold were an issue throughout the game. Science was surprisingly easy.

This is one of my best results ever, and demonstrates that Liberty is a useful and fun tree. What I have learned from this and the games played by Manpanzee, Acken, Ironfighter, Olodune.

1. You can get a great SV result with Liberty, on some maps. Even sub 200 as Acken demonstrated.
2. I still think I could do better with Tradition
3. Playing Liberty is HARD, and there is very likely stuff we still need to discover. Part of the strength of Tradition is that is easier to play, that means a lot more people are playing Tradition and the best practices are well known.
4. Playing Liberty takes a lot of time (see 3)

So as expected no final conclusion, but at least for me, this has helped me get much better at playing Liberty and try some stuff I had not tried before.

Phenomenal map, Acken. Truly amazing, thanks for posting it.

t278 SV Liberty, 9 cities, many mistakes!

@Nigel_Turfnel2, well done. 9 cities you are a brave man sir. You know

Haha, thanks. After playing a while I looked where others settled. So many better options to cover the same spaces. The 9th city E of cap was just to prevent settling, although it did end up OK, it probably wasn't worth the cost. It kept Dido away though.

I had great faith but nothing to do with it (never built more than the first shrine). I did create a GP who spent dozens of turns waiting patiently near a N CS. Those mtns made everything very congested.

I just got through this with T341 SV, pretty typical speed for me. I only got 5 expos up even though I was really hoping for at least a couple more. Two of the expos had observatories and three had gardens. So six strong cities, and six SS parts, so the end game wrapped up well enough, except for losing aluminum for a few turns. Oddly, no one was working at CV.

The middle game I felt like I was thrashing around, so I imagine that when I replay this as 4-city Tradition there will lots of room for improvement.

I open and closed Liberty, planted the Liberty GP as a GS, and then opened Tradition (that seems like it works well). Then I opened and picked one policy in Patronage. I am not sure how I ended up with three picks before unlocking Rationalism.

I missed Pyramids, Porcelain Tower, and Statue of Liberty. I really miss the Tradition GEs. The only GE spawned I burned on Taj Mahal. In hindsight, I should have saved him for SoL, but I really didn’t anticipated such competition, and expected another natural GE or two. I hard built Oracle, Neuschwanstein, Hubble, and Sydney Opera House. I won Worlds Fair and International Games when they came up. I never got around to National Epic, HE, NIA, nor NVC.

I picked up Desert Folklore but missed founding. I got early Mosques from a neighbor and hit the industrial age with like 4000 faith. I bought 3 GS, but I so wish that could have been 2 GS and 2 GE.

Map and AI specific notes in the spoiler...

@beetle

Looking at your dirt, I see a lack of farmland. You have lots of trading posts that could be producing 3 food after Fertiliser, an important later growth phase. My advice, next time see about farming rather than trade posts, and see if you can grow that capital a bit bigger. I only put trading posts on jungle.

Yeah the trading post spam is only viable on puppet cities, at least that's how I remember doing it. Around your parts, farm everything everywhere

stormtrooper412 said:

Yeah the trading post spam is only viable on puppet cities, at least that's how I remember doing it. Around your parts, farm everything everywhere

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IMO they're not ideal even there, unless you're just trying to cycle conquest with commerce boosting their yield (in which case yes for conquered/puppet cities, less so starting cities of your own). They're pretty handy to help stay solvent + buy even more units once you're in steamroll mode, but I can't picture them being too great for a teching game in most cases.

Obviously. But it raises the question, where do puppets came from in a teching game innit

stormtrooper412 said:

Obviously. But it raises the question, where do puppets came from in a teching game innit

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Indeed. You can get a lot of tech from a bajillion cities but it comes really late, not something that can give a competitive finish in this game.

Are you sure? A bajillion puppets feels more like dead weight if you want to tech properly

You could do the maths and see if a particular Puppet is producing 5% or less of your total science and, if so, raze it.

If they're working university lots, they'll often be able to produce enough science to be worth keeping. It seems that some larger puppets work university slots immediately after resistance ends; but some don't. Does anyone know if science is their next priority after gold and GP tile improvements? As in, will a Puppet work a scientist slot over a mine/farm?

I don't think the increased science is generally worth the happiness sink, but yeah, it's all in the math I guess

stormtrooper412 said:

Are you sure? A bajillion puppets feels more like dead weight if you want to tech properly

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If the city has any value at all, contributing 5% to science with spec slots isn't difficult.

The problem is happiness efficiency. If you aren't constrained by that, picture a 20 city empire. This would double your technology cost, but you shouldn't have any trouble doubling beakers on 20 cities without a happiness constraint.

You can (eventually) get even more cities than that and grow them all, but doing that requires conquered wonders, commerce finisher, and ideologies in force...and to truly take the lead in science you'd need rationalism on top of that.

It's not tenable in practice because games don't last long enough for it to pay off once you can come up with the happiness. This is also why tradition is typically the favored generic opener; you get enough tech pace with a very happiness + hammer efficient capital that gives you "good enough" tech rate to get to any VC you desire far more consistently than alternatives. If you extend the game or push a lot more happiness earlier then wide-heavy becomes more attractive. The 5% tech penalty is a comparative drop in the bucket, a discouraging factor for settling junk cities but not the real constraint. Any average quality site will, if you can support the gold/happy, increase your tech rate.

That said, if you take all of your opponent's cities away your tech rate is still better than his tech rate.

I think I found a fairly distinctive strategy on the Russia DCL. An early expansion (including the wiping out of 1 AI civ and taking his 2 best cities) gave me a huge amount of beakers once public schools were up. But that game was abnormal in terms of happiness. Had I struggled more with smiles, I'm not sure it would have been feasible.

consentient said:

Looking at your dirt, I see a lack of farmland.

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stormtrooper412 said:

Around your parts, farm everything everywhere.

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I learned that lesson once, I am not sure why I reverted back to giving TP some play.

This was not a map were Liberty was competitive for me. Going 4-city Tradition / Rationalism / Freedom, I ended with a T317 SV which is probably my best yet, 24 turns faster than my Liberty run. Final score was 1353 raw, 2147 adjusted (#3 Abraham Lincoln). I had time to build all the NW and snagged all the late wonders except Christo Rendentor and The Great Firewall. No other civs had built SS parts. I built four (one per city) and bought two, only needing a loan for 1K.

That's still too slow given your population, should have been in the 270 range I think. You probably didn't save up the scientists

My science game is not as strong as I would like to be sure. I never can afford to rush buy more than one Public School, and maybe one Lab if I am lucky. I never even got around to labs this game, and I started on the parts late while I paused to try and win International Games (and missed anyway).

I planted three GS before Schools, and was science focused for the ten turns leading up to Hubble, so I burned four GS over fours turns as Hubble came on line. I think that was already about T260. After that, I didn’t stress about my GS bulbing because the end game seemed pretty certain, but I think there were three more. The second (and last) faith-purchased GS came right before launch (which why the screen shot shows mobile infantry).

well I never plant GS in a science game, and I start saving up (loan from AI) for schools MUCH earlier than they unlock, and I usually have at least Big Ben before RLabs. I start bulbing around Radar to Hubble, and then bottom part of the tree to nano, use the Ratio finisher for nano and then use the remaining scientists for the top part of the tree. If done well, that's a winner in the 230-240 range, mistime any of those and it's around 270 in most of my games