Compare Liberty and Tradition, Head-to-Head

How does the wide game work for culture, that's one combo I never tried on Deity? Currently I can't see myself doing anything other than a ICS SS strat, can you keep up with tech good enough to swipe those wonders, do you even need them with 8-9 cities stock full of artifacts and art and whatnot? Do you still save everything for a musician bomb after NVC/Internet/Airports

Cromagnus said:

Yes, I believe Liberty is viable, no it is not competitive on Diety, finish-time wise for science victory. The Shoshone are (as I've always stated) so OP they're practically broken. Since they compensate for one of Tradition's biggest advantages, I don't consider this a strong argument.

Still, I think the difference in best finish time between Liberty and Tradition is only about 20-30 turns for most civs. /shrug

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There are several questions I'm exploring. The answers to some are clear, but I think some are less clear.*

1. Given the ability to reroll for an optimal map, is Liberty competitive with Tradition? The answer to this question is almost certainly no.

2. Are there individual maps where Liberty is competitive with or superior to Tradition, finish-time wise? This I'm unsure of. I think there's a good chance that the answer is yes, but I'm unsure. It's hard to test this.

3. If the answer to question two is "yes", what are the map factors that really support Liberty relative to Tradition, and how can these be best exploited?

4. If the answer to question two is "yes", how much untapped potential does Liberty have that could be discovered through better understanding of question three?

5. If the answer to question four is "a lot", is it possible that we could revise our answer to question one? I think this is unlikely, but the possibility is alluring enough for me to keep exploring.

Finally, yeah, the Shoshone are totally OP and aren't representative of a normal Liberty game. However, the extremes of possibility are interesting here. If we want to examine Liberty in its strongest possible form, then we should grant it the ability to use the most OP civilizations. Even discovering that the Shoshone and ONLY the Shoshone can win faster with Liberty than Tradition on Deity would be a valuable bit of information.

*(All of these questions are Deity only -- I think that there are a lot of environmental factors on Deity that make Liberty relatively more competitive than at any other difficulty level.)

There's also one thing I'd like to know.

On a good map, Tradition wins over Liberty hands down. But what happens if you roll a crap start, like, say, the Rome DCL map. Obviously not viable for a HoF game but would Liberty be able to pull off something like that? I obviously want to include more Liberty games in my opus so the obvious conundrum is can Liberty catch up to Tradition in technology before Tradition can finish

That is a GREAT challenge. Same leader, full game, Liberty vs. Tradition. Deity, SV. Winning time will have to be between 210-225. Or better. Manpanzee what do you think is the best possible leader for Liberty? Some of us should take Liberty some Tradition. Same start or HOF rules?

Best wide science leader is hands down Korea.

IronfighterXXX said:

I had an idea inspired by this thread to make post your save challenge, if you think liberty is faster on your map in SV, DiploV and no domination type culture victory, so definitely will try it. (only hope you don't have this cursed map packs)

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Manpanzee said:

Finally, yeah, the Shoshone are totally OP and aren't representative of a normal Liberty game. However, the extremes of possibility are interesting here. If we want to examine Liberty in its strongest possible form, then we should grant it the ability to use the most OP civilizations. Even discovering that the Shoshone and ONLY the Shoshone can win faster with Liberty than Tradition on Deity would be a valuable bit of information.

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So do you think that in your game liberty was better or not? (don't know if try it with tradition).

Bleidraner said:

That is a GREAT challenge. Same leader, full game, Liberty vs. Tradition. Deity, SV. Winning time will have to be between 210-225. Or better. Manpanzee what do you think is the best possible leader for Liberty? Some of us should take Liberty some Tradition. Same start or HOF rules?

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Well, even Manpanzee admitted that with optimal map tradition is almost certainly better, so definitely same start.

Here is a good map for Liberty, lot of space and luxuries, lot of horses and a faith wonder.

Will be also good for tradition if you want to try it twice.

Liberty has the edge for survivability on Deity. If you told me "Pick a policy tree without knowing what your start looks like. The only requirement is that you win, not that you win fast"... then I would probably pick Liberty. The extra hammers early help get archers out to protect you from a rampaging Shaka, which you would be very vulnerable to if you rushed settlers after 1 or 2 scouts... not to mention bad barbarian luck. Sure you could keep your scouts at home to escort settlers, but then they're not scouting. If you remove some of the risk-taking necessary to post competitive times on Deity, then Tradition loses a bit of an edge.

Plus, the Liberty closer is very flexible. (Great Admiral for when you're isolated on an island... for example)

Liberty is more survivable n a highly contested start when you have little-to-no good production spots near your starting settler, etc. etc.

But, if I'm going for speed? Tradition wins. On Deity. But only for speed. Perhaps it's all the time I spent warmongering on Deity with Liberty, but I feel like when you don't know what you're up against, Liberty > all. Worst comes to worst I can kill off everyone and THEN win a SV.

Cromagnus said:

Liberty has the edge for survivability on Deity. If you told me "Pick a policy tree without knowing what your start looks like. The only requirement is that you win, not that you win fast"... then I would probably pick Liberty. The extra hammers early help get archers out to protect you from a rampaging Shaka, which you would be very vulnerable to if you rushed settlers after 1 or 2 scouts... not to mention bad barbarian luck. Sure you could keep your scouts at home to escort settlers, but then they're not scouting. If you remove some of the risk-taking necessary to post competitive times on Deity, then Tradition loses a bit of an edge.

Plus, the Liberty closer is very flexible. (Great Admiral for when you're isolated on an island... for example)

Liberty is more survivable n a highly contested start when you have little-to-no good production spots near your starting settler, etc. etc.

But, if I'm going for speed? Tradition wins. On Deity. But only for speed. Perhaps it's all the time I spent warmongering on Deity with Liberty, but I feel like when you don't know what you're up against, Liberty > all. Worst comes to worst I can kill off everyone and THEN win a SV.

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I feel the opposite. If I have no idea what I'm going to get land wise I would choose tradition blindly. The reason being that I don't know if I'm even going to be able to find more than 4 good city locations or even have a neighbor nearby.

Going Liberty and then finding that you're going to be stuck on 2 - 3 cities is just fail.

If you are next to an aggressive adversary then 2 pop a settler into archer spam and get caravans up. In the long term you will be much better off with tradition, looking past killing that one neighbor.

IronfighterXXX said:

So do you think that in your game liberty was better or not? (don't know if try it with tradition).

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I think that there were a lot of factors that helped Liberty relative to Tradition. I don't know for sure if these factors were strong enough to make Liberty actually better, though.

The biggest factor, I think, was a combination of limited fresh water and few coastal city sites. That made it hard to get the really fast growth you want with Tradition. Meanwhile, I had a lot of raw jungle, which I think benefits wide. It's easier to stomach those 2f2s tiles when you aren't trying to max growth everywhere constantly.

I also had Jesuit Education spread to my lands, which is a totally random factor that definitely helps wide empires more than tall empires. Pure luck of the RNG there, although I also had a strong religion that I would've liked to spread if my neighbor hadn't gone faith crazy. So it's not entirely Jesuit Education vs. no JE -- it's JE vs. Tithe gold and preferred beliefs. Still lucky, but not as lucky.

Cromagnus said:

Liberty has the edge for survivability on Deity. If you told me "Pick a policy tree without knowing what your start looks like. The only requirement is that you win, not that you win fast"... then I would probably pick Liberty. The extra hammers early help get archers out to protect you from a rampaging Shaka, which you would be very vulnerable to if you rushed settlers after 1 or 2 scouts... not to mention bad barbarian luck. Sure you could keep your scouts at home to escort settlers, but then they're not scouting. If you remove some of the risk-taking necessary to post competitive times on Deity, then Tradition loses a bit of an edge.

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Well, if you're not going for speed, I think you can pretty much always win a 1-3 cities Diplo VC, regardless of your early game policy choices. Though Tradition will be better than Liberty in the long run there.

vadalaz said:

Well, if you're not going for speed, I think you can pretty much always win a 1-3 cities Diplo VC, regardless of your early game policy choices. Though Tradition will be better than Liberty in the long run there.

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Oh I am going for speed. I don't really know how to post the challenge, I don't have templates etc, but if nobody posts it, I will post a Liberty vs. Tradition challenge by the end of (my European) day. Use Acken's save, go for speed. I will go Liberty, I have not really played it much, but I think it is likely that if anybody plays besides me, they will go Tradition, so Liberty will have one supporter at least.
I suggest the following rules: You have to fill close your tree of choice, say before 120. Hybrids are OK as long as the above is done. I am tempted to say GOTM rules but as we are trying to demonstrate optimal play, that may not be the best choice, not sure.

There is a new mod made since a couple of weeks by some NQ members for the sake of fair competition. It's very interesting and i tried it once last week-end. It opens different and more strategies. You can download the singleplayer part below the mp part. Instructions are included and it's pretty easy in fact.

EDIT: Follow this page to get latest version.

Link(Version 4)

MOD link

SINGLE PLAYER
Download the zipped patch from HERE (just close Dropbox window - you don't need account)
Unzip it in the appropriate directory:
WINDOWS: C:\Users\{YOUR_USERNAME_HERE}\Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 5\MODS
MAC: ~/Documents/Aspyr/Sid Meier's Civilization 5/MODS
Load via the MODS menu (instead of Single/Multi player).
You do not have to uninstall this version of the mod to play games normally again, but it is not playable in a multiplayer setting. You can only play this single player vs AI.

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Lot of stuff have been changed or modified. Liberty has been revamped a little bit. And this is what it looks like when you play the mod :




Since we all agree that Liberty can't compete Tradition into a science game do you think that these modifications can bring better love?(haven't tried it myself yet)

When I first started playing Civ 5 I quickly shifted to using the Civilization Unofficial Patch (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=386855), because a lot of "normal" (unmodded) civ seemed strange. It transmogrified into the Communitas Mod (https://github.com/Thalassicus/cep-bnw/releases). I abandoned it because it seemed to me that it changed far too much from the original game. But for those who want a change from the "normal" civ, it might be appealing. It is very, very different! It tries to address a lot of the oddities in the tech tree, social policies, and to balance the leaders so that they are more evenly matched.

As an observation on the topic of whether one social policy tree is better than another, I find myself wondering if it is not the case that some players are better at using one tree than they are at using another. If you use one tool a lot, you might expect to find out what you can do with it, and how to exploit its capabilities. A tool with which you are less familiar might prove more difficult to use.

Cromagnus said:

Since they [the Shoshone] compensate for one of Tradition's biggest advantages, I don't consider this a strong argument.

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Was that suppose to be the Shoshone compensating for one of Liberty's biggest disadvantages?

Bleidraner said:

Some of us should take Liberty some Tradition. Same start or HOF rules?

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To settle this at all, you need to eliminate variables. So you want everyone playing the same map twice. I am grateful to see Acken's posted save, but I am not good at getting SV fast, so I am not sure I can contribute. I am interested in learning to exploit Liberty better. To date, with the maps that I have replayed -- Tradition has always beaten out Liberty. But I am not sure I am working the Liberty tree to the best effect, and I have not tried Shoshone is quite a long while.

stormtrooper412 said:

How does the wide game work for culture, that's one combo I never tried on Deity?

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I would like to know this too. As with st412, I am looking for a later game CV, so not something gimmicky like Liberty GMu bomb. Nothing wrong with SS being part of the plan, but not early SS cheese please.

Acken said:

Here is a good map for Liberty, lot of space and luxuries, lot of horses and a faith wonder.

Will be also good for tradition if you want to try it twice.

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Thanks for save, but I'm really not very eager to play same map twice. I thought rather that someone post great result with liberty and I will try to beat it.

IronfighterXXX said:

I thought rather that someone post great result with liberty and I will try to beat it.

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That would only be telling if (1) you beat it and (2) both you and “that someone” agree “that someone” is a consistently stronger player than you. If either condition (1) or (2) is not true, then your results don’t advance the Liberty v Tradition debate.

What we all want to know is if there are maps that work better for if played Liberty instead of Tradition. I think that boils down to individuals playing maps twice.

I made a flow chart that I think is helpful. Hopefully no one will argue too much with these blanket statements

TLDR: Open Tradition if you don't have specific ideas or if your specific idea is SV/CV.

EDIT: If I can't get through the week without playing Civ 5, I'll play the Korea map twice Trad and Liberty. I'm a mediocre player so I think it's a better test

consentient said:

I made a flow chart that I think is helpful.

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I love it, and I am glad to see you could work Piety in there!

But by “open” to you really mean something like “pursue vigorously”? I won’t say “open-and-complete asap” because while that applies to Tradition, I think Liberty (after Collective Rule) can spare a policy pick elsewhere. I am not sure about Honor and Piety. Maybe for the graphic, “choose” would work better than “open”? Especially since so many people open Tradition even when they plan to complete Liberty (or Honor), or open Honor then complete Tradition (or Liberty).

first of all i never saw such a big difference between the two trees and the latest tradition nerf helped alot to compensate it. liberty is to compensate low early production places and u wanna expand FAST (free worker is great at turn 15 but useless later on, for example if u can grab one from the city states and so on).

the NQ group plays a special enviroment which is not the pinnacle for balancing, its more suited for turtle style games. liberty is fine, its like a sprinter to grab fast a lot of bonus to take while tradition is like a marathon runner. i often take BOTH trees, but ppl always wanna finish just one and i guess this is the big missunderstandig of the policies.