Liberty opening on higher difficulties (deity/immortal)

Having been a relative tradition junkie for quite a while, i have to say i have changed my opinion somewhat after playing on higher difficulties. I still think tradition is the best, but in about 25% of cases i think liberty is actually a better opener. The rough criteria i follow is as follows:

Do you have a hammer heavy or food heavy start?

If hammer heavy - tradition
If food heavy - possibly liberty

If you are on the second bracket, it really depends on two things as to whether you go liberty:

Do you have hammer heavy special resources (copper, gold, silver, gems, salt)

If yes, go tradition, if no go liberty.

You might also want to consider your neighbours:

If you are close to someone, go liberty. If you are isolated, or the AI is miles away, go tradition.

Finally, some civs work better on liberty than others. I am ignoring start bias in this. But, for instance, the Aztecs make very good liberty openers because they start in jungle (hammer poor, food rich), they can get culture through their special ability, and they are better off building jaguars and shrines early game so they can get sacred path, which again boosts culture.

Others i have found that are good:

America - manifest destiny helps with poor border pop.

Shoshone - same as above

Byzantium - you want religion as Byzantium, so for that you need shrines, which you get quicker with liberty.

The Huns - especially if you are close to someone.

Morocco - Dont underestimate a couple of early trade routes.

Venice - No brainer here really, as tradition is a bit of a waste on them.

Most war mongers are decent at liberty starts, as its basically a necessity if you are going for an early war. However, as i mentioned above, you must be poor in hammers.

I am ignoring the gamey tactic of stealing workers from city states as well.

Thoughts?

I don't understand how Liberty can possibly be the better opener in a hammer-poor start. Sure, you can get your first settler for free and build other settlers faster, but your Capital takes longer to grow to the point where you can build a settler (no Fertility Rites) and you have to build a Monument instead, as well as building a Monument in your first four cities before their borders even begin to grow properly. For all of this, you need hammers (never mind building aqueducts). The slight production bonus from Liberty can be nice, but it rarely offsets the need to build two additional buildings in each city UNLESS you want to pump out a lot of Settlers quickly to secure good city locations or a lot of units early to go for an early war and are skipping these buildings for that reason.

In addition, you miss out on the (important!) growth Bonus and some extra gold (meh!) later into the game, and the liberty tree takes a lot longer to complete in the early game because of the lower base culture. All of the remaining bonuses cancel each other out in my opinion and are very situational.

The only time I open tradition on Deity Difficulty is when I see a LOT of good city locations and/or natural wonders that I really want to grab, or when I have something special planned for the free great person that is the liberty finisher (e.g. rushing petra with a free great engineer on a really good desert city).

I would agree in general that Liberty Openers CAN be the better choice in high-difficulty games, but I think it's rarer than you say...

Ok, maybe I should have added the caveat that war is basically essential at some point. Not necessarily really early war (which doesn’t work well at all IMO), but medieval. I often find on immortal/deity war is frequently necessary early (classical or medieval). Otherwise you run the risk of being destroyed. I also find that starts which are overly poor on hammers take too long to get yourself into a position where you can threaten the AI because workers take so long to build and you don’t have the gold to buy. This is even more pronounced on deity when room often becomes much more of an issue. In both situations you run the risk of being destroyed. Taking liberty, at least in the games I have run, means you can skip building a worker for your capital and a settler for your second city. Roughly speaking, this equates to something like in the region of 25-30 turns (for both, more if you count the worker for your second city, and can be longer than this if you are really hammer poor). This is actually highly significant in my view. Picking liberty allows you to skip these and instead get yourself set up with basic infrastructure and also get an earlier than usual national college. You will have lots of food, otherwise you wouldn’t pick liberty, so you will be growing as well. You can stop the liberty social policies once you have your free settler and take 2 in tradition if you are that worried about borders, but I don’t think its that much of an issue. Then when in classical/medieval, you can go off to war (must have trade routes set up with a friendly AI or friendly CSs). Then if you are big enough you can raze everything and build cheap workers and settlers to replace it with your own (and take the SP in liberty that means 33% less for each city founded).

I guess the strategy basically means you accept you will only get 2 cities, which I often find an manageable outcome on immortal/deity as war is often necessary in the classical or medieval eras so better to use something that’s conducive to it.

I tend to use 3 kind of openings,
1) honor-tradition
2) honor- liberty
3) honor-piety

I tend to play on immortal, normal speed, fractal map.

That is opening for any civ which has any military or religious tendency, which I use depends on start.

But I almost always take first policy honor. It give bonus against barbarian and knowledge of there camps and culture form kills.

Idea behind is,
1) we want to steal worker, preferably more then one and from neighbor civ if possible.
2) we want to do camp quests for early culture/food/happiness bonuses.
3) give time to postpone decision if we lucky and found culture ruin.
After that decision depends on how easy is to steal worker as early as possible.

Example, Celt, spawn in a middle river/forest with lost of camps in a forest(3 or 4 around city I believe).
panteon +1 food from camps, honor-liberty to worker, building second worker manually after 2 scouts, monument, granary, prechoping forests - very fast GL-pyramids, NE and settler from liberty and go get shone settling near me. There cities have soo mach land - very easy game.

easy war with 1 turn repair workers. Then fill the rest of land as happiness getting available.

Combination of quick workers from liberty + pantheon lead to fast tall capital. Combination of liberty honor lead to easy warmongering.

I disagree about Aztec liberty. I like to make 3 really tall cities with Aztec and Tradition is the way to go. You can take Honor later or you can just play out 3 tall peacefully.

The thing is, even if you are in the jungle, some tiles will be bonus food and some will be regular trees. You just work, chop and grow into those tiles while keeping some jungle or chopping it later. Capture additional workers with your jags.

Thoughts,

I'd never go Liberty with Venice, I always pump population to my capital with a few coastal puppets. I don't know when you'd go Liberty with Venice.

Define gamey tactics

I go Tradition in most cases however if I'm in a jungle start I'll go Liberty it usually equates to a 50% increase in production and gets those plain tiles uncovered more quickly.
Tundra Starts with Sweden I'll go Honor, Domination games where I want to abuse Liberty +Pyramid one turn pillage.

Resipsa said:

Thoughts,

I'd never go Liberty with Venice, I always pump population to my capital with a few coastal puppets. I don't know when you'd go Liberty with Venice.

Define gamey tactics

I go Tradition in most cases however if I'm in a jungle start I'll go Liberty it usually equates to a 50% increase in production and gets those plain tiles uncovered more quickly.
Tundra Starts with Sweden I'll go Honor, Domination games where I want to abuse Liberty +Pyramid one turn pillage.

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The theory of not going tradition with venice is that you don’t beneit greatly from it. You only get 1 free monument instead of 4 and you only get 1 free aqueduct instead of 4. The other buffs that it offers are so so. You don’t really need the gold or the happiness from monarchy and with all of your trade routes, you can get plenty of food. Wonder spamming is not really a great option at higher difficulties either, so I don’t honestly see whats so great about it as far as Venice are concerned.. IMO liberty is better because you can get 2 free great merchants, which means two extra cities (albeit puppeted).

By “gamey” I mean cheap tactics like stealing city state workers.

i only play immortal and i use all four t1 trees as opener.

tradition has 2 big advantages: in cases of great land for your capital go quickly down to +2 for your cap and growth growth. the other case is not enough luxuries around so u can go for monarchy.

liberty is perfect for bad production places and starts with awful terrain (like jungle). also if u have like 5+ different luxuries u dont need monarchy. settle close and you will get more money from your luxuries in conjunction with trade network. if u got enough money by going wide opening piety is viable too.

piety is perfect if u have enough money and dont know where to spend. to open it i prefer building settler at pop 2 in capital for more synergise from the opener (2 quickly built shrines are better then 1). pure piety is only imho viable with silver/gold or wine/incense or sometimes as hvy religious civ.

honor is for melee UU civs imho and everyone with UA suited towards war, like japan, germany, songhai, aztecs and so on. going quickly down to military caste is never a bad idea regardless of your land. if u need money then open tradition meanwhile and use oligarchy, legalism n monarchy. in late game professional army is a great eco boosting policy, while the left side is more for pure warmongering. (early citadels are sometimes nice to steal land from a city state, better then conquering for diplomatic penalties)

sherbz said:

The theory of not going tradition with venice is that you don’t beneit greatly from it. You only get 1 free monument instead of 4 and you only get 1 free aqueduct instead of 4. The other buffs that it offers are so so. You don’t really need the gold or the happiness from monarchy and with all of your trade routes, you can get plenty of food. Wonder spamming is not really a great option at higher difficulties either, so I don’t honestly see whats so great about it as far as Venice are concerned.. IMO liberty is better because you can get 2 free great merchants, which means two extra cities (albeit puppeted).

By “gamey” I mean cheap tactics like stealing city state workers.

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1. More upfront culture
2. Border Growth
3. Significant amount of early game growth prior to getting puppets running trade routes to the capital
4. Monarchy essentially provides +1 happiness per 2 citizens. Around turn 200 when Venice is 30 pop, where else are you going to get 15 Happiness from? CS and Happiness Buildings are a wash because you are going to get them too.
5. The hammer bonus applies to National Wonders too and Venice builds a of those.

If you want additional puppets go smash some face, with your UU.

Is stealing workers the onlything you consider gamey?

Edit: Out of curiosity how many CS do you Puppet? I might try to go Liberty/Pyramids with Venice and just use the MoV to buy additional armies.

I used to think stealing workers was an exploit. Now, I don't think so.
The AI does do a pretty good job of protecting them, only very early, before they have any military units do they leave them unguarded, so it's not like you will always get them without a fight.
It's no different than how barbarians harass your early workers.
The penalty to relations with what otherwise could be a very useful source of resources does make the strategy a bit of a trade-off. And the time it takes to commit the military units to the act, you could be clearing barbarian camps for gold and influence, you could be scouting more city states and natural wonders.

Hey, I didn't know right offhand but you get free culture buildings and Aqueducts with Venice FYI

Abraxis said:

The penalty to relations with what otherwise could be a very useful source of resources does make the strategy a bit of a trade-off. And the time it takes to commit the military units to the act, you could be clearing barbarian camps for gold and influence, you could be scouting more city states and natural wonders.

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The first time I tried worker stealing trick (which wasn't a long time ago), the Civ I stole from became my most trusted ally the whole game (don't try this against Attila though). You only need your starting warrior to do it, and some luck with the terrain (get lucky some more and you can get it with a single scout). By far the single best use of your starting warrior (takes forever to clear barb camp and not as good when scouting).

You know whats more gamey than worker stealing? Paying the AI to DOW your Allies and then immediately denouncing and DOWing them

Resipsa said:

You know whats more gamey than worker stealing? Paying the AI to DOW your Allies and then immediately denouncing and DOWing them

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Sounds pretty legitimate, the only gamey thing about it is the AI isn't smart enough to do it, but if that were our qualification for gamey strategies we'd have to consider half the game's mechanics as gamey exploits.
It just sounds like general political intrigue, I'm sure there must be real-world precedents as well.

Resipsa said:

You know whats more gamey than worker stealing? Paying the AI to DOW your Allies and then immediately denouncing and DOWing them

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Agreed. Especially with the new warmongering penalties, it just feels too cheesy and too exploitative. Heavy use of bribes for DOWs turns Deity into a boring walk in the park in most cases, which I guess is fine if your aim is an easy win, but not so good if you want more of a challenge.

"Especially with the new warmongering penalties"?? It wouldn't be *necessary* to do cheesy things like double-cross your allies if the warmongering penalties weren't so unbalanced. This is the first version of CIV which punishes non-peaceful play, and it's stupid. Luckily, there are creative ways around this *fundamentally broken and unbalanced mechanic*... ways like double-cross DoWs.

I agree with Abraxis. However, I do wish the AI behaved more like a player. Players would never fall for that.

If they made the AI behave more like a player (refuse to give cash for gpt deals, etc) then a lot of the Deity AI boosts wouldn't even be necessary. Half of them only exist (it seems) to counter-balance AI stupidity.

Resipsa said:

Hey, I didn't know right offhand but you get free culture buildings and Aqueducts with Venice FYI

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This varies. In my experience, you only get them if you acquire the policy *after puppeting*. So, you'll likely get free Aqeuducts but not free Monuments. Maybe Venice is the exception.

Cromagnus said:

This varies. In my experience, you only get them if you acquire the policy *after puppeting*. So, you'll likely get free Aqeuducts but not free Monuments. Maybe Venice is the exception.

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I think Venice is an exception, did it last night on a deity game, went optics later, after NC to get a grab bag of additional units to throw at a Civ I was planning on attacking. I received a (free) monument and aqueduct.

My point about double crossing the AI to get them to DOW your Allies was that there are plenty of tactical things you can do not just worker steal(In that if you don't worker steal liberty gets stronger for the free early worker). Personally if the game let's me do it, I do it.

Resipsa said:

I think Venice is an exception, did it last night on a deity game, went optics later, after NC to get a grab bag of additional units to throw at a Civ I was planning on attacking. I received a (free) monument and aqueduct.

My point about double crossing the AI to get them to DOW your Allies was that there are plenty of tactical things you can do not just worker steal(In that if you don't worker steal liberty gets stronger for the free early worker). Personally if the game let's me do it, I do it.

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Sure. There are plenty of other things one can do to gain an advantage. I almost never need less than 6 workers in a game. If I can steal 3, and get the other 3 for free, that's way better than building 3. Early game hammers and gold are at a premium. There are few things in the game that change the outcome as much as early worker steals. Should it be as easy as it is? No. CS AND AI should protect workers. This would be easy if CS built units before workers. If the AI dedicated one unit per worker as protection, this whole conversation would be moot. And I wish they would!