What if Liberty Removed the Science Penalty?

Liberty isn't underpowered, it doesn't need any buffs. Problem is, Tradition is too good.

Someone nailed the issue in an earlier post.

BNW moved economy over to trade routes. What this means is that expanding continues to cost you maintenance per city (because you still need multiple copies of each building) while the main way of getting money back is fixed. Wide empire or tall, you are stuck with the same number of trade routes. So on top of everything else they have to pay for with science and culture penalties, wide empires get hit with extra gold costs, particularly early in the game when you can only have 1 or 2 trade routes. This issue doesn't just effect Liberty, it has a huge effect on Piety and Honor as well. In G&K cities generally paid for themselves with buildings, and while that is partially true now, the main way they pay for themselves now is through trade routes and population needed to work tiles (which a wide empire won't have while paying more money for buildings that have less effect).

The whole point of the science penalty is to prevent ICS from happening. Take that away and ICS becomes a great strategy again. Happiness is already nigh-irrelevant once Ideologies come into play.

At most, have a policy reduce the penalty by 33% or something similar. Taking away the penalty altogether is just too much.

vampireboot, was ICS such a huge strategy in G&K? No it wasn't, it wasn't even popular in the last vanilla patch.

vampireboot said:

The whole point of the science penalty is to prevent ICS from happening.

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Obviously. And the science cost increases do a good job of throttling early-aquisition of spaceship victories, which once again is more relevant for preventing AI puppet empires from running away than doing anything to effect player experience. It's only in Modern and post-Modern techs that the percentage increases become more daunting, because those techs are so much more expensive.

Which again is the whole reason this is being discussed. Wide empires perform better on those expensive techs, and as such catch up and surpass tall empires on science in the long run, but not until after turn 250 or so. They do this despite the science cost penalty. On the other hand, tall empires played well might still have an advantage thanks to RAs, but wide ones will have the edge in pure turns-until-tech.

The real advantage of tall play is that you can lock a Culture or Diplomacy victory before turn 250 (as in have it guaranteed by then, though it might take 40 more turns) by teching to Radio. Before turn 250, Tall empires have the science advantage. They can lock their VC before the AI starts to push back attainable victory times by catching up on culture and CS influence-boosting policies (especially on higher difficulties) , and thereby completely circumvent a lot of the intended BNW mechanics for late-game play such as World Congress and, you know, war. The tall player doesn't need enough science to get Combustion etc after Radio, because they won with Radio.

Which is really just another example of why science distorts discussion of everything else in the game.

Playing wide generally prevents early VC-lock and leads to a more engaged, interesting late game. It's actually a nice thing, and why I prefer to play wide (though I can only do so by settling on strict schedules to avoid messing up all-important national wonder timing). By focusing on the science, by discussing science at all, all we're really talking about is Tradition, and the dominance of the Radio beeline for easy culture victory.

The Radio beeline and general dominance of science need to be addressed but aren't the main problem with wide play.

The deficits BNW has introduced to wide play and liberty that really need to be addressed have to do with money and build flexibility - the flexibility of not being forced to delay hermitage 100 turns if I want to settle in the Renaissance as Spain, for example. Liberty should do more to mitigate the negative effects on economy and culture for actually playing as wide, and improve how quickly cities settled between turns 100-200 catch up with the rest of the empire, so that expansion doesn't risk completely stalling your empire.

I would be for having a liberty policy reduce, but not eliminate the penalty.

Continuing my thought, one hypothetical change that would help illustrate how wide empires are actually stronger after turn 250, would be if Ideological Tenant costs (all new culture costs after Ideology adopted, for simplicity) started really high and were discounted 5% with number of modern and post-modern techs the player acquires.

This would hurt the radio beeline, since that player now has huge culture costs until they finish filling out their tech tree, and don't get to sling-shot into tier 3 of Freedom and Order (either of which is essentially like getting 6 free wonders when adopted before turn 250). They can still get their early-adopter tenants as a perk, of course.

Not only that, wide empires would in practice tend to catch up on tech at exactly the range of turns when a tall player hits plastics, and thus be on equal footing for Ideology tenant costs, and soon enjoy relative discounts (the wide player is generally filling the tree more evenly anyway, and so collects more lower-level modern techs before heading up to information era).

vampireboot said:

The whole point of the science penalty is to prevent ICS from happening. Take that away and ICS becomes a great strategy again. Happiness is already nigh-irrelevant once Ideologies come into play.

At most, have a policy reduce the penalty by 33% or something similar. Taking away the penalty altogether is just too much.

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In civ 4 and earlier it was far easier to get a big empire and run away way to quickly.
It takes a bit longer time in Civ 5, however in the end big is allways better.

Taking away Science Penalaty will make it worse, however they should increase the Tech cost for everyone by up to like 50% more then the current one.

qemist said:

Ah, the endless wheel of buff and nerf. Back in those days Liberty was what all the smart players chose and people talked about it being OP. Now as far as I can tell, nothing changed in Tradition or Liberty between GAK and BNW, or am I wrong? Liberty was still seen as a good tree even after the collective rule demotion. What changed was they handicapped wide by introducing the science penalty, which made going wide and therefore Liberty less attractive.

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Yep, that's the thing. Liberty was awesome in GnK, where you could spam out dozens of cities with no tech penalty. Now that is less attractive, since you'll probably have about 6-7 cities even with Liberty, so Tradition is better. Trad. will help your first 4 cities grow, and you can always spare one or two trade routes to help other cities grow (5-8).

but in general, I think both tree are fairly balanced, since Tall will have more science\culture\gold by pure population, while Wide empires will have more land, in other words, more gold because of more luxuries you can trade, more culture because you can produce more (also, more land means you can have more landmarks from digs) and equal science because you'll have those extra few cities producing extra science.

alto, for culture vics, wide empires might be better, because you don't need every tech out there: once you get hotels, game can be over. I often accidentally win by culture while going for dom\science victory. This happens with Spain every single time!

Actually given the need for early expansion bonuses in Liberty, perhaps if it gave a direct +science per city (or per building ie Library).

A more general Idea might be more Happiness. (= more pop in each city)

Perhaps instead of a Golden Age, Representation could give +1 Local per Monument (since it is Culture Flavored) [and Happiness is the major limitation on early expansion]