Liberty Vs Tradition

I would say tradition and liberty and pretty balanced at the moment, although liberty could use a boost to republic. Use tradition playing a "traditional" game, use liberty if you want to beeline a tech such as steel.

ok, now I see why I was not convinced by the liberty start: I always play quick pace and that means the tradition opening is even more powerful...

One city NC start (no monument):
1. SP at turn 15 =>tradition means
2. SP at turn 23 instead of 30 (with liberty) or even turn 45 (with honor)
3. SP at turn 38 instead of 60

from there on, there are too many variables like how many cities to continue a simple example. Summary: tradition means additional 300 culture points by turn 115...that's worth it in my book...

Janne said:

ok, now I see why I was not convinced by the liberty start: I always play quick pace and that means the tradition opening is even more powerful...

One city NC start (no monument):
1. SP at turn 15 =>tradition means
2. SP at turn 23 instead of 30 (with liberty) or even turn 45 (with honor)
3. SP at turn 38 instead of 60

from there on, there are too many variables like how many cities to continue a simple example. Summary: tradition means additional 300 culture points by turn 115...that's worth it in my book...

Click to expand...

But you got to keep in mind that the SP you get at turn 30 with libery opener is citizenship and not liberty itself meaning you delay your free worker by 8 turns if you do tradition -> meritocracy.

The only SP that is sped up is meritocracy (and maybe sightly the 5th I would have to check precise quick speed scaling)

that 300 extra culture by turn 115 helped your capital border expansion for 100 turns but it has been delaying each of your policy since the 4rth or 5th

Having more SPs open means nothing if the extra SP gives you "nothing"

Like if you go trad/meritocracy/scholasticism/scientific revolution then trad has significantly crippled your game. There is no way saving at best 10 turns on the free GP from meritocracy & the extra border expansion in your capital will have compensated delaying scholasticism by 10-25 turns and then all of the rationalism sps by 25-40 turns

It does give a very good illusion that it is better though since "you have more SPs open"...but the 1 extra SP is tradition itself and it really blows so 11 SPs is not better than 10SPs if you got your 5th-11th SPs later on a timeline than you did in the other path for your 4th-10th SP.

I've tried playing around with a hybrid opening recently that tries to generate a large amount of culture to start. It relies on getting Stonehenge and I've only gotten up to Emperor, so I'm not sure it would fly on higher difficulty.

It usually also requires having two luxuries somewhere near the capital to sell to other civs for one-time lumps of gold.

It goes: Tradition (3 culture in capital) -> Liberty (1 additional culture) -> Citizenship (free worker) -> Representation (less policy penalty when founding new cities) -> Collective Rule (free settler) -> Meritocracy (free engineer) -> Legalism (free temples)

If there's enough gold generated at the start and I can often sell a luxury for 300 gold, then a cultural city-state can be bought off for 500 gold which boosts the process along.

I've started building Monument -> Scout -> Warrior -> Warrior/Scout -> Stonehenge. It leaves the terrain at the capital undeveloped until Citizenship comes around, but it's good for early defense.

After Stonehenge, work starts on a Settler. Within a few turns of the Settler finishing production, I can usually sell my second luxury to work towards buying a 2nd Settler. Collective Rule provides a 3rd settler, and with the 3 settlers I can get out 4 early cities (though the other civs have normally each founded a 2nd city by this point).

Depending on the terrain, I've built monuments in the other 3 cities pretty quickly, though sometimes squeezed them in just before Legalism popped. I forget which tech provides temples, but it can be grabbed in enough time to get 4 free temples for all the starting cities.

I've been using the Great Engineer from meritocracy to pop the Collossus in a seaside city for later gold generation. I haven't tried popping the Hanging Gardens, but that could provide a large early boost as well. The Great Engineer can also pop the Oracle, and if the Monuments are down early enough then Legalism could be grabbed from that. Landed Elite or Monarchy could then be grabbed off the next policy, depending on whether you want to grow the frontier cities or the capital.

I've used this in my last three games, but only on Emperor. It is terrain dependant, relying on the early nearby luxuries (in the capital and at frontier cities). Also, it helps to be able to set up highly defensible frontier cities with a few archers built for defense. It's been pretty fun starting awash in culture, though it does hurt the tech pace a little.

snarzberry said:

If your goal is to get to meritocracy then it's faster to just take the three liberty policies. I can remember making this mistake after the changes to social policies were made a couple of patches ago. Now I consider this opening of tradition - liberty - x - x almost invariably a bad idea. There are exceptions but not for the type of opening we're discussing.

Some have claimed it could be justified if you intend to take additional policies in tradition at a later time, but I can't see this as being a good idea either due to the strength of the policies in trees of the later eras...

Click to expand...

I'm with you but for one thing--and forgive me as I've been drinking. Clearly Meritocracy is faster by skipping Tradition. But what is the break-even point? If that point is somewhat close to Meritocracy, even if it's a net loss in terms of how fast you're getting Meritocracy itself, then it's a net gain for overall SP's.

Again, I'm not arguing as I'm sure the math's been posted, and I apologize for rehashing. Just looking to get my head around where the break-even points are.

Edit; Don't know if it affects anything but my average length is Epic--occasionally Standard, occasionally Marathon, but usually Epic.

Give me liberty or give me death!

I believe someone else said that once, but this is serious!

Seriously though I almost never go anything else, because I am a divide and conquer type of guy. It's not about what's best it's about what suits your personal style really I think.

Aestis25 said:

I'm with you but for one thing--and forgive me as I've been drinking. Clearly Meritocracy is faster by skipping Tradition. But what is the break-even point? If that point is somewhat close to Meritocracy, even if it's a net loss in terms of how fast you're getting Meritocracy itself, then it's a net gain for overall SP's.

Click to expand...

you've got it opposite... it'll only be a gain if you're planning on taking other tradition policies. the +3 culture is really inconsequential compared to the cost of later policies, and with exponentially increasing costs, any time you take a policy with the goal of getting other policies faster, it ends up being slower. the exception is obviously any culture victory game.

vexing said:

you've got it opposite... it'll only be a gain if you're planning on taking other tradition policies. the +3 culture is really inconsequential compared to the cost of later policies, and with exponentially increasing costs, any time you take a policy with the goal of getting other policies faster, it ends up being slower. the exception is obviously any culture victory game.

Click to expand...

Well Tradition policy is also a free Angkor Wat. Faster border expansion in all cities is pretty useful.

I've played around with Liberty-Collective Rule-Patronage and Liberty-Citizenship-Patronage quite a bit. It's the fastest way to Scholasticism. I don't know that it's better than Meritocracy in most circumstances, though -- often I'm not adequately funded to take great advantage of early Scholasticism.

You need the NC early to unlock Medieval in time for the third SP. And don't build early Monuments. The timing can be tricky -- plan it out far in advance. Usually there's time for the most important worker techs before you have to beeline Medieval, but not always everything you'd like. I'll sometimes settle a third or fourth city right before the third SP would happen, to push up the cost and give me a few more turns for research. Once you unlock Medieval, hire one or two Culturals at 12/turn, build those Monuments now, and you'll pick up two more policies in a hurry because they're still cheap.

If you've taken Calendar for luxes, then the shortest route to the Medieval is Theocracy. I generally prefer Metal Casting if possible. The Arabs should consider Currency.

On the higher difficulties, I find growth and food to be the most necessary bonus' to keep up with the AI's massive growth. So personally, I find landed elite be a must -- while Meritocracy is only for bee-lining Longswordsmen. Other than that, Landed Elite isn't worth giving up.

Personally I've been a bit more of a fan of Tradition openings just because after that free GP liberty loses most of it's "bang" if you straight up rush for it, mostly because Collective Rule and Republic lose their value very quickly.

I would love to see a deity LP of someone straight up bashing the world with Autocracy <.<, Puppet worlds are becoming a little too popular .

Furycrab said:

Personally I've been a bit more of a fan of Tradition openings just because after that free GP liberty loses most of it's "bang" if you straight up rush for it, mostly because Collective Rule and Republic lose their value very quickly.

I would love to see a deity LP of someone straight up bashing the world with Autocracy <.<, Puppet worlds are becoming a little too popular .

Click to expand...

The core issue with an Autocracy assault is that you'd have to remain fairly small, or go Representation + left side of Freedom, to be able to take the Autocracy policies. It just doesn't like up well given the really long RA spam/GS spam you'd need to hit Industrial Era before opening it up.

and since you want a fight, you'll likely want to go there via Artillery to ensure you can fight. (fighting early generally means you're giving up potential RAs/lux sales, and that just handicaps you for later)

Furycrab said:

I would love to see a deity LP of someone straight up bashing the world with Autocracy <.<, Puppet worlds are becoming a little too popular .

Click to expand...

it doesn't happen because it's a poor choice. when you're in a world domination run, taking the first policy in freedom to avoid very unhappy is a lot more effective than going into autocracy.

You know, they need to do something about Autocracy. It's virtually ignored by everyone, out of necessity. A totally ignored policy tree.

Heck, add Germany's UA the ability to take it without disabling the other trees, that'll shut the silly whining German players up at least.

vexing said:

it doesn't happen because it's a poor choice. when you're in a world domination run, taking the first policy in freedom to avoid very unhappy is a lot more effective than going into autocracy.

Click to expand...

It's not always a poor choice, it's just that war is typically so easy that order is more effective. And, of course, it exludes freedom and liberty, both of which are extremely popular. I do think that a few buffs to autocracy could make it more desirable for lategame warmongers, however. Say like making total war permanent, get -50% maintenance cost on your units instead of -33%, and instead of double strategic resources get a flat amount of each.

I have come to adopt a hybrid liberty/tradition opening combined with aggressive expansion. The most common variation I use is Tradition-->Liberty-->Collective Rule-->Citizenship-->Legalism. I stopped prioritizing meritocracy a few weeks ago and haven'r really regretted it. The AI tends to get the wonders before me anyway unless I rush straight to it, and I like collective rule too much to pass it over. Grabbing legalism after citizenship gives enough time to research philosophy & build monuments for the free temples. But it wouldn't be possible to have 4 cities without collective rule. The extra culture from the free temples means the next policy will come pretty quickly. And, at that point you have the option of meritocracy, landed elite, monarchy, oligarchy, representation, all solid choices depending on the situation. It's been working very well for me on emperor, I really like the flexibility.

I myself have only recently been playing Immortal/Deity and find myself more often than not going for Tradition about 60-40...on lower difficulties I use it almost exclusively.

One caveat to the OP's pick sequence: the wonder building SP should be a contender. If you start with marble and beeline philosophy, you are almost guaranteed to beat out computers to the Oracle, paying for it's cost in social policy terms. If you are on deity or don't have marble it's a bit more marginal, but will almost always result in the ability to hard build some key wonder at some later point in the game if you slingshot properly.

I would argue that either of those alone gives it marginal value, but here's the real steal: How many games do you NOT build National Epic, National Treasury, and Heroic Epic? Take 20% of the hammers from the total cost of the three, and you have the baseline 'reward' for this powerful SP.

I go direct to meritocracy via liberty. I have it timed roughly so that the tech that builds workshops is available and a great engineer will complete the great library which gives a free tech. If the great library has been built a great scientist will do the same with the loss of culture from the library. Which means you're now researching longswords.

If you have an aggressive neighbour just change to great general and create a bottleneck with a citadel.

I skip all 3 Ancient Policies and spend points from Piety onward...... lol

Can you outline the benefits of that strategy?

Only you're banking your policies (for ?) and i'm coming at you with rushed longswords...

The reason why I rush Longswords is as much about defense as it is aggression.