Is there any point to going Liberty over Trad if you are secluded with no neighbors?

macheteman

Chieftain
Joined
Jul 20, 2013
Messages
44
I really want to go for a Domination victory using liberty (honor??), but I am right at my first policy and my map is below.

It is Standard/Pangea, but with that mountain range blocking off nearly everything, Tradition is looking better and better for a great start. Lack of unique luxs also pushes me towards Trad.

Spoiler :
 
Trad/Honor(or Commerce) is also viable for domination,and would definetly suit this terrain better,since you'll gimp yourself alot by choosing liberty(you have space,but still not nearly good enough terrain to avoid the happiness suffer,which would be inevitable if you setlled more than 4 cities,heck, i'd even consider settling three with this map..)
Atleast that's my two cents :)
 
Trad/Honor(or Commerce) is also viable for domination,and would definetly suit this terrain better,since you'll gimp yourself alot by choosing liberty(you have space,but still not nearly good enough terrain to avoid the happiness suffer,which would be inevitable if you setlled more than 4 cities,heck, i'd even consider settling three with this map..)
Atleast that's my two cents :)
Thats what I am leaning toward. Lack of happiness due to unique luxs and city states pretty much negates Libertys ability to expand quickly. Whats the point of settling 4+ cities via Liberty if production and happiness is limiting?
 
Ofcourse,and if you are going for domination you will eventually have atleast 7 new cities:) (standard map)
 
I think Liberty is fine for this. It's far too early to declare yourself completely secluded. That mountain range isn't blocking EVERYTHING.

I actually often do Liberty with only 3 self-founded cities when I want to do some conquering. The early hammers from Liberty are nice for getting an army out quick, and there are other benefits to Liberty besides founding cities -- fast Workers are awesome for conquest, especially with Persia. With Pyramids and a movement bonus, you can do really efficient pillage/repair for healing your units. This is the actually the biggest reason to go Liberty, in my opinion. There's other nice stuff there, too. The free Golden Age is very relevant with Persia. And the per-city culture savings will add up over time once you conquer some cities, even if you aren't founding a ton yourself.
 
The best thing about Liberty is the faster expansion and how that enables you to have more archers at T60ish for upgrade to CB. If you don't want to war with CBs, go Honor or Tradition.
 
Assuming you want to use conquest as a decent part of your strategy, then I'd say that it breaks down like this:-

1. Honor is best if you are going full DomV and trying a strategy where you delay initial war but want to win ASAP after you start.

2. Liberty is best if you want to war early, and especially if you want to transition to a wide culture or science game.

3. Tradition is best if you want to turtle until a certain tech and then start a capital sweep or simply a one-time enlargement. But it struggles if you keep too many cities.

I'm most comfortable with Liberty. I think that, overall, it's better than Tradition if I want to make good use of conquest. But Honor and Tradition are both good trees, just very different.
 
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