Why Liberty as opposed to Tradition.

beetle said:

I agree completely. I would argue that Liberty is actually less forgiving when it comes to city locations. But you opened Liberty only because there were 6+ good sites to settle early.

Absolutely, but it not okay to have gone with Liberty in that situation.

Yeah, but for so small an empire, as Nick31 points out, the player would have been much, much better using Tradition.

The difficulty I have is that, even with two scouts as first builds, the decision to open Liberty or Tradition sometimes is still just a guess.

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These are all reasonable points. I think I just value Liberty for different reasons.

One difference is that the "standard" Liberty build I've been experimenting with lately is Monument-first. As many have said, the free Liberty Settler often comes late -- building the Monument first is a good way to address this. However, the cost of this is that I'm often committing to Liberty before I have any idea of how much space there is to expand.

The reason I think this is ok is that I view Liberty's #1 purpose as being a way to compensate for bad starting dirt, in particular low-production starts. Liberty is especially suited to Jungle starts, where you may not even have a workable hill until after you research Bronze Working and invest some Worker turns chopping. In these situations, it may be a very long time before you could build a Settler in under 15 turns if you went Tradition. By going Liberty, you ensure yourself timely expansion and a reasonably quick National College. I think ensuring a good start in these situations is worth sacrificing some long-term boosts.

If you're re-rolling and only playing good starts, then sure, Tradition is probably better. But I think Liberty is very nice for bad starts, and it doesn't actually involve much guessing, since you know what your starting dirt looks like from the very first turn.

Shark Diver said:

As for t350 SV, that can turn into t300 or better soon enough. Keep playing.

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I appreciate your encouragement, but I don't think I am really progressing much on that front. Still having lots of fun though!

Acken said:

I may give it some tries, been a while I haven't played Liberty seriously. I'm doubtful it can beat my best times with Tradition (below T210) but it looks worthy of a shot still.

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I think Liberty is as much about keeping the game interesting as opposed to being optimal or even competitive with Tradition. I replayed some maps both ways, and completion time was about the same. (It's hard to attribute the difference to anything other than map knowledge.) For me, the Liberty games were more work, but I enjoyed them more. When I focus on Honor OTOH, I am not competitive at all.

@Beetle

The word "Competitive" can be understood many ways. But I believe the most widely accepted definition on this forum is Victory Speed. I am not saying this is the wrong definition, in fact this is the most easily obtainable metric when comparing plays. However, what I don't agree with is how some people use "Competitive" synonymously with "Good Play". I think there are many levels of "Good Play". For example, is a T300 finish any worse than a T250 finish when the T300 player is able to put the other AIs so far behind that it doesn't matter when he is finishing the game while the T250 player barely launches into space, just 10 turns ahead of the next best AI. To put it in terms of sports (soccer), is a 5-3 win any better than a 1-0 win? Of course, a team that consistently wins 5-3 thrillers will say that they are the more competitive team because they score more goals, while a team that consistently wins solid 1-0 games will say that they are more competitive because they concede less. To be honest, they are both right and they are both good in their own way, but they should also respect each other's approach to the game.

Winning the game requires at least one of these two objectives:
1. Get ahead of everyone with minimal intervention of other opponents
2. Slow down all the opponents through successful intervention

Any play that is able to accomplish at least one of these objectives can be considered "Good Play" or "Correct Play". In the debate between Liberty and Tradition, the latter puts the player in a better position to accomplish objective 1 while the former puts the player in a better position to accomplish objective 2. The social policy trees are designed not to be played the same way.

The same argument could be applied to generating Great Scientists and Great Merchants. Generating GSs puts the player in a better position to accomplish objective 1 while generating GMs puts the player in a better position to accomplish objective 2. Because instead of using the GSs to bulb ahead of everyone scientifically, I can use the money from GMs to create units and infrastructure to influence the game in a more immediate way, such as slowing down an AI by direct intervention or bribery, buying out city states, etc.

@ Acken. Re: Korea. It is hard to force a strategy. I played the map and the fact that I got petra. The liberty-freedom thing mainly helped the secondary cities. I would suggest this strategy when given lot of happiness but low food potential.

My memories form the Egypt game are a bit dim, I've been playing Civ IV a while now. The religion was desert faith and happiness. I believe I used the 4 city NC and then expanded to 8 cities and liberty finisher on Macchu Picchu as I had seen a neighbor build it.

Early game suggestions are:
- Found or convert to a happy religion, preferably the faith buildings.
- You need at least one decent city to build SOL and apollo in, usually your cap but not necessarily. In other cities avoid building anything that is not units, specialist buildings, granaries, circuses and coliseums, might make an exception for an early wonder like oracle or macchu picchu if your prod is good.
- Surplus policies before rationalism preferably go in commerce, but exploration might work on a water map. You will need gold for the late game to buy 5 or 6 parts.
- Build early army with your early prod for bullying an AI, steal his workers, secure land, plunder for fun and profit.
- Be smart about it so that you do not get hated and can trade resources and foreign trade routes.
- If doing the more warlike approach I suggest conquest when the cities are more mature, around turn 100.
- Try Korea for peaceful or Persia if you want more war. Huns might be fun as well.

Vitruvius said:

The word "Competitive" can be understood many ways. But I believe the most widely accepted definition on this forum is Victory Speed. I am not saying this is the wrong definition, in fact this is the most easily obtainable metric when comparing plays. However, what I don't agree with is how some people use "Competitive" synonymously with "Good Play". I think there are many levels of "Good Play". For example, is a T300 finish any worse than a T250 finish when the T300 player is able to put the other AIs so far behind that it doesn't matter when he is finishing the game while the T250 player barely launches into space, just 10 turns ahead of the next best AI. To put it in terms of sports (soccer), is a 5-3 win any better than a 1-0 win? Of course, a team that consistently wins 5-3 thrillers will say that they are the more competitive team because they score more goals, while a team that consistently wins solid 1-0 games will say that they are more competitive because they concede less. To be honest, they are both right and they are both good in their own way, but they should also respect each other's approach to the game.

Winning the game requires at least one of these two objectives:
1. Get ahead of everyone with minimal intervention of other opponents
2. Slow down all the opponents through successful intervention

Any play that is able to accomplish at least one of these objectives can be considered "Good Play" or "Correct Play". In the debate between Liberty and Tradition, the latter puts the player in a better position to accomplish objective 1 while the former puts the player in a better position to accomplish objective 2. The social policy trees are designed not to be played the same way.

The same argument could be applied to generating Great Scientists and Great Merchants. Generating GSs puts the player in a better position to accomplish objective 1 while generating GMs puts the player in a better position to accomplish objective 2. Because instead of using the GSs to bulb ahead of everyone scientifically, I can use the money from GMs to create units and infrastructure to influence the game in a more immediate way, such as slowing down an AI by direct intervention or bribery, buying out city states, etc.

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Very well said, Vitruvius, and I love the soccer analogy.

What I've been trying to say, is there is a difference between "speed of victory" and "likelihood of victory".

Your analogy is better.

But I don't agree that the Great Merchant ever justifies the cost. Bad game metrics, as $ is far more easily replaceable.

chumchu said:

@ Acken. Re: Korea. It is hard to force a strategy. I played the map and the fact that I got petra. The liberty-freedom thing mainly helped the secondary cities. I would suggest this strategy when given lot of happiness but low food potential.

My memories form the Egypt game are a bit dim, I've been playing Civ IV a while now. The religion was desert faith and happiness. I believe I used the 4 city NC and then expanded to 8 cities and liberty finisher on Macchu Picchu as I had seen a neighbor build it.

Early game suggestions are:
- Found or convert to a happy religion, preferably the faith buildings.
- You need at least one decent city to build SOL and apollo in, usually your cap but not necessarily. In other cities avoid building anything that is not units, specialist buildings, granaries, circuses and coliseums, might make an exception for an early wonder like oracle or macchu picchu if your prod is good.
- Surplus policies before rationalism preferably go in commerce, but exploration might work on a water map. You will need gold for the late game to buy 5 or 6 parts.
- Build early army with your early prod for bullying an AI, steal his workers, secure land, plunder for fun and profit.
- Be smart about it so that you do not get hated and can trade resources and foreign trade routes.
- If doing the more warlike approach I suggest conquest when the cities are more mature, around turn 100.
- Try Korea for peaceful or Persia if you want more war. Huns might be fun as well.

Click to expand...

I sadly already know most of this I'll figure something out.

Competitive - is for sure just potential to protect empire now and be able to win eventually.
In my understanding the best contribution to being "competitive" on large pangea:
1. Good defencive city locations at your borders.
2. The more land is the better (better chances for oil/coal/aluminium/uranium/sites, more luxuries or other sellable resources)
3. Good production (for military and buildings).

I don't like term "the earliest win", because it requires constantly benefit from glitches in bad AI. IMHO it is much better to feel the game as close as possible to real world instead.

Vitruvius said:

For example, is a T300 finish any worse than a T250 finish when the T300 player is able to put the other AIs so far behind that it doesn't matter when he is finishing the game while the T250 player barely launches into space, just 10 turns ahead of the next best AI.

Click to expand...

The problem with this example is that presumably your T300 player is playing leisurely, and could have won much faster if he had set his mind to it. The T250 player may be pushing himself to his limit, or maybe he has no chance of losing either.

To put it in terms of sports (soccer), is a 5-3 win any better than a 1-0 win? Of course, a team that consistently wins 5-3 thrillers will say that they are the more competitive team because they score more goals, while a team that consistently wins solid 1-0 games will say that they are more competitive because they concede less. To be honest, they are both right and they are both good in their own way, but they should also respect each other's approach to the game.

Click to expand...

This is analogy again assumes situations where loosing is extremely unlikely. Which may be the case with most players in this forum, but that is not where I am at yet. My favorite games have been narrow victories. I think it is more fun when loosing is more than plausible. Maybe folks keep it interesting by focus on trimming down the turns to victory, but I have not gotten to that stage yet.

beetle said:

This is analogy again assumes situations where loosing is extremely unlikely.

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Good observation, I presume the win in either case. I play tradition if I want to hit Next Turn and win the game quickly (both in turns and in real life time) or I go liberty/tradition mix to dominate the entire map.

Just because they are starting trees doesn't make them less than those available later.
I would rather have full liberty than full commerce or full rationalism when I am conquering the entire world.

To settle the debate. A definition we probably can agree on.

Competitive is only defined regarding who you consider to be the competitors.

If your competitors are the AI in the game who races for a win, then all strategies to win are competitive.
If your competitors are the other players outside the game who race for speed win, then strategies giving the best times are competitive.

If you want an analogy take Dark Souls for example. You could consider some build competitive in 3 different ways:
-A build is competitive if it allows you to finish the game without trouble
-A build is competitive if it allows you to fight other players with efficiency
-A build is competitive if it allows you to get some of the best times in a speed run competition

It's obvious that if you don't consider yourself in a race you don't care about running efficiently.

E.g. if you don't build military at all - you are not competitive, but may get the best win speed (if lucky enough).

*wonders if he's the only one that thinks competitive can only apply to multiplayer, and bemoans the fact that Aspyr, 2K and Firaxis have conspired in their laziness to make multiplayer an impossibility for him*

Multiplayer is just another form of competition.

But it sucks too much technically for me to even try to enjoy it.

Another game. This time Persia with a so-so start except for Uluru in 3d ring. Turn 250 =(

Tech order: Pottery, Animal husbandry, Bronze working, Sailing Philosophy, Consruction, Currency, Optics, Civil service, Education(114), Engineering, Compass, Metal casting, Machinery, Banking, Industry(163), Scientific Method (178), Astronomy, Electricity, Navigation, Fertilizer, Replacable parts, Plastics(202), Satelites (oxford), Penicillin, ....

Build order: scout, monument, scout, granary, immortal, caravan, 2 settlers, scout, immortal, oracle, watermill, library, NC(rushed with liberty engineer)[70], petra [83] (4 desert hills, none of them on the river 1 with a sheep The trade route is good though), settler, settler, settler... 8 cities by turn 100.

Policies:
Liberty, 2 in exploration[for cities 4-8], 2 rationalism, 3 Freedom, (Civil society, Capitalism [which I did not need], and Universal Suffrage), Rest of rationalism, Freedom for parts, 3 exploration.

Since my start was food poor I tested sun god pantheon with 2 food resources in cap + 6 food resources in city 2,3 4. I got an early religion and pagodas but I did not really have the faith to get it going. I missed borobodur and all my neighbors took piety. There were no religous city states on my continent either. City 3 and 4 lost their pantheon and ended up with no majority religion due to pressure from 3 directions. I did not enhance until turn 170ish as I wanted to build pagodas as long as they were cheap. I got 3 =(. I did just manage to get 2 great scientist by buying the first religous city state I met turn 180. This came back to bite me as I was strapped for happiness my cities expanded much too slow. I had to buy tiles for several thousand gold =(. I really missed traditions opener.

If there is one thing I would change it is this, I should have taken desert faith (4 flood plains + 4 desert hills in cap, some more in city 4) or religous idols (4 gold but I could not really work more than 2 early.) I am fed up with desert faith.

Did some early warfare to test out the changes to warmongering. Took Spains capital during liberty golden age [82] which left them boxed in with one really bad city until turn 130, in the end they never got into industrial X). This led to lots of hate from my neighbors even if I had bribed them against each other. Shoshone and Poland both attacked me but my army form the spain campaign managed them. I could not get any DoF for the next 80 turns though. I probably should have conquered a few more cities later on as my science was a bit low but happiness was not a problem.

Another strange thing was that no one of the three AI:s on the other continent got astronomy and that poland failed to discover the other continent for like 20 turns. I had to get astronomy myself (instead of stealing it form Poland) to found the world congress turn 185. I mostly play fractal, which is much slower than pangea for tech and meeting others. There are less mountain as well. I had 1 mountain spot for city 5 but that was it.

Got no coal and aluminium in my borders but could use a general and tile purchases to get them in outer rings. Messed up the end game by building hubble to early and delaying my last needed scientist with 7 turns. Everything except science was timed around turn 240. Purchased all parts. I

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@Chumchu
I'm currently giving Liberty some love to see how the tree feels and my Maya LP is feeling well (and refreshing for a change of strategy). I probably do not expand fast enough after NC (I built it manually though and went for the GS from finisher and I'm happy with that result). I'm unsure about my routes, do you still send them for food as tradition or do you try to get more gold with Liberty ? Boosting the cap still seems important for wonders but I feel that happiness can be an issue at times with too much growth when rolling on 6+ cities (especially since I wasn't able to grab a happy religion).

Trade routes.

Early trade route to other AI:s for science and for city state quests.

Thereafter my highest priority is getting the cities I planted after NC up to speed. Sending food to them allows to work more production tiles and grow into them more quickly. Because of the exponentially increasing food costs you get a lot out of that even without growth bonuses. If they are food rich you can just send production to them.

When they are at around 10 pop and/or work all good tiles+universities it is time to boost your NC/wonder city so that it can build late game heavy stuff. When it is at 25ish pop that is probably enough and it can stagnate. Your other cities should stagnate at 15-18. Thereafter you send trade ships for gold for parts.

If you are aching for happiness production routes to secondary cities are good. Before workshops you can work specialists/mines in secondary cities. Think about this when choosing city sites. I do not do many external routes after NC.

Vitruvius said:

The word "Competitive" can be understood many ways. But I believe the most widely accepted definition on this forum is Victory Speed. I am not saying this is the wrong definition, in fact this is the most easily obtainable metric when comparing plays. However, what I don't agree with is how some people use "Competitive" synonymously with "Good Play". I think there are many levels of "Good Play". For example, is a T300 finish any worse than a T250 finish when the T300 player is able to put the other AIs so far behind that it doesn't matter when he is finishing the game while the T250 player barely launches into space, just 10 turns ahead of the next best AI. To put it in terms of sports (soccer), is a 5-3 win any better than a 1-0 win? Of course, a team that consistently wins 5-3 thrillers will say that they are the more competitive team because they score more goals, while a team that consistently wins solid 1-0 games will say that they are more competitive because they concede less. To be honest, they are both right and they are both good in their own way, but they should also respect each other's approach to the game.

Click to expand...

A win is a win, but I still think that players who can win consistently faster are better because they know what to do, how to prioritize and focus.

The reason why the term "competitive" is simply not applicable to most of those wins is because they are played vs AI. Experienced players know how to abuse the AI's: steal workers, bribe to war, exploit AI's weak warfare, etc. You can't really call single-player competitive, just as you can't call Tetris competitive.

What we have here is a case of "Bards are not the Best Class."

In an RPG, the idea is to build a unique character (in this case a nation) that manages to accomplish goals but also serves up flavor. Sure, some people play Civ V like chess. But a lot of people play it like an RPG. The goal isn't "Can I win playing the exact same way every time?" but instead "I beat the game with a Warrior, now let me try a Cleric."

On Deity, you don't always get to choose how you beat the game