Liberty tree with tradition opener

Say I have lot of open land and I want to go liberty.

If I choose tradition opener first and then going down the liberty tree, it will hurt early starting from the 3rd policy onwards, and then late game for delaying the powerful later policies.

But going straight for liberty hurts my capital development mid-game when I stop building settlers. I don't have access to my third ring tiles, my population is stuck in the teens with unemployed citizens and a handful of tiles in 1st/2nd ring are usually desert or ocean.

See, tradition opener is not for the +3 culture at all, it's for the reduced culture cost of spreading. The capital has a dozen things to build, monument is low on the list and tile-buying 3rd ring is too expensive.

If I knew how to quantify these effects, I could do my own math. I don't even know where to start.

I always take the Tradition opener as policy #1, no matter what. Always. Here's why:

Assuming no monument, with a mean first policy on turn 15. Monument would have even effects for both players, so no bias even if we did. Player A is Tradition opener, Player B is straight Liberty.

Turn 15 - Policy 1 (25): Player A (Tradition Opener, 4 ) Player B (Liberty Opener, 2 )
Turn 23 - Policy 2 (30): Player A (Liberty Opener, 5 )
Turn 30 - Policy 2 (30): Player B (Free Worker, 2 )
Turn 33 - Policy 3 (60): Player A (Free Worker, 5 )
Turn 48 - Policy 4 (90): Player A (Free Settler, 5 )
Turn 60 - Policy 3 (60): Player B (Free Settler, 2 )

As you can see, the Tradition opener player that "burns" a policy there only lengthens their time to a free worker / settler by 3 turns, and gets whichever they did not pick (policy 4) quicker than the straight Liberty player by a large margin, 12 turns.

Of course, Tradition opener also saves on tile buying costs and gets more good workable tiles early on. You also open up the option to take Legalism at an advantageous time later on, or get a wonder boost from Aristocracy.

Make the list with a monument in cap ...
it should be a 1. build (definatly before all other buildigns/wonders) in both sp and mp.

Allone the fact that u get the opening policiy faster which gives cult aswell and therefore double speads 2nd policy makes monument superpowerful

tommynt said:

it should be a 1. build

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so you build your monument before scout?

or do you mean the first actual building?

Skip Tradition if you want to finish Liberty quickly.

You may as well save up to 250g from 'not buying tiles' and with another 250g buy a Cultural CS...

I find I only dabble in tradition if I plan on abusing Legalism. I think getting the Liberty worker as a 2nd policy is pretty strong, but as fm points out because of the culture bump it can be manageable if you need those tiles or if Legalism is a bomb for your UB (egypt, siam, songhai)

I think the answer is 'depends'

Liegence said:

I find I only dabble in tradition if I plan on abusing Legalism. I think getting the Liberty worker as a 2nd policy is pretty strong, but as fm points out because of the culture bump it can be manageable if you need those tiles or if Legalism is a bomb for your UB (egypt, siam, songhai)

I think the answer is 'depends'

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To my mind there are some associated costs to the free second worker in that, early game, you have to defend your workers and their tile improvements from Barbs - especially if you've enabled Raging Barbarians in the game setup. Archers are probably the best bet for this, depending on your civ's UU. While Archers are now cheap they still aren't free and while you're building them you're not-building something else. While you're researching Archery you're not-researching something else.

Here is the above analysis with a Monument build figured in, on turn 15. All analysis assumes 1 city. Since both players take Liberty Opener early expansion (+1 /city) will not benefit the Liberty Only player much.

Turn 15 - Policy 1 (25): Player A (Tradition Opener, 6 ) Player B (Liberty Opener, 4 )
Turn 20 - Policy 2 (30): Player A (Liberty Opener, 7 )
Turn 23 - Policy 2 (30): Player B (Free Worker, 4 )
Turn 29 - Policy 3 (60): Player A (Free Worker, 7 )
Turn 38 - Policy 3 (60): Player B (Free Settler, 4 )
Turn 42 - Policy 4 (90): Player A (Free Settler, 7 )
Turn 59 - Policy 5 (120): Player A (whatever, 7 )
Turn 61 - Policy 4 (90): Player B (whatever, 4 )

If you add in a monument, the Tradition Opener player doesn't run away much, as the +2 from the monument brings the two a little closer relative to each other. The Tradition Opener player is lagging by 6 turns to their free worker and 4 turns to their free settler. But the Tradition Opener player passes up the Liberty Only player by the first of the three downstream Liberty policies. Obviously, the effect of having that extra 3 only compounds from there.

Of course, you also get that nice border expansion benefit in your capital, which is nothing to sneeze at.

Unless you are really desperate for an early worker (or most likely, settler) and cannot wait those few extra turns, taking the Tradition opener first in any strategy is simply mathematically superior.

so you build your monument before scout?

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depends on map/setting pretty much 50/50 - just do the analisysy how much faster u get sp with monument finished turn 8 (standard speed) to lets say turn 30 - its amazing and even bigger diff if u get trad opener straigth - = +6 cult per turn vs 1 cult per turn ..

tommynt said:

just do the analisysy how much faster u get sp with monument finished turn 8 (standard speed) to lets say turn 30

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true but i would say that unless you are on a small island on your own, i would say the bonusses a earlier scout gives (ruins, meeting others, etc) outweigh a monument.

DaveMcW said:

Skip Tradition if you want to finish Liberty quickly.

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but according to the calculation fmlizard gives this is actually not so? getting tradition first would result in finishing liberty faster on top of the bonus from tradition?

Nice info fmlizard2!

Not to go too far off topic, but are we all comfortable taking Tradition before starting Honor? This one seems like an even better deal, as I find I usually am not scrapping with Barbs till my 2nd policy hits (assuming I take Tradition). Also opens up Oligarchy which works very well with Honor.

m0bstar said:

but according to the calculation fmlizard gives this is actually not so? getting tradition first would result in finishing liberty faster on top of the bonus from tradition?

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Getting a free settler and worker is not the same as getting a free great person.

DaveMcW said:

Getting a free settler and worker is not the same as getting a free great person.

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Correct, but this doesn't assume that you won't get that person. If you finish out the pattern and assume the person takes Tradition Opener then finishes Liberty, you will get that free great person roughly the same time either way...perhaps faster with the tradition opener.

The point is that the one policy detour is as fast or faster to the ultimate end goal of a full Liberty tree.

fmlizard2 said:

the one policy detour is as fast or faster to the ultimate end goal of a full Liberty tree.

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No, it's not.

Originally Posted by fmlizard2 View Post
the one policy detour is as fast or faster to the ultimate end goal of a full Liberty tree.
No, it's not.

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in sp starting with trad opener IS really the way to go nm how u put it

fmlizard2 said:

The point is that the one policy detour is as fast or faster to the ultimate end goal of a full Liberty tree.

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most importantly your numbers are wrong,
in addition you're failing to account for exponentially increasing costs and the minimizing effect larger amounts of culture have on the 3/turn tradition provides because in general you're stopping your analysis far too early (not that it matters when you're making up numbers).

first seven policy costs go like this on standard speed, one city:
25 30 60 105 170 255 355

with two cities, no representation this gets bumped up to
25 35 70 120 195 290 410

it's easiest to just compare the total amounts of culture needed

for six policies the total culture needed is going to be around 720, depending on when you plant second city. for 7 the total goes up to 1130. tradition therefore needs to increase your total culture output by more than 60% over all those turns to end up being faster. at the very minimum your two cities should both have monuments, giving 7 base culture which tradition boosts to 10, a 43% increase. start adding in wonders, temples or a cultural ally and things look worse and worse.

you can never catch up to exponentially increasing costs with a raw 3 culture.

DaveMcW said:

Skip Tradition if you want to finish Liberty quickly.

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This.

I usually take tradion opener, honor opener, and then fill out liberty as France. I dont like a GA that early, dont see the use of 1 extra hammer, and dont usually have the wheel ready yet to connect my second city. I dont see any use for a GP either. I usually take a great engineer later on and pop Notre Dame since I beline eduction.

What else could I do instead?

vexing said:

most importantly your numbers are wrong,
in addition you're failing to account for exponentially increasing costs and the minimizing effect larger amounts of culture have on the 3/turn tradition provides because in general you're stopping your analysis far too early (not that it matters when you're making up numbers).

first seven policy costs go like this on standard speed, one city:
25 30 60 105 170 255 355

with two cities, no representation this gets bumped up to
25 35 70 120 195 290 410

it's easiest to just compare the total amounts of culture needed

for six policies the total culture needed is going to be around 720, depending on when you plant second city. for 7 the total goes up to 1130. tradition therefore needs to increase your total culture output by more than 60% over all those turns to end up being faster.

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It's better to just divide 410 by 3 to get 136.7. If the liberty opener completes his tree in 136 turns or fewer after making his first culture pick he wins, otherwise the tradition opener wins. (Where winning is defined as the liberty GP closer).

This discussion ignores two other benefits of the Tradition opener: the border expansion and the option of taking Legalism later.