Another wide/liberty thread sorry

[kb27787]

My answer: just buy the buildings? (or buy a workshop/factory for the nascent city)
And losing a single trade route to feed the new city is not the end of the world (esp if your new city is coastal it grows pretty fast)
Another answer... the only national building you'd be worrying about at that stage in the game is hermitage... so why not build hermitage THEN settle...


Of course liberty will lose to tradition unless you use the early expansions to your advantage... the same way tradition would lose to liberty if their capitol fails to grow fast. So, the decision should be made on which one you value more, settling early, or growing the main city? Depending on the map, the answer may vary.
Tradition gets +2 food and +10% growth early, but with liberty, the first granary in the satellite is done faster, and that's +4 food to capitol, for example... then +8 food in no time with 2 satellites. (if all cities are coastal this is very good)

Finally, think why you want that new city (coal? oil? uranium? a certain lux for CS quests?)... if it's just to grow a city just for the sake of it, then I feel that should not be rewarded.
Wide empires do better only in a few areas: pantheon faith, and troop production (and maybe city connections). If your game's focus is not on these, then why bother going wide?

 

[Vitruvius]

I believe this is a thread created to address the problem of wide empires rather than reinforcing the notion of why tall is better than wide. We want to have a game that does not punish expansion as much as it does now, although we still want some punishment or else we will go back to the same old ICS style.

-Make the ToA a liberty wonder instead of the pyramids. Fast growth is very important for expansion now. It's also an ancient Greek wonder which kind of fits liberty a little better than an ancient Egyptian wonder. I know it wouldn't help every liberty civ but it'd at least balance the growth bonus for one civ.

The last civ i played was civ 2. I believe Pyramids back then = free granary in all cities. So your suggestion isn't very far off.

 

[bbbt]

What I'd do to change the wide vs tall balance is actually change the way the national wonders work, to make them more powerful per city instead of a flat benefit.

I.e. national college and the hermitage - instead of being a +50% science/culture boost to the city they are in, they boost the city they are in by +5% per connected city. So, if you build them in your capital and have 4 cities, it's a 20% boost. If you have 20 cities, it's a 100% boost (but your capital is likely far so there's less of a base to boost)

Then it's a balance of having a tall empire with say more base science to boost, but a smaller percentage boost, or having a wide empire with a bigger percentage or a smaller boost.

As it is, National Wonders entirely benefit tall empires - they only boost one city (which favors the taller cities), and they are cheaper to build with smaller empires.

 

[GhostSalsa]

Tradition gets +2 food and +10% growth early, but with liberty, the first granary in the satellite is done faster, and that's +4 food to capitol, for example... then +8 food in no time with 2 satellites. (if all cities are coastal this is very good)

This is why I agree that Liberty is still "good" right now - for standard 4 city starts. And exactly - I will especially favor it if I have two coastal spots for second cities, just as you say.

But this is as much of a factor of the current excessive load on essential builds that can pinch Tradition empires in the first 100 turns. It's nice that Liberty is competitive, but if it's solely for the reason that Tradition can't always get by without stealing a worker then that's more dumb... Liberty should have benefits that scale with expansion.

And why is me wanting to expand just to have another city dumb? If it's going to be a cool island settlement, I want to be able to have it. Crafting my empire and all that - it's kind of why I play...

 

[VicRatlhead5199]

What about adding "new cities start with 2 population" to the finisher of liberty? I know the free GP is pretty good but the tradition finisher lasts all game. It'd help them get to the break even point faster. Might encourage expansion a little more.

I still say tall and wide are pretty balanced, it's just the trees that aren't. Tradition works just as well wide as it does tall.

 

[Nick Carpathia]

Still why I love Civ4's expansion mechanics, that penalised early game overexpansion, but gradually ramped up your empire's capacity for going wide as you gain more techs.

 

[VicRatlhead5199]

Still why I love Civ4's expansion mechanics, that penalised early game overexpansion, but gradually ramped up your empire's capacity for going wide as you gain more techs.

Yeah but the health mechanic pretty much forced you to go wide since more cities meant more pop which in turn became more science. If you wanted to do that peacefully you had to claim the land first. Every CiIV game began with a mad land grab to claim as much as possible before some one else. Then you dealt with your empire. The penalties for over-expansion really weren't all that stiff especially if you had the financial trait. I liked CiIV but the early game kind of stunk. I like CiV's because it's a little slower and not all about claiming every bit of land before your neighbor.

 

[Wulf38]

I agree it's a problem that mid-game founded cities take too long to develop, and the options for speeding them up (buying buildings, sending a trade route) come with opportunity costs so high that it's rarely worth it. I hate when I see good land sitting idle, but can't justify settling it. I like the idea of making upgraded settlers available starting in the medieval or renaissance that found cities with some pre-built infrastructure.

 

[KmDubya]

The problem with liberty to me is that most of the policies confer a one time bonus. Of the five policies three are one time benefits.

The free settler, the free worker and the golden age. The golden age is really free in that it resets the golden age timer to the next higher level. It also happens so early that the effect is pretty small. The faster worker speed is pretty nice though, the faster settler build in the capitol is ok. The connection bonus is nice, the building bonus at 5% is pretty small though.

On the finisher liberty comes up short to tradition. Four free aqueducts are great plus you get to faith buy great engineers. Liberty gets a great person who is not free, the counter gets reset which delays the next one. Faith buying two great engineers is ridiculously easy and gets you your pick of the modern era wonders.

Tradition gets more gold, more happiness, more growth, borders that expand quickly, increased city attack, the ability to faith buy great engineers and free garrisons. Liberty gets a fast free worker, a fast free settler and a pick of a great person.

I still pick liberty if I need to get three cities up fast due to proximity of the AI or if the map has an abundance of nice settling spots. I play at emperor level so I can make non optimal choices in order to have fun. Tradition just has a lot more going for it and is a more powerful choice.

To fix the disparity you would need to increase the benefits of liberty. Make workers have no maintenance cost, make the free great person really free as well as the golden age, increase the building speed to 10% or more and maybe add in a percentage reduced building maintenance cost. Maybe have the benefits increase in later eras in order to not unbalance the early game.

 

[Rooftrellen]

-remove a lot of the gpt from tradition. The maintenance free stuff and gpt from monarchy are dinosaurs left over from before river and coastal gold were removed. They were to help a tall empire compete economically with wide empires who could work a lot more gold tiles and trading posts. It probably should have been removed at the same time because it means liberty civs are much more dependent on the same number of trade routes.

- if gold isn't removed from tradition maybe it should be added to liberty. Maybe 4 workers maintenance free (not free but maintenance free, you'd still have to build them) at citizenship and +1gpt for city connections at meritocracy. Adding 1gpt to city connections would make the happiness from meritocracy attainable sooner without killing your economy.

And then it hit me.

It's not just Tradition that is a bit of a dinosaur, but Liberty, too.

The penalties to wide empires have indirectly nerfed Liberty, but Liberty didn't change to help neutralize those new penalties.

Just like Tradition was made to help tall empires compete with wide ones (regardless of how effective that was).

Besides your ideas, which I think are good, Liberty could use a reduction in science cost increase per city. It could, with a SP, make national wonders buildable when, say, half your cities have the needed buildings. It might need to help with GWAM production or drastically reduce the cost of buying tiles (now that I think about it, I might want to try a wide America game...).

To help with gold costs, I would definitely put Oligarchy's bonuses in Liberty (it fits better in a wide empire that has more gold restraints and fewer hammers for city defenses.)

In fact, thinking about my BNW games, Tradition is normally better for wide empires, ignoring the capital, due to getting some free buildings and units (add in faster access to happiness and bonus gold, which wide empires need more than tall...)

Tradition could use some changes to make it more specialized for the BNW tall empire, instead of being universally good. Liberty could use some changes to make it better for the BNW reality for wide empires.

As a side note, Honor could use some bonuses for BNW wide empires, as well, as it does very little to help deal with the costs of gaining a new city. Tradition does better, in giving free buildings (saving hammers and gold) and providing a way to make those units free after your conquest.

Tradition's bonuses are too good for wide empires, and Liberty's (and Tradition's) design is for an older version of the game, and, as the game has changed, it changed in ways that make Tradition better than Liberty for going wide (and still better for tall).

 

[Wulf38]

The problem with liberty to me is that most of the policies confer a one time bonus. Of the five policies three are one time benefits.

I think you're underrating the long-term benefits of liberty a bit. Don't forget that Representation also makes all future social policies cheaper, by about 10% if you have 4 non-puppet cities besides your capital. That plus the chance of taking key city sites before the AI can, and the tile improvement advantage, adds up quite a bit over time.

It's possible that it could use some more marginal tweaking, but right now I think the balance between tradition and liberty is as good as it's ever been in the game's history. It's certainly in better shape than the balance of honor and piety.

 

[Strategist83]

I agree that Wide empires need to be accommodated. At least before BNW they didn't have some massive science penalty working against them.

Facepalming every time I read this (which is often indeed). This 5% malus has a psychological effect far beyond what game effects it actually has. Please, run the numbers - this "huge" science malus is no worse than the one you get on culture.

The example game was Immortal, as stated. And I find the AI is useless at having duplicate luxes to trade post-patch, because it will settle far-away unique luxes before duplicates, making the trade screen a waste of time.

In my Spain game, happiness wasn't a problem because I was Spain and had a good religion. GPT wasn't even as bad as most of my wide runs because I had Machu Picchu. The problem was building, technology, and wonder deficit. The problem was wide-ness.

Sorry about missing the Immortal statement. It doesn't change much, though - it's the same problem of the AI not playing the game by the rules you're running into as you explicitly give an example of yourself.

You'll have to elaborate on what you mean by 'wideness being a problem'. The gist of this thread is that a tall empire is always better than a wide one by default. I may be in the minority around here (with so many of the 5%-OMG people around) but I say it isn't the case. It isn't true that building more cities in the renaissance is meaningless or detrimental - it gets you behind on the national wonder construction, sure, but it gets you ahead on everything else. The national wonders are only in the game to give small empires a chance against wide ones - they aren't the end-all-be-all and it won't break your game if you don't build them [as fast] since you're already benefitting from the obvious positive effects of having 2-3 times as many cities as somebody else.

You're wrong though: happiness is always the problem. If you have unlimited happiness (as you suggest) there's absolutely no reason why you wouldn't just expand indefinitely. In that case, Liberty is hands down better than Tradition. Even the NC (which is overrated in the first place) becomes unimportant if you can just put down cities at will.

If you have the happiness there's absolutely no reason to wait until industrial to settle a city. Hermitage isn't special, you're missing out on (or, at least: making difficult) various national wonders throughout the game every time you settle a new city. Yes, the tenets do reduce 'turnaround' times but it doesn't make it the only viable time to settle cities - city turnaround time continuosly reduces throughout the game and - this is perhaps the important part - is never very long, especially not for a Liberty player.

Now, to address the "building-deficit": Have your cities work high-production tiles. This is how Liberty works, production focus rather than food focus. Working hills and special resources it shouldn't be a problem getting infrastructure up in due time. No, of course your sattellite cities aren't going to be competing for wonders with Tradition capitals, but they will get the basic infrastructure done.

 

[kaspergm]

Facepalming every time I read this (which is often indeed). This 5% malus has a psychological effect far beyond what game effects it actually has. Please, run the numbers - this "huge" science malus is no worse than the one you get on culture.

Well the culture penalty is pretty devastating for going wide, or at least it was before they cut it back in BnW, so perhaps that was not the best comparison. But with that being said, I agree that the numbers themselves wouldn't suggest that this should be such a big problem.

None the less, I do feel that there is a very unfortunate synergy going on with the current game elements, because the increased science cost will be layed on top of the effect of generally slower city growth in major cities (happiness constraints), slower access to key national wonders (if you expand right from the start, it can take a VERY long time before you're able to build National College) and slower access to social policies (which WILL matter once you open Rationalism).

This thread has once again raised my awareness of the problems with National Wonders. A central problem is the fact that National College just is overall imbalanced. +50 % Science in your capital is such a huge bonus that any competitive strategy I see starts with "beeline Philosophy, build National College asap." - and that is no matter whether you intend on going tall or wide. That *is* a problem imo. A simple first solution (that I play with myself as part of a mod) is cutting the science bonus from NC down to 25 % (move the remaining 25 % to Oxford University), this makes NC less vital and thus puts some more freedom to take alternate tech paths. Secondly, I do agree what others have said, cost per city might be toned down a bit and more importantly, perhaps change the current "all cities" condition to be "all cities *or* a fixed number of cities (like 6 cities)" which would mean that settling new cities midgame won't freeze all national wonders once you have grown that number of cities up to major cities.

 

[Plumfairy]

I agree it's a problem that mid-game founded cities take too long to develop, and the options for speeding them up (buying buildings, sending a trade route) come with opportunity costs so high that it's rarely worth it. I hate when I see good land sitting idle, but can't justify settling it. I like the idea of making upgraded settlers available starting in the medieval or renaissance that found cities with some pre-built infrastructure.

It looks like the devs tried to offer this kind of thing with some of the order tenets, but man.... the opportunity cost for picking those "new city" tenets rather than the standard tenet choices is just too steep.

 

[GhostSalsa]

You're wrong though: happiness is always the problem. If you have unlimited happiness (as you suggest) there's absolutely no reason why you wouldn't just expand indefinitely. In that case, Liberty is hands down better than Tradition. Even the NC (which is overrated in the first place) becomes unimportant if you can just put down cities at will.

If you have the happiness there's absolutely no reason to wait until industrial to settle a city. Hermitage isn't special, you're missing out on (or, at least: making difficult) various national wonders throughout the game every time you settle a new city. Yes, the tenets do reduce 'turnaround' times but it doesn't make it the only viable time to settle cities - city turnaround time continuosly reduces throughout the game and - this is perhaps the important part - is never very long, especially not for a Liberty player.

My happiness wasn't unlimited but it was a large cushion for steady expansion, which I tried to leverage and sadly should have left alone.

Claiming there's no difference/reason to wait between mid-game and Industrial settling is a really extreme statement. With a non-settling mid-game, Hermitage and World Fair often come online the same 50-turn span that you open your ideology, it lets you slingshot 5 policies deep which, if you are taking Autocracy or Order, is more or less all the buffer you need to commence late-game expansion/conquest.

I can't settle a city mid-game and just ignore it because I'm still happy. I am sending workers and fussing with huge expensive rush buys to get Workhouses or Opera Houses up. This drains my core cities. This makes me lose World Fair, as I did in my Spain game, and miss first adoption of Order, as I did in my Spain game, and suddenly the outlook for that same 5th Order policy is 80 turns down the road, while the tech-leader/world-fair-winner AI with his 5 Order policies is settling right next to the same mid-game cities I am still paying for, and gobbling up tiles with his World-Fair culture boost and Tradition discount. Give me a break. Happiness is big but the problem is no mid-game boost to new city turnaround.

I agree with you about the over-reactions to the science penalty though, haha. All that really does is penalize puppet empires.

 

[GhostSalsa]

And then it hit me.

It's not just Tradition that is a bit of a dinosaur, but Liberty, too.

The penalties to wide empires have indirectly nerfed Liberty, but Liberty didn't change to help neutralize those new penalties.

Exactly. And now Tradition is just great for wide empires late-game.

 

[Magean]

Pre-patch I played two very successful games with liberty and a wide start, but in both of them I used civs that are tailored for it (Shoshones and Poland) and relied heavily on religion - the very area of the game where wide really beats tall.

Has anyone had success with non-religious wide strategies with BNW ? For me it's a no-brainer.

 

[Rooftrellen]

Has anyone had success with non-religious wide strategies with BNW ? For me it's a no-brainer.

I'm ready to start a new game, and I think I'll try wide America. I'll still use Tradition, for the gold benefits, but my hunch is that being able to buy tiles will help me get my cities up and running fast enough to be worth it, assuming I have the money to actually buy a few key tiles. I probably won't go for a religion, but it will depend on ruins and nearby land.

I'll see how it works out.

 

[joshua43214]

Facepalming every time I read this (which is often indeed). This 5% malus has a psychological effect far beyond what game effects it actually has. Please, run the numbers - this "huge" science malus is no worse than the one you get on culture.

Sorry, have to differ on this one.
I have been beating the Assyrian HoF thing to death lately, and I have tried going anywhere from 3 to 12 cities. The wide empires take so long to develop that you end up with finish times pushing 300 turns. 5ish self founded cites with some puppets actually works better because you do not lose growth building settlers, and the cities come with population, tile improvements, and infrastructure. And the culture cost is huge - trying to get tier 3 ideology, and full rationalism in a timely manner is hard with a wide empire.

I can consistently get a sub-260 SV with 5 or 6 self founded cities, but I have not been able to get under 260 with 7 or more self founded cities. I have tried spamming settlers early, 3-4 city start and expand mid-game, 3-5 city start and expand late industrial/early modern and rush everything from hospitals to labs, full Liberty, full tradition, mix liberty/tradition. Wide = slow win time, tall = fast win time.

 

[Civsassin]

Sorry, have to differ on this one.
I have been beating the Assyrian HoF thing to death lately, and I have tried going anywhere from 3 to 12 cities. The wide empires take so long to develop that you end up with finish times pushing 300 turns. 5ish self founded cites with some puppets actually works better because you do not lose growth building settlers, and the cities come with population, tile improvements, and infrastructure. And the culture cost is huge - trying to get tier 3 ideology, and full rationalism in a timely manner is hard with a wide empire.

I can consistently get a sub-260 SV with 5 or 6 self founded cities, but I have not been able to get under 260 with 7 or more self founded cities. I have tried spamming settlers early, 3-4 city start and expand mid-game, 3-5 city start and expand late industrial/early modern and rush everything from hospitals to labs, full Liberty, full tradition, mix liberty/tradition. Wide = slow win time, tall = fast win time.

This I agree with. Tradition is an instant gratification strategy. Liberty is a patience oriented strategy. It is just as winnable, but it takes longer. Good post.

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