Tradition 4-5 city is a faster way to win and much easier but liberty early can really help set up foundations for snowballing industrial era and modern as I'm seeing in my Mayan emperor game (still experimenting with wide thats why difficulty is low) on epic speed, reaching modern era at turn 310 when the best of the AI hit industrial(huge map size 12 civs) combined with full piety, commerce and rationalism with 14 cities do really well with Jesuit education and freedom growing cities and loads of specialists producing 1470 science by turn 420 (epic). Liberty empires generally don't need many wonders to survive, i only had statue if liberty, Hagia Sophia and The Jesus statue.
Liberty should be combined with a fast religion into mp games. The 5% science penalty per new city really hurts Liberty in the long run. You need buffs or Tradition will win.
I'm sure it's the case for sp too...unless we talk about fast dom. games.
I'm curious. Is this discussion about tradition vs liberty or is it more about tall vs wide?
Many mention tradition being the stronger tree, but is that also the case for a wide empire?
(So is tradition wide better than liberty wide?)
The problem for liberty isn't the 5% cost on tech. As far as I can tell, most cities that are even worth considering can surpass that added cost easily.
The problem is the efficiency of growth and maintenance of buildings. If you grow the capital under trad, every 2 pop = 1 and gold. It's not too long before you're looking at 15 of each or more. Just as importantly, this city has your best multipliers...NC, fast university, probably any relevant wonders, public school priority, the works. An additional pop in the cap is more efficient from many perspectives than one elsewhere, and while this applies to liberty as well (liberty can also stack multipliers), liberty doesn't get the growth + scaling /gold that tradition gets.
If you had infinite happiness, liberty/wide would massacre tall, because you would just grow ALL THE CITIES. The advantage for tradition depends on the happiness growth constraint and requirements for building national wonders. IMO, the 5% tech penalty is small when compared to this.
Is there a cutoff point in number of cities for a Liberty Science game or is it simply not viable for the most optimal finish
I'd like to share a game I recently completed as a proof of concept for Liberty science victory on Deity. This was a standard Pangaea game with random opponents, played as the Shoshone. I've uploaded it to the Hall of Fame, and the save files (including the initial autosave) will be available there with the next HoF update. I won on Turn 228, which is my fastest Deity science victory so far. This may not be a record for the fastest science victory ever, but I think it should be clear that Liberty is entirely viable for fast science victory on Deity.
One thing I believe about Liberty is that the happiness/gold/growth issues associated with Liberty are seriously overstated, and the real problem with the tree is border expansion. Thus, the Shoshone UA is kind of gamebreaking for Liberty. Outside of Shoshone-land, I view the "standard" Liberty science build as starting with the Tradition opener. Failure to do this may be a reason for people's experiences of poor performance with Liberty.
Tech priorities are also quite different with Liberty. I think grabbing Metal Casting before Education is often correct. If you head straight for Education, your cities won't be big enough or strong enough to effectively build and use Universities. Better to get Workshops first and develop infrastructure. This is an example where the "standard" good play from Tradition may actually be actively bad for Liberty.
In this particular game I also grabbed Guilds before Civil Service, purely for trading posts. This is pretty wild, and I don't expect it to be a standard play -- do this only if you have little fresh water and lots of jungles. However, I think trading posts are particularly important with Liberty. Liberty does have less happiness than Tradition, but this can be countered through the use of trading posts (as well as specialists). Once you have the relevant Rationalism policies, you should work trading posts and specialists very aggressively. By doing this, you generate more science per population than a Tradition empire that works a lot of farms. You have slower growth, but that's ok -- your ability to grow is capped by happiness anyway, so having less food isn't significantly limiting your growth. Better to grow a bit slower and pick up extra science and gold than grow fast and find yourself needing to stagnate at your happiness cap.
Not to quibble with your point, because in general I agree, but if you have to open Tradition for Liberty to be viable, Tradition is better, because you definitely *don't* have to open Liberty for Tradition to be viable.
228 with Liberty. Wow. Whatever else that demonstrates, it is clear that it shows you are an amazing player.I'd like to share a game I recently completed as a proof of concept for Liberty science victory on Deity. This was a standard Pangaea game with random opponents, played as the Shoshone. I've uploaded it to the Hall of Fame, and the save files (including the initial autosave) will be available there with the next HoF update. I won on Turn 228, which is my fastest Deity science victory so far. This may not be a record for the fastest science victory ever, but I think it should be clear that Liberty is entirely viable for fast science victory on Deity.
One thing I believe about Liberty is that the happiness/gold/growth issues associated with Liberty are seriously overstated, and the real problem with the tree is border expansion. Thus, the Shoshone UA is kind of gamebreaking for Liberty. Outside of Shoshone-land, I view the "standard" Liberty science build as starting with the Tradition opener. Failure to do this may be a reason for people's experiences of poor performance with Liberty.
Tech priorities are also quite different with Liberty. I think grabbing Metal Casting before Education is often correct. If you head straight for Education, your cities won't be big enough or strong enough to effectively build and use Universities. Better to get Workshops first and develop infrastructure. This is an example where the "standard" good play from Tradition may actually be actively bad for Liberty.
In this particular game I also grabbed Guilds before Civil Service, purely for trading posts. This is pretty wild, and I don't expect it to be a standard play -- do this only if you have little fresh water and lots of jungles. However, I think trading posts are particularly important with Liberty. Liberty does have less happiness than Tradition, but this can be countered through the use of trading posts (as well as specialists). Once you have the relevant Rationalism policies, you should work trading posts and specialists very aggressively. By doing this, you generate more science per population than a Tradition empire that works a lot of farms. You have slower growth, but that's ok -- your ability to grow is capped by happiness anyway, so having less food isn't significantly limiting your growth. Better to grow a bit slower and pick up extra science and gold than grow fast and find yourself needing to stagnate at your happiness cap.
Yes, I believe Liberty is viable, no it is not competitive on Diety, finish-time wise for science victory.
I'd like to share a game I recently completed as a proof of concept for Liberty science victory on Deity. This was a standard Pangaea game with random opponents, played as the Shoshone. I've uploaded it to the Hall of Fame, and the save files (including the initial autosave) will be available there with the next HoF update.