Is liberty dead?

[jango76]

Personally I think the two trees are well balanced now (certainly better than they've ever been), and tall is also now quite well balanced against semi-wide/wide (6 to 12 cities). For all that the speed enthusiasts say tall tradition is everything, you can make yourself into a real beast with 8 or 10 cities, and the wide science nerf has been good because it forces you to play more aggressively mid to late game if you choose that set-up, instead of turtling and letting victory come to you.

The argument that liberty is only good for the first 100 turns while tradition benefits last all game is a bit spurious: if you save the liberty finisher, then a slingshot GE > Pisa > another GE > another wonder can be very powerful (especially in a mainly peaceful game), and the benefit from two wonders can easily compete with the long-term growth bonuses. Plus it makes sense to save the free GA until later in the game when you've got a few trade routes up and are rolling a decent amount of gpt, so you probably want to delay finishing liberty anyway.

The main weakness I find in liberty is that you can't faith-buy late-game GEs without finishing tradition: that's a huge benefit whatever victory condition you're going for.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

The more you expand the weaker the ai get, remember that because thats is one of the points with liberty that nearly nobody mentions

 

[guven]

liberty is great for building a quick petra on a hilly desert setting. that city will kill'em all. other than that, tradition is better because of the growth and happiness plus defense it provides. one of the liberty policies (dont remember the name but the one gives +1 happiness for a city connection) is great though for the late game if going for domination (which I always do)

 

[Jimdigriz]

I just played a game with Liberty... completely dominated from start to finish.

I just think I need to get used to playing wide instead of tall. Settlers and workers can really make a difference.

That's interesting because Im the exact opposite! I cant play tall - I always play wide, its like built in to my Civ playing since the first Civ.

 

[dashwinner]

no giggles though

 

[Artifex1]

no giggles though

*giggles*

 

[Cromagnus]

Troll or poll?

Seriously though, Liberty is the 2nd best opening tree, by a large margin. Meaning it's not far behind tradition and it's WAAAY ahead of Honor or Piety.

If this were a class, I'd give Tradition an A+, Liberty a B, Honor a D, and Piety an F.

I often play Liberty simply because it's better at certain things than Tradition, but despite that, it's still inferior, even when it's better. Why? Because Tradition is better at doing what it was designed to do than Liberty is. Tradition is the tall tree. Liberty is the jack of all trades opening. Liberty is NOT the wide tree. Wide is heavily nerfed, and Liberty doesn't fix it.

Liberty is more flexible than Tradition. Why? Well, an early Great Person of your choice is the very definition of flexible. Want a religion? Done. Want a Wonder? Done? Want a quick science boost to get Chivalry/Machinery early? Want to spit out settlers for Sacred Sites? Done. Want the absolute best Wonder for war? (The Pyramids) Done.

Liberty is better than Tradition at just about everything but going tall. And sometimes, on Deity, because of the early, cheaper settlers, it's better at tall, because the Tradition build might miss out on the best spots. If you build 3 settlers in a row starting on t25, the opportunity cost is tremendous vs 3 for the cost of 1.

But, even with ALL that, Liberty isn't as good at what it does as Tradition is.

Nonetheless, this tired old argument needs to be put to rest. Liberty dominates, quite literally.

What IS dead is Honor. And Piety: only relevant in extreme cases... Settler, Sacred Sites or Poland? Maybe. Otherwise, nope!

But, what IS funny to me is all the people who come in stating that Liberty is useless who've clearly spent 10x as many hours playing Tradition. I mean, I get it, Tradition's synergies are immediately obvious. Liberty is far more nuanced and non-intuitive. Beelining Guilds on Deity to use a Liberty GE closer to secure Machu Picchu, all to pay for a Machinery rush, may seem obvious when I say it, but how many of you thought of it yourself? How many of you are struggling to imagine deviating from a 200 turn peaceful start? Tradition = Tall. Tall = not capturing cities. Capturing cities requires way more effort, skill, planning and creativity than hitting next turn and selecting the next science building in your queue. Which is, admittedly, still a lot to think about, and to be fair, I played exclusively Tradition for Vanilla and most of G&K, so I get it. I remember when I used to be influenced by those build suggestions the game gives you... because choosing techs, social policies and build order was an overwhelming number of things to keep track of. When you're new at the game, Tradition sure is a lot easier to digest.

So, yeah, people generally prefer Tradition because it's better at what it was designed to do, and its synergies are obvious. But "I've struggled to figure out how to use Liberty effectively" does not equate to "Liberty is dead".

 

[Asterix Rage]

Liberty, tradition or whatsoever are just ways to forge my personal trait.
I pick the best when it's needed and i win. That's it

 

[Artifex1]

Honor isn't dead if you play as Aztecs with raging barbarians.

 

[Cromagnus]

Honor isn't dead if you play as Aztecs with raging barbarians.

Aztecs are good at every victory condition. They get through Honor faster than most, but that doesn't fix Honor. They get through Liberty and Tradition faster too. Getting free aqueducts sooner is awesome, especially with floating gardens! Getting a free GS earlier is totally awesome. But, the last thing the Aztecs need is bonus culture. Culture/kill is doubling down on the one thing they don't need. They need happiness to supplement their warpath and/or super-fast growing cities.

The bottom line is that even though it's one of the best policies in honor, culture/kill from barbarians, while it helps, is not all that great: Tradition opener is 3/turn. Let's say you get it on t16. By t100 that's 252 culture.

The average barbarian for the first 100 turns is worth ~9 culture. If you kill one every 3 turns, starting exactly on t16, that's 252 culture. But, realistically, even with raging barbarians you'd be lucky and hard-pressed to kill one every 3 turns. More likely, it'll be 1 every 5 or less, and that culture doesn't contribute to cultural boundaries. By comparison, the Liberty opener w/ 4 cities gives (by t100) 249 culture. (84x1 + 50x1 + 55x1 + 60x1)

Liberty has the most culture. (By way of policy cost reduction, assuming that in all cases you have 4 cities) Tradition comes in second. Honor is the worst of the three.

The Aztecs are awesome. This much is true. Honor still sucks. Don't get me wrong, I love opening Honor, but it's because of the fun factor, not because it's anywhere near as effective.

 

[Princeofnigeria]

Tradition is a little better but there are many situations in which liberty is preferable, and I'd say that they are about even.

 

[Callonia]

Troll or poll?

Seriously though, Liberty is the 2nd best opening tree, by a large margin. Meaning it's not far behind tradition and it's WAAAY ahead of Honor or Piety.

If this were a class, I'd give Tradition an A+, Liberty a B, Honor a D, and Piety an F.

I often play Liberty simply because it's better at certain things than Tradition, but despite that, it's still inferior, even when it's better. Why? Because Tradition is better at doing what it was designed to do than Liberty is. Tradition is the tall tree. Liberty is the jack of all trades opening. Liberty is NOT the wide tree. Wide is heavily nerfed, and Liberty doesn't fix it.

Liberty is more flexible than Tradition. Why? Well, an early Great Person of your choice is the very definition of flexible. Want a religion? Done. Want a Wonder? Done? Want a quick science boost to get Chivalry/Machinery early? Want to spit out settlers for Sacred Sites? Done. Want the absolute best Wonder for war? (The Pyramids) Done.

Liberty is better than Tradition at just about everything but going tall. And sometimes, on Deity, because of the early, cheaper settlers, it's better at tall, because the Tradition build might miss out on the best spots. If you build 3 settlers in a row starting on t25, the opportunity cost is tremendous vs 3 for the cost of 1.

But, even with ALL that, Liberty isn't as good at what it does as Tradition is.

Nonetheless, this tired old argument needs to be put to rest. Liberty dominates, quite literally.

What IS dead is Honor. And Piety: only relevant in extreme cases... Settler, Sacred Sites or Poland? Maybe. Otherwise, nope!

But, what IS funny to me is all the people who come in stating that Liberty is useless who've clearly spent 10x as many hours playing Tradition. I mean, I get it, Tradition's synergies are immediately obvious. Liberty is far more nuanced and non-intuitive. Beelining Guilds on Deity to use a Liberty GE closer to secure Machu Picchu, all to pay for a Machinery rush, may seem obvious when I say it, but how many of you thought of it yourself? How many of you are struggling to imagine deviating from a 200 turn peaceful start? Tradition = Tall. Tall = not capturing cities. Capturing cities requires way more effort, skill, planning and creativity than hitting next turn and selecting the next science building in your queue. Which is, admittedly, still a lot to think about, and to be fair, I played exclusively Tradition for Vanilla and most of G&K, so I get it. I remember when I used to be influenced by those build suggestions the game gives you... because choosing techs, social policies and build order was an overwhelming number of things to keep track of. When you're new at the game, Tradition sure is a lot easier to digest.

So, yeah, people generally prefer Tradition because it's better at what it was designed to do, and its synergies are obvious. But "I've struggled to figure out how to use Liberty effectively" does not equate to "Liberty is dead".

Except for the fact that Tradition is even more better for warmongering than Liberty.

You get extra gold at start of the game and less unhappy plus you want your capital to be as big as possible anyways.

It makes your city's bombardment slightly tougher.

And allows you to maintain even bigger garrison reserves thanks to oligarchy. I can count the number of times where I was forced to pull the reserves to the frontlines exactly on one hand. Two times.

Say you're fighting Iroquois on one front then on other front the poland decides he wants your cities? Well your inactive garrison just came in handy and call them to battle to fight poland while you fend off iroquois at same time. And the unlikely happens with third ai joining in the party against you? at that point you will be loving oligarchy.

I think the most I ever had was four fronts at same time. I had my soldiers sally out of cities and fight then duck back in to save gpt. Plus cities can serve as stopping points as your soldiers in the interior move slowly to the frontlines so that you will only pay gpt for when they're actively fighting.

Liberty is all about short term gains while tradition if you're patient enough is all about long term gains. And in Civ, long term gains is the best.

The bigger your empire is the more powerful oligarchy policy becomes.

Plus your capitals can reach like size 60 if you're patient enough and that translates into extra 30 happiness points saved up for other cities and golden ages!

And plus there's indirect benefit of having rather huge military because of oligarchy which makes AI very unlikely to attack you unless they have real huge military too. AI only preys on the weak most of the times they're bunch of wusses afraid of a good solid war!

Well all my experience comes from King difficulty on Huge maps. I tend to let AIs grow unless they start near me then only circumstances will decide if they get to live or not.

Don't be fooled, both liberty and Tradition can work well with warmongers. Its just that in long term growth the tradition policies work much better for warmongering than liberty.

 

[Cromagnus]

Except for the fact that Tradition is even more better for warmongering than Liberty.

You get extra gold at start of the game and less unhappy plus you want your capital to be as big as possible anyways.

It makes your city's bombardment slightly tougher.

And allows you to maintain even bigger garrison reserves thanks to oligarchy. I can count the number of times where I was forced to pull the reserves to the frontlines exactly on one hand. Two times.

Say you're fighting Iroquois on one front then on other front the poland decides he wants your cities? Well your inactive garrison just came in handy and call them to battle to fight poland while you fend off iroquois at same time. And the unlikely happens with third ai joining in the party against you? at that point you will be loving oligarchy.

I think the most I ever had was four fronts at same time. I had my soldiers sally out of cities and fight then duck back in to save gpt. Plus cities can serve as stopping points as your soldiers in the interior move slowly to the frontlines so that you will only pay gpt for when they're actively fighting.

Liberty is all about short term gains while tradition if you're patient enough is all about long term gains. And in Civ, long term gains is the best.

The bigger your empire is the more powerful oligarchy policy becomes.

Plus your capitals can reach like size 60 if you're patient enough and that translates into extra 30 happiness points saved up for other cities and golden ages!

And plus there's indirect benefit of having rather huge military because of oligarchy which makes AI very unlikely to attack you unless they have real huge military too. AI only preys on the weak most of the times they're bunch of wusses afraid of a good solid war!

Well all my experience comes from King difficulty on Huge maps. I tend to let AIs grow unless they start near me then only circumstances will decide if they get to live or not.

Don't be fooled, both liberty and Tradition can work well with warmongers. Its just that in long term growth the tradition policies work much better for warmongering than liberty.

I never said Tradition can't work well with warmongering. And, in a world where you take over the world slowly, fighting to maintain tech supremacy, growth is absolutely very important, and all the factors you mention would be very relevant, even to the extent where it would make Tradition better.

But Tradition is not so great at the kind of war I typically wage. I want lots of units ASAP, and I get my gold/turn from pillage and capture, and I can't afford to have units in cities... not because of gpt, but because of the unit supply cap, because I've solved that happiness problem by having small cities locked on production.

Tradition is better at slow through-the-ages warfare, shooting for a t250+ victory using Modern or later units.

Liberty is better at early rush, culminating in Medieval/Renaissance or early Industrial victory. Who needs growth when you don't even build libraries...

So, I'm not disagreeing with you, I'm just saying that your parameters for why Tradition is better at warfare are irrelevant to the Liberty warmonger.

 

[Dr. D]

I'm a liberty warmonger (typically a liberty/tradition hybrid) and on the rare occasion I go straight tradition, I always miss the happiness bonus from connected cities while I'm on the warpath. I find liberty much easier to use for domination.

 

[joncnunn]

#6 I strongly disagree with because you're upsetting a core mechanic of the tall vs. wide gameplay styles.

"Upsetting" would be on purpose; I think the original design went way too far in the self-found only a few cities direction.

 

[lindsay40k]

Below Immortal, it's not terrible at getting out a Worker to chop Glib and then Oracle your way to a GE to rush Petra in the halfscreen of Desert Hills and Flood Plains your free Settler's bagsied.

But I like to open Honor early on for CS questing and general security, so unless I get a LOT of kills and ally with a couple Cultural CS's, that's usually off my track...

 

[Matthew.]

Troll or poll?

Seriously though, blah blah blah...

...Liberty is far more nuanced and non-intuitive.

-snip-

I agree 100%

Especially the part about Liberty's perks not being immediately obvious. I think there is a general misconception that Liberty = wide from turn 1 or Liberty = ICS, and if you start a map and cannot do so, then Liberty has failed.

 

[Callonia]

I never said Tradition can't work well with warmongering. And, in a world where you take over the world slowly, fighting to maintain tech supremacy, growth is absolutely very important, and all the factors you mention would be very relevant, even to the extent where it would make Tradition better.

But Tradition is not so great at the kind of war I typically wage. I want lots of units ASAP, and I get my gold/turn from pillage and capture, and I can't afford to have units in cities... not because of gpt, but because of the unit supply cap, because I've solved that happiness problem by having small cities locked on production.

Tradition is better at slow through-the-ages warfare, shooting for a t250+ victory using Modern or later units.

Liberty is better at early rush, culminating in Medieval/Renaissance or early Industrial victory. Who needs growth when you don't even build libraries...

So, I'm not disagreeing with you, I'm just saying that your parameters for why Tradition is better at warfare are irrelevant to the Liberty warmonger.

Hmm, so liberty works alot better on smaller maps?

 

[Moriarte]

Hmm, so liberty works alot better on smaller maps?

No, liberty works better on large maps, because of the representation and meritocracy. It's specific area of expertise is when you're jammed between Hiawatha and Montezuma with 2 expansion spots and you need to kill at least one of them fast. Then move on, and kill the other, all the while connecting roads, annexing cities. And keep expanding in this fashion.

On continents, especially, huge continents, liberty's admiral is the difference between meeting all civs around t.130 and meeting them all around t.180, which speeds up world's fair significantly, as you might guess, without ever needing astronomy. And world's fair will fuel your domination campaign with tons of happiness from full commerce. World's fair aside, you might end up in the area with lots of luxurious duplicates and tons of strategics. Admiral can sell all that. Or just rush NC at any early date, or Machu, or scientist, etc, etc.

It's a solid tree for places where tradition wouldn't work as good.

 

[CraigMak]

If tradition is a perfect 10 then liberty is probably more like an 8.5. Honor and Piety on the other hand are more like 3's. completely not usable.

Also, in teamers liberty is pretty much standard fair. Tradition is not likely to do very well in a team game where there's a lot of war going on.

If you see a lot of good city locations in an FFA then Liberty is probably the way to go. If you see only 4 or less then tradition is probably your best bet.

Tradition-Liberty mix is also very very strong. That's a very good option if you see 4 - 6 good city locations and don't want to fully commit to liberty but need to get them up quickly.