Liberty Deity

[KingKong76]

I usualy go tradition, and I dont have much experience with liberty. In fact I used it pretty often on emperor, won a few games on Immortal, but, well, you can do pretty much what you want at those levels, and you will crush the AI.

On Deity, it confuse me a bit.

Everything was terrible. I manage with happines and $$$ but thats about it.
But then, I freakin adopt Freedom, and didnt check how strong in tourism (and how bad I was!!) were the order civs, and boom. -21 happiness.

I think, not sure, that I've been a bit late with my aqueducs, Pop was low, so prod aswell, gold, science, etc... Can it just be that?

What is the right timing for the Aqueduc in liberty?
+even if I had severals great spots available, can t stl be valuable to go trad 5-6 cities?

I was playing Celts
I went 4 cities NC turn 80 something.. then 2 more...
Any time I needed happyness I build a temple... (had the +2 happpiness per temple)
Then, Did not rush the Halls, but manage to build them when needed. In fact, I was not really in need, cause My cities were like 16-12-12-10-8-6 in pop on turn 190

My second opener was Piety... (Mistake?) couldnt even adopt one policy in piety before Rationalism became available.

I was in fact 5th in science, 11 techs behind leader and 1 upfront the last 3 cvis, had 2 RA ongoing and 2 spies stealing. +2 sientists stacked. Science score was like 300 something.

Any toughts?

 

[Kriogen]

My second opener was Piety... (Mistake?) couldnt even adopt one policy in piety before Rationalism became available.

Peity is weak.

If its just opener, I prefere Patronage. Keep mercantile CS (happy faces) for longer.

Stupidly big boost to happines is left side Patronage and full Commerce.

But yes, if you don't go Order (what AI likes), you need big happines buffer and have some of your own tourism, so you are at 10+% influence (exsotic).

Personaly I go:
- Freedom if I stay small, tradition
- Autocracy if I go wide. Yes, with pointy stick. If you kill big Order civs, all your problems will be gone

 

[inthesomeday]

Freedom is terrible in a world with AIs that have way more tourism and different ideologies. There are not nearly enough happiness policies in freedom to cope with heavy pressure.

The tech path for liberty favors a dip into engineering rather than an all-in direct rush for education. Engineering has a trade route in it and acqueducts, and I may sometimes pick it up right after civil service. Sometimes even before drama and poetry, if I haven't got a good river or lake system.
Building the actual acqueducts ought to come before universities in liberty and in some cities before markets or colosseums, depending on gold/happiness level. Sometimes you might even go workshops before universities, with some builds, meaning engineering comes around where I'm describing it.

 

[danaphanous]

300 bpt is a bit slow for T190 and I think it's due to your population. Celts have the ability to support much more population due to their halls and religion if you pick the right beliefs. I agree with inthesomeday, it sounds like you skipped your aqueducts and growth buildings for too long. You can shave dozens of turns off your finish time if you prioritize them first and definitely build aqueducts as soon as possible. The Celts can manage rapid population growth in more cities then that even.

Also, to help recover some of the time spent diverting from education to aqueducts, and sometimes even workshops, save your gold so you can cash-buy some universities as soon as you get the tech. Then start running the specialists in those cities as soon as possible for a big science boost and early scientists later. Generally even though you want your growth on full-tilt most of the game skipping the science specialists is not a good idea. If you start them early enough every city will give you a scientist and some more than one for a bunch of saved time at the end. This is a major advantage of a large empire. Convert all your trade routes to food routes around aqueducts so you can manage running the specialists without slowing your growth as much--ideally you want to do both. Exception migth be if you are so far behind on tech that routes are still bringing in 5 science each. Then maybe keep them on gold to AI longer. Your call, but the growth is important and you shouldn't need the routes for gold. Liberty has decent gold output midgame and better then tradition late game.

Sounds like you got the basic problem down if you had the happiness sorted. That's the issue most new players have with liberty. You also kept your capital growing so that's good. The capital size factors into the gold you get from every city connection so it is the most valuable one to keep growing.

Generally if I go liberty I want to settle more than 6 cities, reason being I feel that tradition is better suited to manage empire sizes 1-6 and liberty 7+. But that's just a rule of thumb. You can win with liberty 6 cities, but the return is better if you get a couple more. Liberty bonuses get stronger with more cities so I want more then 2 extra vs. tradition. If you have trouble expanding past 6 then it can't be helped unless you get some more through war though and that can happen on Deity.

Building NC is actually not needed for a while with the liberty approach that I play. If you gave up a few city spots to expanding AI by stopping at four cities to do that then you made a bad choice. It's better to forget about NC in my opinion before you've settled all the best spots near you. It's not worth it to get that building 20-30 turns earlier but get worse expos as a result imho. On deity there are plenty of ways to catch back up, the one exception maybe being Sejong when he starts getting loads of specialists. But in general you can catch up to him too since he doesn't stack scientists like a human SV player would. On my 11-city liberty game I did not build the NC till I'd settled every one. I built it really late and still scored a decently early science victory because I claimed great city spots and grew constantly thereafter. Growing new expos can have the same effect as NC if you get them up early and get those libraries. Mayans are probably the best at this since new cities get immediate science from the pyramid. You might try wide with them first, since they are best suited to doing it and not falling behind, then play a non-science civ once you're used to it? Another great civ for wide is Sejong actually. The specialist boost only gets stronger with empire size.

 

[KingKong76]

all good info guys thanks!