Liberty does not work for Deity

[reddishrecue]

And tradition transition perfectly to beyond earth anyway.

Sometimes.

 

[Myth and Legend]

Note: i did not say it is impossible to succeed with Liberty. I said that it is a sub-optimal choice.

Note #2: this thread was created pre Tradition nerf.

 

[TheDuckOfFlanders]

In my experience, if you go scout-monument (which you should if doing Liberty), the free settler typically comes at turn 38-40 without a culture ruin, and 7-12 turns earlier with one.

The quickest i got so far for celts is turn 22 free settler. in other games it was more around turn 25/27 that i got there. In about 1/3rd of starts as celts, you'd will either find jungle+forrests with some luxes in the jungle, gold or silver either on hills or sometimes even in grasslands, or wine and incensense around youre starting spot, in the later cases these can be interresting afcourse to settle on too. All these can help the liberty celts player to get some extra culture, beyond say having the luck to settle near a culture giving natural wonder. Because of their forrest faith typicly the celts will get a pantheon either at turn 5 or turn 10, and if there are say 2 luxuries that would give him an added +2 culture, it would easily amount to something like 20 to 30 more additional culture before turn 20. At an average youre likely to find atleast 1 culture ruin with a scout and a warrior too but then it's also very helpfull if you find it very early.

So i played a few celt openers in diety just to test.I reloaded until i got a good starting spot for this strategy, in 1 of 3 cases it was good enough. When getting that free settler around turn 25-27, it's actually quite doable to set up a strategic blocker city on good luxes to slow the ai down, and then be able to settle a few more city's. When you get that free settler by turn 22 like i had in one case, you have it actually rather easy to grab quite a bit of land, atleast providing the ai didn't settle on top of you to begin with with their capital and free starting settler.

But even then, for what regards any civ, say that you had the opportunity to settle youre capital at a culture giving natural wonder, like Mt fuji, El Dorado or Mt kilimanjaro. mt kilimanjaro would make it easy for any player to have fast early city growth and plenty of culture production to get to free settlers very fast. Even withought culture ruin, providing the normal scout-monument order for liberty, you would unlock liberty at around turn 9 thanks to Kilimanjaro's help, the monument would soon kick in too and you'd get to the extra hammer by say around turn 15, and then from there to the free settler by turn 25. A late culture ruin would decrease the time by another 3 turns and would be likely to get, so turn 22 free settler would be a realistic goal for a player settling near Mt kilimanjaro.

Imho, if you an get to that free settler policy that fast, youll have a very good chance to get value from having gone liberty. Even if there aint that much room available, you have a much better chance to get to important places faster, and even if you don't settle mor than 4 city's the sheer speed by which you got there can give you a head start as long as you can keep up the momentum of having started with things earlier.

I ned to explore a bit how other civs might play into this. The Aztec can get culture trough fighting but im not sure how to put it in a build. Monument + Jaguar + jaguar? But then if you don't go scout or use youre jaguars for scouting you won't get culture ruins. otoh putting either monuments or jaguards further down the queue decreases the likelyhood that they can add enough before turn 20.

 

[TheGuineaPig]

Here's another fun Liberty game I played. Had a pretty terrible capital; flat plains, one sheep, one hill (in third ring), no freshwater. So I decided to go Liberty. Turns out I had a nice, isolated peninsula that I could seal off near London, so I went for eight cities before my NC. Lots of production, not a lot of growth, which is nice for a Liberty game, as I could always feed my cities with cargo ships. I ended up making my de facto capital Samoa, which was a much nicer city than Honolulu. Polynesia's UA ended up being quite nice, because I could float settlers and stolen workers up and down the coast without worrying about barbs in the interior.

Anyways, I failed at getting a religion. Even Liz, who went Piety, didn't get a religion, so I never really had much chance. I missed scouting Great Barrier Reef initially so my pantheon was pasture culture which actually served me quite well, because I had lots of them. I didn't get my NC until turn 103 due to mistakenly building monuments before libraries in my last two cities. I used the extra turns to move my GE from Oracle/Liberty finisher up to Samoa to make the NC there. Another nice thing about Liberty is you can essentially change your capital if there are better options; it's very, very rare to build your NC in other cities than your capital with Tradition, but in this case it's possible.

I got to Navigation at turn 152, and had already been building galleases for a bit before. I took London, and then subsequently Venice. Lost a bunch of frigates taking the latter as it was pretty tough by the time I got to it. That gave me enough cities and coast to work with. Teched to Radio and got Order (second after Germany, unfortunately; them, Greece, and the Huns all were run aways). Went to Archaeology to start pumping out my archaeologists. Stopped at Fertilizer before I got to Plastics at around turn 225. Wide play is good for archaeologist production; even with slow tech, strong enemy civs, and some mistakes with open borders I got 20 foreign artifacts, plus my six landmark improvements. 2 bought Great Musicians (not even at peak tourism yet, as I bought them a few turns before) were enough to win. Didn't end up having time to generate my own.

I made a couple of mistakes. I wasted a second policy in Piety even though I didn't have a religion. Would've been much better in Aesthetics, as I couldn't faith buy anything until turn 265. I pissed people off due to not micro-managing my archaeologists. I let Greece run wild with city states. Unluckily there were only two culture CSes, one Venice puppeted 20 turns in, and the other that got puppeted at turn 240. So almost no CS culture. In fact, due to constant warring between the big powers, by the end of the game only 5 CSes remained independent. Fun game.

Policies were 6 Liberty, 2 Piety, 4 Exploration, 6 Aesthetics, 3 Order.

South side:

Spoiler :

North side:

Spoiler :

Also attached save if anyone's interested.

 

[reddishrecue]

I had failed a the shoshone liberty yesterday. I failed to get the pyramids but i got to sign a dof with inca. Pachacuti however took advantage of his power and attacked. I lost my capital so i needed to quit.

 

[Fluphen Azine]

It depends. The Trad Nerf did not hurt Liberty! Liberty has always worked for Deity. In most situations Tradition is stronger but Liberty is very powerful when you are Warmongering the whole game keeping a lot of AI cities. It is a more difficult balance compared to Tradition, but most experts would agree that Liberty overcomes Tradition in the Late Game. If you are trying for SV or CV... it is pretty clear that Liberty does not work very well compared to Tradition but if you are going for Domination... Liberty is by far the better choice (IMO). If you are trying for Diplo... well I have found both work just as good as the other but when you get into Liberty you want to build and conquer as many cities as you can connecting your empire with roads. Mix in the MoG pantheon and it gets even better in the early game. I find the problem with most players who struggle with Liberty is because they play Liberty the same way they play Tradition which does not work. You have to play Liberty the way Liberty is meant to be played!

Most players play a Tradition Style of game which is by far easier compared to a Liberty game which is why Liberty does not work on Deity for them! It is also Civ Dependant... by far some Civs excel at Liberty compared to Tradition. Before the Nerf I would play Civs like the Mayans and with Liberty and MoG and Pyramids you can really get an spt boost if you play a 5 pop Capital Strategy. I used to love to keep my expos at 1 pop until I would get my Religion Rolling. I still play this way from time to time. However if you want an easier game with less Headaches... you should play Tradition. Before BNW... France was the best Civ by far to go with Liberty but now they are horrid for Liberty (IMO).

 

[killmeplease]

is NC really that needed for a liberty civ?
i mean there are so many cities and your capital is relatively small so the NC's effect isnt that big. Is it worth so spend an engineer on it? plus all that bustle with libraries..

 

[Fluphen Azine]

Timing Libraries and NC with Liberty can be the biggest problem. Just like any other game it is map and Civ Dependant. It appears that most players will use the Liberty Finisher for a GE to rush the NC. However, you can play Liberty and ignore Libraries and NC for a much longer time if you are taking over your map through war and expansion. It will not be the most optimal but you can do many things with Liberty and still win. Most players think that Deity is limited but I find that you have more room to experiment compared to standard ideas.

 

[reddishrecue]

Timing Libraries and NC with Liberty can be the biggest problem. Just like any other game it is map and Civ Dependant. It appears that most players will use the Liberty Finisher for a GE to rush the NC. However, you can play Liberty and ignore Libraries and NC for a much longer time if you are taking over your map through war and expansion. It will not be the most optimal but you can do many things with Liberty and still win. Most players think that Deity is limited but I find that you have more room to experiment compared to standard ideas.

The NC start could be risky with many cities since you miss out in wonder building and you also miss out in oligarchy from tradition. NC from libraries however is smart with liberty and could let you make good science.

 

[killmeplease]

i mean, wont it be more effective to use the GE to rush petra or sophia or piza tower, given you have ~10 cities?

 

[reddishrecue]

i mean, wont it be more effective to use the GE to rush petra or sophia or piza tower, given you have ~10 cities?

Yeah but you would need a GE. Obtaining a GE would need you to have the pyramids which can slow down your NC growth since youll be beelining to a different non calendar and non early philosophy start. Once you have that GE providing wonder up then you could try to tech ahead and continue with oracle with GE or NC with the libraries in different cities. The workers provided will need defenses and you would have to defend your improvements from barbarians so you could turn them off.

 

[beetle]

It appears that most players will use the Liberty Finisher for a GE to rush the NC.

That tactic gets a fair amount of discussion, but I don’t believe that “most” Liberty players do that. I would argue that the opportunity costs are much too high. The free policy from Oracle is more valueable, and you might even do better than that! What I find more provocative is the argument that the Liberty finisher should be a planted GS.

 

[stormtrooper412]

That's I'd say only if you fell a fair bit behind due to early game wars and seriously need to catch up

 

[Acken]

Rushing NC with a GE happens (not necessarily) if you expanded a ton before your NC, like 6+ cities. If you however went a more classical 3 or 4 city before NC (and followed by more expansions) then just build it manually.

 

[beetle]

I could also see using Liberty GE for NC if you missed Oracle and other Classic/Medieval wonders. I remember one poor game in particular where I had a Liberty GE sitting around for far too long as I was just a couple turns too late for wonder-unlocking tech after tech after tech...

@Acken, how do you feel about planting Liberty GS versus Oracle?

 

[Acken]

Versus using a GE for Oracle ? I'd probably preffer a fast academy. This would be a discussion between GS vs policy. It probably is hard to make the comparison but my gut feeling is that a GS would accelerate your game faster than a pre-renaissance policy. Unless maybe you want faster aesthetics for a CV... maybe.

 

[TheGuineaPig]

Where the policy is really useful is for getting two into Piety. Especially if you have Mosques or Pagodas in your religion, getting the extra +1 faith per shrine/temple is huge for increasing your early game culture/happiness/faith. There's a definite snowball effect there.

 

[reddishrecue]

Versus using a GE for Oracle ? I'd probably preffer a fast academy. This would be a discussion between GS vs policy. It probably is hard to make the comparison but my gut feeling is that a GS would accelerate your game faster than a pre-renaissance policy. Unless maybe you want faster aesthetics for a CV... maybe.

I agree with aesthetics. An early aesthetics establishment could increase your culture per turn for future social policies and ideologies.

 

[beetle]

Where the policy is really useful is for getting two into Piety. Especially if you have Mosques or Pagodas in your religion, getting the extra +1 faith per shrine/temple is huge for increasing your early game culture/happiness/faith. There's a definite snowball effect there.

I agree that opening Piety can be a good use of a spare policy. But the SP you describe is one in. It has its uses, but I would argue that, for most games, it is a weaker choice than the alternatives.

 

[reddishrecue]

I agree that opening Piety can be a good use of a spare policy. But the SP you describe is one in. It has its uses, but I would argue that, for most games, it is a weaker choice than the alternatives.

If using piety, I prefer using piety at the start often because one can take advantage of building a shrine in 2, 3 or even 1 turn rarely. A late piety opener could be a waster because you miss out on the religious building speed bonus that you didn't use when you started the beginning non piety social policy.