You can win tech with BNW and choose freedom

[michaeljhuman]

It's not trivial, but I did manage to stay ahead of the dissidents this time, with a tech victory on King.

I did get a really nice start, with 5 cities, which is uncommon. And Dido gave me a city after foolishly attacking me. There wasn't a lot of coveting of my cities going on.

I managed to stay pretty friendly with other civs. This is not always possible, but it can be done in some games. I managed to have 2 or 3 luxuries that way, for exchange or 9 G/turn.

I did some deal with maritime city states.

I built almost every happiness building, and some key happiness wonders. I rushed great library, and got philosophy and got the oracle which was a good head start. I took any happiness policies I could, but often favored tech.

You want to be diligent with exploration as well, for the bonus from naturals.

I built the main culture buildings just to provide an offset to incoming influence from Greece. I was still -10 for dissidents, but I managed to have 30+ Happiness for most of the game.

I did open some borders, but perhaps it helps to keep as many closed as possible - not sure on that one.

It's maybe harder to do this on higher levels, but it can be done on King.

 

[ravenmagus]

It's not the ridiculous Science factory boost Order gives, but Freedom's perfectly fine for SV - rush buying parts is arguably better than GE rushing them (though the free GS/GE is important too).

 

[Jack Funk]

rush buying parts is arguably better than GE rushing them

I agree with this. I finished a King game this weekend with a Space Race Victory using Freedom (as Egypt). I had a fairly large empire due to being attacked by Japan (who had taken most of China) and taking all their cities. I had 10 - 12 cities in the end (5 of my own, the rest Japanese and Chinese). Despite being universally hated (due to warmongering, even though Japan back stabbed me), happiness was not a problem, as I had lots of luxury resources and good relations with the CSs. I was going for culture, but a couple of civs were working hard at the space ship and I knew they would beat me if I didn't switch. Built most of the ship, but, in the end, I bought the final two components of the space ship, which won the game.

 

[Dardis]

The good thing about being able to buy the parts is that, so long as you manage to maintain some AI friends until the end, you can take out a loan from them with an exorbitant gpt payback.....then disappear completely leaving behind a forwarding address of 'space' for the debt collectors

 

[Jack Funk]

The good thing about being able to buy the parts is that, so long as you manage to maintain some AI friends until the end, you can take out a loan from them with an exorbitant gpt payback.....then disappear completely leaving behind a forwarding address of 'space' for the debt collectors

Nice!

 

[szcott]

Even on higher levels, as long as you can pull off being the first to choose an ideology, you usually stay ahead of the happiness by using your 2 free choices to choose happiness related tenants.

Also saving GW's to pop after choosing your ideology allowing you to get an extra tenant also helps.

Having a GG handy to settle on coal and a big bank account to buy a factory or 3 just as you discover Industrialization helps.

 

[loserforsale]

Another science boost from freedom is the tenet causing Specialists to consume less food. If you're going science then you'll have 2 science (4 with Korea) from every specialist. This means that you can happily fill in every single specialist slot for the 8 turns before you bulb your Great Scientists, for an increased science boost.

Oh, and buying parts is far easier than GE rushing them, especially if you grab Mercantilism and Big Ben. GEs are unlikely to give you more than one or two spaceship parts, quite possibly less if you decide to use a GE on the Hubble Telescope.

 

[TheGrumpyBuddha]

Another science boost from freedom is the tenet causing Specialists to consume less food. If you're going science then you'll have 2 science (4 with Korea) from every specialist. This means that you can happily fill in every single specialist slot for the 8 turns before you bulb your Great Scientists, for an increased science boost.

It's nice -- I usually choose it when going Freedom -- but it's really not that big a deal. Without it, you can still always take a -4 or -5 starvation hit during those 8 turns if you need to, if you really really want to max out science. Your cities are usually so big then that losing a total of 30 or 40 food doesn't cost you any population.

 

[FinsT]

It's not trivial, but I did manage to stay ahead of the dissidents this time, with a tech victory on King. ...

On King difficulty, to be honest, it is quite trivial. With any civ. Heck, even Denmark, which is getting some nice pounding in nearby topic. The recipe (for any civ to do science victory on King) - is:
- get majority of all world wonders built up until industrial;
- through those wonders and general buildings together, get undisputable cultural, religious (+faith amount), productive lead and city-state domination (number of allies - usually all of them, on King);
- build a large army;
- take out any civ which is close or slightly ahead scientifically (on King, no AI can be far ahead). Feel free to let 'em survive with one city if you want, this still halts 'em for a loooong time scientifically;
- win scientific victory.

See, it's quite trivial this way.

 

[ravenmagus]

Another science boost from freedom is the tenet causing Specialists to consume less food. If you're going science then you'll have 2 science (4 with Korea) from every specialist. This means that you can happily fill in every single specialist slot for the 8 turns before you bulb your Great Scientists, for an increased science boost.

There is also New Deal, which is a pretty cool tenet (+4 yield to each Great Person improvement). And don't forget Avant Garde, good for every non-Domination victory.

 

[FinsT]

And then there's Statue of Liberty, which - on King difficulty, - there is no reason not to have. With the tenet which makes specialist to consume only 1 food, there are few reasons not to have all specialist slots occupied at all times once all siginificant +food tiles of a city are worked on.

But personally, the one i like the most - is "Treaty Organization". I always take it the 1st of 3rd lvl tenets. By the way, if i get related formulaes right, once a city-state is 1000+ influence, there is simply no chance an AI could coup 'em away, even.

Freedom's OK, there's no question about it - just like other two ideologies, it suits certain kinds of empires better than other two.

 

[ravenmagus]

But personally, the one i like the most - is "Treaty Organization". I always take it the 1st of 3rd lvl tenets. By the way, if i get related formulaes right, once a city-state is 1000+ influence, there is simply no chance an AI could coup 'em away, even.

The problem with Treaty Organization is that using it will cause you to accidentally win with diplomacy

0% happens a lot sooner than 1000 influence, but the AI generally sucks at retaking CS anyways. They will try to coup but often won't bother spending their gold to take allies from you.

 

[joncnunn]

I prefer Freedom for going science; I play tall and so there's actually quite a bit of indirect science bonuses attached to Freedom. (Rationalism has a policy that gives science for every specialist, with Freedom you have reduced food consumption for specialists and can then both grow the city more and hire more specialists)

You don't have to worry about accidentally winning a diplomatic victory; just abstain from the vote. But when going for science I'm only interested in the level 3 tenet that benefits science and go back to policies afterwards.

 

[reddishrecue]

Freedom is very good, since most of my victories were with this ideology. The trick now for me is to get more victories with freedom in deity, immortal, or try a different ideology because most of my victories were either tech or cultural with freedom in the king and emperor difficulties. However, diplomatic victories also seem so much easier since one doesn't have to wait to research so much technologies for the spaceship.

 

[Magma_Dragoon]

The only space part that is rushed is the last one. You can easily build the others with time to spare while finishing particle physics, so the gold vs GE argument is irrelevant. Order will always gets your spaceship launched faster than freedom, but noone ever said it's impossible.

Spoiler :

Everything is trivial on king

 

[joncnunn]

The only space part that is rushed is the last one. You can easily build the others with time to spare while finishing particle physics, so the gold vs GE argument is irrelevant. Order will always gets your spaceship launched faster than freedom, but noone ever said it's impossible.

That is bound to be hammer output vs gold output specific. I also note that prior to the patch that doubled the hammer & gold cost; I had a game where my gold per turn output was sufficient to rush every part except one without slowing down my victory based on science turn times and only needed to hand build one of them. My gold per turn was such that I could cash rush space ship parts faster than hand building. I think I was playing Venice.

 

[ravenmagus]

The only space part that is rushed is the last one. You can easily build the others with time to spare while finishing particle physics, so the gold vs GE argument is irrelevant. Order will always gets your spaceship launched faster than freedom, but noone ever said it's impossible.

For what it's worth, your cap does need to be around size 40 to fully GE rush the last part. Easily doable, but if your terrain is poor for growth (plains/coast, too many hills, etc) then the GE might leave your part with a few turns left, while rush buying is always 1 turn.

The factory science boost is way better than anything else from Freedom though.

 

[michaeljhuman]

On King difficulty, to be honest, it is quite trivial. With any civ. Heck, even Denmark, which is getting some nice pounding in nearby topic. The recipe (for any civ to do science victory on King) - is:
- get majority of all world wonders built up until industrial;
- through those wonders and general buildings together, get undisputable cultural, religious (+faith amount), productive lead and city-state domination (number of allies - usually all of them, on King);
- build a large army;
- take out any civ which is close or slightly ahead scientifically (on King, no AI can be far ahead). Feel free to let 'em survive with one city if you want, this still halts 'em for a loooong time scientifically;
- win scientific victory.

See, it's quite trivial this way.

Didn't say King was the hard part. See the post topic Avoiding massive unhappiness when doing Freedom was what was killing me until I made some play changes.

As someone said above, I liked Freedom for the 1/2 food for specialist item, as I play Korea.

 

[michaeljhuman]

I prefer Freedom for going science; I play tall and so there's actually quite a bit of indirect science bonuses attached to Freedom. (Rationalism has a policy that gives science for every specialist, with Freedom you have reduced food consumption for specialists and can then both grow the city more and hire more specialists)

You don't have to worry about accidentally winning a diplomatic victory; just abstain from the vote. But when going for science I'm only interested in the level 3 tenet that benefits science and go back to policies afterwards.

I also play tall, but early science victories seem tricky if you had only say, 3 cities, due to build times. I suspect I can make better decisions though, to win earlier.

Four cities seems better, as you can have 3 of them working on the boosters, and a fully stocked capital ( nuke plant, spaceship factory, iron works, whatever) quickly do other parts, maybe with an assist from the next best city.

 

[FinsT]

The problem with Treaty Organization is that using it will cause you to accidentally win with diplomacy

...

Not me it wouldn't, - i usually play with all victory types, except max turns, disabled. Score ftw. Try it. You'll like it.