Liberty
When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.
When the government fears the people, there is liberty.
-- Thomas Jefferson
When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.
When the government fears the people, there is liberty.
-- Thomas Jefferson
Introduction
The Policies
Strategies
- General Use
- Liberty and Victory Conditions
- Liberty's Synergy With Other Policies
- Civilizations Well-Suited to Liberty
The Policies
Liberty
Adopting Liberty will provide 1
Culture in every city. Unlocks building the Pyramids.Although this may be an insignificant amount of culture per city, it helps offset the social policy cost penalty of settling multiple cities. It also allows your newly founded cities to begin expanding their culture borders immediately, before building Monuments and other culture buildings, which is very helpful.
Building the Pyramids will provide two free workers, which can be invaluable to a wider empire, and increase your workers' tile improvement speed by 25%, which stacks with the 25% bonus from Citizenship (as described below). More workers, each improving tiles more quickly, provide benefits for the entire game.
Republic
+1
Production in every City and +5% Production in cities when constructing Buildings.This provides a significant boost to early city production. Cities founded on flat terrain working a non-production tile will have their initial production doubled. The +1 production becomes less significant as the game goes on, but the +5% production for buildings scales with city production, making this a decent boost throughout the game (equal to one-half of the boost from a Windmill).
Collective Rule
Speeds the training of Settlers by 50% in the
Capital and a free Settler appears near the Capital. (Venice receives a Merchant of Venice instead of a Settler.)Requires: Republic
The highlight of the Liberty tree. The benefits of planting an early second city compound throughout the game. The 4 unhappiness from founding a new city can potentially be a problem if done before you have improved at least 1 luxury. This can be overcome by buying (or stealing) a worker to improve one or more luxuries, or founding your second city on top of a luxury.
The +50% production boost to settler production in the capital significantly speeds up the settler generation rate, allowing for the production of three settlers in as many turns as it would otherwise take to produce two settlers. Fewer turns to produce each settler translates into fewer turns of stagnated growth in your capital.
Citizenship
Tile improvement construction rate increased by 25% and a Worker appears near the Capital.A free early worker has similar positive compounding effects as a settler, though not quite as dramatic. The construction rate increase makes improvements take 80% as long to construct as base, rounded up. On standard speed, this means a farm will take 5 turns instead of 6, while roads will still take 3 turns. This stacks additively with the Pyramids for additional construction rate reduction. The rounding issue makes Citizenship generally more effective on longer speeds, like epic and marathon.
Representation
Each city you found will increase the Culture cost of policies by 33% less than normal. Also starts a 
Golden Age.Requires: Citizenship
Reduces the standard size 10%-per-city social policy cost increase to approximately 6% (due to integer rounding in the social policy cost formula). With four cities, this reduces the total social policy cost increase from 40% to about 25%; the more cities, the larger the reduction. Note that Representation works retroactively, which means it reduces the additional policy cost attributable to cities settled before you select the policy (although it does not provide any retroactive adjustment or "culture rebate" for policies you previously adopted). The standard golden age (10 turns) provides 20% boosts to city production, culture generation and gold, all of which are helpful.
Meritocracy
+1
Happiness for each City you own 
connected to the Capital and -5% 
from 
Citizens in non-occupied cities.Requires: Citizenship
Meritocracy will provide +1 Global Happiness per connected city, helping to overcome, in part, the connected city's innate 3 unhappiness. Note that the +1 happiness benefit requires that a city be connected to the capital by a combination of roads and harbors (a "city connection"); a trade unit (caravan or cargo ship) operating between your capital and a city to form a trade route does NOT provide the Meritocracy benefit. Because city connections generally come relatively late in most players' build orders, this is often the last policy chosen in the Liberty tree.
The 5% percent reduction in unhappiness translates to 1 Global Happiness per 20 citizens, and does get rounded up. Note that this policy applies to citizens in "non-occupied cities" -- cities you have founded, cities that you have puppeted and cities that you have annexed and that have a courthouse; it does not apply to annexed cities that do not have a courthouse.
Finisher
Adopting all policies in the Liberty tree will grant a free Great Person of your choice near the Capital.A free Great Person opens many possibilities. Many players will choose a Great Engineer, which can be used to hurry production of a wonder, such as the Parthenon, Notre Dame, the Leaning Tower of Pisa or the Porcelain Tower. Alternatively, you might select a Great Scientist to create an academy, or a Great Prophet to found or enhance your religion.
Or you might select a Great Admiral (which can embark on ocean tiles before you have researched Astronomy), allowing you to meet, and trade with, civilizations on other continents more quickly (but be sure your Great Admiral finishes each turn in an ocean tile, to avoid losing your GAdm to barbs). If you are playing as Venice, you might select a Great Merchant of Venice to buy another City-State.
Note, however, that the Liberty finisher Great Person is not completely "free" -- it will increase the Great Person Point cost of your next Great Person of that type (with the further caveats that Great Engineers, Great Merchants and Great Scientists are on the same "counter", so selecting one will increase the cost of the next for all three types of Great Persons). Selecting a Great Prophet will increase the faith cost of your next Great Prophet.
General Use
Liberty helps gets you your cities out faster, with an extra worker, faster tile improvement, more production, a golden age to boost gold/culture/production, and a free Great Scientist that you can use to boost long-term science. Or a Great Engineer that you can use to get a key wonder, like Macchu Pichu for a significantly boost to your economy. Getting your cities out faster translates into faster libraries, faster growth, and more luxuries to sell, which in turn allows you to rush-buy buildings and units. The benefits from policies like Republic, Meritocracy and Representation scale up with more cities you found, so Liberty encourages you to expand and found a wide empire. Overall, Liberty is a very coherent tree, but you still have to decide which Liberty policies to choose first.a. Republic --> Collective Rule --> Citizenship
This is the most common way players use Liberty -- to grab an attractive settlement site or occupy a choke point before your opponents can do so. Also, the production boost from Republic will be quite significant the earlier you adopt it. Absent free culture from ancient ruins, if you build a monument in your capital first, you should be able to open Collective Rule between turns 35 and 38 (depending on how quickly you complete your monument). Then take Citizenship for the free worker and improved tile improvement construction speed.
b. Citizenship --> Republic --> Collective Rule
By starting with Citizenship, you can utilize the huge boost of a free worker, which could be used to improve tiles and get luxury resources to sell. You would then march straight towards Collective Rule to get a settler as quickly as possible to expand your territory.
Liberty and Victory Conditions
Domination
Getting multiple cities up and productive as quickly as possible will help you to produce an early army. Since puppets otherwise prioritize gold-producing tiles and specialist slots, Republic will speed up the rate at which puppeted cities will build useful buildings like monuments and markets.
Science
Using a Great Engineer from the finisher to rush build the Porcelain Tower is a key tactic in science victories. Additionally, Liberty helps you to found a wide empire, which should generate more science over time than a tall empire.
Diplomacy
The deep tech need of diplomatic victory makes it fall under the same purview as a scientific victory. Liberty policies also help setting up a large empire with which to generate the large amounts of gold required for a diplomatic victory.
- Culture
Representation provides a significant reduction in the required culture cost of social policies when settling many cities. The finisher can be used for a Great Engineer to hurry a key culture wonder, or a Great Writer for a Great Work of Writing or a quick burst of culture from a political treatise, or a Great Artist for a Great Work of Art or a timely Golden Age.
Liberty's Synergy With Other Policies
- Tradition
It is popular to open Tradition before opening Liberty and beelining to Collective Rule. However, that approach does NOT get you to Collective Rule's free settler faster than just opening Liberty and beelining to Collective Rule.
Without culture ruins, if you beeline Liberty to Collective Rule (as your third policy), when you get Collective Rule will depend on when you prioritize a Monument in your capital's build order and whether you have a 4-, 5- or 6-hammer start, but the range of number of turns is narrow. If you go scout --> Monument and have a 6-hammer start (settling on a hill and working a food-giving single-hammer tile, like stone or plains wheat), you will finish your Monument on turn 11 and will open Liberty on turn 15, take Republic on turn 23 and get Collective Rule on turn 38. On the other hand, if you build a Monument first, with the same 6-hammer start, your Monument will finish on turn 7 and you will get Collective Rule on turn 35 -- 3 turns faster, but at the cost of 5-7 turns of early scouting (when you might have picked up a culture ruin and/or gotten more first-to-meet-a-City-State gold bonuses).
If you use these same assumptions (no culture ruins, 6-hammer start and Monument first), opening Tradition before opening Liberty pushes Collective Rule back 7 turns (from turn 35 to turn 42). The punch-line is that you should not open Tradition on the assumption that you will get you your free Liberty settler more quickly -- in fact, it will only slow you down.
That being said, there can be real benefits to opening Tradition first. First, the Tradition opener's border expansion boost can be sufficient justification alone for taking the Tradition opener before opening Liberty -- more rapid expansion of your cities' borders will, among other things, save you considerable gold by not having to purchase key tiles. Second, opening Tradition allows you to build the Hanging Gardens, which provides a free Garden and provides enough food to support 3 specialists or citizens working 3 mined hills for stronger production.
A hybrid Tradition/Liberty approach can be highly beneficial for Poland (with its free social policies) or civilizations that can abuse Tradition's Legalism, such as Siam and Songhai. Due to exponentially increasing social policy costs, it takes significantly longer to finish both trees than to finish one, so with other civilizations it's generally advisable to just go for one tree or the other.
- Commerce
A wide empire that Liberty encourages you to build is well-suited to an investment in Commerce policies. Decreased road/railroad maintenance and purchasing costs, as well as additional happiness from each type of luxury resource, are all huge bonuses for wide empires.
- Rationalism
Liberty is well suited to a Science Victory, so combining Liberty with Rationalism can be very effective. Your science per turn will scale up like no other.
Civilizations Well-Suited to Liberty
Although any empire can benefit from Liberty policies, the following civilizations' unique abilities can benefit specially from pursuing a Liberty strategy:- America
Manifest Destiny is custom-made for a fast-scouting settlement extravaganza, buying tiles as needed to grab luxuries early from would-be City-State and AI claimants.
- Carthage
With each new coastal city getting a free harbor from Phoenician Heritage, Carthage should be swimming in gold after researching The Wheel.
- Poland
With a free social policy upon entering a new era, Poland is the only civilization that can complete both Liberty and another early tree (such as Tradition or Piety) without impairing its ability to take other pre-Ideology policies at the same pace as other civilizations.
- Rome
Rome builds up infrastructure in new cities faster than other civilizations, and turns Republic's +1 into +1.25.
Note: Amended from vanilla Liberty article by slobberinbear and G&K Liberty article by LordLeoz.