Social Policy: Liberty (G&K)

Introduction

Liberty is one of the three social policy branches available in the ancient era, and generally the strongest of those three when pursuing a wider strategy.

The Policies

• Liberty
• Republic
• Collective Rule
• Citizenship
• Representation
• Meritocracy
• Finisher

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.

An insignificant amount of culture per city, this helps offset the penalty of settling multiple cities to a minor degree. Getting cities expanding tiles before building Monuments is also nice.

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 becomes less significant as the game goes on, but the +5% to buildings scales with city production, making this a decent boost throughout the game.

Collective Rule

Speeds the training of Settlers by 50% in the Capital and a free Settler appears near the Capital.
Requires: Republic

The highlight of the Liberty tree. Planting a second city early positively compounds throughout the game; the only downside is the four unhappiness hit of founding a new city can potentially be a problem too early. This can be overcome by buying a worker to improve luxuries, or founding the second city on top of one. The +50% production boost to settler production in the capital significantly speeds up production, allowing for the production of three settlers in as many turns as it'd take to produce two otherwise.

Citizenship

Tile improvement construction rate increased by 25% and a free Worker appears near the Capital.

A free early worker has similar positive compounding effects as a settler, though not quite as dramatic. But since Citizenship could be adopted early, a free worker is still quite significant. The construction rate increase makes improvements take 80% as long 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 turn reduction, and the rounding issue makes it 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[/B]

Reduces the standard size 15% per city social policy cost increase to 10%. With four cities, this reduces the total social policy cost increase by about 10%; 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 pick up the policy (although it does not provide any retroactive adjustment or "culture rebate" for policies you previously adopted.) The standard golden age (10 turns) is useful for speeding up critical early city production, culture generation and a minor early gold boost.

Meritocracy

+1 Happiness for each City you own connected to the Capital and -5% from Citizens in non-occupied cities.
Requires: Citizenship

This will generally provide +1 happiness per city, helping to overcome a city's innate 3 unhappiness. Late establishment of trade routes generally makes this the last chosen policy in the branch. The percent reduction is a minor 1 happiness per 20 citizens, but does at least get rounded up.

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. Most frequently a Great Engineer will be chosen, which can be used to guarantee a particularly strong wonder such as Notre Dame, Hanging Gardens, Leaning Tower of Pisa or the Porcelain Tower. Alternatively, a Great Prophet could be chosen to Found/Enhance a religion if you have a lower faith output.

General Use

With both free settler and worker, Liberty provides a fast start, which leads to more production, gold, food, and everything else. 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. Fortunately, we have a free settler and a faster settler production rate to help found a large empire early. Overall, Liberty is a very coherent tree, but deciding which Liberty policies to choose first can be difficult.

a. Citizenship - Republic - Collective Rule
It is the most common way of using Liberty. By picking Citizenship, you can utilize the huge boost of an early free worker, which could be used to improve tiles and get luxury resources to sell. Then, march straight towards Collective Rule to get a settler asap to expand territory.

b. Republic - Collective Rule - Citizenship
Generally, it is better when you want to occupy a choke point or settle in a rich spot as early as possible. Also, the production boost from Republic will be quite significant if it is adopted early.

Liberty and Victory Conditions

• Domination
  Getting multiple cities up and productive early helps producing an army, and Republic speeds up the rate at which puppeted cities produce their 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 pushes you to found a wide empire, which always gets a higher science.
  
  
• Diplomacy
  The deep tech need of diplomatic victory makes it fall under the same purview as a scientific victory. The policies of liberty additionally help setting up a large empire with which to gain the gold required for a diplomatic victory.
  
  
• Culture
  Representation provides a significant decrease in culture required when settling cities beyond the capital, and the finisher can be used for an engineer or an artist for a landmark.

Liberty's Synergy with other Policies

• Tradition
  A hybrid tradition/liberty approach can be highly beneficial for 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 branches than to finish one, so with other civilizations it's generally advisable to just go for one branch or the other.
  
  
• Commerce
  A wide empire that Liberty brings you is well suited to Commerce branch. Decreased road/railroad maintenance and purchasing costs, as well as happiness from each type of luxury resource, are all huge bonuses for wide empires.
  
  
• Rationalism
  Liberty is well suited to Science Victory, so combining with Rationalism, your science per turn will scale up like no other.
  
  
• Autocracy
  Liberty's Meritocracy and Representation help mitigate the effects of going on a world wide rampage.
  
  
• Order
  With a further number of per city increases these meld well together, with Liberty being like Order's baby brother. Who doesn't want a big brother?

Civilizations well-suited to Liberty

• France
  Ancien Régime stacked with Liberty is simply awesome, with each new city producing 3 per turn upon founding. With new cities speeding up policy acquisition rather than the normal opposite, France can blaze through the branch like no other.
  
  
• 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.
  
  
• Rome
  Rome builds up infrastructure in new cities faster than other civilizations, and turns Republic's +1 into +1.25.
  
  
• Carthage
  With each new city getting a free harbor from Phoenician Heritage, you will just swim in cash after researching The Wheel.

Note: Amended from vanilla Liberty by slobberinbear, this article is in G&K version.[/b][/B]