Social Policy: Liberty (vanilla)

Introduction

Liberty is one of the three social policy branches available in the ancient era, and generally the strongest of those three in most game situations, the only exception being a one city challenge game.

The Policies

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

Liberty and Victory Conditions
Liberty's Synergy with other Policies
Civilizations well-suited to Liberty

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.

Collective Rule

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

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. 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.

Republic

+1 Production in every City and +5% Production in cities when constructing Buildings.
Requires: Collective Rule

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.

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 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. The standard golden age is useful for speeding up critical early city production 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 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. Generally a great engineer will be chosen, which can be used to guarantee a particularly strong wonder such as the Porcelain Tower, Notre Dame, Hanging Gardens or Hagia Sophia followed by any of the prior. Alternatively a manufactory can be gained to speed up the hard production of all the above, though on higher difficulties this is risky.

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. Liberty is one of the only ways to get this done in time for classical era signed RAs to fall under its boosting effect.
  
  
• 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 Egypt, 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.
  
  
• Piety
  A natural fit for a rapid expansion strategy, which is typically limited by happiness. Piety and Theocracy help establishing new cities with monuments and temples to both overcome the happiness penalties of a new city and increase culture output.
  
  
• Rationalism
  Getting through liberty and using the finisher to get the Porcelain Tower for a great scientist to bulb into renaissance, opening up rationalism as a available for 7th policy is a key tactic in any science pushing scenario.
  
  
• 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 culture 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 production into +1.25.
  
  
• Egypt
  A hybrid tradition-liberty approach with Egypt can lead to a very strong empire quickly, using Liberty to set up a few cities with monuments before popping Legalism to get Egypt's unique Temple replacement, the Burial Tomb.

Patch version of this article: 1.0.1.383