A Small Proposal for Balancing Liberty

[reddishrecue]

Acken's suggestion would be a subtle but noticeable change.

Liberty is certainly difficult early on but I think in the late game it really starts to outshine Tradition.

Some have suggested this before but if shrines and monuments had zero maintenance cost & libraries produced 1 science each (maybe reduce NC science yield from 3 to 0 - leave the 50%) thus transferring more benefit to libraries instead.

This is what I have experienced before in multiplayer. Tradition does do better at first and then liberty does better later particularly If tradition doesn't do anything significant to stop liberty.

 

[killmeplease]

proplem is not in liberty but in tradition - tradition is op
1. remove +3 culture from the opener, but bring legalism back to tier 1
2. the main source of overpoweredness are free aqueducts though, they should come later (require technology to appear just like those free culture buildings from legalism) or be weaker (keep 25% food instead of 40%?)

also i think the restriction of no growth while producing settler should be removed. its awful and pointless imho.

what needs a buff are honor and piety, honor needs free maint for an early army of ~5 units (milirary caste?) and piety maybe +3 happiness from opener (like it was before..)

 

[AnonymousSpeed]

I don't think removing the three culture is a good idea. Each policy (aside from Piety) has a way of speeding up future policies, and the Tradition Openers +3 culture is its way of doing it. It ends up being inferior to the Liberty opener if you get a lot of cities early, which is what Liberty encourages. Making you wait for engineering to get aqueducts though is perfectly reasonable. Maybe Oligarchy could lead to Aristocracy and Legalism, Aristocracy to Monarchy and Legalism to Landed Elite. Monarchy is a pretty important happiness boost, so tucking it under Aristocracy would be an indirect nerf.

I disagree on settler growth. Settlers are supposed to be a big investment, a city is its big reward. If you have no more investment in thr Settler than anything else, then that cost/investment isn't quite as high.

What if honor worked like...
Opener: +33% versus barbarians, culture for kill barbarians, barbarian encampments spawned in revealed territory are shown to you.
Warrior Code: Requires opener. +15% production of land military units, a free great general appears outside the capital.
Military Tradition: Requires Warrior Code. Units gain 50% more experience from combat and land military units start with Great Generals 1. (A unit built before adopting this policy can get this promotion by upgrading it.)
Professional Army: Requires Military Tradion and Discipline. +15 experience for all newly built military units. Cost of upgrading and purchasing military units is reduced by 33%. Maintenance cost for military units is reduced by 25%.
Disciple: Requires opener. Units receive a +15% combat bonus when adjacent to both an allied unit and the enemy they're fighting. Flanking bonus is 50% greater (meaning 15% instead of 10%).
Military Caste: Requires Disciple. Can construct defensive and experience granting buildings in half the time and experience buildings are maintenance free. +1 local happiness from these buildings. A garrison increases a cities local happiness by 2 and culture by 2.
Finisher: Receive gold for each enemy unit killed. May purchase Great Generals with faith starting in the industrial era. May purchase units in puppeted cities.

Not sure if that would make it good though. My idea was that by boosting the happiness from garrisons it would make annexing a city less of a happiness hit. The finisher boost letting units get purchased in puppeted cities sounded neat on paper. New units can be summomed close to the front and workers can be bought to improve pillaged lands.

 

[BlackWizard]

Liberty gives too little happiness and gold.

Policy that gives free worker could also decrease maintenance cost for all civilian units or make them maintenance free

Policy that gives happiness could give -10%unhappiness in unoccupied cities and +1 in every city and +1 per city connection

 

[AnonymousSpeed]

Liberty is a bit shy on good happiness bonuses, given that it's all about expansion.

You know, I've once or twice gone into negative GPT from having to pay for the cost of workers from Citizenship. I don't know if I'd give it a gold bonus because Liberty already isn't bad.

Though this thread is mainly about Liberty that detour to talking about Honor did get me thinking. What if a policy gave +3 melee strength to all units? That makes your warriors like spearmen, spearmen like swordsmen, etc.

 

[reddishrecue]

Liberty had some issues for me when I used it..first, ideology had a hard time trying to kill enemy units when I was trying too expand my cities and even trying to get my NC up. I was in the middle of building libraries when all of a sudden my neighbor started attacking and I couldn't kill the units quick enough. I guess that also happens with tradition but with this liberty I was building lots of good buildings such as water mills libraries and circuses to try to stay happy. I was able to purchase units which really made me believe that it worked out fine and I was going to make good defenses but still wasn't enough. I even had walled up and still couldn't get the cities saved on time..