Avoiding fights when using liberty policies

[ArcaneSeraph]

After playing a lot of Immortal games, I've come around to agreeing that Liberty is better in perhaps every circumstance. I don't think of it as a "wide" policy branch but rather a "quick start" policy branch. It's early bonuses have huge impact that can boost either wide or tall approach substantially.

However, I think Tradition is getting short shrift here, probably because many players (including very good ones) don't play in a way that really exploits its benefits. It's clearly very situation, but I think the biggest factor is your general approach to city placement and development. I think after watching MadDjinn's videos (and consciously or unconsciously imitating his style) I'm getting less and less out of Tradition. If you like to pack cities and plop them on resources, forget it. If, on the other hand, you like to build "megacities," which is not necessarily an optimal win approach but works nevertheless (at least up to Immortal), then Tradition is for you. First, the opener can get you out to that 3rd ring amazingly fast (I believe this is a much bigger benefit than the +3 capital culture). If you're someone who even thinks about putting cities 4 tiles from each other, then this is not really a factor. However, if you want to claim a large area with the fewest possible cities, then this is indispensable. Second, the trick to exploiting the 15% food finisher is to understand that it works on excess food, not total generated. If you are someone who even thinks about building a mine on a river hill tile, forget it...this policy is not useful to you. You need to farm everything, and to want Hanging Gardens like your life depends on it. If you don't typically have 40+ pop (still growing 1 pop per 6 turns) in your core 3 or 4 cities at 1700, then you probably aren't playing in a way that benefits from this policy branch.

This is what I've trying to say, exactly. You can't play liberty by sitting with one city and trying to hard build wonders. That's hardly taking advantage of its bonuses. Similarly you can't play tradition by only hard building like 1 or 2 wonders and trying to expand like mad. You have to leverage its capabilities to do like, say, don't use the HS to get the PT for free but instead get a GS and use it for something cool and hard build the PT, such as what an earlier poster suggested - use the GS for steel / gunpowder. Or take advantage of its synergy with honor. Or use it to just a grab a few policies and dive in patronage.

There are tons of options out there. Many powerful ones exists for liberty but so, too, do they exist for tradition. I see liberty as a very fast early bonus tree and early bonuses are very powerful which makes it very powerful. Tradition is a slower tree but if you leverage it can be used to get a stronger, later bonus. Then there are combos that are cool. Trad to liberty can work or liberty to trad.

 

[Kevin J]

Players like Vexing and Martin play competitively to complete win conditions the quickest possible. Others play different styles, and taking an approach that is narrowly focused on a win condition and pushing for it may not be appropriate to your play style.

I like to try for time victories, then pull off a win if I have to - which basically amounts to game focused on dominating the map and keeping your opponents down (and certainly doesn't give fast win times). My proactive goal - mass production and happiness, by whatever route, to be focused on tile control. But most of my turn-to-turn play is reactive - and that is what I enjoy.

Money is not typically an issue once I'm past a couple cities, and taking legalism early (doubling culture) gets me my next couple policies faster - the crucial ones I need for happiness to push expansion or conquest (Monarchy is usually worth 8+ when taken next). It's on a stepping stone to a good happiness policy. Happiness = more puppet culture, faster policies. It snowballs very quick in a conquest game if you can push all the happiness policies as fast as you can - I don't think my approach is optimal, but that's typically the focus. Some maps the CS's have many unique luxuries, and it's Patronage that's situationally best to keep the expansion/conquest alive - the saved maintenance can be turned into courthouses or happiness buildings as needed.

I still like liberty as an opener, because it gives that big push when you're most behind the ai (the very start). But it's certainly not the only option, you can win with any of the initial three policy branches on Diety. Liberty seems to be the path to the fastest wins, however.

 

[Ceterius]

I don't get why you should ever REX. It is surely better to rush an opponent with warriors and archers. The enemy civ declares war on you anyway on Deity. It's easy to capture their newly built cities and you get workers too.

 

[peddroelm]

On MadDjinn Deity LP - Rome video series he maintains a high gold stock early [from selling luxuries,open borders , ruins and meeting City States.]. He says having a lot of gold saved up will make the AIs fear you and not DOW.

About the openings:

TRADITION: IMO misleadingly positioned on the top of the policies list doesn't have many policies geared for maximum return during the early game. Most of the rewards for the tradition policies are far in a distant future you will probably never survive to benefit if you go for a tradition opener.

Most of the rewards for the liberty have POWERFULL IMMEDIATE EFFECTS and most of the permanent bonuses scale with the number of cities -> very good for ICS

Also lets not forget HONOR for opening :
HONOR: Early on you will usually get DOWed by multiple AI's with superior resources. Honor helps to even odds ...

 

[Lokos451]

There are tons of options out there. Many powerful ones exists for liberty but so, too, do they exist for tradition. I see liberty as a very fast early bonus tree and early bonuses are very powerful which makes it very powerful. Tradition is a slower tree but if you leverage it can be used to get a stronger, later bonus. Then there are combos that are cool. Trad to liberty can work or liberty to trad.

I think you're missing Martin and Vexing's real point. They're not saying that there are not exploitable policies and strategies in tradition. They're saying that there are much more consistently exploitable policies in Liberty, and backing it up with generally mathematical proofs. Those early bonuses mean that if you played another player who leveraged Liberty early and you went Tradition, you wouldn't MAKE it to the end game you refer to.

Tradition is the support policy tree for a really cool style of play, essentially the vertical empire. However, it's underpowered and difficult to utilize, partly because some of the policies force you into such long term approaches to your returns, partly because some of the policies are outright weak in comparison to policies in other trees that can be reached by the same times, and mostly because legalism is positioned badly. Now getting a tree maxed out for 6 policies results in 7 policies return. Not being able to go for that right away hurts. I think the shame is simply that when honor and liberty got buffed, tradition basically got nerfed. This forces you into a playstyle path that CAN be powerful, but the approach is much more inflexible, less optimal, less likely to win quickly.

That's the core argument here. I wish I didn't have to agree with them, because pre-patch I made all the same arguments you did, and my playstyle prefers those methods. But I don't win more playing that way. Tradition needs some help to be really competitive as you go up in difficulty, and I don't see any arguments past that. Arguing that it can work and be fun is a given as well.

 

[Ceterius]

I think you're missing Martin and Vexing's real point. They're not saying that there are not exploitable policies and strategies in tradition. They're saying that there are much more consistently exploitable policies in Liberty, and backing it up with generally mathematical proofs. Those early bonuses mean that if you played another player who leveraged Liberty early and you went Tradition, you wouldn't MAKE it to the end game you refer to.

Tradition is the support policy tree for a really cool style of play, essentially the vertical empire. However, it's underpowered and difficult to utilize, partly because some of the policies force you into such long term approaches to your returns, partly because some of the policies are outright weak in comparison to policies in other trees that can be reached by the same times, and mostly because legalism is positioned badly. Now getting a tree maxed out for 6 policies results in 7 policies return. Not being able to go for that right away hurts. I think the shame is simply that when honor and liberty got buffed, tradition basically got nerfed. This forces you into a playstyle path that CAN be powerful, but the approach is much more inflexible, less optimal, less likely to win quickly.

Tradition is necessary for a wide empire because of Oligarchy. It's certainly more powerful than either Patronage or Commerce. You usually want to fill all 3 early trees. The question is about the order. It's the best to start with either Honor or Liberty.

 

[Lokos451]

Tradition is necessary for a wide empire because of Oligarchy. It's certainly more powerful than either Patronage or Commerce. You usually want to fill all 3 early trees. The question is about the order. It's the best to start with either Honor or Liberty.

I'd disagree with the first and third statement there. One of them, very likely, for the 'free' bonus from finisher. Parts of all three, sure, since oligarchy strengthens the honor garrison policy and there's some synergy there.

However, when it comes down to it, oligarchy can be skipped. I've been playing with a France REX strategy attempting to utilize the full benefit of garrisons...but even specifically working towards that I find it really hard to take oligarchy because of a few things. First, if you garrison every city and go wide, the computers are much less likely to DOW you. That makes the better shot end of oligarchy decreasingly useful. So you're left with 1-1.5gpt, per city. That's your concrete benefit. Honor's equivalent offers 2 cpt and a happy per city for 1-1.5 gpt. Assuming trade routes, the happy pays most/all that cost as soon as you grow into it and you get +3 prod, +1 beaker from your happy face, or +1 beaker/gpt + growth.

That is a MUCH stronger benefit, unless your empire is constantly awash with enemy troops you're shooting at. And if it is, you're not working the tiles they're on, you're not growing, and the longer you do it, the more you start losing. Oligarchy's secondary benefit is bad precisely because you can't afford to let them get that close very often, better to be attacking them or stopping them at or near your borders.

 

[Ceterius]

I'd disagree with the first and third statement there. One of them, very likely, for the 'free' bonus from finisher. Parts of all three, sure, since oligarchy strengthens the honor garrison policy and there's some synergy there.

However, when it comes down to it, oligarchy can be skipped. I've been playing with a France REX strategy attempting to utilize the full benefit of garrisons...but even specifically working towards that I find it really hard to take oligarchy because of a few things. First, if you garrison every city and go wide, the computers are much less likely to DOW you. That makes the better shot end of oligarchy decreasingly useful. So you're left with 1-1.5gpt, per city. That's your concrete benefit. Honor's equivalent offers 2 cpt and a happy per city for 1-1.5 gpt. Assuming trade routes, the happy pays most/all that cost as soon as you grow into it and you get +3 prod, +1 beaker from your happy face, or +1 beaker/gpt + growth.

That is a MUCH stronger benefit, unless your empire is constantly awash with enemy troops you're shooting at. And if it is, you're not working the tiles they're on, you're not growing, and the longer you do it, the more you start losing. Oligarchy's secondary benefit is bad precisely because you can't afford to let them get that close very often, better to be attacking them or stopping them at or near your borders.

Naturally, you want to use both Military Caste and Oligarchy which have an excellent synergy. Unit maintenance costs are more expensive than 1-1.5 gpt per unit during the later eras. Sure, you can delay Oligarchy until late Renaissance or Industrial Era.

Oligarchy's secondary benefit is useful because fighting happens near frontier cities I've captured from the enemy. These cities are not economically useful at that point.

 

[vexing]

Tradition is necessary for a wide empire because of Oligarchy.

i can't remember the last time i've lost a city, and i never go for oligarchy. it is in no way required.

 

[Ceterius]

i can't remember the last time i've lost a city, and i never go for oligarchy. it is in no way required.

The question is not if it's required but if Patronage or Commerce are better.

 

[vexing]

The question is not if it's required but if Patronage or Commerce are better.

not really. you can get all of liberty and be heading into rationalism next policy pretty easily.

 

[Ceterius]

not really. you can get all of liberty and be heading into rationalism next policy pretty easily.

You'll fill 5 policy trees in the game. Piety and Rationalism are mutually exclusive. Order, Autocracy and Freedom are mutually exclusive.

That means you must choose one of these: Tradition, Commerce, Patronage.

 

[vexing]

You'll fill 5 policy trees in the game. Piety and Rationalism are mutually exclusive. Order, Autocracy and Freedom are mutually exclusive.

That means you must choose one of these: Tradition, Commerce, Patronage.

since when are we talking about a cultural victory? cultural victories are generally best tradition liberty piety freedom patronage

 

[Lokos451]

Naturally, you want to use both Military Caste and Oligarchy which have an excellent synergy. Unit maintenance costs are more expensive than 1-1.5 gpt per unit during the later eras. Sure, you can delay Oligarchy until late Renaissance or Industrial Era.

Oligarchy's secondary benefit is useful because fighting happens near frontier cities I've captured from the enemy. These cities are not economically useful at that point.

I'll give you that first point in a sense, but by the time it's costing more than 1.5 gpt or so you're at or very near economics, and the relative scale of what each gold is worth is going to change drastically for you. I related it in those terms because of that, and I'd say it indirectly devalues the savings because your overall income will increase to go along with it. Especially if you're being militaristic and have a few puppets with several TP's each.

So, I'd say the savings mean less as time goes on because money just isn't as tight. Furthermore, the attack strength increase means less as time goes on because you've theoretically got more military, and a lot of the AI's most dangerous rushes occur fairly early. If they occur late, they have 3 range artillery and could invalidate your bonus completely.....

I'll also give it to you that the new cities get some shots in as you cap them and are aggressive. But how many shots do you get out of that in a game? 20? 30? So basically that end of the policy is only useful each and every time a city fires, which is not nearly every turn, or even an average of once per turn overall. This means it's a benefit that should not be valued highly, since you cannot insure that you will benefit from it at all times.

 

[Ceterius]

since when are we talking about a cultural victory? cultural victories are generally best tradition liberty piety freedom patronage

It's common to pick policies from 5 trees in non-culture games.

BTW, Honor is better than Patronage in culture games since the strongest strategy to achieve cultural wins is a puppet empire.

 

[ArcaneSeraph]

I think you're missing Martin and Vexing's real point. They're not saying that there are not exploitable policies and strategies in tradition. They're saying that there are much more consistently exploitable policies in Liberty, and backing it up with generally mathematical proofs. Those early bonuses mean that if you played another player who leveraged Liberty early and you went Tradition, you wouldn't MAKE it to the end game you refer to.

Actually I'm not missing their point at all. In fact my last post just said:

"I see liberty as a very fast early bonus tree and early bonuses are very powerful which makes it very powerful."

THEY are missing my points. For whatever reason, I don't know. I think sometimes it is something you get locked into. When you think you are the best and are always right, you tend to teach and ignore the suggestions of the 'lesser' people.

I'm no slouch in math myself. I do have a doctorate after all in the subject. It's a very hard thing to mathematically analyze but I will give it a shot. Let's consider 2 scenarios. In scenario A the player has just completed the liberty branch. In scenario B the player has just completed the tradition branch.

Assumptions:

The branches were completed at the same time
4 cities
The happiness cap has been reached (i.e., 0 global happiness)
3 unique luxuries available to you naturally
2 DoWs (as that's very common on higher diffs). 1 was an 8 warrior rush and the other a more upgraded spearmen, archer, warrior rush.
Cities may build monuments and no other culture buildings. This does not mean they won't get other free culture buildings from tradition.
Ignore intangibles as both civs could've taken advantage of them (trading, CS allying, happiness triggered GAs, beating another civ to a wonder, etc)
Same wonders have been built
Captial is the biggest, second city is smaller but bigger than the 3rd and 4th cities.
Both players are intelligent
Ingore order of policies as both can make intellgent choices to either get more production sooner or get more culture / happiness sooner.
Every city has a library and the capital has the NC
Each worked tile produces an average of of 2 production/turn. I thought about this a lot and since you have few citizens, have access to civil service, granaries, stone works, stables, etc, it seemed a reasonable value to put it at.

I will try to compare bonuses as production one as much as possible as it tends to be most universal between the two.

Under both scenarios the base happiness (before any policy specifc boosts) is 9 + 3 * 4 = 21. The base happiness remaining for citizens themselves is 21 - 4 * 3 = 9.

Scenario A (Liberty)

Thanks to meritocracy you have an extra 3 happiness, 1 for each of your secondary cities. Thus you have a total of 12 for citizens. This implies:

Capital: 5 citizens
2nd city: 3 citizens
3rd city: 2 citizens
4th city: 2 citizens

Policies (and effects):

Liberty opener: providing 4 culture/turn

Collective rule: has saved 106 + 2 * 35 production (the 35 comes from the 50% faster build of the last 2 settlers - you pay 2/3 of the normal cost, saving 1/3)

Republic: It's providing at least 4 production/turn. Let's say the extra 5% amounts to 1 additional production (you won't always be building buildings and it's hard to estimate production but I think 1 is reasonable). So a total of 5 production/turn

Citzenship: saved 70 and a somewhat unmeasurable benefit to tile improvements (meaning its hard to compare / analyze in terms of gains so we will mark is as a benefit and move on)

Representation: free GA (again very hard to compare so we will mark is as a benefit) and reduced culture costs (Approx 10%).

Meritocracy: as discuessed above, is providing 3 happiness. Let's assume the cities are 5 tiles apart. So 5 road sections in other words. that gives you 15 road improvements. Trade routes don't make more than the city sizes themselves AFAIK so you will be getting 3 + 2 + 2 = 7. For a loss of 8/turn

Finisher: Used to rush Notre Dame / PT for 400 (NOTE: this just happened, remember, so the Notre Dame happiness couldn't have be utilized yet)

Other Items:

The two wars and the barbarians required you to build 8 units to defend / rome / hunt / etc. We will assume for simplicity all archers. For a total cost of 320

Empre Stats:

15.75 + 4.5 + 3 + 3 = 26.25/turn
10 + 6 + 4 + 4 = 24 citizen + 5 policy = 29/turn (see note on citizen production below for an explaination)
-8/turn + gold from all other sources
4 + 3 + 3 + 3 = 13/turn
646 saved via policies

Note: What is citizen production? It's production from citizens themselves excluding the city, modifiers, building production, and anything else I haven't thought of as it will be the same for both

Scenario B (Tradition)

A smart tradition player will attempt to grow the capital larger than a non-tradition player. Also as they aren't expanding as fast, the capital will have more time to grow larger too before hitting the cap. So with that said, let's say the capital has grown to size 10. This means you get +5 from monarchy and +1 from landed elite. Thus you have a total of 9 + 5 + 1 = 15 happiness for citizens. This implies:

Captial: 10 citizens
2nd: 3 citizens
3rd: 1 citizen
4th: 1 citizen

Policies (and effects):

Tradition opener: +3/turn. The faster border popping is quite useful but also hard to evaluate so again we will mark this as a benefit and move on.

Aristocracy: A smart player will build the GL, the Oracle or HG or something like that to take advantage of this... however for comparison purposes lets assume the wonders that would be build are just, NC, HS, and Notre Dame. This totals 185 + 300 + 400 = 885. With aristocracy you save 116

Legalism: You got 2 free temples and 2 free monuments. This is a savings of 280

Oligarchy: By this point units cost I think 1.5/turn to upkeep. You had the same wars, but required fewer units to defend. This makes the cities twice as good and usually can be defended with just the garrison archer. Thus you only required 4 archers instead of 8. So you are saving 6/turn and 160

Landed Elite: Providing just 1 measly happiness

Monarchy: Prodiving 5 and 5/turn

Finisher: +15% is hard to analyze so we will mark this as a bonus. The +2 food per city we will consider as a way to shift production to be more efficient. Thus +2 food can actually turn into +2 production per city per turn

Other:

Since the trade routes would be a loss at this point, the tradition player opted not to build them. This saved 8/turn over the liberty variant.

Empre Stats:

27 + 4.5 + 1.5 + 1.5 = 34.5/turn
20 + 6 + 2 + 2 = 30 citizen + 8 policy = 38/turn
6 + 5 + gold from all other sources
9 + 5 + 2 + 2 = 18/turn
556 saved from policies

Now I won't draw any conclusions but you let the reader think about it themselves. I'm 100% certain someone will come along and bash something to pieces and claim the whole thing is invalid and I'm fine with that. I realize that both empires will likely be bigger due to trading and such. But that doesn't change anything. This is a proporital analysis... not an 100% accurate this is how the game will go analysis. I also realize I haven't included upkeep costs, whether you rush buy or produce, whether the liberty player gets a city faster or whether the tradition player gets an extra wonder or completes the tree faster thanks to having more culture. There are so many variables a smart player can take advantage of on both sides that it becomes a wash.

So you have a think and let your creativity run wild

 

[Pazyryk]

I'm sure there are some minor flaws there but I can't find them. In Liberty's favor, I think that the early worker/settler probably has a bigger cumulative effect than you have accounted for. In Tradition's favor, having completed the branch will give you greater future benefits (the food one applying to wide or conquest as much as tall, as +2 food converts to +2 production in all those cities).

I think this argues that they can be at least roughly comparable under the right circumstances and if exploited properly. As many argue, there are probably many more circumstances that favor Liberty. However, if you can place your capital in a spot to work 20+ good tiles (and you develop in such a way to do this) then Tradition is a bigger boost.

(As a minor point to add, Tradition approach can shave 5 or so turns off the GL. This is a very iffy start at Immortal+ but I think that 5 turns incrases the chance a lot, perhaps from 30% to 60% in my very rough guestimate for Immortal difficulty.)

 

[vexing]

BTW, Honor is better than Patronage in culture games since the strongest strategy to achieve cultural wins is a puppet empire.

not at all, unless you're playing as aztec. feel free to disprove me, the last HoF was a cultural victory challenge. you just need to beat a 141 turn victory while taking honor.

 

[ArcaneSeraph]

I'm sure there are some minor flaws there but I can't find them. In Liberty's favor, I think that the early worker/settler probably has a bigger cumulative effect than you have accounted for. In Tradition's favor, having completed the branch will give you greater future benefits (the food one applying to wide or conquest as much as tall, as +2 food converts to +2 production in all those cities).

I think this argues that they can be at least roughly comparable under the right circumstances and if exploited properly. As many argue, there are probably many more circumstances that favor Liberty. However, if you can place your capital in a spot to work 20+ good tiles (and you develop in such a way to do this) then Tradition is a bigger boost.

(As a minor point to add, Tradition approach can shave 5 or so turns off the GL. This is a very iffy start at Immortal+ but I think that 5 turns incrases the chance a lot, perhaps from 30% to 60% in my very rough guestimate for Immortal difficulty.)

I tried to think of a way to add in the fact that liberty get the settler and potentially worker faster. It would turn into extra production, mainly. But I couldn't think of how without taking into account a bunch of other stuff too. Like what if the liberty player hits the happy cap sooner because of this rapid expansion? Or what if the tradition player pops a 2nd / 3rd ring luxury to trade sooner? Or what if an early war prevents forming a 3rd or 4th city right away?

Someone clever might be able to think of a way to do this better but at the moment a method escapes me completely

 

[Ceterius]

not at all, unless you're playing as aztec. feel free to disprove me, the last HoF was a cultural victory challenge. you just need to beat a 141 turn victory while taking honor.

That HOF had Chieftain as difficulty. What works on Chieftain is not what works on Deity.