Avoiding fights when using liberty policies

[Rittmeyer]

I`m surprised to see so many people defending Tradition. I`m not surprised to see top players like Martin and Mad Djinn defending Liberty.

Also, seeing how many of you are choosing tradition, it`s not hard to see why people are ranting so much about the new Deity. I`m not saying it`s easy. I just recently started playing after patch, and I`m doing well, but I have been kinda lucky and not taking to many early DoW`s. The sample is small, anyways. But what is clear to me right now is that Tradition is just plain bad. Landed elite is now pathetic, Aristocracy is almost useless on Deity, Oligarchy fails to do what it was supposed to (solve the early DoW problem), Legalism hardly will hit for more then 2 temples+2 monuments. Will you go through all of that to get monarchy and the finisher?

To me it would be much more a matter of Liberty vs Honor then Liberty vs Tradition.

 

[Martin Alvito]

1) In the initial expansion stage, the more hammers you spend on settlers, the more you then have to spend on units to defend that land. You can expand as aggressively as you can until that inflection point after which your unit/cities ratio is too low to survive. What I am wondering is whether you actually end up with more cities and land during the expansion phase if you delay your expansion by going honour and attacking someone.

Doing that completely screws the pooch on . You have to run up to Iron to go on the offensive, which takes time. If you stay with puppets, you're going to end up way, way behind on because you can't force them to put Universities in and staff them. If you annex, you take a big short-term hit followed by a big hit once you put the Courthouse in.

Optimal play right now requires inducting the AI's aggressiveness function and expanding along the frontier of that curve. As you gain the ability to settle another city without drawing a DoW, you need to do it. That curve tightens down if you go on the offensive due to the diplo hits you take for being a warmonger and taking cities.

2) After expansion stabilises, you are still stuck with more neighbours and more resentful ones. Even in the static sense, you need to spend more gold per turn maintaining and upgrading units. I wonder whether the need to maintain a larger military and having less favourable trading opportunities actually makes smaller empires better. Having less citizens certainly doesn't help.

I can't see how it makes them "better" in the sense that they are more efficient. Every luxury you resell is worth 9-10 per turn; it follows that you want to grab every multi-luxury site you possibly can. The optimal empire size is certainly smaller than it once was; you won't see me trying to settle a 15 city empire on Deity. But you still want to be somewhere in the 4-6 city range when all is said and done, primarily because Universities are just that good.

 

[ArcaneSeraph]

@RealHuhn

Representation is not a bad policy... but it's a policy that's practically as good if you just don't take it. You save just as much policy wise by ignoring it. So unless you are going for a cultural game or want a lot more than 4 cities, it isn't really outstanding.

500 is a lot to throw at a Settler. It's a more attractive play than it was, given the rebalance in early building costs, the new -> conversion factors on early buildings and the weakness of city-states early on.

I've been known to buy a Worker in a city where I need to hook up luxuries and can't reasonably walk a Worker over or steal, but I try to exhaust all other options (and plan ahead on my steal) before resorting to purchasing the Worker.

I guess we just see things a lot differently. I find it much more efficient to purchase units (settlers especially) than buildings. Also I hate stalling growth in my capital during a critical time to build a settler. So to me it is always better to build, say, the library and purchase the settler than to purchase a library and build a settler... anywhere... not just the capital.

Yes, but the problem is that Republic beats the pants off of the from Monarchy (it isn't even remotely close once you expand), and the Tradition branch has dead policies. Monarchy alone is better than either, but the combination of Republic + Meritocracy is far superior to say, Oligarchy + Monarchy or Landed Elite + Monarchy.

It's a question of what you can build. CiV still has the same basic problem that it always has: you want the first tier buildings and Universities everywhere because they're efficient and cheap to maintain. Everything else is situational. Further, you get far more per unit of population in many small cities than in a few large ones due to the way the mechanics work. The only exception is if you managed to build the Hanging Gardens amongst a bunch of Hills. The result is that in almost every case the small cities are much more efficient producers. You have fewer citizens but they work better, more efficient tiles, and the they make gets sunk into more efficient buildings.

This is assuming that the monarchy happiness is being used to expand your capital alone. Republic allows you to have 1 more production (and a bit extra that I will ignore because monarchy offers a bit extra too) in each city. Monarchy allows you to have enough extra happiness to have 1 extra citizen in each city. That one extra citizen will almost certainly produce more than 1 production, in addition to all the other benefits. They don't have to be used for inefficient tiles in the capital.

Instead of having 3 cities stuck as size 2 with republic waiting for happy buildings or policies under liberty, with monarchy you can get them to size 3 or 4 as soon as they can grow.

The math has always favored spamming cities and Scientists on several levels. First of all, a Scientist under Secularism is nearly eight times as efficient at producing than a citizen assigned to a tile. Second, adding more cities running Scientists yields up more Great Scientists. Each additional city past the first is marginally less productive, but it's still sensible to slap down another city as long as that city will end up yielding a Great Scientist that you otherwise wouldn't get before the end of the game.

Yes agreed but... why does liberty get some special bonus to this? Tradition can (and most likely will) have just as many cities as liberty. Unless I'm mistaken most liberty players stop at 4-6 cities. That's the same as tradition. Yes they are up a little bit sooner under liberty but... that hardly will come in time to build these universities any sooner.

If you're not getting a powerful UB from Legalism, a GE is a lot to give up in order to get a couple of lousy Temples from Legalism and pick up Monarchy. I can see how you might want to just take the four top-quality Liberty policies and go elsewhere, but there isn't any combination of policies in Tradition that's going to compete with what that GE can do.

I guess if you consider a building that produces the most culture you can get at that point in the game and either a) under piety gives you extra happiness and extra money which means extra citizens and extra production and extra science or b) lets you get secularism faster a useless building then sure... legalism isn't much good.

And why would you possibly take 4 out of the 5 liberty policies and then go elsewhere if this GE is so powerful, as you say?

Personally I consider aristocracy roughly equaivalent to a free GE, if you actually use it.

I guess I must really play differently than a lot of people. I'm sure people play and win deity games all the time using liberty. There's no doubt there. I'm also equally sure that I play tradition based games on deity and win quite regularily as well. My style tends towards a tradition-honor-rationalism one. Under this a powerful capital helps me out. I can use the captial to build military to run to my other cities to provide happiness and culture, get their borders expanding wihtout bothering with monument first and make them nice and happy to fuel growth. My captial can build me wonders that I want (I usually get either the oracle or HG) and if I needed it aristocracy saves me 5 or 6 turns there. Likewise a save similar on NC and when I build HS and PT... and even oxford... so there's pretty much a free GE. Because I've got wonders early I'm well on my way to generating a GP by time education comes around.

I'm also like temples. They really boost my culture at a time when I have very little. They usually come close to doubling it to around 32 or so at the time. Sometimes I even run an artist in my captial. Why? Cause it lets me grab rationalism, secularism, and power towards those 2 free techs faster. In that way the culture is like generating 2 GSes. With careful management I won't accidently generate a GA along the way, if you I don't want one. The arists aren't too bad if you can get them making science for you too.

All I can say is that it works for me

 

[MadDjinn]

@RealHuhn

Representation is not a bad policy... but it's a policy that's practically as good if you just don't take it. You save just as much policy wise by ignoring it. So unless you are going for a cultural game or want a lot more than 4 cities, it isn't really outstanding.

random logical aside:

the 33% drop does take more cities to overcome the cost of taking it. though, if taken as the 4th policy, that's... very little. It's only when you stay small that you won't see much out of it. But even at 2 cities, the minor cost of taking it early eventually pays off due to the reduction in the later game high cost policies. (base-adjusted summed from 5th policy->end game >>> policy cost of the 4th choice as Representation)

and well, taking a 10 turn GA is definitely good. So even if you stay small, a GA is a GA...

oh, and can't get the free GP without it!

 

[ArcaneSeraph]

Doing that completely screws the pooch on . You have to run up to Iron to go on the offensive, which takes time. If you stay with puppets, you're going to end up way, way behind on because you can't force them to put Universities in and staff them. If you annex, you take a big short-term hit followed by a big hit once you put the Courthouse in.

Optimal play right now requires inducting the AI's aggressiveness function and expanding along the frontier of that curve. As you gain the ability to settle another city without drawing a DoW, you need to do it. That curve tightens down if you go on the offensive due to the diplo hits you take for being a warmonger and taking cities.

I'm not trying to just argue for argument sake but this isn't correct. You do not need iron to go on the offensive. You need some combo of honor, early unique unit, free great general, discipline. It works very trivially on almost all maps immortal or below and works well under certain conditions (mostly that you are close enough to an AI and have a decent capital) under deity.

The benefits are hefty. You get cities, captured workers, upgraded tiles, and a GA (from the battle generated GG). The courthouse also provides a heck of a lot of happiness and you've saved building your own settlers and workers. If you're a civ that has an early UU it's even more efficient. Babylon can be amazing like this. India is even insaner thanks to the courthouse thing. Any civ can do it though.

The only thing I've found to be careful about? Don't steal a worker. That's a second DoW and it hurts you for future trading.

 

[ArcaneSeraph]

random logical aside:

the 33% drop does take more cities to overcome the cost of taking it. though, if taken as the 4th policy, that's... very little. It's only when you stay small that you won't see much out of it. But even at 2 cities, the minor cost of taking it early eventually pays off due to the reduction in the later game high cost policies. (base-adjusted summed from 5th policy->end game >>> policy cost of the 4th choice as Representation)

and well, taking a 10 turn GA is definitely good. So even if you stay small, a GA is a GA...

oh, and can't get the free GP without it!

Agreed . If you have everything else in liberty it is pretty much a default choice to take it... but I wouldn't go into liberty just for it either.

 

[vexing]

I guess we just see things a lot differently. I find it much more efficient to purchase units (settlers especially) than buildings.

i doubt martin buys many buildings - pretty much all excess money goes into RAs or CS.
settlers have a low hammer cost and 20% hurry modifier, both of which make them an inefficient gold:hammer ratio purchase. under liberty with the +50% production modifier, you can hard build them very quickly, especially if you exploit the lack of starvation while building settlers - my latest game i had a 5 pop capital, with 5 workable +3 production tiles at the time of producing settlers, so i had 31.5 production per turn and it took me 6 turns to produce two settlers. as i've pointed out before (i think to you) saving 1000 gold on two settlers is enough to purchase two maritime allies which can potentially provide more bonus than the tradition finisher.

I guess if you consider a building that produces the most culture you can get at that point in the game and either a) under piety gives you extra happiness and extra money which means extra citizens and extra production and extra science or b) lets you get secularism faster a useless building then sure... legalism isn't much good.

i can't see how to get four established cities with monuments in time to get temples with legalism, so either you're splitting policies down honor as well (or maybe peity) which is further delaying the final policy, or you're only getting monuments in a couple cities. legalism itself is worthless, as are all policies that give +culture. they never catch up to the exponentially increasing costs they incur.

And why would you possibly take 4 out of the 5 liberty policies and then go elsewhere if this GE is so powerful, as you say?

it's 4 of 6, and the time to do that may be in a culture game, where you want to finish piety and then freedom as fast as possible.

Personally I consider aristocracy roughly equaivalent to a free GE, if you actually use it.

look at your actual hammer count early game when you're getting aristocracy and see how much the +15% is. your capital will probably be near 10 hammers max for a +1.5 boost. you need 27 raw hammers to have aristocracy give +4, whereas a manufactory gives +4 raw. guaranteeing one of the critical wonders on high difficulty is a lot more important though.

 

[ArcaneSeraph]

i doubt martin buys many buildings - pretty much all excess money goes into RAs or CS.
settlers have a low hammer cost and 20% hurry modifier, both of which make them an inefficient gold:hammer ratio purchase. under liberty with the +50% production modifier, you can hard build them very quickly, especially if you exploit the lack of starvation while building settlers - my latest game i had a 5 pop capital, with 5 workable +3 production tiles at the time of producing settlers, so i had 31.5 production per turn and it took me 6 turns to produce two settlers. as i've pointed out before (i think to you) saving 1000 gold on two settlers is enough to purchase two maritime allies which can potentially provide more bonus than the tradition finisher.

If you are founding 4 cities fast like that and don't buy buildings then I'm uncertain how you intend to get the NC up fast. You don't have to of course but a tradition player can usually have it after 2 cities which means you'll be a way ahead in tech.

By the time I usually build / buy my 3rd and 4th settler, it is around 2000BC or so. At that point will have probably about a size 7 or 8 capital. So if I do have to build settlers, I can do it faster than a size 5 city anyways. Maybe not 50% but faster nonetheless.

i can't see how to get four established cities with monuments in time to get temples with legalism, so either you're splitting policies down honor as well (or maybe peity) which is further delaying the final policy, or you're only getting monuments in a couple cities. legalism itself is worthless, as are all policies that give +culture. they never catch up to the exponentially increasing costs they incur.

No of course you can't. I never meant to suggest as such. And yes I do split policies down honor or piety and no I really don't care about the tradition finisher. If I get it sometime I get it. If the situation warrants not bothering with it, then I won't bother with it. I just ally a few maritimes and make up for it anyways if I really want it. It's not the finisher that interests me.

it's 4 of 6, and the time to do that may be in a culture game, where you want to finish piety and then freedom as fast as possible.

Okay 4 out of 6 then... but you get no happiness at all from the branch that way. Also if you are playing cultural, wouldn't you want representation? And what about the GE / GA / GS?

look at your actual hammer count early game when you're getting aristocracy and see how much the +15% is. your capital will probably be near 10 hammers max for a +1.5 boost. you need 27 raw hammers to have aristocracy give +4, whereas a manufactory gives +4 raw. guaranteeing one of the critical wonders on high difficulty is a lot more important though.

Look at the turn savings. A GE will save you say 20 - 30 turns maybe for rushing the PT (what a lot of people use it for)? Aristocracy saves you approx 4 - 6 turns per wonder. So if you are buildings wonders... you'll save that 20 to 30 turns anyways. If you do what I tend to do, build the NC, oracle, and HS... you've probably save 15 turns already. And those turns comes before the GE could save you anything. So earlier turns are more productive. Getting the NC faster means working on that next settler, next unit, next building that much faster not to mention extra science and culture and whatnot.

Further because of the early NC, targetting education to ensure you get that PT is easy. You'll also have a nice hefty capital to produce it quickly, if that's how you wanted to play it.

 

[Martin Alvito]

I guess if you consider a building that produces the most culture you can get at that point in the game and either a) under piety gives you extra happiness and extra money which means extra citizens and extra production and extra science or b) lets you get secularism faster a useless building then sure... legalism isn't much good.

You dropped two policies on getting Legalism. Monuments are cheap; using Legalism on them is a waste. Temples are not a good build if you're paying maintenance for them, unless you intend to win on Culture.

And why would you possibly take 4 out of the 5 liberty policies and then go elsewhere if this GE is so powerful, as you say?

I think I already explained that. If you're getting a maintenance-free UB in four cities (Burial Tombs/MPM) or a strong UB like a Wat, Legalism is very strong to must-have. If not, the GE is the big winner.

Personally I consider aristocracy roughly equaivalent to a free GE, if you actually use it.

On Deity? I don't think so. In a typical Deity game the largest set of Wonders you hard build in a non-cultural is as follows: NC, Hagia (-> PT), Ironworks, Oxford. That assumes that you throw the GE at Notre Dame.

For perspective, I'm not saying that your approach is futile. I'm sure you win games. What I'm saying is that Tradition just isn't as efficient as Liberty these days; the games you win could have been won faster by going Liberty.

i doubt martin buys many buildings - pretty much all excess money goes into RAs or CS.

Yup. I regularly bought Libraries before the NC got pushed back, but no longer do. If I rush an early building, it's a Granary in the right spot.

 

[ArcaneSeraph]

I've got too much to do these weeks and I can't stay and discuss CiV anymore for a while . So I'll just say this:

I'm not saying by any means that liberty is bad. For some styles, for some maps, for some civs it can be just great. You can do anything with liberty given the right conditions that you can with tradition. You can also do anything with non-liberty builds under the right conditions that you can with liberty/

What I am objecting to is the fact that there's a lot of talk about how other approachs and other styles are just foolish and sub-optimal. I do not believe for 5 seconds that my approach is the optimal one. That would be kind of arrogant of me to suggest as such. I do not really believe there is an optimal build out there. It depends too much on what's going on. It's like saying there is some optimal play in chess. If there was, you'd win all the time. In fact I change my plan all the time cause a) I get bored and b) the situation demands it.

I don't have time for nor am I trying to start an argument . I'm just saying try things out
and have fun and cya later I guess

 

[vexing]

If you are founding 4 cities fast like that and don't buy buildings then I'm uncertain how you intend to get the NC up fast. You don't have to of course but a tradition player can usually have it after 2 cities which means you'll be a way ahead in tech.

for my particular game i did the GL->NC start, with a rush bought library in second (free) city from liberty. then i hard built stoneworks (2 stone sites) and two settlers.
liberty doesn't preclude a standard NC start in any way.

At that point will have probably about a size 7 or 8 capital. So if I do have to build settlers, I can do it faster than a size 5 city anyways.

this is irrelevant - you can wait till your population is just as high whether you're going liberty or tradition. liberty always gets the +50%.

I really don't care about the tradition finisher.

whoa. wait. what? so you're taking tradition purely for aristocracy and monarchy? ouch.

Okay 4 out of 6 then... but you get no happiness at all from the branch that way. Also if you are playing cultural, wouldn't you want representation? And what about the GE / GA / GS?.

representation is one of the four - liberty, citizenship, collective rule, representation (preferably via oracle). getting to freedom finisher doubles the value of all your landmarks, so after freedom is done you go back and finish liberty.

Aristocracy saves you approx 4 - 6 turns per wonder.

haha. in what fantasy world is this? only if the wonder is going to take 31 turns to build does aristocracy save you 4 turns, and that's assuming no other modifiers: workshop, golden age, marble, egypt all reduce the turn savings from aristocracy.

 

[Martin Alvito]

What I am objecting to is the fact that there's a lot of talk about how other approachs and other styles are just foolish and sub-optimal. I do not believe for 5 seconds that my approach is the optimal one. That would be kind of arrogant of me to suggest as such. I do not really believe there is an optimal build out there. It depends too much on what's going on.

It wouldn't be arrogant to make the claim if you could back it up. I agree that the map and opponent locations now have significant influence on what you should be doing. That's a good thing; any game of strategy requires that the opponents' actions influence yours.

My position is that the opponents have less influence than you claim when it comes to SPs. I believe that certain civs have good reason to deviate from the otherwise optimal pure Liberty line due to the way Legalism works. I also believe that Honor is a reasonable choice if you intend to win by Domination. However, I can't see conditions under which pure Tradition makes sense in this patch. If you want to convince me, you need a more systematic explanation than you've provided.

It's like saying there is some optimal play in chess. If there was, you'd win all the time.

Chess lacks a strictly optimal pathway; if it had one, we would consider it solved like checkers now is. It doesn't follow that reactive play is the answer.

representation is one of the four - liberty, citizenship, collective rule, representation (preferably via oracle). getting to freedom finisher doubles the value of all your landmarks, so after freedom is done you go back and finish liberty.

For perspective: the "strong four" Liberty policies vary by win condition. If you're playing for a Cultural win, that's the list. If not, you'd rather have Republic than Representation. The change to Republic makes it worth an extra 1-2 per turn in an empire, and that makes it much more worth consideration. The rebalance of Republic is probably the single best change in the present patch; the devs found a way to make it much more attractive without making it mandatory, which I had thought was impossible.

 

[ArcaneSeraph]

Sigh...

this is irrelevant - you can wait till your population is just as high whether you're going liberty or tradition. liberty always gets the +50%.

whoa. wait. what? so you're taking tradition purely for aristocracy and monarchy? ouch.

Look... I'm trying to listen and accept your point of view and think about it critically. I'm not bashing you but providing my alternate thoughts. You do yourself a disservice by not doing the same for others.

The point was that tradition can have a larger capital early by not expanding so fast, in my experience. Hence why I said the capital could be larger before building settlers. I do realize of course that anybody can grow a city to any size.

And yeah I'm taking tradition for opener, aristocracy, legalism (when I want it), and monarchy. People are talking about just taking 4 policies in liberty. Why is that any better?

Everyone seems to think Martin is one of the best players out there (I have no opinion as I don't know him) just said he takes tradition sometimes just for 2 policies. Why isn't that laughable?

representation is one of the four - liberty, citizenship, collective rule, representation (preferably via oracle). getting to freedom finisher doubles the value of all your landmarks, so after freedom is done you go back and finish liberty.

I had assumed that the 4 then would include repulblic as it seems to help more early game and is one of the better policies but I stand corrected if you meant the others.

haha. in what fantasy world is this? only if the wonder is going to take 31 turns to build does aristocracy save you 4 turns, and that's assuming no other modifiers: workshop, golden age, marble, egypt all reduce the turn savings from aristocracy.

In the fantasy world I usually play of epic or marathon? 31+ turns for a (national) wonder is not exceptional if you don't have a production heavy city building it. Or are aiming for getting wonders in other cities to use that culture gain policy in piety? You aren't always in a GA, have marble, and build a whole bunch of production buildings that early in the game.

@Martin

Actually by definition something that is not considered solved optimally does mean exactly that the optimal play does depend on the environment.

Again you keep throwing around this optimal term and it can proved and backed up and therefore not arrogant to suggest. Yet you also say at the same time these are the wonders everyone builds and these are the things everyone does. I certainly do not just build the wonders you do (yes even on Deity). So what's the proof then? A game by game anaylsis of every option? What strategy wins more? Kind of pointless because no one uses the exact same strategy to same effect in every game.

CiV is almost certainly a NP-hard problem. Meaning you may be able to come close to optimal but most likely never find it in finite time.

 

[guenzak]

Well, I've found that picking a friend or two for DoF's helps a lot with that situation. If you do it just before your expansion wave hits you'll secure yourself a solid trading partner, often for much of the game. This is less so at Deity, but still a big deal.

I thought this as well but i was playing a game yesterday. On a continent with Inca, Spain, and Aztecs. Everyone was very friendly. Everyone had DOFs with the other 3. Happy to be friends with friends of friends type messages popping up all the time. We were even involved in resource trades. I was very happy with the situation cause I had already started expanding...and not even very close to anyones boarders. THEN...in one turn, denounce, denounce, denounce. THEN next turn, war, war war.

It didn;t seem that the DOFs andthe trades had any influence on them turning on me in one fell swoop. BTW...this was only on Prince not a high difficulty. I usually play prince or king.

Thoughts on this crazy AI situation?

 

[vexing]

People are talking about just taking 4 policies in liberty. Why is that any better?

i know not these people - in the liberty tree all the policies are good, so you're doing a disservice by not finishing the tree. in a culture game (specifically) you may want to delay the finishing, but i can't foresee it in other games.

Everyone seems to think Martin is one of the best players out there (I have no opinion as I don't know him) just said he takes tradition sometimes just for 2 policies. Why isn't that laughable?

he is, as am i. i take tradition for two policies as well. there are situations where that is optimal. legalism in most games is just a mistake - even if you're doubling your culture output immediately, with exponentially increasing social policy costs you don't recover from the spent policy.

I had assumed that the 4 then would include repulblic as it seems to help more early game and is one of the better policies but I stand corrected if you meant the others.

that's specific to a culture victory, in which case you're generally starting with tradition to open up the eventual legalism for opera houses + hermitage.

In the fantasy world I usually play of epic or marathon? 31+ turns for a (national) wonder is not exceptional if you don't have a production heavy city building it.

it's a bit disingenuous to quote marathon turn numbers without mentioning that when people typically quote standard speed. and in those cases an engineer rushing becomes relatively more valuable, it wouldn't be unusual for porcelain tower to take 40 turns on marathon. anyway, regardless of that a manufactory for +4 production still beats aristocracy at up to 27 raw production, or 36 raw production with workshop + marble.

 

[bryanw1995]

I agree that it's more or less impossible to REX these days on Deity due to the AI, but going Liberty lets you avoid dropping about 180 on a Settler and a Worker at a period in time when production is very dear.

Unless you're building Temples in several cities or have a UB that can be acquired via Legalism, you're not getting that back from Aristocracy, Oligarchy and Legalism.

Meritocracy generally gets you the same returns as Monarchy, and Republic's is just better than Monarchy's now unless you go hard vertical.

The net result is that Tradition is the better tree if you plan to go for something like a Hanging Gardens game, and Liberty is better if you're going for buildings to maximize raw via Universities or raw output in a Culture game. I can see how a Hanging Gardens game might be optimal for Diplomacy with Arabia, but for all other combinations of civs and win conditions it seems to me that Liberty is going to come out on top.

When I was working out gunpowder rush strategies for france/USA/Ottomans/Spain I found the liberty GP indispensible. It's a complete crapshoot on deity, but at least in immortal you can nearly always get either the HS or GL plus the free GP from liberty, launching you to gunpowder in the late 90's. I suspect that on deity you'd want to be closer to mid 80's, but even then you'd almost certainly be better off just rushing to steel as quickly as possible and upgrading your warriors/swords. 6 LS by turn 65 are much better than 3 musketeers by turn 100.

 

[ArcaneSeraph]

i know not these people - in the liberty tree all the policies are good, so you're doing a disservice by not finishing the tree. in a culture game (specifically) you may want to delay the finishing, but i can't foresee it in other games.

I can see how you might want to just take the four top-quality Liberty policies and go elsewhere.

For perspective: the "strong four" Liberty policies vary by win condition. If you're playing for a Cultural win, that's the list. If not, you'd rather have Republic than Representation.

No one is talking about just taking for strong policies in liberty, huh?

he is, as am i. i take tradition for two policies as well. there are situations where that is optimal. legalism in most games is just a mistake - even if you're doubling your culture output immediately, with exponentially increasing social policy costs you don't recover from the spent policy.

Why do I feel like I'm talking to the borg? "We are the best. Our play styles are optimal. We are the top players. All other play styles are inferior. We will not consider arguments. You will play as we do."

I have an open mind. I like adopting new strategies and new styles of play. I don't really care if anyone thinks I'm a top player or not. I care about myself and my friends having fun and winning in an enjoyable fashion.

I suggest that you can build early temples to push into another tree faster beyond liberty and no one even bothers to think about it but just says its a failure... mistake... it isn't what we do. I've used strategies where you can get rationalism + those free techs at a critical time using extra culture early on, like the oracle or running artists. What's the feedback? Sum-optimal... not what we do. Do you even consider that someone else might have a strategy that you haven't thought of that might actually work? Of course not.

So have fun with your assimilation.

it's a bit disingenuous to quote marathon turn numbers without mentioning that when people typically quote standard speed. and in those cases an engineer rushing becomes relatively more valuable, it wouldn't be unusual for porcelain tower to take 40 turns on marathon. anyway, regardless of that a manufactory for +4 production still beats aristocracy at up to 27 raw production, or 36 raw production with workshop + marble.

I'm sorry that I didn't mention the entire details of my game setups. You made it sound laughable that a construction could take longer than 30 turns or that a city would ever have more than 27 raw production so I presented options where I routinely can find constructions that both conditions are true. And what does a manufactory have to do with it? You guys have been discussing rushing PT or Notre Dame with it. Which is a one time savings of X turns that comes much later than aristocracy.

I also note we aren't quoting all the other settings. Are we using island maps? Pangaea? Small? Large? Duel? Geez man... you are just nitpicking about everything...

Yes I am certainly terrible for suggesting that someone might want to choose tradition and get aristocracy fast before jumping into another tree or maybe going for legalism when temples are ready.

 

[vexing]

Why do I feel like I'm talking to the borg? "We are the best. Our play styles are optimal. We are the top players. All other play styles are inferior. We will not consider arguments. You will play as we do."

you're free to play as you want. assuming your goal is to win there is optimal play and there is suboptimal play. i have proven that i'm pretty good at figuring out ways to finish in the least number of turns, and martin has elsewhere posted an elegant argument about how this is always optimal assuming a desire to win. my point is simply that skipping liberty tends to be suboptimal (ie bad advice), and none of your arguments have proven otherwise.

 

[Martin Alvito]

Actually by definition something that is not considered solved optimally does mean exactly that the optimal play does depend on the environment.

You're misinterpreting "active" vs. "reactive" play.

I'm well aware that strategic interactions involve adjusting your actions based on what other players do. However, it also involves taking action to force opponents down preferred lines of play. Reactive/passive play can be appropriate when the game is specified in certain ways, but it is usually an error. CiV is not a counter-puncher's game; SMAC and the four preceding series entries also were not. (Yes, I'm old and I've played them all extensively. Even Civ III, which rapidly earned a spot on my bookshelf and an uninstall.)

Again you keep throwing around this optimal term and it can proved and backed up and therefore not arrogant to suggest. Yet you also say at the same time these are the wonders everyone builds and these are the things everyone does. I certainly do not just build the wonders you do (yes even on Deity). So what's the proof then? A game by game anaylsis of every option? What strategy wins more? Kind of pointless because no one uses the exact same strategy to same effect in every game.

I haven't been claiming that there is a purely optimal line of play since the .215 patch landed. I am not claiming that there is a purely optimal SP path either; I am arguing that the SP path is civ-specific. What I am saying is that Liberty provides better returns and roughly equivalent returns when compared to Tradition. That's why you see Liberty as the predominant choice in HoF games in this patch, and why it happens to be the stronger Deity choice right now.

As far as "four good policies" goes - for most purposes, Representation and Meritocracy are weaker than the other four Liberty policies. (If you aren't going to take a lot of policies in your game, Representation is pretty meh.) Tradition and Legalism are both potentially very strong policies when judged on their own merits. However, the finisher rule means that mixing trees rather than finishing out Liberty is not a great idea, unless you are playing a civ that can acquire four unusually strong UBs from Legalism.

 

[Pazyryk]

My position is that the opponents have less influence than you claim when it comes to SPs. I believe that certain civs have good reason to deviate from the otherwise optimal pure Liberty line due to the way Legalism works. I also believe that Honor is a reasonable choice if you intend to win by Domination. However, I can't see conditions under which pure Tradition makes sense in this patch. If you want to convince me, you need a more systematic explanation than you've provided.

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.