[BNW] Tradition Opener + Liberty and a few questions

renton555

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Aug 9, 2011
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Long time lurker, first time poster.

I just did a little math and it seems like there is a decent argument for opening Tradition first regardless of whether you want to go Liberty or Piety or whatever. For example, with no help from ruins, you get the free settler by turn 40 going straight liberty, but if you went tradition opener first you get there in 46. Is 6 turns worth the border expansion buff and the versatility of being able to pop monuments in all your cities or get the 15% wonder bonus at an opportune time at one's discretion? I think maybe so. Just curious what others' thoughts were on this.



A couple of unrelated questions:

- Is there any resource forming since BNW came out that breaks down the mathematical formulae, like what influences culture cost of policies etc? I can't seem to find much about this and it's tedious to collect the data from the game itself.

- Are the multiple city penalties for culture costs and beakers additive or multiplicative? I suspect its the latter. For example the 10% penalty for culture would be:

1 - 1.0
2 - 1.1
3 - 1.21
4 - 1.33, etc

and not just 1, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3.

Regardless it seems to me like the nature of science generation would cause more cities to almost always trump less cities.

Anyway thanks for your thoughts.
 
Long time lurker, first time poster.

- Is there any resource forming since BNW came out that breaks down the mathematical formulae, like what influences culture cost of policies etc? I can't seem to find much about this and it's tedious to collect the data from the game itself.

- Are the multiple city penalties for culture costs and beakers additive or multiplicative? I suspect its the latter. For example the 10% penalty for culture would be:

Cost = ([nPolicy* 3^2.01] + 25) * (1 + modifiers / 100)

Number of cities modifier is 10 for Standard map size.

Source
 
You're skipping a lot of important facts. First of all, taking 3 policies in Liberty isn't nothing. If you want to finish Tradition and Rationalism + go deep in Order then those 3 policies will come back to hurt you. Your best bet is to rush Monuments in your expos and use Legalism to grab 4 Amphitheaters and produce Oracle before or after NC. This is possible even on Deity as most civs ignore it. With any luck you can rush Acoustics after Education and grab Sistine Chapel too. Again, even on Deity you can still get it most of the time. At that point you can still finish most of your trees at a decent clip. Still, like, you'd be pretty screwed if you didn't do that. Finishing the Rat tree would take soooooooooo long.

With respect to city number you're overlooking happiness and diplomacy. Mass expanding gets you DOWed but sitting pretty at 3-4 cities doesn't (usually). Also, it's very difficult to amass enough happiness to grow 8 or more cities. They usually stay fairly small and small cities never produce much science. Your modifiers suck and you can't easily work 4 specialist slots after all. It also slows your acquisition of policies which compounds with the problem of going 3 deep in to Liberty then going Tradition.
 
i feel like tradition opener is only worth it if i eventually want more than that. for example if i'm playing siam, i want the free culture buildings but not until universities, but if i'm going to take tradition opener i might as well take it early. or as Tich said, using it for ampitheaters for an extra +4

also the tradition - liberty settler seems to work pretty well with poland because you get so many free policies. i was able to finish both of those trees and rationalism, plus some tenets. but i've only played one poland game and it took a lot longer than i'd like lol so maybe that is not normally realistic
 
I'll occasionally do this for civs that really want the border expansion e.g. Polynesia, but in that case I'll take the tradition opener then go through all of liberty for the crucial worker bonus, and wide happiness and culture reduction. Generally not worth it unless you also want a couple other policies from tradition later on.
 
To address OP's general point: Poland can dabble in Liberty while filling out Tradition due to the bonus policies. All others go Tradition -> Rationalism (or Liberty -> Rationalism) in a science game.

Why? Running both early trees delays Aqueducts and delays Rationalism progress. Empirically, it turns out that the costs of those delays outweigh the turns saved by getting the Settlers out faster.

If this were wrong, tommy almost certainly would have falsified the claim by now. He said he was investigating the point and has not returned with data, so I think it's safe to infer that Poland is the only civ capable of efficiently running two early trees unless it comes out that tommy got hit by a truck or something.

Regardless it seems to me like the nature of science generation would cause more cities to almost always trump less cities.

This is an optimization question, which boils down to the constraint that binds. Adding cities loosens the :c5food: constraint on population growth and adds :c5science: specialists at the cost of :c5happy:. Cities past the fourth also require a greater initial investment of :c5production: to function properly due to the absence of free Tradition buildings.

It's trivial to show that a limit on the desirable number of cities exists given the finite nature of the game; at some point the :c5production: and :c5happy: investment in horizontal growth ceases to pay off even before the introduction of a :c5science: penalty per city. More complex is to show where that cutoff lies. It was pretty obvious in the initial vanilla release; the last city that will not produce an additional Great Scientist prior to a win condition should not be settled.

We don't yet have a good theory to answer that for G&K or BNW because the optimization function is more complex. The best data we have would seem to suggest four settled cities on Deity, followed by taking whatever else you want by fire and blood and forcing unequal treaties upon the AI. Lower difficulties almost certainly imply a greater number of cities settled by the human player.
 
A lot of posts are referring to the fact that dabbling in Liberty delays completing Tradition and making it to rationalism etc. I was more referring to a straight liberty opening i.e. a wide empire.

If you were planning on going full tradition from the start yeah it would be highly inefficient to waste points on Liberty at all. It seem like there are a lot of scenarios, however, where it would be useful to have a point in Tradition while going Liberty or Piety. For example with Siam it would seem like a decent idea to go Tradition -> Liberty -> Republic -> Collective Rule -> Patronage -> then pop Wats in all your cities at the appropriate time.

Or in any otherwise pure liberty open it might be more versatile to go Tradition first incase the ai's overzealous expansion during the first 20-30 turns makes you want to change your plan and go vertical, having a point or two in liberty before deciding to switch back to Tradition isn't the end of the world if the situation warrants a switch.
 
I, too, have run the numbers because it seems intuitive to pick the Traditional opener for the +3 boost before going into Liberty. What I did last night was (yet again) to see if doing that would get me the worker and settler sooner. It doesn't really, not to mention that you just added one additional policy to the mix, slower your progress down.

0 tr 0 li
4 2
8 4
12 6
16 8
20 10
24 12
28 14
4 li 18
10 22
16 26
22 30
28 34
34 38
40 42
46 46
52 50
58 54
4 w 58
10 2 w
16 6
22 10
28 14
34 18
40 22
46 26
52 30
58 34
64 38
70 42
76 46
82 50
88 54
94 58
100 2 rep
106 6
112 10
118 14
124 18
2 rep 22

Sorry for the formatting. First column numbers is trad opener then liberty; second column is liberty with the policies along the way. There's a monument in there at row 9. Very simplistic but I still had convinced myself. Pick one or the other.
 
Yeah as I mentioned it seems that you pay about 6 turns for the extra border expansion and the versatility of having set one foot into the Tradition tree.

edit: I suppose you also pay in the form of the exponential nature of culture costs of subsequent policies.
 
Yeah as I mentioned it seems that you pay about 6 turns for the extra border expansion and the versatility of having set one foot into the Tradition tree.

edit: I suppose you also pay in the form of the exponential nature of culture costs of subsequent policies.

Exactly. The early boost quickly becomes a liability, far costing more than any early benefits.
 
After re-reading tommy's Poland guide, now I am beginning to question myself. Do the numbers work long-term going Tradition->3x Liberty or is this just for Poland (because of their UA)?
 
Interesting thread!

It got my attention as I've been questioning lately the viability of having a wide empire. More and more it seems that going for a wide empire and starting with Liberty seems to make you fall behind on the population and science of other players (I play MP).

Is there any hope for wide empires?
 
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