Compare Liberty and Tradition, Head-to-Head

[beetle]

Steal them before T20 with scouts/warriors.

From the AI, I guess I am too scared to try that without at least an archer on deck. (The starting warrior can take a hit from an early city, but if the AI follows chase, things can get real ugly in my experience.) Sometimes the AI will wander an unescorted settler towards me. Those I will pick up, but that maybe one game in ten. I will build one worker before pumping settlers. Early chops rock.

What is your recommendation as to the timing for picking up BW and any luxury techs not on the path to Philosophy, Civil Service, and Education?

 

[Cromagnus]

From the AI, I guess I am too scared to try that without at least an archer on deck. (The starting warrior can take a hit from an early city, but if the AI follows chase, things can get real ugly in my experience.) Sometimes the AI will wander an unescorted settler towards me. Those I will pick up, but that maybe one game in ten. I will build one worker before pumping settlers. Early chops rock.

What is your recommendation as to the timing for picking up BW and any luxury techs not on the path to Philosophy, Civil Service, and Education?

Re: worker stealing. If I were to write a guide to playing on Deity, it would start like this:

"Step 1: Steal *at least* one worker before t20, and re-roll if you fail to do so."



The Holy Grail is the double worker steal before t10. If you line it up right, sometimes you can grab two workers in one turn and block their recapture with your warrior's ZoC.

 

[Acken]

You could always film your first 100 turns for direct feedback.

 

[mbbcam]

I guess I am too scared to try that without at least an archer on deck.

Why don't you try a few games in which you only intend to play the start, up to the point when you have successfully taken a captured worker back to your territory? It takes some of the anxiety away when you don't invest too much in the game. If you know you are going to stop early, you can experiment with what you like.

After all, it is common practice in sport to ... practise (sorry) ... techniques in isolation that will later be incorporated into a full game. It's the norm, really. Musicians practise tricky passages, too. You don't have to play the whole piece.

You have to be careful in choosing your targets. Don't steal from Attila (and selected others). They bear grudges...

 

[consentient]

I think I might make a worker-stealing video one day. Dos and Don'ts. I'm not the best at it, but I can usually get one or two.

 

[mbbcam]

If I can do it, a chimpanzee can manage it. With ease. I'm a lousy player, but I've managed three or four at times. If I only get one, I feel I've been cheated by the map. It does depend on the map, though. Ploughing through a lot of hills and jungle is bad. Spawning in an isolated spot is probably just as bad.

 

[stormtrooper412]

Yeah I once managed to steal 7

But usually it's 2 or 3, one each from a neighbor and one from a CS. Sometimes, you will be lucky and find a lone wandering settler with no escort

 

[beetle]

Beetle, I'm doing a video playthrough that I'll upload. Did two hours so far, will do another two hours later tonight.
Edit: or would you prefer I play that new one instead?
Triple edit: or, hell, would you prefer I play the game from the turn 0 save? I'm open to any of the above.

I apparently overwrote the initial turn 0 auto save, but here is turn 11. Second scout just spawned, I just finished Pottery, and it is the turn to open Tradition or Liberty. (How is that for a convenient trifecta?) I like shrine nowadays before monument. The main thing I will be doing different is teching harder to Philosophy and then Civil Service.

Note the barb camp that just spawned due south of Mecca. Plenty for all 3 units to level up on!

 

[beetle]

Beetle, you want to finish Tradition, research Civil Service, and have an army to defend yourself by T90 at the latest. Try another game where, after a couple of scouts and a monument, you built settlers and finish your expansion by T40, then concentrate on army and infrastructure and improving lux and hammer tiles. Then after civil service, just concentrate on working food tiles and growing the economy. See where you are at T150 again.

Going back to turn 11, I complete Tradition on turn 98, NC on turn 100, and Civil Service at about turn 105 (forgot to note that one). Really the best I could do. At turn 150 cap is at size 13 and food surplus +20. So much better, but still marginal for what you guys say I should be doing. I also lost a city to Pocatello for a several turns, but 6 Camel Archer are just now on-line so I think I will be sacking him heavily. I am looking forward to this time through most of all!

 

[LordBalkoth]

That is a very generous offer. I think it would have most appeal, for me and others, starting from turn zero.

*shrug*

I can do that, but I will point out that I don't worker steal as I consider it insanely exploitative. Or, to be more specific, I don't worker steal at the start of the game when the AI doesn't really guard them and I'm not actually going to war with the AI (meaning I'm not trying to wipe out their army or take their cities). On the flip side, I was happy to take several workers off Russia's hands in your game when I burned two of her cities to the ground and took Moscow (since I was actually attacking Russia).

Out of curiosity, who started that war that you dropped me into the middle of? Was it Russia who declared war on you, you and Shoshone who declared war on Russia, or something else entirely?

Salvaging a poor T150 game is not so interesting, especially when it would seem that my game is off the rails well before then! I will upload the initial file and a screen shot tonight.

To some degree, I suppose, though even with taking out several of Russia's cities (and getting Moscow reduced to 1 population in the process since I wasn't really focusing on conquest) I managed to pull off a turn 310 Science Victory using your initial turn 150 save. Nothing record setting or anything, mind you, but very winnable (and basically everyone went else went Autocracy -- no AI even built a Spaceship part by the time I won).



Naturally, I kept the surviving Camel Archers from the war until the end of the game.

Are you still refraining from steals even though you could have them?

Yep!

Oh, wait, you weren't talking to me.

Re: worker stealing. If I were to write a guide to playing on Deity, it would start like this:

"Step 1: Steal *at least* one worker before t20, and re-roll if you fail to do so."

I've only seen one Deity game that I actually felt was probably unwinnable (was Shuffle, got spawned on a large island that was nearly half desert, had like seven copies of one lux, and was surrounded by ocean so I couldn't meet neighbors until Astronomy or beyond)...and as you can tell from that description there weren't even any workers to steal.

Yes, worker stealing early on is a massive power gain (and is a major penalty for the Civ(s) you take them from). That's part of the reason I hold it in such high disregard -- it's like there's "gold piles" randomly spawned in the territory of the AIs which they ignore for the first 50 turns but you have to DoW to retrieve. It's an idiotic and exploitative mechanic with not nearly a severe enough penalty.

Steal one tech from an AI (that they notice) and you get a game long penalty. Steal a worker from the AI early on (which is a larger gain for you and a more significant loss for them) and they just don't care a few turns later. It's ridiculous.

In short, I think it's an insanely cheesy/exploitative crutch (ditto Pillage/Repair).

And yes, I consider it different from the 1 strategic/2 gpt thing for at least two reasons.

1, the math is all screwed up on that, period. While they'll pay 3 gpt for 2 strategics they won't pay 9 gpt for 6 strategics...even if they'll pay 3 gpt for 2 strategics *three times* (meaning they do actually want all 6 strategics). There's no reasonable way to sell them "accurately." They really should have just done "X gold over 30 turns" rather than "X gpt for 30 turns."

2, you're still giving up your resources for the duration of the deal. Worker stealing is more like lump sum -> DoW to break the deal (which, of course, is why they changed that to require a DoF first).

If I only get one, I feel I've been cheated by the map.

Here's a tissue.

I apparently overwrote the initial turn 0 auto save, but here is turn 11. Second scout just spawned, I just finished Pottery, and it is the turn to open Tradition or Liberty. (How is that for a convenient trifecta?) I like shrine nowadays before monument. The main thing I will be doing different is teching harder to Philosophy and then Civil Service.

Note the barb camp that just spawned due south of Mecca. Plenty for all 3 units to level up on!

Got it, but it'll take a day or two to record/process/upload the first part of the game...if you're still interested despite the lack of worker stealing.

 

[adcarrymaokai]

Nowadays, I struggle to play on Immortal because I am so used to early worker-steals and get anxiety if I haven't stolen one by t20.

 

[consentient]

Going back to turn 11, I complete Tradition on turn 98, NC on turn 100, and Civil Service at about turn 105 (forgot to note that one). Really the best I could do. At turn 150 cap is at size 13 and food surplus +20. So much better, but still marginal for what you guys say I should be doing. I also lost a city to Pocatello for a several turns, but 6 Camel Archer are just now on-line so I think I will be sacking him heavily. I am looking forward to this time through most of all!

You should never lose cities. That slaughters your population and destroys villages. The impact is profound.

How many archers did you build and upgrade to CB?

Did you consider bribing Pocatello to attack someone else? Why did he want to come after you?

Why are you still trying to keep your scouts at home and mess with barbs to level them up when their job is to explore the map?

How is your religion doing? Did you get one? Building a shrine for me is simply not worth it. Either you'll get a religion from a decent pantheon or not. Have you examined your build order to find anything else that is slowing you down?

 

[Acken]

Just replace one of your usual scout with a worker if you don't worker steal. You guys never play on lower difficulties ?

 

[J_Star]

I've only seen one Deity game that I actually felt was probably unwinnable (was Shuffle, got spawned on a large island that was nearly half desert, had like seven copies of one lux, and was surrounded by ocean so I couldn't meet neighbors until Astronomy or beyond)...and as you can tell from that description there weren't even any workers to steal.

Do you still have the save? Since this is a tradition vs. liberty thread, why won't we compare them in this situation? In this case, I would probably go tradition in the beginning but after scouting and the tradition opener, liberty would make more sense to me. With liberty you could expand so the whole island is yours and you could do either two things with your great person: engineer for petra or if that wonder has been built already (prob), the great admiral is a great choice. Great Admirals can travel through ocean tiles from the first turn of the game.

At turn 150 cap is at size 13 and food surplus +20

If you want to learn how to grow your cities like they have never done before, try the Inca. They're definitely orientated towards an empire with big cites and they grow really fast after construction and some terrace farms.

You could also try India if you want a wide empire with higher population cities. If anyone disagrees with this I'll show you some math.

 

[Acken]

And yes, I consider it different from the 1 strategic/2 gpt thing for at least two reasons.

1, the math is all screwed up on that, period. While they'll pay 3 gpt for 2 strategics they won't pay 9 gpt for 6 strategics...even if they'll pay 3 gpt for 2 strategics *three times* (meaning they do actually want all 6 strategics). There's no reasonable way to sell them "accurately." They really should have just done "X gold over 30 turns" rather than "X gpt for 30 turns."

2, you're still giving up your resources for the duration of the deal. Worker stealing is more like lump sum -> DoW to break the deal (which, of course, is why they changed that to require a DoF first).

The whole trading mechanic shenanigans just baffle me. They tried to be cute by making some sort of antiplayer loan mechanics (positive interest as a borrower, negative interest as a lender) and made gpt an integer instead of a float...
Should have just applied the same interest rate on both side, like 25g for 1gpt and then allow for some floating gpt with an automatic balance calculator. Or simply have everything as multiples of 25g. Would have fixed a lot of the nonsense. Or if the interest rate is too easily exploited by players just make the AI refuse gpt for gold deals.

 

[beetle]

Out of curiosity, who started that war that you dropped me into the middle of? Was it Russia who declared war on you, you and Shoshone who declared war on Russia, or something else entirely?

Probably it was just my marching units back and forth to Kilimanjaro that invoked the move-or-DOW challenge from Katherine. My end games (win or loose) have all looked like yours -- a sea of brown.

I managed to pull off a turn 310 Science Victory using your initial turn 150 save.

I think I may end up close to that with the second turn 150 that I uploaded. I got to Ideologies first (which is not usual for me at all), picked Autocracy, and Shoshone followed suit a few turns later. When I stopped that game to go pack to turn 11, I was about ten turns out from flight, so in good shape to pick up Prora.

Naturally, I kept the surviving Camel Archers from the war until the end of the game.

I keep getting them killed. I work so hard to get logistics, march, cover 2x. But then I end up being too aggressive with them as landships or maybe tanks.

Got it, but it'll take a day or two to record/process/upload the first part of the game...if you're still interested despite the lack of worker stealing.

I am more interested know that you don't plan to worker steal! But really though, I would get more out of a screen shot and few notes every 50 turns.

You should never lose cities. That slaughters your population and destroys villages. The impact is profound.

I agree completely. Usually when that happens, I chalk the game up as loss, and go back several many turns to learn what I could do differently. This run through, because of being light on defense, I was going to take a beating from Shoshone or Russia one way or the other.

How many archers did you build and upgrade to CB?

Zero. I was holding out for the CA that would upgrade to CA, and The Wheel was not on the tech path to Philosophy.

Did you consider bribing Pocatello to attack someone else? Why did he want to come after you?

I actually DOW'd on him with Katherine to avoid Katherine DOWing me. It was going to be bad either way. My other games have involved bribing them to DOW each other while I get my infrastructure up. I was not able to work that this time through. I blame that on using caravans for internal food routes to instead of trades routes to their capitals...

Why are you still trying to keep your scouts at home and mess with barbs to level them up when their job is to explore the map?

It is turn 11. First scout had just circled round cap, and second scout just spawned. Barb camp in nearby and will cause me grief if I do not clear it (Raging Barbs) I do tend to over emphasis getting scouts +2 vision asap, but this set up is win-win-win.

How is your religion doing? Did you get one? Building a shrine for me is simply not worth it. Either you'll get a religion from a decent pantheon or not. Have you examined your build order to find anything else that is slowing you down?

After the Halloween patch, when it became clear that I might never again have Stonehenge as an option, I started experimenting with shrine/monument instead of monument/shrine. This causes a noticeable delay on your first few policies, but in my experience the payoff from an early pantheon is well worth it, founding or not. From the numbers alone, X turns of any pantheon >> the 2X cpt you get from monument first. I would encourage you to try it for a few games in a row, see what you think.

This game, the dirt is so good for Tears of the God that I think shrine-before-monument is not necessary, and that founding is assured. I have been picking up Jesuit Education. Of course, that delays Rationalism, but I think it has worth the trade off.

My war with Pocatello quickly imploded. The only city I can get to is in jungle and he has the Great Wall. CA cannot stay of city range. As soon as I get the city into the red, Comanche Riders pop out and kill my CA. I probably will not return to this iteration...

EDIT: I should also confess to two worker steals from Russia. I was trying my best to comply with the instructions to have farms online for early Civil Service, so my plan was to not stop building workers (after expos) until I had eight of them. The two I got from Russia were after I had build four. One was wandering around my territory, and the other was apparently scouting tundra on the far east side of the map. I don’t think that much harmed Russia.

My next try is to go back to turn 11, monument before shrine, and open Liberty. I will still try and get to Civil Service quickly after NC, but won’t be neglecting The Wheel so as to get Chariot Archers early. My Tradition games leaves too many pearls and gems unclaimed, so I think this still might be a decent map for demonstrating that Liberty can be competitive with Tradition.

My longer term game plan is to delay guilds until closer to Oxford for Radio for Ideologies for Autocracy for Futurism. I would very much enjoy spinning this towards a CV instead of SV.

 

[consentient]

I've only seen one Deity game that I actually felt was probably unwinnable (was Shuffle, got spawned on a large island that was nearly half desert, had like seven copies of one lux, and was surrounded by ocean so I couldn't meet neighbors until Astronomy or beyond)...and as you can tell from that description there weren't even any workers to steal

I'd also like this save. I feel very confident I could win a Piety diplomacy game IF there is a pantheon, which is sounds like there is (DF). I'd spawn a load of cities on the continent to increase my faith generation, not care about how good the cities are, then use the Liberty finisher to send a GAdm to the other lands once I've got a huge bunch of GPs lined up and waiting. I'd use trade routes to raise the money to bribe people for World Religion = my religion, and all the usual Diplo tricks to avoid being conquered and staying alive long enough to win the UN vote.

For me, an unwinnable map is one where you have enough space for one city sandwiched between Shaka, Oda and Pocatello/Dido/Monty/etc.

Try to play diplo to stop one of them? The others will get you. Try to build nothing but archers and take Shaka out early? The others will get you. Try to expand? Can't. etc.

Btw, if someone posts a Deity LP of a similar situation, I'll happily change my tune, but although isolated starts are boring and more difficult to win SV, CV or DomV, they are probably still possible with Diplo and Piety.

The sandwich start is, I think, unwinnable. I wish I'd kept my save where the civs WERE Ashurbanipal, Shaka and Monty and I was forward settled T4 in the only other spot where there was ANY room for a city that wasn't marsh.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

In short, I think it's an insanely cheesy/exploitative crutch (ditto Pillage/Repair).

The problem with applying your argument to worker stealing is that you can say the exact identical argument and claim any of the following is a cheesy crutch:

- XP farming
- Trading strat resource for 2 GPT (show me a human that routinely would buy the resource)
- Baiting AI units to death with workers
- Diplo manipulation to survive despite no/almost no military where a sensible human would kill you before you can blink
- Picking top tier civs over poor ones (just play Iroquois all the time instead to be less "cheesy"

I could go on. The point is that you can make up any pretend house rules you like to make the game more challenging, and if that's what you prefer it's valid. However, calling tactics of others "cheesy/exploitative crutch" type stuff has direct negative connotations, and when used to describe things of comparable (or in some cases lesser) value than alternative options that take advantage of AI weaknesses it smacks of hypocrisy as well.

In most cases where a player decries a game option as an exploit, what's really happening is that the player just doesn't like the idea of the option being used...but can't come up with any logically consistent basis for excluding that tactic and not ones he/she uses routinely.

 

[Cromagnus]

I consider both repairing in enemy territory and the free workers the AI starts with on Deity game balance issues, not exploits per se, but I will continue to aggressively use them until Firaxis does something about it. The game is what it is. As TheMeInTeam says, arbitrarily refusing to use certain unbalanced mechanics while gleefully taking advantage of others is IMHO silly, however, play the way you best enjoy the game. If that's the way you like to play, who am I to say. But, if we're giving advice on Deity play, which, apparently this has tangented into, then *most definitely worker steal as early as possible*.

 

[beetle]

I agree we are OT.

you can say the exact identical argument and claim any of the following is a cheesy crutch:

I read this as you admitting that worker stealing is a cheesy crutch. Yes, there may be other cheesy crutches.

In most cases where a player decries a game option as an exploit, what's really happening is...

That may indeed be true in most cases. Sorry, but you sound like a felon complaining about everyone jay walking.

...but can't come up with any logically consistent basis for excluding that tactic and not ones he/she uses routinely.

Sure you can, and here is one: Does the tactic help the player at the expense the AI? Or does it just buff the human player, and is not something the AI does?

I have made peace with CS worker steals and even pillage repair by applying the above test. Yes, both are cheesy, OP, and not something the AI does. But neither CS worker steals nor pillage-repair cost the AI civs directly.

It just seems very hypocritical to me to (1) want to play at Deity, while (2) understanding that a major play balance mechanism is to give the AI extra early units, but then (3) work hard to take away units and give them to the player.

How is this much different than using the in-game editor to achieve the same effect?