How is Liberty Supposed to Work in BNW?

[Matthew.]

Matthew, you're ignoring the fact that generally with Liberty and the smaller cities you end up with, and longer build times, you can't afford to build as many buildings.

Two things. Well, three.

1. You don't need to build a lot of buildings, or at least when you normally would when going tall. You don't need aqueducts, nor granaries/water mills right away. A lot of buildings, like stables, windmills, and such are rarely worth it in most cities.

2. To grow taller you need a larger food surplus, which means a portion of your cities is solely dedicated to working food tiles. With wider play, you can stretch citizens further and be working just as many hammer tiles in many cases. A food surplus of about 4 (the amount of one granary and the city tile) is typically enough in most cases. Everything else can be hammers/gold.

3. I'm not "ignoring" anything. I play a lot of Liberty games and can actually back this up with experience--the whole reason I've been posting game results in this thread: to show it actually being done.

Yes, you have more hammers, but you're spending a great proportion of your total hammer output on buildings to get the same result.

But it isn't the same results. Developed cities produce a surplus of gold and extra science. Yes, it takes a total of 40 turns to build 4 10-turn factories and 80 turns to build 8 10-turn factories... so what? That doesn't mean anything. The only thing that matters is total amount of beakers (in relation to tech cost, of course), gold, culture, etc.

There's a sweet spot, like it or not, and it's closer to 4 than it is to 15.

I've never once thrown out the number of 15 in this entire thread. I've mentioned numbers of 6 and 8 mostly, and I've even mentioned that after a certain point (I'd estimate in the 10-15 city range depending on a number of different factors) it becomes too difficult to break even and no longer worth it. Except for random puppets in a domination game or something, of course.

I've also acknowledged that 4-city Tradition is A.) Strong and B.) Has an advantage over Liberty through Monarchy.

My comments in this thread have been mainly focused on

-replies to comments claiming anything beyond 4 cities doesn't work. False.

-Liberty cannot be competitive and or work on Deity. False.

-Liberty needs buffs because it is so far behind Tradition. False.

I *really* feel the difference. I'm spending such a larger percent of my gold and hammers on buildings to manage happiness, and my tech costs are way up. (+50% at ten cities!)

You are probably doing something wrong. For one thing, it should be 45% (I'm 99% sure the initial city doesn't influence cost, it is each additional city that raises it by 5%). And for another, you end up with more science than the penalty takes and end-game is when Liberty really takes off resulting in quicker tech rates than 3-4 city Tradition. My guess is you expanded beyond your means which forced you into needing happiness buildings sooner than convenient in combination with too low of population sizes to abuse GS slots without sacrificing production. If you have a fail game you don't demand game adjustments, you analyze first and see if there was anything you could have done better. I'd argue for all the people saying they have fail games with Liberty, nearly all can be attributed to player mistakes. If anyone thinks differently, feel free to post the saves.

Liberty is missing one thing that would really help: Reduced tech penalty per city. (Make it 2.5% or 3% instead of 5%)

Not really needed, IMO. This change is one of my favorite. It sucks for early puppet empires (pretty much killing that strat), but it does what it is intended to do, and it does it well: curbs late-game snowball effect.

And NC is just way better than an academy. In the long run, you get a lot more than 8 beakers/turn out of the NC, even with liberty.

It is just to bridge the gap due to later NC. Once you hit mid-game, the benefit of NC begins to diminish (cities with observatories get the same benefit along with a larger bulk pool of beakers). If you get lucky on mercantile quests or whatever, you don't even need to burn it on the GS and can use it on something else. Not sure I agree with burning a GE on NC. I know some of you do it, but I cannot imagine it works out in the long run.

I'm not knocking Liberty, I'm just saying Tradition outperforms it if the AI lets you settle where you like. (Which happens way less often post patch!)

Nor am I knocking Tradition I'm just against knee-jerk changes to a game when there isn't experience to back it up (much less common on these forums, although still a personal pet peeve of mine). Judging from some of the comments I question whether some of you have any experience with Liberty at all beyond attempting a small number of games and trying to play it like Tradition, then simply writing it off as useless.

Like I said, post the fail games. I don't say this in a "macho internet badass rolleyes way of "throwing down" but purely for evidence one way or another. If it turns out Liberty is indeed too weak and cannot work and in need of changes, I'm all for it, but it hasn't been my experience. Give me some evidence to work with, because armchair theory-crafting isn't enough and what people are claiming, I just don't see it in the games I am playing.

 

[iconocast]

internal trade routes giveing food etc to the citys. try it, love it

 

[killmeplease]

Hardly, as this assumes all your cities are the same size.

i took average size

(and shouldn't tradition's capitol get 25/2 = 12? it halves unhappiness in capitol no?

again, its average. 25/2/4 = 3 per city

And then another policy gives one happiness for each 10 citizens)

it was involved into calculation.

 

[killmeplease]

with more cities you get more faith, which can help liberty a lot.
you also get more resources (or less chanse of not having some resource in your borders), scientist slots, more flat bonuses like +2 food per granary or +3 science per public school etc. you cant build 8 granaries in 4 cities but in 8 you can. also, larger you cities, more food is needed to grow an additional citizen. so its pretty balanced i think.

 

[kb27787]

with more cities you get more faith, which can help liberty a lot.
you also get more resources (or less chanse of not having some resource in your borders), scientist slots, more flat bonuses like +2 food per granary or +3 science per public school etc. you cant build 8 granaries in 4 cities but in 8 you can. also, larger you cities, more food is needed to grow an additional citizen. so its pretty balanced i think.

Sure, the only two things wide empires has going for it is troop production and maybe shrine/temple/terrain pantheon faith. (go wide if you want to go domination)
(and generally when cities get quite tall the +flat bonus is negligible)

Problem I see is that gold no longer scales linearly with cities (in BNW trade routes are the major major source of gold);
For example, a tall empire spends 1300+ gold to buy a research lab in capitol... his overall bpt shoots up by 20%... the wide empire (with smaller capitol) maybe needs 2-3 research labs in his biggest cities to get the same amount. Because gold cost does not scale at all with the size of the city, a tradition player spends less gold for the same effect.
Also I wonder (from looking at the screen shot where a wide empire's capitol is at a mere size 11 and no sign of growing any faster at turn 200...) if people think spending 30 turns (because your cap is small and doesn't have much production, while your empire is big with many cities) to construct a hermitage super late because you need OHs in all your cities is normal... If anything else those kind of screenshots remind me why I wouldn't dream of playing wide on deity. Your cap is small and when push comes to shove (you used GS on the finisher) you can't even buy GEs to save your life and spend 40 turns to build hubble space telescope.

 

[Depravo]

Reading this thread has done nothing but teach me how much I suck as a player compared to some of you

Hurf durf, free settler good
/

 

[Matthew.]

Also I wonder (from looking at the screen shot where a wide empire's capitol is at a mere size 11 and no sign of growing any faster at turn 200...and spend 40 turns to build hubble space telescope.

Oh, you mean where the population was purposely slowed down and wasn't a science game? Yes, I see. You are correct, of course, going Autocracy while ignoring research labs is indeed terrible for a science win. Thus, Liberty must need to be buffed

 

[Cromagnus]

I'm not saying Liberty isn't effective. I actually find that I win *more often* on Deity with Liberty, because I don't get boxed out early by the AI. But in the games where I *do* get a good Tradition start, the game goes better. Is that because I'm better at playing Tradition? Not in my opinion. It's because tech is everything, and going tall is better for tech. Period. And Deity is about overcoming the AI's initial tech advantage.

Does it mean I don't know how to play with Liberty? No. Admittedly I have less experience with it lately, but that's more a function of Liberty being tuned for going wide, and going wide got heavily nerfed. By nerfing wide empires without boosting Liberty, the devs absolutely shifted the advantage to Tradition. Before they nerfed per-city happiness from religion, before they nerfed wide empires in general, I really found Liberty to be more fun.

Now I go liberty on Deity for the flexibility of an early GP and because it's sometimes the only way to get your dang cities out. In the long run, that can make a game winnable that I would otherwise lose. But I really feel the burn of losing all those free buildings, all that free happiness per population, all that gold, etc. Liberty doesn't have any gpt in it. And in BNW your economy suffers early on. Free aqueducts, free monument, +1g/2 pop, that's at least 15gpt by the time you get the Tradition closer. And you need *more* happiness buildings in Liberty to keep the same total population happy, which costs more money. Yes, each city generally adds gold, but you get the same amount with Tradition as you do with Liberty. There's no *inherent* economic bonus to Liberty other than the implied bonus from faster tile improvement.

Unless you're warmongering, IMHO, Liberty is *only* better because the fast expos and free GP help you survive on Deity. The reduced unhappiness per city is nothing. 1 + 5%?? Tradition gives more than 50% in the capital. (-12 at pop 20!!)

But this argument is going nowhere. I open Liberty > 50% of the time nowadays, because I'm in a warlike mood... but whenever I do choose tradition, I'm like, wow, this is great.. I'm getting policies so fast, and just when my pop growth would start to slow I get +growth. Just when my happiness starts to suffer I get +happiness. Just when my economy starts to suffer, I get +gold. And then BOOM the free aqueducts kick in. And don't tell me there isn't a huge advantage to free instant aqueducts. It's not just saved hammers and gpt, it's like you *rush-bought* 4 aqueducts and monuments. C'mon, you have to acknowledge how powerful rush-buying maintenance-free buildings is! The gold cost to do that for aqueducts is 1600!!

 

[Cromagnus]

To compensate for the inherent disadvantages the devs have introduced over time, Liberty needs:

* Science penalty reduction
* Per-city economic boost

All it would take to put Liberty back at an even level with Tradition is:

1) Reducing the 5%/city tech penalty to 3% with the Liberty closer. Your total increased tech cost with 11 cities would be 30% instead of 50%. That's huge.

2) Reduced building maintenance and/or increased gpt from city connections.

But, this is all moot until they fix Honor and *especially* Piety.

 

[Ninakoru]

Like I said, post the fail games. I don't say this in a "macho internet badass rolleyes way of "throwing down" but purely for evidence one way or another.

Well, not exactly a fail, but just the opposite. Far from a competitive game (I usually play on Immortal sometimes on Deity, but Emperor is my fun level), but gone wide on a large map, epic speed, and tradition worked wonders. The images are self-explanatory.

Spoiler :

Spoiler :

 

[kaspergm]

Looked like the Zulus had a fun party-for-one over at their own continent.

 

[kaspergm]

To compensate for the inherent disadvantages the devs have introduced over time, Liberty needs:

* Science penalty reduction
* Per-city economic boost

All it would take to put Liberty back at an even level with Tradition is:

1) Reducing the 5%/city tech penalty to 3% with the Liberty closer. Your total increased tech cost with 11 cities would be 30% instead of 50%. That's huge.

2) Reduced building maintenance and/or increased gpt from city connections.

But, this is all moot until they fix Honor and *especially* Piety.

I'm not sure actually that I agree with the fix to science. I would rather say that now that Science has a penalty, they can loosen the happiness constrictions that limit Liberty so severely in early game. The Science penalty can be overcome in reasonable time and is a good way to make extreme ICS unviable, but the happiness just makes fast early-game expansion nigh impossible imo. and that completely kills Liberty-wide strategies. But that is of course a question of personal preference.

*edit* Oops, sorry for double-posting.