How to Fix Liberty

[CraigMak]

So, I think we can all agree that since BNW Tradition has become the favorite policy tree for just about everyone. Why? BNW tends to favor building tall over building wide and everyone has come to realize that Tradition has more to offer in the long run.

I for one believe the two trees are relatively balanced with one providing different but not inferior/superior benefits. The reason that most prefer tradition is because it is simply easier to use and benefit from. If you don't know what you're doing Liberty can be a total train wreck.

I do however believe that Tradition is slightly stronger and Liberty needs a small buff. Liberty falls short in the gold category. When you look at Tradition it gives you 4 free monuments which is 4 gold per turn and +1 gold for every two citizens in your capital. Let's say you happen to have a 12 pop capital which is relatively easy to acquire. This means Tradition is giving you a total of 10GPT as well as 6 Happiness. Tradition also gives more happiness from every 10 citizens but I'm focusing on Monarchy here and how OP it is.

Liberty has a free golden age from its finisher but let's face it, that doesn't add up to anything compared to 10+ GPT for the entire game. What I believe Liberty needs is some gold bonus to help out. A really good addition would be +1 gold per city connected to your capital in addition to the happiness bonus that meritocracy provides. Assuming that Liberty has 7 cities which is not very easy to obtain, you would get 7GPT from liberty. This IMO would make Liberty more on par with Tradition because Monarchy is pretty OP right now, providing massive amounts of gold and happiness.

Now Honor and Piety on the other hand both need complete and total overhauls to be even remotely usable in a competitive nature. Those two, I don't even know where to begin, they are so horribly under powered.

 

[Ninakoru]

I think liberty is mostly fine, is more a game mechanics problem, there are two other ancient policies that are far inferior, you know:

Fix to game economy: Free maintenance monuments and shrines.

Tradition is indirectly nerfed if used as starting policy because the free monuments are free maintenance anyways, the rest of the trees can play a bit more relaxed on the early game, have some units or buildings you would normally don't build to avoid the red numbers on the gold, etc. As game advances that early benefit becomes more and more meaningless, also matches when economy works at his own. Game fixed

Note: That's what I did on the balance mod I made some time ago and is a subtle change that really makes the game more fluid.

 

[MattZed]

Just weaken National College to 25% and going tall is suddenly much less attractive.

 

[Nick31]

I think Liberty is fine. I play on Immortal, not Diety, and I like it for all the reasons that Cromagnus lists on page 3 of the Liberty is hard thread.

I find it bemusing that there are now many, many threads on this. Of the many things to 'fix' or balance, Liberty isn't one of them.

Also: don't worker steal and Liberty gets cooler. I never worker steal as it's such a massive AI exploit. Any fixing Liberty questions should start about increasing penalties for worker stealing.

 

[CraigMak]

I think liberty is mostly fine,

Yes, I did mention at the beginning of my post that I believe the two to be relatively equal. However, Liberty falls slightly short in the gold department.

there are two other ancient policies that are far inferior, you know:

Yes, I did mention that Piety and Honor are completely unusable at the end of my post. Did you even read any of my post before replying?

Tradition is indirectly nerfed if used as starting policy because the free monuments are free maintenance anyways,

Simply NO, adopting Legalism early does not nerf you. It gives you FREE buildings earlier so you are getting more culture. It also allows you to delete any monuments you built and begin getting free GPT for each one you would be paying for earlier.

the rest of the trees can play a bit more relaxed on the early game, have some units or buildings you would normally don't build to avoid the red numbers on the gold, etc. As game advances that early benefit becomes more and more meaningless, also matches when economy works at his own. Game fixed

I am not sure what this part is even saying. Possibly a problem with English proficiency. Can you try to re-iterate?

 

[Montezuma II]

Simply NO, adopting Liberalism early does not nerf you. It gives you FREE buildings earlier so you are getting more culture. It also allows you to delete any monuments you built and begin getting free GPT for each one you would be paying for earlier.

Did you read what they said? They never said liberalism nerfs you, they were trying to say that if monuments were to be maintenance free, liberalism would be slightly less valuable. You would still get four monuments, but you won't be benefiting from the gpt you don't have to pay for the monuments.

 

[GKShaman]

I think its been said before but I really liked the analogy somebody made in another thread.

Its a question of do you want $100 now or $500 in a year?

The Liberty policy is all about quick and fast setup. Get that worker, settler, hammer fast. Get a golden for some cash. Get a GP to personalize ur play style.

Only negative as u can see is Meritocracy SUCKS.

Tradition is all about the long game. +2 food 10 percent? ehh thats one less turn for a pop but combined with free aqeuduct, monument, and 15% growth? wowza.

 

[adwcta]

Liberty is not suppose to have gold bonuses. That's the point. Every tree has something it's crappy at. For Liberty, that's supposed to be Diplo (which is gold), and they can rescue it via autocracy or freedom later. For Tradition, it's Domination (which is hammers), and they can rescue it with autocracy or order later on. For Honor and Piety, it's science, and the theory is they can rescue it with rationalism + order or freedom later on. (Although, those trees do need work).

Anyway, I would at most change representation to 40% culture penalty reduction / 20% science penalty reduction, change meritocracy to -10% unhappiness (instead of -5%), and move the golden age to the closer (where it makes more sense anyway). Don't make Liberty more like Tradition... make Liberty more Liberty-er.

 

[kaspergm]

I do think game is slightly skewed towards Tradition/narrow over Liberty/wide. I think Liberty in general suffers from lack of gold, whereas wide strategies overall suffer from lack of happiness early which means even a wide game will start out narrow for a good third of the game or so.

For those reasons, I've made the following changes which I personally enjoy:

• Liberty opener adds a flat +4 happiness. Liberty opener was pretty bad as it is, and this helps you support an extra city very fast.
• Meritocracy cuts road prices by 50 %. This is necessary because the happiness from Meritocracy requires you to make roads before you get the happiness, which will be very expensive when newly founded cities have low population and hence give low profit.
• National College gives only +25 % science, whereas Oxford University now also adds +25 % science. This is a nerf for narrow empires, because rushing NC is now less deciding for early science status.

I've made some other minor tweaks also, but this is the core of what I would do.

 

[4N4C0ND4]

Just weaken National College to 25% and going tall is suddenly much less attractive.

This.

I would also like a tweak on National Wonders needing a certain amount of buildings in X cities instead of the "all cities" rule.

 

[Wodan]

I would also like a tweak on National Wonders needing a certain amount of buildings in X cities instead of the "all cities" rule.

Whatever it is, it has to work for all situations. Requiring a flat number doesn't work if you only have 1 city period.

 

[kaspergm]

If one wants to make national wonders more even for wide vs. tall empires, the condition should be "have building in X cities *or* all cities". However, I'm not necessarily sure that change is a good idea - after all, the purpose of national wonders is to give tall empires a compensation for having fewer cities compared to wide, and while some of them arguable need a bit of tweaking as they shoot a bit over the target (most significantly National College), I don't think the balance is *that* bad on the others, and we don't want to return to the wide-by-default either.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Making NC 25% (and add 25% to Oxford)
Would be good

Otherwise I would change it to
Opener: +100% to settler production (the earliest penalty for expanding)
(Hammer boost): change to +1 culture/city
(Free settler): change to hammer boost
So you open to get a cheap settlers, then take the right side for happiness (workers/meritocracy)

Free shrines should be the piety opener

 

[Zaimejs]

Simply NO, adopting Liberalism early does not nerf you. It gives you FREE buildings earlier so you are getting more culture. It also allows you to delete any monuments you built and begin getting free GPT for each one you would be paying for earlier.

Whoa! In order to get the free monument in the capital, I have to delete the monument I built? Or just wait until a get a free amphitheater? I have never known that!

 

[Browd]

The exploit is to build the monument early, to get to Legalism all the more quickly, and then sell the monument 1 turn before you take Legalism. You get a bit of gold and save 1 gpt for one turn, and the next turn you get your free monument.

 

[GhostSalsa]

Also: don't worker steal and Liberty gets cooler. I never worker steal as it's such a massive AI exploit. Any fixing Liberty questions should start about increasing penalties for worker stealing.

Same. Heck the AI just needs to treat "peacetime" human units as barbarians since that's what most of us play like. CS workers should hide haha.

 

[civjou]

I simply don't understand the Liberty hate for multiplayer games.

With Liberty there are many paths you can take to overwhelm the many Tradition players out there...

With Liberty getting quick settlers will ensure that YOU get the right slots and deny your tradition competitors the perfect tradition spots (because face it, with 4 cities you've gotta have perfect cities).

An option is to get the Liberty great person great general, double it up with a honor great general and you've steamrolled the tradition slow building empire next to you...

Another option is to get a great engineer and build notre dame and solve your happiness issues.... or get a great scientist + academy and get a science boost...

With +2 science for connections pantheon (messenger of the gods) you've solved your early science problems....

Liberty haters love a quiet game until turn 150 or more when tradition starts to kick in, while ignoring aggression/expansion in the first 150 turns... very boring IMO. you play 2 hours only to find out who edged out navigation or artilleries to win the game...

Get Liberty and ruin their plans early on. The game is active for the full duration...

Wide empires early game will always overwhelm tall empires in production...

I roll my eyes every time i see every other player doing all out tradition... especially in 1v1... hilarious IMO.

I see a tide where I think the many Tradition copy cats are starting to realise that benefits of Liberty and are starting to revert back... in a few months we'll be having different discussions IMO.

 

[GhostSalsa]

With +2 science for connections pantheon (messenger of the gods) you've solved your early science problems....

I don't really have anything to address RE mp games but this brings up a point. Liberty can't always have a pantheon, never mind the pantheon that it wants.

On the games you don't hit a culture hut, building a shrine is pretty much out of the question for a liberty start - or will hurt you too much if you do. Liberty is slow. Tradition is fast. Liberty without culture huts / monument priority gets settlers out slower than Tradition. You can still choose to have an early pantheon, but everything else is going to be delayed.

 

[civjou]

huh, I don't follow the logic. If anything culture ruins will tempt you to get settlers quicker than shrines as they'll be available to you sooner... and really all you need is 3 to 4 turn shrine in your capital by the time you hit roads. In my experience tradition players don't get messenger of the gods but you can get it timed to beat them to it if you have to

I don't wanna list every build order that gets you a shrine quick... but there are many possibilities...

And how is it that tradition gets you settlers quicker? early 3 settlers tradition is already down perhaps 12 turns or more on production AND growth in early game... if a tradition player pulls this on you early game on a 2/3 pop capital then they are already way behind in everything else... no early national college, no early granary, no early workers...

 

[manu-fan]

This.

I would also like a tweak on National Wonders needing a certain amount of buildings in X cities instead of the "all cities" rule.

What an excellent idea. Something like 'At least 10 cities, or all cities if you have less than 10'.