How to Fix Liberty

[Knut_Are_M]

Currently Tradition has by far the most happiness. I would change monarchy to 1 gold per pop and remove the happy bonus. it is too good With Food caravans.

I would let the Liberty finisher GP be free.

I would change honor by letting military caste get 1 happy, and 2 culture per wall.
And let the honor opener give have the added bonus of giveing 2 free Warriors.
I would let the GG bonus policy of honor have the added bonus of sacrifiseing GG for golden ages.

As for piety i would change mandate of heaven -20% faith cost to include Great prophets.
And i would change religious tolerance in 1 of 2 ways. Holy city is granted another 30 outward pressure. or get to pick a second pantheon policy.
Also maybe allow getting a one time bonus of 30 faith on standard speed when picking piety.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Currently Tradition has by far the most happiness. I would change monarchy to 1 gold per pop and remove the happy bonus. it is too good With Food caravans.

I would let the Liberty finisher GP be free.

I would change honor by letting military caste get 1 happy, and 2 culture per wall.
And let the honor opener give have the added bonus of giveing 2 free Warriors.
I would let the GG bonus policy of honor have the added bonus of sacrifiseing GG for golden ages.

As for piety i would change mandate of heaven -20% faith cost to include Great prophets.
And i would change religious tolerance in 1 of 2 ways. Holy city is granted another 30 outward pressure. or get to pick a second pantheon policy.
Also maybe allow getting a one time bonus of 30 faith on standard speed when picking piety.

Actually (looking at what Piety does with Great Prophets) a good boost for Honor might be giving a benefit to Citadels [say 3 for citadels in your territory?]

 

[Teproc]

Well arguably, that depends on where you place the bar for "fine". You can place the bar at Liberty level - which makes Tradition OP and Honor and Piety UP - or you can place it at Tradition level - which makes Liberty UP and Honor and Piety laughable.

There is no right and wrong in that question as I see it, but I do think that someone earlier in the thread raised a valid point: It makes the game more fun by setting the bar high rather than low, because a game full of policy trees that make very little impact on game would be utterly boring - just imagine if all policy trees were as bad as Honor or Piety.

Personally, I think the best level lies somewhere between Tradition and Liberty. I do think Tradition needs a small nerf, but I also think Liberty needs a boost, because basically it fails at what it's intended to do, namely help you found a wide empire, and bottomline is, even with Liberty, founding a wide empire is just not going to do you a lot of good.

I see what you're saying. I just think Liberty is already enjoyable to play and I never feel bad when I take my policies in Liberty, whereas I cringe everytime I foolishly try to make Piety work and I'm a little disgusted by the power of Tradition policies.

Basically good social policies should feel a little bit like cheating, but Tradition feels A LOT like cheating, if that makes sense.

I see Liberty more as the "early expansion" tree than the "wide" tree. In that I end up with empires that aren't much wider than Tradition (4-5 cities vs 3-4), but I just got there faster which allowed me to do other stuff (typically building an army).

All of which means I'd much rather get rid of the extra 15% growth of the Tradition finisher (are free Aqueducts really not enough ?) and probably nerf Monarchy a little, than buff the GP from Liberty.

 

[Wodan]

All of which means I'd much rather get rid of the extra 15% growth of the Tradition finisher (are free Aqueducts really not enough ?)

I'd suggest the other way around. If you're really going tall, you won't mind building 3-4 Aqueducts. Whereas the 15% bonus is something you couldn't get otherwise. So, it's a matter of choosing between a one-time hammer bonus + an ongoing 3-4gpt savings vs. 15% permanent growth bonus. In my mind not only is the latter a better encouragement for a tall empire, the former is decidedly unimpressive.

 

[Browd]

Also, the 15% bonus applies to all cities, including puppets (which can be good/can be bad), not just your first 4 cities.

 

[Calouste]

I see what you're saying. I just think Liberty is already enjoyable to play and I never feel bad when I take my policies in Liberty, whereas I cringe everytime I foolishly try to make Piety work and I'm a little disgusted by the power of Tradition policies.

Basically good social policies should feel a little bit like cheating, but Tradition feels A LOT like cheating, if that makes sense.

I see Liberty more as the "early expansion" tree than the "wide" tree. In that I end up with empires that aren't much wider than Tradition (4-5 cities vs 3-4), but I just got there faster which allowed me to do other stuff (typically building an army).

All of which means I'd much rather get rid of the extra 15% growth of the Tradition finisher (are free Aqueducts really not enough ?) and probably nerf Monarchy a little, than buff the GP from Liberty.

Agree with seeing Liberty as the early expansion rather than the wide tree. Thing is, in the beginning of the game you want your population to work resource tiles, because everything else isn't really worth the investment you need to make to keep that population happy. A resource tile has a yield of at least 5 with the improvement and booster building, more with the right Pantheon. If your pop is working a plains farm, you get 2 food, 1 hammer, 1.5 science and 1 gold from a city connection, which costs you 1 happy. Not a particularly great deal. Except of course for a capital with Monarchy and the National College, where 1 happy can support 2 pop who will return 2 hammers, 4.5 science, 1 gold plus some change from city connections and trade routes. The question I ask myself when choosing between Tradition and Liberty is if I can grow my capital big. Do I have a river? Do I have food? If I don't have food resources, do I have good hammers so I can go for the Hanging Gardens? Do I have a lot of resources? If that's mostly "No", I go for Liberty.

I think the free aqueducts are a bit overrated. Yes, they always have benefits and free buildings are always nice, but by the time you could get them when playing Liberty, your cities have already more or less grown to the size where they are working all the useful tiles, so they're not adding much.

 

[Tabarnak]

We can also see that in another way : What about map settings? Is that because cs and AI(for sp) are too overpowered too?

We all know how important is the harrassment level about these 2 things. Tradition is largely favourised by them. More free stuff acquired outside trees and self builds dilute the need of workers and some other things by your own, making Liberty ''less needed''.

That said, and from my own experience, Liberty and Tradition are pretty at par when we compare them on a more balanced focus. Get these cs and AIs out and you find yourself a much less attractive Tradition tree. And Liberty is surely better if lack of production around.

 

[reddishrecue]

Since liberty has all these penalties from science, why not bring back the national treasury from civilization 4 and make it build able when all the cities have a bank. That way, people can buy the public schools so that the science center could be built when a public school is built in every city. Another thing that could be helpful for liberty is dropping the requirements for the national intelligence agency, which will make stealing technologies a lot easier especially with a large empire. The only thing that can make liberty better overall is reducing the hammers that are included in the liberty from the republic and increasing other resources such as science, money or culture/faith.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Well the National college is the key for favoring Tall... so splitting its 50% into 25% (National college)+25%(Oxford)
Would encourage
1. Early wide
2. go on the lower tech tree a little.
3. using Oxford's Free Tech earlier (more variety than just saving it up)

However, I think liberty needs not just to be buffed v. Tradition nerfed...

but Liberty needs to be more different... ie more focus on fast REX ...
Move Settler production boost to opener

Policies on the left make your cities better
Culture to 1st on Left (more terrain)
Hammers to 2nd on Left (I like the cumulative bonus Idea... perhaps +1 hammer, +3% for each copy of a building you already have.. maximum +30%... no "base +5%")

Then deal with the gold/happiness issues on the right
L1 No/Low Maintenance from Workers (and make it AND the Pyramids +50% each not +25% each)
L2 Connection Bonus..change it to +1 and +1 Gold
L2 Social Policy penalty decrease..maybe increase the effect to -50% since there are very few per city sources of culture

[and ALL the "Free Great Persons" from all sources, should be actually Free.. or else they should call them instant]

Finisher Should let you buy Settlers with Faith in the Industrial Era.

 

[Calouste]

Well the National college is the key for favoring Tall... so splitting its 50% into 25% (National college)+25%(Oxford)
Would encourage
1. Early wide
2. go on the lower tech tree a little.
3. using Oxford's Free Tech earlier (more variety than just saving it up)

However, I think liberty needs not just to be buffed v. Tradition nerfed...

but Liberty needs to be more different... ie more focus on fast REX ...
Move Settler production boost to opener

Policies on the left make your cities better
Culture to 1st on Left (more terrain)
Hammers to 2nd on Left (I like the cumulative bonus Idea... perhaps +1 hammer, +3% for each copy of a building you already have.. maximum +30%... no "base +5%")

Then deal with the gold/happiness issues on the right
L1 No/Low Maintenance from Workers (and make it AND the Pyramids +50% each not +25% each)
L2 Connection Bonus..change it to +1 and +1 Gold
L2 Social Policy penalty decrease..maybe increase the effect to -50% since there are very few per city sources of culture

[and ALL the "Free Great Persons" from all sources, should be actually Free.. or else they should call them instant]

Finisher Should let you buy Settlers with Faith in the Industrial Era.

A free Settler on the opener doesn't make much sense as you won't usually have the happiness to support an extra city that early in the game. And you also often won't have been able to scout around enough to determine where your second city goes. And buying Settlers with Faith in Industrial is more or less useless, you can build them in 1-2 turns at that point.

 

[klaskeren]

maybe im one of the few that thinks that liberty and tradition are still balanced, liberty is just really good for early rush, there are other game settings than deity science game you know

 

[Mutineer]

Free settler with opener? Did you play civ5 befor? Free settler on first policy was OP as hell. Free settler on opener would be Broken incredibly.

 

[reddishrecue]

You could use circus maximus for that. You could have 1 or 2 luxuries with circus maximus along with the national college and easily expand to 2-3+ cities. Since luxuries sometimes repeat themselves in large land masses and rival civilizations don't always have the extra luxury to keep the happiness, why not throw in a happiness national wonder when you build a zoo in every city , a theme park perhaps? That way, when there is a land mass with repetitive luxuries that don't provide any happiness you can build this theme park and sell the excess luxuries to other civilizations that don't have it. If you make works of art, then you could get freedom with arsenal of democracy and get even more land.

 

[magicq99]

Want them to act as secondary trees? at least make them to unlock on classical era. As they stand now, they are just noob traps.

I disagree with this. Pushing Piety and Honor into the Classical era would make it much more difficult to use them as a secondary tree, since you would have to synchronize your Tech advance with the Culture accumulation.

I think this is the main reason why they moved Piety into the Ancient era in BNW. When trying to mix Liberty or Tradition with Piety in Gods & Kings, I very often came into the situation that I was only one or two turns away from the Classical era when I had to pick the next Policy. This was very frustrating.

BNW makes it much easier to use Piety as a parallel tree because of this change. I do not think Firaxis intends Piety to be a viable first choice in many situations.

I do think however, that Tradition is intended to be the most generic and flexible choice. This is because it is the very first Policy available, placed at the top left spot in the UI. In most situations you can't go wrong with choosing Tradition. You can choose a different tree, if you know what you are doing, but if in doubt go Tradition. At least that is the way I read the Social Policy trees.

The "noob trap", in my opinion, is opening too many policy trees and not focusing on a strategy.

 

[Teproc]

I don't think Firaxis considers the Piety tree as a secondary tree, if only because AIs use it as their main tree all the time.

 

[Browd]

It is not unusual for 4 or 5 AI in a standard game (7 AI) to go full Piety.

Of course, in some games, no one goes Piety. In fact, in a recent game, not a single AI even got a pantheon -- a first for me. They just started warring each other early and often (some bribery helped). By turn 150 or so, my religion was in every city on the map (and I did open Piety, to build the Great Mosque).

 

[4N4C0ND4]

It is not unusual for 4 or 5 AI in a standard game (7 AI) to go full Piety.

Of course, in some games, no one goes Piety. In fact, in a recent game, not a single AI even got a pantheon -- a first for me. They just started warring each other early and often (some bribery helped). By turn 150 or so, my religion was in every city on the map (and I did open Piety, to build the Great Mosque).

At what level is that
In my (albeit) few games played (immortal) I've never seen that so far

 

[Browd]

That was an immortal game. As I was enhancing, I checked the beliefs tab and there were no pantheons. Huh? And none were established all game long. Really weird.

But, in fairness, none of the typical religious civs was in the game -- it was full of expansion-oriented warmongers and such. They hated each other, but liked me (in part because they all "happily adopted my religion" in a majority of their cities).

They all went Liberty or Honor -- Statue of Zeus was the first AI wonder to go, followed quickly by Pyramids and Temple of Artemis. It was one of THOSE games.

 

[Vitruvius]

That was an immortal game. As I was enhancing, I checked the beliefs tab and there were no pantheons. Huh? And none were established all game long. Really weird.

But, in fairness, none of the typical religious civs was in the game -- it was full of expansion-oriented warmongers and such. They hated each other, but liked me (in part because they all "happily adopted my religion" in a majority of their cities).

They all went Liberty or Honor -- Statue of Zeus was the first AI wonder to go, followed quickly by Pyramids and Temple of Artemis. It was one of THOSE games.

In my games AIs tend to take same policies together. They either all go piety aesthetics or in my current game, 5 of them went tradition patronage. Then there's this weird AI who finished tradition, liberty and honor and nothing else.

 

[DarthSheldonPhD]

Think this may have already came up in the past 11 pages, but IMO there is a problem but it is not the Liberty tree. The problem is primarily the happiness system that the game employs and, to a much lesser degree, with the science system. These shortcomings, primarily the happiness issue, become very evident when you try a game using Liberty, or more specifically, without Tradition, but the problem is not with Liberty itself.

I could go into the hardships about how...
-the happiness system all but cripples growth and especially expansion opportunities
-there is an insufficient amount of ways to deal with this unhappiness
-the diversity of luxury resources proximal to starting location is both random (luck-based) and FAR too influential on expansion opportunities.

...but everyone reading this knows this and deals with it every game. If happiness weren't such a crippling factor with such a limited number of ways of dealing with it, the game would be so much more enjoyable, and Tradition then might be a situational want for it's growth and science benefits, as well as more golden ages that would result from happiness, rather than a consistent need to deal with the happiness design flaw.

Consider, for a moment, that instead of the current system (city=3 unhappiness + every citizen=1 unhappiness) we had a much more lenient model (city =1 unhappiness + every 3rd citizen = 1 unhappiness). While none of the parameters of either social policy tree have changed, Liberty is now a much more realistic choice and perhaps surpasses Tradition. Piety is a legitimate choice under this system as well (though it still could use some opening culture.) When you can level an uneven playing field without touching either team but by adjusting the rules that they play by, the problem isn't with the teams (in this case, SP trees), but with the rules.

Lastly, I understand why they implemented the system. Civ games have always been about wider=better and they wanted to create a game where it was a valid strategic choice to have a small, efficient empire. They overshot this goal by miles, to the degree that a vast, sprawling empire is both strategically detrimental and, more importantly, a dream that players of this game will never be able to realize.