How to Fix Liberty

[kaspergm]

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.
(...)
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).

I think you bring up a couple of interesting points in your post. I agree that Liberty policies are generally not bad, and when I say Liberty fails at making wide a viable strategy, that is as much a reflection of other game design aspects making wide unappealing (National College issue ranking prominent among these) as it is a problem with Liberty itself.

Interesting perspective to see Liberty not as the "wide" tree as much as the "fast" tree. That does actually make sense in several ways - I guess then Exploration would be the "wide" tree, with its per-city production and happiness. The problem here is obviously that Exploration is sort of messed up with all kinds of different directions - it's both an expansion tree, but it's also a naval combat tree (extra movement and sight, great admirals), and it's also a cultural tree (hidden archeology sites). I guess you can say that the culture from the finisher helps balance the disadvantage you get from increased policy cost per city, so in that way it is consistent with the expansion theme, but it still feels somewhat of a mess to me.

If Liberty is regarded as the "fast" tree, there still seems to be some problems in game however - namely that Tradition seems to allow people to expand with just about the same speed as Liberty, at least based on what I read here. Gold and happiness from Monarchy is probably the key issue here as others have pointed out, along with other game features like easy worker stealing from city states. Also, I still will retain that Liberty gives you too little - and more problematically, too slow - happiness benefits to really make it shine as a tree favoring rapid expansion.

 

[tommynt]

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.

Quoted for attention

this forum is pure hell, there is 1 little good post and then 20 other with pure spam.

 

[megabearsfan]

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.

If the intent of Liberty is to encourage going wide, then Liberty needs to focus on things that are specifically problematic for wide empires: happiness, science inflation, social policy inflation. In order to help make wide empires more viable, Liberty NEEDS to address those three issues!

Liberty already addresses the policy cost inflation with the Representation policy, so it needs a similar policy for the science penalty.
So, to that effect, I will propose a modification to my earlier suggestion for how to change Liberty:

Opener: +1 Culture per city.
Republic: +1 Production per city and +5% Production towards buildings.
Collective Rule: Speeds training of Settler by 33% in all cities, and +1 food in all cities. Free Settler appears near capital.
Citizenship: +25% improvement build rate. Maintenance paid on workers is halved, and Workers do not count towards the unit cap. A free Worker appears near capital. +25% production towards Work Boats.
Meritocracy: +1 Happiness for each city connected to the capital, and -5% Unhappiness from population in non-occupied cities. +1 Gold in cities that have an improved luxury in their radius.
Representation: Each city you found increases the culture cost of new policies by 33% less than normal. Golden Ages require 25% less happiness.
Finisher: A free Great Person of your choice appears near the capital. All Great person tile improvements generate +1 of the appropriate yield.

new proposal (changes / additions highlighted in green):

• Opener: +1 Culture and +2 Global Happiness.
• Republic: +1 Production in each city and +4% Production for each city that already has that building (up to maximum 20%).
• Collective Rule: Speeds training of Settler by 33% in all cities, and +1 food in all cities. Free Settler appears near capital.
• Citizenship: +25% improvement build rate. Workers and Settlers cost no maintenance and do not count towards the unit cap. A free Worker appears near capital. +25% production towards Work Boats.
• Meritocracy: +1 Happiness for each city connected to the capital, and -5% Unhappiness from population in non-occupied cities. Per city Science penalty is reduced by 1%.
• Representation: Each city you found increases the culture cost of new policies by 33% less than normal. Golden Ages require 25% less happiness.
• Finisher: A free Great Person of your choice appears near the capital. All Great person tile improvements generate +1 of the appropriate yield.

First, I added a few Happiness to the opener so that a Liberty civ can more easily afford early expansion.

The change to Republic was suggested by user Sheershaw at post 188. The idea here is to actually have an effect that stacks cummulatively with the number of cities, and helps get newer cities up and running sooner. Another way to do this would be to buff internal trade routes, but since a wide empire (without Monarchy) needs those routes for gold, they can't really spare them for internal trade.

I also made workers cost NO maintenance in citizenship because you don't really have enough workers for half maintenance to make much of a difference.

I added a reduction to the science penalty to Meritocracy. This parallels the reduction to social policy cost in Representation, and the more cities you have, the more benefit you're getting from this policy.

Interesting perspective to see Liberty not as the "wide" tree as much as the "fast" tree. That does actually make sense in several ways - I guess then Exploration would be the "wide" tree, with its per-city production and happiness. The problem here is obviously that Exploration is sort of messed up with all kinds of different directions - it's both an expansion tree, but it's also a naval combat tree (extra movement and sight, great admirals), and it's also a cultural tree (hidden archeology sites). I guess you can say that the culture from the finisher helps balance the disadvantage you get from increased policy cost per city, so in that way it is consistent with the expansion theme, but it still feels somewhat of a mess to me.

If Liberty is regarded as the "fast" tree, there still seems to be some problems in game however - namely that Tradition seems to allow people to expand with just about the same speed as Liberty, at least based on what I read here. Gold and happiness from Monarchy is probably the key issue here as others have pointed out, along with other game features like easy worker stealing from city states. Also, I still will retain that Liberty gives you too little - and more problematically, too slow - happiness benefits to really make it shine as a tree favoring rapid expansion.

This is one of the reasons that I proposed adding an "Imperialism" tree that would unlock in Classical or Medieval and would be more specifically geared towards buffing wide empires rather than just providing early game expansion boosts. This would allow Liberty to be exclusively focused towards getting a few cities founded earlier in the game, and then Imperialism would allow for further expansion in the mid-game. Making room for another tree could be accomplished by removing the Ideology section, and putting the "Adopt Ideology" and Ideology summary along the bottom of the overview screen (in the same area where the culture cost summary is). We'll then have room to shift all the trees and add a dedicated "wide empire" tree.

Assuming that no changes are made to Liberty, Imperialism tree could then include policies that reduce the science penalty, buff gold from city connections, make it easier for wide empires to build National Wonders, add additional happiness, and so on. I'd have to spend some time thinking about specific policy ideas...

The National College still needs to be addressed either way...

 

[Calouste]

If the intent of Liberty is to encourage going wide

I'm not sure that is the case. I think the intent is to help out with crappy starting locations. I think people are looking at this a bit too much from the view of which Policies work best with a specific play style rather than which policies work best with a specific situation (combination of civ and location etc.) in the game.

 

[layelaye]

I think you bring up a couple of interesting points in your post. I agree that Liberty policies are generally not bad, and when I say Liberty fails at making wide a viable strategy, that is as much a reflection of other game design aspects making wide unappealing (National College issue ranking prominent among these) as it is a problem with Liberty itself.

Interesting perspective to see Liberty not as the "wide" tree as much as the "fast" tree. That does actually make sense in several ways - I guess then Exploration would be the "wide" tree, with its per-city production and happiness. The problem here is obviously that Exploration is sort of messed up with all kinds of different directions - it's both an expansion tree, but it's also a naval combat tree (extra movement and sight, great admirals), and it's also a cultural tree (hidden archeology sites). I guess you can say that the culture from the finisher helps balance the disadvantage you get from increased policy cost per city, so in that way it is consistent with the expansion theme, but it still feels somewhat of a mess to me.

If Liberty is regarded as the "fast" tree, there still seems to be some problems in game however - namely that Tradition seems to allow people to expand with just about the same speed as Liberty, at least based on what I read here. Gold and happiness from Monarchy is probably the key issue here as others have pointed out, along with other game features like easy worker stealing from city states. Also, I still will retain that Liberty gives you too little - and more problematically, too slow - happiness benefits to really make it shine as a tree favoring rapid expansion.

That is mostly true. i play almost exclusively multiplayer, and honestly i find tradition fast expansions the best tactic. in standard speed, assuming no culture ruin and a scout -> monument build, you will get your free settler around turn 45, which is extremely late in my opinion (by this turn i usually have 3 cities and a 4th settler).

aside from that, liberty needs some more per-city happyness, as currently it only has 1 happy per city that requires a lot of effort to get (using workers to build roads when you need them for other improvements and lack gold as opposed to monarchy's giant instant effortless gold + happy). it also needs a building maintenance cost reduction (or extra gold) and a science penalty fixer, much like the culture one.

BTW: i'd put the science penalty reduction in the finisher, otherwise everyone will pretty much swoop into liberty with 2-3 policies and grab it after they finish tradition, instead of going patronage or commerce or something.

EDIT: a cool idea i once had was for collective rule to give +1 movement to settlers. it wouldent change the game much as you need an escort most of the time anyway, but it will shave a few turns and make the expansion slightly faster.

 

[Tabarnak]

My solution would be a slightly better AI program. Making sure that all CS and AIs protect their workers anytime with his strongest unit. That way, the player will have much harder times to get freebies early on. This part directly buff Liberty without changing tree aspects.

EDIT: a cool idea i once had was for collective rule to give +1 movement to settlers. it wouldent change the game much as you need an escort most of the time anyway, but it will shave a few turns and make the expansion slightly faster.

Good idea for standard/quick speed, but almost irrelevant for slower speeds.

 

[Wodan]

Making sure that all CS and AIs protect their workers [and settlers] anytime with his strongest unit.

 

[kaspergm]

This is one of the reasons that I proposed adding an "Imperialism" tree that would unlock in Classical or Medieval and would be more specifically geared towards buffing wide empires rather than just providing early game expansion boosts. This would allow Liberty to be exclusively focused towards getting a few cities founded earlier in the game, and then Imperialism would allow for further expansion in the mid-game. Making room for another tree could be accomplished by removing the Ideology section, and putting the "Adopt Ideology" and Ideology summary along the bottom of the overview screen (in the same area where the culture cost summary is). We'll then have room to shift all the trees and add a dedicated "wide empire" tree.

Assuming that no changes are made to Liberty, Imperialism tree could then include policies that reduce the science penalty, buff gold from city connections, make it easier for wide empires to build National Wonders, add additional happiness, and so on. I'd have to spend some time thinking about specific policy ideas...

EDIT: a cool idea i once had was for collective rule to give +1 movement to settlers. it wouldent change the game much as you need an escort most of the time anyway, but it will shave a few turns and make the expansion slightly faster.

I don't think a new policy tree would need to be added as the "expansion" tree, even if we take Liberty as being about fast early expansion but not going wide. The other tree is already there: It's called Exploration. It just needs to be fixed up and streamlined into this focus. Half of the tree is already about this - the extra production in coastal cities - while being a bit weird only working for coastal - is already a tremendous boost for mid-game settling, and the happiness from coastal buildings again help accomodate more cities.

I play with a modded Exploration myself - among the changes, I moved the gold from (naval) trade routes into Commerce (grouped with land trade routs) and replaced it with a 25 % boost to internal trade routes - this will help you get food/production boost to new cities. I also grouped the happiness and gold on naval buildings into one policy (because two policies for this was extremely boring and the one that added the gold alone was awful), and made a new policy that makes new cities start with 3 citizens and provides settlers +2 movement. Navigation school, on top of the Admiral bonus (useless) also adds +1 science from naval buildings to at least give some compensation for science penalty. I feel this makes the tree much more focussed on the expansion theme, even though the opener and closer do feel a bit strange in this context.