How to Fix Liberty

[adwcta]

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...

Yeah, I have no idea what he's talking about there. It's easier to get pantheon/religion than tradition. It's still very hard to get religion, but easier than tradition.

His argument hinges on the idea that if you spend 40 hammers on a shrine with liberty (despite your hammer bonus), you'll somehow be screwed. I build shrine first in almost all my cities until I have a pantheon (and continue to do so after that if I get a faith pantheon).

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[Wodan]

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)

no no

You're effectivly prohibited from going wide early in the game by happiness. Until you get a significant amount of via lux resources, religion, happy buildings, etc, you can't go wide. So the cheaper settlers later in the tree gives you that oomph for your midgame expansion.

The hammer boost early in the tree gives you the option to use that on cheaper settlers but you can alternately use it on cheaper buildings, workers, units, or wonders. The boost is much more powerful and a better early opener than cheap settlers.

 

[Wodan]

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.

That's an exploit? What, you'd get 20 or so?

I'd much rather have a free Amphitheatre.

 

[GhostSalsa]

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...

Landed Elite. Tradition doesn't ever need to build a monument, so shrine is much safer to build fast. Landed Elite gets you to 4 citizens quickly and also adds toward settler production (food is production for settlers). Tradition can't beat a two-culture-ruin Liberty for first settler but it's not far behind a one-culture-ruin Liberty and it's ahead of a no-culture-ruin Liberty.

I prefer four-city starts before NC so maybe I don't regard opportunity costs as very high for Tradition settler-building.

Anyway I only brought it up because it's one more detail. I like liberty, but people who talk down the disparity between wide and tall play in BNW often laundry-list these benefits for early/mid-game, all of which are only potentially achievable.

The only guaranteed dividend for wide play is stronger late-game science. Everything earlier is just sometimes better.

 

[civjou]

You're telling me that Tradition with two lucky culture ruins + a 2 pop settler is quicker than a Liberty settle?

Yeah sure, for every target I can conceive of a string of lucky events and crazy strats to beat it.

 

[adwcta]

Its not just late game science... Its late game anything you want (you get to pick 2, but you can't have it all). Want tourism and science? Done. Want gold and an army? Done. Want faith and science? Done.

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[Calouste]

That's an exploit? What, you'd get 20 or so?

I'd much rather have a free Amphitheatre.

I'd much rather have two scouts.

 

[CraigMak]

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.

I really don't think that Liberty is about getting a quick buck. The free settler comes quite late actually. A tradition player can 2 pop a settler out waaay before liberty can get that settler or begin benefiting from the +50%. Playing Liberty, you really don't want to start making settlers until you have that bonus to maximize hammer efficiency. The settler bonus really needs to be moved back up to where it was before.

The worker comes really, really late if you get a settler first and that golden age is definitely not a quick buck since it usually comes last. Tradition's permanent gold bonus from Monarchy will come long before Liberty's "quick buck" golden age. The great person is not quick either, I often find myself avoiding the Liberty finisher because it comes at about the same time I am earning a natural GE.

I don't think that the quick buck analogy is accurate for Liberty. But, that's just my opinion.

 

[Vitruvius]

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.

Its the opposite. Liberty becomes stronger as game progresses. The only early advantage liberty provides is the free settler and worker. Representation and meritocracy are heavy late game policies. Republic is useful all game. Faster worker speed helps all the way until railroads. And if you are doing conquest, faster workers will always be helpful. Tradition on the other hand gets you early culture building, little bit early gold, early wonder production bonus, and early maintenance. Non of which matters in the late game since you will be rich and use GEs for wonders. Only growth bonus stick with you all game.

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[Browd]

That's an exploit? What, you'd get 20 or so?

I'd much rather have a free Amphitheatre.

Ha! I never said it was a good or profitable exploit. In fact, I think it's a poor practice (sink all those hammers into a monument for a smidgen of gold?) and never do it, but he did ask....

 

[Wodan]

Ha! I never said it was a good or profitable exploit. In fact, I think it's a poor practice (sink all those hammers into a monument for a smidgen of gold?) and never do it, but he did ask....

True.

 

[ronjon]

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.

4N4COND4, I agree with your agreement and your addendum.

 

[Light Cleric]

It needs earlier and stronger happiness desperately, even with a Monarchy nerf(which is also desperately needed). You spend a lot of time sitting unhappy and not growing if you REX, while Tradition just laughs at you and grows its capital to a monstrous size and its satellite cities eventually grow huge as well because the capital has no happiness issues. Mertiocracy just comes too late and its happiness is too small until you get to a REALLY large empire, a size you'd only likely reach via conquering.

I would like Citizenship to come earlier, you want that free Worker WAY sooner. The Liberty opener could probably use to give more culture, the Trad opener has the stupidly strong border thing anyway.

Republic also needs a boost, +1 hammer and +5% to buildings is terrible in the early game when you need it most in a wide empire to crank out Monuments, Granaries, etc. Those low production cities aren't going to get much of anything out of that +5%; +5% on 5 hammers is a whopping 1/4 hammer, whoopdie-do. At the very least it should be +2 hammers, base 1 hammer + an additional 1 hammer and 10% on buildings, something. It sucks now.

The finisher also either needs to be:
A)ACTUALLY free, not counting against the next Great Person(Liberty deserves this exception to the general rule)
B)Able to purchase some Great Person type in the Industrial; Tradition can purchase the stupidly powerful Engineers.
C)Both A & B.

Frankly one of the biggest things Liberty needs is a Tradition nerf. Going wide also needs to be more viable rather than just drop 3 cities and then go take a bunch of stuff from the AI at Dynamite.

 

[Vitruvius]

It needs earlier and stronger happiness desperately, even with a Monarchy nerf(which is also desperately needed). You spend a lot of time sitting unhappy and not growing if you REX, while Tradition just laughs at you and grows its capital to a monstrous size and its satellite cities eventually grow huge as well because the capital has no happiness issues. Mertiocracy just comes too late and its happiness is too small until you get to a REALLY large empire, a size you'd only likely reach via conquering.

I would like Citizenship to come earlier, you want that free Worker WAY sooner. The Liberty opener could probably use to give more culture, the Trad opener has the stupidly strong border thing anyway.

Republic also needs a boost, +1 hammer and +5% to buildings is terrible in the early game when you need it most in a wide empire to crank out Monuments, Granaries, etc. Those low production cities aren't going to get much of anything out of that +5%; +5% on 5 hammers is a whopping 1/4 hammer, whoopdie-do. At the very least it should be +2 hammers, base 1 hammer + an additional 1 hammer and 10% on buildings, something. It sucks now.

The finisher also either needs to be:
A)ACTUALLY free, not counting against the next Great Person(Liberty deserves this exception to the general rule)
B)Able to purchase some Great Person type in the Industrial; Tradition can purchase the stupidly powerful Engineers.
C)Both A & B.

Frankly one of the biggest things Liberty needs is a Tradition nerf. Going wide also needs to be more viable rather than just drop 3 cities and then go take a bunch of stuff from the AI at Dynamite.

+1 hammer is fine. In the early game it can often make a 2 hammer city into a 3 hammer city. Thats +50% production. In the late game, the 5% bonus kicks in. Republic, meritocracy and representation are 3 heavy hitting late game policies that can greatly improve your empire and I think their bonuses are fine. I agree that maybe the position of republic and citizenship can be swapped so you can get a free worker right away and then a free settler. But i am not sure if this will make liberty overpowered. The finisher of liberty is actually great. A free great person could really help at that time. What we need is a nerf to tradition. Since 4 cities is generally the norm for any opening, I dont think tradition should provide free stuff for all 4 cities but maybe only 2 or 3. Because in the past, 4 cities is considered few, and therefore tradition is designed in that way to only provide bonuses for 4 cities. Now, going wide is much less attractive and 4 cities is considered standard in many cases.

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[Light Cleric]

+1 hammer is fine. In the early game it can often make a 2 hammer city into a 3 hammer city. Thats +50% production. In the late game, the 5% bonus kicks in. Republic, meritocracy and representation are 3 heavy hitting late game policies that can greatly improve your empire and I think their bonuses are fine. I agree that maybe the position of republic and citizenship can be swapped so you can get a free worker right away and then a free settler. But i am not sure if this will make liberty overpowered. The finisher of liberty is actually great. A free great person could really help at that time. What we need is a nerf to tradition. Since 4 cities is generally the norm for any opening, I dont think tradition should provide free stuff for all 4 cities but maybe only 2 or 3. Because in the past, 4 cities is considered few, and therefore tradition is designed in that way to only provide bonuses for 4 cities. Now, going wide is much less attractive and 4 cities is considered standard in many cases.

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+50% of crap can still be crap. And the +5% bonus never really "kicks in". It's effectively 1 hammer for every 20 the city has. That's amazingly mediocre.

You're playing catchup with Tradition right off the bat because it gets a free 40 hammers with the free Monuments before the 5th city(which is not a great idea to build in the first place).

The free Great Person is not that great because, again, it increases the cost of your next one. You can get a Great Scientist early, but then the next one takes 200 points to get so it's not really much help.

 

[seanflokstra7]

I start on Liberty, get the free settler and worker, then switch to Tradition. It's really effective for me.

 

[Veras]

I think the problem isn't with Liberty at all, but with Tradition. Just weaken it. It gives you way too many free stuff. If we got 2 bad Ancient trees, 1 good and 1 really good; what seems to be more fair is to make it 2 bad and 2 good instead of creating a huge gap between an hipothetical 2 bad and 2 really good Ancient Trees. Maybe after that we'll be in a better position to to fix those bad Trees.

 

[MadHaxxor]

Liberty was indirectly nerfed in 2 ways with BNW while not being buffed at all. The biggest harm done to it is that rivers no longer produce gold, meaning you will not be able to finance all your buildings where as tradition can. So, yes it needs some kind of gold bonus. OP's idea was good, extra gold for city connections. Either that or perhaps a building maintenance reduction. The other way Liberty was nerfed was with the ridiculous 5% tech cost increase per city, combine that with the fact that tradition civs typically get national college very early. it is difficult to come back. I was thinking a good idea would be to add to the liberty finisher a one half reduction in the tech increase cost per city. so only 2.5% tech cost increase instead of 5%. Although, I do believe the default number for tech cost increase per city should be no more than 4%. Additionally, I believe puppeted cities should NOT add to tech cost increase, this should provide warmongers with the advantage most of us believe they could use. My 2 suggestions combined with what the other poster said that stealing workers from city states is an exploit, should make liberty a viable choice some times. If you look through my previous posts you can see me going into long arguments about why stealing workers from city-states is absolute bs and ruining the game.

On a side note... Piety is not horribly weak. In fact I use it regulary, it is very effective online because you can get your religion into literally every city on the map since no one will be able to compete with your insane faith production and cheap missionaries. I have 2 very, very powerful piety strategies right now. I imagine that most of you say piety is bad because you don't know how to use it. It is not nearly as straight forward as tradition or liberty, but it is very powerful if you use it correctly. I'm not going to tell anyone my strategies because they are unique and I have never even seen people post what I tend to do in my 2 piety strategies. However, I will say that the secret to piety lies in the half cost temples and reformation belief. Just think about it and practice and you will realize that piety is right up there with tradition and liberty. Honor, on the other hand, may need a slight indirect buff because melee units are by far the weakest type in current civ 5. Maybe if melee units were just generally made better, like if the damage taken when attacking ranged or sieged units was cut by 3/4ths. Perhaps instead of buffing piety and honor we could nerf tradition slightly. I never understood why tradition gets the 25% border expansion bonus, it makes sense for liberty to get that anyway. Also, to what the other poster said about making piety give free shrines... no that is a bad idea. Everybody would take just the opener then and get an easy religion. Additionally it would overall make piety weaker because it wouldn't get half off temples which imo is one of the most important abilities of it

TL;DR Liberty isn't too far off from being balanced, it just needs a gold bonus and science bonus, or the national college could be nerfed. Piety is very good, but you have to know how to use it. Honor would be good if melee units were good.

 

[adwcta]

The free Great Person is not that great because, again, it increases the cost of your next one. You can get a Great Scientist early, but then the next one takes 200 points to get so it's not really much help.

This is what I don't get about the apologists for tradition.
Tradition has two bonuses that are front-loaded, and because that snowballs, it's wonderful!
Liberty's finisher is front-loaded, but even though it snowballs, it's still only mediocre!

::sigh::

 

[Light Cleric]

This is what I don't get about the apologists for tradition.
Tradition has two bonuses that are front-loaded, and because that snowballs, it's wonderful!
Liberty's finisher is front-loaded, but even though it snowballs, it's still only mediocre!

::sigh::

What about being able to get a 35-40 pop capital with no happiness issues is "frontloaded"?

A single academy that delays your next one does not fit my definition of snowballing, you should be well on your way to Education and with bigger cities and probably a faster NC if you don't use your GE on it(with a bigger cap yielding more Science) with Tradition by that stage unless you REALLY lucked out with cultural CS or got an amazing culture pantheon.

Tradition's Aqueducts are free. Its Monuments are free. Liberty's finisher is NOT that same type of free because you pay the cost in GPP. Taking a Prophet will increase Scientist/Engineer/Merchants costs as well which it really should not.

I don't see the need to call names, either, but thanks.