How to Fix Liberty

[adwcta]

What names? Apologist means defender....

The point is that it doesn't matter if its free or not, its the time shift of a bonus. Let's pretend Liberty's bonus didn't say its free, and said "+100 great scientist points". It'll be the same thing. The languages confuses the actual bonus. You would generate a great scientist anyway, but you do it now much earlier. You would build four monuments anyway, but you now get then 10 turns earlier each, and you save 1gpt for each turn each of your first 4 cities are up. You've time shifted a bonus. In the same way tradition "saves" you hammers, Liberty "saves" you great person points.

If you argue that one bonus snowballs, then the other does too. Its basic logic. 15% on surplus food means you get a pop out earlier? (due to increasing surplus needs, you'd actually need almost 20 pop before the 15% part of the bonus gives you a full extra pop, without food routes). It's roughly equivalent to the hammer bonus liberty gets at that point, and doubles it by 50 pop, but liberty's per city bonus actually kicks in much quicker, you know, for snowballing.

I don't think snowballing is as important as people make it out to be, but if you buy into that, then you can't deny the liberty finisher's utility.

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[Light Cleric]

Well apologist is often pejorative, I'm used to getting it that way so it's reflex

I don't think I ever mentioned the word snowballing.

You're also glossing over the actual important part of the Tradition finisher; the Aqueducts that you don't have to go off the Education tech path and hardbuild. Not to mention, again, lack of happiness issues thanks to Monarchy and Landed Elite's food bonus.

 

[Vitruvius]

Maybe just nerf traditions free stuff and finisher growth bonus to just 2 cities.

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[kb27787]

You know, I feel you can nerf tradition to the ground by even having the bonus only apply to the capitol, and not the first 4, and I'd STILL take it over liberty. +25% growth in cap and a free aqueduct, half unhappiness in capitol and the same amount of gold? That's still better than liberty's entire tree combined.

And tradition completes its tree faster as well....

 

[adwcta]

Well apologist is often pejorative, I'm used to getting it that way so it's reflex

I don't think I ever mentioned the word snowballing.

You're also glossing over the actual important part of the Tradition finisher; the Aqueducts that you don't have to go off the Education tech path and hardbuild. Not to mention, again, lack of happiness issues thanks to Monarchy and Landed Elite's food bonus.

Sorry, I meant it in the way Plato uses it.

Agree about the happiness and early game gold. They're Liberty's biggest weaknesses. Tradition's weakness is doing much outside of your first 4 cities, including mid-game and after wars. That's all built into the tree.

The free aqueducts saves you hammers, but it's all compensated by the one hammer bonus plus two free early game units Liberty gets, even in 4 cities. If you run no food routes for surplus (you can run them to work specialists), don't build world wonders, and don't consider gold saved or gained (liberty has other bonuses)... Liberty's three hammer policies beats out tradition's everything else besides landed elite in pure food/hammer resource gain... in 4 cities. Free aqueducts were also better before they tied the trade route to that tech.

I've said this before, but the breakpoint is at 7 cities. We can keep arguing, but its all math in this game with resources you can trade off food/hammer/gold/happy. Liberty is actually the tree that actually gets you scarce resource like GA points, GP points, and culture (so, if anything, I'm undervaluing it).

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[Ninakoru]

Tradition has a perfect sinergy within their policies. That's good and shouldn't be changed but some policies are just absurdly good. The best approach I can think of is maintaining the tree and bonuses, but lower their values. 15% border growth instead of 25% from the opener, 1 gold/happiness for each 3 citizens in capital from monarchy.

What if feel is awkward on Liberty is that you benefit of the settler production bonus a bit too late, and you kill fast expansion if you choose free worker before going for the free settler. Still I think moving up the free settler is a bit too much, but maybe moving the settler production bonus up and exchange it with the 5% building prod bonus...

I think republic bonuses are fine. +1 production will save many turns in each new city. 5% to building production may seem little but you will spend most of the turns in all cities rising buldings, at the end of the game it will save the player many hammers.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

What if feel is awkward on Liberty is that you benefit of the settler production bonus a bit too late, and you kill fast expansion if you choose free worker before going for the free settler. Still I think moving up the free settler is a bit too much, but maybe moving the settler production bonus up and exchange it with the 5% building prod bonus...

I think republic bonuses are fine. +1 production will save many turns in each new city. 5% to building production may seem little but you will spend most of the turns in all cities rising buldings, at the end of the game it will save the player many hammers.

I think that is the issue.

Liberty isn't timed properly for rex

rex needs
Settler production early
Happiness later
Production, Gold, Culture last (for buildings)

So I would
Opener gives +100% Settler production to all cities (no free settler)
Move +1 culture to current Hammer spot
Move +1 Hammer up to current Settler spot

So
Open.. start rexing
get Free Worker (then meritocracy) if you are feeling the happiness pinch
Otherwise stay on the left side for faster culture+development of the cities.

 

[Wodan]

Relative benefits could be (and are) argued all day.

What gets me, though, is when I want to have a game with a large empire, I still find it more beneficial to take Tradition and speed up my early empire. I'm not getting that large empire until mid to late game anyway, so the real comparison is what my early empire looks like up to the time when I'm ready to go into that phase 2 of expansion, versus the ongoing benefits. Even with tradition's benefits only applying to the original 4 cities, I still find it better in almost all cases.

 

[megabearsfan]

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.

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

Perhaps Liberty could have a policy that makes it so that newly-founded cities do not stop the ability to construct a national wonder unless their population grows to 3 or more. This could maybe be part of the finisher. This way, you're not constantly waiting until you finish a national wonder before founding a new city (East India Company, Oxford are big pains for me). You just need to make sure you have the prereq building in all your established cities. I find that this tends to be the biggest hold-up to going wide for me (beyond first 3 or 4 cities).

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

Not bad. Perhaps one of the Tradition policies could bump the bonus back up (maybe just to 33%). Landed Elite seems like a good place for this to be. This would help offset the fact that you have fewer cities.
Then Liberty could have a policy that gives +1 Science in every city after building the NC. This could maybe be in Meritocracy. This would give a research incentive for continuing to go wide.

 

[Vitruvius]

I think that is the issue.

Liberty isn't timed properly for rex

rex needs
Settler production early
Happiness later
Production, Gold, Culture last (for buildings)

So I would
Opener gives +100% Settler production to all cities (no free settler)
Move +1 culture to current Hammer spot
Move +1 Hammer up to current Settler spot

So
Open.. start rexing
get Free Worker (then meritocracy) if you are feeling the happiness pinch
Otherwise stay on the left side for faster culture+development of the cities.

I can also argue that tradition doesn't facilitate growth right off the bat.

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[kaspergm]

Perhaps Liberty could have a policy that makes it so that newly-founded cities do not stop the ability to construct a national wonder unless their population grows to 3 or more.

I think that's a pretty interesting idea.

 

[Calouste]

If you have a good starting location, Tradition is always going to be the better choice than Liberty. Which means you need some food and a number of workable tiles (resources/fresh water/hills). Even if you don't have a lot of food but have hammers, Tradition helps you out with the Hanging Gardens.

Only if you don't have food resources and a lot of the surrounding terrain is resource-less flat grassland/plains/desert/tundra or jungle do you want to start thinking about Liberty. No use picking a policy tree that gives a lot of benefits to your capital if your capital can't grow, and even if it did grow, it wouldn't have anything useful to do.

 

[GhostSalsa]

The problem with Liberty's production bonus is that it doesn't really help new cities turn around and become productive faster. A city planted on turn 150 takes as many turns to finish an ancient-era building as one planted on turn 50 - but the game is practically over by this point. Mid-game settling is not rewarding and this indirectly reduces rewards for exploration.

It's hard to get more than 6 cities out before turn 110. Then everything after turn 110 isn't even worth it because the city will be trash for so long.

Anything settled after turn 110 is going to mess up your Oxford and Hermitage timing always and by extent delay your ideology tenant adoption, which is a huge loss of bonus hammers later. No way is any city worth getting 5-year-plan 20 turns later. New cities should turn around faster. Settle in mid-game, look like a regular city by turn 200. Liberty should be good at this, it should be one of the main perks compared to Tradition.

What needs to happen is that the building-percentage bonus goes +5% either for every era older a building is than your current era, or for how many other instances of the building you already have. A city settled in the year 1100 shouldn't take 15 turns to finish a market. I've argued this in other threads.

Tweaking National Wonder requirements also needs to happen for this.

 

[djm_jm]

I think that liberty is not bad policy tree, it's very good for players that prefers largest civilizations.

 

[adwcta]

None of that is necessarily true. You can settle around national wonders, Oxford is the one wonder than can be delayed without negative consequences, and after chemistry, fertilizer, schools, cities start out with extra resources, so they actually work 20-33% faster than improved ancient era cities.

There is a time when new cities will no longer break even, but its far past the turn time people around here keep throwing out from the deity players handbook. A city on turn 150 will only not pay for itself if you finish ~sub-230. But the whole point in going wide is that your starting area is not optimal... and liberty back loads your science even more. On Deity, if you win the turn before the AI wins, cities up to turn 230 will pay for their own science (thus being pointless for science, but still not hurtful). Give you don't want to cut it that close, 200 is a good benchmark for a break even city, and 150-160 is a conservative cutoff for cities to significantly contribute to your science victory security. There's math behind this.

If your start is so godly, and you are so fast, that you win in ~200 turns... Then yeah, Liberty is completely pointless and harmful. So is any city made after turn 110 (not counting your first 4), for science.

In good Tradition start conditions, Liberty is not as good. In bad Tradition start conditions, Liberty is better. A bias comes from most players' familiarity with the two trees post BNW, and most players' refusal to play bad starts in the first place. No one will argue that Liberty > Tradition for science given a good 4 city starting area.

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[Calouste]

The problem with Liberty's production bonus is that it doesn't really help new cities turn around and become productive faster. A city planted on turn 150 takes as many turns to finish an ancient-era building as one planted on turn 50 - but the game is practically over by this point. Mid-game settling is not rewarding and this indirectly reduces rewards for exploration.

It's hard to get more than 6 cities out before turn 110. Then everything after turn 110 isn't even worth it because the city will be trash for so long.

Anything settled after turn 110 is going to mess up your Oxford and Hermitage timing always and by extent delay your ideology tenant adoption, which is a huge loss of bonus hammers later. No way is any city worth getting 5-year-plan 20 turns later. New cities should turn around faster. Settle in mid-game, look like a regular city by turn 200. Liberty should be good at this, it should be one of the main perks compared to Tradition.

What needs to happen is that the building-percentage bonus goes +5% either for every era older a building is than your current era, or for how many other instances of the building you already have. A city settled in the year 1100 shouldn't take 15 turns to finish a market. I've argued this in other threads.

Tweaking National Wonder requirements also needs to happen for this.

Either buy some basic infrastructure in the city (buying a Lighthouse in a city with two or more sea resources is probably the best investment you can make in the game) or run an internal trade route to it, and a newly founded city will be up and running in no time.

 

[CraigMak]

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....

It's a great tactic and is not an exploit at all. It's choosing what you want for free. That 4GPT will add up over time and is especially useful on skirmish/teamer games where gold is extremely hard to come by. Even in an FFA I don't normally build amphitheaters unless I am aiming for a culture vic which is pretty much never. A culture victory is nearly impossible vs competent players.

 

[isau]

IMO the National Wonders shouldn't require other cities to build things. The base cost of the building should just be high (say 50% higher than it is now) and go up based on empire size. There don't need to be any rules around what is built in other cities because there is already a hammer penalty. The way the National College and Ironworks work right now really hamstrings the game.

 

[CraigMak]

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.

Holy Moly, these settings would make liberty the way to go 98% of the time. This is a bit too far although I am glad you agree that Liberty does need help compared to tradition.

 

[CraigMak]

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

This is an interesting proposal. I have often felt that NC comes a bit too early for its strength. Mainly because it is a super early NC that makes GL so powerful. If the NC was moved back a bit so that GL couldn't straight shot it, GL would be much less powerful.

As it stands I feel that the placement of NC makes GL a bit too strong.