How to Fix Liberty

A new issue in my liberty games are money. Tradition have legalism (3 gold) and Monarchy (3 gold for cap with pop 6, for example).
In liberty, it's three monument and a coliseum (if no circus), assume you have Meritocraty for same effect, it's so - 5gpt.
In early games it's a gap from -5 to +6 gpt. It's 5 units in early games, specially archers and workers.
On deity and immortal, you have a caravan to fix it (all barbs being equal). Below...
 
I don't think there is a tree that is always superior/inferior, it's all map-dependant.
Liberty actually does give you boosts that lasts the whole game, the fact you get your city cluster done faster and the GP impact the game greatly and could even dictate win/loss if you are under certain conditions.
 
LC totaly missed the point I think.
Isnt it TOTALY OBVIOUS that its impossible to make good balance suggestions if u dont even understand game mechanics?

I m no engineer, I dont tell people how to build bridges, but when engineers try tell me how to improve accounting thats not helpful either. U need good insight to existing status to improve things.

Well, yeah, but I think coming in to a thread on a public forum and attempt to dictate that only people who have spent X hours playing against set Y of people should have opinions that matter, which is the sentiment I was responding to, and dictating who is a "pro"(Without ever defining "pro" lol) doesn't really accomplish much of anything except pissing everyone off.

judging something before even trying, eh?
If u dont like comunicate with other people u can just turn off chat.

I think you missed the point there.

I want to communicate with other people, because how else do you learn? I mean, yeah, you can learn through experimenting but it's still better to have other people's feedback on said experiments and have advice from people who know better.

What I don't want to deal with is what I've dealt with in some other multiplayer communities; that is, people who seemingly lack any clue on how to interact with other human beings on a personal level, e.g. the aforementioned LoL community and some others.
 
Well, it appears the thread derailed despite my hopes, which partly is my fault. I think everyone should really read carefully the last few pages just to see how pointless this argument is.

CraigMark said, "It is not about making the game harder, it is about making the game balanced. So that one policy tree is not superior to the other or one unit is not the free win unit."

That is true. No one denied that. The only difference is that it was suggested to buff the other trees as to be on par with Tradition, instead of nerfing down Tradition to be on par with the three. The goal is the same, balance and significance of choise! And some (me including) think that the choice is more important/significant when all 4 are strong and beneficial in their own way.

So please people, I urge you, let's get back on track.
 
Well, it appears the thread derailed despite my hopes, which partly is my fault. I think everyone should really read carefully the last few pages just to see how pointless this argument is.

CraigMark said, "It is not about making the game harder, it is about making the game balanced. So that one policy tree is not superior to the other or one unit is not the free win unit."

That is true. No one denied that. The only difference is that it was suggested to buff the other trees as to be on par with Tradition, instead of nerfing down Tradition to be on par with the three. The goal is the same, balance and significance of choise! And some (me including) think that the choice is more important/significant when all 4 are strong and beneficial in their own way.

So please people, I urge you, let's get back on track.

I don't think the policy trees or the civs have to be balanced. The fact that you can play a completely different game with a completely different focus depending on your civ and starting location is what makes Civ5 interesting to me. The main issue with Tradition is that it is the policy of choice for good starting locations, and players like to play good starting locations. They will walk around looking for a better location or just restart if they don't get a good one.
 
Oh my, this thread has become quite the train wreck. People going on about "pros", despite the fact that as far as I know nobody plays this game for a living and earns money from it (do inform me when SK Telecom starts up a professional Civ5 team).

It actually does make sense on some level that the game should be balanced for multiplayer. But the only reason for that is that the AI cannot match a good human player and therefore has to cheat massively to make up for it. So MP is the only true level playing field. But I remember reading somewhere that the Civilization games were always intended primarily for single-player...

Although I agree with the sentiment partially, I cannot for the life of me understand why some people have to present it in such an offensive manner, as if they think it strengthens their case or something. It's unfortunate that these "casuals" don't have all day to play a video game because they, you know, have lives and jobs and stuff. Damn casuals, ruining video games for the rest of us! :rolleyes:

As for the almighty opinions of people who beat the game on Deity, lol. We all know that half of beating Deity is cheesing the system and exploiting the living daylights out of the AI at every possible opportunity. I suppose that's what people mean by "pro" nowadays. :lol:
 
Most of these groups in your list do not care about the game's playability. Their focus is on profitability and appeal to the lowest common denominator.
I disagree.

If the design experts were such experts how could they possibly believe that Spain getting 2000 gold/20faith per turn is balanced?
I don't consider the in-house designers to be members of the external audience of design experts. While they are design experts, they aren't members of the external audience in the first place.

In any event, your mention of them is nonsensical; clearly they did their best given the time they were allocated to work on balance. The only reason to bring them up is if we were going to take a different approach: If we suspect that the reason the balance isn't that great is because the designers weren't given enough budget to do a good job, then we should be arguing for them to be given more funding... and all of this discussion (for the external audience to fix it) is a waste of time.

They are being subjected to every aspect of the game for countless hours.
Already responded to this.

Balancing Starcraft is actually a vastly harder task than a game like Civ 5. This is because the 3 races function in completely different ways. In Civ, all the civs function the same and 95% of the units are identical. It's not hard to balance Civs that make exactly the same units 95% of the time.
Are you qualified to express an authoritative judgment on this subject?

The fact that they can be even remotely balanced is an incredible testament to Blizzard's effort and ability.
No, it's testament to the fact that Blizzard made this a lynchpin of their game. They devoted the resources to doing a passable job at it (and the number and frequency of game balance tweak patches are testament to their lack of skill in getting it right the first time as well as their commitment to making the effort to continue adjustments to improve after release). Whereas Firaxis did not devote these resources, not to the same degree that Blizzard did.
 
Tommy and Craig have got one thing right.

You need to have a very good understanding of game mechanics to have good feedback on balance. "Pros" who innovate strategies, refine turn times, delve into the math actually know what all of the effects are to every change.
I don't disagree with this but I strongly disagree that this is the only feedback that should be taken into account. I also feel that the "pros" tend to have extremely narrow viewpoints... they are trying to min/max the mechanics so they tend to have huge blind spots as well as little idea of how mechanics function outside of their narrow play settings and play style.
 
As for the almighty opinions of people who beat the game on Deity, lol. We all know that half of beating Deity is cheesing the system and exploiting the living daylights out of the AI at every possible opportunity. I suppose that's what people mean by "pro" nowadays. :lol:

No, the skilled players don't care about beating the game on deity. They care about the game being fair and balanced vs other humans. No OP civs, No OP units, No OP wonders, No OP policies. Beating the AI on any setting is irrelevant completely to the discussion.

The "pro" players play other highly skilled players. NOT mindless AI's that can be exploited.
 
I don't think the policy trees or the civs have to be balanced. The fact that you can play a completely different game with a completely different focus depending on your civ and starting location is what makes Civ5 interesting to me. The main issue with Tradition is that it is the policy of choice for good starting locations, and players like to play good starting locations. They will walk around looking for a better location or just restart if they don't get a good one.
I still think that Piety and Patronage are perfectly good 2nd trees. Oh, they could use some fine tuning, sure. But so could other trees. Honor to me is the decidedly weak one.

But I personally don't see a problem if Tradition and Liberty are 95% of the time the best starting trees in all games. Who said that Honor, Piety, and Patronage needed to be a starting tree? Nobody. If you really wanted to, for kicks or variety, you could pick them. But there's no reason they can't be intended and designed as 2nd choices for the midgame.

I'm not so sure I'd nerf Tradition as a solution, as opposed to improving Liberty. The real problem with Liberty is Happiness. You can't really take advantage of going wide until you have multiple happy sources coming in, and that's simply not possible until midgame. So why pick Liberty as a starting tree? You wouldn't. Maybe as a 2nd tree, which would group Liberty with Piety and Patronage (and Honor still being the odd man out).

So, how to fix Liberty? Add a stronger per city happy source (than Meritocracy). That's the only answer.
 
I still think that Piety and Patronage are perfectly good 2nd trees. Oh, they could use some fine tuning, sure. But so could other trees. Honor to me is the decidedly weak one.

But I personally don't see a problem if Tradition and Liberty are 95% of the time the best starting trees in all games. Who said that Honor, Piety, and Patronage needed to be a starting tree? Nobody. If you really wanted to, for kicks or variety, you could pick them. But there's no reason they can't be intended and designed as 2nd choices for the midgame.

I'm not so sure I'd nerf Tradition as a solution, as opposed to improving Liberty. The real problem with Liberty is Happiness. You can't really take advantage of going wide until you have multiple happy sources coming in, and that's simply not possible until midgame. So why pick Liberty as a starting tree? You wouldn't. Maybe as a 2nd tree, which would group Liberty with Piety and Patronage (and Honor still being the odd man out).

So, how to fix Liberty? Add a stronger per city happy source (than Meritocracy). That's the only answer.

What about having finishing Liberty (or Meritocracy or Representation) give +1 Happy to every Coliseum/Zoo/Stadium? That would still help going wide while not encouraging city spam because you still need a somewhat decent city for it to take effect. On the other hand, going wide allows you to generate more Faith, so you can get Pagodas or Religious Centers to solve your happiness problems.
 
there dies another general forum thread in absurd mindless spam.

I really wonder why there are so many people acting like they dont have time to learn play the game (while every1 who does is a dumb nerd), but seem to have sheer amount of endless time spaming this forum with absurd comments.

4.700+ posts and no clue at all about the game :crazyeye:

Moderator Action: Please do not troll the forums. Please make your point if you have one to make instead of being insulting and surly.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889
 
What about having finishing Liberty (or Meritocracy or Representation) give +1 Happy to every Coliseum/Zoo/Stadium? That would still help going wide while not encouraging city spam because you still need a somewhat decent city for it to take effect.
Maybe, though that still doesn't help much with the early game. The OP was to "fix Liberty [as a starting tree]". I suppose the +1 :) to Coliseums helps a tad, and it would be interesting to have a scalable benefit that gets better in the mid and late game.

On the other hand, going wide allows you to generate more Faith, so you can get Pagodas or Religious Centers to solve your happiness problems.
That's a non-starter for two reasons... it doesn't help (basically this says "what we have now is fine"), and it only provides help in certain situations (where you're going wide AND focusing on religion).
 
How much faster can one expand with Liberty vs. Tradition? It seems like the bonus gold that Tradition gets would help it expand by buying settlers.

Happiness is, usually, the limiting factor for expanding in most games I've played. Because it's designed to go wide, Liberty handles Happiness issues better than Tradition does, particularly for expanding early.

On Immortal, it's rare to be able to expand a third city with a Tradition opener before improving lux/trading for lux/getting a reliable CS ally unless you're willing to deal with Happiness issues.
 
How much faster can one expand with Liberty vs. Tradition? It seems like the bonus gold that Tradition gets would help it expand by buying settlers.

An important advantage of Liberty that wasn't talked about much is its ability to hook up luxes much faster. They can be traded for money or other luxes and that's where liberty gets most of of their gold and happiness from in the early game.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk
 
The liberty free worker is negated compeletely as you probably will steal workers anyway.
If you choose to play fully peaceful, that is actually a strong policy.
But playing fully peaceful is not the best play most cases. I have tried to play liberty a few times, compared to tradition, and tradition was the better result in 100 turns every time.
There was one exception, when that start position included a 3food 2 culture hill - interestingly this resulted better results for liberty, but this might have been just a coincidance because of more luck in CS quests/barbs/huts etc.
 
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