Liberty and early expansion. Is it a good strategy?

[Artifex1]

Like having 10 or so cities before the rennaisance period?

 

[Rathelon]

For a cultural victory, I'd say not. If you're not going for the Utopia Project, then sure.

 

[firecat318]

I always take Liberty when I'm doing an ICS or similar strat.. the +1 production helps and having +1 happiness for each city that is connected to the capital is awesome.

 

[Chassit]

Yes it is

 

[Paeanblack]

ICS seems to be emerging as the dominant Spaceship strategy, and the Liberty tree is a crucial part of that.

For a conquest win on pangaea/smaller/more open maps, a Horseman rush is faster. Honor & Tradition are helpful.

If you want a Cultural win, the Liberty tree is not that beneficial. Piety & Freedom are more important.


If you are on a larger/continents/archipelago/highlands maps, a combination of Horseman rush + ICS will probably be the fastest. Some tradeoffs will be necessary between the two.

 

[Trickster7135]

It ca be used for a specific strategy (ICS/honeycomb), but you won't get much farther than meritocracy before the social policy costs rise faster than the culture you can generate from your many small cities.

 

[S.K. Ren]

If you play as Songhai you don't really notice a slowdown on SPs when you ICS.

 

[Duo]

I think it might be the only strategy.

 

[Martin Alvito]

As far as I can tell, there are two local optima on Deity:

- ICS
- pure warmonger - Warrior or Horse rush, then keep the pressure up

Liberty makes the ICS engine go. If you're going down that road, you must run it. If not, you should save your SPs.

 

[Celevin]

To be honest, I intermingle both of those strategies constantly.

And really sadly, to go for science/diplomatic/cultural victories, you really should also do an early game war/sprawl.

 

[Slowpoke]

I think taking liberty and then going to either the republic line or meritocracy line is best. But skip going to the other line and save for freedom or pat.

 

[CrimsonEdge]

I go Honor 90% of the time. I feel the other two are very weak compared. An early great general is amazing for both offense and defense. Since you're expanding early, you'll want a strong army as you'll probably be stirring a few feathers by expanding.

 

[Razzlesnaff]

I also go Honor almost 100% of the time. Sure +1 Happiness is nice, but I can get -1 Unhappiness in each city with a garrison unit and much better warmongering policies along the way. Liberty just seems like a really bad tree all in all. I don't really much see the point in taking it.

 

[Nunya]

The upkeep you end up paying for garrisoned units eventually ends up higher than any happiness building so it's not very efficient.

Liberty is a very strong tree, but not for every playstyle. It's great for REX and ICS, but other trees will be better for different palystyles.

 

[CultureManiac]

ICS seems to be emerging as the dominant Spaceship strategy, and the Liberty tree is a crucial part of that.

For a conquest win on pangaea/smaller/more open maps, a Horseman rush is faster. Honor & Tradition are helpful.

If you want a Cultural win, the Liberty tree is not that beneficial. Piety & Freedom are more important.


If you are on a larger/continents/archipelago/highlands maps, a combination of Horseman rush + ICS will probably be the fastest. Some tradeoffs will be necessary between the two.

I've stopped taking Piety in my cultural games, opting instead for Rationalism, since I want the tech boosts and can't have both branches open at once. I haven't won on Immortal without Cristo (-33% SP cost), and so you need to burn through the tree quickly to get there with enough time to still pick up the remaining SPs and build the Utopia project. Plus the extra tech helps you open up the technology for building the powerful Opera House - Museum - Hermitage trio, which combined with a broadcast tower pump up your culture increadibly for that last push. The early benefits from the happiness overspill into sulture, etc, isnt worth the delay in getting to the higher culture techs, IMHO.

 

[Paeanblack]

I've stopped taking Piety in my cultural games, opting instead for Rationalism, since I want the tech boosts and can't have both branches open at once.

I've found that taking some Piety and later switching to Rationalism doesn't cost that much. The final Piety policy basically gives you a rebate on the switch. In some games where Piety was crucial early on, I put those policies in the same mental bucket as Tradition later in the game. Unless you are really rocking the +happiness->culture, getting earlier Broadcast towers could be worth more.

Also, for a Cultural win, a turn of Anarchy is not a big deal, since I believe you still get culture during that turn.

 

[ccubed]

I didn't even know you COULD switch Social Policies midway through. Does it just retroactively lock out the other, conflicting branch or something?

 

[Biz_]

depends how many luxuries you can get

without a lot of luxuries, waiting until communism before expanding a lot is a better option

 

[Ulti_mecia]

As long as you make sure to keep up with culture, always expand.

Make sure cities can get to at least size 4-6 happywise and try to balance happiness around the 0 mark (depending on luxuries, Meritocracy, Collosea, etc) and keep that up. You'll see huge jumps around Theocracy/Forbidden Palace/Planned Economy where you can afford to further expand.

 

[Martin Alvito]

And really sadly, to go for science/diplomatic/cultural victories, you really should also do an early game war/sprawl.

I'm finding that for Diplo, growth up > growth out after the war. The time horizon is very, very limited, you get your University faster than you get your Settler -> Library -> Colosseum, the Uni benefits are huge, and you build the UN faster in a 12ish pop lumberyard.

I haven't been gunning for Science wins, so I couldn't tell you there. The ICS may catch up, since it will if the time horizon is long enough.