Liberty does not work for Deity

[Acken]

For domi, yes GS is fine it will give better science in the long run while the GE for NC will free up more production time (more units). You could also use the GE for MachuPichu in a domination game.

 

[notque]

I think Liberty is great, I open Tradition then finish Liberty for great scientist. I will even expand to multiple cities.

My current game, I went with 6 cities before National College, using the Liberty finisher and Trade Routes to stay within punching distance on science.

 

[Myth and Legend]

I think Liberty is great, I open Tradition then finish Liberty for great scientist. I will even expand to multiple cities.

My current game, I went with 6 cities before National College, using the Liberty finisher and Trade Routes to stay within punching distance on science.

Excuse me, but you are obviously not playing Deity and this thread is talking specifically about the highest difficulty setting.

 

[Acken]

It's not like what he said is impossible or something.

 

[TheGuineaPig]

Sometimes I go six or seven cities before National College if I'm in the middle of the map and will be squeezed out by AIs otherwise. It's definitely a slow start but it will start to rebound quickly once universities are up (providing you can stay happy).

 

[fallout3dc]

Liberty in my eyes has 2 uses:

1. You are playing as Persia. A Liberty policy gives 50% longer golden ages along with a free golden age, along with a GE finisher that can be used to rush Chitzen Itza.

2. Jungle start. Looking at the Liberty tree less as, "Why would I take it over Tradition", but if you have a Jungle start then it makes a lot more sense choosing Liberty. The extra Hammer and 5% building helps a lot as well as the improved worker speed and free worker for cutting the jungles and making hills along, not to mention the free settlers and faster settlers. The only thing Tradition has over Liberty is happiness and faster growth, but food is in excess in a jungle start and the player needs to get cities up right away, along with clearing the jungles or they will be run over.

 

[LordBalkoth]

1. You are playing as Persia. A Liberty policy gives 50% longer golden ages along with a free golden age, along with a GE finisher that can be used to rush Chitzen Itza.

No, it doesn't? A *Freedom* policy gives 50% longer golden ages, Liberty policy just gives a free Golden Age and less Culture "cost" per city.

 

[PhilBowles]

Bottom line: my experience is that unless you plan to warmonger earlier than ideologies, you better just stick with Tradition when we are talking about Deity.

I think the issue with Liberty is one more of consistency than power - it can be effective, but it's very map-dependent whether you have enough good city spots available early, and usually you won't know quite how many you can readily take by the time you have to select a policy tree. Tradition is a much safer start because you always have enough spots for 1-3 cities, but Liberty's benefits really require 6+.

 

[beetle]

The thing I like best about Liberty is that it is more interesting than Tradition. On its face, 6+ cities is twice as engaging as 3 or 4. Plus one can get two early Wonders, so that is very nice. OTOH, the few times when I have replayed maps going 4 city Tradition instead of the 6+ city Liberty games which I had enjoyed and felt I had played successful with -- the 4 city Tradition games by comparison were stronger by any reasonable metric.

I would like to have more confidence about circumstances that make Liberty objectively better than Tradition. Can anyone help with that? I feel like OPs provocative title for this thread is not far off the mark!

By comparison, lately I have been experimenting with guides on this forum for exploiting the Honor tree. Not only is that fun, but so far it has let me play very differently, and I am having much better success with Dom VC than I ever was able to get out of Tradition or Liberty.

Tradition is a much safer start because you always have enough spots for 1-3 cities, but Liberty's benefits really require 6+.

I concur with your whole post, but this bit in particular.

I think Liberty is great, I open Tradition then finish Liberty for great scientist.

Sorry, but I think it is pretty clear that any delay to Liberty's half-price settlers is using the tree sub-optimally.

 

[tribefaninnc]

I would like to have more confidence about circumstances that make Liberty objectively better than Tradition. Can anyone help with that? I feel like OPs provocative title for this thread is not far off the mark!

I think it has to be something non-Standard where you would have enough room to easily settle those 6 cities without conflict. Huge maps. Little to no water/land only maps. Fewer than standard AIs/CSs (i.e like 4 AI on Standard map). Plus maps with CSs out of the way.

Seems most Standard/8 AI maps only give you enough room to get in the 4 city range (maybe a couple more if you force the issue). Especially on Deity (I imagine), where they start ahead of you.

 

[TheGuineaPig]

I don't think it has to be non-standard. One of the things Liberty excels at is getting out units early; I often have three archers or so out before that free settler policy. This allows you to clear encampments, locate neighbour's settlers, steal workers, etc. If used effectively these units can give you the space you need to settle 5-6 cities. If not, they can be used to take enemy cities.

I think another objectively useful circumstance of Liberty is the jungle death start, where you have no production. The free settler, worker, and bonus to improvements make a huge difference in making up for the slowness of the start.

Another one is when you border warmongers. If you're blocking in the Huns or Aztecs or Zulus you can't spend time building settlers, or granaries or libraries in your expansions. You need units and you need them ASAP or else you will be buried. Liberty can be huge for staving off early aggression.

I think people are seriously underrating Liberty because of how often people just re-start bad starting locations. Take some time to play the next awful start you get, because it affects the way you see Tradition vs. Liberty. Tradition inherently works better if you get a great start because of the capital bonuses, so if you only play your good starts of course Tradition looks a lot better.

I think the only thing that needs to be done to make them equal in strength is move the faith-buying engineers to Liberty. I think that would be the perfect balance tweak.

 

[x2Madda]

I find it very odd that most of the fastest wins via Turn Time on Domnation Games Have used a Liberty approrach on Deity. In fact I have seen some very fast wins even on Conts Maps with Liberty Domination in mind. The biggest point of Liberty Warmongering is getting the Pyramids for the easy pillage/repair in 1 turn which is pretty strong IMO.

Hate to spoil this for you but the reason for this is exploiting the game. Liberty + Great Pyramids = 1 turn repair tiles.

Some of the "top players"

Spoiler :

'no names mentioned'

will pillage & repair a tile outside an enemy capital every turn allowing a siege to continue for much longer than is normally possible. The AI starts with workers and have increased tile improvement speed so their is always plenty of tiles worth pillaging and the gold is a huge help for fielding the army sizes required to keep up with Diety AI spitting out units super fast.

Because the AI will always have super improved capitals and tiles on Immortal & Diety, it is far better to take their cities and leave yours as a glorified army base than it is trying to catch up to them.

Spoiler :

You can occassionally build the great pyramids on Immortal & Diety unless you are against an AI that always opens liberty but failing to obtain it just means the AI that did get it, should be the first capital you take over.

 

[claudiupb]

I think it is debatable if the pillage/heal is an exploit. I see no reason to have the ability to repair improvements outside your territory (as you do not have the ability to build improvements) other than using it for stuff like this. If it really was considered an exploit it would have been removed in one of the patches (like the science overflow). It can feel a little cheesy (or even cheating) but there are numerous other things that you can do (like transforming a CS into a worker farm) that feel even worse.

 

[beetle]

I see no reason to have the ability to repair improvements outside your territory (as you do not have the ability to build improvements) other than using it for stuff like this.

Well, it is nice to be able help a friendly CS or uncompetitive AI recover or resist a warmonger. I actually do that as much, maybe even more, than pillage-heal-repair for my own units. The inability to build improvements for a CS or AI is kind of annoying, but it would be abused if allowed, so I get that.

 

[PhilBowles]

The thing I like best about Liberty is that it is more interesting than Tradition.

Yes, I find the same. I always applauded Civ V's efforts to allow tall play to be a viable alternative to wide play (for all that it ultimately overcompensated) but - ultimately - this is a series whose essential structure is built around wide play and playing tall just isn't very interesting after a few playthroughs. Wide play gives you control of more of the map, lets you make greater use of roads, work and improve a wider range of tiles, allows you to produce more simultaneously, gives you more flexibility in city specialisation, adds additional options for domestic trade (and hence more interesting decisions than 'use one ship to send food to the capital, farm the rest for gold'), gives you greater ability to exert religious pressure and to reap the benefits of founder beliefs. All of this adds to gameplay interest and immersion. Hopefully Civ VI will follow the same general philosophy of allowing varied strategies, including tall ones, but with wide being the easier to succeed with rather than vice versa.

 

[Acken]

Civ 5 is actually pretty close to balance between the two. If national wonders had fixed costs and did not require a building in absolutely all cities I would consider balance almost reached.

 

[Fluphen Azine]

Hate to spoil this for you but the reason for this is exploiting the game. Liberty + Great Pyramids = 1 turn repair tiles.

I don't think most players realize that exploitation is part of the game and is meant to be part of the game. Bugs are something completely different and is not meant to be a part of the game. Pillage Repair is supposed to be part of the game and it is not hard to build the Pyramids on Deity if you know what you are doing.

If a player wishes to play with special rules and not take advantage of so called exploits that is the players choice. However, the same goes for a player that wants to exploit or abuse the AI as much as possible which is something I enjoy.

Exploit is nothing new in all the Civ games 1-5. Exploit is nothing new in real life which I am sure we are all guilty of in one way or another.

You also do not need the Pyramids to use this exploit. Yes it will take 2 turns instead of 1 turn but it works pretty good as well without the Pyramids. You only need a band of workers which is easy enough to obtain.

Last thing... The title of this thread is obvious that it is from an inexperienced player since you can make Liberty work playing peaceful as well and have no problem winning on Deity. You will go deeper into turn times compared to Tradition but to say it doesn't work on Deity is absurd. I have made Full Piety work on Deity without going into Trad/Liberty/Honor and it is much harder than going Full Liberty on Deity but very viable as well.

 

[ComradeKroo]

Depend on the settings (Map size, game speed, World age, water body, ...) that the Policies are strong or weak.
If you play standard for all ==> Tradition is better.
If you play Huge, Marathon ==> Liberty is better.
If you play world age 3 billion ==> more hill, mountain ==> Order is better.
Low level Water, more sea lakes ==> Exporation is better.
...

I usually play Huge, Marathon, so i prefer Liberty with Happiness Religion. Liberty get hard start, but will become stronger in late game. When you catch up others Traditions players in tech (nearly Industrial era), you will always lead tech from there.

 

[TheGuineaPig]

Something that four-city tradition often is terrible at: culture. Often you just simply don't generate enough, and without the spoils of war cash is short so you can't buy culture city states. Then you get wrecked by ideological pressure, especially if you try freedom.

 

[Gort]

Depend on the settings (Map size, game speed, World age, water body, ...) that the Policies are strong or weak.
If you play standard for all ==> Tradition is better.
If you play Huge, Marathon ==> Liberty is better.
If you play world age 3 billion ==> more hill, mountain ==> Order is better.
Low level Water, more sea lakes ==> Exporation is better.
...

I usually play Huge, Marathon, so i prefer Liberty with Happiness Religion. Liberty get hard start, but will become stronger in late game. When you catch up others Traditions players in tech (nearly Industrial era), you will always lead tech from there.

I think you have a good point here. Being able to spam out cities quickly is more useful on larger maps where new cities cost less happiness.

In order for people's opinions to be meaningful in this argument, they need to say what map size they play on. Tradition is obviously skewed towards the smaller map sizes, while Liberty's skewed towards the larger maps. I think Tradition is the clear winner, but I never play above a Standard sized map.