LTP (Liberty-Piety-Tradition) Opening

[GKShaman]

Hello Everyone,

NOTE: If you have time please read all and try this strategy out. Let me know your thoughts, criticisms, and concerns. Love to make this strategy good.

I've for a long time been testing openings. I think the first 150 turns of a civ make the next 250. Recently with ideologies and spies they've definitely made the second half of the game not as easy and tedious as it used to be.

Problem with Full Tradition: Getting 4 cities up in time and faith generation and without war or luck.

Usually in first 40-60 - the "choice" spots (usually a natural wonder, 2 distinct luxuries, etc. were all taken.) Then I realized the benefit of Liberty and Piety. So I considered testing a hybrid strategy:

FIRST 20 TURNS

START: Scout-Monument-Worker-Settler

EXPLORATION: Use Warrior and Scout to get at least 4 ruins and scan a 30 tile radius around capital Find two good city spots and be aware of where ur neighbors are.

RESEARCH: Research proper luxury techs. Decide if u want to build the Pyramids or Mausoleum (Low contested wonders provide important benefits (gold or speed).

GOLD: Get to 250 gold through ruins and meeting City States - Purchase Shrine.

SOCIAL POLICY: Adopt Liberty and go till settler. Usually with monument and a culture ruin u can get to settler by turn 36.

After Collective Rule T35-T45(Depending on if there is a culture ruin)

Make sure u get the scout and warrior back to capital by when these two settlers are done. Also make sure as soon as ur worker is finished have him work luxury #1.

FOUND TWO CITIES:Send out first settler to settle first city with warrior. Wait till luxury 1 is tilled and settle city - Go Monument-Shrine-Granary
Repeat with second city as ur worker tills luxury #2.
capital: Caravan-Wonder #1

TRADE: GET A TRADE CARAVAN OUT BY TURN 40-50. Important not because of gold but because of the science - lets u hit a key tech earlier for a wonder since the AI starts with more technologies.

MILITARY: Use the warrior and scout(hopefully turned archer) WISELY. Protect luxes take out early nearby camps.

GOLD: Save up to buy workers or steal them if other nations havent met city states or u get them from barbarians.

KEY: Make sure to NEVER get to negative unhappiness - so if u need to delay a city by 5 turns no probs. The golden age needs to hit for a much need gold and production boost.

SOCIAL POLICY AFTER COLLECTIVE RULE

Here as Robert Frost has said there will be a FORK in the road:

Open Tradition and get to Aristocracy for Wonder Production and Culture OR
Open Piety and get to Organized Religion for faster shrines and faith production.

This is where some good land (wheat or cattle), luxuries (salt or citrus on plains generate Production AND FOOD!), Religious Cultural or Food pantheon beliefs (Religious Idols, Desert Folklore, Stone circles, Tears of gold, Oral Tradition, God of Open Sky, Sun God, Goddess of Hunt), natural wonders augment ur culture, faith, production, and food as necessary to decide which path u should take and hopefully that makes all the difference!

Then after those two:

Finish Tradition
Get to Piety Temple gold boost - build grand temple.
Get to Piety Reformation for Jesuit Education or Glory of God.
Finish Piety
Finish Liberty for Great Scientist or Engineer.
NOTE: Some finish Liberty for the great prophet. While this helps establishing a religion - it does not continue the faith growing or set up discounts - going down piety does.

However its all game by game from here. Maybe u have uluru so Piety can be pushed. Maybe u have a lot of close cities and want to finish Liberty for a key wonder. Maybe growth is important.

TURNS 40 AND AFTER

U have ur three cities in sweet spots all by turns 40/50. Life is good!
Build pyramids or workers and caravans. Try to get the empire growing.
Get the national wonders going.
National College - T75-100
East India - T125-150
4th and 5th can be settled as long as u get the national wonders out on time.
etc. etc.

T100 AND AFTER

I usually will start Rationalism as soon as I can because the +10 percent is key. Then I will get to Three factories for the ideology for two free tenets. I find I finish Liberty later for the happiness boost, social policy help, AND free Great Person which is when the free great scientist is critical.

Finish Piety gets a me the SUPER RELEVENT reformation beliefs: Glory of God or Jesuit Education.

BENEFITS

ANXIETY GONE! (Not sure if this affects other but Im usually so tense my first 60 turns where im like gotta get 500 gold, come on AI please dont settle, etc...)
No early war or hatred of neighbors.

NEGATIVES

TAKES SKILL AND PRECISION

Honestly Ive tested 5-7 100 turn games so far. This worked great for two games where I had a faith natural wonder or great pantheon.

For one game I struggled with faith but later realized I forgot to open Piety.

Granted though those wonders I got were in my 3rd or 4th city so this strategy essentially helps set up that sort of start.

REALLY DEPENDANT ON TERRAIN, NATURAL WONDERS, PROXIMITY TO CIVS, RUINS

But then isnt that Civ as a game?

IT IS A HYBRID SOCIAL POLICY OPENING

So u dont get the full food and growth of tradition or crazy faith of piety or full production and free worker and GP of liberty.

INSTEAD u get parts of all three and as long as u play well and get a little lucky - its REALLY POWERFUL.

 

[Doctor Doom]

Wow I just tried this and I was surprised how well it worked! I normally go full tradition but next time I spawn by gems, desert or a faith wonder I'll give this a shot!

 

[mice]

Good write up and interesting.

At which difficulty are you playing this ?

 

[GKShaman]

I always play immortal. Tried diety once - too scary. Emperor - I was beating the ai every time.

I used to always play full tradition also. One negative I do see as mad djinn pointed out in the diety Poland video - if u go liberty u wanted to really get 5 cities up and hyper expand but u get a late national college and no ancient classical wonder - this strategy gets a bit of everything. Also after dipping into liberty piety - finish tradition.

 

[GoStu]

Neat write up. I've been playing a hybridized Tradition & Liberty combination for Wide play now. Tradition still offers amazing bonuses, some of which are quite useful to rapid expansion, while Liberty offers some stuff that's very valuable early, and some stuff that's only really valuable later. I get the culture through the Honor opener though.

Questions: where do you get all the Culture from to crush three SP trees? Also, how tall or wide do you intend on playing this?

 

[HerrDoktor]

Sounds like a plan for civis with early-to-mid culture bonuses. Poland, Japan (with a fish-heavy start), Brazil, France, Aztecs. Still, you're giving up Aesthetics and Patronage.

 

[reddishrecue]

Building monuments to make culture for the liberty sp is the one way to keep up with the tradition sp as it initially starts out with a total of +4 culture with tradition opener and +2 culture with liberty opener (without the monument).

 

[GKShaman]

So each city with a monument liberty opener and free unfilled amphitheater through legalism yields 4 culture a turn. Then in faith I prefer to get cathedral for the slot and plus 1 but pagoda is fine. Then there's also the pantheons - best for this that worked too well is religious idols +1 culture and faith for each faith and gold. There's also tradition opener bonus of +3. So three cities and capital all by turn 80 has all these for is 19 culture a turn. Then with religious building ( eased by taking piety) it's +4 to +8 culture a turn. Then there's helping a cultural city state by discovering lands or freeing a worker/camp.

Also we haven't even talked about guilds or filled slots yet.

It's difficult and u do sacrifice patronage aesthetics but I feel the value added is quite a lot.

Key is adaptable: got a lot of marble/ stone? Go circles and more tradition and culture in faith while still having quicker shrines.

Best is a hybrid like idols or a faith one like folklore or circles, or a natural wonder like Uluru, Sinai, el dorado, or lake Victoria. I noticed culture per turn is easier to get then faith per turn.

Got useless jungle but with sacred path or oral tradition. Get liberty production and piety faith help while still getting tradition growth.

Also one's gotta be a little lucky with a wonder or two special mention to the oracle for the free policy but aristocracy with liberty production boost helps with that.

 

[GoStu]

Those culture bonuses are certainly nice and can carry you through two policy trees fairly quick, especially with some smart decision making and timing the policies right. Culture bonuses from Religion could proved the extra you need to make this quicker and to be able to go deeper.

Something I'm not entirely clear on: are you skipping policies to cherry-pick the best, or do you intend to finish the trees entirely pre-rationalism? I can see ditching Oligarchy to get deeper somewhere else, but completing three trees in short order seems tough.

Do you take the Honor opener for culture off Barbarians? In my games I do, but I play with big maps, lots of room, and raging barbarians.

I might give this a whirl next game with someone like the Aztecs for extra murder culture, or Songhai for extra culture off Temples.

 

[GKShaman]

I prioritize finishing tradition by T100-140. Getting to reformation by industrial era helps too. I always start rationalism as soon as I can.

U sort of stated it correctly if ur smart about u can cherry pick the right policies.

In regards to finishing trees. Finishing tradition is more relevant earlier than later. Finishing liberty has as much power being finished in T125 than in turn T325 since a gp is flexible and free worker late game can helpful if uve expanded into pillaged lands or had a war on ur lands.

Finishing piety is fine early or late. Better early than late but in a game I finished piety by T350 and used the prophet to spread to pop 20 and over cities to raise gpt by 10-20 and generate more culture from already settled sites.

Edit: when I can I start rationalism and get the +2 science per specialist. Freedom or order great person boost is nice also for culture gain.

Edit: I usually go 5-8 cities for production, trade, and military benefits, but I can see benefit if sticking to four. But I've crushed some powerful neighbors before. Also to mention unlocking all three trees gets u access to some key sometimes overlooked wonders.

I have considered opening honor. It not doable early since settler is key early but maybe for a civ with barbarian or exploration benefits: Spain, Aztecs, ottomans, Songhai I see the benefit.

I play this strategy with india - key benefit: starts are hard but once u have 4-5 Distinct luxuries. Growth and happiness is easy to take care of.

 

[reddishrecue]

I've gained a need for liberty for the late game one more turn because liberty increases the chances that you'll get much needed resources for the one more turn series such as uranium. It's hard to stay for the one more turn after victory with tradition sometimes because all the other liberty civilizations have more chances of having uranium while traditional civilizations are less likely to have uranium.

 

[GhostSalsa]

Your first 40 turns describes most of my openings - especially for coastal openings where I want to race to granaries and food TRs then liberty is good. (It doesn't change that playing tall is still annoyingly safer and better than wide, just that Liberty is also good for playing tall in circumstances.)

I haven't tried the piety blend yet - I usually just use one shrine to get tears of the god and then cathedrals and don't stress about high faith generation. I prefer Exploration after liberty for the synergy (hammer bonuses and building benefits) and because I can leave it un-finished while I switch to pursue Rationalism. Like I said I'm usually coastal on liberty opens anyway.

Regarding honor openings, they are viable on Immortal if you have chopable wood near the capital to speed up the monument and settler build (I build worker before monument on honor open), so I usually get settlers out pretty fast, but then you definitely say good-bye to almost all early wonders (fine because you can steal them later). But it's a really volatile start, lots of potential for failure.

 

[Lyoncet]

Thanks for the writeup. Looks promising and fun. I'd been looking for some new openings to improve/spice up my early game, since I'm in the "Emperor's a steamroll, but I need to be spot on for Immortal" area and usually found myself going down the same well-worn Tradition-NC-XYZ-Rationalism route. Definitely going to keep this in my pocket for games where it seems viable.

Out of curiosity, what might you see in the early turns that would make you not want to pursue this build order?

 

[GoStu]

I prioritize finishing tradition by T100-140. Getting to reformation by industrial era helps too. I always start rationalism as soon as I can.

U sort of stated it correctly if ur smart about u can cherry pick the right policies.

In regards to finishing trees. Finishing tradition is more relevant earlier than later. Finishing liberty has as much power being finished in T125 than in turn T325 since a gp is flexible and free worker late game can helpful if uve expanded into pillaged lands or had a war on ur lands.

Finishing piety is fine early or late. Better early than late but in a game I finished piety by T350 and used the prophet to spread to pop 20 and over cities to raise gpt by 10-20 and generate more culture from already settled sites.

Edit: when I can I start rationalism and get the +2 science per specialist. Freedom or order great person boost is nice also for culture gain.

Edit: I usually go 5-8 cities for production, trade, and military benefits, but I can see benefit if sticking to four. But I've crushed some powerful neighbors before. Also to mention unlocking all three trees gets u access to some key sometimes overlooked wonders.

I have considered opening honor. It not doable early since settler is key early but maybe for a civ with barbarian or exploration benefits: Spain, Aztecs, ottomans, Songhai I see the benefit.

I play this strategy with india - key benefit: starts are hard but once u have 4-5 Distinct luxuries. Growth and happiness is easy to take care of.

Yeah, I generally play with Raging Barbarians, and big maps with a reduced number of civs. There's a lot of empty space for them to spawn on my maps, and I'll sometimes send an Archer to farm a camp for lots of Culture. Whether or not it results in more policies is debatable as taking the Honor opener increases all further policy costs, but it certainly speeds up early-game acquisition when a Brute is worth two turns of progress.

I find Liberty is more important to finish early. The free Worker and Settler are worth a lot more the earlier you get them in my opinion. A later free Worker might be only 2-3 turns of production later, and the earlier you get the work speed bonus the better. Same for the settler. When combining Liberty and Tradition I generally put off Oligarchy and Aristocracy for as long as possible. I tend to go Tradition to Monarchy and Landed Elite, while filling as much of Liberty as I can. I double back later to finish Tradition for the maintenance-free units and free Aqueducts, but if I was trying to do Piety as well I might skip Oligarchy and Aristocracy to get Reformations faster.

I like this idea, but I think I'd have to play it a few times to see if it pans out. The real kicker in my opinion is just getting enough culture to fuel three trees: I feel like you'll either need some luck with Cultural city-states, good Religion culture, or both.

 

[GKShaman]

Out of curiosity, what might you see in the early turns that would make you not want to pursue this build order?

The BIG thing that kills this opening for me is if there is no source of "free faith per turn" I dont enjoy the game as much.

4 shrines with mandate is 8 faith a turn
4 temples with mandate is 12 faith per turn
then grand temple 8 more.
4 cathedrals - 4 fpt.
but then thats it... thats only 32 faith per turn. I need at least 50 fpt to make faith buying buildings and ppl relevant.

With 50 faith per turn a 320 faith university (with jesuit education) is built in 7 turns, so in 28 turns thats all ur universities with no hammers or gold investment! - go built oxford!

now ppl say GO WIDER or just what about great prophets? and I see the possibilities but u need an early faith boost to make piety worth it I feel. Also ur not paying any maintenance on desert folklore or such.

to make 1000 faith per turn great people in 20 turns or less.

So thats where pantheons, religious wonders like mosque and such are good. But the issue is that u need a good pantheon for faith per turn. So stone circles are great because the next few cities can be built around stone etc.

Building up culture is great and easy in the game - plenty of wonders, natural wonders, buildings, city states, etc. soo many sources. Not enough for faith.

 

[Lyoncet]

So I toyed around with this build order over the last few days. Admittedly, I bumped the difficulty down to Emperor since I hadn't played in months, and I also picked the Shoshone, who seem really absurdly strong with this order because of picking up extra early culture, faith, and gold at just the right time (plus techs and population to fill the in-between time). Overall it worked well, but I ran into some problems. The biggest one's bolded below in case of TL;DR.

Ran standard-sized, normal speed fractal, which gave me one large continent. I was near a bunch of city-states, but no other civs nearby so I had 5 really great city sites with 1 pretty good site and 2 more mediocre plots. Unfortunately my nearest neighbors were Shaka to the east and Alexander to the west, but with some careful monitoring and judicious war bribes they weren't an existential threat. Other AIs were Darius and Sejong far to my south, and further away Isabella, Boudica, and Genghis Khan.

I opened Freedom, grabbed the extra settler, then opened Tradition and took Aristocracy, then opened Piety and grabbed Mandate of Heaven (20% faith discount) and Organized Religion (+1 faith from shrines/temples). At some point I grabbed the extra worker too but I don't remember where I squeezed that in.

Build order was monument-Pathfinder-buy shrine-worker-settler-Pyramids. Also stole a worker after building the first one, and got the free settler right around popping Collective Rule. Prioritized libraries in the new cities so I could get NC out at 3 cities before expanding again. That start, plus the absurd power of the Pathfinders, propelled me into an easy score lead. I also managed to grab a very late Oracle, Hagia Sophia to enhance my religion, Petra, and Notre Dame.

Religiously, my capital was about 60% desert, with ample desert hills and flood plains, so of course I went Desert Folklore. Boudica beat me to founding a religion, but I was a close second. Grabbed Tithe and Pagodas, and later enhanced with Divine Inspiration and Religious Texts.

However, by mid-Renaissance, things started to just feel off. I still hadn't finished Tradition, having Oligarchy, Monarchy, and Landed Elite to fill in, still had Meritocracy and Representation to finish in Liberty, and had to choose between starting Rationalism or putting off Religious Tolerance so I could get a reformation belief (didn't have Theocracy yet, either). I don't feel like I slacked on culture buildings, I grabbed Oracle, and I'd kept friendly/allied with a few cultural city-states, so I don't know exactly what the problem was. To make it worse, by the time I was finally in a position to use all the faith I'd been saving up (having finished all the Pagodas), it was well after other players had already started reforming. They'd picked off Jesuit Education and Glory of God, which I feel like this build relies on heavily. AI had also taken Heathen Conversion and Religious Fervor.

At that point I was still second in tech and leading score easily, sitting at 6 cities and occasionally bribing Shaka and Alexander into wars to keep them off my back. But it just felt like the build didn't hold together after losing out on the reformation beliefs that would give me something useful to do with my heavy faith investments. Without those, it felt like most a lot of my gameplan was moot. And that was just on Emperor, not my usual Immortal. So I restarted and made some different choices.

My Retooled Opening (work in progress, only in classical so far)
The next time, I did a similar opening, but I took Tradition first instead of Liberty, then went down the left side of Liberty. About to open up Piety and grab the faith boosters there. Still Desert Folklore, with roughly the same opening build order.

I found that Tradition into Liberty still gave me a third settler just behind the second, but with the added bonus of already having Tradition opened. Other than that there wasn't much difference, so it just seemed like it put me ahead one SP.

Once I get a little ways in, I'm planning on trying a different religious game. Instead of going Tithe/Religious Texts, I'm considering going for Interfaith Dialogue/Holy Order (presumably keep Pagodas since they're spectacular for semi-wide to wide). I'll also try for Grand Mosque of Djenne. While probably not as strong as Tithe, I'll have lots of faith and cheap missionaries that can spread 3 times per. The hope is that I can still try for Jesuit Education or Glory of God, but if I don't make it, I can skip Reformation and just turn my huge FPT into science that way.

Not sure how great that will be, but losing the relevant reformation beliefs was a huge blow. I'll try to get some more play in later today and drop back in with what I find.

If you have any thoughts on the problems I ran into, or the ways I'm trying to go about fixing them, I'd love to hear!

 

[GKShaman]

Hello Everyone,

Thanks for playing through the build order (especially Lyoncet) and if you haven't yet let me know what u think. Open Tradition gives a whole 3 culture a turn so mathematically ur right its essentially a free Social Policy

I tried my own build order through several games. I used India, Immortal, Pangaea.

Social Policy Order: Open Tradition, Liberty to Settler,

This is where things get odd. When I want the free worker - I cant because I need to open Piety to have faster shrines. If I don't open Piety I get normal build shrines.

If I want wonders - I need to open Aristocracy but that sacrifices the +1 faith per shrine and temple.

Point Is: I need to try a few more and see what I can do. I also think I will try with Poland - see if the UA can make the difference.

Odd Occurrence: On IMMORTAL I was able to land Pyramids and Hanging Gardens - Thus my capital became quite strong. Only played through till Turn 90 most times.

Question: How many cities? I find I get to three but due to National College cost I don't want to build the fourth unless theres a sweet wonder/resource/spot.

KEY: Pantheons/Natural Wonders really make this strategy. If Folklore, Idols, Stone Circles, Mt. Sinai, Uluru, or even Kailash is there - ur good to go. The extra happiness, faith and culture allow u to be this ambitious.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

Open tradition just for the Culture per turn has been proved to cost you policies in the end because how the policies increase in cost.
It maybe can give you the settler faster then straigth Liberty however.

If you need to expand fast or else lose alot of city spots, go Liberty to setter asap.

If you need shrines for faith go piety and organised religion, capital pump settlers without Liberty bonus.

Else you could maybe get tradition but it depends.

If you can get good amount of faith from paretheon piety opener don't look as intresting as it do if you got no or Little faith from paetheon so you could go straigth for settler, otherwise you probably have to go piety first and get citys asap

 

[Browd]

Open tradition just for the Culture per turn has been proved to cost you policies in the end because how the policies increase in cost.
It maybe can give you the settler faster then straigth Liberty however.

If you need to expand fast or else lose alot of city spots, go Liberty to setter asap.

Opening Tradition does not get you to Liberty's free settler faster than beelining Liberty.

Without culture ruins, if you beeline Liberty to Collective Rule (as your third policy), when you get Collective Rule will depend on when you put a monument in your build order and whether you have a 4, 5 or 6 hammer start, but the range of number of turns is narrow.

• If you go scout => monument and have a 6 hammer start (settle on hill and work a food-giving single-hammer tile, like stone or plains wheat), you will finish your monument on turn 11 and will open Liberty on turn 15, take Republic on turn 23 and get Collective Rule on turn 38.
  
  
• On the other hand, if you build monument first, with the same 6-hammer start, your monument pops out on turn 7 and you get Collective Rule on turn 35 -- 3 turns faster, but at the cost of 5-7 turns of early scouting (when you might have picked up a culture ruin and/or gotten more first-to-meet-a-CS gold).

If you use these same assumptions (no culture ruins, 6-hammer start and monument first), opening Tradition before opening Liberty pushes Collective Rule back 7 turns (from turn 35 to turn 42).

Punch line is: Do not be seduced by the Tradition opener's 3 culture--if you want to open Tradition for the border pop or to tee up a Legalism play later in the game, OK, but don't do it because you think it will get you your free Liberty settler more quickly -- it will only slow you down.

 

[NukeAJS]

Sure it's been said, but I think patronage with consulates is too good not to use. I think That's far superior to completing piety imo