That's it - Liberty is complete utter worthless trash

[sixty4half]

A throwaway comment by nimling pulls the feature discussion right to the forefront!

Thread tl;dr: lots of arguing about tradition v Liberty, me and Chum and dan love liberty and sixty4half, noto and sugardady hate Liberty. Then there are a lot of probably more reasonable people taking some kind of middle ground. Either way don't even get us started on the advantages of Liberty; suffice it to say "not picking tradition" is not "a massive nerf".

Idk where u got the idea I hate liberty as I've said on multiple occasions that I've been using you guys' advice in my last several games. I've been playing nothing but liberty games the last 2 months.

 

[danaphanous]

Idk where u got the idea I hate liberty as I've said on multiple occasions that I've been using you guys' advice in my last several games. I've been playing nothing but liberty games the last 2 months.

I think he meant sugardady. You've been pretty interested in liberty strategies and I've following your comments.
I don't think anybody actively hates liberty from my experience with comments, just some players are obsessed with "optimal" times and thus can't get over the fact that a well-played liberty game has more risk and even played well finished a little slower then tradition. But the trees are pretty well balanced I think by the fact that I can kill Deity with tons of time to spare with either tree. It just takes a bit more instinct and uncertainty to play liberty. What's optimal varies from game to game and you have to really adapt to your terrain and utilize religions for the best finish times. That's why I love it but some players dislike it for these very reasons. They prefer strategies they can plan out ahead of time a bit more surely

 

[zxcvbob]

When I'm playing a Liberty game, when do I build the national college? When I have 4 cities planted and the settler is still travelling to the 5th site? (He may have to wait a while when he gets there, I have scouts guarding the location)

National wonders take a lot of hammers if you have more than about 3 cities. I still think I need a national college, grand temple, and Oxford, even if I skip all the rest. NC and the temple will both become available at about the same time.

Is this why people talk about taking a great engineer for the Liberty finisher instead of a scientist, and rushing the NC instead of Oracle?

 

[Acken]

The engineer for the NC makes sense only at 5 and + cities imo. If you go for a 4 city nc liberty game id still make it normally and either grab oracle or an academy instead I think. But if you want to expand post NC you might need indeed to use the GE on 4 cities so that you reduce the time before settling 5+. However I think its way inferior economicaly than expanding earlier and getting a later NC.

My favorite way is to go for 6 to 8 right away and use the engineer later on to get the NC. I often get it in the 90s that way which is perfectly fine with more cities. The only issue is that it angers the ai which can be problem especially at deity.

It also depends on your production. If you have a vrazy salt start id probably always go for the academy.

 

[apocalypse105]

Lower city states it makes the game more balanced play standard map with 8 civs and 8 city states you can have situations where you can settle many cites

 

[zxcvbob]

I'm playing the Celtic GOTM (number 93?) and going Liberty just for practice. I took Oral Tradition for my pantheon, then was going to make up for not getting faith from dirt by taking Mosques for my first follower belief. (Russia beat me to the 1st religion by 1 turn because my prophet didn't show up until 3 turns after I hit 200 faith, and she took Mosques)

I settled 5 cities by about turn 100, but it took a while to build that last library (didn't have the gold to buy it) and then build the NC. So I was wondering if I should have build NC sooner and then continued with building settlers. I had the area pretty well blocked off. Or maybe I shouldn't have built the Pyramids. I'm still behind the AI's in just about everything except acreage, but still friends with all of them and catching up in science. I'm on a little over my head just from the difficulty level (immortal) Will start spamming crossbows soon.

 

[lindsay40k]

Uses for Liberty:

- free GE for building Petra after free Worker helps chop GLib

- free GAd for finding trading partners when you're isolated with seven Salt

- filling the wasteland left by a bulldozer army burning down everything that's not a capital

 

[Volcanon]

Uses for Liberty:

- free GE for building Petra after free Worker helps chop GLib

- free GAd for finding trading partners when you're isolated with seven Salt

- filling the wasteland left by a bulldozer army burning down everything that's not a capital

Even if you started in a full forest map with five free workers wouldn't it still be hard to chop your way into GLib on the higher difficulties?

 

[beetle]

If you have a civ with early culture bonus, Aztec comes to mind because they are the current GotM, then Liberty finisher as GPr is a guaranteed religion, even on Deity. No shrine or pantheon required.

 

[zxcvbob]

If you have a civ with early culture bonus, Aztec comes to mind because they are the current GotM, then Liberty finisher as GPr is a guaranteed religion, even on Deity. No shrine or pantheon required.

I have trouble with the Aztecs and Liberty because my cities grow so fast I can't keep them happy. (floating gardens) So I almost always take the Honor opener with them and then straight Tradition. Or sometimes the Tradition opener and straight Honor.

Straight Liberty with a GPr for the finisher to found a religion is an interesting idea. I will have to try that sometime. Thanks.

 

[lindsay40k]

I have trouble with the Aztecs and Liberty because my cities grow so fast I can't keep them happy. (floating gardens)

Use your FG food to grow your cities large enough to work all their Luxuries and Quarries and suchlike then manually allocate citizens so as to keep the population at a manageable plateau. Grow the cities as and when more Scientist slots appear. The point of Wide Liberty is to produce loads of GSs to offset the city number science penalty and loads of money to buy CSs & rush key infrastructure, Aztec get their compact cities to maturity at high speed and need fewer farms etc to feed their miners, harvesters & specialists.

 

[apocalypse105]

I have trouble with the Aztecs and Liberty because my cities grow so fast I can't keep them happy. (floating gardens) So I almost always take the Honor opener with them and then straight Tradition. Or sometimes the Tradition opener and straight Honor.

Straight Liberty with a GPr for the finisher to found a religion is an interesting idea. I will have to try that sometime. Thanks.

Dont go liberty with aztecs... Go honor always in combination with tradition only built 2 cities and make them huge pop conquer the rest

 

[beetle]

Go honor always in combination with tradition

I cannot think of a scenario where delaying the Tradition finisher makes for the strongest play.

 

[zxcvbob]

Dont go liberty with aztecs... Go honor always in combination with tradition only built 2 cities and make them huge pop conquer the rest

That's that I usually do, but 3 cities instead of 2.

Current GOTM, I went Liberty 3 cities, and took a prophet for my finisher to found a religion. Game is going okay. It was rough for a while, long stretches of unhappiness and negative GPT. I haven't built my guilds yet so I'm pretty far behind in culture. Liberty, Aesthetics(2), and Rationalism opener. Very peaceful game, friends with everyone. This turn I pick an ideology and I'm going Autocracy and will pick Futurism and Universal Healthcare. Build the guilds and start pumping out artsy folk. Eventually I'll have to kill Brazil and maybe Morocco.

Morocco went full Piety and didn't found a religion. I shared mine with them. Now it's spreading naturally to the CS's. Tithe money is pouring in.

 

[apocalypse105]

I cannot think of a scenario where delaying the Tradition finisher makes for the strongest play.

well dont finish honor just pick the 2 policies that gives you general and extra promotion you will finish tradition pretty fast because of killing barbs and units

after finishing tradition finish honor

 

[beetle]

well dont finish honor

That is still weaker play choices -- because it delays Tradition finisher, which the most OP of all the early policies, but only if you get it ASAP. Honor policies after Tradition can be strong. Full Honor can be strong.

Delayed Tradition is not as strong a play as straight Tradition, except maybe under exceptional circumstances, none of which can I think of off the top of my head.

 

[Sclb]

I don't think I've ever seen a scenario where honor is strong play.

 

[zxcvbob]

I don't think I've ever seen a scenario where honor is strong play.

Peddroelm seems to make it work, but I think he's a wizard or something.

 

[danaphanous]

I've found honor to work fine, and you can actually get more culture per turn out of it then tradition or liberty through the midgame if you can grind a couple barb camps then run full garrisons. Of course people's definition of "well" varies. It works really well for starting a world conquest quickly, and after 50% xp your troops will be at logistics, range, march, and blitz much faster. For sustain and security on Deity I think most people go liberty --> honor. It's an effective option on its own though and you can head straight into commerce instead to cheapen your long road networks and bring in more gold and happiness, just burning all but capitals.

 

[Sclb]

On deity, liberty -> commerce -> autocracy can't be beat. Honor is strictly inferior in all my games that I've tried. The slower start honor has compared with liberty seems to be a huge factor. Yes you can get serious gold with honor finisher, but usually it takes a while to get there where at that point you can get a lot of gold via other methods such as peace deals, pillage repair, caravan/cargo looting etc. Peddro is a good player, but that doesn't mean that honor is good, he just likes playing it.