The liberty tree is too strong

[Optional]

One thing that irks me about Tradition is that I may not have to pay maintenance over a garrisonned unit, but it still counts towards the supply limit. I easily run into that 10 or 20% build penalty for being over the supply limit. Being a military flee on the wall and still having to disband units because I'm too small to support them feels wrong when I've chosen a policy that's supposed to help with small empires. Especially that is where Tradition could use a boost in my opinion.

Honour is a great tree, nothing wrong with that.

About Liberty, I'm not jealous of its starting policies. I think Representation and Meritocracy are better, more durable policies. The finisher... yeah, that stands out for me. I've no idea why a great person would fit in better with Liberty thematically, but this is something to envy when you're choosing other policies like I do.

 

[apocalypse105]

Liberty isn't to strong tradition is only to weak..

If I have to choose for liberty or tradition I choose liberty even If i dont gonne expand fast...

Tradition really needs a good buf maybe a good finisher

 

[wcbarney]

Free culture for every barbarian I kill? Free gold for every unit I kill? Bonus to producing melee units? Happiness just for garrisoning a unit I was going to garrison anyway?

Yes please Mr Honor.

Liberty is indeed a powerful tree for many plays, but the other two have their place and benefits that in specific games knock the stuffing out of Liberty.

I actually tried this strategy in a few games, playing as Montezuma with raging barbs. Yeah, I initially got a lot of by knocking off barbs, and would have 3-4 camps guarded by my jags. But invariably some AI boob would come prancing along and take out the stupid barb camp for me -- as a good will gesture, I guess. After not that many turns all the barb camps were gone & I was stuck without the strong benefits that I could be getting if I had chosen Liberty instead of Honor.

 

[Ellye]

One thing that irks me about Tradition is that I may not have to pay maintenance over a garrisonned unit, but it still counts towards the supply limit. I easily run into that 10 or 20% build penalty for being over the supply limit. Being a military flee on the wall and still having to disband units because I'm too small to support them feels wrong when I've chosen a policy that's supposed to help with small empires. Especially that is where Tradition could use a boost in my opinion.

Uh, I believe you might be doing a bit too many units if you're running on the supply limit like that. But then again, I don't know which settings you play with.

Personally, I believe that Tradition and Honor won't ever be perceived as being as good as Liberty, because they are less "flashy". Liberty gives you free units - a settler, a worker and a great person. The other two give you solid and permanent, but much more discreet, bonuses.

 

[woodshadows]

I actually tried this strategy in a few games, playing as Montezuma with raging barbs. Yeah, I initially got a lot of by knocking off barbs, and would have 3-4 camps guarded by my jags. But invariably some AI boob would come prancing along and take out the stupid barb camp for me -- as a good will gesture, I guess. After not that many turns all the barb camps were gone & I was stuck without the strong benefits that I could be getting if I had chosen Liberty instead of Honor.

Honor tree is all about rushing. It's unfair to choose honor and then try to play a game that is better suited to a liberty tree game and then claim that honor is weak. Montezuma is just amazing if played right. Build jags, lots of them. Go straight down honor, picking up the great general and 50% faster experience. Smash barb camps and beeline ironworking. Upgrade your heavily promoted jags to swords and take out a few neighbours, likely with no losses. At this point you'll have gained a ton of free culture with all the killing, you'll have a nice big puppet empire which many who can will install floating gardens, meaning you can grow a huge population and have the science pouring in. You should be able to keep those initial jags around for most of the game with few losses.

 

[vexing]

Tradition really needs a good buf maybe a good finisher

the finisher for tradition is its best part.


first i'll just point out that the op is correct. liberty is overpowered, mainly due to the free settler and settler production boost you can get as second policy. the benefits of early settlement compound throughout the game. additionally the free great person comes at about the perfect time to get the porcelain tower. hall of fame winners are consistently using liberty branch, which is a pretty good indication that it could use balance adjustment.

honor has it's place; it's a decent opening branch for aztec, germany and songhai for obvious reasons, and it can work with any early rush.

tradition could be buffed by reversing the position of monarchy and legalism. this would probably be enough to make it a viable alternative by allowing people to get temples with legalism while still getting landed elite as 3rd policy. alternatively oligarchy could be made useful - not sure how though.

an alternative would be nerfing liberty by reversing the position of the settler and production boost. settler 2nd, worker 3rd is a lot more powerful than settler 3rd, worker 4th.

 

[The_Quasar]

I don't think that the issue is, "is the Liberty tree too strong"... I think the point is, "does it fit in properly with the other policy trees, and does it upset the balance of the game".

imho it sits well... as do the Tradition and Honour trees... they are all there for a purpose, and they do it well.

Ok, you can pick small holes in them all, but whatever they do, you'll be able to do that, by their very nature.

Personally, I don't believe them to be overpowered, and I don't think they should be made more powerful, they are there for a purpose, and they fulfill that purpose well, whichever way you wish to direct your strategy.

 

[CrazyHorseSouix]

Liberty indeed has the flash factor as you said, Ellye. Two free units, a free GP, and an automatic golden age are hard to pass up. I play a lot of games as civs with chivalry UUs, and so I usually spend the Liberty GP on bulbing chiv.

But I definitely think that Tradition doesn't get enough credit, and it is a very strong alternative, especially if your region of the map is devoid of good city spots. The opener, though with less potential than Liberty's, provides a stronger early boost that can get you the next few policies in short order. The wonder building bonus is a very nice boost, and I would argue that legalism is the strongest early branch policy of all (perhaps save the Liberty finisher). Though it can be used to speed up build orders in new cities (if you always open with monuments), its greatest strength is abusing it for opera houses. And if you're playing Siam, you'd be mad not to take advantage of legalism (4 free universities!).

Honor also has some very good policies, but unless I'm playing certain civs, I rarely feel the opportunity cost is worth it. But if you are going pure warmonger, 50% faster promotions is indispensable, and the finisher is no slouch. Fending off a single wave of Landsknetch spam could fund an entire second army!

 

[woodshadows]

I don't think that the issue is, "is the Liberty tree too strong"... I think the point is, "does it fit in properly with the other policy trees, and does it upset the balance of the game".

I agree and think all three trees are well-balanced; each provides some distinct advantage over the others. It really becomes about play style and learning to exploit to the fullest every aspect of each tree. When used effectively each of the three opening trees can be equally powerful and useful.

 

[budweiser]

I believe it is sub optimal to start a game with the preconceived notion that you are going to use 1 specific tree without first knowing what the map looks like. I also believe it is suboptimal to bee-line to the end of any tree to the exclusion of other trees. With that said, I can make a case to open with Honor first because I may not know the lay of the land by the time my first policy is due. The benefits are threefold: delaying the Tradition/Liberty choice until I know the best starting city locations, if any, increased survivability vs barbs, the option to go deeper into Honor for a free GG if attacked or early war looks like a good option.

Liberty > 2 cities > NC > expand finish Liberty > HS > PT is not always best.

It is possible to finish a game in 300 – 350 turns (if not sooner) peacefully with only 1 to 3 cities (no puppets) if you play the map right.

 

[chazzycat]

tradition could be buffed by reversing the position of monarchy and legalism. this would probably be enough to make it a viable alternative by allowing people to get temples with legalism while still getting landed elite as 3rd policy.

I like this idea a lot. I would much rather see a buff to tradition rather than nerf liberty. Liberty needs to remain good for wide empires...the problem is that it's being used in 2 or 3 city situations.

 

[Strategist83]

first i'll just point out that the op is correct. liberty is overpowered, mainly due to the free settler and settler production boost you can get as second policy. the benefits of early settlement compound throughout the game. additionally the free great person comes at about the perfect time to get the porcelain tower. hall of fame winners are consistently using liberty branch, which is a pretty good indication that it could use balance adjustment.

We need the Hagia Sophia modified. It's that free-engineer-into-dual-world-wonders that's so upsetting. Maybe the free Great Person needs to go as well; free Great People are about as un-Libertyish as it gets, anyway.

tradition could be buffed by reversing the position of monarchy and legalism. this would probably be enough to make it a viable alternative by allowing people to get temples with legalism while still getting landed elite as 3rd policy. alternatively oligarchy could be made useful - not sure how though.

The problem with that is Firaxis never intended these speculations about when to pop Legalism for free Temples/Opera Houses/Wats. It was clearly meant to be a free Monument for initial cities, compensating for Liberty's easier time producing Settlers - free infrastructure vs free cities, aka tall vs wide. That's why it's at the first row of the tree. I'd really hate to see Firaxis base a policy around what really is a sort of gamey loophole.

Oligarchy is useful with the fantastic defensive capabilities it grants (as well as the ever-increasing gold bonus later on) - it's the AI problem rearing its ugly head again, making defense too easy.

an alternative would be nerfing liberty by reversing the position of the settler and production boost. settler 2nd, worker 3rd is a lot more powerful than settler 3rd, worker 4th.

... but that would totally destroy the whole idea behind Liberty as the rapid expansion option. If Collective Rule is too strong, I'd rather have them either remove the free Settler or lower the production bonus.

 

[vexing]

The problem with that is Firaxis never intended these speculations about when to pop Legalism for free Temples/Opera Houses/Wats. It was clearly meant to be a free Monument for initial cities

that is pretty clearly a misrepresentation of their "intentions." if they intended legalism to provide monuments only, that would have been a lot easier to implement than the "highest culture / production cost culture building available." the law of unmitigated programmer laziness proves that was not their intent.

... but that would totally destroy the whole idea behind Liberty as the rapid expansion option. If Collective Rule is too strong, I'd rather have them either remove the free Settler or lower the production bonus.

hardly.

...does it upset the balance of the game".

it does. as i pointed out before, almost all science/diplo hof games are starting with exclusive liberty as it's the superior choice. any branch can work for non competitive purposes, but the optimal path being so clearly defined lessens the game.

 

[Optional]

Uh, I believe you might be doing a bit too many units if you're running on the supply limit like that. But then again, I don't know which settings you play with.

It wouldn't happen with semi isolated starts, but getting rushed by a much bigger neighbour can easily give you unit supply problems.
In comparison, bigger empires give much less unit supply problems. This is a hidden advantage of Liberty. The unit supply scaling could be adjusted a bit in my opinion, to give bigger empires not such increasing supply opportunities as is now.

tradition could be buffed by reversing the position of monarchy and legalism. this would probably be enough to make it a viable alternative by allowing people to get temples with legalism while still getting landed elite as 3rd policy. alternatively oligarchy could be made useful - not sure how though.

That looks like a good idea. The positioning of Legalism in the tree makes it rather unflexible just now - get monuments or just don't pick it.
Oligarchy is actually quite useful to deal with an early rush, it doesn't give you opportunities to move forward, but it can save your skin.

hall of fame winners are consistently using liberty branch, which is a pretty good indication that it could use balance adjustment.

Hall of Fame games will often work with ideal scenarios, it's a good measure of how good a certain choice can be, not necessarily a good reflection of the average game. But the amount of players using Liberty seems massive, agree about desirability of balance adjustment.

Liberty has a pitfall, and that is that its good start can backfire, you're not guaranteed to get away with a fast early expansion. If everything works well, then Liberty is the strongest tree, yes.

 

[headcase]

Tradition needs a little boost. Honor is great and Liberty is great, perhaps a little more so.

To make honour a tiny bit stronger, make the rewards for killing barbs a bit better, or make 'em a bit more of a pillaging threat

To make liberty a bit weaker, find a way to nerf the GE while still keeping it interesting (less hammers on lower turn numbers?)

To make tradition stronger, improve the policies. per 5-8 citizens instead of 10 would be a start. I can't help but think the opener should give something on top of the culture, like +1 or 2 gold in the capital.

 

[The Pilgrim]

tradition could be buffed by reversing the position of monarchy and legalism. this would probably be enough to make it a viable alternative by allowing people to get temples with legalism while still getting landed elite as 3rd policy. alternatively oligarchy could be made useful - not sure how though.

Why not Landed Elite and Legalism? Is happiness such a problem with Tradition opening? I have no idea.

an alternative would be nerfing liberty by reversing the position of the settler and production boost. settler 2nd, worker 3rd is a lot more powerful than settler 3rd, worker 4th.

I'm not sure that will change much. As a result people will rush buy second settler from first lux sell and get the third one for free instead of current reverse order.

 

[vexing]

Why not Landed Elite and Legalism? Is happiness such a problem with Tradition opening? I have no idea.

landed elite as 2nd policy would be pretty powerful, i was trying to keep it as a third.
aristocracy and legalism could change places... that would be decent.

 

[vonbach]

I always go with Tradition first usually its Piety then Liberty. I used to go Liberty first but Tradition is
just too powerful. The Honor Barb killing culture benefit is nice at first but it doesn't take long
before you hit diminishing returns.

 

[The Pilgrim]

landed elite as 2nd policy would be pretty powerful, i was trying to keep it as a third.
aristocracy and legalism could change places... that would be decent.

Well, if you think Liberty is seriously OP'd, that will make sense.
But actually I like Aristocracy <--> Legalism swap idea even better. Pushing Legalism down the tree would mess Siam/Egypt abuse, this way it won't get nerfed.

 

[qemist]

I'd say honor is better for an early rush+domination strategy.

Liberty has some advantages here too though. The early worker and settler means more hammers for warriors.

An easy nerf for Liberty: turn it upside down. If the free units were at the bottom instead of the top it would be a much less popular choice.