Things you only just now realized

[Krajzen]

Most of the time liberty is stronger than Honor at least. I usually take it instead of Tradition now, since I find tradition boring. With liberty, you can go wide and improve your tiles quickly without having to sacrifice too much growth or production (for workers and settlers) in your city.

Well personally I always play with Reform and Rule mod which makes each social tree much more interesting.

When speaking about unmodded game... Tradition beats all other early trees, it is better even for quick expansion!

Honor can be good only for few civs and domination victory. Piety also only when you play very religious gameplay. Liberty... Well, I did some math and I have bad news - Liberty is completely useless

It gives you free worker, settler, golden age and great person. Cool but it gives almost nothing besides that. +1 production, culture and happiness is laughable and it is designed for a gameplay strategy which is alone not really good. Free worker, settler and golden age are IMHO 'comfortable cheat codes' as they save ~20 turns of production but experienced player can manage to build them without liberty and have even better empire with Tradition. Besides that, all these things are instant boosts which pass and leave not much for mid - late game.

Tradition provides much more happiness, early gold from Monarchy and Oligarchy, more early culture, provides bonus to defense (Oligarchy), wonder production, four free cultural buildings, four free aqueducts, much faster border growth allowing on quick development of cities and insane +25% food bonus. All these things are optimal for every game...

In the same time Liberty offers: free worker and settler, which are worth much less than four aqueducts; some happiness but despite that Liberty empires are much more unhappy than Traditional (especially as wide gameplay generally generates more unhappy); laughable +5% production of buildings, laughable -33% to social policies penalty; 10 turns of +20% production and gold (which still doesn't recompensates policies of Tradition and their accumulating effects) and the Great Person. Which is cute when you choose Great Scientist or Engineer, but even they won't recompensate scientific and wonder domination of Tradition. You can also choose Prophet or General, but Piety and Honor are better for that

 

[beetle]

I have tried Liberty, and I don’t disagree with you. The one-third discount to social policies seems like it should be pretty significant, but it sure does not feel like it in play. You characterize it as laughable. Why doesn’t that it work out better? Missing from your calculation is the half discount on settlers. That seems to provide good leverage for early expansion.

 

[Krajzen]

You mean you agree with me or not?

Half discount on settlers works only in capital. But yeah, I missed it.

 

[beetle]

Yes, I agree with you. But please explain why the SP discount is weak. In the early game, capital is where you will be building settlers anyway.

 

[Feurisson]

Meh, since I play mostly for fun I like to take Liberty more. Tradition is just boring. Besides you missed the tile impromevent bonus - 1 turn less for most things, including instant repair of pillaged improvements!

 

[reddishrecue]

I just now realized that ranking up on barbarians isn't recommended since barbarians tend to pop out of nowhere all of a sudden. Healing during promotions is better against barbarians since killing barbarians don't rank your units up after the second promotion..

 

[beetle]

Healing promotions are a basically a wasted opportunity. They are only good for situations where you are a little desperate, like when it makes the difference between a unit living or not, or a group taking a city a turn earlier. It especially sad to have to use instant heal against barbarians, as one of the main points to barb hunting is to get units a couple promotions. When fighting barbs (without a mod), you don’t earn experience after two promotions, and uses of instant heals count as promotions.

 

[LakeSolon]

Promotions are the result of leveling up. Healing "spends" that level's promotion. Each additional level costs more XP.

The level cap on barbarian XP just makes it worse. Heal a couple of times and thereafter that unit could kill 10,000 barbarians and still never get a "real" promotion.

P.S. There was a recent reddit discussion on promotions that has a bunch of useful info: http://www.reddit.com/r/civ/comments/258vyn/maybe_i_should_have_built_a_third_gun/

 

[Calouste]

You mean you agree with me or not?

Half discount on settlers works only in capital. But yeah, I missed it.

You also missed that Liberty can generate more raw culture per turn from the fourth city onwards, and that you only get 25% growth in the capital with Tradition, it's 15% elsewhere (or maybe even only in the first four cities, not sure). Free aqueducts are way overrated btw, just run a food trade route to a city and it will be up to the size where it can work all useful tiles in no time. Unless of course you got some really great spots with lots of food, but that's exactly what Tradition is for.

 

[Magean]

You also missed that Liberty can generate more raw culture per turn from the fourth city onwards, and that you only get 25% growth in the capital with Tradition, it's 15% elsewhere (or maybe even only in the first four cities, not sure). Free aqueducts are way overrated btw, just run a food trade route to a city and it will be up to the size where it can work all useful tiles in no time. Unless of course you got some really great spots with lots of food, but that's exactly what Tradition is for.

Tradition gives you a total of 7 cpt : 3 from the opener, 1 from each free monument. For this to even out with liberty, you need 7 cities, not 4.

In overall, I've really attempted to use liberty in "normal" games, but each time I felt I did worse than with tradition.
In the two games where I've been happy with liberty, I went really wide (9-10 cities early) with specific civs (Shoshones and Poland), and a good religion to back it.

 

[Calouste]

Tradition gives you a total of 7 cpt : 3 from the opener, 1 from each free monument. For this to even out with liberty, you need 7 cities, not 4.

In overall, I've really attempted to use liberty in "normal" games, but each time I felt I did worse than with tradition.
In the two games where I've been happy with liberty, I went really wide (9-10 cities early) with specific civs (Shoshones and Poland), and a good religion to back it.

I didn't realize you're not allowed to build Monuments when you open Liberty. I guess you learn something new every day.

 

[reddishrecue]

I just now realized that population doesn't always give you the best technology sometimes.

 

[Magean]

I didn't realize you're not allowed to build Monuments when you open Liberty. I guess you learn something new every day.

But that's not something any liberty policy "gives" you. You need to build them all (even though it's a little bit faster with Republic), that's the problem. And pay for the upkeep.

 

[Doktor Vic Tim]

Wait, I thought a Monument gave +2 Culture?

 

[Magean]

That was before BNW.

 

[Maximo the Xth]

It still does. The other culture buildings now give only 1 culture, the monument 2.

 

[reddishrecue]

I just now realized that the piety reformation belief that completes its social policy doesn't always work with other civilizations. It's also unknown how the piety reformation beliefs will work with other civilizations and why or why therreformation belief will or will not work.

 

[George Abitbol]

I realized few days ago that is possible to choose a city production from the world map, by clicking on the prod icon right on the city name. I used to enter the city screen before that, then select building/units on the list.. So much time saved now!

 

[Calouste]

But that's not something any liberty policy "gives" you. You need to build them all (even though it's a little bit faster with Republic), that's the problem. And pay for the upkeep.

That doesn't make Tradition produce more Culture than Liberty, it saves Tradition on maintenance and hammers.

 

[happyturtle]

I just now realized that Assyria is AWESOME!