Viability of going liberty + wide?

[Haersh]

How viable is going wide w/ liberty opener? I think maddjinn in his poland playthrough used liberty and rapidly expanded while delaying NC for quite a bit.

Lets assume that there is ample land for expansion with the necessary diversity of luxes, etc. Is it viable to go liberty as your starting policy to go wide? Or can you do the same thing with tradition.

 

[Resipsa]

How viable is going wide w/ liberty opener? I think maddjinn in his poland playthrough used liberty and rapidly expanded while delaying NC for quite a bit.

Lets assume that there is ample land for expansion with the necessary diversity of luxes, etc. Is it viable to go liberty as your starting policy to go wide? Or can you do the same thing with tradition.

Assuming standard deity settings? Sure its viable, is it optimal? Probably not. Rarely does delaying NC ever pay off, what is to gain by REXing and delaying NC past turn 100? A few plots of dirt that you'll be forced to vigorously defend?

You can go liberty and start with only 4 cities, Liberty is the go to tree for Domination and is only slightly worse than Tradition for other victory conditions. Liberty requires and rewards you for being more aggressive, more people play Tradition because after the first 100 turns you are basically following a tech order and hitting next turn.

On a side note what is the definition of viable? I just played a Deity/Pangaea game with Sweden on Tundra dirt where I opened and finished Honor and had Generals and Prophets spawning like crazy that game. Holy Warriors to purchase 8 or so archers and then later pikes and Tithe to support maintenance.

 

[Johan^^]

How viable is going wide w/ liberty opener? I think maddjinn in his poland playthrough used liberty and rapidly expanded while delaying NC for quite a bit.

Lets assume that there is ample land for expansion with the necessary diversity of luxes, etc. Is it viable to go liberty as your starting policy to go wide? Or can you do the same thing with tradition.

Take a look at yoruus last MP game and see how it might be done :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rz_I2j5ee40&list=PLgYopQWwsyjFyY-W5uFdpWyNLI4A5szmi

 

[chazzycat]

I play on immortal, and can safely say it's viable at that level. If you have room/luxuries to expand to 6 or more cities, it can totally work out. Definitely try to get Pyramids, that really helps. My last game I expanded to 8 cities and ended up with a turn 290 science victory, totally in line with my usual victory times when I go tradition. And this was as America, who really is better for domination. With a better science civ I would have finished by 275 or so.

The thing is, it's pretty rare to actually have that much space and luxuries.

 

[joshua43214]

Liberty maps are somewhat rare. You get horribly starved for happiness and gold with liberty, I don't even think its especially good for most domination games below Immortal. You really need to get an early worker out, get horses, iron, lux's up and trading, and even on Immortal the AI does not have to gold to pay you early on pretty often.

Sure you can build fast archers (that you can't afford maintenance on), and crank out cities (that you lack happiness to support), so you can go take over a neighbor (and lose all your trading partners). But unless you can pull down extremely fast wins (so pretty much only Pangaea maps), you are much better off going with tradition where all the happiness and gold is.

You also need to expand pretty quickly otherwise the new cities will be too much of a drain on your tech.

 

[sh3baproject]

why not both. i tend to do it and though i am hardly a pro,i seen improvement in my combo games rather then choosing a singlaur route. then again,i play at king :/ point is,i will do what works for me until it gets pushed off a cliff by diety.

 

[Blitz Spearman]

Liberty wide-ish (5~7 cities) is good even in non-pangaea maps, up to immortal, and is not so problematic as joshua43214 says (I am assuming he is talking about 8+ cities, which fits his explanation). You just have to get roads up really quick to get your economy up (tip: play Incas/Carthage until you get used to it), make markets everywhere asap and choose your settling spots based on happiness. Ideal world is one lux per city, but you can make 1 or 2 lux-less cities as long as you have horses for Circus. If you manage to get Pagodas, you are pretty much tied in happiness with any trad player pre-ideology.

 

[chazzycat]

Liberty maps are somewhat rare. You get horribly starved for happiness and gold with liberty, I don't even think its especially good for most domination games below Immortal. You really need to get an early worker out, get horses, iron, lux's up and trading, and even on Immortal the AI does not have to gold to pay you early on pretty often.

Sure you can build fast archers (that you can't afford maintenance on), and crank out cities (that you lack happiness to support), so you can go take over a neighbor (and lose all your trading partners). But unless you can pull down extremely fast wins (so pretty much only Pangaea maps), you are much better off going with tradition where all the happiness and gold is.

You also need to expand pretty quickly otherwise the new cities will be too much of a drain on your tech.

i think you are too focused on the CB rushing aspect of liberty, but that's not the only way to play it. If you're lucky enough to get a map where there is a lot of room and luxuries to expand, liberty can be a good peaceful opener. luxes + circuses + religion can keep you happy. the gold problems are not as bad as you make it out to be...there might be a brief period with low income but generally if you research currency at a reasonable time you'll be fine.

Pyramids really helps with the gold too, by improving luxes and getting roads up faster.

It's just the vast majority of maps do not meet these criteria, so it's very easy to get in the habit of taking tradition every time.

 

[joshua43214]

i think you are too focused on the CB rushing aspect of liberty, but that's not the only way to play it. If you're lucky enough to get a map where there is a lot of room and luxuries to expand, liberty can be a good peaceful opener. luxes + circuses + religion can keep you happy. the gold problems are not as bad as you make it out to be...there might be a brief period with low income but generally if you research currency at a reasonable time you'll be fine.

Pyramids really helps with the gold too, by improving luxes and getting roads up faster.

It's just the vast majority of maps do not meet these criteria, so it's very easy to get in the habit of taking tradition every time.

lol, you realize you just reinforced what I said?
They are rare maps, trying to play Liberty on a non-liberty map will just give a crappy game.

 

[chazzycat]

reinforced the first sentence of what you said, yes. But the overall tone of your post implies that liberty is just for CB rushing and is always inferior to tradition for peaceful openers. I do not agree with that.

 

[Mercurio]

Tradition is superior in pretty much every situation because expansion itself doesn't really work anymore.
-Low amount of gold early game makes early expansion too expensive (and no extra traderoutes either to offset it).
-Sciencewise the 5% penalty makes expansion beyond the 6th or so city pretty much pointless to begin with (standard size/speed) and that's not taking into account the time it takes to make the underdevelopped 5th and 6th cities to get up to speed (and thus the period it actually slows your scientific progress down). Also not taking into account delays of NC.
-Low earlygame hapiness.

The optimal tactic is probably 4-city tradition (although like others say it might vary slightly depending on the map). Lots of free stuff, less problems with early gold and hapiness, fast NC, quick growth.

And I hate it... Multiplay with my mates is just getting 4 cities up (in some cases a 5th or 6th depending on location), spam buildings and militarily at the most making some tactical precision strike. No conquest, no natural expansion: they just drag you down. BNW is such a dissapointment. Liberty can still work against the AI though, even on the higher levels as the AI is just stupid.

 

[Johan^^]

Tradition is superior in pretty much every situation because expansion itself doesn't really work anymore.
-Low amount of gold early game makes early expansion too expensive (and no extra traderoutes either to offset it).
-Sciencewise the 5% penalty makes expansion beyond the 6th or so city pretty much pointless to begin with (standard size/speed) and that's not taking into account the time it takes to make the underdevelopped 5th and 6th cities to get up to speed (and thus the period it actually slows your scientific progress down). Also not taking into account delays of NC.
-Low earlygame hapiness.

The optimal tactic is probably 4-city tradition (although like others say it might vary slightly depending on the map). Lots of free stuff, less problems with early gold and hapiness, fast NC, quick growth.

And I hate it... Multiplay with my mates is just getting 4 cities up (in some cases a 5th or 6th depending on location), spam buildings and militarily at the most making some tactical precision strike. No conquest, no natural expansion: they just drag you down. BNW is such a dissapointment. Liberty can still work against the AI though, even on the higher levels as the AI is just stupid.

Yes they need to chance the science penalty. Maybe just make it 2½ %. I think you can handle the gold issues and happiness just fine as it is. A hybrid Liberty opening with 3 points into tradition can be quite strong.

 

[Paszczak]

The 5% per city was intended as a nerf to puppet empires and to keep runaway AIs in check. It wasn't supposed to discourage rapid expansion. If you actually grow all cities that you've settled and build science building in them you'll be fine.

It is the growing part that's the problem, though. Wide empire runs out of hapiness fast. There is simply not enough before ideologies to make a wide Liberty empire competitive with a tall Tradition one. The only time something resembling ICS was possible in civ 5 was when Ceremonial Burial gave 1 per city. This along with 1 from Meritocracy and extra from buildings made going wide (I mean really wide, not 6 city "wide") possible and effective, especially for domination. Not anymore sadly.

 

[joshua43214]

The 5% per city was intended as a nerf to puppet empires and to keep runaway AIs in check. It wasn't supposed to discourage rapid expansion. If you actually grow all cities that you've settled and build science building in them you'll be fine.

It is the growing part that's the problem, though. Wide empire runs out of hapiness fast. There is simply not enough before ideologies to make a wide Liberty empire competitive with a tall Tradition one. The only time something resembling ICS was possible in civ 5 was when Ceremonial Burial gave 1 per city. This along with 1 from Meritocracy and extra from buildings made going wide (I mean really wide, not 6 city "wide") possible and effective, especially for domination. Not anymore sadly.

^^This
The science penalty is nothing more than a pathetic band aide. It is the most cost effective way to "balance" the game so civs can't run away as easily.

The wider you go, the slower the win. You simply can't grow a new city fast enough mid/late game to over come the penalty, and going wide early is almost impossible because of happiness/gold except on very rare maps. Tradition is much better almost always

 

[tommynt]

I actually do both in sp and in mp better as every1 else by setting allways 2 more cities as other players d do.

In sp u can conquer cities midgame to increase science output further.

Managing happynes with these extra cities is a challenge - but if u play good u can do it and do even better as easystyle 4 city.

 

[SirPepsi]

Tommy, will you narrate your games at some point? I feel like I could learn quite a bit from your play, but the speech in the background is what really contributes to the experience.