I have a follow-up question...
What would you change about Liberty to make it the less obvious choice?
I'd remove the free settlers/workers for a start. But no idea what I'd replace it with.
I'm of the opinion that the +1 culture per city is fine, free worker's fine, the +1/+5% hammers is fine, and the happiness boost is fine. The Golden Age + policy cost reduction is a little on the powerful side, and the setter and especially the free GP are absurdly good compared to the alternatives. Particularly with when the free GP comes. It's almost surprising these days when I don't get a Great Engineer right as I get Education so I can rush Hagia Sophia so I can get a Great Engineer so I can rush Porcelain Tower so I can get a Great Scientist so I can bulb... whatever it is I decide I need at that point. Considering you're also getting the RA benefit, the +GP points benefit, and the other output associated with those buildings, that's just too powerful. Although part of that is the fault of the Hagia Sophia-Porcelain Tower trick also being on the OP side. But you still have to consider how any aspect of the game interacts with its environment.
As for what to do about them, I think that it
would be nice if it had something to do with settlers, because those are things that go well with the wide empires Liberty is supposed to focus on. But I think it goes about it the wrong way. Getting a free settler early game is equally good for both tall AND wide empires, unless you're doing a one-city play. But wide empires want more of them. So, perhaps something like replacing the free settler with "+50% production speed of Settlers. You may spend gold to purchase Settlers." Along with, of course, removing the innate ability to buy settlers with gold. Because really, does anybody actually hard-build Settlers anymore? Forcing most openings to build their settlers, but also giving the player a way to reclaim the ability to purchase them if they want to, seems like an OK idea. But maybe that would end up still Liberty to good.
For the free Golden Age, again, I think it's the right idea, but implemented poorly. After all, wide empires benefit
immensely from Golden Ages. The problem is that that particular policy that early is incredibly strong on its own because of again where it comes. It's super easy to pick that policy right when you can start getting your empire online, either using it to build/buy an army to whack your nearest neighbors, buy Libraries so you can get your National College online as early as possible, accelerate your wonder production while buying infrastructure... that size of a boost that early, especially when taken with the other bonuses, is good. Too good. But it
does make sense to have a GA-focused policy. So why not make it something like "All your Golden Ages are increased by 2 turns." It would still be a very good policy, as it would result in
more turns of golden ages over the course of most games, but it would also not give you such an overwhelming early advantage to go with all the other overwhelming early advantages. Maybe this would still be too good, so instead it could buffer the number of turns of golden age your GP give you, so instead of 12/9/6/3/3/3/3 you could get 15/12/9/6/3/3/3.... You'd still et an extra 12 turns of Golden Age before modifiers like Chichen Itza and Achaemenid Legacy, but only once you'd popped a bunch of those useless Great Merchants your puppets produce constantly.
Finally, with the finisher, I still like the GP focus. I don't know if it really belongs in this tree, but I like it anyways. So perhaps this could co-opt Freedom's finisher, but to a lesser extent. I like GP buildings and I'm bummed that I almost never have a good reason to build them since bulbing and rushing now are usually better than the long-term benefits of an Academy or Manufactory. And Landmarks are only good for one victory condition, and Custom Houses are one of the most pitiable things put in this game. So, along with hopefully reworking the way GPs balance out between one another and within their own ability pools, I'd like to see, say, a +2 or +3 bonus of the appropriate yield of each GP improvement. This would also mean that between this finisher and the GA length increase, the Freedom so it would have to be reworked (as hopefully the whole tree will be, since as sit is it's pretty lackluster. 8 maintenance-free units? In a specialist-focused tree? OK whatever you say.)
I think that would help moderate the pretty much unsurpassed immediate benefits you get from the Liberty tree, which IMO are the reason it's so good compared to the others. The other trees have some good stuff too, but none of it is AS good, and worse, most of them take a lot longer to show results. And with how much success in most any 4x game, CiV included, depends on strong early turns snowballing into more and more momentum, the other trees will just languish until the problem is addressed.
