What is the strength of the Lib-race?

[RRRaskolnikov]

I'd really love to see an outline of a strategy that totally ignores Liberalism and maximizes medieval war power...anyone?

Early rush followed by catapults/maces/elephants domination try. This combo has no counter for cost till rifles/cannons. You need a suitable pangean map and ivory (and to be confident at the level you play at) to pull it off.

Other possible scenario: continent map. You can ignore liberalism and conquer your own land mass in most cases. You will have sufficient economy afterward to catch up the other continent in terms of techs. You might find out that the other continent is full of trading peaceniks. Not the most probable case, but it happens. In this case you are in for a late game challenge.

Basically it all comes down to your confidence at the level you play. If you are struggling, the lib race provides you with a freebie and thus leverage to be exploited to catch up with the AIs. All freebies will have this "catch up" effect. If you are confident in your skills, well, you can go for other challenges and take the bloody path As Dave said, marathon makes this easier.

Cheers,
Raskolnikov

 

[gilmore606]

Early rush followed by catapults/maces/elephants domination try. This combo has no counter for cost till rifles/cannons. You need a suitable pangean map and ivory (and to be confident at the level you play at) to pull it off.

Other possible scenario: continent map. You can ignore liberalism and conquer your own land mass in most cases. You will have sufficient economy afterward to catch up the other continent in terms of techs. You might find out that the other continent is full of trading peaceniks. Not the most probable case, but it happens. In this case you are in for a late game challenge.

Basically it all comes down to your confidence at the level you play. If you are struggling, the lib race provides you with a freebie and thus leverage to be exploited to catch up with the AIs. All freebies will have this "catch up" effect. If you are confident in your skills, well, you can go for other challenges and take the bloody path As Dave said, marathon makes this easier.

Cheers,
Raskolnikov

Are there specific situations where this is clearly a _better_ path than the lib race? My concern is that this really is a bottleneck in Civ 4 strategy -- the only good choice in 90% of games is to race for Lib (and all that that implies -- education, Oxford, teching up, ignoring medieval war). I understand that I _can_ go rush with macemen and cats, I'm just wondering if this is ever a good idea strategically or just a fun challenge to give myself.

 

[Ataxerxes]

Are there specific situations where this is clearly a _better_ path than the lib race? My concern is that this really is a bottleneck in Civ 4 strategy -- the only good choice in 90% of games is to race for Lib (and all that that implies -- education, Oxford, teching up, ignoring medieval war). I understand that I _can_ go rush with macemen and cats, I'm just wondering if this is ever a good idea strategically or just a fun challenge to give myself.

I think RRR gave you the most common specific situation. Even that depends upon neighbors. I would probably let a small Mansa live (if tech brokering is off). You're probably right, lib is best in most cases.

The worst case scenario for clearing the continent while neglecting liberalism would be the Shaka-Mansa together on the other continent scenario. That's always chilling. Have to watch out from Mansa going to space while making sure Shaka doesn't kill you.

 

[Iranon]

Getting the most out of liberalism requires some knowledge about what to expect from the AIs, as such an unclear gamestate can make other options safer. I usually play custom mapscripts more random than Shuffle, and when I started taking on Deity I rarely bothered with Liberalism because it's very possible to make unreasonable concessions for something that doesn't work out.

On that level, AI/AI warfare is quick and decisive enough that having a solid standing army can allow you to get a lot of land by joining a dogpile and seizing cities from under your ally's nose... and if that doesn't happen, medieval counters being hard and trebuchets being powerful but fragile allow predictable and low-attrition warfare under your own power.
The main problem is time constraints - conquering faster than is safe carries a massive increase in attrition not seen in other ages, and the window for getting enough land to compete for the long game can be a little tight on default speed.

I've also heard good things about a direct beeline to Steel without involving Liberalism - makes sense if you're confident that a cannon-based war will get you into a winning position despite an ailing economy, but not that you're able to win the Liberalism race for something juicy enough that it's worth it.
I haven't done this on purpose yet.

These days, I go for Liberalism more often than not but certainly don't consider it a no-brainer.

 

[Rusten]

I'd really love to see an outline of a strategy that totally ignores Liberalism and maximizes medieval war power...anyone?

It's easy.

1: Pick a tech to go for (say maces+x-bows).
2: Produce 2-3 GMs with caste system.
3: Pre-make ~20 axemen + some archers and catapults.
4: Use trade mission to upgrade axes into maces and archers into x-bows.
5: Conquest/Domination victory (or huge land % for later win if the map has 2 or more landmasses with players on them).

 

[Grashopa]

What you really want to know is when is one better than the other so you can choose the best strategy. Play any of the forum games and goto war, you'll certainly find a lib game to compare against.

 

[Benginal]

You don't even have to play a forum game. Just start a game and after you set up the economy and some slight infrastructure, maybe around 1AD save your game. Then try a Medieval war and play to the finish. Then try again with Liberalism as your goal and play to finish with either Renaissance or Industrial War. Or just any other different things. I have found that instead of starting new games all the time, you can learn a lot more by playing the same game using different strategies.

 

[ColossusXXIII]

Just to address one thing in ColossusXXIII's post: selecting the "no tech brokering" option fundamentally changes how research plays out, particularly on difficulties where the AI has significant research bonuses.

Absolutely... if you play with tech brokering enabled, you may as well forget the lib race, On Deity at least... The Ai's like ghandi and Mansa simply dish out every tech they can to anybody possible. And any Ai you trade with will just turn around and trade it with everyone else. So in that case if you trade say Aesthetics, you may as well just trade it to absolutely everyone.

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

Are there specific situations where this is clearly a _better_ path than the lib race?

Depends what "better" means for you. There are definatly many cases where you don't need liberalism to win. Knowing to "read" the layout of the map early in the game helps a lot to distinguish those situations.

Cheers

edit because I can:

It's easy.

ofc. What were we thinking?

 

[Farm Boy]

Absolutely... if you play with tech brokering enabled, you may as well forget the lib race, On Deity at least... The Ai's like ghandi and Mansa simply dish out every tech they can to anybody possible. And any Ai you trade with will just turn around and trade it with everyone else. So in that case if you trade say Aesthetics, you may as well just trade it to absolutely everyone.

Precisely. Which is why, I think, the bulbing path of great scientists becomes so critical. With good/lucky diplomacy a beeline can almost yield all tech paths at the same time.

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

Absolutely... if you play with tech brokering enabled, you may as well forget the lib race, On Deity at least...

I missed it earlier, but maybe it's a typo from you. It's the opposite. Tech brokering makes deity playable.

 

[Farm Boy]

Tech brokering makes deity playable.

I am not a deity player. It makes sense however, that tech brokering distinctly favors those with a research malus and relatively hurts those with a bonus.

On noble where you can roast the AIs with self-research then tech brokering(theoretically) helps them keep up some. On deity where the bonuses are extreme enough that the player is not going to keep up in raw numbers, it provides a catch-up path through diplomacy.

I suppose if one is going to marathon-stomp the AI through warfare with what are ephemeral tech leads on "normal" speed then slowing the global tech rate and taking advantage of some AIs propensity to skip self-researching military techs for thousands of years at a time could become beneficial.

 

[ColossusXXIII]

I'm not saying that tech brokering doesn't make deity easier, what I'm saying is that it makes the lib race more difficult or at least that's what I've experienced. For example I've just bulbed philo and am the first to get it, now the Ai mostly stops teching it because the religion is gone so it starts prioritizing other techs. So basically I'm left with amazing trade bait, but a tech which is also key to the lib race as it's a prereq. Obviously I want to exploit both advantages, the first being that I can trade to get prereq techs for my free lib tech. the second being that I am the only one who has it. Ideally if I do trade it I would do so after a while, when I'm mostly done paper and about to dbl bulb edu or something. As well I'd probably want to trade it to an Ai who won't really be able to use it (really backwards monty, someone who is being dogpiled and will soon be gone etc.). That way I can keep most of the front runners away from it. With brokering on you could never really maintain that slim bulb lead, in my example monty would turn around and give it to everyone he could if you didn't. Either way the front runners who can easily finish edu and lib combined in 25 turns (marathon) will get their hands on that slim advantage of yours. With brokering off, you can strategically trade to maintain a lib tech lead over them during the lib race. As for the rest of the game different story.

I always play brokering off, and one of my favorite things is to feed civs that are getting dogpiled military techs to increase the attrition factor and overall damage to all involved. The best part is that I don't have to worry about them spilling the beans, i get tech or gold or good diplo if they survive. Having a friendly shaka or monty as an attack dog can be really fun, but always be careful of course.

I suppose I should try playing brokering on, maybe i'd have more deity wins...

 

[ColossusXXIII]

View attachment Peter Rasputin LIB lossSave.CivBeyondSwordSave



Trying to post a game where I lost a narrow lib race, because of irresponsible trading.

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

@Colossus: You have to know your opponents a bit I confess (who will sell your tech, who won't). But in any cases, you get more techs than the AI. If you don't you shouldn't be trading in the first place. In other words, the decision "should I trade around my tech" is closely linked to the number of AIs you know, their tech pool, their teching rate, and your future military plans. It's hard to write down all possibilities, but all things being considered, trading is generally an helpfull thing to do for a human. I can't open your save right now, but don't worry I've experienced similar things in the past ("oh I will trade paper to Mansa, looks the way to go! ... let's attack Louis! ... some turns later ... Paris is mine yeah! ... Mansa Musa just discovered liberalism! damn!!!!)

 

[babar]

I agree with Colossus (although only with experience of immortal), no tech brokering makes liberalism easier. You can freely trade all the lib prereqs to those who won't be competition for the lib race without fear. It even has a (slim) chance of slowing your real rivals down, because now the slower AIs have no chance of researching the prereqs (since they already have them) and trading them. Although I guess it does make the techs a bit cheaper for your liberalism rivals to research...