This guy...he'd probably beat me before i get past the loading screen

"Faith is science." Chaos ensues.

Poland: "Why not both?"

It amazes me how you can easily talk for over an hour, without breaks or edits, on a Civ topic. There's so much good information in these videos it almost too much to take in! As a new player I will probably be avoiding the Liberty tree for a while as it does seem to be less reliable and forces more decisions that I'm not sure I'm qualified to make just yet! Great video, I'll be sure to check out your others and I've started tuning into the stream when I can too.

I still find myself coming back to this video (as well as every other Filthy civ 5 video) just because of how amazing they are. So much knowledge presented in such an eloquent and well structured way. Thanks for making these

I feel obliged to comment and support this video just due to how willing you are to sit down for over an hour and talk through this in a logical and easy to understand manner. top advice and thanks

"I'm gonna watch a few quick vids" Ends up here, watches it all...

Am I the only one who thinks the pyramids being unlocked by Liberty is kind ironic?

Why is it so much fun to listen to this guy's commentary about civ5? I like civ5 i play it often but sometimes i like to watch this guy rather than play myself , why?

when your brain is churning out so much genius that it needs 10 seconds to cool down, in order to think of the word "World Wonders"

15 mins in this video, fk Liberty I am going Tradition, starts a new game..

Your channel is a real asset to strategy gamers everywhere. It makes me yearn for channels with this kind of depth for some of the other games I'm into.

One significant advantage that a liberty player has is greater access to Strategic Resources. I can't count how many games I get great lands for Tradition and have a very solid mid-game, only to lose later on due to bad RNG and not having access to coal/uranium which can be incredibly crucial to success in those eras. Overall though, fantastic guide!

34:58 I love how you put your short answer in the middle of the video lol

Tradition is so much easier to deal with but honestly, I think it's lowkey fun to go liberty. The games I play with my mates are just races to see who can get the science victory first and I think by going liberty, I can maybe spice it up for once lol

Your TL:DR is 35 minutes into the video. That isn't how TL:DRs are supposed to work sir.

The rate and quality of information is so much that I had to backtrack more than a dozen times to keep up with what you're saying. That is in no way your fault, if this amount of information was all scripted, your videos would be 3 times the lenght with no need imo. This is more akin to a real class. Thanks for your work its really appreciated, and although its allways good to explore our own strategies and learn the game by fault and error, my enjoyment of the game is much higher because of your help. Godbless mate.

Hover along the time bar, the clouds move!!!!!

Another really well thought out wrap up mate. I'm late to the game (had it about a couple of months, played 290 hours) and find your vids very helpful and for that I thank you. Well done :)

Awesome guide. I quit studying to my tests to watch this video and it was worth it!

I can't possibly imagine a better guide than this, very efficient and well explained mr. Phil. I really enjoy the information/time (fraction) in your vids! So much accurate details given in the shortest time possible.

Great overview. He nailed basically everything. Short answer is Tradition is always safe, you really can't go wrong with it. Liberty can be better though if the circumstances are right.

Excellent video. Very informative and useful guide, even for semi-experienced players like myself.

Haven't played Civ 5 in a long time, but I'm super impressed by your amount of knowledge and wanting to play again just after seeing two of your videos.

Subscribed. One of the best streamers I've seen, coherent, insightful and a genuine learning experience watching you.

Thanks for the video Filthy. The 5% technology and social policy cost per city is IMO, the defining factor in preventing liberty from being relevant. Since there is no production penalty; eventually, a liberty empire will outproduce a tradition empire, but that's doubtful. I feel if players were given a 1% penalty per extra city that scaled up to a maximum of 15% (similar to the production follower belief) would balance reasonably well (and speed the game up!) Monarchy is just too overpowered. Perhaps if you could relocate your capital there would be a case for liberty being more popular. It's amusing that to combat ICS from vanilla and G&K, minimum distance between cities increased from 2 to 3 hexes, scientist specialists removed from libraries, nerfs to meritocracy, Forbidden Palace and HUGE buffs to tradition with the final nail in the coffin being additive tech/social policy costs have created a situation so one sided. Thematically, a wider larger empire SHOULD out produce and out compete a tall, centralised empire. Honestly, if the tech/SP penalty was removed or tweaked, players could reliably make a meaningful and difficult game decision between liberty/tradition. Not have it decided within 5 turns between whether your capital or viable or not. It would be nice to regardless of the strength of your capital, be able to go wide if that is your playstyle. Also if converting population into production a la Civ4 Slavery would have been great.

I can't believe how much I improved by watching 2 of your videos. I will watch more in the future but I've been playing both tradition and liberty incredibly wrong until I watched your videos. I've tried Google to find some information but mostly it's not as in depth as your videos and I tend to interpret things differently as they meant, meaning I screw up again. Love your videos!

I feel like Liberty should get some of the lesser bonuses from Order honestly. Such as Resettlement, the thing that gives your cities god king but with food instead of faith, slightly better internal trade routes. You know, maybe anything at all to help with happiness in an impactful way. Obviously I don't mean the exact tenants.. But yeah.

This is one heck of a guide. im new to brave new world, but i was doing some policy research for use with my single player mods on 10 player maps. i usually play liberty over tradition, but i usually play defensive and its clear based on your information that Tradition would far work better for me overall.

This guy really knows his shit! I can't believe I just sat for an hour and watched this. I'm gonna go play civs.

Thanks to Filthy's guides I always hold at least a 500pt lead in casual online ffa games with friends aha This is the last guide I have to watch to completion and if I don't smash them in the early game too now I'll be surprised!

I learned so much here and I've played civ for 200 hours. LOL

I love you so much dude. I still play this with my friends and you are the singular reason I destroy them every time now lol.

You are so chill when making guides, a totally different person from the one in MP games lol

is liberty better in a slower game like standard or marathon? That way their military units stay relevant for longer right?

I only play single player Civ 5, but I still got a lot out of this video. Thanks for making it.

Cool and interesting stuff. I have palyed Civilization games for a long time, since 2003. it started with a game called Civilization: Call to Power. When you mentioned big empires can spam out a lot of units even if it takes a lot of turns for each city to build units, i thought of when i used to play Call to Power, and spent the early part of the game to expand like CRAZY!! :), build (or rather settle) a huge number of cities, got the Agricultural Revolution technology and then built a whole lot of the sort of cheap pikemen who were fairly decent (3 attack, 3 defence, not at all very strong units) units but very strong in huge numbers against empires with big obsolete ancient armies. (With a few musketeers as long range units to help out and huge numbers of pikemen it was easy to conquer). Even smaller cities could build pikemen fairly Quick, and a big empire and early focus on science meant iw as usually first with the good texhnology and advantages. Libraries were quite cheap in the game as well as settlers also. And once you changed government from the earliest one to Republic (i Think it was republic) then it was easier to expand and get enough gold for a bigger army. A few years later i played Civ III a lot and by then a lot of things had changed inthe gameplay. There were borders, Culture, Resources and other stuff introduced in the game. But the expansion tactic was still an easy way to get ahead of the computer. Once you started building cities far away from the capital though, Civ III punished you a lot in terms of Culture. Some cities turned to the other empires if Culture was too weak, on the other hand you could also get cities if your Culture was stronger. Also, if a city was to far away, the cultural influence got lower, which meant less production i Think. But you could still expand very much. The next Civ game i played was Civilization Revolution, which was quite somple compared to a lot of other Civ games and i Think expansion was quite easy to achieve. Then i started playing Civ V as late as early 2014 (after a Humble Bundle) and i played it quite a lot during the first half of 2014, but in 2015 i have only played one game in the spring and Another one going on right now (or two actually, but i might not finish both of them). I play the regular Civ V and i still tend to play games where i want to expand a lot. Liberty seemed like the natural choice for me. In plain Civ V you also get the free settler much quicker, which is a big reason to go fr the monument, because essentially, getting 4 Culture per turn instead of 2 Culture per turn rom the capital means i can get to the free settler social policy much faster. I have not played Civ V as in depth as Civ III or Civ Rev though. In the beginning i used to pick some stuff from both Liberty and Tradition, but nowadays i tend to get the settler Liberty social policy, then the production one and the worker one, and by then i only need 2 more social policies to clear out the whole area and get the bonus. And by the time i can choose my seventh social policy, i usually need gold, and happiness (or both) and Commerce tends to be better for getting such things. I know tradition gets some happiness, but only for big cities, which i usually have not got. Expansion and social policies is a bad combination though. Happiness is a huge problem for me, especially when i want to conquer other cities and take over them during the middle phase of the game when i have lots of cities who have grown a bit and a few big core cities which can be used to make units quite fast. I keep playing Civ like a game of conquest and expansionism, but perhaps i should change tactics and try something sligthly conservative when it comes to expansion. I Always run into happiness problems, and trying to get the luxuries is hard. I want a big empire with lots of luxuries to become self suffcient and not relying on items from other. But perhaps i should try to get luxuries from city states instead, but how to get gold to bribe them? I know i can later in the game but i wxpand so much even early in the game and i usually have not got enough gold in the early parts of the game.

Surprisingly, Korea is very good in Liberty game thanks to its science bonus per specialist which allowed me to keep up with demographics science leader in the mid-game having 8 cities and around -20 GPT.

This guy should do guides on every video game ever he's so good at it! Learning so much lol

i like finding new youtubers that i enjoy

i like how liberty make me feel like im over everyone with so many cities but i guess after this video im wrong

"TL;DR go tradition, thats what this video is saying"...Wouldve been nice if that wasnt halfway through the hour long video. Anyways great video, I learned a lot :)

In a nutshell: "Liberty suffers..."

I've always simplified Liberty as the "incase your capital location sucks", which 90% of the time it doesn't. Always found the benefits of tradition will back fire if the capital you have isn't worth growing. Not sure if this is the best strategy, but I usually go for the free settler (considering sacrificing what little growth my capital can do is already a problem) then get a few honor to make up for the loss culture with killing barbs, then max out tradition for the aqueducts later on for my 2nd or 3rd city being the main. So many things can go wrong though (lose the settler, can't find a much better 2nd city in-time), meh~ liberty nightmares.

You are so fucking smart, i can't believe how much im learning from these videos. I've been playing Civ for quite a while, but have always played very casually and it's nice to know a lot of these things now.

New to Civ and your channel but you articulate ideas really well and very quickly. Be a professor, like someone else mentioned

Seems very thought-through, big thanks! Playing atm and listening to the video for the third time as background sound! And I'm even writing notes on paper! Trying out implementing your strategies, playing Earth and started alone in N-America, so I'm trying a good tradition game! (Which will end in global bloodbath, ofc) :D

I don't know why I am on KZfaq, really. The one thing I really hate is images that move. Thank goodness, I was finally able to rest my eyes on the almost completely static Social Policies page for an hour and seven minutes. I am not sure what you were saying, because I was trying to keep my attention averted from the movement in the camera screen-in-screen

Thank you for all your videos. Gave me a great insight on civ5 and how to play. Thanks again.

I randomly stumbled across one of your videos. I think I went a mix of both tradition and liberty in a recent game and managed to get all the cultures in both of those and half of the ones in rationalism and commerce. I had gotten quite a lot of culture wonders due to having a lot of production.

The reason I watched a video of yours for the first time (settling your capital): lmao how can this dude make a 31 minute video on clicking the goddamn settle button I'm gonna make fun of him. The reason I watch your video's now: they're fun and teaching and helpful and interesting!

>That Moment you always pick liberty and you're like "OMG i'm doing this so wrong"

I like the parallel this game presents in this discussion, because if I'm thinking from a historical context, ww1 was basically this discussion with nations like Russia, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottomans being liberty in style while nations like Britain, France, and Germany were more tradition oriented.

This guy knows a lot about Civilization . . . And I love it!

Liberty does have a few small advantages as well, in that the finisher does give you options other than the scientist - you can take the engineer and use it to finish Hagia for faith production and a religion, or straight take a prophet for religion, and if you know you are going to need to go that route, you can focus on culture via a strong culture pantheon like pastures, etc. to get you there if you don't have access to a strong faith producing pantheon. The early hammers also let you make use of grassland settles slightly more easily, and the workers let you improve jungle terrain more quickly.

The gap between Tradition and Liberty has frustrated me ever since G&K. If it were up to you, what changes would you make to Liberty to make it at least closer to Tradition? Or would it be something on a different level like making a bit longer before you have to choose your first SP? Or both? I'll admit I'm typing this around the 50:00 mark so if you answered this later and I look dumbo I apologize.

Tradition all day every day 🇷🇺 Jokes aside, thanks for the guide Filthy 👍 as always, well done dude ❤️

Lots of great info i didn't know, and you clearly know a ton about Civ. I'd like to see these a little more concise, though. Other than that, very impressive.

wow i never knew that 15% growth in tradition was for all cities, always thought it was the first four

I know you were talking almost exclusively about 6-person FFAs online, but I would like to input that as someone who plays almost entirely in marathon mode vs AI (hey, at least its on emperor/immortal), the extension of the length of the early-game multiplies the effectiveness of Liberty (and Honor and Piety, too) to the extent that they are all viable starting policies. Basically since everything costs most to produce, its importance is magnified tenfold. Units that normally obsolete themselves in a number of turns (like UU warriors) have a chance to shine in the early game. Also, a question: do games online always play at standard pace, or is that changeable? Marathon can sound like a real pain but it definitely can allow for a larger variety of gameplay (90% tradition start? sheesh!)

been watching some of your guids... really great vids, thanks

WHen i play tradition the expansion rate im compelled to greedly attempt always causes everyone to declare war on me for being massively overstretched

I think liberty is great for single player vs AIs in large maps. Especially if more lux mod is in play. Thoughts?!

epic length man. Good stuff all around.

exacerbated! the word you're looking for is exacerbated! you almost have it! thanks for the help this is phenomenal

Tradition for a easy game, Liberty for a micromanagement hell.

I am neither a super pro player nor a civ 5 expert but i have deticated around 200 hours on the game and have sone ci3 and insane civ2 experience, and i must say i completely agree with you 100% on what you say about liberty and tradition. Just yesterday i had a king game with bismark which i dedicated to liberty and from god damn first turns i realized how weak it is against tradition. Everything you said got confirmed step by step throughout the game, which pretty much made me wish i had picked up tradition. Money lacking early, could not grow without good luxury luck, i was SO far behind in science and culture, things that i didnt have to worry about in tradition except my first games which i lacked due to inexperience. Perhaps for super veteran players on the game who can synchronize every single detail of their game and dont miss even a single turn without sucking every advantage they can get from it, liberty is worthy..But is it worth to call something worthy because you are super high skilled and pick it when you can use those skills to make the superb tradition shine and give you a better game?

On the points about the bunching buildings that 'you have to get through' at 19:42; Public School, Windmill, Factory, Hydro Plant (plus Research Lab) - "all those buildings are extremely important buildings, very impactful buildings ..." Well, looks like I'm doing a few things right then, even if I don't know them off the top of my head and have to slow it down to 0.75 to hear them! :) Edit: Oh, and as a note to self: the discussion after all the basics have been covered begins around 34:45 -- this immediately refers back to the 20:50 comments on early vision and production order.

Unbelievable video! Helped surprisingly a lot. Thx :) I even joined the group :P Keep up the good work.

Hey Filthy! So Just wanted to say thanks for a great vid! Also I had a question for you and I'm probably gonna be called a noob cuz i am. I've been playin Civ single player for a while and just started getting into the mechanics. So here are my thoughts on improving liberty play (subject to testing). Hopefully you already know if its good or bad and can tell me why. So Tradition starts slow and ends hard. But liberty starts fast and ends slow. What if you use tradition open with first point to get the extra culture. Then next point you go into liberty tree for extra culture. You hard build monuments in your first 4 cities and use legalism for a later game culture building to allow you to catch up in culture without wasting hammers so you can build librarys. You rush Collective rule as technically your 3rd policy. And then immidiatley go settler in cap. By this time you should have infrastructure in your cap and be about 3-4 food dpending on your land. Now that immediatly fixes cap deduction in science. Then you get 4 cities very fast and have the option for free worker or oligarchy if you get attacked. Then after you get writing and progress into the culture techs you get the free culture boost from your 4 cities. While taking more. If you can't get more you just finish tradition asap and go for a nice wonder or soemthing. Or if you're alone you can keep spamming cities and go for liberty finish. Then if liberty land is good, start looking at small branches to policies that reduce hammers for buildings . I.E adopting 1 point into piety or 1st tier aesth. Gradually grow all your cities early game so you have 1 extra food and squeeze out the production. Use granneries and windmills to produce the food lost to help you work production. They grow slow but consistant. Also if liberty is a play then messanger of the gods offsets the science reduction per city? If i understand what you said then that is a huge help to the overwhelming science loss you would normally have. Then after small investments in multiple trees. You look for a win condition around industrial tech and focus on finishing that particular tree and using your uncentralized production to snowball the late game with so many buildings producing science, mitlitary, faith, or culture. I just think of it like a jack of all trades until you get a grasp of what you're up against and even if you can only get 6-8 cities then liberty finished still helps tradition and if you're stuck on limited land just finish tradition and grow. Thoughts?

If you don't want to watch the entire 1 hour of video, he's basically saying that you should pick tradition because Liberty is more situational and you simply can't see enough of the map to make a logical decision on which culture policy to pick.

Been a liberty player for ages. Did a test where I played the same game to t100 going lib and going trad. Trad won hands down in all categories except production. In fact, i tried lib a few times to try to get the same tech rate and development as the trad game but its just not possible. Really wish the game was more balanced.

You're a civ genius, I love it.

Thank you for your amazing videos. I'm curious, you never mention the possibility of buying only the first social policy of some branches, especially Honor which is quite powerful culturally early in the game, and Tradition (if you're playing Liberty) for it's big border expansion Bonus. It seems to me that picking one or both of these 2 branch openings wouldn't get you too much behind in your social policies development (even maybe ahead with the Honor culture vs barbarians). I'd love to hear what you have to say about it! Thanks again for these videos they're very helpful.

Would you consider making a tutorial on late game war?

Is it a bad idea to do Liberty after completing the Tradition tree? Why? By the way, this is very useful! Someone please make notes and compile them for all of his videos and post them up! This would save a lot of time watching videos. For example, the first 15 mins of the video can be summarised as follows: Strengths of Tradition: 1. Better for growth and hence science 2. Centralised production means you can build more Wonders, faster 3. Large population means your cities can have more specialists Problems of Tradition: 1. Low early to mid-game production 2. Difficult to expand beyond 4 cities 3. Lower faith generation (to a lesser extent)

I just had this RIDICULOUS Liberty game as Spain recently. Got a an Early Uluru city and got tithe(cause gold hurts as liberty) and mosque and pagodas. And then i just rolled. Snowballed so hard discovered 3 wonders. And then just dominated, By modern era i had 100 extra happiness on 15 cities with Commerce Rationalism(one from done) And a full Autocracy Ideology filled in. And then i just picked up tradition because I could. Most pop in game before tradition. Man oh man. Was a fun game.

I can't get all this info on my head so I'll just pick tradition ok :p

filthy - great videos! some of the best I have ever seen for any game. question: I watched a Persian game of yours (game 352?) and you seem to mention Tradition is no longer viable? has there been an update to your stance since this video?

So, as a general conclusion: Tradition is the standard approach. While Liberty shines when you have tons of free land with fresh luxuries available, while it very heavily depends upon religion and faith, to offset its intrinsic disadvantages. (As are culture, gold, science) It has an advantage in military production over Tradition (at the cost of civil production) that is direly needed to conquer cities for further aggressive expansion , and to earn the lacking gold. Early tributing City States is not only easier with Liberty, but it becomes generally even a must.

Is that no quitters group still active on steam playing Civ 5?

So confused why the alias is filthy... this was a very clean discussion about liberty vs. tradition.

This guy has PHD in civ 5

Hi, FR, For me, this is a great guide, as I don't mind theory at all. I've played maybe just enough, solo, and a tiny bit multi-player, to have examples in mind. But theer is one little thing that everyone assumes that everyone else already knows. From the way you talk about internal trade routes, that extra food or extra hammers being brought back to a city by its caravan must not actually be subtracted from the other city's food or hammers. I think you're saying that a mother city can build a caravan, transfer it to a growing daughter city, and the tdaughter city can route it back to the mother city for a free growth boost (at only the cost of building the caravan and not using it for gold and maybe science). If that's not true, if a growth boost foer a newer city only comes at the expense of a donor city, then I don't know how internal caravans help. For me, the game doesn't spell that out absolutely,.

Play Liberty if you really enjoy hard-building buildings Tradition got for free, giving up a bunch of happiness and gold based on the city you'll try and grow as large as possible, building tons of roads you can't afford to get happiness you're desperate for, and needing to buy tiles with your nonexistent gold that the Tradition player just grew to for free. Don't forget that you'll need a lot of luxury resources in a situation where your lands were bad and probably didn't have a lot of resources. But that one free settler and worker really starts you off, and the 1 hammer/city is definitely one of the bonuses. Liberty has its place but man, I'm always sad to be in a position where Liberty will actually be better than Tradition because I know the game will be defined by (A) micromanaging more cities and (B) needing to aggressively expand into somewhere else and then (C) playing hard catch-up against someone who just got to sail into a smooth Tradition game.

tl;tr: There are no friendly Liberty neighbors in Civ5. They always covet your lands.

what a bomb of knowledge. absolutely god tier

I have a limited programming background, only in classroom work and study, so I didn't get RNG right away, and had to Google it with Civ 5. Your advice about the chance factor involved with a Liberty player trying to get a religion made more sense after that, without a mysterious acronym popping up and flicking me in the ear. :)

Stingy question: what happens to existing "normal" aqueducts in cities when that policy is adopted? Are the free 'ducts just bumped or queued to later cities? Are they dropped in as instant replacements? Or do you lose out entirely on the free maintenance if you don't delete existing ones?

What is your opinion on dipping into liberty just for the early production boost and free settler (and production bonus for settlers) and then finishing tradition when playing as Poland? I realize that this isn't a viable strategy on most civs since you delay the tradition finisher and give up all your points on filler policies before starting rationalism, but Poland gets 2 free social policies before the renaissance, so it would only delay the tradition finisher for a bit. Is the early boost in production and the earlier expanding worth it?

sometimes I do open honor first but then switch to either tradition or liberty. The idea is that given the fact that there are lots of barbarians around, it'll help you clear them out without spending early turns building many units AND that by killing a few barbarian units you actually get back the amount of culture you spent on it (and alot more actually) pretty quickly.

Hype!

Shoutout to the stream

@FilthyRobot: There are another source of faith generation without those that you have mentioned - It's the belief named "Devine inspiration: + 2 faith per cultural wonder". Hence one wonder is equal one temple in term of faith gen.

"Man is not intended to see through the eyes of another, hear through another’s ears nor comprehend with another’s brain. Each human creature has individual endowment, power and responsibility in the creative p lan of God. Therefore, depend upon your own reason and judgment and adhere to the outcome of your own investigation; otherwise, you will be utterly submerged in the sea of ignorance and deprived of all the bounties of God." ~ Baha'i Faith

I know this comment is coming years later, but i did always find that picking Liberty always felt like you were strangling yourself or bottlenecking production just for the arbitrary benefit of being able to covet and expand to very specific locations in the early game. The only reason i would feel the need to take Liberty is if i felt pressured to compete for numerous, obviously key city locations, but i'd feel suffocated by that upfront investment because i'm behind on key growth/culture buildings for rushing settlers, i'm not floating happiness anymore, i'm not floating culture, i'm not floating money as i need to spam workers. You just immediately stagnate.

*picks liberty* *picks autocracy to build prora*

Actually if you pick piety you can get a reformation belief that allow you to purchace all great people out there including engineers and scientists in the industrial era

I often grab both Liberty and Tradition for the extra culture so I don't have too buy tiles. Then I hit honor early to get extra culture from killing barbs. This allows me to grab both Liberty and Tradition. -But Im not playing on Immortal with aggressive humans.

Let me make a comment about specialists. I don't fully agree with the conventional idea that tradition is better for specialists than Liberty. Tradition only increases food output in the capital. It does increase growth via the aqueducts and growth bonus finisher, but in terms of actual food output, only the capital receives extra food. Having more cities allows you to build more specialist buildings and thus more specialists and great people. For example, I have played Venice several times on both Tradition and Liberty, and while I did prefer to use Tradition with them, on my Liberty files (where I had ~12 cities) I was producing MoV's almost every other turn. In terms of generating great people, having more cities (provided that they have enough food to sustain specialists) is going to net you more specialists and great people.