It probably depends on how good your culture game have been thus far. Do you need the 3-4 extra policies or not?
You do not have to grow the cities that much for freedom to be worthwhile. Stagnating around 18 pop should be good for 16 specialists + 2 food tiles. With the extra food you can work 3 more specialists while the extra hammers give you more research/gold.
I played science games on immortal and deity. That makes you less focused on early wonders (unless conquered) and more on trading gold and tech discounts/steals.
As for liberty/tradition Poland you should go for early medieval through Civil Service. With the two free policies and the extra culture per city and faster cities tradition should be done by then which is when you really start to grow anyway.
Doing it this way gives you the benefits front loaded. Production of settlers is a major bottleneck early in the game for tradition (less so with Shoshone =) ), a 250ish hammer discount during turns 25-50 is a wonder or an army or some serious economic tempo.
You do not have to grow the cities that much for freedom to be worthwhile. Stagnating around 18 pop should be good for 16 specialists + 2 food tiles. With the extra food you can work 3 more specialists while the extra hammers give you more research/gold.
I played science games on immortal and deity. That makes you less focused on early wonders (unless conquered) and more on trading gold and tech discounts/steals.
As for liberty/tradition Poland you should go for early medieval through Civil Service. With the two free policies and the extra culture per city and faster cities tradition should be done by then which is when you really start to grow anyway.
Doing it this way gives you the benefits front loaded. Production of settlers is a major bottleneck early in the game for tradition (less so with Shoshone =) ), a 250ish hammer discount during turns 25-50 is a wonder or an army or some serious economic tempo.
My singleplayer balance mod of BTS: https://dl.dropbox.com/s/3u6g4b2nfa74qhm...%20mod.odt?