Byzantium Sacred Sites Culture Victory Guide (T170 pangaea all standard)

Yes! That's what I call "playing Piety the right way"! Turn 162, Immortal, Byzantium, Standard/Standard, Pangaea, CV. It would have been on 160, but for some unknown reason, my influence started "falling" for one turn with the last civ remaining to be influenced. That pushed it back 2 turns. Does anyone know why this could happen? Maybe they burnt a GW?

Anyway, that was THE most fun and fastest victory I have ever gotten in CiV. I'll try to do it with the Maya now for a crazier result. Poland too, afterwards.

Beliefs : Desert folklore (Pantheon), Initiation Rites (founder), Pagodas, Mosques as Follower and Bonus beliefs. Got Cathedrals as enhancer since Monasteries got taken. Gotten Religious Texts for super-fast spreading, without having to spend faith on Missionaries at all.

I had 13 cities in the end, but one of them was far away (due to me wanting to get to an extra luxury) and never had a religion until the very last turn where I ultimately spat out a missionary to convert it. So, it really didn't give me any Tourism at all. I went Liberty till Free Settler, then Piety till Reformation, finished Piety, and almost finished Liberty (I had NO Cultural CS allies until 20 turns before I won).

One last thing: why didn't my diplomat give me any tourism modifiers when he was in Denmark's (the last remaining civ) capital? We both had embassies with each other. Maybe because I was still in the Medieval for the whole time? If anyone knows, please tell me! (You can see the issue in the screenshots, as well as the victory notification).
 

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One last thing: why didn't my diplomat give me any tourism modifiers when he was in Denmark's (the last remaining civ) capital? We both had embassies with each other. Maybe because I was still in the Medieval for the whole time? If anyone knows, please tell me! (You can see the issue in the screenshots, as well as the victory notification).

The tourism boost from a diplomat is based on having differing ideologies. As an example, you pick Freedom and they pick Order, then the diplomat can be used to (almost) offset the negative modifier you get for differing ideologies.

So staying in medieval and not having an ideology, that is indeed the reason you didn't get a bonus. Still a nice looking game, need to try this strategy myself soon :)
 
Ah, yes. Makes sense now. I'll definitely beat my record with the Mayans one of these days. Sub T150 looks plausible if I have 2 Cultural CS allies and I finish Liberty (musician no.1) and get the 2nd one from the Mayan UA.

Two "gigs" should be enough to cut it.
 
I decided to make this a separate post, since it's about another thing.

To all the people who did this with a Civ other than the Byzantines, how did you get to settle so many cities in so little time? The OP said to go Liberty until Free Settler and then take the whole Piety Tree. Others did it just by going full Piety.

So, are you ignoring Libraries/Trade routes until you have some tourism? Do you build the Oracle? (Since the Pyramids are out of the question if you go Piety). Do you only produce Settlers from your capital or from more cities? Also, what are some representative "milestones" for this strategy? I'd like to see some screenshots of your empire on turn 100, or at least to tell me how many cities you had on turn 50, 75, 100, 125, 150, etc. Thanks in advance!
 
Hi, James. If you're still interested - download my sacred sites game from the HOF.

t. 134 Maya, standard sized continents, king.

You can download 4 saves from different periods, click the link below:

HOF

You can browse the HOF for more SS games, surely there are more than a few.

This one is also interesting, imo: Sweded SS + domination, by Cromagnus, t.132, standard sized inland sea, emperor.

The fastest times will be with free settler --> full piety --> full liberty, most likely. As the OP said. Oracle is very valuable for this strat, much more valuable than pyramids. Stonehenge is great too, if you can snag it.
 
In the Legendary Moriarte we trust! Yeah, about SP trees, I have been experimenting with both going Piety and finishing it first, or Liberty until Free Settler and then Piety and the latter seems to be much more stable in general.

I'll try to open up your saves and Cromagnus' ones and take screenshots of various milestones (most likely T50-75-100, etc.).

As a side question: has anyone done this on Deity? I've only done it on Immortal, but never really tried Deity yet. I assume you don't mind if I post the milestone screenshots here? If yes, I won't. :)

EDIT: Okay, after taking a quick look through your save files, I noticed a few things:

1) You had the Pyramids already on T46. Your capital was at 4 pop, no granary or library in it. You had 3 workers (I assume you hard-built one and you had the Pyramids' two free ones?) Also, what was your Capital's BO? I assume: Scout - Monument - Pyramid - Worker - Settler - The Pyramids?

2) Research wise, in your 2nd save file, I saw that you skipped Sailing (so, just 1 trade route until Civil Service - at least)

3) Policy wise I saw that when going down the Piety Tree, you didn't rush for the Reformation belief, but you rather took Theocracy first. May I ask why that is? I'd always leave this one as the last Policy of the tree.

Thanks in advance!
 
I don't mind, of course.

And yes, glory7 did this on deity, i think you will find screenshots from his shoshone game in this very thread.

1. Well, this was a long while ago, so i don't remember about BO. I'd skip pyramids if i'd do it again. Don't actually need many workers, roads.. Scout - monument - pyramid - (maybe worker) - stonehenge - settlers - oracle - settlers. Throw in few units here and there, rush bought or built. Depending on difficulty level. Stonehenge is really more attractive than the pyramids. Few turns faster religion - faster pagodas - faster reformation belief. Snowballing effect.

2. Yes, science was irrelevant past the Oracle.

3. I did? That was incredibly stupid of me then. :lol:

EDIT: After looking through the thread, glory did deity russia and immortal shoshone. His russian game was handcrafted though - not that it matters much, but doing this on deity is truly hard.
 
1. Well, I'll try going for Stonehenge (I only play Immortal or Deity). It usually goes by T40, which is kinda doable if you have a forest start and get lucky with pop ruins and/or gold ruins, so you can have at least 1 worker super early.

2. I understand.

3. It happens to the best of us, mate. :)

I will take a look at glory7's post (I must have been blind and missed that one), but my guess is: if you wanna do this on Deity, you'd either choose a large map, or if you choose standard, you'd have to delete at least 2-3 Civs and 4-6 CS from the Advanced Settings. Otherwise you simply cannot have 20+ cities to compete with the massive culture that some of the AIs will be generating.

As a side note: what would you do if you saw a runaway culture AI on Deity that you needed something like 100+ Tourism in the Middle Ages in order to overcome its culture? Go Aesthetics and hope for the best? Amass an army and try to Dow + Bribe anyone you can to Dow it? That's the only big "situational" obstacle one has to overcome in this strategy, apart from actually having the space to do it. Thanks again in advance!

PS. I'd kill for a Moriarte Let's Play on Immortal or (preferably) Deity that showcases the strategy!!
 
As a side note: what would you do if you saw a runaway culture AI on Deity that you needed something like 100+ Tourism in the Middle Ages in order to overcome its culture? Go Aesthetics and hope for the best? Amass an army and try to Dow + Bribe anyone you can to Dow it? That's the only big "situational" obstacle one has to overcome in this strategy, apart from actually having the space to do it. Thanks again in advance!

PS. I'd kill for a Moriarte Let's Play on Immortal or (preferably) Deity that showcases the strategy!!

Nah, that would probably involve lots of re-rolling, defying the way i handle let's plays. I am more of a fan of playing what is given to me in a chilled out manner. Maybe you like to do one yourself eventually?

As for the first part, i think it would indeed help to divert everyone's attention from peace and culture to war and suffering. You won't have many choices past renaissance, so, yes, aesthetics would probably be the only option. Maybe, kill some close by culture maniac with xbows at some point. Better with composites really, early on, but that requires a lot of investment, especially on highest level.
 
Hm, maybe I'll try to showcase the strategy when I am back to my shiny desktop and not on this crappy laptop I have at the moment, and still it will require lots of re-rolls. I hate re-rolling, but this strategy is situational, so I agree that you have to do it. But I'd like to see a better player than me doing it. And you definitely are better.

Come to think of it, though, if you're hell-bent on performing one specific strategy, no matter how good, you still might need to re-roll, in order to get the requirements ready. For example, tommynt's "peaceful tradition + liberty hybrid Poland" strategy is also situational, because you still need Poland's ability, non aggressive neighbors in the first 100 turns, probably mountains nearby, etc.

Adapting to the situation, often means "playing what is given to me in a chilled out manner", just like you said. Not trying to force yourself into performing a certain strategy.

Anyway, enough babbling about that.

On to the topic again, I thought of something about social policies. Why do you HAVE to finish Piety before Liberty? I mean, what will Theocracy (which should be your last Piety policy) really give you? At 1-2 pop, a city will only produce either 0 gold, or something like 3-5 gold, if you settle on a gold-based luxury and also work another gold tile. So, you'd only be getting let's say 5 x 1.25 = 6.25 gold instead of 5. That's just 1gpt per city IF you're lucky and have all the gold luxuries there.

Also, about the Piety finisher. How many Holy Sites are you going to have on let's say T120 (after mid-game, for this strategy's standards)? Let's say 1? 2 at best if you get the Hagia Sophia and the "free" one you get from the finisher? That's only 6g/c per turn. Pretty "meh", don't you think?

So, with that said, why not finish Liberty before taking Theocracy, then? Just a thought.
 
That could be viable is some cases. But consider this also: you want liberty finisher not earlier than your tourism is good enough to justify a musician. Then again you can make that decision when there is one policy left to fill in both liberty and piety, so yes, agreed.
 
Very cool strategy. A few questions:
- is oracle worth the trade off agains two extra settlers for land grab?
- is grand temple worth the dent in ICS?
- which founder belief is best? Good ole tithe? Pilgrimage and WC don't sound too good because you shouldn't convert other civs...
- maya for early musician or Ethiopia for earlier reformation?
 
On to the topic again, I thought of something about social policies. Why do you HAVE to finish Piety before Liberty? I mean, what will Theocracy (which should be your last Piety policy) really give you? At 1-2 pop, a city will only produce either 0 gold, or something like 3-5 gold, if you settle on a gold-based luxury and also work another gold tile. So, you'd only be getting let's say 5 x 1.25 = 6.25 gold instead of 5. That's just 1gpt per city IF you're lucky and have all the gold luxuries there.

Also, about the Piety finisher. How many Holy Sites are you going to have on let's say T120 (after mid-game, for this strategy's standards)? Let's say 1? 2 at best if you get the Hagia Sophia and the "free" one you get from the finisher? That's only 6g/c per turn. Pretty "meh", don't you think?

So, with that said, why not finish Liberty before taking Theocracy, then? Just a thought.

I like to finish Piety, sometimes by finishing it you get to enhance your religion faster from the Great Prophet that appears. Which can mean the difference between snagging anohter Faith building or not. Or its hard to beat the +3 gold/+3 culture/+6 Faith from a Holy Site if you didn't need them for that purpose.
 
I'm interested in doing this on MP. I recently played a game with friends as Byzantium and got close with sacred sites cheese, but then all 3 of them DoW'd me and took a few cities. Next time if I go Byzantium or Brazil they will be suspicious D: I was able to pull of a tourism vic against them before as brazil+futurism+great works.

What I'm considering for the next game is probably something like this:

Poland
- Get Liberty Free Settler policy
- Spam cities
- Oracle
- Go for Reformation Belief
- win!

I'd love some input from someone like Moriarte :D You cfc guys know a lot about the game but don't play enough MP games haha.
 
I'm finding that the 3 jumps into Liberty for cheap settlers and the 5 jumps down Piety to Reformation and Sacred Sites is too slow....

At that stage in the game, the capital is geared up to spam settlers anyway and you still can only produce as many settlers as Happiness will allow.

When the Faith engine starts kicking in from faith buildings thats when you need more land and settlers. But you often have a few core city that can do the settlers by then.

In Multi-Player won't people just DoW you when they see what you are doing. Maybe producing military with Faith is an option?
 
Come to think of it, though, if you're hell-bent on performing one specific strategy, no matter how good, you still might need to re-roll, in order to get the requirements ready. For example, tommynt's "peaceful tradition + liberty hybrid Poland" strategy is also situational, because you still need Poland's ability, non aggressive neighbors in the first 100 turns, probably mountains nearby, etc.

This is a bit off topic, but in my past several games, I've found a way that's pretty reliable to avoid war. All I do is find the likely warmonger civ and bribe them to attack someone else. Usually, the amount is simply gpt. This method works reliably all the way through to ideologies. For peaceful play, that early financial hit is worth not having to build and maintain a defense.
 
Amazing, I tried this with Pacal and I've never won so quickly in any game/mode.
Was fun, lacked gold 80% of the game (-20-40gpt) but money wasn't a problem. Converting 42 cities automatically equals 4200gold :)
From tursn ~80-110 Ottomans and America DoW'd me. Both gave one city for peace.
 

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Pretty hilarious. I didn't win as fast as I could have because I messed up my build order early on and greatly delayed myself plus Montezuma took culture from jungle pantheon and ran away, but hey, a win is a win. :p This was on Emperor. It's probably possible on Immortal and near impossible on Deity because the AI luuuvs Piety and SS with Jesuit Education are the first 2 Reformation beliefs that the AI's take. Rushing Piety would also delay expansion, and then expansion itself would not be taken lightly by the AI's. In my game, both Shaka and Ashurbanipal thought I build new cities too aggressively and DoW'ed me.
 
Spoiler :
I tried this with Songhai and had attila and eliz as my neighbour. I was happily spamming cities and when my faith starts kicking in I realized I was "building too aggressively' and was Dow by both of them despite being friends. I was shocked I did not expect a backstab at all. I did not have enough money or luxury to bribe attila due to pumping cities. I was wiped out soon.


GG no re :mad:
 
I tried this with Songhai and had attila and eliz as my neighbour. I was happily spamming cities and when my faith starts kicking in I realized I was "building too aggressively' and was Dow by both of them despite being friends. I was shocked I did not expect a backstab at all. I did not have enough money or luxury to bribe attila due to pumping cities. I was wiped out soon.

GG no re :mad:

Are you referring to the Songhai DCL?

That map is brutal. And yes that "building too aggressively" is perhaps the most punishing penalty to playing wide. Your best bet is to find any choke points and block them off to prevent the AI from being able to surround you.
 
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