Various religious gambits

Abraxis

Joined
Nov 17, 2008
Messages
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Location
Ottawa, Canada
As many of you probably know, getting a religion on 22/civ immortal+ maps can be a bit of a challenge. While the obvious answer would be to pick Maya or Etheopia, I'm interested in hearing people's experiences trying out the not-so obvious ones. Secondary or tertiary benefits to a civ's abilities, start bias based indirect advantages, all the stuff that isn't immediately obvious while looking at a civ.

Things like,

Shoshone: Stagnate capital working a double production tile immediately, pump out pathfinders. Grow through goody huts when necessary. The goal being to grab a religious bonus from huts when you can to get one of the pantheons which yield piety from worked tiles. Failing that, use the bonus production you can afford from not having to work food tiles to get Stonehenge before anyone else.

Arabia: Desert start bias + Desert Folklore + they seem to start near religious CS pretty often.

Spain: Start bias near a natural wonder, which seems to have a good chance of being +piety (from my limited experience anyways).

Now, I don't have much experience opening religious focussed games so my exmples are a bit light, but you get the idea. Shoshone being pretty well the only one I've tried to make work (sucessfully, several times on Immortal/22civ).
So does anyone have any other opening strategies for making religion work for non-standard religious civs in the higher populated/difficult games?


P.S. Bonus points to whomever explains how to get one as Byzantium on immortal+/22civ :king:
 
Morocco can be good for religion due to the desert start bias allowing for desert folklore
 
Byzantium are bit thought tho, but I've noticed that in lot of my games I get stone\marble as Byzantium, so +2 from quarry is must... any +faith pantheon is good for Byzantium, and once you get religion, you can pick another pantheon that gives +faith to quickly blast to Enhanced religion. ... let's say you have got 2 stones and a Marble, along with 2 gold. You pick up +2 from quarries to get your religion, then once you get religion, pick up +1f\+1c from Gold\Silver as bonus to quickly advance to enhanced religion.

Egypt and Songhai - you'll need to find pantheon first, and I suggest opening Piety for half the production time of shrines\temples. Quickly discover Philosophy to get temples, and build them fast. They cost no maintenance, so they won't hurt economy and you can build them in multiple cities.
Both civs have really good unique temples tho, with Egypt giving extra happiness, while Songhai gives extra culture. Askia's +2 culture from temple are good, because you can pick up bonus pantheon from other civ (Piety policy, can't remember the name!) and hopefully it will give you some extra faith generation.

as for the rest of the civs, it's based on little luck, depending on terrain and how many religious civs are in the game.

Yeah, Spain is awesome if there''s NW around, since it's automatic +8 faith with OWN pantheon... and if it's +faith wonder, it can go up to +20 faith. Happen to me once, I had enhanced religion by turn 15-20.
 
If, playing as any civ, you discover Mt.Sinai near you, rush a settler and plop a city by it. Manually select it to be worked, even if all of your citizens are starving, and wait for the pantheon. From what I've seen, Sinai only spawns in deserts, so Desert Folklore would be a safe choice to skyrocket you into a religion.
 
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