Are the Persians viable?

Talking about their UA mainly. Sounds an awful lot like shooting yourself in the foot. Warmongering means low happiness. Low happiness means less golden ages. Less gold ages, less UA procs.

So if you make use of your UA by going ham in those 12 turns, your next one will be seriously delayed.

Or is the point of this UA to help you turtle hard if you go cultural?

Warmongering doesn't cause low happiness so much as more cities cause low happiness. You don't get the unhappiness unless your war efforts are successful, and your GA help that. You can get virtually perpetual GA's post-industrial if you find a way to faith purchase artists, and/or you build/capture Chichen Itza. Also there are SP and tenets which give and lengthen GA's, which benefit Persia more than other civs.

Yes, Persia is very viable to play. In fact AI Persia is on of the better ones out there if you're not at a really high difficulty level giving very high happiness handicaps to the AIs.

One of the things to remember is that when you are in the middle of the GA, the counter stops increasing. That actually makes being in GA the perfect time to conquer. After the war ends, you build some more happiness structures to complete shortly after the GA does. Sometimes the AI builds junk cities, being in a GA during that temporary unhappiness while razing it down is the perfect time as well.

In addition, if you are in the middle of a GA and a Great Artist comes born, you can extend it.

(Warning: If you've NOT gotten the achievement for five GAs yet and want to get it in that game that GA induced does NOT count and in fact the only ones that do are happiness ones. In addition, while if not seeking the achievement, Chicken Itza is a very good wonder, its counter productive to this achievement.)

As an alternative, you can also play them peaceful, if so you won't really use your UA, but your UB will still be nice.

Persia is extremely underrated. They are top tier. I dare say they are close to Arabia.

From the BNW Deity Tier list thread over in Strategy & Tips:

Soffacet said:

Persia is a beastly domination civ.

Persia’s UA + UB approximately replicates Universal Suffrage from the Freedom Ideology. This means that Persia can access one of the most important aspects of Freedom (50+ turn GA from timed natural GA and stockpiled Artists) without actually adopting Freedom. The main bummer with the usual 50+ GA strat is that you can’t easily combine the absurd income with a cost efficiency policy since those are from other Ideologies. But obviously, Persia does not face this problem. Ideally you will use the ~permanent GA and Mobilization (Autocracy) to purchase hordes of units in a city where you have stacked Barracks/Armory/Base/BGate/HEpic, not to mention Total War, Clauswitz, and +10%/+1 movement because Persia. Combine with (rail)road to the front line for best results.

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59saintdane said:

I actually feel like Persia should be higher rated. They probably have one of the best UAs in the game: Not only do they get to enjoy the economic, production and cultural bonuses of a GA for 50% longer, they're also much more effective at combat. Their units cover more ground, they have better mobility for tactical maneuvers, and they're also respectably stronger in combat. Immortals are also a great UU; +10HP healed per turn is HUGE, especially if they have March, and the promotion stays upon upgrade as well. Persian Immortals or Pikemen or even Lancers in a GA can be quite deadly against any foe.
There's also the "Forever Golden" strategy to give an essentially limitless Golden Age if you build Chichen Itza, the Taj Mahal, take Representation and use Great Artists, all one after the other, providing a good way to clear what's left of the world late game. For more info see http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=437142.
I forgot to mention Satrap's Court, while not the most powerful of the Uniques, it gives a bit of gold plus a nice happiness boost, meaning you can build this instead of a Colosseum or Zoo and benefit considerably more.

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I'd asked about Persia because I didn't really understand why they were so highly rated. Those are the answers I got.

Most of your golden ages should be from Great Artists. So warmongering shouldn't affect the UA.

Their UB also synergizes well with the UA, allowing to get GAs even quicker than normal. If you build Chichen Itza, your GAs will be a whole 20 turns each.
Immortals can soak damage like no other; add to that your +10% strength from a golden age and you can tank for quite a while while your ranged units whittle down the city health. They're even better on defense, healing +30 HP per turn, making Persia difficult to conquer in the early game. Sadly they'll become Lancers, though even then you can use them as tanks, especially since they can run around pillaging stuff.
+1 movement lets you do a lot of things: it lets you cover ground faster, giving your enemies less time to prepare; it lets your wounded Immortals escape the city range, even in rough terrain; it lets your siege units move, set up, and fire, all in one turn; it lets your ranged units move on to a hill and fire, etc.
All of Persia's uniques are good. Yes, warmongering generally leads to more unhappiness, as do all strategies that result in a wide empire, but that can be largely offset by building happiness buildings as well as Satrap's court, by razing useless cities especially in a GA, by happiness-giving policies (both Liberty and Honor have a +1 happy per city policy, nearly offsetting the per-city happiness penalty).

If you keep your immortals survived you can upgrade them to better units and keep the healing bonus.. to pikes and then lancers or choppers..

Why you need to warmonger? In my experience on large maps Persia are good for very wide setup. With many cities you get a lot of resources and it doesn't hurt if you delay Civil Service and protect your cities with Immortals. Later on your experienced immortals are just fortified near cities in forts and it is impossible to take them out and thus your cities are defended. And you save your GA for big wars - +1 move is just insane advantage - you can destroy big army of enemy very fast. Then you build trading posts, sell strategic resources and purchase influence to mercantile city states which is more than enough to solve happiness problems with amout of resources you got from your expansion.

Who underrates Persia? The AI always does well with them. When they get their GAs going, they have a license to print money.

Vajrajina said:

Warmongering means low happiness. Low happiness means less golden ages. Less gold ages, less UA procs.

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Raze everything, and/or stockpile Artists and chain them after a natural GA to conduct one large campaign to end the game.

So...Freedom or Autocracy for Persia? Freedom gives longer GA, but Autocracy has Clauswitz Legacy, which goes with 50-turn GA very well.

Autocracy gives insane happiness. Citizens in an Autocracy that actually go for happiness think it's heaven in their civ. You can pop natural GA's like mad.

In my, admittedly limited, experience with Persia in BNW, you really need to get those great works out, so saving up too many artists isn't a real option, and if you save up too many they'll sink your economy anyway.

Their tanks are also hilarious with lightning warfare in a GA, if the game goes on that long, and you shouldn't need longer golden ages. After all, you have 50% longer ones from two sources (since if you missed your one key wonder as Persia, you took the city it was in, I hope), and your military doesn't get any more help from Freedom, outside of some GA help.

I think it's much better to send your military into overdrive.

I have seen someone, somewhat recently, claiming that the Zulu are insanely strong because they get more moves per turn, and moves per turn is perhaps the single biggest advantage you can give a warmonger. Persia gets the same kind of advantage, and if they can build their units faster, send their armored units halfway around the world, and get 10 extra happiness per city on top of it all, that's a huge edge over everyone that took Freedom or Order in your game.

Rooftrellen said:

Autocracy gives insane happiness. Citizens in an Autocracy that actually go for happiness think it's heaven in their civ. You can pop natural GA's like mad.

In my, admittedly limited, experience with Persia in BNW, you really need to get those great works out, so saving up too many artists isn't a real option, and if you save up too many they'll sink your economy anyway.

Their tanks are also hilarious with lightning warfare in a GA, if the game goes on that long, and you shouldn't need longer golden ages. After all, you have 50% longer ones from two sources (since if you missed your one key wonder as Persia, you took the city it was in, I hope), and your military doesn't get any more help from Freedom, outside of some GA help.

I think it's much better to send your military into overdrive.

I have seen someone, somewhat recently, claiming that the Zulu are insanely strong because they get more moves per turn, and moves per turn is perhaps the single biggest advantage you can give a warmonger. Persia gets the same kind of advantage, and if they can build their units faster, send their armored units halfway around the world, and get 10 extra happiness per city on top of it all, that's a huge edge over everyone that took Freedom or Order in your game.

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I agree with autocracy. The 25% great person generation that comes with order and freedom as well as longer golden ages of freedom is overkill. You will be getting enough golden ages already and its not necessary to get more. And if you are doing conquest well you will most likely have conquered chichen itza. And you probably only need a maximum of 3 golden ages to clear the map, which is easily obtainable from normal GA generation. The synergy of the UA, lightning warfare and Clausewitz legacy is terrifying. Persian tanks are ridiculous.

Rooftrellen said:

In my, admittedly limited, experience with Persia in BNW, you really need to get those great works out, so saving up too many artists isn't a real option, and if you save up too many they'll sink your economy anyway.

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While I agree with Autocracy for the reasons you and Vitruvius listed, I don't know what you're talking about here. Persia (and warmongers in general) doesn't need great works since they can just capture them. No matter how short you make the gaps between natural GAs, it can't be as good as a permanent GA. Artist maintenance while you prepare is negligible.

Also, using Artists for gold ages gives more culture than the great work, unless we're talking very early game. You can fill your work of art/artifact slots with Acrheologists (using your high hammer cities during peacetime once they've already built everything useful and you don't want a bigger military right now). And even if you couldn't, you need high culture more than Tourism if you go warmongerish to protect you from Tourism civs who go nuts about Tourism and would otherwise give you massive unhappiness, thanks to culture+ideology influence.

The same reason why I use writers for political treatise. 2 culture per turn (maybe comes out 5-6 with Hermitage and other stuff) vs. 3-4k immediately. I choose the latter, thank you very much.

Of course, if you wanna get a cultural victory than you use them all for great works of art, but we're not talking about that, are we?

What kind of culture output did you have to get 3-4k culture from a writer bulb?

It might fly under the radar, but out of all the perks that Persia has, the silly little +1 to movement is insanely good. It sounds so meager, but I'm telling you, it changes the whole way you fight.

And don't forget that +1 movement affects EVERY UNIT. Even workers! That means a worker can walk through a forest and another tile! Same goes for Settlers. Being able to get to new city locations faster, though that is quite rare of an event anyway.

Vajrajina said:

You can fill your work of art/artifact slots with Acrheologists

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Hermitage needs three pieces of art for theming bonus. Artifacts are fine for museums (and other GW slots).

The same reason why I use writers for political treatise. 2 culture per turn (maybe comes out 5-6 with Hermitage and other stuff) vs. 3-4k immediately. I choose the latter, thank you very much.

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I think that is a mistake. First two GW should go to Oxford for theming bonus. That is 4 cpt before bonuses, and it runs for most of your game. Early treatise are few hundred culture, not thousands!

Of course, if you wanna get a cultural victory than you use them all for great works of art, but we're not talking about that, are we?

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I am not convinced that CV goal really changes the GW slot / bulbing equation. For CV, one is aiming for Louvre, but that is only two more GA needed for theming bonus. Even for CV, I think most Great Writers and Artists are better being bulbed.