How to "reliably" found a religion on Deity without being last?

beetle said:

To me, “reliable” means “less based on luck”.

CS and NW are all luck, so not reliable at all.

Yes, starting dirt is luck based too, but that you can tell from T0. How many turns do you give it before giving up on CS quests or settling a NW? Then what if you had just tried three turns more?

Shrine tech is super early (same as what is needed for granary) and if it is third in your queue will get you a pantheon in probably four out of five random Deity games. So that is reliable. With a faith-based pantheon, you will found late most Deity games. So not good enough for OP, but quite reliable.

The only real risk with a scout-scout-shrine BO is that sometimes an AI enhances before you get a pantheon. I hate that!

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Its the best I could find

But I'll say its as "less based on luck" as T0 desert, not many religious civ rushing peity, etc... lots of "ifs" and lucky rolls.

I'd also like to have a reliable method how to do it, but I think there is none. Founding a religion is like building accient/clasical World Wonder. On higher diff levels it has a lot to do with luck.

Acken said:

That's why the best way to get a religion is play someone that has early faith, get religious CS or get a faith natural wonder.

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I think “best” here means “works okay and has zero opportunity cost”. Scouting, looking for good expo spots, and early CS quests are things you should be doing every game anyway.

Kriogen said:

The most reliable way to found religion are city states or natural wonder.

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If you are following only the “best” strategy, then yes, the only way you will found is via CS or NW. (OP is not interested in playing a civ with early faith UA/UB/UU.)

Kriogen said:

Its the best I could find

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It is objectively the best, just taking religion in those games where it comes free and easy.

But looking for religion to have zero opportunity costs eliminates the majority of games where founding could have been achieved with low opportunity costs.

But I'll say its as "less based on luck" as T0 desert, not many religious civ rushing peity, etc... lots of "ifs" and lucky rolls.

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I will be interested to hear back from OP as too how much he is willing to stack the deck. Later, he says “let's assume worst case scenarios (so huge maps, 2-3 piety AIs)”. I think it is just way too frustrating to mix game objectives like that!

OP are you asking for a reliable way to get early religion (1) without a boosted civ, (2) with the usual piety AIs in the game, and (3) at Deity?

In that case, I agree that CS quests and/or a lucky NW are the only way to pull this off. In that case, I think you should expect quite a bit of frustration! I would guess that you should be prepared to play many, many games to turn 25 or so. Giving up if you do not have a religious CS quest or good NW lined up by then.

Founding a religion is like building accient/clasical World Wonder. On higher diff levels it has a lot to do with luck.

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I disagree with this comparison. Odds of Great Library or Stonehenge is like 1%. Odds of founding (late, with fair dirt and early shrine in BO) is at least 75%.

Strongest faith per turn early game comes from Spain with faith-natural wonder.

Disclaimer: On deity faith is given as is without any warranty...

My default build order for Tradition these days is 4x Scout - Settlers. Lots of Scouts maximize the chances of meeting Religious CS, finding a faith ruin, or locating a faith NW. The 2x Scout - Shrine opener has been tried ad nauseam, and if it was good enough we wouldn't still be seeing these threads. Teching + building the Shrine has huge opportunity costs and usually isn't enough for a fast pantheon on its own.

So what do you do if your Scouts don't find you a free pantheon? In that case, I'll use some gold to get it done. Sometimes I'll buy a Shrine in the capital while the Settler builds, then buy another Shrine ASAP when I plant my early second city. Other times I'll pour money directly into a faith CS. I've found that this is usually enough to get a pantheon, and often a religion.

And remember, you can get gold from meeting CS, finding ruins, pillaging tiles, and plundering Caravans. All things that Scouts can do. Having the money to buy this stuff directly flows from building a lot of Scouts. Thus, building lots of Scouts both gives you the opportunity to get lucky with a free pantheon, and gives you a semi-reliable backup plan in the event that you don't get lucky.

Manpanzee said:

My default build order for Tradition these days is 4x Scout - Settlers.

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That seems very solid. What is your reasoning for passing on the monument in the cap?

It seems to me that scout-scout-monument-scout-scout-settlers would still be better, since you get the 1 cpt sooner and the free amphitheater later.

OTOH, (1) you still get the monument soon enough, (2) the earlier scout might often enough net just as much culture, and (3) pottery can wait.

Bob Morane said:

Not really.
Dance of the Aurora is like DF for Tundra. It's bad because Tundra start is bad but doesn't need an improvement (but your cities won't grow much if you work Tundra)
Tears of the Gods only requires Pearls or Gems. Gems in Jungle are great as they are 232 This can help you a lot. Unimproved Pearls only give you 1 so not that great.
Religious Idols work on unimproved gold/silver. But those never show under jungle in my games so you really won't grow if you work hills, and only give you 1
Goddess of Festival works on unimproved wine/incense. In the rare cases you can get wine on grassland 211 can help you (especially if this culture gets you in Piety or Liberty (for more cities and more shrines)
Finally, Earth Mother gives 1 on Salt, Copper and Iron. With Salt heavy start, and since Salt is sooooo good, it can also be good. You will mine and work that salt ASAP anyway.

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i knew others didnt actually 'require' one but i should have been more specific. as you said tundra starts are bad, so that made Dance of Aurora an easy exclusion. and things like Salt/Copper/Iron are just not plentiful enough to compare favorably and easily with DF. (and yes, salt are just BOSS tiles but still, you need a 5xSalt/Copper start, something really unlikely in random rolls. Iron requires a later tech so doesnt really contribute as much in this exercise unless an early Bronze Working was necessary.) Gems/Pearls are nice but also not as plentiful together as an entire region composed of workable desert tiles. Ive never had a 4-5 Gems/Pearls start before on Deity, at least not 4-5 within the first city's borders to justify fpt. and even the rare 2food wine/incense tiles are not worth it either. they aren't plentiful enough to have a good shot at a t50 religion and seem rather rare in random starts. would have to mess with water levels and/or temperatures to have more, i think.

The desert tile descriptor is why DF is more versatile. If you want to switch off 2food/1faith flood plains to 2hammer/1faith desert hills you dont lose the fpt and now have production improvement. a barb shows up to harass? you can switch to another faith tile than the one he's standing on. its just too versatile and much stronger for actual reliability, imo. But then again, if you random roll a boss salt start it's always worth scouting to find some faith CSs to help. the salt can help in wiggle room. (also OP likes Persia which often has desert-mixed starts.)

anyway, the conclusion was the ability to found the 1st/2nd/3rd religion in a game. those other pantheons are just the ones that help you found period, imo. DF still provides the best opportunities to roughly found in the first 50-60 turns, which is my 'average' Deity experience to get the top 3.

@HR, good insight about why DF being so versatile is so valuable. But I think you are dismissing Earth Mother too quickly. As you say, OP is looking for a T60 religion. How big is your cap going to be at that point? Even if you had 5 salt/copper/iron, you would not have the pop to work them all that early! Plus maybe an expo to pick up one or two. Plus OP likes Persia, so bronze working is a priority for the UU anyway.

For T60 founding, thinking about this more, OP will need faith dirt and to get lucky with CS or ruins. T20 unlocks minor faith hit from ruins. What turn unlocks the bigger faith hit?

I am also curious as to what turn people think OP should reroll the map. I threw out T25 to discover religious CS and have a quest offer in play. Is that giving up too early?

beetle said:

My first suggestion then would be to try the DCL archives. I have not played the Persia (#3) or Byzantium (#6) maps myself, but both are promising for founding, and are listed as being a little easier than average. Liberty is harder than Tradition, and you say you are new to Deity, so a known map should help with both of those.

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#3 has and #6 has

Sclb said:

#3 has ... and #6 has ...

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Are you implying that both are too unusual and too easy? OP looking to found early kind of implies to me that he needs atypical maps, no? Scanning through both those threads, not everyone founded. So much RNG!

beetle said:

@HR, good insight about why DF being so versatile is so valuable. But I think you are dismissing Earth Mother too quickly. As you say, OP is looking for a T60 religion. How big is your cap going to be at that point? Even if you had 5 salt/copper/iron, you would not have the pop to work them all that early! Plus maybe an expo to pick up one or two. Plus OP likes Persia, so bronze working is a priority for the UU anyway.

For T60 founding, thinking about this more, OP will need faith dirt and to get lucky with CS or ruins. T20 unlocks minor faith hit from ruins. What turn unlocks the bigger faith hit?

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thanks. you can have 5-6 pop in time with 1 (maybe 2) pop ruins and Tradition. and depending on what you spend your gold on, a second city out by t40 with a rush buy saves you from growthless turns building settlers. (or you could rushbuy a Granary if didnt want to expand til after t50-60.) still, these favorable conditions require a confluence of luck, whether it be from ruins, CSs, whatever.

also, not sure on when the ruins become better/worse. forgot that stuff since the last time i played pathfinders.

I am also curious as to what turn people think OP should reroll the map. I threw out T25 to discover religious CS and have a quest offer in play. Is that giving up too early?

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i dunno how long it takes some to play those opening rounds. i'd play til it was easy to see potential, maybe 30 turns, but so much is dependent. if 1 religion goes before t40 it's easy to say reroll but depends on how close your are to 200f for a GP. if my neighbors are obnoxious forward settlers or exploration reveals useless CSs or poor expansion terrain (and im not going OCC) then reroll. generally it's about 15-30 minutes for me to know by then. that's based on pc speeds though. early turns process quicker.

For deity, most of us focus on merely getting a religion at all in the games where we plan on religion being a factor, and the order isn't that important. To meet that criteria, I find the magic number is 6 faith per turn by turn 37-38.

If you want one of the first, I think hand-picking your opponents would greatly faciliate playing the game that you want. Obviously ensuring that Boudicca and Haile are out of the game will help, but there's some civs that aren't often associated with religion that frequently get one and early on deity. For example, on deity both Elizabeth and Washington frequently build Stonehenge and get a religion from it. The civs that I PERSONALLY (mileage may vary) don't see getting religions frequently are Greece, Rome, Germany, Denmark, Portugal, Babylon, Zulu, Ottoman, and China. Consequently, making it easier to get the religion may come at the expense of aggressive neighbors.

As far as stonehenge, I say forget it. Easier than Great Library, but there's no way to "reliably" get it on deity, I've seen it go around turn 25. You'd need to steal a worker, preferably two, research pottery->mining->calendar, pre-chop 6 or 7 forests and complete the chops on consecutive turns. Even doing this while working all 1F/2P tiles, it's a gamble that someone else didn't beeline it.

Also as beetle mentioned, there's some uncertainty about what you mean by "reliably." It could mean less based on luck, ruling out religious mountain starts as well as both meeting religious CSs first and/or getting easy quests from them. These are completely luck based and can't be used every game "reliably." It could also mean a universal approach that any civ can perform any game, which rules out my suggestion - tripling up on:

1.) civ (Ethiopia/Celts/Maya)
2.) social policies (hybrid approach of 2-piety and full liberty) and
3.) terrain (obviously lots of desert, but also any where you can monopolize all copies of both applicable resources, such as all wine and incense within 4 cities, etc.)

There's also Uluru. Since it's self-feeding, it's always going to be the first locked tile in your second city (Sinai often waits since other tiles need to feed it, unless you want to stagnate for a LONG time.) I've never had a deity game with Uluru in the second city and missed a religion (have missed with Sri Pada + shrine, though)

Another thing to consider is map-size. Usually bigger = harder, but I've found that since moving from standard sized maps to small maps, it's more difficult to find a religion. There's only four allowed instead of five so the first goes because either Boudicca or Haile is in the game, the second goes from someone who picked Desert Folkore, the third goes from whoever built Stonehenge, leaving just one for me to compete with 2 other civs for. If one of them gets a middle tier faith-generating pantheon (espeically the guy buried in tundra getting DotA) or a religious mountain, you can still miss out.

My default build order for Tradition these days is 4x Scout - Settlers. Lots of Scouts maximize the chances of meeting Religious CS, finding a faith ruin, or locating a faith NW. The 2x Scout - Shrine opener has been tried ad nauseam, and if it was good enough we wouldn't still be seeing these threads. Teching + building the Shrine has huge opportunity costs and usually isn't enough for a fast pantheon on its own.

So what do you do if your Scouts don't find you a free pantheon? In that case, I'll use some gold to get it done. Sometimes I'll buy a Shrine in the capital while the Settler builds, then buy another Shrine ASAP when I plant my early second city. Other times I'll pour money directly into a faith CS. I've found that this is usually enough to get a pantheon, and often a religion.

And remember, you can get gold from meeting CS, finding ruins, pillaging tiles, and plundering Caravans. All things that Scouts can do. Having the money to buy this stuff directly flows from building a lot of Scouts. Thus, building lots of Scouts both gives you the opportunity to get lucky with a free pantheon, and gives you a semi-reliable backup plan in the event that you don't get lucky.

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That's badass. I'll try this opening out for sure. Contrary to what seems to be the preferred option- Scout / Monument / Scout or Scout / Scout / Monument or Scout / Scout / Shrine - I much prefer going with triple scout builds: Scout / Scout / Scout / Shrine for Tradition or Scout / Scout / Monument / Scout for Liberty. I will definitely try out you quadruple Scout build and report back!