Piety+Patronage opener

Idea is, you start with piety, get religion, continue with patronage opener and consulates, and convert as many city states as possible to get their permanent friendship bonuses.

Essentially you need only 4 policies: Piety opener, Organized religion, Pantronage Opener and Consulates. Then you can go into some other tree or just finish off piety.

Beliefs you'd more likely to take are instant happiness ones: Asceticism (+1/shrine) or Religious Centers (+2/temple) or Peace Gardens (+2/garden), to compensate for the lack of liberty/tradition happiness and save more faith for missionaries. The best Enhancer belief here is obviously Religious Unity (double pressure on friendly CS) to keep your CS friends in your faith.

I think this strategy can be useful when there are both a little room for Liberty and little food for Tradition bonuses to apply. And of course you need some city states nearby.

What do you think?

I like the idea of combining religious bonuses with alliance bonuses, but the problem is that doing this on higher difficulty levels requires an almost exclusive focus, so you're looking at DiploV or possibly SV only. And since you won't get the Tradition growth bonuses, it will mean a slow finish, so you have to use even more resources to keep those links alive.

I can see this being a really good strategy for Siam or Indonesia for a decent DiploV, but like all Piety strategies it's dependent on having a strong faith pantheon, and even then, there are games on Deity when all 5 religions are gone by T45.

consentient said:

And since you won't get the Tradition growth bonuses, it will mean a slow finish, so you have to use even more resources to keep those links alive.

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Won't free food from maritime CS compensate for the abscence of the Tradition's bonus?

Tradition bonus is +10% growth and +2 food in the capital, and then further 15% in all cities once you complete tradition. This is no where close to be able to complete with the 4 tradition strat. This looks interesting for Siam though.

Plus you can get the bonus from a maritime CS on top of tradition. Securing an early friendship is not that hard, and you don't need patronage

Is it viable on Deity?

claudiupb said:

Plus you can get the bonus from a maritime CS on top of tradition. Securing an early friendship is not that hard, and you don't need patronage

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here you dont depend on quests/gold and can make as many friends as there are city states on the map. well if they arent agressively converted by other players; anyways you are in a stronger position because of Religious Unity.

i agree tradition is the king but i think it wont be always better
especially if you are not coastal. if you send 3 food caravans to your capital you get a surplus of 12 on average (more if you work farms or less if you work hills/specialists), 25% of that is 3 food, plus 2 food from Landed Elite = 5 food. Imagine you've made 2 maritime friends, this gives you 4, plus they occasionally become allies as you win quests and give more. and remain allied for longer because of 40 base influence and religion+patronage modifiers to the speed of decrease. So it seems 2 maritime CS is enough to compensate for tradition food bonus if you arent in a food-rich location and isnt coastal.
And you get not only food but other stuff from different CS - culture, units, happiness, faith.

I don't understand how Piety helps -- unless you get Papal Primacy and have a good plan for keeping the CS converted.

I am currently trying this with France DCL. It is going pretty well. So, yes it works at Deity. You need both Consulates and Papal Primacy for free friendship status. Then you need to convert the CS and keep them converted.

Keeping the CS converted has always been the stumbling block for me when I have tried this before -- but look up the Underground Sect thread -- spies are doing it for me.

But still, this is only half the battle since for DiploV you need lots of allies and friendship status does not matter.

beetle said:

I don't understand how Piety helps -- unless you get Papal Primacy and have a good plan for keeping the CS converted.

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piety and organized religion are needed to get you religion and grand temple asap so you'd have a head start in converting. getting to CSs before your rivals helps alot. And you will start receiving those bonuses much earlier ofc..

beetle said:

But still, this is only half the battle since for DiploV you need lots of allies and friendship status does not matter.

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it is not ideal for DV maybe
but it helps alot. at first you have a 40 points higher base (or at least 20 if the CS follows a different religion). and secondly your influence drops 50% slower because of religion and patronage modifiers (25+25).

I agree that zero-maintenance friendship status with CS is useful for any VC. The difficulty I am having is that one needs 2 policies in Patronage and 3 in Piety (since you need a strong edge to convert and keep CS). And as you observe, you need those Piety policies early for the most leverage.

Definitely slower than either standard tradition-rationalism or standard liberty-rationalism.

In addition, appears slower than the Sacred Sites gambit.

As to weather or not you could still win on Deity with this, that depends on what your normal turn of victory on Deity is under standard tactics.

Should still be doable on deity unless AI somehow pulls out a sub 300 win which isn't that common tbh. All it requires is a solid culture output which you'll get by getting all the culture CS. I would still suggest you start with Liberty until you get the settler to start it faster tho. Opening Piety is questionable at best.

killmeplease said:

Idea is, you start with piety, get religion, continue with patronage opener and consulates, and convert as many city states as possible to get their permanent friendship bonuses.

Essentially you need only 4 policies: Piety opener, Organized religion, Pantronage Opener and Consulates. Then you can go into some other tree or just finish off piety.

Beliefs you'd more likely to take are instant happiness ones: Asceticism (+1/shrine) or Religious Centers (+2/temple) or Peace Gardens (+2/garden), to compensate for the lack of liberty/tradition happiness and save more faith for missionaries. The best Enhancer belief here is obviously Religious Unity (double pressure on friendly CS) to keep your CS friends in your faith.

I think this strategy can be useful when there are both a little room for Liberty and little food for Tradition bonuses to apply. And of course you need some city states nearby.

What do you think?

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I was thinking that the religious center beliefs and the other beliefs that have happiness from gardens and the temple seem like a primitive type of autocracy where you get very little culture and social policies but get a lot more happiness instead. Besides, with piety you get to build temples faster.

joncnunn said:

As to weather or not you could still win on Deity with this, that depends on what your normal turn of victory on Deity is under standard tactics.

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I am quite content with longer-terms-to-victory, but I cannot make it work. I have not tried a Liberty-Piety hybrid since figuring out Underground Sects though.

killmeplease said:

I think this strategy can be useful when there are both a little room for Liberty and little food for Tradition bonuses to apply.

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I'm glad you put it like this. I was on a map earlier that was like this and was kind of lost on how to proceed.