Strategy for Persia?

Carl5872

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Does anyone have a suggestion on how to play Persia?

I tried Honor because of the immortals and military bonus in golden ages, but I always felt lagging. What social policies would you all recommend?
 
Liberty, so you can time your assaults with the guaranteed golden age, and use the finisher to get a Great Artist for another golden age.

Peddroelm has a good mini-guide on this forum somewhere.
 
Key things:
- happy faces (natural golden age)
- great artists (proc/extend golden age)
- Chichen Itza (golden age lasts 50% longer)

Liberty for early war. One policy in Liberty will trigger Golden Age (your should have army ready at this point). I prefer to take GE for finisher and if possible rush Chichen Itza.

Liberty for mid/late war: beeline Civil Service, use finisher to get GE and use it to rush buy Chichen Itza.

Tradition for Artilery rush. Save all Great Artists that you will use to trigger and/or extend golden age. Don't plant GAs, bulb them for golden age.

If you can't build Itza, the civ/city that did it is you Primary Target. Take it. You want it. You can feel its power. It gives you focus, makes you stronger. Must have the precious!!!

Happy faces are super important for Persia. Do what you can to get as many happy faces as you can to get as many golden ages.
 
Does anyone have a suggestion on how to play Persia?
What social policies would you all recommend?

Play as you would play with any other civ, so :

for SV, DiploV - tradition, rationalism, freedom or order

for Culture - tradition, aesthetics, secularism, freedom

for DomV - depends on terrain and neighbours
 
Key things:
- happy faces (natural golden age)
- great artists (proc/extend golden age)
- Chichen Itza (golden age lasts 50% longer)

Liberty for early war. One policy in Liberty will trigger Golden Age (your should have army ready at this point). I prefer to take GE for finisher and if possible rush Chichen Itza.

Liberty for mid/late war: beeline Civil Service, use finisher to get GE and use it to rush buy Chichen Itza.

Tradition for Artilery rush. Save all Great Artists that you will use to trigger and/or extend golden age. Don't plant GAs, bulb them for golden age.

If you can't build Itza, the civ/city that did it is you Primary Target. Take it. You want it. You can feel its power. It gives you focus, makes you stronger. Must have the precious!!!

Happy faces are super important for Persia. Do what you can to get as many happy faces as you can to get as many golden ages.

Trying out your advice, and so far its working. Playing a marathon game as persia in the Europe map. They started me where Russia would be geographically, and I went liberty. Got an early pantheon of Earth Mother? (the one where you get faith from the 2 sources of copper I had nearby. Found 2 faith goodie huts and have Zoroastrianism with Tithe and Cathedrals as beliefs.

Used the settler from Liberty to build one city to bridge my capital to Poland. Built an army of archers and immortals and razed one of his cities, kept his capital, and left him with one city (timed the war to coincide with the liberty free golden age). Currently have 2 internal food trade routes, and shrines, monuments, granaries and libraries built in my two original cities. Going to prioritize the national college now.
 
I have a few ideas but I don't know how well they work, because I haven't played much with Persia. Here are the ideas, though.

1. Tradition > Liberty. Yes, Liberty has a guaranteed GA that jives with the timing of the UU, but I don't think you're going to reliably get to Civil Service (or finish liberty) fast enough to get Itza with your liberty GE if you are going wide and warmongering. Maybe I'm wrong about this and I'd love to hear from a better player, but I don't think I could do it.

If you finish Tradition and NC with two or three cities, you might be able to get Itza and you'll certainly be teched up enough to build an army that can take the city that builds it (unless on another continent).

1.b. Immortals are badly timed for the kind of game that will work with the other bonuses, so just use them for defense and CS quests, not being too ambitious.

1.c. Don't attack everyone. Target the player(s) with good wonders and annex their capitol(s). You especially want Notre Dame (and Itza, obviously).

2. Aesthetics has a policy that will give you a ton of culture since you're maximizing happiness, so you probably want that and the +25% artists opener even if you're not going CV.

3. The Order ideology will probably be best, since the AIs lean heavily toward it almost all the time. You want to stay super happy, so shared ideologies are important. However, in that rare game where there's at least a little ideological pressure for Freedom, or you have so much culture it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks, go for Freedom! That +50% to GA in tier two would be amazing.

4. Unlike most civs, you have a military bonus that isn't locked into a particular era. It's a flexible, powerful advantage to be able to time a GA to help knock out whatever AI is threatening to win the game.

It seems to me that Persia has a lot of different little edges. Any one of them by itself is not game changing, but taken as a whole this civ seems stronger than when I first started writing this post. They seem well-suited for a muscular culture victory. I think I've talked myself into playing them next...
 
Also Ive played a few games and have started in the desert quite a bit. Do they have a desert start bias, or is my experience just happenstance?
 
I have a few ideas but I don't know how well they work, because I haven't played much with Persia. Here are the ideas, though.

1. Tradition > Liberty. Yes, Liberty has a guaranteed GA that jives with the timing of the UU, but I don't think you're going to reliably get to Civil Service (or finish liberty) fast enough to get Itza with your liberty GE if you are going wide and warmongering. Maybe I'm wrong about this and I'd love to hear from a better player, but I don't think I could do it.

If you finish Tradition and NC with two or three cities, you might be able to get Itza and you'll certainly be teched up enough to build an army that can take the city that builds it (unless on another continent).

1.b. Immortals are badly timed for the kind of game that will work with the other bonuses, so just use them for defense and CS quests, not being too ambitious.

1.c. Don't attack everyone. Target the player(s) with good wonders and annex their capitol(s). You especially want Notre Dame (and Itza, obviously).

2. Aesthetics has a policy that will give you a ton of culture since you're maximizing happiness, so you probably want that and the +25% artists opener even if you're not going CV.

3. The Order ideology will probably be best, since the AIs lean heavily toward it almost all the time. You want to stay super happy, so shared ideologies are important. However, in that rare game where there's at least a little ideological pressure for Freedom, or you have so much culture it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks, go for Freedom! That +50% to GA in tier two would be amazing.

4. Unlike most civs, you have a military bonus that isn't locked into a particular era. It's a flexible, powerful advantage to be able to time a GA to help knock out whatever AI is threatening to win the game.

It seems to me that Persia has a lot of different little edges. Any one of them by itself is not game changing, but taken as a whole this civ seems stronger than when I first started writing this post. They seem well-suited for a muscular culture victory. I think I've talked myself into playing them next...

You are right on Chitzen Itza! I may just stay in a perpetual golden age for the rest of the game between social policies and great artists!
 
Aesthetics has a policy that will give you a ton of culture since you're maximizing happiness, so you probably want that and the +25% artists opener even if you're not going CV.

That one policy is a bit odd. It gives more motivation for the player to want to be happy -- but does not directly help to be happy! For a CV, you would be picking it up in any case. And more culture means does more opportunity to pick up additional SP and several SP and Tenets do provide happy bonuses.

But does that policy on its own ever pay itself off? Would I not be better off working towards happy policies in Exploration or Commerce instead? Does the Persia UA change the math?

Yes, GAs (and thus happiness) is more important to Persia than other civs. But happiness is important every game. I am skeptical that this Aesthetics policy has utility on its own, outside of unlocking other Aesthetics policies!
 
That one policy is a bit odd. It gives more motivation for the player to want to be happy -- but does not directly help to be happy! For a CV, you would be picking it up in any case. And more culture means does more opportunity to pick up additional SP and several SP and Tenets do provide happy bonuses.

But does that policy on its own ever pay itself off? Would I not be better off working towards happy policies in Exploration or Commerce instead? Does the Persia UA change the math?

Yes, GAs (and thus happiness) is more important to Persia than other civs. But happiness is important every game. I am skeptical that this Aesthetics policy has utility on its own, outside of unlocking other Aesthetics policies!

Im inclined to agree that it doesnt have any utility on its own at least until ideologies when excess happiness comes more easily. but it does synergise well with Civs that usually swim in happiness like India/Brazil.

As far as paying for itself i think that would depend on finish times really.And again Civs that swim in happiness will probably find it paying for itself much sooner. (its not uncommon for me to be rollong around on 25+ happiness early-midgame with civs like india/brazil
 
How do you manage to swim in happiness with Brazil? I don't recall them having any happiness bonus. India is obvious, their UA is a huge boost with tall cities.
 
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