Just went from vanilla to BNW--completely overwhelmed

Culture victories are complicated, I don't understand how to use religion, gold is scarce, it feels like the early game is much slower. CiV doesn't seem to offer practical tutorials either...

Can you explain some things to me like I'm five, please? (or help me find a helpful source)

1. When is it important to focus on faith? What are its benefits?
2. When should I first get a caravan going? Asap or after other important buildings?
3. How do you win a diplomatic victory now? Is globalization now not needed? Is it still best to play as a science victory to a certain point?
4. What are some good starter civs for diplo and culture victories?

Thanks!

For religion, check out the religion articles in the War Academy (not yet updated for BNW, but should still be useful): http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=481906

On caravans (and cargo ships), practice varies, and depends on difficulty level, but the gold yields from caravans are miniscule in the early game, so using a caravan to ship food from city #2 to your capital (after city #2 has a granary) is a common technique (allows a citizen in the capital to work an extra lux tile, which will allow the capital to keep growing and generate about as much gold as an early caravan). At higher levels, the flow of science from the AI to your civ along a trade route is worth, um, its weight in gold.

Globalization is not required for a diplo victory, but the extra delegates help. Diplo victory comes from being elected World Leader. The Civilopedia text is pretty useful on that: http://www.dndjunkie.com/civilopedia/RESOLUTION_DIPLOMATIC_VICTORY.aspx

As in vanilla (and G&K), every BNW victory condition requires that you prioritize science for the first half to 2/3 of the game.

I will leave starter civs to others -- really any civ can work for diplo or culture (even the Mongols and Huns!).

I don't know about culture, but Venice and Greece are extremely good to win a diplo victory.

Reicta said:

Culture victories are complicated, I don't understand how to use religion, gold is scarce, it feels like the early game is much slower. CiV doesn't seem to offer practical tutorials either...

Can you explain some things to me like I'm five, please? (or help me find a helpful source)

1. When is it important to focus on faith? What are its benefits?
2. When should I first get a caravan going? Asap or after other important buildings?
3. How do you win a diplomatic victory now? Is globalization now not needed? Is it still best to play as a science victory to a certain point?
4. What are some good starter civs for diplo and culture victories?

Thanks!

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Well, Civilopedia is a helpful source, other people's let's plays, as well strategy guides on this site as well. Now on questions:

1.) Having your own religion is always a good thing since it can help you in many areas. At least it is good to get a Pantheon quickly, so you can start getting bonuses from some things in your starting location. So, in a way religion is very good it can help you even in your victory condition in a long run. So it is good to get pottery tech and after that build a shrine so you can get your pantheon up and running. The problem is there is no specific time when you should focus on faith, you simply try to get as much faith as you can all the time, and yes Stonehenge is Not a necessity to getting your religion. Late game faith can be used to purchase Great People, so having a nice faith output through the whole game is a good thing.
2.) Caravan is not an ASAP unit. Once you research Animal Husbandry and Sailing you can have 2 trade routes. I usually build my first caravan when I found my second city to send food to the new-found city. Early on external trade routes are more useful, they give you that early game gold buff, as well as science. Once your economy stabilizes and you have a tech lead, it is better to shift to internal trade routes and provide your cities with food and production, making you even stronger.
3.) To get a voting on the World Leader, at least half of civs must reach Atomic Era or 1 Civ must reach the Information Era. Then every 10 turns (on Standard game speed) there is a voting for World Leader, then you just use your delegates to vote (for yourself obviously), there is just as before the certain amount of votes you must get to win diplo victory, and as before the more city states you have the more delegates you will get as well, so you still need a lot of city-state allies. Of course it is good to have Globalization because it has a nice bonus. Prior to BNW Food and Science were very important. In BNW they are the MOST important thing now, because having a tech lead allows you to pretty much win every victory condition.
4.) For diplo, well... probably: Alexander, Ramkhamhaeng, Gustavus, Maria I.
For culture: Ahmed al-Mansur (not the best one), Casimir III, Gajah Mada, Napoleon, Gustavus, Montezuma (much more for domination), Theodora (if you take culture focused beliefs), Pedro II (the best one), Ramesses II, Oda (has some nice early bonuses).
but just as Browd said every civ can do it pretty much.

Everyone has pretty much covered the strategy aspect of your post. The jump from Vanilla to BNW is pretty hefty, but is well worth it. Culture Victory and Diplo Victory can be pretty easily attainable with any civilization, but there are a few that are tailor made for it in my opinion.

Culture:
Brazil - the start bias is a bit production poor and it takes a bit to get set up, but if you can get some production benefits from Religion, you should be good to go

France - they get a bit more difficult on higher difficulties because you can't get as many wonders, but you can get theming bonuses in 2 National Wonders and I find that it's pretty easy to get the Louvre on Immortal.

Others: Polynesia's Moai and Japan's fishing boats will eventually generate tourism and Byzantium can get 3 religious buildings and sacred sites.

Diplomacy:
Greece - for obvious reasons. City States stay friendly longer and I use my UUs to build up early influence by killing Barbs/camps

Germany - the new Hanse encourages trade with City States, so combining it with Freedom makes allying all of them easy.

Sweden - you can give those extra GPs to City States for some easy influence

Siam - while they don't get a direct boost to City State influence, their ability definitely encourages it

Others: Venice gets mentioned a lot, but you have to make sure you're not eating up all the City States and using your MoV for influence/gold. Portugal is decent because of extra cash, plus the Fetoria gets you extra lucre from them

As for beginner civilizations: Poland is number 1. Their ability is flexible and let's you pursue a lot of different strategies. Babylon is great for getting a science boost (by planting your academy), so it allows you to move around the tech tree a bit more and experiment. Greece and Egypt are pretty straightforward, so they're easy to play.

I find religion to be an all or nothing deal. Get that shrine up ASAP and pray for some good CS, ruin, and natural wonders finds with your scout. Celts and Ethiopia are great for getting the first religion and getting those building beliefs. My fastest culture win was as Ethiopia. I grabbed a few liberty polices and then went straight for reformation. With Pagodas and Mosques giving me tourism (thanks to Sacred Sites reformation belief) I was generating lots of tourism.

Of course that was map dependant and only on King difficulty. If I didn't have the room to spread out as wide, I probably would have been better off going Tradition.

Here are some of my tips:

• As Browd mentioned, early trade routes don't generate much gold so it's best to send food. Try and settle on the coast as cargo ships send more food than caravans.
• When you trade with a civ the bonus to tourism is applied to both civs.
• Never give open borders to a civ that is generating tourism.
• Never neglect tourism/culture even if you plan on another path to victory as when you pick your ideology you might find unpleasant results.
• There are now only 3 culture buildings that have specialists assigned and those are the artists/writers/musicians guild(s), and you can only build 1 of each.

Thanks for all of the tips everyone.

I jumped into BNW headfirst trying out the Mayans, Austria, Netherlands, and more, but something always felt so off early on that I restarted. Am I correct in saying early game is slower than before?

Currently playing as Venice on King and it's going pretty well. I've got peaceable neighbors and I'm growing big with one puppeted CS. I'm thinking the cash will start to flow once I get cargo ships trading across the ocean.

Probably going for a diplomatic victory with Venice, but I may try Siam too (although I'm worried about his UA now that gold seems harder to get early on).

Reicta said:

Thanks for all of the tips everyone.

I jumped into BNW headfirst trying out the Mayans, Austria, Netherlands, and more, but something always felt so off early on that I restarted. Am I correct in saying early game is slower than before?

Currently playing as Venice on King and it's going pretty well. I've got peaceable neighbors and I'm growing big with one puppeted CS. I'm thinking the cash will start to flow once I get cargo ships trading across the ocean.

Probably going for a diplomatic victory with Venice, but I may try Siam too (although I'm worried about his UA now that gold seems harder to get early on).

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The early game is generally a bit more peaceful since people won't have as much money to amass large armies. Early trade routes won't provide a ton of gold (it is based on how many strategic/luxury tiles are improved around the cities, plus the city's GPT). The early game is a lot more focused on religion and empire building, so I'm not sure if that's what you mean by "slower."

The City State quests should be enough to get you friendly/ally status with a few City States with little to no gold invested, so that shouldn't be an issue. They've moved away from is strictly being a contest of "who can throw the most money at them" (though in the later game, that still exists). Come mid-game, you should have a decent GPT, especially as Venice with all your extra trade routes.


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Well I just completed my first BNW game as Venice on King, diplo victory.

It was pretty easy once I hit mid-game. I ended with every CS allied, nearly 30k gold, almost 700gpt. I eclipsed the world leader vote with my 38 delegates.

All in all, it was fairly boring, but Venice is definitely powerful. I understand trade routes much better now, but religion is still confusing...Gandhi overtook my holy city with his religion, and I couldn't figure out how to get rid of it once it was the majority religion. I stole a Great Prophet but it eradicated *my* religion while keeping Gandhi's. Inquisitor the way to go?

Regarding early trade routes with other civs instead of internal ones - sure, they might not give a huge amount of gold, but they give something far more important: science. It's not uncommon to be getting 4-6 science off of a single trade route when your cities are providing, maybe, 15 total. Though, admittedly, it's not nearly that good on lower difficulties.

Regarding great prophets:

- Great prophets wipe out all the competing religion from a city while pouring in a large douse of their own pressure, converting that city's major religion to said GP's one. It can do so even against holy cities, but holy cities' religious pressure can never be completely wiped off. However it'll take possibly centuries to accumulate enough pressure back to its original one unless you create a GP, missionary, or inquisitor to converte/purge it back. Which brings up...

- Any gp/missionary/inquisitor created will retain their religious abiliy of the city it's created in. So a gp created from a Catholic city can only spread Catholicism and will remove every other religious effect, whether that gp is in control by the founder of Catholicism or is captured by rival religion owners. Which brings up..

- Take BIG care when you're going to purge infidels with inquisitors or spread religions with missionaries/gp! Lots of people have purged their own religion because they used a inquisitor purchased from a city which was converted to a rival one. Your case is the same. Move your cursor over a religious unit's banner to check which religion it's working for. Finally...

- To prevent ai from spreading religion into your cities, just park a inquisitor in or adjecent to a city and missionaries/gp can't perform such actions on said city.

HeresiarchQin said:

- Any gp/missionary/inquisitor created will retain their religious abiliy of the city it's created in. So a gp created from a Catholic city can only spread Catholicism and will remove every other religious effect, whether that gp is in control of the founder of Catholicism or is captured by rival religion owners

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Only partly accurate. True for missionaries and inquisitors. For Great Prophets, they always have the religion of the civ that spawns it -- the majority religion of the city in which it is spawned is irrelevant. This fact is critical to restoring your religion if an AI GP zaps your holy city before you've spread your religion to any of your other cities.

I am shocked to see advice to always vote for yourself as world leader

most of my games, I will misdirect. there is a point in every game where the embargo's start to get personal, very personal. I have found I prefer to have a leader who shares my ideology and who I have a diplomat in their capital, and I vote them in to make the tough decisions. it seems almost immediately any attention the top civ's had on me, turns directly to their new most hated civ, the new world leader who I now control with puppet strings

if you take control, and buy trade for votes, other civs REALLY hate you. I went from having a friendship with about 9 positives showing including some pretty big things, and I voted down their proposal like any other time, but I traded for votes first, doing that made them not only stop being my friend, but denounce me immediately.

Civilmyzation said:

I am shocked to see advice to always vote for yourself as world leader

most of my games, I will misdirect. there is a point in every game where the embargo's start to get personal, very personal. I have found I prefer to have a leader who shares my ideology and who I have a diplomat in their capital, and I vote them in to make the tough decisions. it seems almost immediately any attention the top civ's had on me, turns directly to their new most hated civ, the new world leader who I now control with puppet strings

if you take control, and buy trade for votes, other civs REALLY hate you. I went from having a friendship with about 9 positives showing including some pretty big things, and I voted down their proposal like any other time, but I traded for votes first, doing that made them not only stop being my friend, but denounce me immediately.

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I guess this varies a whole lot according to play styles and the sort of relationships you work on with the AI Civs.

In 75% of my games I'm the second Host and to the end of the game usually, if I miss the first session, and though I propose some unpopular measures at times and nearly all games (nearly for all sessions when I play Venice and swim in gold) I buy several votes from the AI for my proposals, or against the second one, this has never landed me in serious trouble (the worst was one denouncement). I have yet to be embargoed in any game (one way to almost beg for an embargo is to send all your TR to CS while warmongering. You end up with no one supporting Nay, and if you don't deflect the votes on the second proposal (by buying them), you're doomed. AIs with one or two of your TR really need to hate you badly to vote Yea to embargo you. It's the same with luxuries - the AI targets the human mostly when you've allied all the CS and thus left them no source of that luxury. One way to torpedo a ban is to give or sell the luxury to the civ(s) with the most votes. Once they have the lux, they'll assign all their delegates to prevent the ban, even if they proposed it in the first place.

It's true enough being Host can be tricky, but when I have nothing important to pass, I simply propose one of the few neutral proposals (the one for Natural Wonders cause no grief, so do World Fair and Games. Proposing World Ideology cause no grief if you beeline to Radio and no one else has an ideology yet. You then buy the Yea votes for the tech leaders likely to pick an ideology before the vote, and you're set.

Reicta said:

I stole a Great Prophet but it eradicated *my* religion while keeping Gandhi's. Inquisitor the way to go?

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That's your problem right there. Captured Great Prophets, Inquisitors, or Missionaries retain their religion. If you capture a GP and it's not of the religion you want, just plant him.