Looting and Plundering

I'm playing a pretty fun domination game as Ethiopia with this setup as my religion:

F: Initiation Rites
f1: Holy Warriors
f2: Religious Community
E: Just War

I wanted to try something different than tithe, for a change. It's pretty awesome that with a missionary or a GP I can grab quick gold, hit my opponent with a 25% debuff, and stick their city with a useless religion. With Great Mosque of Djenne a single missionary can potentially collect 300gp in a few turns. Of course, later on, I can see how this wouldn't be as useful.

As Ethiopia I am staying small and puppeting everything I capture, so faith points come slow. If I allow other civs to convert cities, I'm wondering, will I get another 100gp from Initiation Rites by converting them back?

What I'm looking for is a game where the strategy is to thrive off of using units to leverage large sums of gold, rather than making it through an economy. Great Merchants, Landsknechts, faith-bought units, Gunboat Diplomacy...is such a game viable?

Initiation Rites is only the first time a city converts.

Rather than sustaining entirely on large sums, Honor gold-for-kills is the standard warmonger substitute to strong GPT. Commerce + Autocracy to match, as you implied, is the way to go - a late game Great Merchant gets you five new bombers with air repair and lets you open up a new front instantly.

If you want more of a lump-sum bonus experience, use Songhai. However I don't really like Honor with Songhai (encampment alerts really don't make a big difference in how many you can clear in practice), I've had a lot more success with Liberty -> Commerce -> Autocracy for them.

Faith-bought units are hard to pull off. You'll rarely have fpt that strong without religious buildings, and you can't buy religious buildings without giving up units. The best scenario is to plant one or two prophets to boost your fpt and luck into getting faith unit belief from a neighbor, which has only happened to me once (as Japan with Honor), worked out great though.

Landsknechts do have the capture bonus but I rarely use them that way, as they are still too expensive before Autocracy discount. I tend to spam them late game for Honor garrison bonus or for when I need cannon fodder.

You can make a decent sum of money going around demanding tribute from CS.

I'd actually suggest Pilgrimage over Initiation Rites since the extra FPT is much more valuable for Holy Warriors. You didn't mention Social Policies but you definitely want to dip into Piety to grab Mandate of Heaven. And I'd even suggest going all in as the Evangelism Reformation belief is very good with Just War. Heathen conversion can also be fun.

I had something similar with Songhai. Started with an amazing desert start, at least 4 incense. Somehow managed to get desert folklore(This was on Immortal) and was second to a religion. Instead of picking holy warriors, I picked monasteries, which helped boost my faith by about around 15. When I enhanced I took holy warriors, and with around 60 fpt I spammed mandekalu cavalry and trebuchets, just finished taking denmark and siam out of the game, and Im ready to move in on japan and persia.

I didn't know someone else did this! I thought I was weird Anyhow play as Songhai. Get Mandelku Cavalry & then pillage the hell outta your enemies, then take the cities. The gold you obtain is outrageous.

TheologiaCrucis said:

I'm playing a pretty fun domination game as Ethiopia with this setup as my religion:

F: Initiation Rites
f1: Holy Warriors
f2: Religious Community
E: Just War

I wanted to try something different than tithe, for a change. It's pretty awesome that with a missionary or a GP I can grab quick gold, hit my opponent with a 25% debuff, and stick their city with a useless religion. With Great Mosque of Djenne a single missionary can potentially collect 300gp in a few turns. Of course, later on, I can see how this wouldn't be as useful.

As Ethiopia I am staying small and puppeting everything I capture, so faith points come slow. If I allow other civs to convert cities, I'm wondering, will I get another 100gp from Initiation Rites by converting them back?

What I'm looking for is a game where the strategy is to thrive off of using units to leverage large sums of gold, rather than making it through an economy. Great Merchants, Landsknechts, faith-bought units, Gunboat Diplomacy...is such a game viable?

Click to expand...

No the 100 gold is a one time thing, regardless of if you convert them back. That's why I usually prefer 2 gold per turn. You only need 50 turns to break even. In a 500 turn game, you more than make back your money.