danaphanous
religious fanatic
- Joined
- Sep 6, 2013
- Messages
- 1,501
Update:
My byzantine game has gone well! I spread my neighbor's religion a bit as an experiment and it's been very helpful to keep it in my production-poor southern cities to buy the science buildings even after I finished building pagodas and cathedrals there. I settled to a final size of 13 cities but expansion plans were definitely slowed by all the early DOWs from my neighbors. In fact maybe 5 of those cities are conquests so it's been slower going with many unhappiness issues from occupation. I've finished courthouses in all now though and the empire is strong with a solid 150 gpt now and all growing rapidly. I bought maybe 25 religious buildings in total by the end and it's kept me happy and up to date on tenets due to the extra culture. I'm definitely a bit behind on science compared to a normal game as I did not have the happiness to keep growing and had to stop midgame a few times. but I'm easily on parity with the AI and will definitely win at this rate. I love the challenge of wide games compared to small despite the fact that the developers have made it so much more difficult. Maybe that's why I like it, small feels easy in comparison now.
The world is descending into communism as the huge world size and many islands have provoked the AI and me to go wide. Average empire sizes are 10+ cities so I'm not alone in my dreams of expansion and a few neighbors are spamming them everywhere (Carthage and France are the worst and have bigger empires then me) However, the space has kept conflict from escalating too far. A notable counterexample is Venice who ticked everyone off with buying city states and is now being destroyed by France and Spain after he foolishly tried to steal my valuable mercantile allies. (I sicced them on him with bribes and he's already lost his capital)
Korea decided on freedom and has just finished denouncing nearly the entire world as a result. Unfortunately the fool did this a few turns after we became friends and my allies have been telling me they dissapprove of this relationship. I'm breaking it off as soon as I can and then will unite the world against him and have some fun. My ranged upgrade boats have been itching for more combat and will soon be battleships.
If I'd picked sacred sites I would've been almost winning by now as the AI have been slow on the culture front, but I won my past 2 games culturally so I've made it out of the question. My only winning options are war or science this game.
I will note, the only benefit I got from Byzantines this game was their 2 UU's which dominated in early coastal wars and the Cataphracts are nice tanks! The UA ended up worthless to me since it only partially made up for missing the best religious beliefs. It might have been better if I'd chosen a different strategy but I now agree with Beetle that the +2 culture from temples was a weak pick. Not necessarily for the same reasons, but because it needs a temple and 5 followers to activate and on my wide game where I kept some of my cities my neighbor's religion it had less of an effect than I'd hoped. Same with the happy from temples belief but in the 7 cities where I kept my religion it worked nicely, and now that I'm flipping my cities back to my religion it works even better. In the future, I think I've learned picking another enhancer or founder would be better as those are less city-specific. Ceremonial Burial is growing on me though it is a shame it was nerfed in BNW to 1 for every 2 cities. why??? The reason being I've learned about local vs. global happiness and the local cap. Ceremonial Burial is a global happiness addition and applies to all your cities. Thus it is great for combating the global penalties like #cities that local happiness cannot overcome. I was watching the stats this game and that founding penalty is the main problem with going wide as you can't get enough unique luxes to keep the ball rolling otherwise.
My byzantine game has gone well! I spread my neighbor's religion a bit as an experiment and it's been very helpful to keep it in my production-poor southern cities to buy the science buildings even after I finished building pagodas and cathedrals there. I settled to a final size of 13 cities but expansion plans were definitely slowed by all the early DOWs from my neighbors. In fact maybe 5 of those cities are conquests so it's been slower going with many unhappiness issues from occupation. I've finished courthouses in all now though and the empire is strong with a solid 150 gpt now and all growing rapidly. I bought maybe 25 religious buildings in total by the end and it's kept me happy and up to date on tenets due to the extra culture. I'm definitely a bit behind on science compared to a normal game as I did not have the happiness to keep growing and had to stop midgame a few times. but I'm easily on parity with the AI and will definitely win at this rate. I love the challenge of wide games compared to small despite the fact that the developers have made it so much more difficult. Maybe that's why I like it, small feels easy in comparison now.
The world is descending into communism as the huge world size and many islands have provoked the AI and me to go wide. Average empire sizes are 10+ cities so I'm not alone in my dreams of expansion and a few neighbors are spamming them everywhere (Carthage and France are the worst and have bigger empires then me) However, the space has kept conflict from escalating too far. A notable counterexample is Venice who ticked everyone off with buying city states and is now being destroyed by France and Spain after he foolishly tried to steal my valuable mercantile allies. (I sicced them on him with bribes and he's already lost his capital)
Korea decided on freedom and has just finished denouncing nearly the entire world as a result. Unfortunately the fool did this a few turns after we became friends and my allies have been telling me they dissapprove of this relationship. I'm breaking it off as soon as I can and then will unite the world against him and have some fun. My ranged upgrade boats have been itching for more combat and will soon be battleships.
If I'd picked sacred sites I would've been almost winning by now as the AI have been slow on the culture front, but I won my past 2 games culturally so I've made it out of the question. My only winning options are war or science this game.
I will note, the only benefit I got from Byzantines this game was their 2 UU's which dominated in early coastal wars and the Cataphracts are nice tanks! The UA ended up worthless to me since it only partially made up for missing the best religious beliefs. It might have been better if I'd chosen a different strategy but I now agree with Beetle that the +2 culture from temples was a weak pick. Not necessarily for the same reasons, but because it needs a temple and 5 followers to activate and on my wide game where I kept some of my cities my neighbor's religion it had less of an effect than I'd hoped. Same with the happy from temples belief but in the 7 cities where I kept my religion it worked nicely, and now that I'm flipping my cities back to my religion it works even better. In the future, I think I've learned picking another enhancer or founder would be better as those are less city-specific. Ceremonial Burial is growing on me though it is a shame it was nerfed in BNW to 1 for every 2 cities. why??? The reason being I've learned about local vs. global happiness and the local cap. Ceremonial Burial is a global happiness addition and applies to all your cities. Thus it is great for combating the global penalties like #cities that local happiness cannot overcome. I was watching the stats this game and that founding penalty is the main problem with going wide as you can't get enough unique luxes to keep the ball rolling otherwise.
