Deity SP - capturing AI's Great Prophets?

Athenaeum · Feb 10, 2016

I hardly ever play SP. However I have played Deity SP a few times and am aware that the AI tends to spam religious units including missionaries and Great Prophets.

I found the Great Prophets part to be an extremely exploitable mechanism with which you can create holy sites, or gift the Prophets to City-States.

As such, do any of you Deity SP players try to go Piety often in order to boost output from holy sites, or play Sweden to gift these Prophets to City-States?

Athenaeum · Feb 10, 2016

To clarify, I know that filling out Piety (being a secondary tree) is especially hard to do on Deity SP, and is very sub-optimal (unless you're Poland) but I guess if you were Poland, would you think about going Piety and spamming Holy Sites with the AI's prophets?

fyar · Feb 10, 2016

Most of the time, by the time you get their prophet, they've already spread religion at least once, and so you can't build a holy site with it.

Before, I would just disband those prophets immediately. But one strategy I've started to use recently is to use them to stem the tide of other religions encroaching upon me. Let's say that Askia has converted all the city-states near me to Islam, and I'm worried that all the pressure from those cities will convert mine to Islam, when I want them practicing my own religion. Now let's say I happen to capture an Ethiopian prophet for Orthodoxy, but I can't build a holy site. Then instead of wasting it, I'll convert some of those city-states to Orthodoxy, reducing the religious pressure for Islam. Sure, now I'll have some religious pressure for Orthodoxy, but +12 pressure for Islam and +12 pressure for Orthodoxy is better than +24 pressure for Islam.

Mr. Shadows · Feb 10, 2016

fyar said:
Most of the time, by the time you get their prophet, they've already spread religion at least once, and so you can't build a holy site with it.

Before, I would just disband those prophets immediately. But one strategy I've started to use recently is to use them to stem the tide of other religions encroaching upon me. Let's say that Askia has converted all the city-states near me to Islam, and I'm worried that all the pressure from those cities will convert mine to Islam, when I want them practicing my own religion. Now let's say I happen to capture an Ethiopian prophet for Orthodoxy, but I can't build a holy site. Then instead of wasting it, I'll convert some of those city-states to Orthodoxy, reducing the religious pressure for Islam. Sure, now I'll have some religious pressure for Orthodoxy, but +12 pressure for Islam and +12 pressure for Orthodoxy is better than +24 pressure for Islam.

Thanks for this. I've been trying to get better at using the religion mechanics lately and this is a lot better than just deleting them.

Athenaeum · Feb 10, 2016

fyar said:
Most of the time, by the time you get their prophet, they've already spread religion at least once, and so you can't build a holy site with it.

Before, I would just disband those prophets immediately. But one strategy I've started to use recently is to use them to stem the tide of other religions encroaching upon me. Let's say that Askia has converted all the city-states near me to Islam, and I'm worried that all the pressure from those cities will convert mine to Islam, when I want them practicing my own religion. Now let's say I happen to capture an Ethiopian prophet for Orthodoxy, but I can't build a holy site. Then instead of wasting it, I'll convert some of those city-states to Orthodoxy, reducing the religious pressure for Islam. Sure, now I'll have some religious pressure for Orthodoxy, but +12 pressure for Islam and +12 pressure for Orthodoxy is better than +24 pressure for Islam.

That's an interesting strategy you have there. But have you ever thought about playing Sweden and gifting all those prophets to City-States?

Also can you think of some creative way to make use of captured missionaries? Those are even more common than Prophets but I can't think of what to do with them besides explore (which they are poor at doing due to 1 sight).

shaglio · Feb 10, 2016

Athenaeum said:
That's an interesting strategy you have there. But have you ever thought about playing Sweden and gifting all those prophets to City-States?

Also can you think of some creative way to make use of captured missionaries? Those are even more common than Prophets but I can't think of what to do with them besides explore (which they are poor at doing due to 1 sight).

While they are poor due to their 1 sight, they don't require open borders - although they will eventually die of attrition. Prophets, on the other hand, don't have that problem.

ShakaKhan · Feb 10, 2016

Other uses of both captured prophets and missionaries:

1.) awesome but completely luck-based: if you capture any civilian unit (settler, worker, missionary, non-virgin prophet) from civilization B that they captured from civilization C, you can return that unit (which may be worthless to you anyway) to civilization C for a nice diplomatic boost.

2.) lackluster but always an option: keep the units with your carpet and use them to bait units into range of your ranged units, or bait them to come out of cities. Note that you're paying maintenance on them the whole time, but if it gets an artillery out of a capital, it may be worth it. Also note that you have to keep religious units out of closed borders since they'll die of attrition,

fyar · Feb 11, 2016

@Mr. Shadows, you're welcome!

@Athenaeum, of course if you're Sweden then you should gift the prophet instead. But that's not really a general strategy.

@shaglio, yes, using captured missionaries / prophets for reconnaissance is another way to make use of them. I don't usually find attrition to be a problem, because with 4 movement, I can usually find a way to sneak in, get the information I need, then get back out of their territory.

Deity SP - capturing AI's Great Prophets?

Athenaeum

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Athenaeum

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fyar

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Mr. Shadows

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Athenaeum

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shaglio

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ShakaKhan

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fyar

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