Suggestions for Piety start?

You don't go "small" with tradition, you go "tall". Small is when you have little cities and little pop compared to Liberty's "wide" and Tradition's "tall".

And nobody is saying that it's better than tradition, only that it works differently. otoh, adwcta, the one who proposed it have supposedly registered a sub250 victory with this strategy, so it's not really THAT bad. People just need to divorce themselves from their comfort zone a bit.

Erneiz Hyde said:

You don't go "small" with tradition, you go "tall".

Click to expand...

Please correct me if I have this wrong, but my understanding is that the "small" in Small Piety is about just a few cities, expanding away from AI, and generally staying away from AI. These are things the Tradition player can do. Cities having a low population is a side effect, not a feature. How is your observation above relevant to this thread?

And nobody is saying that it's better than tradition, only that it works differently. otoh, adwcta, the one who proposed it have supposedly registered a sub250 victory with this strategy, so it's not really THAT bad. People just need to divorce themselves from their comfort zone a bit.

Click to expand...

OP, Bruin, myself are okay with Piety being different and sub-optimal. And I think I speak for OP, Bruin, when I ask for examples of something, anything really, where Piety is competitive. How about gold generation? Does Piety have a leg up on Tradition when it comes to money?

Small Piety also keeps your *pop* small early, certainly until both Aqueducts are built and Civil Service arrives (which is typically sub-optimal for Tradition). You stay (or can stay) in Classical and Medieval a long time to keep getting cheap Missionaries and Rel Bldgs. You focus on gold and production tiles, rather than the standard Tradition farm spam. You do, at some point, go into a hyper-growth phase, but you have survived the early game with no/fewer enemies. Typically I race to forward settle all the river/lux spots, but here you just don't even have to care much, as long as you can milk your rel beliefs.

If you haven't done it, read the whole (very long) first entry and play a game with it. It is very silly how "poorly" you seem to be playing, and that's OK. It added another dimension to my Civ experience, for sure. I enjoy not having to be obsessed with growth/science early. I missed a DV in the DCL 21 India game by 5 turns to Assyria's SV (after he took over half the world) using the strat (although I didn't use a faith pantheon, I took a culture one). Other than the typical early DOW by Shaka, I was best buddies with him, Khan, and Assryria most of the game, in large part due to religion/Piety and the diplo game outlined in the guide.

I suck at forward calculating gold issues in Civ, but I can't help but believe that the 25% gpt in each city with Theocracy, added to freely working more gold tiles, added to much stronger religion spread with various policies/reformation/enhancer esp with Tithe in the mix isn't at least fairly competitive with Monarchy and the big benefits of large city city connections under the typical Tradition tall empire. Plus everybody likes you for half the game, so your TRs aren't being plundered, you get better trades, any wars bring AI TRs your way, and you develop at least one (probably two) nearby super allies by not being a threat and sharing religion.

Certainly you can use many of the guides features in a Tall Tradition game (or Liberty), and I haven't used it enough to better measure it to my typical Tradition SV path. But then again, I am never obsessed with tech or NC benchmarks or fast finishing times. So the strat sort of fits my derp-dee-doo playstyle. I would much rather play an enjoyable Immortal game with many options than a grueling Deity game any day.

I watched a Let's Play recently where Dushku (?) did a culture victory without any building any wonders. He had a ridiculously good start; I know that was a lot of it. But the part that interested me was finishing Piety (after Liberty or Tradition) and instead of spreading his religion he planted all the great prophets for gold, culture, and faith. "To the Glory of God" for the reformation belief, and then spammed all kinds of great people with the faith.

On a recent GOTM where we were supposed to use Piety, I did the same thing with the great prophets and it was incredible -- so much gold!

I'll be using the Piety tree more often. But I don't think I'll run with it right from the beginning w/o also opening Tradition, Liberty, or Honor. Otherwise if you're not careful you can get to the reformation before you found a religion, and I don't know what that does. (if you take reformation as the last policy, you can found a religion with the free prophet)

Piety is complete craaaaaaaap. Its only good for Sacred Sites and is only good on 1 in 20 maps, and on Immortal at the highest. Only 1 time did I do it on Deity and it was by a very small margination.

hiawafer said:

Piety is complete craaaaaaaap. Its only good for Sacred Sites and is only good on 1 in 20 maps, and on Immortal at the highest. Only 1 time did I do it on Deity and it was by a very small margination.

Click to expand...

Have you seen how much a holy site yields with full Piety? 3 gold, 3 culture, 6 faith, plus whatever the tiles base yield was. Really awesome if you can plant one on horses, sheep, or cattle and you have a stable.

Or use one to immediately improve that workable jungle coal tile that just showed up so you can build your factories 14 turns earlier.

The only time I will use the GP to create a religion is if I will be the only civ with a religion on the continent. Otherwise, I will plant all my GPs on tiles and I will sometimes complete the piety tree (even without a religion), which will generate a large amount of gold and faith, both of which are very helpful near the end of the game.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

zxcvbob said:

Have you seen how much a holy site yields with full Piety? 3 gold, 3 culture, 6 faith, plus whatever the tiles base yield was. Really awesome if you can plant one on horses, sheep, or cattle and you have a stable.

Or use one to immediately improve that workable jungle coal tile that just showed up so you can build your factories 14 turns earlier.

Click to expand...

The 'opportunity cost' for having nice Holy Sites is greater than the benefit. Instead of moving alosly wthrough the piety tree, you could and have used many policies to greater effect. Take a game with a nice Tradition start, and compare the different choices by reloading at a certain point and trying for the faster victory.

Option 1 - 'standard' - Finish Tradition ASAP for snow ball gorwth, take some in Patronage, then Rationalism, Freedom, few from Commerce, maybe Exploration if you want Louvre.

Option 2 - 'early Piety mix' - After Legalism go into Piety and go towards Reformation. THen finish Tradition, with late0game polices same as 1.

Option 3 - Open with Piety and miss all the beneftis of Tradition for a fast Reformation

I would bet a lot that on average, Option 1 has a result of finishing 30-60 turns earlier than either of the others.

NomadMan284 said:

The only time I will use the GP to create a religion is if I will be the only civ with a religion on the continent. Otherwise, I will plant all my GPs on tiles and I will sometimes complete the piety tree (even without a religion), which will generate a large amount of gold and faith, both of which are very helpful near the end of the game.

Click to expand...

I never thought of that. Or found a religion to lock-in your pantheon if it's a good one, but don't bother enhancing it. You can build a grand temple that way.

I've been taking Religious Texts for my enhancer lately, and using cargo ships to convert CS and irreligious AI cities. (with or without Piety) I leave the religious civs alone and hope they do the same to me. Never need to waste faith on a missionary that way.

zxcvbob said:

I never thought of that. Or found a religion to lock-in your pantheon if it's a good one, but don't bother enhancing it. You can build a grand temple that way.



I've been taking Religious Texts for my enhancer lately, and using cargo ships to convert CS and irreligious AI cities. (with or without Piety) I leave the religious civs alone and hope they do the same to me. Never need to waste faith on a missionary that way.

Click to expand...

I will usually get a pantheon and I will choose one that will benefit me in the early game. Your idea of using only one GP to found a religion to get the Grand Temple may not be the best. Yes, it will allow you to keep your pantheon and get 8 more faith, but if you plant the GP instead, you will get 6 faith, 3 culture (when all 5 piety policies are complete), plus there are other policies and world Congress tenets that can add 4 more faith for that GP. Also, if you do found a religion you have to defend it by purchasing inquisitors with faith, losing even more if your faith. I have also found that most times the religion you wind up with will have great benefits and you didn't have work for it. I've had my cities change religion so many times I've been able to purchase every single faith building, granting huge amounts of faith.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

And 3 gold, times whatever multipliers you have in the city. I'll have to try that sometime and see how it works. It's certainly not intuitive.

ETA: wait a minute, you go full Piety and then forfeit the reformation belief? No Jesuits, no To Glory of God, and no Heathen Conversion?

hiawafer said:

The 'opportunity cost' for having nice Holy Sites is greater than the benefit. Instead of moving alosly wthrough the piety tree, you could and have used many policies to greater effect. Take a game with a nice Tradition start, and compare the different choices by reloading at a certain point and trying for the faster victory.

Option 1 - 'standard' - Finish Tradition ASAP for snow ball gorwth, take some in Patronage, then Rationalism, Freedom, few from Commerce, maybe Exploration if you want Louvre.

Option 2 - 'early Piety mix' - After Legalism go into Piety and go towards Reformation. THen finish Tradition, with late0game polices same as 1.

Option 3 - Open with Piety and miss all the beneftis of Tradition for a fast Reformation

I would bet a lot that on average, Option 1 has a result of finishing 30-60 turns earlier than either of the others.

Click to expand...

There is another option. Piety in my opinion is best mixed with liberty, since wide empire tends to generate more fpt and can better benefit from piety. You can either mix piety opener before taking free settler from liberty, or just go for free settler then go straight through piety. Of course doing it the latter way might miss founding a religion on deity due to slower fpt at the expense of faster first expo.

Go ethiopia. And go for piety combination with tradition.. In the early game you will not built shrines because youre momument gives faith. So the bonus of building them faster is usefull when you settled youre 3 cities.

YOu will get a fast religion because of ethiopia special momument and faster shrine building.

so plan:

go tradition and get the free momument.
When you settled youre 3 cities and have the national college use piety opener to building faster shrines and temples.
After that finish tradition
then go pick up th extra faith for temples and shrines to get faster enchanched religion.

apocalypse105 said:

Go ethiopia. And go for piety combination with tradition.. In the early game you will not built shrines because youre momument gives faith. So the bonus of building them faster is usefull when you settled youre 3 cities.

YOu will get a fast religion because of ethiopia special momument and faster shrine building.

so plan:

go tradition and get the free momument.
When you settled youre 3 cities and have the national college use piety opener to building faster shrines and temples.
After that finish tradition
then go pick up th extra faith for temples and shrines to get faster enchanched religion.

Click to expand...

I like this strategy. I'll give it a try in my next game. Thanks.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I hate that this seems to be my solution to everything lately but I would say go with the Vox Populi mod and play the modified Tradition tree (I forget what they call it but its in the same location) and then onto the revised Piety tree.

The Piety tree in BNW is truly terrible as an opener and the AI gets religions so fast at higher difficulties that its not worth messing with much. In the Vox mod tho religions are much better balanced and the race for them more interesting.

i think pre-NQ mod i never used this tree, it's too weak

after NQ however

NomadMan284 said:

I like this strategy. I'll give it a try in my next game. Thanks.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Click to expand...

A other good point to go piety is the reformation believe. There are 2 good combos to do :

first combo
You can pick the reformation believe "To the Glory of God" this will allow you to buy every great person with faith so you can spend more culture at rationalisme tree and ingore the ashthetics three Which is not necessairy to win a culture victory. its more important to have a high science to go as fast as possible to national visiter center and the internet then buy massive amount of great musician with your faith.
and start culture bombing youre enemies with concerts. Thats basicly the plan for a culture victory using late game musicians but you have to FAST to internet and national visit center.

second combo
A other usefull combo is choosing the 2 believes :
cathedrals to get the extra great artist slot
pagodas(or mosques) a other faith building buying.

Then pick the reformation believe "Sacred Sites" that gives you 2 tourisme for All buildings purchased with peace Faith. This gives you extra 16 tourisme.

third combo

Reformation believe " the jesuit education"

Going for a science vitory using the jesuit education is a amazing bonus it allows you to buy research labs and public schools is amazing.


My conclusion there are only few civs that should OPEN piety:

-ethiopia like i mentioned before.

-celts if you have a map with LARGE AMOUNTS OF FOREST and you can get 2 faith per turn in each city this will cause you not to built shrines in the early game and focus on libraries and other things As soon as you finish philosophy pick piety and built youre shrines and temples

-egypt and songhai why?
Because They have usefull unique temple buildings but you probably dont want built them because it takes time. and you want to built libraries for national college or other usefull buildings or even units. Especially as egypt its usefull because you can get free faith and happinesss for low hammers. Give it a try.

go tradition and open piety as soon as you finish researching philosopy start building shrines and those unique temples wich will boost youre happiness as egypt and culture as songhai.

These civs should not finish piety or go reformation believe unless they go for a science or culture victory with the 3 combos i just mentioned.

I did not mention maya's why? because they have a unique shrine improvement you want to built as fast as possible. so the extra building time is a waste in my opinion. you only get extra reduction of the temple. As maya's allways go for liberty + tradition combo.

In the thread on "small piety" it says with a 3 city empire and and piety, the other civs will be friendly (as long as you don't missionary-spam the other religious civs) In a game I replayed over and over recently, I had Spain as a neighbor. Whenever I founded a religion (Piety or not, I played it both ways), she was hostile towards me the entire game, constantly denouncing and attacking me. The time I just planted my first prophet and made a holy site and never founded a religion, she eventually converted all my cities (I got to keep my pantheon for a while) and was friendly the whole game. But that's not what I wanted to talk about

I thought up a cheese strategy using Piety that might be fun. I'm not sure which civ to try it with; probably Ethiopia or Inca. Play on the "tilted access" map. Play peacefully the first half of the game. Heathen Conversion for your reformation belief. Send missionaries to the polar regions to recruit a vast army of barbarians, and then invade the temperate area with them for a domination victory. (Ethiopia for strong faith production and the defensive bonuses for the first half of the game. Inca because you might need to settle an outpost city up in the snow and they can thrive there as long as there are hills) The barbarian units can fight each other for a while first to get some promotions and earn you culture.

bob, we tried Tilted Axis and Heathen Conversion in the Immortal Alphabet Game series with Boudicca. Some pretty wacky things happened!

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=563678