Possible to have a good game starting with honor or piety?

soldier2975 said:

The two infamous starting SP's. Honor and piety are very infamous for being terrible starter SP's because in order for them to work correctly you have to already be well established but they can still be selected from the start of the game.

Has anyone ever had a successful game where they don't start with tradition or liberty but go with piety and honor first? I have tried it but i was behind everyone and never recovered until i reached the medieval era and everyone else was an era ahead of me or just getting out of medieval Even though i recovered i quit because there was no way i could win the game in the position i was in.


So has anyone ever had a good game starting with the SP's?

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Full Piety first can work well with Poland. But you wouldn't want a pantheon that only provided faith (by contrast the ones with culture & faith are good). A major food pantheon would also work if you can also build the Oracle. And going this route, you want to complete full Tradition as your second tree and do so in time to avoid slowing down Rationalism by more than the cost of polices.
If you're not playing Poland though, Piety appears to be a handicap big enough to make it needed to play one difficulty level lower than normal to still win.

Full honor first is best on a Duel size map playing your choice of Zulus, Aztecs, Huns, Assyrians, or Mongols.

Picking honor opener before first tree completed without advancing: That's mostly used when doing achievement hunting that requires knowing about barb camps.

Picking piety opener before first tree completed without advancing: I can't think of a reason to ever do this. Shrines are cheap enough without needing to be half priced and if only after the world wonder that can wait until you finished the tree you were intending to completing first.

Resipsa said:

I run Honor when I get tundra starts with Sweden on deity, you aren't going to have a great capital anyway. The early GG gift to a Culture CS means you can finish a 2 City NC Honor start at around t65-70 and then start making gold per kill. Your archers will have range or logistics much more quickly and you will get alot of gold in the mid game from kills.

Its not better than Liberty Pyramids but it works.

I've never been able to make piety work on Diety. I tried a Celtic Semi-Wide Jesuit Education SV but never finished it. By the time I got labs up I was pretty far behind and just retired from the game.

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I think the most important thing piety gives is the holy sites and therefore terrain tourism for culture victory. I never felt piety is any good for any other victories especially sv because science is the least faith dependent (unless maybe you get glory of god for buying great scientists), but you can use rationalism for that. To maximize planting holy sites, the civ has to be either good at faith generation or the terrain gives alot of faith through pantheon. The only victory on deity i got by only opening piety was a CV as celts. Went sacred sites with 2 religious buildings and spammed some 12 holy sites on capital by taking cheap prophets as enhancer. Took freedom to double holy site output. Beelined airport and won before internet. The side benefit was i was earning so much gold from holy sites i could rush buy all the important buildings and monopolize city states to pass world religion and ideology.

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