Byzantium Sacred Sites Culture Victory Guide (T170 pangaea all standard)

alcaras said:

Having serious gpt issues. Here I am on Turn 86 (Quick), shortly after getting sacred sites.

Also, should I be hitting "Avoid Growth" to keep cities on size 1 and the cap at size 3 (and if so, when do I let them go to 5 for the cap and 3 for the outriggers?)? Or just leave them focused on production, and if they grow, they grow?

..

Also, what happens if you can't find a civ and thus aren't able to influence them with your early Tourism until much later? Is there a nice transition out somehow or are you screwed?

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Well, don't build roads to size 1 cities, that alone makes you lose a lot of gold. Also, play pangaea to be able to contact all civs in a short term.

You can grow your initial cities to size 3/4 if your happiness allows it and your cap to size 5/6 (important for roads). Once you start spamming cities avoid growth in your initial ones. An egiptian city with Tomb, Pagoda and Mosque/Cathedral can grow to size 2 without giving you unhappiness and to size 4 with Colosseum. 5 if you have Meritocracy (Liberty) and it is connected with a road.

The happiness provided by Pagodas, Mosques and Cathedrals, and I'm pretty sure the happiness provided by Burial Tombs, is local city happiness, not global happiness, so it does not offset unhappiness from the city itself (3 unhappy on Standard map).

For unhappiness from the city, you need global happiness, such as that from luxuries (3 unique luxuries can support 4 cities), finding natural wonders (a nice reward for scouting), Meritocracy (comes just as unique luxuries become harder to find), Mercantile city states (a godsend for those playing wide), and happiness from Founder beliefs, like Ceremonial Burial (but not pantheons and follower beliefs -- those are local).

If you've covered unhappiness from the city, then burial tomb, pagoda and mosque/cathedral can support up to 5 population. Colosseum would get you to 7 pop. The Shrine happiness follower belief (Asceticism) could get you to 8.

Hrm, I've been trying this on Quick Emperor or Immortal and after 7-8 cities the nearest AIs inevitably DoW me ("you are settling cities too aggressively") and well, it is bad

I'm using this strategy with Spain and One With Nature Pantheon to maximize the early faith output and rush buing faith buildings. But going for the fastest victory that way is circumstantial as you don't know how many settlable natural wonders you'll find first.

faith ICS power ... Should add BNW tag to thread title ...

On higher diff settings I think you can limit the city spam at some point and transition to domination victory (using monster religion of the ages to backup your conquest spree ..)

Here are screens from my Spain 1v1 emperor cultural game (97 turns), standard pace. I've had no world wonders, no trade routes, no shared religion, no open borders, no great musicians, so a larger map with more opponents would give similar result. Policies are 5 of 6 from Piety, game completed in classical era.

So no three-policies-in-Liberty, just Piety? That makes a lot more sense. Slower to pop out cities, but all you really need are settlers (settle on luxuries for happiness neutrality), shrines, temples, a few defensive archers and a half-way decent faith-giving pantheon, right?

Browd said:

So no three-policies-in-Liberty, just Piety? That makes a lot more sense. Slower to pop out cities, but all you really need are settlers

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Much more easier with Spain AND duel map. But Sidor got a point here. If by any chance you can build/buy your settlers without Liberty you can beat the game even faster.

i have a little bit of input but also some talking about my game because i'm pretty happy about it, hope you guys don't mind (also this post ended up being kinda long probably, sorry)


i just finished a shoshone game using this, emperor and standard size/speed, but i changed a couple of other settings (inland sea map, hot, wet, youngest earth age), start bias disabled.

won on turn 144, but i feel there was room for improvement. i didn't think to get a printscreen but i have the save from the turn before if anyone wants it or whatever

i got lucky with ruins and by that i mean i actually found some, in one of my practice games i didn't get any :O so i ended up getting my best start yet. i got the free settler from liberty on turn 22 lol, and religion "could have" been founded (RNG) on turn 40, when my previous fastest had been with 50 also as shoshone. t100 reformation (should have been t99 but i misplayed and settled a city on like t96 or so which bumped up the cost, oops). finished with +80 tourism per turn


like i said i had practiced the opening a few times, this was probably my 6th or 7th attempt. for this one i decided i would try a new thing which i haven't seen here yet: don't build an early shrine. instead, take a faith ruin on turn 20 or as soon as possible to get the free faith (in my experience i never have enough faith for a pantheon before that point anyway, unless i'm ethiopia or probably maya/celt which i didn't try). luckily i had found one in the corner of the map behind me, so a freshly built pathfinder (i built path - monument - path) was able to get it safely while an existing one camped another ruin somewhere else.

anyway i got that and it gave me a pantheon next turn, and my other one walked into a ruin immediately after... and gave me the "discover a great prophet" ruin! turn 21, pantheon founded and 78 faith towards religion! i had no idea that i could get that immediately after the 20 faith ruin, but i guess it's because they have different names? that combined with the desert folklore and a second city almost immediately after also in desert gave me that early religion i mentioned.


before this game i felt that shoshone was a good option but probably not as good as some of the others (egypt byzantium etc), but seeing this makes me realize they have some crazy potential. they still have the slowest monument (assuming everyone goes scout - monument) which is annoying but as far as i've seen so far the fastest religion, at least of the liberty starters. AND guaranteed culture ruin to make up for monument being delayed a few turns. i mean i guess "anyone can get it" but nobody else is guaranteed

i also considered spain as the person above me said, because you can probably go straight piety and buy a few settlers to make up for not getting reduced price, but it seems super luck based and i always play with start bias disabled so i didn't want to change that on a normal size map, would you be able to get enough cities with spain to buy your faith buildings?

Tabarnak said:

Much more easier with Spain AND duel map. But Sidor got a point here. If by any chance you can build/buy your settlers without Liberty you can beat the game even faster.

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Exactly. With Liberty you are delaying the moment of adopting Sacred sites. And since in the early game other nations have low culture early it is essential to adopt Sacred sites asap to generate at least some tourism right away.

I've discovered 2 faith generating wonders first - Uluru and Mt. Kailash (40 faith per turn with One with Nature from turn 15 ish, 2 rush bought settlers). I've concentrated on producing workers and settlers the whole game, did not go for anything else. So you can see the start was perfect, but of course it's circumstantial (like most Isabellas starts).

Concerning the victory time based on map size. Such a victory time is possible on larger maps, but it's more difficult to get all the starting conditions right. That is - I've discovered the 2 wonders first in settlable reach - this particular factor will be much more difficult to achieve on larger maps, as the wonders are more spread out on larger maps. This would delay my third settler and delay the religion generation (also time for the settler to travel to a further location).
Other factors are - further locations are difficult to defend against more AI's and they want to destroy you since you are expanding rapidly and near them (and this strategy doesn't involve building an army, there is no time for that)
With more CS the AI's might get allied with cultural ones to get some defences against your tourism.
With more AI's chances are you'll get a faith spamming one which will steal the pantheons/beliefs - but in such occasion the strategy won't work anyway.

But the basic tourism vs culture mechanism is exactly the same on larger map.
I was generating 36 tourism per turn against 1 AI which had all the wonders - cultural defense against tourism is in such situation higher, than on larger maps, where the wonders are split among multiple AI's.
I had no open borders (no Civil Service + AI hates you for rapid expansion), no trade routes (no time to establish them), no shared religion. So I got no bonuses for tourism expansion, only raw tourism. With more AI's the rate of cultural conversion would be the same.
The only circumstantial factor in this equasion would be if I haven't met some civs when already generating tourism. But tourism generation starts only with your 5th policy. So there is like 65 - 70 turns to meet everyone and since your opening is scout/scout it is easy to do on a landmass type map.

This is a sad strategy, guys. Hack the game in 100 turns.

Sorry..

Moriarte said:

This is a sad strategy, guys. Hack the game in 100 turns.

Sorry..

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I remember the Hall of Fame entries, where someone got a deity domination victory in 7 turns. Playing 1v1 as Huns, get the starting warrior upgrade from an ancient ruin to battle ram and conquer enemy capitol when it's not defended by any units

Anyway - I never meant for my game to be a "strategy" by any means - it's just an example of what you can do to have fun. A "strategy" requiring to get 2 natural wonders near Spains starting location is not a strategy at all and I'm aware of that.

This is a sad strategy, guys. Hack the game in 100 turns.

Sorry..

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Well we know you like Domination strategies Moriarte but you can win via domination on emperor with the right civ in 100-150 Turns too while abusing the inability of the AI fighting useful with their units...

So this is not the same type of "hack" ?

This is only a peaceful way of winning very fast due to a mechanic which is in my opinion good but not perfect (esp. with these Sacred Sites)
There will be always a cookie cutter strategy...

I have to say I like this one- I hadn't tried the new culture victory out yet so I started up a game, emperor, Pangea, standard, although it didn't really go as planed.

The problem was the Germans decided to wonder spam, whilst taking umbrage to one of my cities, so I ended up being influential with everyone except them, and now there's a widening gap as their culture took off at about t200. This is despite the GM I sent over as the liberty finisher. I was only about 10 turns away from becoming influential with them when they DoWed on t160ish and managed to take an isolated city of mine. Of course, when I sent over my troops that had been guarding another border, the Ottomans also DoWed me. I think the moral of the story is "only anger one AI", so that you can cow them by massing troops near their border- doing that with two is a bit much.

Anyway, the current state of the game is that I'm teching to artillery to deprive the Germans of their capital, after doing so to the Ottomans, but it's become a long, boring slog around t250 so I'm thinking of restarting- I wanted a peaceful game!

Fire0rb said:

Well we know you like Domination strategies Moriarte but you can win via domination on emperor with the right civ in 100-150 Turns too while abusing the inability of the AI fighting useful with their units...

So this is not the same type of "hack" ?

This is only a peaceful way of winning very fast due to a mechanic which is in my opinion good but not perfect (esp. with these Sacred Sites)
There will be always a cookie cutter strategy...

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It doesn't remove the fact that some people used their smarts to figure that out . I get that.

And no, it isn't the same type of hack. You use strategic planning to win in 150 turns on emperor consistently, and it's possible on almost every map - due to multitude of reasons, like: fighting skill, adaptation of build orders, etc.

While here you need strategic map rolling till A meets B and B meets C.

To each his own, I guess.

Moriarte said:

It doesn't remove the fact that some people used their smarts to figure that out . I get that.

And no, it isn't the same type of hack. You use strategic planning to win in 150 turns on emperor consistently, and it's possible on almost every map - due to multitude of reasons, like: fighting skill, adaptation of build orders, etc.

While here you need strategic map rolling till A meets B and B meets C.

To each his own, I guess.

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The only real thing that would require a reroll is if the AI lands Sacred Sites before you do, correct? I mean there are a lot of things that could slow you down a lot but this strategy should be able to win on Emperor or below easily in all other circumstances I think. I did something similar after reading about ICS + Sacred Sites here before this thread popped up, and while it took me quite a bit longer because I didn't play it very optimally it was still basically always a guaranteed win for me.

Nice strategy, Sadato!
Got my first BnW culture victory on t159, emperor. Was my first ICS liberty/piety game also.
Thanks again for a nice write up!

Moriarte said:

This is a sad strategy, guys. Hack the game in 100 turns.

Sorry..

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I believe this mechanic is intentional and I believe the AI tries to pull this on you to a certain extent. when they do. its up to you as a player to BNW them before they complete the cycle. Likewise, as a player, you may opt for this strategy to win a 'first half' victory with a first half civ, in effect defeating the BNW.

i guess it's hard to argue whether it's intentional, but it does seem pretty silly that this is in the game. getting a bunch of faith buildings is a lot easier than a bunch of great people to fill the slots, and for the same amount of tourism.

Magil said:

The only real thing that would require a reroll is if the AI lands Sacred Sites before you do, correct? I mean there are a lot of things that could slow you down a lot but this strategy should be able to win on Emperor or below easily in all other circumstances I think. I did something similar after reading about ICS + Sacred Sites here before this thread popped up, and while it took me quite a bit longer because I didn't play it very optimally it was still basically always a guaranteed win for me.

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sacred sites for sure, and probably the pantheon you need (usually desert folklore for me)

you're right that a lot of things can slow you. i personally don't like to restart over small things but i guess some people might if they don't get good ruins etc, especially if they're trying to get a better time. i bet i would be more willing to reroll if i tried it again to beat my record

I tried this on Immortal as Egypt (looked fun), but even with a GREAT start didn't work out. I was generating almost 50 FPT by turn 100 with 8 cities (around 16 FPT by turn 50! I love desert starts). I was still only able to nab Pagodas, and that's just not enough to carry an early victory. Adapt, methinks.

At T150:


So I tried this - AI next to me has Monastery (not to mention reduced faith cost, yeehaw!), the new cities I founded he was Johnny-on-the-spot with converting the 1 pop. I would buy the Monastery, wait until 2-3 pop then send my missionary, build pagoda and then I'm back to to 4 whopping tourism per new city. Sadly, this only worked for about 4-5 cities. The rest were stuck with 2 tourism from pagoda only. but it was still just too low compared to the leader's intense culture. I got to around T150

My takeaways: getting a faith NW, goodie hut, or easy religious AI quest is probably the only way to secure this victory at immortal/deity. If you meet civs, check the global politics and see if they are pursuing Piety. Most likely 1 or 2 are.

tl;dr - I would revise the "game over" conditions to include sacred sites AND at least 2 follower buildings on Immortal or Deity. Although you could probably still win at archaeology and hotels+airports, to me this kind of defeats the early tourism rush

Has anybody succeeded at this pre-1200 AD on Immortal or Deity? I might try this again as Byzantium on Emperor...