BNW Deity Tier List

[kb27787]

On France v Polynesia, I'm sure the 3 Gold of the post-Flight Chateau is no small benefit, and the 3 Culture Chateau at 3 per city will probably out-do a Polynesian city by game's end. But within the new BNW Continents script, I've had no problem getting +6 to +8 Culture from tiles in 3 cities by about T100 as Poly. And that's with planting cities on the coast and interrupting the line. Four tiles are easy to work in a size 8-10 city, and honestly the Happy, etc. from Policies are better for growth than the +1 food or any other option for that non-bonus tile.

That's really the touchpoint. If you think Culture is better at that stage you'll work that tile, and if you don't you won't. I don't see how any player is not working Moai's ASAP. Whatever guide is out there, maybe I'm even playing sub-optimally I don't know, but I find Piety an undeniably huge benefit as a second tree with CV, and that means a hybridized opening where you are chasing down your Growth/Happy policies along with one of the two work-able Reformations - Sacred Sites and Glory of God. Poly can do that, if desired. With France, it's just not available early. To beeline Chivalry after Edu, what's the cost and do you even get there in time to pick a Reformation when half the AI's open Piety? How many Chateau per city in the first place? How's your Worker budget enough even then to get them up quickly, considering your cities are full and ready to work the tiles otherwise?

Moais come earlier (by quite a bit,.. you're going construction pretty soon anyway whereas chivalry is probably post-education), and can clump... (chateaux cannot clump and by far I find that you end up sacrificing more valuable tiles such as flood plains to build the highest number of chateaux you can) played France in GotM and wasn't really impressed by chateaux; when early game and your satellites borders are still small, moais outdo chateaux by FAR in getting those borders out.
And trust me, that, + Sistine and early world fair win ends up usually in games where I never felt a single point of ideology pressure.
However, I would not go piety; even if Moai come sooner they still come too late (and you really need cargo ships to abuse them); you'd be better off at least taking the tradition opener.

I'm saying this again: Poly has something that France doesn't have: coastal bias and food cargo ships; it is very easy to send a satellite one ship and have it work 3-4 moai tiles even. Land routes are much less effective. 3 chateaux per city is not that much; 9 culture? 4 Moai in a line, not clump, (2,3,3,2) easily exceeds that amount.

Although, if terra is considered Polynesia definitely deserves ***, as that civ is simply amazing on terra.

 

[Vitruvius]

Poly does have a better UA that allows it to snowball better than France.

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[GhostSalsa]

I don't know how someone can nitpick about chateau and turn around and portray moai as consistent per-city bonus. Working moai tiles is more of a tradeoff than chateau. Losing farms is bad for any civ - at least France gets gold before flight. Chateau gets better if you go wide (one of the problems with France's intensely stupid UA), Polynesia only gets Moai on coastal cities, it doesn't scale. Sure it is "easy" to find coastal cities when you actually play as Poly, and it's fun to be encouraged to shape your empire differently than with another civ - but when you reach that point in your mind you are just neglecting the huge opportunity costs of not selecting otherwise better city spots inland.

Moai are hard to leverage. Poly is frustrating even if you like them. Ultimately Poly works best as a "heck with it, I'm going to reroll until I get good peninsulas" experience.

 

[adwcta]

You can't get 4 moai in a line, not clump, unless you have a 2 wide peninsula, are at a tip, or are not on the coast. And, any strategic or luxury resource breaks up the line. After you satisfy those conditions, Moai > Chateaus. Out of 4 cities, only 1.5 will satisfy. And, that uses 4 tiles!!! It's the paradox of how to get city culture without moais for the tiles, in order to effectively use moais.

Anyway, this is the 4th Poly discussion we've had, and I've already moved them up too...

 

[Buccaneer]

You can't get 4 moai in a line, not clump, unless you have a 2 wide peninsula, are at a tip, or are not on the coast. And, any strategic or luxury resource breaks up the line. After you satisfy those conditions, Moai > Chateaus. Out of 4 cities, only 1.5 will satisfy. And, that uses 4 tiles!!! It's the paradox of how to get city culture without moais for the tiles, in order to effectively use moais.

Anyway, this is the 4th Poly discussion we've had, and I've already moved them up too...

That's not even map specific, that's more like a very specific geography within a map. You're trying to make this list map-neutral and here you have come up with something ludicrous to make Poly work. The point is that they should not have been moved up but kept at the bottom.

 

[Learner]

I think Russia should be moved from Mid tier to Upper-Mid Tier. Russia has great UA, that can be used for moneymaking or war and also gives production. Cossack is strong UU, and benefits from Russia's UA. Krepost is decent, but it will allow you to grab strategic resources early and gives promotion for Cossacks.

 

[Buccaneer]

As an addendum to Polynesia - here's the definition of a bottom tier: "require uncommon starts outside of their control, and have mediocre benefits even at their best". That fits Polynesia well, imo.

 

[kb27787]

You can't get 4 moai in a line, not clump, unless you have a 2 wide peninsula, are at a tip, or are not on the coast. And, any strategic or luxury resource breaks up the line. After you satisfy those conditions, Moai > Chateaus. Out of 4 cities, only 1.5 will satisfy. And, that uses 4 tiles!!! It's the paradox of how to get city culture without moais for the tiles, in order to effectively use moais.

Anyway, this is the 4th Poly discussion we've had, and I've already moved them up too...

.... (clumps are better than lines so I'm not sure what your point is... if your city is at a tip, then 4 on a tip, for example would be 4,3,2,2, which is even better, or if it's 4 in a knot on a narrow corridor 2 tiles wide it could be 4,4,3,3)

And I'm keeping the conversation to 4 moai but in reality you likely have more than 4 per city!

But assuming the worst case that you get a straight coastline, the 4 moai need not be worked with one city (as each city has a radius of 3), they can be split between 2 cities (since a city's work radius is 3), but imagine a line (or circle) of cities on a coast, each city works 2 sets of such lines, one above and one below, such that it is sufficient to say it is by average one set per city at the worst case, and this is assuming you set your cities 4 tiles apart, not more.

Strategics and luxes don't break the line; you can build moai on top of them (you can even exploit this by selling your only copy to a friend, then destroying the improvement by building a moai, then rinse and repeat, but I consider this an exploit so I don't use it... but if you do, Poly is easily upper tier)... who cares about iron or horses endgame anyway? Coal is also useless once your factories are up. If you have multiple copies and not enough friends to sell it to (late game most likely because some civs get wiped out), you can even sacrifice a lux tile.
It's not accurate to compare chateaux to moai on a tile-by-tile basis as you most likely will have more coastal tiles than tiles adjacent to a lux and not adjacent to a preexisting chateau.

Working moai tiles is more of a tradeoff than chateau. Losing farms is bad for any civ

Polynesia gets food ships that can pass through oceans immediately. France does not, and if they get a coastal start they actually get fewer chateaux

 

[adwcta]

I ran Indonesia's new gardens through my calculations, and..... they're actually incredible value, even just for GP buying. By pure values, with 1 spice island (I think averaged out, they'll at LEAST get that many), Indonesia's actually easily mid-tier. But, I'm dropping them to lower-mid because of the uncertainty, and the extra work in getting religions into your garden (I baselined a value a 6 faith, which is two religions. considering there are 5 religions in the world, that should be an under-estimate if anything).

I also re-ran Egypt. They're about right for the upper-middle tier, and although they're close to the bottom of it, they are still better than Russia from a pure resource perspective. Russia, for its part, has been recalculated so that they can only sell 75% of their bonus horse/iron from first 4 cities, and 40% from their next 4. Egypt, as a bonus, has the earliest happiness bonus in the game outside of Netherlands (which is really a net happiness loss, so doesn't help expansion), India (again, not good for early expansion), and Spain (a much smaller bonus), so the unique-ish guaranteed ability to quick-expand shouldn't be dismissed. UU is also synergistic with their quick expansion, allowing for rapid movement between cities, clearing space for new ones, etc.

Coastal bias is not terribly noteworthy on land-water balanced maps. With no start bias, you only have something like a 10%-15% chance to start farther than 2 moves from the coast. Coastal cities are bad for France, but you can usually still get 1 chateau. And, costal luxury resources almost always means there's also one land luxury resource around too. France was calculated very conservatively, at an average of 3 chateaus per city. In reality, looking back at saves from my last 5 games, 4 is closer to the average.

 

[Justice1337]

Indonesia is one of my pet civs. They play kind of like Byz, you really want your own religion, but you don't have any way to reliably get it. Only they are obviously better even when they don't get it, and still arguably better when they do. Culture VC is very easy with them, I find, almost as easy as Maya but more in the style of Brazil with late game Musician spam after Internet rather than Wonder spam. I like to open Piety with them, but you need a really good production start not to get out-settled that way, and if you don't get Glory of God reformation you are hosed besides.

The surprising thing is that it's easy to get the Candi up to 8-10 fpt. When you don't use Prophets, it is basically impossible to lose a given religion's presence when a city is growing. Just invest in one or two moving inquisitors to defend against other Prophets. Then once you have your spice cities sitting out there, getting a city of each religion is.workable. It's just a question of time. Conquest is useful if you can. Definitely by Modern on Continents, harder on Pangea due to having less islands. Interfaith Dialogue for the lulz.

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[tommynt]

easy to get the Candi up to 8-10 fpt

allways funny how people totaly exagerate just to make some weired point

 

[direblade99]

allways funny how people totaly exagerate just to make some weired point

Yeah I agree with tommynt on this one, there is no way you can easily get 8-10 fpt from a candi on a standard map size, this isn't to say that 4 or even 2 fpt on a garden that doesn't need rivers is bad, but that is a ridiculous exaggeration.

 

[adwcta]

I looked back at my games, 6fpt (2 religions) is almost guaranteed if you don't have a religion, without doing much. 3 religions average (8fpt) is likely if you do some work and management, but prophet spam makes it not worth the gold opportunity cost. 4-5 would only happen in your trade hub, or if you actually got your own religion and cultivated.

I'd say 6fpt is reasonable, mostly because you'd have to go piety otherwise to see any results. And piety is very bad. I'm playing a Piety start right now.... testing what happens when I only have 3 cities and refuse to grow them (with exception of capital) or do any focus on science. I STILL got ideology first. It's really kind of sad for the AI.

I got NC up at turn 140. I have more gold than I know what to do with. Zulu is my neighbor, so I've basically been running 20gpt less to bribe him since turn 50. My religion is now up to 20 cities, and this game had 4 civs starting Piety too. I'm using Greece, so obviously going for diplo. Oh god Greece is so bad. This really feels like I'm trolling the AI at this point. You know, assuming I win. Russia did already eat one CS, so I'll need both of world religion / ideology to pull off a two-round win. Assuming I don't reach globalization. Maybe I'll build a small battleship navy and go liberate that CS. I have no hammers though. My civ has nothing. Oh, I've also been running GMs in my three cities since markets, and I started boxed in by Zulu and city states in an area that had 0 river/lake/mountain. It's been a fun game.

 

[GhostSalsa]

France was calculated very conservatively, at an average of 3 chateaus per city. In reality, looking back at saves from my last 5 games, 4 is closer to the average.

I agree. Chateau count also benefits from rapid tile expansion - luxes in the 4th ring let you build 1-2 workable Chateaus in the 3rd ring, so on 4-city tradition starts if you're picky about your settling, 5 per city isn't hard.

 

[Justice1337]

allways funny how people totaly exagerate just to make some weired point

Scratch "easy" then, replace with " often possible". I look to get one religion in each of 4 ways: found one, don't spread my own so the neighbor spreads to me (possibly 2), make a spice Islands city or 2 around T120 or right after NC near a religion I don't have, and fourth, conquer a city off the fool who DoW's me. Last doesn't always work if that AI didn't found. A lot of work to maximize one UB, but all you need to accomplish is own one city of each majority for however brief of a time period.


On opening Piety, I understand why people don't do it because it's not a versatile opening, you will only really want it if you're doing CV, and you need a good tech pace to make Wonders anyway. But it's similar to Liberty. You want a good production start, you have to chop a few Settlers, and you're waiting for Happy and focusing prod in secondary cities for a while. Then, the benefits of Culture and size set in at a later point than Trad. It really can't be any worse than Liberty when you both found your Religion and found 5 cities. Where it misses out on happy, culture, and hammers late game it gets them elsewhere. It's just that no one is interested in comparing to a 5-cities Liberty baseline. So arguing for it, you're confronting the Tradition-only mentality, where Tradition is probably just as good for CV and more consistent. Founding with Indonesia, Egypt, Songhai, Poly, or Byz without an early hut and a Faith Pantheon though, there's really only one way to do it.



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[hai 1]

This tommy dude cracks me up. He is so harsh on people, and seems to get away with it. I am relatively new to civ 5, is he everyone's hero or something? I used to play League of Legends competitively, and ran into his type all the time. Just because he is very good at the game, it doesn't make him the end-all authority on theorycrafting. There's no reason to let him cruise around the forums on a high horse belittling others.

Anyway, I think it's sick you make piety work for you on those awkward civs that are at their best when they have a religion, but have no way of generating one of their own. When I rolled the Byz, I was a pansy and rerolled for a faith goody hut lol.

 

[tommynt]

Calm down and dont worry bro.

Even with me trying this forum is still 95% about spreading nonsense.
So u can feel very good here.

 

[Light Cleric]

People don't bother correcting his behavior because raising someone else's rude child is not our jobs

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[tommynt]

People don't bother correcting his behavior because raising someone else's rude child is not our jobs

The godlike mighty LC speaking - BOW DOWN!
What u do in this forum when u r suppused to raise your kids?

U r totaly wrong if u think agreeing to nonsense is good behavious. Its just dumb.
We here in germany did learn that blindly agreeing and following to dumbness is wrong - other still have to learn it seems.

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[Light Cleric]

This may shock you, but there are ways to inform people they're incorrect other than behaving the way you do.

Or do you correct kids by throwing a tempertantrum alongside them?