Does Byzantium need a boost?

[Arachnofiend]

That's a lot of room. You should go Liberty and use the free Engineer to pop Hagia Sophia. Maybe you'll get Oral Tradition to take advantage of all that silk.

Or maybe you just reboot.

 

[GhostSalsa]

That's a lot of room. You should go Liberty and use the free Engineer to pop Hagia Sophia. Maybe you'll get Oral Tradition to take advantage of all that silk.

Or maybe you just reboot.

That's the point of the screenshot - the turn-11 taken pantheon is Oral Tradition (((. And byz doesn't get to leverage their UA without piety or a desert start. I hate Byz so much.

 

[Redaxe]

That's the point of the screenshot - the turn-11 taken pantheon is Oral Tradition (((. And byz doesn't get to leverage their UA without piety or a desert start. I hate Byz so much.

That's actually an ok start. Look at the screenshot again. You have Uluru to the NE. You should settle that ASAP. You have stone and marble so for pantheon you could choose either 'stone circles or one with nature'.

 

[GhostSalsa]

That's actually an ok start. Look at the screenshot again. You have Uluru to the NE. You should settle that ASAP. You have stone and marble so for pantheon you could choose either 'stone circles or one with nature'.

right, barring more lucky finds that's 4 faith via pantheon only either way, very weak. to be fair to Theo, it's actually an awful start for anyone. 1 lux / 2 lux tiles on the capital? What a joke. And Uluru in undesireable land that I won't have the happiness to afford settling / only two other luxes in that much revealed space / and possibly seeded alone on a continent / and if not alone then (even with liberty since this is Immortal) some of those silks will probably be forward-settled by my neighbor negating the trade value of that swarm of duplicates. I probably wouldn't play this past 50 turns with any civ. It just looks like trash.

You're right that only liberty can redeem this start but then I'd be lucky to even found a religion at all. Playing a civ with no UA is no one's cup of tea.

 

[Beaver79]

right, barring more lucky finds that's 4 faith via pantheon only either way, very weak. to be fair to Theo, it's actually an awful start for anyone. 1 lux / 2 lux tiles on the capital? What a joke. And Uluru in undesireable land that I won't have the happiness to afford settling / only two other luxes in that much revealed space / and possibly seeded alone on a continent / and if not alone then (even with liberty since this is Immortal) some of those silks will probably be forward-settled by my neighbor negating the trade value of that swarm of duplicates. I probably wouldn't play this past 50 turns with any civ. It just looks like trash.

You're right that only liberty can redeem this start but then I'd be lucky to even found a religion at all. Playing a civ with no UA is no one's cup of tea.

If you stop what you're doing and build a settler immediately and put it right next to Uluru you'll get 6 faith and 2 food a turn. Take the +4 to natural wonders patheon and that's 10 faith a turn. You're getting 1st or 2nd religion and probably enhancing around the 5th overall prophet. You'd have a decent shot at getting 3 religious buildings. Fill piety at your leisure and get 6 tourism a city.

I thought you posted that map being sarcastic at first. Meaning you need a good start like that to make Byzantine work.

 

[KmDubya]

If you stop what you're doing and build a settler immediately and put it right next to Uluru you'll get 6 faith and 2 food a turn. Take the +4 to natural wonders patheon and that's 10 faith a turn. You're getting 1st or 2nd religion and probably enhancing around the 5th overall prophet. You'd have a decent shot at getting 3 religious buildings. Fill piety at your leisure and get 6 tourism a city.

I thought you posted that map being sarcastic at first. Meaning you need a good start like that to make Byzantine work.

I am with Beaver here, that looks like a pretty good start. Settle next to and north of Uluru and take the natural wonder faith boost or go for stone circles. That city would get you more silk and can get the salt above as well.

Settle next due west to get the marble for the next city. Liberty would be good to get the settlers quickly, build one and pop the other with your third policy. maybe get pyramids for more workers instead of building any.

With tundra and snow to the north if you have any neighbors they are to the south of you. Scout out near the marble to see where exactly you want to settle.

It is just as well that someone took the plantation culture boost pantheon that early. That won't get them much culture, probably no more than 3 per turn, and gets no extra faith. A super early desert faith could mean real religious trouble.

At turn 11 pantheon means your probably have the Celts with two or more forest tiles next to Edinburgh. I don't think anyone else could get enough faith that soon except for multiple religious city states. A natural wonder with faith would have gotten ten faith earlier and no one would have been able to build a faith building that quickly and generated ten faith.

Unless you luck out with a faith natural wonder or easy alliance with religious city states you need a good faith generating pantheon. You need to get a prophet before the Ai finishes the Piety tree or builds Hagia Sophia.

 

[Redaxe]

Yes focus settling those 2 cities that the above posters have said asap. Do this by going for the free settler in liberty. I would then take 2 policies in Piety to get the bonus faith, then go back and fill out liberty.
With 3 cities, a faith NW and stone circles/one with nature you should soon be able to get 25 faith per turn with those 3 cities. Seems a decent start to me. What difficulty is it? You could even chop all that silk forest to get Stonehenge.

 

[GhostSalsa]

Alright fine it's a decent start for founding a religion thanks to Uluru, I was confusing my negative emotions, derailing the thread sorry.

It's just a horrible start in general - hardly any luxes, second city will basically be trash aside from Uluru - but doesn't really have anything to do with Byzantium aside from the lost pantheon choice. I really really strongly dislike swaths of duplicate plantation resources, have had some recent painful games with them.

 

[Redaxe]

Alright fine it's a decent start for founding a religion thanks to Uluru, I was confusing my negative emotions, derailing the thread sorry.

It's just a horrible start in general - hardly any luxes, second city will basically be trash aside from Uluru - but doesn't really have anything to do with Byzantium aside from the lost pantheon choice. I really really strongly dislike swaths of duplicate plantation resources, have had some recent painful games with them.

Yes I must admit that is a little peculiar, I don't think I've ever seen 8 copies of a duplicate luxury before. But to your advantage you will have lots of spare copies you can either sell/trade to the AI or gift where you want to improve relations.

The Uluru site isn't too bad, you have a couple of choices there. Either pick liberty and settle close to uluru asap so you can work the tile immediately. You will get food for this so the city will grow as you get faith.
Alternatively pick tradition and hard build a settler (by chopping forests) and move it next to the river tile to the North of Uluru. Start of working the salt and use the tile expansion bonus from Tradition to get to Uluru as soon as you can. You might need to buy 1 or 2 tiles to get to it. I would also explore around that area a bit more, as there might be other resources still hidden.
Hard-building settlers with tradition will slow you down a little, but I reckon the growth and culture bonuses and free monuments/aqueducts and chopping forests will make up for that very quickly.

But either way you should be able to get both salt and Uluru from one city so thats reasonable. That site also has a heap of forest so use that to your advantage. That's enough forest for you to probably chop for all your early buildings or even a wonder.

To your West you actually have an excellent city tile. I see marble, 2 rivers, a mountain, wheat and sheep. Settle adjacent to the mountain and river and that's a great spot for a food/production/science megacity.