Game strat: Easy and fast Religious victory on diety (Tholal's)

[Horatius]

It is not difficult to achieve a religious victory in Fall from heaven with RoK if you go for it fast enough on a high cohesion map.

Here Varn Gosam is playing a standard Pangaea map, no huts and no Acheron, on deity (Tholal's new 2.0 patch).

You need a good start that can allow one to go straight towards mining with enough floodplains and production.

Like so:




We research mysticism and grow building a warrior.

But, oh, what is that?




Great, just great...




Mommy, can I open my eyes now?




Uff...

(breathe....)


Wait, again? This is supposed to be a quiet religious game! --




Oh yeah, Lair Exploration is really really fun...


We are going to bet on two Warriors for now and put some hammers already in the worker because we want it (it?) in time to work the wine:




We switch to Godking and pacifism and start building the desert shrine as fast as possible (the Malakim longs and lives for the whispered prayers on the desert dunes).




We run a priest and we will get our worker on the required time.




One more warrior can't hurt (oh, really?) and we research mining.




We build an elder Council and then another worker. We synchronize stuff because we feel like it.




Btw, yes, I know we met some not-so-friendly-maybe-stubborn-to-open-borders-people.
Whatever.
The great prophet is teleported from the sky (i think so) to give us Rok (and roll?) and a holy city.




No chance of missing the holy city. With Jonas you can easily lose it at this difficulty.

Anyway: Agriculture. Exploration. A Temple of Kil. Some growing. Some laughs with barbs.




We build a Sok. It seems that people are plotting against us .
The pigs. We need to work them. We research animal husbandry.

 

[Horatius]

Life goes on steadily; and look at that we have horsies.



It is a good thing that Sandy actually went for Rok, since he is usually too stubborn to open borders. Lucky us.
Time to spam Thanes.



What?! I don't even... (sigh...)



Well, whatever. They didn't went for me (why would they? I didn't bother them...).
Anyway, our city is set up to build thanes every two turns.
Time to build roads to connect everyone. Time to open borders. Time to spread them:







We research horseback riding just for whatever since we have horses. Since no other religion was founded and people were not stubborn to open borders we don't need anything else besides pumping thanes.
We lose one warrior and a Sok to barbarians. To compensate, we eventually steal the Orthus' axe from a barbarian warrior.



Do you see that thane there? He survived (not the Dain one) a giant spider! - that's right, nothing can stop the spreading of the true and fanatic word.









Look at all those happy faces:




image hosting gif

 

[Horatius]

Actually, it can be better to try to open borders much sooner: To find far away opponents and start trading with them as fast as possible, to change alignments, to spread your religion and dissuade each civ in the game from researching another for a while (they eventually will).

In this game I decided to bet in achieving a good production in my capital as fast as possible so that I could speedily pump thanes. It was just a matter of nobody being stubborn to open borders eventually. I was just trying to see how fast I could achieve a religious victory and things went my way. The capital and map position was also good.



I played four games in a row with different maps trying to achieve a religious victory with only one city and I won all of them. Some took longer than others.
For example, in one game I was trying to win with OO (much harder) but Beeri was spreading Rok and eventually Arendel spread FoL. I had to change to philosophical and bulb priesthood. Almost every city in the map had OO (except the Sandy ones) but Inquisition and forcing people to change religions was needed.
Since I had close relations with Beeri and all his cities had OO as much as RoK I was able to use priesthood to bribe him into changing (yes, even with him having the holy city, he can be bribed into changing). I knew that the change wouldn't last long but I already had cultists in position to do mass Inquisition. Eventually Rok Sandy also considered to open borders for more OO spreading. Finally, I then bribed OO Sheelba into declaring against Arendel. Two Fol and OO cities were captured and that was it after another little Inquisition. I won that game at turn 166. Fun stuff.


Anyway, still, it is better that you actually have at least two cities, otherwise it is really all-inish. But everything being considered, spreading the religion as fast as possible is actually important if you want to win a religious victory without wars. Speed and Rok - and that's it.


Moreover, for more fun, know this: you can have just three or four cities and be able to build up in a balanced way to get the Mercurian gate in good timing (before turn 180 at least (I usually get writing and arete as well if not military strat also sometimes; cottages or aristocratic and financial farms are both fine; using the philosophical trait to bulb, get academies, maybe the shrine and a Golden age also works).
If Rok is well spread and the diety AIs are well developed, you just have to use fanaticism to bribe people into wars with each other -- and dozens and dozens of angels will pop in your city in no time...

 

[Akbarthegreat]

Nice!
All those barbs on deity............scary
I'm still on noble and below.