How to properly kickstart Byzantine?

[HeresiarchQin]

This is probably embarrassing, but I'm a King player (and long time Civ player nonetheless) but is having trouble with handling Byzantine.

Byzantine has a strong reliance on getting a decent religion up ASAP, so it's natural for me to try to get the faith running. However I've tried to play around it and find it difficult to make a smooth start. I've read many threads on the forums and so far the opinions have been inconclusive.

Social policy alone is giving me a big headache. Some people claimed that start right with piety is ok, yet many more said that that'll easily make your empire lag behind in infrastructure and expansion, and you should start with a couple of Trad/Lib or even Honor points. I've tried both direction a bit and I don't find either to be optimal. Going with Piety start, sure it'll give me faster faith build up, but then by the time the third social policy comes in the only place that gives me a good benefit to put in are Trad or Lib. Then I realized that I've suffered from the opportunity cost of not starting with Trad or Lib...Starting with Trad is particularly attractive thanks to the 3 extra culture and faster border expansion. However, if I start with those two SP trees, inevitably I will be tempted to go a little deeper into it, and then I'll find that I can't catch up to the SP cost raise to put points into Piety fast anymore.

Also, I find it difficult to juggle with the build orders. With other civs I can happily go with e.g. scout -> monument -> warrior/worker, but if I go with faith then I must put Shrine somewhere in between them. If I neglect the shrine then I'll get even more difficult to get even a pantheon up and running with the AIs competing, if I neglect worker/warriors then I'll have trouble with happiness/growth or even defending against barbarian.

Finally, it seems to me that the start location can make or break my game. If I'm starting in a desert with lots of floodplains then I can get an spectacular religion very fast to play with, but if I'm starting in jungles/plains/coast without cows/stone/shiny resources then my potential to get faith fast is ruined. Sure I can get a pantheon to increase my culture from jungle or hammers from sea resources, but what's the point if I can't get (a decent amount of) faith generation, playing as Byzantine?

So my thought is, while playing as other Civs it's very straightforward, as you can just change strategy and adopt different development directions on the fly, and you can even completely neglect a couple of unimportant things (i.e. religion). Things like culture, units, and even gold generation can be delayed for a few dozens of turns. But as Byzantine, I feel my freedom to play more or less hamstrung because its UA seems like suggesting me "FOUND A RELIGION OR LOSE!", which is more or less true because if I don't get faith generation started ASAP, the chance to found a decent religion is moot. And as I mentioned above, if I try to put in religion development somewhere in between social policies, building production, or city settling, then I can't get it played in an optimum way at all.

So I would like to hear from you guys, how do you usually start with a religion game? Especially now after the fall patch, has there been any new findings on the strategy?

 

[myclan]

Count your faith source: pantheon+shrine+Stongehenge(if possible)
If you could gain 6 faiith/turn when founding a religion, and 10 faith/turn when enhancing a religion, go tra/lib.
If you could gain more than 10/15, piety is an option.
If your faith is below 6/10, don't found a religion at all, though it is not very difficult to build Stonehenge if your start is not too bad.

 

[paralistalon]

Byzantium is a strange beast. I guess the first thing is to decide what your plan is. If you're going for the sacred sites culture victory gameplan, it's usually best to go straight for your reformation belief, because if you don't get sacred sites, your only option is to steal it from the civ that got it, which can be doable but might be too much of a pain. There are other good beliefs, however. I really like tithe and pilgrimage, and they are usually easy to get even late. Your goal with byzantium could just be to get high FPT, which will support any strategy really because of how you can faith-buy great people.

As you said, shrines are quite unimpressive. If you can ally a faith citystate or settle a faith natural wonder, you might not even need to buy a shrine. Otherwise, you need one just so you can found a pantheon and get a faith generating belief ASAP. It's also advisable to rush Stonehenge. Your next goal should be to get at least one of the theology wonders (i like the great mosque).

I find that the early game is much harder to spread religion because the other faith civs are going to be rushing prophets like mad. After a while, they'll run out of steam and you can use your great prophets to spread your religion (missionaries lose effectiveness as time goes on). With spreading, you should also consider spreading to a militaristic civ that hasn't founded his/her own religion, because they won't fight to convert their cities back.

In summary, only rush through piety if you absolutely need a certain reformation belief.

 

[KillingMeSoftly]

Try building the Oracle, it helps immensely for Piety starts.

 

[HeresiarchQin]

There is one particular tactics that I haven't tried yet and that's rushing Stonehenge. I'm still pretty sucky in Civ 5 and in fact I still can't reliably build any ancient wonders. It's difficult enough building even a single worker or a granary.

I think I shall try a playthrough beginning with chopping Stonehenge tonight with help from Tradition and see how it goes.

 

[ense7en]

Frankly, they are a BAD civ so they will be a challenge regardless of how you go about things.

Basically they have nothing to make them a religious civ, so you have to get lucky with good terrain for faith generation, or delve into the horribad Piety tree and screw yourself over.

I think they might be better played ignoring their horrible UA, but then they are just a horrible civ with crap UUs, so yeah...

Bad civ that's not good for anything really...

Personally i decide whether to bother with religion based on my surrounding terrain and how fast the AI is taking all the beliefs unless playing a good religious civ, which Byzantine is not.

 

[MKDELTA3]

Get Stonehenge and/or expand rapidly and spam shrines (some kind of Liberty/Piety hybrid) or reroll until you spawn next to 4 religious city states and 9 wine and 18 incense.

IIRC the most succesful Byzantine game I had was spawning next to a pile of wine, buildorder in the capital was something like Monument -> Shrine -> Settler -> Worker -> Settler and then a pile of archers and The Oracle. Expanded so fast that I dipped into unhappiness untill I could improve the surrounding luxes. Popped culture ruin and took piety opener, then liberty until free settler and then raced for Reformation managed to get To the Glory of God. Religion was something like Goddess of Festivals, Papal primacy, Pagodas, Monasteries, Pilgrimage and Glory. AI beat me to Sacred Sites. Fiddled around and pretended I was the pope. Got bored after I smacked down Poland who thought I was easy prey after I negleted my army to beeline for religion and culture. Dromons murdering poles on a narrow isthmus was hilarious.

 

[isau]

Stonehenge helps tons. I go Tradition, Piety is just not very good at getting an early religion in my experience. Build order Scout > Scout > Shrine > Worker > Granary > Stonehenge (Techs: Pottery > Calendar > Writing). Maybe delay Granary if hammers are tight. If you can get a Faith pantheon you're golden. If you can't then Stonehenge can still really help.

Good map for them is Small Continents Plus from the new Scrambled Maps DLC. Good, balanced map for everyone really.



All of that said, Byzantium is kind of on the weaker side and a small bonus to early Faith generation would really help them out. Maybe if their UA included: "Begin the game with a Pantheon."

 

[telekinetic136]

I always hope for luck with byzantiams once i had archers outside a barbarian camp on the border of Jerusalem for 50 turns killing everything that spawned for some faith it worked quite well. However you don't always get lucky with religious city state placement.

 

[HeresiarchQin]

Ok I've quickly ran two tests on Deity and Immortal (because if it works on these difficulties, it should work reliably on the easier ones...no?) to go chop rush Stonehenge. My tech route were both Pottery > Calendar > Mining. Building order Scout > Monument > Worker. For social policy, I tried once on the Deity game with Liberty > Citizenship for the extra worker and faster chopping, and on the Immortal game with Tradition for the 15% bonus in wonder building. Both tests lost the SH - with Deity it was by 10 turns, and Tradition by 4 turns. If I ran with normal Shrine building it wouldn't help, the AIs were getting Pantheons left and right and there was no hope for me to catch up on them (not to mention I haven't seriously tried anything harder than Emperor).

It seems that it can be done by tinkering a bit with the research/build orders, but yeah, as everyone agrees, rushing for religion as Byzantine in higher difficulties seems to be a huge gambit and may require sub optimal gameplay. The extra belief may or may not worth it too...but hey it's fun rushing for such kind of gameplay.

 

[FrostK]

do 2 scouts while researching pottery. If u want go tradition, dont build monument. With 2 scouts most of the time u will get 20 culture. Also you will find religion cs more quickly. If u want liberty, build monument->shrine or vice versa, depending on how good can be your pantheon.

Go liberty[up to the free settler] and then piety if u want to abuse sacred sites. Oracle is really required here. Once u got reformation belief, spam cities like crazy. This works quite well on Immortal, on Deity a lot of luck is required.

If u dont want to take sacred sites or if u playing Deity, just NEVER TAKE PIETY. It is really weak. Go i.e. full tradition->patronage->rationalism.

 

[Soffacet]

This is probably embarrassing, but I'm a King player (and long time Civ player nonetheless) but is having trouble with handling Byzantine.

Byzantine has a strong reliance on getting a decent religion up ASAP, so it's natural for me to try to get the faith running. However I've tried to play around it and find it difficult to make a smooth start. I've read many threads on the forums and so far the opinions have been inconclusive.

Social policy alone is giving me a big headache. Some people claimed that start right with piety is ok, yet many more said that that'll easily make your empire lag behind in infrastructure and expansion, and you should start with a couple of Trad/Lib or even Honor points. I've tried both direction a bit and I don't find either to be optimal. Going with Piety start, sure it'll give me faster faith build up, but then by the time the third social policy comes in the only place that gives me a good benefit to put in are Trad or Lib. Then I realized that I've suffered from the opportunity cost of not starting with Trad or Lib...Starting with Trad is particularly attractive thanks to the 3 extra culture and faster border expansion. However, if I start with those two SP trees, inevitably I will be tempted to go a little deeper into it, and then I'll find that I can't catch up to the SP cost raise to put points into Piety fast anymore.

Also, I find it difficult to juggle with the build orders. With other civs I can happily go with e.g. scout -> monument -> warrior/worker, but if I go with faith then I must put Shrine somewhere in between them. If I neglect the shrine then I'll get even more difficult to get even a pantheon up and running with the AIs competing, if I neglect worker/warriors then I'll have trouble with happiness/growth or even defending against barbarian.

Finally, it seems to me that the start location can make or break my game. If I'm starting in a desert with lots of floodplains then I can get an spectacular religion very fast to play with, but if I'm starting in jungles/plains/coast without cows/stone/shiny resources then my potential to get faith fast is ruined. Sure I can get a pantheon to increase my culture from jungle or hammers from sea resources, but what's the point if I can't get (a decent amount of) faith generation, playing as Byzantine?

So my thought is, while playing as other Civs it's very straightforward, as you can just change strategy and adopt different development directions on the fly, and you can even completely neglect a couple of unimportant things (i.e. religion). Things like culture, units, and even gold generation can be delayed for a few dozens of turns. But as Byzantine, I feel my freedom to play more or less hamstrung because its UA seems like suggesting me "FOUND A RELIGION OR LOSE!", which is more or less true because if I don't get faith generation started ASAP, the chance to found a decent religion is moot. And as I mentioned above, if I try to put in religion development somewhere in between social policies, building production, or city settling, then I can't get it played in an optimum way at all.

So I would like to hear from you guys, how do you usually start with a religion game? Especially now after the fall patch, has there been any new findings on the strategy?

Tbh you are running into the natural flaw in the Byzantine civilization. They need to found a religion to actually use their UA, but they have no inherent advantage in faith generation. This means you must either be very lucky with religious city states, faith ruins, faith pantheons, etc. Or deviate from the standard BO in order to secure your religion (Stonehenge). This means you will always be either less consistent or less efficient (or both) compared to a civ that naturally generates faith from the standard BO (Ethiopia, Celtia, Maya).

So I would recommend using another civ, but if you insist on Byzantium, try to chop-build Stonehenge and hope that your extra belief makes up for the delays in the rest of your BO.

 

[krc]

I've now tried this several times, and am convinced that Byzantium really is the worst civ in the pack.

The following screenshots show successive starting positions (king, standard, pangaea) with Byzantium:

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Of these none starts, exactly one (the last one shown) has a luxury or other terrain feature nearby that might allow them to get a faith-increasing pantheon. Without that, they have very little chance of founding a reasonable religion.

I started playing through that one, founding the city of Constantinople in place.

Religion details(turn): first pantheon = Goddess of Festivals(24)

Build order(completion turn): scout(5), monument(13), shrine(18), granary(27), worker(38), Stonehenge

Research order(completion turn): pottery(10), calendar(20), animal husbandry(27), mining(33), writing

Ruins(turn); map(3), population(8), culture(16), barbarians(29), map(32)

City-states discovered(type,turn): Antananarivo(mercantile,8)

Social policies(turn): Open piety(16), Organized Religion(20), Mandate of Heaven(35)

On turn 41, I rage quit because someone else built Stonehenge:

Spoiler :

Am I missing something here, or are they really terrible? Since I often play with random civs, my response to getting Byzantium in the future is likely to be "Exit to Main Menu".

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

Stone is better for faith then wine.

You started Stonhenge to late, you should have started it as soon as you gotten Calendar.

 

[Erneiz Hyde]

Though it seems they get stone pretty often. You can use those for the +2 faith per quarry.

edit:ninja'd

 

[tommynt]

you can easily get a religion with every start at every difficulty without picking a single sp in peity

Why d u not be able to with Byz on some low lvl with 2 different res in cap giving faith with pantheon.

Instead of building stonehenge u could also build a warrior and complerte a barb quest of some reli CS, much more effective.
Just less obvious.

 

[joncnunn]

Scanning the thread:

Terrain suitable for a Faith boosting pantheon and/or building Stonehenge is counter-productive for Piety.

Reason: Piety policies make the boring shrines so much more effective in faith that its actually a race to complete the tree before you have already enhanced your religion. (The best thing to do with a free great prophet is enhance a religion; a holy site is a poor second choice)
Instead its culture producing pantheons you want. Oracle is also good if you can beat the AI to it.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

Piety in my opinion isnt that much about the shrine or the temple, its about making your religion more effective and better.

20% reduction on faith cost: very nice allowing us to get our faith Buildings up quicker and using missionaries more often.

Reformation: Many of these are very strong and make religion with piety much stronger then without.

Gold from temples is very nice, its like having comernce opener in basicly all cities because you probably want cheap better piety temples anyway.

 

[TheGrumpyBuddha]

Some of those starts looked pretty sweet - the 2nd one in particular, move south and settle on the hill next to the mountain on the river. I'm sure the luxes will show up eventually .

On King I would, after doing the standard 2x scout, go for Stonehenge (as I think some folks recommended). You should be able to build it without much difficulty. Meanwhile, make sure your scouts mug the AIs for workers once they build 'em!

 

[qemist]

Terrain suitable for a Faith boosting pantheon and/or building Stonehenge is counter-productive for Piety.

Reason: Piety policies make the boring shrines so much more effective in faith that its actually a race to complete the tree before you have already enhanced your religion. (The best thing to do with a free great prophet is enhance a religion; a holy site is a poor second choice)
Instead its culture producing pantheons you want.

I think that's debatable. I tried your advice and could have picked my reformation belief before I had founded. This suggests I was culturing too fast. Plus If you want to play the influence game with sacred sites you want to grab the building beliefs, and that's competitive.