Maya - policy to choose

[eodh]

Hello everyone,

I would like to get your opinion about the policy to take for the Maya.
I'm playing mostly in King-Emperor-Immortal.
I'd like to avoid the full liberty as I'm not planning to build Wide (I'll stay mostly with 3-5 cities) and I mostly aim at having a comfortable science advantage, paired with a strong religion (able to create GS).

My question is, before getting to the rationalism,
Would you advice a mix of Tradition with Piety ?
Piety isn't really good, and we agree on it, but the synergy with the religion of mayas, is great. (Jesuit Education?)
Should I choose a mix of Trad and Liberty or Patronage? (it makes less sense for me but I'm just a beginner) or simply spare the policies ?

It is my first post and I'm still a beginner, so feel free to explain me where I'm wrong in my reasoning!

Regards !

 

[hiawafer]

What victory are you seeking? If Science, then Tradition of course. If Domination, then Honor is good as you can take the left side and have fast-promoted Atlastists!

 

[eodh]

I'm not really good with battles and war, sincerely
So I'd prefer to focus on any other victory types than Domination !

My interrogation was rather: "what do I do with the policies once tradition is full and before rationalism is unlocked?"

What would you advice, beside Honor?

 

[Kung-Fu Kitty]

Patronage up to the +20 CS resting place policy is a good choice. It makes allying CSs easier (maritime food bonus, culture bonus) and opens up the Forbidden Palace wonder aiding Science, Culture, and Diplo victories. If you have extra later, there's another policy up that tree that grants science from CS allies.

 

[eodh]

Interesting,

I thought that considering the high faith of Mayans, you would advice me to try to get some reformation believes in the piety tree.
Either Jesuit education
or the one which makes the CS allying cheaper (30% less gold, if I remember well).
or actually save the policies for later.

 

[Kung-Fu Kitty]

I'm not an expert on Mayans or Piety, so take my recommendation with a grain of salt. Not sure how many policies you need for Reformation belief, though. If you fill out Tradition, will you have that many before Rationalism opens?

 

[Browd]

You have to burn 4 Piety policies to get to Reformation (opener, Organized Religion, Religious Tolerance, Reformation). Unless your tech rate is really poor or your culture generation is really strong, it is highly unlikely that you will be able to "burn" 4 policies in Piety after finishing Tradition and before hitting Renaissance (to be able to open Rationalism). You will either be delaying the Tradition finisher longer than you should, or delaying Reformation (risking losing your preferred beliefs), or delaying opening Rationalism (and therefore delaying additional Rationalism policies), which will harm your tech rate long-term. And that's before you factor in the benefits of dipping into Patronage (as some in this thread have suggested) or Commerce (which I often prefer, since as critical as beakers are, gold is king).

 

[eodh]

Really interesting, thanks a lot to both of you !

It is a bit of a sadness to read that Piety isn't viable with any of the Mayans strategy.
(and I guess not with any of the Korean ones, via the holy sites).
I thought that finishing the piety tree could actually help the gold generation (due to the Theocraty policy), not as good but still comparable to Commerce tree.

I would like to thanks all of you who could help me to get a better idea about religion and maya !

 

[poxpower]

Piety is total garbage unless you go for one very specific game plan of sacred sites city-spamming. Every other time Tradition is infinitely better.

2 into piety is alright though as the 50% build time and +1 faith from shrines and temples is by far better than the entire rest of the tree. That can help give you a strong religion and strong faith generation that lets you buy lots of great people.

It also unlocks the Great Mosque which you can use to stack with Borobudur to spam some super powerful missionaries.

Putting more than 2 policies into piety is useless IMO. Jesuit Education is the only decent reformation belief but it would cost you so much culture to get to it that you're just way better working down Rationalism anyway.

 

[poxpower]

For religion on King/Emperor, you can attempt Pilgrimage or Tithe and spam the HELL out of everyone with missionaries. On King it's a gimme, you can usually get the Great Mosque and Borobudur in your capital which gives you 9 missionary hits. When you have pilgrimage (+2 faith from each foreign city of your religion ) and convert early cities, the pressure just converts more and more cities around them and eventually the entire world has your religion in it and you're generating 100-120 faith per turn just from that
Same deal for Tithe, in the end game you can be generating 60-100 gold per turn from your religion.

The bonus for Tithe is that it lets you buy science buildings faster without having to get Jesuit education, whereas with Pilgrimage you have to get Jesuit education if you want to convert that faith into schools/labs. Usually though I just spam missionaries / pagodas until industrial and then stockpile faith to buy scientists. Not uncommon to be sitting on 10-11k faith doing pilgrimage on king and below. That's like 5 great scientists haha

 

[apocalypse105]

What victory are you seeking? If Science, then Tradition of course. If Domination, then Honor is good as you can take the left side and have fast-promoted Atlastists!

Lol allways go liberty as Maya even if you are going for science vitory you want to spam cities and built pyramids everywhere i would go with opening piety and then going liberty..

+2 faith in each city + science that will benefit you massivly. Pick the phanteon believe of +2 science of every trade route and you actually dont get cripled by penalty for expanding by science..

Use religion to get with pogoda's and mosque's. use liberty finisher for great enginer and built the national college i would say when you built 4 or 5 cities...

Built order in cities:
pyramid
momument
granary if a city has dear or wheat and low food other wise go library

You can ignore archery becaue you get atalist cheap archer units to defend..

Why go tradioion if you have unique shrine.. that will give you a religion verry fast so you can get pogoda's and expand more NO. I would just open piety for bonus for building thee shrine then go liberty

 

[Blatc]

Mayan pyramids are great, but laughing at hiawafer's post and saying you should always go liberty is a bit much. If you should always do this, how much stronger is piety opener/liberty vs Tradition for Mayan SV - 10 turns faster? If you're willing to post a map (Diety difficulty and I'll commit to take part), I'm sure a few posters would be willing to compare their preferred strategy with your specific preference (opening piety, then Liberty, with +2 science from trade route pantheon).

 

[IronfighterXXX]

Mayan pyramids are great, but laughing at hiawafer's post and saying you should always go liberty is a bit much.

Yes, liberty can be competitive to tradition for SV, but it require specific map (lots of room, luxuries).

Pyramids are great (the best UB in game imo) and useful for liberty, but still land is more important.

 

[Blatc]

Yes, liberty can be competitive to tradition for SV, but it require specific map (lots of room, luxuries).

Pyramids are great (the best UB in game imo) and useful for liberty, but still land is more important.

Agreed, on specific maps liberty would be competitive with tradition and perhaps come out ahead.

Part of the reason pyramids are great is how few hammers/gold they require. I don't think there's any need to open Piety just for pyramids; if going piety, you should be doing it more for faster temples and the +1 faith policy. I tried out a strategy where early gold was spent on pyramids in expos; might not be optimal, but I'll likely try this again if I make some more SV attempts with the Mayans.

 

[apocalypse105]

Mayan pyramids are great, but laughing at hiawafer's post and saying you should always go liberty is a bit much. If you should always do this, how much stronger is piety opener/liberty vs Tradition for Mayan SV - 10 turns faster? If you're willing to post a map (Diety difficulty and I'll commit to take part), I'm sure a few posters would be willing to compare their preferred strategy with your specific preference (opening piety, then Liberty, with +2 science from trade route pantheon).

I am not laughing at him i just dissagree at hims opinion.. Olso like other people said you dont need to open piety the production bonus of liberty is enough.