Big J Money
Emperor
- Joined
- Feb 23, 2005
- Messages
- 1,030
I personally don't like the Candi
I doubt Piety will be that useful now that it's unlocked in the ancient era. It lacks any bonuses to general infrastructure that Tradition and Liberty have. Same problem with Honor.
I think people are forgetting that religion affects diplomacy which ultimately affects world congress voting. Having control over a religion and spreading it like crazy can pay off in the long run as a result.
Piety increases your ability to create a powerhouse religion.
Piety opener gives quite huge boost for religion race. If you don't choose Piety and you're not Ethiopia or Maya, you'll not found a religion and (unless find faith in ancient ruins) not even found a pantheon. And if you're Ethiopia or Maya, Piety bonuses are really welcome and will boost the civilization a lot.
I wouldn't say it's mandatory as founding a religion is optional. But it's really strong.
I know I'm going to make sure I get a religion now with Byzanthium with both Intinerant Preachers and Religious Texts. The rate at which that spreads, especially with trade routes...it'll be glorious. Especially with trade routes...
... Just add Tithe.
I don't know what kind of difficulty you play at but with a bit of careful planning I usually managed to found religions and be on par with Ethiopia on Emperor even without taking the piety tree.
If now taking piety becomes an absolute requirement for that I don't think it's such a good thing. Piety should give a boost to your religion not be a mandatory choice for those who want a religion at all.
Going Liberty without Piety seems to be silly, really.
It's 20 hammers per city, and it's when you're REXing, exactly when it would take a long time otherwise. Lastly, it's also good for quicker science, which surely is the best final result of all the hammers mentioned.
It's not that the Maya have to reject liberty to do this; it's just 1 or maybe 2 policies, and they'll still be hitting the worker and settler policies, just maybe a policy or so slower.
You are not getting a 20 hammer discount on the pyramid, it still costs 40 production. Instead you are doubling your production output when building the pyramid. What this means, is you have the potential for a lot of overflow into whatever you build after the shrine. If your city has 19 production, when building the pyramid the city will be boosted to 38 production. It will take 2 turns to build the pyramid for a total of 76 production generated, 36 of which gets dumped into whatever you're building next. That's more than half the production needed for a worker and all this from taking 1 policy in Piety.
The beauty of the shrines and UB shrines is you can sell them and rebuild them as much as you like. This means once your city's production is more than 20 you can sell and rebuild your shrine/shrine UB every other turn to dump some overflow into the next item in your queue all while gaining gold from the repeated selling of the shrine/shrine UB. Once your city reaches 40 production you can do this without losing any turn on the next item in the queue. As the city gain more and more production over 40, you start shaving turns off the next item by selling and putting the shrine/shrine UB at the top of the queue every other turn. The reason it's every other turn, is you have to build the next item for a turn after the shrine or the overflow is lost.
20 hammers per city is not a lot. You need 8 cities to just breakeven with the free monument hammers from Legalism. By the time you have 8 cities, 20 hammers is not a big bonus. The snowball effect of the monuments, for instance, will be way better.
Is that true?
Man, I didn't know about this. I assumed it worked like Civ 4, where the overflow of a built item was reduced by the percentage bonus you received when building it (if you got 40 hammers overflow from a creative library - which was 100% more production -, it'd be cut to just 20 hammers in the next build). Of course, the fact that the UI doesn't show how much overflow you are getting on the next build helps a lot in not noticing this.
That's pretty big and extremely exploitative, depending on your objectives. You can essentially double your production in almost everything you want to build, after the city has more than 40 hammers. That certainly makes this SP extremely powerful in the late game.
MadDjinn pointed out in his videos that the spread via trade routes only kicks in outside the range of IP and RT.
So with Byzantium, I'd likely go with cheaper prophets for the bonus, so I get my 2nd prophet faster. Then take cheaper missionaries and inquisitors for the enhancer. Then I can strategically spread with the missionaries until the industrial era. Then buy prophets to build holy sites with since they will be fairly cheap.
Having an opener policy I won't want to finish right away is great. That means I can start to blend in more powerful Medieval policies at lower SP cost because I'm still on my first 6.