...You've read my other posts, you know I specifically was talking about putting religion aside for aggressive play with fast universities... You may be building a single shrine, but you aren't mass building shrines and you certainly aren't building temples, not without giving up map control... If you found on turn 80, that leaves you with 70 turns to work with. Let us consider another 300 faith to enhance, 1,200 minimum for 6 pagoda purchases, and another 200-500 to help the initial spread. You aren't getting that in 70 turns off of a single shrine and a couple stone circle quarries.
But you can get all that off a single shrine and faith dirt! The single shrine gets you a pantheon. The pantheon gets the first GPr. They you buy the faith buildings as they become available. In addition to the +2 happiness, those Pagodas generate more faith than they cost. Plus the pantheon is still paying out. I rarely buy missionaries, and the next GPr spawn only because my religion has passively spread to my cities and no more faith buildings are available for faith purchase.
There is no reason why a single shrine, and building your national religion, should interfere with map control. There is no trade off. Religion is about adding a play aspect to your game.
If you do play that way and insist religious dominance with map control by turn 150 is "ezpz 80% of my games I play", then by all means, post those screenies.
What do you mean by “religious dominance”? Founding and having your religion dominant in your cities is compatible with map control. Aggressively spreading your religion outside your borders is something completely different.
Turn 150, you with map control, several of your cities under your enhanced religion... Do all that now with only a single shrine.
Okay, if this is all you mean by “religious dominance”, then yes you can do that all with a single shrine while clearing your continent by T150. The
byzantium CDG has examples of just that, and with terrible dirt with a tough neighbor.
Whatever. You founded a religion. Congratulations. What are you going to do with it now? Let it fade and die? That is an option, but I don't see why you would be making this many replies here if that is all you do with it. At that point you may as well just settle the prophet for the fpt.
After founding from that single shrine, play the game as usual. Your religion in your Holy City will not fade and die, since its own internal pressure like 30. Even surrounded Holy Cites rarely loose their native religion. If you exercise “map control” as you say, then foreign influence are not an issue. By T150, you are killing the cities near you, that includes civilians like missionaries and GPr does it not?
No, you try and benefit from it... So how are you going to support it off of a single shrine? You aren't. Two stone circles and a shrine is still another 60 turns to spawn a second prophet, another 40 for a single missionary.
Yes, you are. Hopefully you have picked up a couple more quarries in your expos. Ideally I go with Mosques because they pay back the faith faster. But with your example, 40 turns later I buy a Pagoda (not a missionary), so now I am at 7 fpt. Thirty turns later my religion has probably spread to the next city, so another Pagoda, and now I am at 9 fpt. Twenty turns after that, another city has converted and I buy another Pagoda. So in 90 turns, that is 3 cities with Pagodas, 11 fpt, 6 cpt, 5 gpt. All from a single shrine and two quarries. From passive pressure alone, I would expect all my founded cities within 10 tiles of my Holy City to be of my faith by that point.
Is it really that confusing? If you don't invest into the religion, it goes nowhere. If you do, you aren't getting map control.
Map control (which I am going to read as “clearing your starting continent” makes it unnecessary to invest into the religion. So without further investment (that is, without missionaries, shrines, or temples) your religion blooms. Passive pressure takes care of the spread, and faith buildings more than pay back their faith cost.
It is actually more complicated without map control.
Matthew. said:
Turn 150 is because that is a competitive time to enter industrial, or close to it. A more conservative number is closer to 160. Regardless, you aren't investing into religion after that point. Mathematically you aren't getting any returns. You purchase a mosque for 400 faith, in another 100 turns you've made back 300 faith and the game is over.
I agree that you want to buying faith buildings early. Which is easier if you found and catch one. But maybe “map control” means hitting that early benchmark to enter Industrial
without killing your neighbors? Even in that scenario, founding still makes sense. You get have the shrine, two quarries, and pagoda in just your Holy City. So at least 5 fpt that you would not have otherwise. Play the religious game in your other cities the way you would normally, that is, faith purchasing whatever buildings foreign religions offer. That single early shrine is giving,
at a minimum, 750 extra faith for your game.
Even if you do nothing else ever with religion.
Form it off of a shrine, okay, perhaps, but in no way are you enhancing a religion and purchasing a bunch of Pagoda's while also pumping out military.
Sure you are. The one has nothing to do with the other. After the first shrine, the faith game is not costing hammers and is net positive gold (assuming you catch a faith building). Each pagoda generates more faith than it costs. Enhancing is only after faith buildings (domestic and foreign) and only because your faith generation is so high that the GPr spawn before you can start saving for GS or GE.
Are you going to grab a religion with a single shrine?
Yes, exactly. That single shrine is enough to get you a pantheon in probably nine out of ten Deity games. If you can get to 4 fpt (that is, for example, just two quarries), then 50 turns later, that is the 200 faith you need to spawn a GPr. Lots of RNG involved, mostly around which AI are in the game, but yes, that is all it takes to grab a religion with a single shrine, on Deity, half the time (maybe more).
The opportunity cost of building an early shrine is 1-2 Ancient Ruins and whole lotta 15 gold from CSs instead of 30.
That would be the opportunity cost of shrine before scout. Which, I agree, would be quite terrible. But that is not even an option -- since you need to research Pottery first.
The opportunity cost of building an early
monument is 1-2 Ancient Ruins and whole lotta 15 gold from CSs instead of 30.
Shrine after two scouts. Monument after shrine. Skip the shrine if initial scouting reveals you can get a pantheon without it. Skip the monument if Tradition and you hit a culture ruin.
In my last game on Deity, Heile "attacked" me with 5 Great Prophets. Not 5 Gprs from start to finish, a carpet of 5 prophets at the same time near my border.
Right after getting you to sign a DoF no doubt! Reload back a few turns, skip the DoF. See if the carpet shows, and if it does, collect them all!