Advice for Founding on on Immortal?

[ohhaimark]

Hey, since the April patch I have run into the problem where I am consistently beaten to a religion by the AI in almost every case.


For non-religious civilizations, I will go shrine to mono in every city. In some games I take Stonehenge, others I don't, but it doesn't matter too much.

Granted, I'm not playing religious civilizations, but I don't really see how in most of my games non-religious AI have founded around turn 75. I've seen Greece and Carthage beat Ethiopia and the Maya for religions which doesn't seem right to me.

I've tried tradition and Progress and numerous civilizations and pantheons with the latter including:

Renewal
Wisdom
Commerce
Expansion
War
Nature
Earth Mother
Beauty
Open plains


Out of all of those, only nature and beauty founded more than once, and the latter missed more often than it did in the past.

Any advice?

 

[tothePAIN]

Count the number of tradition civs in the game. The tradition civs are going to found a religion by turn 85ish. Authority civs, if they have a religious monopoly or God of the Expanse, will found around similar times. Decide if you have a chance at founding by that time. You might be able to with Tradition, less likely with Progress.

Renewal is strong for other resources, a little less for faith. You have to micromanage the tile selection.
Wisdom - to found with this you need to build shrine - market and then work the specialist.
Commerce - Its faith generation is pretty weak, hard to found with, unless religious civ and progress (maybe Ethiopia?)
Expansion - Can found with this, best with Mongolia and/or tradition civ
Beauty will only found if you snowball and get a few wonders.
War - Tough to found with this, maybe possible with Aztecs
Nature - Strongest faith generation in certain scenarios, I can found with Nature even with Progress in certain scenarios
Earth Mother - Weak faith, strong culture - this will mostly found only with religious civs
Beauty - Only if you get the wonders for it, which is tough on immortal
Open plains - Strong for the gold, culture, etc. but still relatively weak on faith, so probably needs a religious civilization.

 

[kawyua]

there are strategies and all that, but without being a religious civ and without the context of any other faith to help you in the map, its hard to be consistently founding. this is also a problem with clarity, its hard to imagine exactly how other civs reach that faith. it really does boil down to some civs going wider earlier than others with to make that faith happen, but yeah. its hard to go wide quickly now with settlers losing you a pop to get that faith by t85.

i'd direct you to try info addict if you haven't https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/info-addict.391069/
i use info addict to tell how i and everyone else is doing in the religious game by looking at the total faith in each civ. Its also nice feedback to understand how certain civ and pantheon combinations manage to make their faith. losing the religion race sucks ass, its such a binary mechanic. playing the game trying to found and failing to do so feels incredibly bad. the fact that faith is reset too when switching religion is an insult to injury in my opinion. there are some advantages to being a nonfounder, but its a bit of an arrogant playstyle of saying that you can conquer an ai holy city or be fine at the whims of whatever an ai chooses (not to mention the religious division from civs that might fight to convert).

so yeah, trying to found with a nonreligious civ is uh, i wish you luck. its really not that bad to bite that bullet and just take god of all creation or similar, but having a fallback plan to go conquering is really necessary with that. not taking faith has its own merits