Beaten to religion in Emperor

[tu_79]

This discussion is from Dec-18 thread. Here are the most relevant posts.

Very strong start on Emperor. Turn 53 with 4 cities.

I appreciate that Arabia which is next to me built Petra before me. When I conquer Mecca, Petra shall belong to its true owner and as a generous ruler I shall allow the citizens of nearby Medina free pilgrimage to Mecca's wonder.

Now all I have to do is build military to prevent my greedy neighbours, Shaka to the north and Genghis Khan to the west, from wrong ideas.

I chose a untypical belief here, the God of Sun. Quite a lot of wheat in my territory which I intend to harvest to the fullest and store in my faith producing granaries. Would have prefered Spirit of the Desert but Arabia snatched that too while I was busy snatching his territorial assets around his capital. No worries, soon we will be united via a common religion.

Once this all is done, I can found a world religion to enlighten my neighbours and then the true culture machine will be turned on.

Got to keep an eye on Shaka because he is building some army. He might be interested in a nearby to him city state but I don't trust this monger. In any case, he better know that it ain't easy to win battles on desert lands. There is nowhere to hide from falling arrows and nowhere to run is the arid deserts.

View attachment 513331

You could go Tradition, settle just two cities, snipe a wonder or two, and wait for the AI to settle there before you get a new puppet, or settle yourself once you have Forge technology. With just food, those cities are not contributing in a long time.
I'm not saying your approach is wrong, just that there are options.

In Leondegrance's starting position, I would have picked Tradition, rushed Statue of Zeus, picked God of All Creation (after seeing Arabia pick Spirit of the desert), rushed Horsemen, and then proceeded to go on a surprise attack against Arabia, starting with Mecca if Harun neglected to build a walls there by the time I had four Horsemen ready. (I recommend everyone to at least occasionally play with Strategic Balance enabled, so that all civs have an equal starting amount of horses and iron, which gives all civs the option to build a decent army at the start of the game).

I don't want to decrease the difficulty, neither to switch to less Civs than the full set. Rather trying to figure out a strong faith start to overcome the founding issue and guarantee religion.

Spirit of the Desert is clear winner here so the question is beating the AI for Pantheon by not losing time. Although God of Sun looks okay here it is not enough as building the granaries is critical time lost.

So a strategy needs to be less dependent on building. And I am looking into these 2 alternatives. Goddess of Love and God of Expansion.

Love ( 15 f/born citizen) looks strong on my particular map with tons of wheat. But if the map was different and had poor growth potential, Expansion (20 f/border exoansion) looks strong. Expansion particularly good with Tradition (Sovereignity) as both boost border expansion.

Do you think these 2 are the ultimate ways to guarantee a religion ?

Of course the question remains how to secure quick Pantheon so they can be picked.

Edit: I uncovered one mistake here. I chose Justice in Tradition first (the engineer). Instead should have gone Sovereignity (the artist) for its + 3 f immediate effect. Lost 60 faith only to this overlook.

Sorry to say that @Leondegrance, but
Like Gazebo said, the game is not balanced around a specific way to play. And like Grabbl said, there are ALWAYS 7 civs with faith related bonuses in early game. Plus Byzantium which has a high favor for religion and Siam which may meet religious CS and gain a lot of early faith too. If you want to have always a religion, play byzantium or india.

Another point. Your starting position is extremly special. Nothing else than floodplains, wheat and desert gives you nothing for production. Complaining your not able to start a religion in such cirmumstances is not representive.
I dont know if others see this too, but your city placement is terrible. Fes is is not on the river nor on the coast. Placing it on the river and focus on water mills to compensate the lack of hammer would be a priority to me. I also dont see a reason to place Casablanca on your chosen spot. Theres nothing. Instead you could have placed it on the forest north west of it to gain a hammer rush and then focus on a shrine. Or place it even more northwest in the gap between the woods. Your Kasbah can be placed on woods and those can be improved by the workshop aswell, making it extreme strong tiles.

Tbh, I think you have a very bad start with almost no production at all. Even if you try to rush faith buildings, that won’t help because they will come online too late. And your choice of places for settling is bad too.

So I think that’s better for you to learn more about the game than complaining about balancing. Try reading and analyzing games from photojournals, improve your decision making. Until then you can come back and discuss more about balance because right now you have the passion but lack the knowledge and experience of the game.

I dont think he has bad cities placement. If it was me, I would settle just like him, with Fes just one tile forward, next to the oasis. Watermill come very late. I would rush mining and build well because 2 productions. Also Rivier City get +1 food but you already have plenty of food, +1 gold from Flat City is better so you can rush Well.

Tried really hard to do it but got beaten to 4 turns. Even with this impressive jackpot start with Spirit of the Desert unlocked and shrine rush and nearby Lhasa contributed 6 faith for quite long time, it was still not possible on Emperor.

I give up. Indeed religion is reserved only for few Civs on this difficulty.

View attachment 513489

Did you try Stonehenge + goddess of beauty? I can get a religion as tradition 90% of my games with this combo.

Here is the save on turn 1 with this map. I would be happy to know if you can found a religion.

No mods present, only the VP version must be 43.

And keep in mind, the last religion was found on turn 90.

I find it funny the last pages of this thread. Yesterday I was saying it is possible and you were saying it is not possible. Today the roles are reversed funnily, I am saying it is not possible and you are saying it is possible.

 

[tu_79]

In this post, there's the savegame for anyone interested in trying it out. 43 civ version.
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/new-version-december-18th-12-18.639855/page-12#post-15317667

In my opinion, Morocco is not a religious civ, so it's ok if it does not manage to found a religion sometimes.

 

[Leondegrance]

Thank you tu79 (is this a russian jet, tupolov 79)

In other words the question is can religion be founded. My theory is that it cannot consistently and I am pushing for redesign which will not happen unless supported. But not just pushing so that do more work for nothing.

Kind of question is, should powerful Civs be able to found a religion or that will break it, but should one and the same Civs be able to do it only.

 

[Rekk]

When there are 38 civs fighting over 3 religion slots, your start has to be excellent indeed.

 

[Leondegrance]

When there are 38 civs fighting over 3 religion slots, your start has to be excellent indeed.

Right now yes, the question is if should be changed. I have doubts that it may be bad to allow Civs like Morocco to get a religion. I mean nice if you play Ahmad but too bad if your opponent.

 

[Leondegrance]

The issue I foresee is that if religion gets fixed then we will run into issues like "oh let's decrease Kasbah's output because we can't catch it by any menas". So it may turn to be a loop and just creating more work for nothing.

You know what I mean. If religion is fixed, and then culture is fixed to equalize back, then we essentially did nothing but waste. Your time, my time, coders time, everybody's time.

 

[chicorbeef]

Right now yes, the question is if should be changed. I have doubts that it may be bad to allow Civs like Morocco to get a religion. I mean nice if you play Ahmad but too bad if your opponent.

It can't be changed for a reason you pointed out to me: not enough Founder beliefs. Not enough Enhancers or Follower beliefs either.

 

[tu_79]

In a standard map, you have just 10 players, 5 of them can found. The chances of having yourself a non religious civ and having in your map less than 5 religious civs is very high. However, you still depend a bit on luck: starting next to a religious wonder, a religious city state, or a luxury provinding faith, may change completely the outcome. For example, imagine your neighbour is England with a tobacco start. Not a religious civ, but probably Elizabeth is going to found just earlier. This dependency on the map randomness is welcome, actually, so every game is not equal.

What was your luxury monopoly? Salt? That only gives food. Good, but not for founding. Is Lhasa a religious city state? I think it is. If you want to befriend it that early, you have to produce a few warriors and gift them to the city state or have some luck with the quests. Maybe not enough, you could spend your hammers on other better things. Religious wonders? No luck. Is your civ religious? Not at all. Did you get any religious prize in the ancient ruins? Then, it's no wonder you have a rough time founding. But rejoice! There are other ways. If you are not able to found yourself, just usurp the religion founded by your neighbours. Focus on your military, conquer a holy city and let that religion spread to your cities. Voilà! You are the new leader of that religion.

On another note. I see most your cities don't have a river. That's a pretty good setting for goddess of fertility, actually. Not sure you can found with it, though.

 

[CrazyG]

Is there a special reason the 43 civs version has only 8 religions? Is that a hard cap in the code or something? If not, I can't really see an issue with suggestion to increase that number.

 

[tu_79]

Is there a special reason the 43 civs version has only 8 religions? Is that a hard cap in the code or something? If not, I can't really see an issue with suggestion to increase that number.

You need 21 religions to be comparable to standard games. There's not enough founders beliefs.
They just need to accept that this setting is not the one we're balancing with and make their own doable suggestions.

 

[CppMaster]

Can beliefs be just copied 3 times, so they can be picked for 3 different religions? That might solve the issue.

 

[Leondegrance]

Can beliefs be just copied 3 times, so they can be picked for 3 different religions? That might solve the issue.

Interesting suggestion. Looks like easy fix I guess, just changing a few parameters and no need to introduce new founder beliefs and reformations. Though I am not coder so not sure if it is that easy.

But on the game balance side of it. This would mean having many religions founded and will become probably very tough to spread your own religion. Every other nation will found one. Very controversial to have more of them and game breaking.

The easiest fix is what I experimented with by increasing the Prophet requirement to 1000 the other day. I still got beaten though with zero effect, beaten on same turn with the same deficit, proved to have no effect but under some other circumstances it may work, I assume. Increasing it further, for example to 1200, is also a possibility.

Then I played another map, which has screenshot above, and got beaten to only 4 turns. Pretty close I guess, maybe some suboptimal decisions by me in the faith race. For example, tu29 suggests to gift Lhasa a few units. I already befriended Lhasa and was getting 6 faith from them, but I should have indeed gifted a unit to ally them for even more faith which may had closed the deficit.

I have one proposal for your evaluation too. How about making the cities be able to produce faith early on ? Like they produce food early on in the production queue. This way you can make targeted decisions and it is still up to you whether to do it or not. This may even push you towards very fast spawning of cities in order to switch them to faith, and will have a side effect of slowing the building progress of the cities, but that is the trade off. Certainly have some strategical appeal to it.

 

[tu_79]

Not being able to found a religion with Morocco is not an issue. Do you want to lead your religion? Capture the holy city of the religion you want to lead, it's not difficult.

 

[Leondegrance]

I needed to found religion only for the Sacred Sites reformation belief. Because last time couldn't beat Egypt's and Ethiopia's influence.

 

[tu_79]

I needed to found religion only for the Sacred Sites reformation belief. Because last time couldn't beat Egypt's and Ethiopia's influence.

Do you want to beat Egypt and Ethiopia in influence being Morocco, or just any civ able to use Sacred Sites would work?
Cause Morocco also has a big deal with trade routes, so focusing on trade routes might give you a bit chunck of tourism. And if you want Sacred Sites badly, both India and Babylon might work better. But making Morocco work with Sacred Sites may only be possible with a bit of luck from your map.

 

[Leondegrance]

Yes wit Morocco. Just another attempt at Cultural Victory. May not work due to higher difficulty but I will try it. Last time I got delayed with Stadiums, completely forgot that they require first Arena and circus, and made them way way too late. Quite lame when going for CV.

 

[CppMaster]

time I got delayed with Stadiums, completely forgot that they require first Arena and circus, and made them way way too late. Quite lame when

I'm surprised you haven't built arenas at that point. Nice source of culture and production early game.

 

[tu_79]

Yes wit Morocco. Just another attempt at Cultural Victory. May not work due to higher difficulty but I will try it. Last time I got delayed with Stadiums, completely forgot that they require first Arena and circus, and made them way way too late. Quite lame when going for CV.

Sacred Sites is a reformation belief. Just capture any holy city before it reforms its religion, and reform it yourself with the beliefs you want. Have you ever usurped a religion?

 

[Leondegrance]

Now I am building them on time.

However there is another issue that may be too big of an issue. I think there is a runaway Civ somewhere on the map. While I was finishing Classical era, suddenly received 2 spies. A runaway Civ entered Renaissance. A whole era ahead of me.

The neighbors around me though are okay, similar score to me. This map is weird. I have met only 4 Civs. Where are the other 38 ? This could be multiple continents map and this may hurt my TRs.

Yes I have conquered before holy capitals. Here though nobody around me found a religion. There must be a whole runaway continent somewhere.

 

[tu_79]

Now I am building them on time.

However there is another issue that may be too big of an issue. I think there is a runaway Civ somewhere on the map. While I was finishing Classical era, suddenly received 2 spies. A runaway Civ entered Renaissance. A whole era ahead of me.

The neighbors around me though are okay, similar score to me. This map is weird. I have met only 4 Civs. Where are the other 38 ? This could be multiple continents map and this may hurt my TRs.

Yes I have conquered before holy capitals. Here though nobody around me found a religion. There must be a whole runaway continent somewhere.

You know? The game is not over until it is over. There's time to recover if you train your spies (have them work a time as diplomats before attempting to steal anything).