Byzantine religion builds
- Thread starter black213
- Start date
I think especially on Immortal+ the consistency of Byz is very strong. You always can take the Pantheon you want, and even if it's not too Faithful or you run into various delays you know you will get a Religion. Considering that if you go for a Religion and miss with other civs it's almost a death sentence thats a strong bonus.
As for Belief combos, I feel like Founders tend to be the strongest. Council of Elders + Apolistic lets you double dip on religion spread bonuses for example. Also you're guaranteed to get Symbolism even if you dawdle on enhancing to spread first.
As for Belief combos, I feel like Founders tend to be the strongest. Council of Elders + Apolistic lets you double dip on religion spread bonuses for example. Also you're guaranteed to get Symbolism even if you dawdle on enhancing to spread first.
There are lots of cool builds. One thing I like is God of All Creation with authority, and rush horses to spam tribute and bully CS. GOAC gives you a huge bonus with absolutely no effort beyond one shrine, and it really helps get your tribute rolling. Byzantines fix GOAC's "problem" of being unable to found. Then you rush to chivalry while gathering xp on your horses. You don't need too many cities, since you actually want your neighbours to overextend and get rekt by cataphracts. Hero worship is nice. Council of elders can give you science/prod just when you need it too. This kind of GOAC strat can be interesting with progress/tradition too.
black213
Emperor
- Joined
- Mar 12, 2010
- Messages
- 1,696
I'm all too familiar with this Byz gameplan
GOAC is very nice assistance for Authority starts. When I found I do Hero Worship + Veneration + Zealotry, Orders + Mendicancy(?) for enhancer.Thibix Magnus
Warlord
- Joined
- May 19, 2019
- Messages
- 197
something I really enjoyed for an OCC Byzantium - I guess works well for a few cities too - was ceremonial + apostolic + prophecy + ttgog. Once missionaries have spread what they could, you follow up with cheaper prophets. So you keep benefitting from apostolic a lot longer while fighting with the AI over the same cities, while you defend your religion size for ceremonial faith yields for more prophets. Cheaper prophets trigger ceremonial more often, more food means more specialists so more great people, etc. Really cool little feedback loop for a small civ that needs yields outside of its borders.
Super spreader:
Pantheon = Situational (whatever helps you found quickly, don't delay founding just because you can)
Founder = Apostolic Tradition (food+culture from missionary spread)
Bonus = Council of Elders (production+science on city convert)
Followers = Whatever you want
Enhancer = Sacred Calendar or Symbolism (both give more potent spreading)
Reformation = Whatever you want
Target Borobudur for 3x missionary spread, Hagia to get your prophet without having to stop buying missionaries. Use Byz's naturally high faith generation to missionary bomb everyone while getting a huge steroid to food/culture/science/production in the mid game. Be sure to capitalize on those yields as they don't scale great later on. Converting the world to your religion has benefits toward diplo and tourism victories.
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Great People Stacking:
Pantheon = Situational (whatever helps you found quickly, don't delay founding just because you can). Commerce, Beauty, and Wisdom might work especially well with their great people point bonuses.
Founder = Ceremonial Burial (culture/faith on great person use)
Bonus = To the Glory of God (buy any great person with faith)
Followers = Whatever you want
Enhancer = Sacred Calendar or Symbolism (both give bonuses to great person generation)
Reformation = Knowledge through Devotion (great person tile buffs)
Goes well with Tradition for even more great people generation. Byz's high faith begets great person buying which begets more faith, culture, and buffed great person tiles.
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Wide Sacred/Holy Sites:
Pantheon = Situational (whatever helps you found quickly, don't delay founding just because you can).
Founder = Apostolic Tradition (food+culture from missionary spread)
Bonus = Way of the Pilgrim (tourism+culture from missionary spread)
Followers = faith buildings (one should be Stupa, the other is situational)
Enhancer = Prophecy (buffed Holy Sites, cheaper prophets)
Reformation = Sacred Sites
The idea is to win a culture/tourism victory while wide and not necessarily relying on culture/tourism wonders. Progress-Fealty supports wide while also giving you the extra faith building. Sacred Sites + 3 faith buildings gives a nice base of tourism that comes online early in the game when tourism is scarce. Apostolic and Pilgrim give a nice source of culture to help power you to 2x tier 3 tenets (you blow through your first two trees very fast). Pilgrim can also help generate tourism via spreading. Last, buffed Holy Sites from Prophecy (they also get +5 tourism/GA points from the 2 reformation buildings!) coupled with Hotel/Airport/National Visitor Center/Olympic proposal wonder convert culture tiles to tourism (stack holy sites at your capital). I'm currently trying to get this working on Immortal, it sounds reasonable in theory but we'll see if it works.
Pantheon = Situational (whatever helps you found quickly, don't delay founding just because you can)
Founder = Apostolic Tradition (food+culture from missionary spread)
Bonus = Council of Elders (production+science on city convert)
Followers = Whatever you want
Enhancer = Sacred Calendar or Symbolism (both give more potent spreading)
Reformation = Whatever you want
Target Borobudur for 3x missionary spread, Hagia to get your prophet without having to stop buying missionaries. Use Byz's naturally high faith generation to missionary bomb everyone while getting a huge steroid to food/culture/science/production in the mid game. Be sure to capitalize on those yields as they don't scale great later on. Converting the world to your religion has benefits toward diplo and tourism victories.
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Great People Stacking:
Pantheon = Situational (whatever helps you found quickly, don't delay founding just because you can). Commerce, Beauty, and Wisdom might work especially well with their great people point bonuses.
Founder = Ceremonial Burial (culture/faith on great person use)
Bonus = To the Glory of God (buy any great person with faith)
Followers = Whatever you want
Enhancer = Sacred Calendar or Symbolism (both give bonuses to great person generation)
Reformation = Knowledge through Devotion (great person tile buffs)
Goes well with Tradition for even more great people generation. Byz's high faith begets great person buying which begets more faith, culture, and buffed great person tiles.
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Wide Sacred/Holy Sites:
Pantheon = Situational (whatever helps you found quickly, don't delay founding just because you can).
Founder = Apostolic Tradition (food+culture from missionary spread)
Bonus = Way of the Pilgrim (tourism+culture from missionary spread)
Followers = faith buildings (one should be Stupa, the other is situational)
Enhancer = Prophecy (buffed Holy Sites, cheaper prophets)
Reformation = Sacred Sites
The idea is to win a culture/tourism victory while wide and not necessarily relying on culture/tourism wonders. Progress-Fealty supports wide while also giving you the extra faith building. Sacred Sites + 3 faith buildings gives a nice base of tourism that comes online early in the game when tourism is scarce. Apostolic and Pilgrim give a nice source of culture to help power you to 2x tier 3 tenets (you blow through your first two trees very fast). Pilgrim can also help generate tourism via spreading. Last, buffed Holy Sites from Prophecy (they also get +5 tourism/GA points from the 2 reformation buildings!) coupled with Hotel/Airport/National Visitor Center/Olympic proposal wonder convert culture tiles to tourism (stack holy sites at your capital). I'm currently trying to get this working on Immortal, it sounds reasonable in theory but we'll see if it works.
Should be very strong in theory but for some reason my Byzantium games havent been that awesome.
Council of E+one more founder is always a good bet as Byz imo, either you go peaceful and spread to others or you go wide and spread to a lot of own cities.
Either way you're fine and holy sites will get very juicy.
Council of E+one more founder is always a good bet as Byz imo, either you go peaceful and spread to others or you go wide and spread to a lot of own cities.
Either way you're fine and holy sites will get very juicy.
I found a very nifty build.
Pantheon - God of the Expanse (Production and Faith on border expansion)
Founder - Ceremonial Burial (Faith and Culture on great person expansion)
Bonus - Holy Law (Faith, Science and Gold on Policy pick)
Follower - Veneration, Gold and culture on faith purchase.
2nd Follower - Free pick of religious buildings (I went Synagogues because 3rd and 4th adds some synergy). But cathedrals (gold and gold on border expansion would work. As would a number of religious buildings
Enhancer
Range of choices
Prophecy - Cheaper and Stronger Great Prophets
Sacred Calander - Percentage Great person generation bonus, and gold and golden age points per city following
Symbolism - GPP points
Reformation
Holy Land - Votes for holy sites
Knowledge Through Devotion - Buff GP tiles and works
To the Glory of God - Faith to purchase any GP, and Gold science and culture on expansion.
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Now, this is basically the faith monster Byzantium turbocharged. Two of the three faith generating Founder beliefs, which actually have an incredible synergy. Buying, and using a great person produces a bunch of culture, which triggers polices, which generates more faith to buy more stuff which produces more culture. Veneration only strengths this further. Faith converting into culture, basically means all my social policies are effectively cheaper. And Holy Law is consistently most of a tech, if you hit the max in terms of followers, which is well within Byzantiums reach.
Veneration is also very useful as the first belief because the early culture and gold from it are useful in their own right. But the culture can be used to trigger border expansions. Buying a faith-building, or a missionary in a city is easily enough to claim a tile or two when the city is still small. Buying a great person in the city can claim multiple tiles. I didn't realise this synergy until afterwards, so in my game, I don't actually have God of the expanse. But even lacking that and lacking Angkor Wat, with Tradition, I have my capital city in the Late Renaissance easily reaching a great distance outwards, from all the lump sum culture generated. Considering my production troubles, Expanse would have been very useful and likely generated more faith then Beauty (which ended up not being amazingly helpful as I didn't grab that many wonders).
Then the enhancer is up to you. Prophecy and Holy Land are perfect if you want to go for a diplomatic victory, it isn't too hard to get 2 votes in the early world congress just from Holy Sites. Even without that, my embassies, coreligionists and religious authority was more than enough to pass world religion on the first round of the congress. The others just mean more GP, which then trigger more yields.
Reformation is also up to you, though I ended up going with To the Glory of God, to best spread out my faith, and the extra yields on expansion. But any of them are viable and could work with a strategy.
In terms of strategy, this is clearly a Tradition build. Most wonders are not particularly critical, the main one for me was actually Hagia Sophia for enhancing my religion, after spending most of my faith on missionaries. And the free Great Prophet on being expanded, and picking Prophecy was enough to help spawn a second one, in the next turn. But any wonders that makes Great people more valuable or gives you more of them, particularly triggered yields is a good bonus. The Pyramids, Angkor Wat and University of Sankore are early wonders to aim for, though missing any of them, or all of them isn't crippling. Of the three, in the game I'm in, I only got the Pyramids.
For later policy, I took only the Fealty opener and then completed Artistry. Fealty opener faith purchase discount is very useful, and purchasing a round of Monasteries for all my cities was some useful border expansions and yields. After that, either Rationalism or Industry works.
Overall, I've tried the super spreader build before and found it was fine but not amazing. But my above build feels incredibly strong, and pushed me from in the middle of the pack in policies and tech, to the leader over the course of the medieval and Renaissance.
Pantheon - God of the Expanse (Production and Faith on border expansion)
Founder - Ceremonial Burial (Faith and Culture on great person expansion)
Bonus - Holy Law (Faith, Science and Gold on Policy pick)
Follower - Veneration, Gold and culture on faith purchase.
2nd Follower - Free pick of religious buildings (I went Synagogues because 3rd and 4th adds some synergy). But cathedrals (gold and gold on border expansion would work. As would a number of religious buildings
Enhancer
Range of choices
Prophecy - Cheaper and Stronger Great Prophets
Sacred Calander - Percentage Great person generation bonus, and gold and golden age points per city following
Symbolism - GPP points
Reformation
Holy Land - Votes for holy sites
Knowledge Through Devotion - Buff GP tiles and works
To the Glory of God - Faith to purchase any GP, and Gold science and culture on expansion.
-----
Now, this is basically the faith monster Byzantium turbocharged. Two of the three faith generating Founder beliefs, which actually have an incredible synergy. Buying, and using a great person produces a bunch of culture, which triggers polices, which generates more faith to buy more stuff which produces more culture. Veneration only strengths this further. Faith converting into culture, basically means all my social policies are effectively cheaper. And Holy Law is consistently most of a tech, if you hit the max in terms of followers, which is well within Byzantiums reach.
Veneration is also very useful as the first belief because the early culture and gold from it are useful in their own right. But the culture can be used to trigger border expansions. Buying a faith-building, or a missionary in a city is easily enough to claim a tile or two when the city is still small. Buying a great person in the city can claim multiple tiles. I didn't realise this synergy until afterwards, so in my game, I don't actually have God of the expanse. But even lacking that and lacking Angkor Wat, with Tradition, I have my capital city in the Late Renaissance easily reaching a great distance outwards, from all the lump sum culture generated. Considering my production troubles, Expanse would have been very useful and likely generated more faith then Beauty (which ended up not being amazingly helpful as I didn't grab that many wonders).
Then the enhancer is up to you. Prophecy and Holy Land are perfect if you want to go for a diplomatic victory, it isn't too hard to get 2 votes in the early world congress just from Holy Sites. Even without that, my embassies, coreligionists and religious authority was more than enough to pass world religion on the first round of the congress. The others just mean more GP, which then trigger more yields.
Reformation is also up to you, though I ended up going with To the Glory of God, to best spread out my faith, and the extra yields on expansion. But any of them are viable and could work with a strategy.
In terms of strategy, this is clearly a Tradition build. Most wonders are not particularly critical, the main one for me was actually Hagia Sophia for enhancing my religion, after spending most of my faith on missionaries. And the free Great Prophet on being expanded, and picking Prophecy was enough to help spawn a second one, in the next turn. But any wonders that makes Great people more valuable or gives you more of them, particularly triggered yields is a good bonus. The Pyramids, Angkor Wat and University of Sankore are early wonders to aim for, though missing any of them, or all of them isn't crippling. Of the three, in the game I'm in, I only got the Pyramids.
For later policy, I took only the Fealty opener and then completed Artistry. Fealty opener faith purchase discount is very useful, and purchasing a round of Monasteries for all my cities was some useful border expansions and yields. After that, either Rationalism or Industry works.
Overall, I've tried the super spreader build before and found it was fine but not amazing. But my above build feels incredibly strong, and pushed me from in the middle of the pack in policies and tech, to the leader over the course of the medieval and Renaissance.
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As an additional point, the Ceremonial burial/Holy Law combo is intended for heavy spreading. I played another game where I spawned on an isolated section of the map with 4 CS and one other civ (who didn't found), and so ditched Holy Law for the enhancer that is +2GPP, which also ended up resulting in gobs of faith from using Great People.
I feel with Byzantium that Veneration is a near mandatory pick if any of the faith producing Founders are used. Byzantium can produce so much faith, meaning a ton of culture, border growth and gold. I actually had half the number of cities that Songhai on the other continent has, but more land area with this religious build, Expanse, Tradition and Angkor Wat. All with like 2 total tile purchases with gold all game, both natural wonders.
To the Glory of God is also amazing. Even aside from all the numerous yields from purchasing a great person (easily multiple tiles of expansion in a non-capital city with Veneration), if you haven't purchased one before and have hit the cap in terms of cites, you get more faith back, than the cost of the Great Person. Of course, the faith cost quickly ramps up, but there are lots of GP to pick from, so easy to pick an expensive one, wait for the 7 turn cooldown on Epic, pick a cheaper one, and pick a more expensive one. And of course all the other yields.
The wonders that give Great people are also great since I could bulb an engineer on the wonder, get a Great Person and then use them.
Byzantium can produce so much faith, that once the world gets fully converted, I would buy a bunch of missionaries, and delete them all next turn, just to get rid of some of the faith. The faith is sorta like a bank that can't be raided by that pesky spies.
I feel with Byzantium that Veneration is a near mandatory pick if any of the faith producing Founders are used. Byzantium can produce so much faith, meaning a ton of culture, border growth and gold. I actually had half the number of cities that Songhai on the other continent has, but more land area with this religious build, Expanse, Tradition and Angkor Wat. All with like 2 total tile purchases with gold all game, both natural wonders.
To the Glory of God is also amazing. Even aside from all the numerous yields from purchasing a great person (easily multiple tiles of expansion in a non-capital city with Veneration), if you haven't purchased one before and have hit the cap in terms of cites, you get more faith back, than the cost of the Great Person. Of course, the faith cost quickly ramps up, but there are lots of GP to pick from, so easy to pick an expensive one, wait for the 7 turn cooldown on Epic, pick a cheaper one, and pick a more expensive one. And of course all the other yields.
The wonders that give Great people are also great since I could bulb an engineer on the wonder, get a Great Person and then use them.
Byzantium can produce so much faith, that once the world gets fully converted, I would buy a bunch of missionaries, and delete them all next turn, just to get rid of some of the faith. The faith is sorta like a bank that can't be raided by that pesky spies.
LifeOfBrian
King
- Joined
- Aug 21, 2019
- Messages
- 757
Byzantium should go Way of the Pilgrim and Veneration and just watch the culture (and gold) roll in. I'm certain there's no better option than that for Byzantium.
