Challenge: Earliest Religious Victories

Spoiler :
Capital was Tarsos (captured from Rebels on my 2nd turn), let Antioch flip to me later. Still called Principality of Antioch though.

Razed Sis and founded Coxon, then later Limassol on Cyprus and Hisn Kayfa in upper Jazira after the Zengid spawn. First vassal was Zengids, then Seljuk Sultanate and then Kingdom of Kartli. Kartli was a Byzantine vassal until Byzantium declared war on me, then once I razed Trapezounta Kartli broke free. I conquered the four closest Georgian cities and then Kartli capitulated. I had to bribe the Zengids to adopt Catholicism to get the URV condition. Zengids promptly collapsed thereafter, but they had played their part.

Surviving against Byzantine attacks was far harder than capturing Jerulsalem, and significantly delayed any moves to the south with my best units. It was only after the Mamluk spawn that I had Byzantium (and the Mongols) under control sufficiently to launch an attack on Jerusalem.

For the spreading of Catholicism, I infiltrated most of the Georgian cities peacefully, persecuted Othodoxy from most of my own cities and lastly used a Great Saint based near Tarsus to convert a bunch of Byzantine cities to Catholicism. I specifically razed the small pathetic cities in the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum's spawn zone before using the Great Saint. I think the Great Saint pushed % Catholicism/Orthodoxy from 87%/100% to 106%/100%.

I started with one Christian relic in Antioch, caputed one from the Seljuk Sulunate of Rum's capital, traded one from the Abbassids and traded a surplus one from the Ayyubids (after I had already captured Jerusalem).
 
Voluntary vassals were Zengids and Mamluks. Built Spiral Minaret early. First tech path was Asymmetric Warfare for Great Spy, then later got Great Merchant from Companies also. Other Great People were spawned the slow way, the last being a Great Scholar.

Never got to see my Golden Age, which would have triggered from 2/3 UHV in a couple more turns. But that's probably a good thing, because the Ottoman Turks would have spawned shortly thereafter anyway.
 
Settled capital at starting location. No civic changes. Research for long distance trade. 10 gold each to Malwa and Ajmer for OB. Settled Khambhat.

Built barracks and 2 catapults in capital, hired some mercs, and sent most of my military for a fast conquest of the indie Chittor with iron and stone. Temple in capital ASAP for an early priest. A bit of micro to ensure that the first GP would be the needed prophet for the shrine. Artists used to pop borders and then mostly no specialists at all except priest.

Built some UU and hired 2-3 mercs and then, to avoid the piety penalty, waited for Ajmer or Malwa to declare war. Malwa declared and I invaded, their cities were captured and Malwa collapsed. Built Ran Ki wonder in Chittor.

No specialists except the priests, no civic change to agrarianism (to avoid the health penalty) and only OB with Ajmer, hiring mercs, and many cities = bad economy. Research was 0-20% most of the game.

After consolidating the Malwa cities the army was sent to Sindh together with Hindu missionaries. Declared war on the Shia Sindh, captured their cities, massacred the Muslim population and spread Hinduism.

Instead of trying to spread Hinduism to other civs I settled more cities in Gujarat and Maharasthra and spread Hinduism to those. Temples and monasteries were built in nearly all cities + 2 cathedrals finished the last turn was enough for 100 piety.
 

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I thought that only applied to AI Sultanate of Rum, but I could be mistaken.

No, if you've taken Constantinople and survived the Mongol invasions, then effectively the Osman's beylik has never formed. Rum is collapsed if the Ottomans spawn in any case, which wouldn't really be that fun for the human player ;)
 
I would love to see a Sunni Byzantine, a Shiite Gujarat, an Orthodox Ayyubid and a Catholic Seljuk religious victory, please.:D
 
When I started, there was only one Great Saint settled by Shia civs, so I had to conquer lots of cities to find more of them, since there is no time to generate them yourself. There was also a mega Mamluk Empire stretching from Makuria to Kayseri (check power graph) and I had to build up a monstrous army to challenge them. Sadly they collapsed almost immeatidely after I started pounding them, so the end was only mopping up rebels and finding the GS cities.

Spoiler :
 
My spawn situation was terrible as Gujarat Empire controlled India from Goa to Sindh and had vassalised Malwa and Ajmer. However, with some manuvering and lots of mercs I managed to bring them down and meanwhile I dedicated my cities to certain specialist. Luckily Sunni was at 40%, so purging India from Hindus did the trick for me. Also it was fun to see the great empires of Mamluks, Ottomans, Safavids and Timurids to battle of the control of Georgia, Mesopotamia and Persia. In the end it resulted to Safavid collapse.

When the missing Great Spy was finally born, my overkill navy sailed towards indie Mecca and took it easily.

Spoiler :


BTW, Edead can you explain why my score is so much lower than in my Safavid URV game?
 
BTW, Edead can you explain why my score is so much lower than in my Safavid URV game?

If I read right, the final score difference is 25000 vs. 5200 ? The final score calculations are rather cryptic. For the part I know, you have 300 less base pts with Mughals, and in the part that deals with the time of victory, you get 38% of max. score with Safavids and 26% of max. score with Mughals (excluding other factors). I'm not sure if that is enough to account for the difference.
 
This harder than I expected as I had to take down really powerful Mamluk Sultanate on my route to Mekke. Settled 10/11 imams by myself, but annoyingly found five of them from super Cairo, so in the end there where about 20 of them. Conquered five of the muslim relics too. I delayed my victory for four turns just to get Cairo for all the wonder points, sadly it didn't really show in the score. No idea how that works.. :confused:

Spoiler :
 
I delayed my victory for four turns just to get Cairo for all the wonder points, sadly it didn't really show in the score. No idea how that works.. :confused:

Oh, that part I can explain. Civ4 score is based on your score graph, not just the final score. So you get more points for Wonders, Population, Land and Techs the longer you have them, relative to your lifetime. Controlling them for just a turn doesn't account for much.
 
Pretty straightforward game, but extremely annoying Mansa -event almost made me rage quit. I would've won sooner without it, since it forced me to build wealth in almost every city just to avoid bankcrupty..:mad:

Embryodead, please nerf it, it is unbearable at the moment!

Spoiler :
 
I won Fatimid Shia URV in 1255.
Found Cairo on 1S1E from spawn spot = 5 hills. Get 1 GS to bulb education, religious law is important.

I worked the semidesert hill SSE of Qusb Minar (Nobatia) - caught a worker from Makuria, make peace, and poop, that worker went near the hill that is normally impassable.

KoJ and PoA were weak: no guild = easy kill. Abbasid respawned without marksmen too, easy prey of my Berber and Ghulam horse archer.

Luckily, I got many great saints.
Got cavalry tactics around 1230s, and Seljuks was soon destroyed by Mongols. Got my last relic at Iran, then I won.
 
Good to have you onboard the challenge youtien. If you could please post some screenshots, I will add your result to the OP. We are also recording final scores.
 
It took a while to produce the 7 different GPs with Oman's cities, so while waiting Kufah to produce the missing Great Prophet I decided make the classic boat bridge from Basra to Mecca; after this is a fastest URV thread like Blizzrd pointed out.:D

Imagine my surprise when I noticed that units cannot change ships in middle of the ocean, so my beatiful ship-bridge was completely wasted and the annoying Portuguese spawned before the GP reached Mecca; they even took Suhar, since I was prepared to win the game before they appear...

Spoiler :
 
Here, I reloaded and did it again, this time in 1246, 5 turns after Seljuks collapsed.
 
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