China's religious wonder whore statrgey

[paralistalon]

I've been playing around with China and have found that it is arguably the best civ for getting the first religion. As long as you start anywhere near a source of stone, which is relatively common, you should start by building a worker/builder and start with astrology as your first tech. Send your warrior around and maybe if you get lucky you'll find a natural wonder, but even if you don't, you can still get Stonehenge before the AI even on Diety. The trick is to beeline astrology and not get sidetracked with mining or sending your builder to do anything but wait to spend his charges on rushing Stonehenge. You can probably make a slinger or warrior inbetween to protect your worker from barbarians if needed, or even a second worker if you can manage (you can get +30% towards a wonder in one turn if you have one builder "die" using his last charge, then have the other walk over and use his charge). This gets your free great prophet. You'll still need a pantheon, which you might already be close to if you've met a religious city state or settled on incense, but otherwise you just wait for the faith from Stonehenge.

After this, if you really want to go all-in with wonder whoring, you can usually get the pyramids next if you have any desert tiles around which makes for a great synergy with China's abilities. Next is probably the Oracle (needs to be on a hill). I've lost the race for the Oracle before, but if you're focused, you can get it as your third wonder. I'm usually in a place to get hanging gardens next, which it doesn't seem like there is much competition for. After this, the mahabodi temple comes up. This is a lot harder to get reliably because the AI usually wants it, and you have to quickly build a holy site (next to a woods space!), shrine, AND temple before you can rush it with your builders. I tend to lose this one more often than not, but it's always really close, so there's a chance you can get it.

As far as your religion, the +2 faith for quarries is pretty safe since you'll have at least one (or else you can't build Stonehenge!). I make sure that my first belief is the one that gives +4 faith for world wonders, and you have some flexibility in the other. If you have an aggressive neighbor and only a handful of slingers for defense because you've been spending all your production on wonders, then the defensive war belief that gives all your units +10 combat strength while in your borders can be good.

These tend to be the main wonders I try to get out of the way. In some of my other games, the Colossus and Great Lighthouse were never built by the other AIs so why not crank them out in 5-6 turns in a second city next to the coast (plus the cost in turns/gold for the builders, but you should probably use the 30% discount on builders for a while), and the Terracotta Army might make a nice foundation for a culture VC game- maybe take cathedrals and triple tourism for relics and forget about trying to compete with the AI's acolyte spam at all?

 

[Frank327]

Is this actually a winning strategy on deity though? Seems like the only thing you'll get out of this strategy is a religion and faith to power the religion. No extra cities, no developing your city with improvements, no extra culture, very small military etc.

 

[MadDjinn]

well, China's early game strategy in general is to mass builder spam and take any wonder that would be useful to it -- or whatever it can get it's hands on. That's by design, so yeah, it can start a winning strategy. No pressure to get whatever founder belief you want does help.

wrt the OP comment on 'ignoring the AIs religious unit spam' -> Reliquaries only works for your relics if you have your religion in the city. so you can't really ignore it.

But generally, it's similar to civV religions. Either build a religion that you want to spread (tithe/etc etc) or build a religion you want for yourself (jesuit education/reliquaries/etc) and just defend it. If for just yourself, then take the +10 combat vs enemy religions near friendly cities, because that will allow you to sit an apostle on your holy site and let the AI spam kill itself on you.

 

[Fuccimama]

Is this actually a winning strategy on deity though? Seems like the only thing you'll get out of this strategy is a religion and faith to power the religion. No extra cities, no developing your city with improvements, no extra culture, very small military etc.

I feel your concern. This seems more like a strategy to lose in an early war than anything.

 

[Idleray]

Hey OP. I have a strategy that guarantees all wonders, even on Deity, and it doesn't involve "whoring".

Wanna know what it is?

It's called building an army and crushing the AI's inferior sense of tactics. In your lingo it would be "making the AI my biatch(it's weird how this is censored and whore isn't"

 

[civplay]

Is this actually a winning strategy on deity though? Seems like the only thing you'll get out of this strategy is a religion and faith to power the religion. No extra cities, no developing your city with improvements, no extra culture, very small military etc.

I have. First on a duel map then on a small map. (I don't like bigger maps, in between turns take to long, and too much micro). The proof of concept is definitely there.

I built SH, then massed archers before AI DOW on me. won defensive got gold. Using, chop building I built 3 settlers and 3 archers, built up my army, then took out civ who on my continent. Then built 3 more holy sites. built 2 more campuses. got my commercial districts up and industry districts where I could. got the extra builder policy and chopped everything. (I had a lot of forest/rainforest). From there I massed Calvary and took out the leading religous civ. I also built more wonders in my capital during the invasion (I cant think of which though). From there it was pretty easy. My religion spread a long time ago to the civ left on the same continent as me.

btw I did get a clost faith city-state which obviously helped a lot, and found a natural wonder pretty fast. The great barrier reef. Building a city there also really helped me keep up with early game science while focusing on faith and units.

(edit) I remember also getting the faith bonus where you get faith per city, and just had a hug amount of extra faith.