Civ7 Exploration Age - Religion - Tactics and Thoughts

[vorlon_mi]

I think people underestimate them. You do need to produce or buy a stream of missionaries to keep them converted, but I think it’s arguably worth it, especially as you can get those civics fairly early in the Age.

It's a tradeoff, like many in Civ games. Devoting production (or gold) to have a stream of missionaries to re-convert your own settlements means not spending that production (or gold) for overbuilding your Antiquity buildings. Not overbuilding means that your yields will be lacking, making it hard to achieve the Exploration Science legacy path, to have non-city-center districts with amazing yields.

Yes, you unlock the social policies that provide benefits for your own settlements with your religion early. But it's hard to KEEP your own towns/cities converted. Literally every other player in the homelands is trying to snatch them away.

In my last game, I kept about 3 missionaries sleeping in my cities until the age progress hit 90-95%. I reconverted my cities so they would be following my religion in Modern. I can't tell if that provided any benefit other than aesthetics.

 

[Fluffball]

I think people underestimate them. You do need to produce or buy a stream of missionaries to keep them converted, but I think it’s arguably worth it, especially as you can get those civics fairly early in the Age.

Not so great if you think about it as a choice of building/buying something permanent or repeatedly having to build/buy something which becomes increasingly expensive each time which also take time and lots of micro to be useful.

Working from memory (not able to open game up and no where seems to list the religious civics, which may be taken as a sign of how popular they are) but isn't the bonus just additional science and culture? Personally i might have thought about it more if i wasn't already unlocking multiple fututre techs/civics in the era thus eeking out a few extra science/culture with loads of extra micro doesn't seem particularly attractive especially when it takes up a policy slot.

In fact whatever resource it may give I am always swimming in them anyway so why bother with additional micro.

Even looking longer term, if you take the golden age you only keep the founder beliefs which all apply to foreign cities.

I just get a religion and then get the second belief as the additional movement on water belief is really useful in the age and is quick and cheap to get. Use a couple of missionaries for the two legacy paths (as I outlined above) then completely ignore it.

 

[Manpanzee]

I achieved 100% religious conversion on Deity/Standard/Standard. It's doable. The enhancer belief that gives +10% production to Missionaries per Relic you have is very powerful.

A total of 44 foreign cities following my religion survived the era, meaning my religious golden age legacy was worth +176 beakers on turn 1 of Modern Age. That's a massive amount, far more than you can otherwise hope to get for two legacy points. Easily worth it in strategic terms, although waging the religious war without a religion lens to easily see what's flipped gets pretty painful toward the end.

 

[The Mighty Quinn]

I would also point out that these policies become available pretty early in the Age. In my current game I built a Temple and two missionaries and converted my entire empire, at the cost of only a few turns of production, and now I have those nice bonuses to get myself set up for the Age. Even (perhaps especially) if I don't choose to bother keeping them converted through the whole Age, it's a good return on investment.

 

[Cptobvious]

Is it normal to be so far behind in exploration age on Immortal? I feel like my Antiquity went pretty well, not sure if I am doing something majorly wrong?

 

[Acken]

Is it normal to be so far behind in exploration age on Immortal? I feel like my Antiquity went pretty well, not sure if I am doing something majorly wrong?

Hard to say from a screenshot but no, 50 turns into exploration you can have much better yields than this. While it is on Viceroy with Confucius, my GotM entry in exploration finished at turn 73 with +1K culture +1K science (as a publicly available example)
The sources of yields in this game are:
* Having the right adjacency bonuses and the current age building.
* Specialists
* City states bonuses
* Policies
See if you are lacking in any of these.
From the screenshot I can only see/guess a few things:
* I see farms in your main cities. Food is a terrible yield in cities.
* Waset looks like a well developped city that you are running as a town

 

[Cptobvious]

I was following your guide actually for antiquity and i just downloaded your save to take a look.

One thing I wasn't using at all was specialists, this was my first exploration age and I'm still learning the game. That's why you see the farms because I continued to grow the city into new tiles. Also Waset I just finished restoring order so I converted it into a city shortly after this save.
So I suppose I should be maxing out my specialists instead of growing tiles in exploration?

I did take advantage of some suzerain bonuses although a few of them were wiped out by the AI. My policies were focused on yields mostly. My adjacency bonus' weren't perfect but I followed your guide and OneMoreTurn's deity video and made decent work of the adjacencies. So aside from specialists and a few minor adjacency mistakes not sure how I could be THAT far behind when I have so many big towns/cities and a larger empire then most of the AI.
Also I spent a lot of time playing whack a mole with Missionaries, not sure if this was a good use of my production vs festivals when I was waiting for techs to finish unlocking new buildings.
One thing that bothered me later in this save was there was barely any room to settle in distant lands by the time I got settlers out there. Only managed 1 decent treasure fleet city. Gonna have to reload my save at the start of the age or maybe a new game altogether, I ended up barely making any better yields by turn 100.

Not sure if anyone has the time but I attached the last save (better than the screenshot)

 

[Fluffball]

Is it normal to be so far behind in exploration age on Immortal? I feel like my Antiquity went pretty well, not sure if I am doing something majorly wrong?

View attachment 724834

I am usually quite low on the yield comparisons but make up for it with influence, taking city states and then stealing techs and civics but you have very low influence also and high gold turnover so you can buy your way through. You have a low gold yield also.

My biggest jump out though is how little of the 'distant lands' you have explored. The mini map only seems to show one basic line of exploration. I usually have 4 or 5 cogs out straight away.

How much gold and influence did you carry over? I usually have the carry over cap of both and use the gold to buy cogs and a couple of settlers to find and settle prime distant lands and the influence to start buying city states.

Wasset appears to be captured, have you been warring at home? If so this is the worst thing to be doing in exploration as you want new/captured settlements in distant lands both for the economic and military legacies.

 

[vorlon_mi]

I was following your guide actually for antiquity and i just downloaded your save to take a look.

One thing I wasn't using at all was specialists, this was my first exploration age and I'm still learning the game. That's why you see the farms because I continued to grow the city into new tiles. Also Waset I just finished restoring order so I converted it into a city shortly after this save.
So I suppose I should be maxing out my specialists instead of growing tiles in exploration?

I did take advantage of some suzerain bonuses although a few of them were wiped out by the AI. My policies were focused on yields mostly. My adjacency bonus' weren't perfect but I followed your guide and OneMoreTurn's deity video and made decent work of the adjacencies. So aside from specialists and a few minor adjacency mistakes not sure how I could be THAT far behind when I have so many big towns/cities and a larger empire then most of the AI.
Also I spent a lot of time playing whack a mole with Missionaries, not sure if this was a good use of my production vs festivals when I was waiting for techs to finish unlocking new buildings.
One thing that bothered me later in this save was there was barely any room to settle in distant lands by the time I got settlers out there. Only managed 1 decent treasure fleet city. Gonna have to reload my save at the start of the age or maybe a new game altogether, I ended up barely making any better yields by turn 100.

Not sure if anyone has the time but I attached the last save (better than the screenshot)

As I get to my 4th game (also still learning), I have certain things that I prioritize in the first 20 or so turns of Exploration.

• You will start with a Cog, but build another 2. Find the shortest path to an island close to your coast and get exploring. Look for an island with a Treasure resource. Send one along a northern route, the other on a southern route. If you have a settlement on the other coast (assuming a continents or continents+ map), that's even better.
• Start building a Settler in one of your cities. Even if you don't know where it will go, start building it. Research the civic (don't remember which one, I'm at work right now) that lets civilians cross the ocean. With luck, you'll finish the civic before your settler gets its feet wet.

I read in another thread here that the only way to get yields up to work on the Science legacy path is by using specialists. Yes, adjacencies are also super important. I'm only now starting to plan an Antiquity wonder location so that the buildings / quarter that I will build in Exploration gets good adjacencies. Specialists are the secret sauce that amplifies the adjacencies.

 

[Acken]

I was following your guide actually for antiquity and i just downloaded your save to take a look.

One thing I wasn't using at all was specialists, this was my first exploration age and I'm still learning the game. That's why you see the farms because I continued to grow the city into new tiles. Also Waset I just finished restoring order so I converted it into a city shortly after this save.
So I suppose I should be maxing out my specialists instead of growing tiles in exploration?

I did take advantage of some suzerain bonuses although a few of them were wiped out by the AI. My policies were focused on yields mostly. My adjacency bonus' weren't perfect but I followed your guide and OneMoreTurn's deity video and made decent work of the adjacencies. So aside from specialists and a few minor adjacency mistakes not sure how I could be THAT far behind when I have so many big towns/cities and a larger empire then most of the AI.
Also I spent a lot of time playing whack a mole with Missionaries, not sure if this was a good use of my production vs festivals when I was waiting for techs to finish unlocking new buildings.
One thing that bothered me later in this save was there was barely any room to settle in distant lands by the time I got settlers out there. Only managed 1 decent treasure fleet city. Gonna have to reload my save at the start of the age or maybe a new game altogether, I ended up barely making any better yields by turn 100.

Not sure if anyone has the time but I attached the last save (better than the screenshot)

Maybe it wasn't explicit enough in the guide (will probably do a revision in the future) but in cities you will typically have a few rural tiles and specialists. So you want these rural tiles to really matter and bring you production (mines, woodcutters). Every farm in a city is usually a loss in potential. The main reason why is that Towns give you food without any loss (1:1) but their production is converted at a 1:1 ratio while you buy at 1:4. This means it is much easier to transfer food than to transfer production. When I capture a large city from the AI their planning is usually bad and full of fishing/farms so I usually build district on top of it to be able to reassign it to better tiles (or I just keep it as a town).

Then the specialists are what will drive the yields up especially with good adjacency. They drive the current age and then in the next age you overbuild on top of the same district to keep getting a benefit from them.

Missionaries are only worth for 2 things: Getting your relics and defend your cities if you are running the reformation policies (which I am still on the fence if really worth it). Defending towns is a bit of a waste and trying to convert many foreign cities for a follower bonus a total waste in my experience. Use incense to make missionaries.

For efficient treasury fleets, you need to both reach ship building fast enough (having decent science yields) and the towns to already be settled by the time you get it.

 

[Fluffball]

I read in another thread here that the only way to get yields up to work on the Science legacy path is by using specialists. Yes, adjacencies are also super important. I'm only now starting to plan an Antiquity wonder location so that the buildings / quarter that I will build in Exploration gets good adjacencies. Specialists are the secret sauce that amplifies the adjacencies.

Then the specialists are what will drive the yields up especially with good adjacency. They drive the current age and then in the next age you overbuild on top of the same district to keep getting a benefit from them.

Missionaries are only worth for 2 things: Getting your relics and defend your cities if you are running the reformation policies (which I am still on the fence if really worth it). Defending towns is a bit of a waste and trying to convert many foreign cities for a follower bonus a total waste in my experience. Use incense to make missionaries.

With a bit of experience, specialists and planning good adjacencies help but the real secret to easily getting the tile yields is focusing in happiness to get lots of celebrations which give you more social policy slots and using the cards which buff yields.

Get the mod that shows what you actually get from slotting a policy card and it becomes a no brainer as you automatically want to slot the card that gives you 150+ science/gold/culture and viola! You automatically have lots of tiles with 40+ (and usually even higher...highest i have had when checking the legacy was 90 something, which was a tile with specialists but I had over 40 tiles with 40+ yields and only about 1/4 had any specialists slotted which I were mainly slotting as I ran out of tiles to work).

There has been some discussion on religion. Personally I just use it to get relics and help fulfill the military legacy then completely forget it. Repeatedly building missionaries with ever increasing costs to spread and defend a religion provides increasing diminishing (meagre) returns.

I do take the second belief as increased movement at sea is cheap to get and a big bonus when the whole point of exploration is exploring the sea.

Some people have really took religion to the extreme, someone even mentioned converting the whole world and getting 150-200 science then taking the culture golden age but how many hammers/gold did that take and what could you have done with all that production/gold otherwise?

Taking 150-200 science into the modern era sounds good but when I am winning modern era (on immortal) before the AI has even registered any of the win conditions most of the time, does it really matter outside of and experiment or 'because i could'.

I have thought about maybe trying it for lols as I often end exploration era with nothing to build for a long time but I always take the economic legacy path as I like having my cities ready to go and like the flexibility of gold.

 

[Manpanzee]

Taking 150-200 science into the modern era sounds good but when I am winning modern era (on immortal) before the AI has even registered any of the win conditions most of the time, does it really matter outside of and experiment or 'because i could'.

Once you're at a level where "winning" is never a real question, you start playing for different things, in particular optimization challenges. One that's always going to be popular around here is "win the Modern age in the fewest number of turns".

Some people have really took religion to the extreme, someone even mentioned converting the whole world and getting 150-200 science then taking the culture golden age but how many hammers/gold did that take and what could you have done with all that production/gold otherwise?

The age mechanic in this game demands drastic changes to how we think about "efficient play". Every choice has to balance "what am I getting now?" with "what am I getting next age?". Given how much resets between ages, these questions have very different answers.

When considering what your empire is going to give you in the next age, I think you can broadly segment into "turn 1 carryover" and "scaling potential". Moving from Antiquity into Exploration, both of these factors are important. From Exploration into Modern, I believe turn 1 carryover is the dominant factor.

Currently the Modern age is very short. With efficient play, victory time is generally gated by techs/civics that you're aiming to hit in the first 20-25 turns. With such a compressed timeframe, turn 1 carryover is hugely important, and there simply isn't much time for increased scaling potential to possibly catch up and overtake it.

Suppose that playing in a certain way costs you 1,000 science in Exploration, but starts you with +10 science-per-turn in Modern. Is this a good trade? For my purposes, I think the answer mostly has to be "yes".

 

[Fluffball]

Once you're at a level where "winning" is never a real question, you start playing for different things, in particular optimization challenges. One that's always going to be popular around here is "win the Modern age in the fewest number of turns".



The age mechanic in this game demands drastic changes to how we think about "efficient play". Every choice has to balance "what am I getting now?" with "what am I getting next age?". Given how much resets between ages, these questions have very different answers.

When considering what your empire is going to give you in the next age, I think you can broadly segment into "turn 1 carryover" and "scaling potential". Moving from Antiquity into Exploration, both of these factors are important. From Exploration into Modern, I believe turn 1 carryover is the dominant factor.

Currently the Modern age is very short. With efficient play, victory time is generally gated by techs/civics that you're aiming to hit in the first 20-25 turns. With such a compressed timeframe, turn 1 carryover is hugely important, and there simply isn't much time for increased scaling potential to possibly catch up and overtake it.

Suppose that playing in a certain way costs you 1,000 science in Exploration, but starts you with +10 science-per-turn in Modern. Is this a good trade? For my purposes, I think the answer mostly has to be "yes".

I can understand the idea of making up your own challenges but that is usually a different thing to the best or optimum way to play.

The degrees of interest and fun derived from challenges depends on the individual.

Personally I find the current religion game boring and uninspiring and if I get to the point i am simply making my own challenges to keep a game interesting, well I am lucky enough to have plenty of other games to play.

I do understand that is not always an option for people and getting the most out any game, especially a game as expensive as civ 7 may be preferable but that is a different thing again to what is the best 'general' gameplay.

 

[Serenya]

It's a tradeoff, like many in Civ games. Devoting production (or gold) to have a stream of missionaries to re-convert your own settlements means not spending that production (or gold) for overbuilding your Antiquity buildings. Not overbuilding means that your yields will be lacking, making it hard to achieve the Exploration Science legacy path, to have non-city-center districts with amazing yields.

Yes, you unlock the social policies that provide benefits for your own settlements with your religion early. But it's hard to KEEP your own towns/cities converted. Literally every other player in the homelands is trying to snatch them away.

In my last game, I kept about 3 missionaries sleeping in my cities until the age progress hit 90-95%. I reconverted my cities so they would be following my religion in Modern. I can't tell if that provided any benefit other than aesthetics.

For my most recent game I was determined to get to 100 to see if that opened up the second locked belief. I started when the only branch not done was treasure fleets - I had 27 turns in the AIs had zero - and the age ended when one of the AIs got to 30 the same turn I hit 100%, and I had 60 fleets waiting. I spammed missionaries *hard* - I had them parked 2 at a time in my cities, and sent them all over the map converting the others. Every time I got close a new sad town would be founded. It took so long (I had turned off future civ aging) that I had 50 missionaries running around and *still* couldn't do it! I did notice that the AIs mostly didn't try to convert their own towns, and I quickly learned which settlements they liked to reconvert over and over again, but every now and again they'd catch me with some random settlement. It was a challenge to see if I could do it, and since I'd taken the 4gp tithe, *and* the tithe for desert plots I was minting money - but I doubt it would be worth it on a higher difficulty setting/unmodded game. And I wasn't the one to complete the science path, just the rest. It was interesting to attempt, but I found myself missing inquisitors! On the plus side, it means taking the religion golden age for modern starts me off significantly ahead on gold.

 

[vorlon_mi]

For my most recent game I was determined to get to 100 to see if that opened up the second locked belief.

What *does* unlock other beliefs? I read somewhere else here that they are narrative choices, relatively rare, but that's all I know.

 

[Serenya]

What *does* unlock other beliefs? I read somewhere else here that they are narrative choices, relatively rare, but that's all I know.

The final two founder's beliefs say that they are based on gameplay; as best I can tell the first one opens when you get to ~85% religion spread, and the second requires 100%. With the first I got a narrative choice that said I could pick a founder's belief, and also granted a couple attribute points (culture I think?). Sadly, the one time I hit 100% was the same turn the age ended, so I don't know what the result would have been. The main advantage is that in the next age you can opt to keep your founder's beliefs as your golden age (it looks like a pick one, but others have said that you actually get them all if you have multiple. I am not sure).

 

[torsteinvh]

My religion tactic is to more or less ignore religion... I might build a temple or two to add some happiness, but I've stopped building missionaries, and never spread my own religion.
A lot less management, and a nice side effect is that the crisis often is quite the opposite:

 

[vorlon_mi]

The final two founder's beliefs say that they are based on gameplay; as best I can tell the first one opens when you get to ~85% religion spread, and the second requires 100%. With the first I got a narrative choice that said I could pick a founder's belief, and also granted a couple attribute points (culture I think?). Sadly, the one time I hit 100% was the same turn the age ended, so I don't know what the result would have been. The main advantage is that in the next age you can opt to keep your founder's beliefs as your golden age (it looks like a pick one, but others have said that you actually get them all if you have multiple. I am not sure).

Wow! That's a lot of work (spreading so far) for marginal benefits, as far as I can tell. You wouldn't have many turns to enjoy the benefits from the additional beliefs. Unless a future patch relaxes the requirements, I'm going to stop worrying about the additional beliefs.
Indeed, I'm going to try @torsteinvh tactic when my next game hits exploration.

 

[Serenya]

Yes, it was a good challenge but not worth it to me to do more than once!

 

[vorlon_mi]

Addendum: As @torsteinvh noted, there can be a tradeoff by NOT spreading your own religion, post-patch 1.1.1.

On the one hand, if you research the final religion civic (Reformation), you unlock benefits for spreading your religion to your own cities. If these policiies are unlocked earlier in Exploration, you may enjoy those benefits for 5-15 turns until the AI begin spamming missionaries and converting your cities. You will need to produce your own missionaries to convert them back, diluting the reformation policies' benefits.

On the other hand, if you don't research Reformation, there are few benefits from converting your own cities. One may choose Brahmanism as your Reliquary belief, to send just a few missionaries to convert AI capitals. As I learned last night, if you get the Plague crisis at the end of Exploration, you get a narrative choice about "Divine Punishment" vs. "Divine Mercy." By choosing Divine punishment, the happiness impact is lessened for cities that are not following your own religion. A game ago, I chose Divine Mercy, and my settlements following my religiion suffered more, so this time I chose the other.

Yes, getting the relic legacy path is nice. With no defense (current state of game) against AI missionaries, I don't find it fun to keep re-converting my cities and towns. It's a bit like a town that I took from the AI, where the AI had settled next to a volcano. Eruptions every 2nd or 3rd turn, a constant stream of gold to repair. Tiresome. Getting to 85% spread doesn't seem to have a great ROI for me, since I haven't observed many good effects for religions in the Modern Age. If I could be convinced that having most of my settlements following my religions helped me in *Modern*, I might stockpile some missionaries to do an end-of-Age "revival" to boost our devotion.