Emperor Byzantium Piety Challenge

[Monthar]

Here's a Byzantine challenge for those of us that aren't up to Immortal or Deity. Can you forge a powerful empire by opening with Piety. The challenge is to complete the piety tree before opening any other tree and use this to forge a strong religion.

Edit: This game was created with all the DLC civs and Wonders of the Ancient World DLC active.

Settings

Spoiler :

Type: Small Continents
Speed: Standard
Size: Standard
Number of AI: 7, all randomly picked
Number of City States 16
Quick Combat and Quick Moves enabled

Start Location

Spoiler :

I haven't played the map yet, so I'll be just as surprised as everyone else by what's nearby and what AI's are in the game. I did not turn on raging barbarians.

Based on this start my pantheon choices, in the order I'd take them are culture from jungles, culture from plantations, food from camps if there are more deer nearby, production from work boats if there are more sea resources nearby.

 

[Hieschen]

Hi monthar

Will play this. Quick question though, why would your favorite pantheon be culture from jungle? Iirc if you transform the spices/banana, jungle disappears?

Pat

 

[Browd]

Still plenty of jungle on this map. Leave the bananas untouched.

 

[Hieschen]

Ok, you work the jungle, i work the plantation panthenon. Thats why it's called a challenge.

Seriously, i believe that the panthenon should help you most in the beginning and i generally start working jungle only after guild / university not before, so 110 turns into the game at least

Anyway, before continuing to speculate, lets explore a bit and see wht my future other cities will have to work on

 

[Monthar]

Three reasons.
1) You should never build a plantation on bananas, because it only gains you 1 food, but loses you the 2 science once your university is up. So with culture from jungles pantheon and a granary, the bananas become 4 food, 2 science 1 culture.

2) You'll be working the 2 spices and bananas to grow the capital and generate some gold before your worker(s) can clear the jungle and build the plantations. Since that takes at least 7 turns to chop and build once you have the worker and get it in place, that's 14+ early culture lost just for that operation, plus how ever long it took to get the techs to both chop the jungle and build the plantation after picking your pantheon.

3) Completing Piety before any other tree, will require a lot of early culture.

Also keep in mind that with a completed piety tree you'll get the pantheon for the 2nd highest religion in your city. One of the AI's might pick the culture from plantations. So if you set trade routes with that AI, you'll end up with both pantheons active.

When you chop a jungle to build the plantations, you lose 1 food because the tile becomes a plains tile. In the case of the bananas you get that food back once the plantation finishes, but the spices don't get it back until fertilizer. So until you need those spices for more happiness and the extra gold, you might be better off working them for the 2 food 2 gold and 1 culture with the jungle culture pantheon.

 

[Hieschen]

Three reasons.
1) You should never build a plantation on bananas, because it only gains you 1 food, but loses you the 2 science once your university is up. So with culture from jungles pantheon and a granary, the bananas become 4 food, 2 science 1 culture.

2) You'll be working the 2 spices and bananas to grow the capital and generate some gold before your worker(s) can clear the jungle and build the plantations. Since that takes at least 7 turns to chop and build once you have the worker and get it in place, that's 14+ early culture lost just for that operation, plus how ever long it took to get the techs to both chop the jungle and build the plantation after picking your pantheon.

3) Completing Piety before any other tree, will require a lot of early culture.

Also keep in mind that with a completed piety tree you'll get the pantheon for the 2nd highest religion in your city. One of the AI's might pick the culture from plantations. So if you set trade routes with that AI, you'll end up with both pantheons active.

When you chop a jungle to build the plantations, you lose 1 food because the tile becomes a plains tile. In the case of the bananas you get that food back once the plantation finishes, but the spices don't get it back until fertilizer. So until you need those spices for more happiness and the extra gold, you might be better off working them for the 2 food 2 gold and 1 culture with the jungle culture pantheon.

One is a given, i rarely plant bananas, i agree completely

2) i do less agree, i will push the spices as fast as possible as i want to be able to sell them to whatever AI is interested. I do agree though that it will take time and that i might lose some culture here. On the other hand, taking plantations gives you the culture in the long run.

Anyway, what i did realise when i loaded the game was that the forest tiles i thought i saw (was on a tablet when i first visited the thread) are in fact also jungle tiles, which kills all argument about anything else than a jungle pantheon….

3) just as a thought, this works both ways


Final note, I tried all piety tree with Morocco as a first game in BNW and was underwhelmed, but i concede that i played very suboptimal.

 

[Monthar]

For those that didn't read the Immortal Byzantine challenge thread, here's a quote of what I posted there.

The only times a Piety opening work well with Byzantium are, in order:

1. If you have a few gold/silver, wine/incense for their faith/culture pantheons
2. Several deer for the food from camps pantheon so you can grow well.
3. Lots of good desert tiles to work.
4. Lots of tundra deer with the dance of auroras pantheon. Only because you'll drop holy sites on the deer for the gold/culture/faith once Piety is completed, even if the deer is forested. However, it needs several hills to mine or you won't have enough production.
5. Lots of jungle for culture from jungle pantheon.
6. Several pasture resources for the culture from pastures pantheon.
7. Culture from plantations.

Anything else and you're better off at least opening Tradition before piety to help power thru the policies.

If you do open piety your bonus belief should be the cheaper prophets not only to get the 2nd one faster, most likely before finishing the tree, but mainly for lots of holy sites. Once the tree is completed working a lot of holy sites will help power thru whatever other policies you want fairly quickly.

With a Piety opening where you plan to complete the tree quickly try these beliefs.
Founder - Culture from followers in foreign cities. CS's do count.
Follower 1 - Cathedrals for the art slot, monasteries if it's the wine/incense start, culture from temples or faith from amphitheaters.
Follower 2 - +15% production, +15% growth or one of the follower 1 beliefs is these are taken.
Enhancer - Any of the 3 passive spreaders work well. With the trade route system the one to spread to CS's is more powerful that before BNW. With all the prophets you're going to generate before industrial or buy afterwards to plant holy sites with the faith from using great people might finally be useful.
Reformation - buy science buildings with faith, buy any great person with faith or buy industrial and later units with faith. BTW, a university only costs 160 faith with piety completed.

The reasons for not taking pagodas or mosques is you can get plenty of happiness from other sources and you're better off getting prophets to build holy sites, buying an inquisitor to protect the holy city and the reformation faith purchases. The only reason cathedrals are there is for the slot, but if you're not going for cultural victory, don't take cathedrals. Monasteries is only for the wine/incense starts, because it super powers that pantheon and it's the cheapest faith bought building.

The new Borobudur is a priority wonder to get your religion spreading faster, because that gives 3 free missionaries. If you're able to get the Great Mosque in before it, they'll all have the extra spread. Don't worry about building Hagia Sophia, because the "free" prophet increases your prophet counter and you'll get more of them fairly quickly anyway.

The biggest reason for lots of holy sites is the gold. The policy that adds 10% gold to temples also adds 3 gold to holy sites. This means higher gold from trade routes and entices the AI to send you more trade routes to that city, thus helping to spread your religion to them if their end of the trade route is outside the range of your natural spread.

One other point that makes the 50 faith every time a great person is expended possibly worth taking now is artists, musicians, writers all have there own counter just like the prophets, admirals and generals already did. So you could generate an artist, writer, musician, prophet, admiral, general and either a GS, GE or GM in the same turn and each counter only progresses one step. So that's 350 faith per great person counter increment. That's if you build a citadel and use the admiral to repair your fleet instead of only using their passive bonus.

 

[RedRover57]

Here's a Byzantine challenge for those of us that aren't up to Immortal or Deity.

The funny thing is that the Immortal challenge map will be much easier. This start has no production and all that jungle to slog through. It will be incredibly slow going with Piety and much slower to get a religion vs the Immortal map.

 

[Justice1337]

Wow, people are really freaking out about the Piety opener having no culture. I would recommend just playing a few games through a few different civs opening Piety. The 3 culture from Tradition, the 3'ish from Liberty and whatever you get from Honor, you can honestly just do without.

Granted, if late G&K were just patched to allow a Piety opener, I'd possibly be a bit more worried. But in BNW, you get much less culture from unslotted Amiptheatres and up, and there are also more policies. So first, a greater portion of your culture is coming from just Monuments, which you can hard-build. And second, the culture costs of policies, particulaly later policies, are way down from what they were in G&K. So you can go Piety, plan to get zero culture from your religion, and still be safe. It's only if you want to parlay the Piety opener into a cultural victory that you will need to emphasize a cultural Pantheon or Follower belief.

I played a game opening Piety with Egypt, took Religious Center and Feed the World, rexxed out like it was Civ IV, and I was still absolutely just fine completing the tree early enough. Early game was a failboat because of escalating tech costs, but culture was just fine.

I have also opened Piety with cultures totally unaligned to culture or religion, like Assyria, and it was just fine.

 

[Hieschen]

As Mac is patched back in since a few days, i give this a shot now.

VC is whatever suits me as long as i complete piety first before any other policy?