G-Minor LXXVII

[Acken]

Here is mine with 52Tpt at 123. Pagoda Monastery I believe.
Maybe Mosques is slightly better than pagoda for the extra faith.

To be honest you just can't get both good tourism and kill opponents and then you need a good initial faith to reach these numbers at 120. Glory is using a gem start giving him 8faith and a natural wonder giving him 4. I have a salt start for 3 faith and sinai for 8faith. If you can get your GP at turn 50 it's a good sign that you'll reach these numbers imo. I personally was just looking for gem or salts in my rerolls and then play until first settler to see if a T50 GP was likely.

Once he's pop I buy a building and then enhance. I kept 2 cultural CS allied in my game and then made Oracle.

Tech was: luxuries, archery, calendar, philosophy.
Cap: Monument, Scout, Scout, Worker/Granary, Settler (when free one pops), Stonehenge, Settler, Settler, Temple, Oracle (Shrine before or after stonehenge and grab pantheon with a ruin usually)

Every city is Monument, Shrine, Temple. Until I have Reformation at which point I stop making monuments. Every city with pop 2 or more that already has these 3 buildings starts on making settlers. I then put priority to monasteries and then pagoda when happiness runs low or no more monasteries. There was just no time to make more than 2 or 3 archers in my game.

Spoiler :

 

[Tabarnak]

Nice stats too Acken!

Well it seems that keys for a strong victory are:

-Faith+culture luxs start(with salt if possible)
-Faith wonder nearby
-Stonehenge?(why seriously? only 5 fpt...)
-Early cultural cs
-Oracle
-2x faith buildings
*Extra: Kill an opponent or 2

You guys didn't kill opponents. Can you trade Stonehenge and try to kill an AI or 2 to accelerate processus? What makes Stonehenge so good? What is the turn you aim for Reformation? I got it around 90 at best. But i know it's kinda slow because i struggled into gaining culture from cs and tiles.

 

[Acken]

I also reach reformation in the 90ish range I believe. I bet glory7 got it sooner since he had 4 cultural CS. Initiation rites obviously help here to ally CS.

Stonehenge fpt doesn't matter at the end but it matters at the start. It starts the snowball effect of the strategy sooner. With stonehenge you may get your first GP 5 turns earlier, which will mean you get your first building sooner, you enhance sooner, get more gold out of founder belief, allowing you to ally CS faster etc. If your whole faith production is 5 turns early it also means the AI will have 5 less turns of accumulated culture once tourism starts to really matter which can mean you'll win more than 5 turns in the end.

Yes I think you can trade stonehenge for killing 2 AI instead, since you'll win some turns from the runaways which may be equal. But for 100% peaceful, stonehenge feels like a good investment.
Killing AIs may even have a bigger potential if you get a game where there is only 2 or 3 AI with good culture and everyone else is really low. But that's a gamble, in my game for example many AI were equally high.
However I wasn't convinced by my ability to kill these AI while still going for Philo so I ultimately abandoned the idea.

 

[Smirk]

Long hiatus...

First try got t166, not great, just playing thru some strategies.
Had a moderate start 3 gems and a few more littered around for other cities. No faith wonder however.

I only played this one out because I had a few wine and incense and started with monasteries. I think this helped ramp up sooner. Of note monasteries cost 120 with Mandate versus 160 for any of the others.
Long term on average mosques would give more total faith and happiness. You don't need the happiness, the culture is equal and largely unneeded end game after Reformation.
Lets just say for a dozen cities the differences in fpt at best is +12 for mosques. The difference in cost to build them is 40 * 12 = 480 which you'll get back after 40 turns. With 6 wine or incense that would be 80 turns so probably totally out of the questions. A more likely scenario is more like 3 or so wine/incense meaning it will pay back the initial higher cost after 50 turns, in total for all cities. It would require more math than I'm willing to bother with to sort out which is better.
My gut tells me the monastery, mostly because faith isn't the real goal here, its the tourism points which a cheaper building allows you to get sooner. I think I convinced myself to stay with monasteries.

Also tried building the writer's guild. Couldn't actually put the one writer I spawned anywhere, but I planned to use him to bulb culture anyway. I probably sacrificed some settlers to build. One thing I noticed initially I was waiting on faith to buy buildings and later I was waiting on new cities to spend my faith. Ended up popping two additional prophets due to not spamming enough cities or using it up.

 

[dcruze75]

So should you hold back on building more cities, since the cost for new policies goes up or what?

Is the unique ability useless, since it's totally out of the way (The Maoi), they're good for additional culture?

 

[Acken]

So should you hold back on building more cities, since the cost for new policies goes up or what?

Is the unique ability useless, since it's totally out of the way (The Maoi), they're good for additional culture?

Well you don't want 10cities before reformation because yeah it slows it done. But you want enough cities to be able to plant religious buildings in advance, and you want even more than that because at some point you will make so much faith that you will buy a building every turn. At that stage your output of settlers cannot keep up so you need cities in advance in order to buy you time. Also, with the religious buildings I'm pretty sure it negates the culture penalty so it's not a big deal.

In my experience you don't have to slow down on settlers anyway, assuming you aren't late on religion or culture, building the oracle will do that for you and you will probably at 6 or 7 cities when reformation hits and that is good.

Moai comes too late in my experiene to be of real use. Since I feel you need philo before construction this makes construction relatively late and cities don't have a lot of pop to work weak culture tiles, and the cap needs hammer to make Oracle... it also delays teching to civil service. Obviously though if you went for composite bowman it would synergize better.

 

[Manpanzee]

My 1st ever attempt at a Sacred Sites game. Got a T140 victory with a ton of war.

I was inspired by one of Cromagnus' posts in the last G-Major thread, and decided to try being the world's biggest bully. It was a lot of fun demanding tributes left and right. I conquered two enemies, and whittled down everyone else who was doing well culturally without even really needing to fight. I would just insta-DOW once peace treaties expired, they would give me a city for peace, and I would raze, rinse, and repeat. I had never seen that happen before, cool to be introduced to the joys of warmongering

Didn't get a faith NW this game. Pantheon was Earth Mother. Wasn't a ton of faith, but can't complain about having Salt. I can only imagine how nicely the faith might snowball with Uluru too... I also got slowed down because I decided it would be interesting to put Attila in the game. Naturally, he spawned next to me. He took a Merc city state I'd been allied with and came after my capital at kind of an awkward time. He got his eventually, though.

Anyway, here's my empire:

Spoiler :

http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=376037&stc=1&d=1401078370

With 20 cities, I've hit the limit of my happiness. I have 3 more Settlers in place ready to plant, if I could. I also ran out of faith buildings to buy right on time, peaking at 64 tourism the turn before victory. I also had two more on-religion cities I could've annexed, I guess. I'm not sure how the happiness mechanics work. Is a Mosque worth 1/4 or something of a happy in a Pop 1 city that already has a Pagoda? It seemed like Mosques weren't doing much for smilies, so Monasteries probably would've been faster.

 

[Swissy]

Had five silver for first two cities. Three of the first five CS I meet were cultural. One had CS Eldorado in its borders, which gave me an early number two city. Settled a good number of cities on unique luxuries, helping the happiness stay in check.

 

[glory7]

I also reach reformation in the 90ish range I believe. I bet glory7 got it sooner since he had 4 cultural CS. Initiation rites obviously help here to ally CS.

Stonehenge fpt doesn't matter at the end but it matters at the start. It starts the snowball effect of the strategy sooner. With stonehenge you may get your first GP 5 turns earlier, which will mean you get your first building sooner, you enhance sooner, get more gold out of founder belief, allowing you to ally CS faster etc. If your whole faith production is 5 turns early it also means the AI will have 5 less turns of accumulated culture once tourism starts to really matter which can mean you'll win more than 5 turns in the end.

Yes I think you can trade stonehenge for killing 2 AI instead, since you'll win some turns from the runaways which may be equal. But for 100% peaceful, stonehenge feels like a good investment.
Killing AIs may even have a bigger potential if you get a game where there is only 2 or 3 AI with good culture and everyone else is really low. But that's a gamble, in my game for example many AI were equally high.
However I wasn't convinced by my ability to kill these AI while still going for Philo so I ultimately abandoned the idea.

very nice summary here. I think I got reformation around t90 too (cannot remember exactly, but for the t120 game I think I got it sometime t85-90)

 

[Cromagnus]

hm, I thought getting itinerant preacher early actually helped - and usually religion spreads to nearby cities anyway before I get 2 buildings at the cap.

I usually go for initiation+mosque first, and enhance with pagoda/monastery + itinerant preacher. Sometimes AIs get religion fast (especially when I lose stonehenge) and I worry losing buildings that I want.

Unless it's Warlord or below I enhance first. Mosque first, Monastery second on Settler-Warlord, Pagoda on Prince+. Monastery is *the bomb*. 4 buildings for the price of 3!

Sometimes I go Monastery first if I have a huge happiness buffer, and I have Wine or Incense. Sacred Sites is more Culture-bound than Faith-bound. I'm also a fan of building Hagia Sophia so that you don't have to spend faith to extend your religion. It also creates a 500-faith buffer just in case you're waiting on religion to spread to a city and don't want to pop a prophet by accident.

 

[Smirk]

Is a Mosque worth 1/4 or something of a happy in a Pop 1 city that already has a Pagoda? It seemed like Mosques weren't doing much for smilies, so Monasteries probably would've been faster.

I don't know how consistent the game is but the terms global and local happiness are used. For global happiness its just a raw addition, like from a luxury. Local happiness is capped based on population or the unhappiness in that given city. The last bit might be two parts that have two roles. But for your case the city only has one population so generates only -1(?) local happiness. Although the unhappiness for the additional city calculates in there somewhere.

 

[Thunda]

are you guys opening liberty to settler and then going down piety to reformation?

 

[Acken]

Yes. The free settler and subsequent production bonus helps immensely. Also free hammer and culture in all your cities.

You'll need the Oracle and at least one cultural CS ally to reach Reformation in a good time.

 

[Denniz]

Results:

G-Minor LXXVII - Culture, King, Standard, Ice Age, Standard, Polynesia (Kamehameha) (check options)
1st glory7 - 125 AD T-120
2nd Acken - 200 AD T-123
3rd Tabarnak - 400 AD T-131

Congratulations!