[BNW] Have people experimented with interfaith Dialogue?

venice

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I am a civ 5 player who loves wacky off-the-wall strategies that most people think are impractical, and one of my favorites is the interfaith dialogue piety build on quick speed as maya. Has anyone tried to do a HOF run as this kind of build, or is it just impractical?
 
Seems like an inefficient way of converting faith to science... I wonder if this can be better than it seems if it applies to all captures missionaries. Even then, it doesn't seem to compare with other good beliefs.
 
I thought I recalled reading about this somewhere and I found it. In this post and a few follow-up posts Vadalaz did experiment with IFD, it seems to be a little bit clunky. If you make it work for a HoF style run though, you might just be breaking into new territory.
 
I've not done any HOF-style runs because different quirky strategies are the most interesting to me. On quick speed (what I normally play) you get 10 science per population of another religion in a city, and I have done 5 city setups where I produce more than 1 missionary worth of faith per turn. If you have a good neighbor like India that goes tall and religious, you can generate 300-450 science per missionary if you use the great mosque. In my opinion, the best way of utilizing this build would be to get enough land for preferably 6 cities with high growth and an interfaith dialogue pagodas religious center holy order Jesuit education religion. I'll start a game on deity, restart until I get a good neighbor and good land, and see what happens.

Also in response to your question Tiberiu, it only applies to missionaries/ prophets of your religion, so if you captured them from someone else that would work unless they were someone else's religion. I'm not actually sure whether the AI buys religious units of religions other than its own if it doesn't found.
 
I don't know what a HOF-style is but I will try this belief in my next game to confirm my theories. I never used this belief. I assume best civ to do so is Spain but I'll try with Byzantine so that I can maybe test another weird belief at the same time.
 
I prefer Maya if you want consistency, Byzantium is rather weak for it because they have no way of generating extra faith. Spain could be very good but you probably need a lot of rolls to get a start that works. I like Maya most because of the fact that you can pick up an engineer from their bonus and grab the great mosque, which I'm not sure how to replicate as Spain.
 
Of course, I understand what you mean with Maya being good for any religious strategy. I like Byzantium because the extra belief can be used to generate faith while Spain...is Spain (I never had a bad game with them since its not very hard to settle at least a natural wonder if you really want to.) I think Babylon has best theoretical chances of building Mosque of Djenne due to their early science boost.
 
The problem isn't science if you go piety. The problem is the 15 turns it'll take to build

Tiberiu, could you tell me how to upload a save file from civ onto here? I am in the middle of a game and I wanted to give an update on how this is working out
 
Tiberiu, could you tell me how to upload a save file from civ onto here? I am in the middle of a game and I wanted to give an update on how this is working out

Yes. There is a button called "Upload a file" here (in the window where you write a post). You click it and then select your file. And then when you post, the file will be available to download.
It should be interesting to see what you did with this.
 
If you have not read it already @venice, see @Browd’s guide on Founder Beliefs. The science can be significant, but (1) only relative to the early game, (2) when missionaries are cheap, and (3) you have easy access to large cities following a different religion.

Obviously, there is synergy between (1) and (2), but (3) is a pretty big obstacle. I have not tried to make Interfaith Dialogue productive in quite some time.
 
In my current quick speed game it has given me about 6-7 renaissance techs worth of science, maybe a bit more. The Issue I'm having is that even with 4 happiness per city in my religion, without monarchy it is VERY hard to stay happy even with 5 luxes on 5 cities

Ok, this is my current save file from turn 107 and my starting file. If these are the wrong files, sorry. I started with the idea that I would reroll on great plains+ until I got a mountain river hill with an immediate growth tile since in all the HOF runs I have seen that has been pretty necessary for a good time. Build order monument- scout-pyramid- granary-scout-caravan-settlers. I found a spearman ruin and a barb camp ruin and I stole a worker from Germany and 3 from city-states. I decided that since piety already if very weak in early game production, I would attempt to avoid building workers to the degree possible. I used interfaith dialogue, pagodas, garden happiness, Jesuit education, and holy order for my religion. If someone wants more info just ask, I'd be happy to share my likely suboptimal choices for review.
 

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One little trick you can use to make IFD stronger is to cripple your missionaries down to 250 strength first. This way you won't convert too many citizens in your target city and keep getting max science from it.

In my opinion you need very high faith for IFD to shine, think over 100 fpt pre-Renaissance. Once you're close to Industrial era you have to start comparing IFD value against just hoarding faith for Great People. Since IFD science doesn't scale with game speed and GS bulb value does, on Quick it's likely a strong play to get 2 GSs from faith plus a bunch of missionaries over 3 GSs. Or who knows, maybe even just one GS and an army of missionaries.

An idea I just had is to play a game in which you don't spawn any GSs at all. Instead you rely on IFD science and work engineer specialists all game long to get a bunch of GEs. Could be an interesting CV challenge. Austria would be a fun civ for this - their windmill replacement can be built in any city and gives 25% to Great People as well.
The Issue I'm having is that even with 4 happiness per city in my religion, without monarchy it is VERY hard to stay happy even with 5 luxes on 5 cities
One of the major downsides of Great Plains maps is that they have few luxuries, and one of them is often just a single Pearls tile that noone ever settles. It's easier to stay happy on a Pangaea.
 
How am I going to get 100+fpt without going massively unhappy from having too many cities?
 
@venice

I wanted to try your map so I played it up to t107 in order to see how my empire ends up at the time of the posted save. I wanted to play for Interfaith Dialogue but it went before I could take it. I tested Peace Loving (1 happy per 8 followers not at war), and Underground Sect reformation belief. Peace loving sucks and Underground Sect is ok but situational. I took Engineer, Great General and Writer as my first Maya great people. I made a manufactory with my natural engineer and used the Maya calendar one for Maccu Picchu bulb. Used the first general for stealing Wine from Lhasa and the Maya one for stealing Gold from Mogadishu. Built Mosque of Djenne since I already had piety. I made a blunder and lost a settler to Buenos Aires, which is why I am not first in the scores but since I used experimental beliefs/strats I'm actually content with how the empire ended up.

Now, for comparison, here are our empires and demographics in turn 107.

You: ( Piety 6, Commerce 2, Rationalism 1)

turn107_venice.jpg



demographics_venice.jpg



We can see that you have low demographics except the redeeming Literacy where you are first, possibly suggesting Interfaith Dialogue had a meaningful impact.


This is my empire in turn 107. (Piety 6, Tradition 1, Liberty 3)


t107.jpg


demographics_me.jpg



While I haven't gotten the chance to use Interfaith Dialogue in my game, I tested it in your save game and I still can't say I like it. I'd rather buy and extra Scientist/Engineer/Whatever with higher faith yield thanks to more Holy Sites, instead of going through all the hassle of using missionaries around the world trying to grab science.
 
I got t 184 science on quick speed after reloading once to pick up the correct policy, but I could've shaved a turn-off at the end with better play. Certainly, more optimization could have been achieved earlier.

Here's the save since I forgot to include it in my last post. I think that what ended up saving this game for me was the fact that I managed to get Shoshone to be my friend for the entire game which stopped everyone else from warring me and I used Jesuit education to good effect. Additionally, I got the first religion going straight piety, whereas I assume you picked up liberty 3 first. If I were to play this again (assuming still no tradition or liberty) I think that I might try to go theology into beeline workshops instead of picking up aqueducts and such in my cities first, the aqueducts didn't pay off enough to be worth it in my book. I didn't think of generaling a lux from the cs, which is a good plan but kind of backfires since I end up needing to general coal later. I'm kind of confused how your science is so low right now, it's turn 107 and your cap is 34! population but you have like 1/3 of my science at the same time.
 

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Here's the save since I forgot to include it in my last post. I think that what ended up saving this game for me was the fact that I managed to get Shoshone to be my friend for the entire game which stopped everyone else from warring me and I used Jesuit education to good effect. Additionally, I got the first religion going straight piety, whereas I assume you picked up liberty 3 first. If I were to play this again (assuming still no tradition or liberty) I think that I might try to go theology into beeline workshops instead of picking up aqueducts and such in my cities first, the aqueducts didn't pay off enough to be worth it in my book. I didn't think of generaling a lux from the cs, which is a good plan but kind of backfires since I end up needing to general coal later. I'm mid of confused how your science is so low right now, it's turn 107 and your cap is 34! population but you have like 1/3 of my science at the same time.

Cool. Yes, Jesuit Education is great. I expected you to win by science since you were so ahead. I was going for Domination. I took tradition opener and liberty worker and only after completed piety. Piety is too weak for my liking on its own.
I don't have much experience for Quick games, nor for Great Plains Plus maps. I just fooled around trying to grow a capital-centered empire. Yes population was decent even though I think with 4 wheat I should have taken Sun God instead of Fertility Rites, I was hoping at least 35, maybe 40, but because I lost a settler this delayed a food caravan for 10-15 turns. Science was low because of no NC (also no Rationalism cuz Medieval, I entered renaissance by mistake last turn). From T 107 it looks like it isn't not even needed for Domination but it's true that it does enable reaching Dynamite in a reasonable amount of time. I just find Crossbowmen enough for standard size maps, especially if non-continental, and I played with this in mind.
 
Ah, no NC explains the uh not great science. I haven't got much experience with diety domination so I wanted to try science. My goal was basically to figure out whether you can do a viable piety science run with IFD and Jesuit, and the answer appears to be yes. I really doubt you can do quick domination from this point, but maybe I'm wrong.

The thing about quick speed is that your units move much slower relative to everyone's tech so killing a lot of players is MUCH harder than on standard size. Like by the time you kill 2 guys someone will be at great war bombers. It's one reason I tend to play small maps on quick speed, you can actually attack people and do that kind of strategy much more easily.
 
I really doubt you can do quick domination from this point, but maybe I'm wrong.

While it is true that warmingering is easiest on Marathon and units obsolete the fastest on Quick, I left and empire that can spam 1 crossbowman/tun just in the capital. I would probably need 40-50 turns until I am first in army size and everybody gives me all their gold and their cities. Which is what I would need to do anyway now that neighbours have attacked me. If somebody somehow gets Bombers (unlikely), I'll put a unit in a citadel and they will all suicide the bombers in it in the same turn, AI likes to do that type of mass suicide with bombers.

I will finish the game this weekend when I have the time to continue
 
I'll try to find a start for Indonesia piety interfaith to try Valadez's challenge. I look forward to seeing the end of your game Tiberiu

I may also be biased against that much war because my experience in multiplayer is influencing me.

Here is a file to try that on, I'm on turn 50 or so currently.
 

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I'll try to find a start for Indonesia piety interfaith to try Valadez's challenge. I look forward to seeing the end of your game Tiberiu
I may also be biased against that much war because my experience in multiplayer is influencing me.
Here is a file to try that on, I'm on turn 50 or so currently.

In this particular situation with very suboptimal (i.e Piety) policies/beliefs, you were right, crossbowmen were not enough at all for pushing for pure conquest. Things got ugly as Germany & France had huge armies jointly DOWed me. Lost Chichen Itza with 21 population and another city was razed but I rebuilt it after. Rome and Shoshone became science runaways. I had to struggle to stabilize the situation, thankfully 3rd to Ideology with Freedom (Voluntary Army) and winning World Fair helped me defend.

At least I made it safe to the endgame, even though I see the victory around T 225. International Games is coming and I should get rid of the nasty public opinion that has been plaguing this empire.

I wanted to show you a screenshot with the Bomber mass suicide I was talking about. The shoshone made bombers but they deal single digit to a fully defended infantry (normally 1 damage, but my infantry is not promoted)

late_game.jpg



edit: this is the final update of the game

Spoiler spoiler :


With first in demographics and score and 100+ units, I've done what I had set out to do, see that domination was possible. This required a lot of micromanagement to pull off and I got tired of the game, I stopped at t204 after conquering Pocatello's 12 wonders. Strong yields and all. Good game @venice and thanks for sharing your insights about the perk of Interfaith Dialogue. I hope you do more interesting stuff with rare beliefs/policies.

maya_end1.jpg



maya_end_2.jpg



 
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