how do you play byzantine?

[Syailendra]

the question is simple, but the answers might be not.
The ua of theodora seems like a very versatile one, but it requires you to found a religion. So i tends to follow a cultural games with plenty of faith buildings purchased (take cathedrals, mosques, and pagodas or monasteries beliefs)
can you elaborate the beliefs you've usually took when playing byzantine and what victory do you achieve. Thanks.

PS: i usually played immortal continents game, standart time and map.

 

[iconocast]

the main thing u need is the hanging Sophia, this imo is the essential thing ( they did build it irl after all ). u wont get ur first prophet before the other faith focused civs, but rush for the HP and u will get the 2nd one fast and that is where the interesting faith choices come in for byz. u can get holy warriors and just cause. spread ur faith and warmonger and puppet that way. u can get all gold generation beliefs. they realy are very flexible. able to pursue whatever VC they want thru a combination of belifes that emphasise what they want to accomplish.
enhancers have some pretty interesting stuff, grabbing two of them can be very potent.
u can also get 2 pantheons so ive heard? i have never done this myself.

 

[peddroelm]

Liberty powered domination is the surest way to guarantee you get a pantheon (ideally one of the faith generators best suited for the particular geographical position that in turn will give you your first great prophet in time ) ...

Won religion powered pangea deity domination victories in G&K so far with Arabia, Rome, Holland and Denmark .. Well underway with Maya .. Intend to do it next with one of the temple bonused civs (Egypt //Songhai - piety mix in) and also with Byzantium (stronger religion)...

In all cases the tons of faith,culture and happiness (+ the many great persons brought with faith ) from religion were very helpful in securing the final victory ...


Build order for capital was always monument (liberty fast free settler) , scout , shrine , worker (could be rushed by forest copping by a brought /stolen worker) ... At 4-5 pop with a few improved hills its time to spit out 4-6 settlers using the liberty bonus ...

The worker comes relatively late into the the build order and cash buying (scout scout scout) one using AI loans ASAP is highly recommended .. Also the city state worker steal ASAP ..

If your scouting fails to meet religious city states in the pantheon picking race you'll probably need to burn gold to rush buy shrine in 2/3 rd city ..

 

[InDubioProReo]

Just got a diplomacy win on Immortal. I was really lucky with my starting location, as I had 15 or so tundra tiles without forest, which made Dance of the Aurora super useful. I got my religion first, enhanced it first, and then picked Itinerant Preachers and Religious Texts. I picked Tithe, that gave me tons of gold. There are certainly great combos one can use with the extra belief. They are a very good civ imo. And I agree with the above posters, getting Haghia Sophia is pretty much a must for Byzantium.

 

[Liegence]

I will have to try this next and find out

Best thing about religion is versitility, so not sure I can say what to go but HS def seems like the plan. Do you guys use Piety when going heavy religion or is it still too weak?

 

[peddroelm]

I will have to try this next and find out

Best thing about religion is versitility, so not sure I can say what to go but HS def seems like the plan. Do you guys use Piety when going heavy religion or is it still too weak?

Early Piety on a non-temple bonused civ has a huge drawback .... (disregarding for one second how powerful a few rationalism policies are for a domination victory) ...

Piety can give you mass early temples which is great news for your religion and disaster for your economy... -(6 to 8) *2 gold per turn at that stage will usually cripple you economics wise (no money for army upgrades - no early war ) ... Buying units with faith conflicts with buying pagodas/mosques/cathedrals/monasteries for happy//culture//faith ...

Maybe combo with a religion belief that gives early gold ?

So atm except rare cases for experts piety is probably reserved to Songhai and Egypt at deity level for domination games...

 

[Crafty Bison]

Other than basing the entirety of your early game (like pantheon, CS choice etc.) on getting faith, I think many play a wide liberty REX kinda game to get the faith points up, but if you get a decent faith start then maybe going SH, HS can give a great tall start for a culture victory through world church founder belief, possibly with the (risky) religious texts + itinerant preachers combo. powerful if your pantheon is localised around your capital or confined to 1/2 cities e.g. one with nature.
generally, yes, they're very versatile, take whatever the map gives you.
It's kind of annoying, cause it's when you want to be using your dromons and 1 era cataphracts as well.

 

[joncnunn]

Tall tactics to get religion fast as Byzantine:

1) Start near a religious natural wonder. Found a city there. (Buy tiles if needed so it gets worked starting on turn 1)

2) Have a desert start (really a floodplains one). Research Pottery first and build a Shrine ASAP. Choose the faith from desert, and work those flood plains tiles.

3) Go for Stonehenge. (This tactic works better on lower difficulty levels)

As to a free prophet via wonder or policy, I personally prefer having a free one arrive after I already have generated a natural one and founded the religion (to use as for the second enhancer right away)

 

[CleverFool]

I find that as much as I like Byzantium historically, their UA and UUs don't complement each other especially well. Either you go all out to earn faith to make use of their [admittedly strong] UA and ignore the UA to use the UUs and then run the potential on missing out altogether. It's kind of a Catch 22 at times, especially on higher difficulties.

I'm with the others in saying that a key wonder (Hagia Sophia or Stonehenge) really helps. I often ignore much of the bottom part of the tech tree to at least try and make use of their UUs, as Cataphracti match up pretty well against nearly all opposition.

 

[Liegence]

So I gave it my first try - here's what happened

Immortal, Standard time & map. I built two scouts to get as much info as I could. I had a really nice coastal start on river with salt. Jerusalem was my closest city-state. The first neighbor I met was Monty. The others were Bouddica and Oda - we shared a small continent. I could tell it was going to get cozy. Also, upon exploring just north I found an already discovered El Dorado (you can guess who found it...). Desperate for faith, I try to clear a barb camp for Jerusalem but Monty's there first with Jaguars as far as the fog reveals.

Monty plants three cities all directly south one after the other - he's directly north of me. I've built up 4 composite bowmen and 2 warriors. On turn 62 he attacks me with at least 7 jaguars, 6 archers complimented with a great general... at least, that's all I can see, I'm sure there was more where that came from. As if that's not bad enough, my CB's are south of the river and further south as the action starts a barbarian spearman wanders into my flank.

GG. Way to abuse Skilldorado AI.

My biggest concern with Byzantium is the concern I've always had - she has nothing to boost her early game faith production.

 

[wloff]

Piety can give you mass early temples which is great news for your religion and disaster for your economy... -(6 to 8) *2 gold per turn at that stage will usually cripple you economics wise (no money for army upgrades - no early war ) ... Buying units with faith conflicts with buying pagodas/mosques/cathedrals/monasteries for happy//culture//faith ...

Well, Piety does have the "+10% gold in cities with Temples" policy which kind of balances that.

What I like to do in a Piety game is try and go for mega temples: Get both the beliefs for +2 happiness and +2 culture in cities with 5 followers. Together with Piety social policies, you'll have temples that give 3 faith, 2 culture, 2 happiness and +10% gold, and cost half the usual hammers to build

That's like having better than Pagodas with no faith cost, so you can use your faith for missionary spam / great people / Holy Warriors (if you're Byzantine) / etc...

 

[peddroelm]

Well, Piety does have the "+10% gold in cities with Temples" policy which kind of balances that.

In a wide domination context ...

That policy requires 3 policies invested into the piety tree .. (after finishing liberty) ..You will need 2 cultured allies to even get 8 social policies early enough (and extra culture from religion) ... And when you get it 10% extra gold won't even cover the -2 gold/turn of the temple itself in most cities ...

It is an extremely "expensive" policy to take for the little that it offers... It can for example greatly delay the commerce finisher (that brings huge huge amounts of GPT on domination games) ..

In the rare cases I take piety in a domination game (Songhai, Egypt) opener and extra faith from temples is as far as I go ... The third policy will be the Golden Age policy saved for mid-late game when it would generate tons of gold ...

My mayan game is almost won (2-3 turns) and will then start a Byzantine , Songhai or Egypt domination game...

 

[Syailendra]

yeah, i'd never take piety with byzantium myself, by mid game you should have enough faith generation rate even without piety, considering that you must found religion as them.
In my current game (3rd byzantium game) i've finished liberty and tradition and opened commerce by turns 165, not a bad game considering i haven't built opera houses yet. Hoping to finish the game before turns 400.
After that i'll restart the game and try not to play cultural, see if i can dominate with cataphract and catapults army. Maybe taking just war, holy warriors and that one with 100g per city converted. Should i take honor as 2nd tree?

 

[iconocast]

i would always always take piety with byz

they can make super temples by getting a combination of beliefs that add bonuses to temples. ( there is a thread on here if u search fo it u should find it) piety has a belife that will make temples pay for themselves and will increase the faith u get from them, as well as a golden age ( not everyone goes liberty). i realy dont see why u wouldn't go piety

and as for the uu. the horses can be great for takeing a cs that has a faityh wonder in there boarders early on. not to mention that fact u dont have to get swords/iron, u can just keep teching thru the top of the tree.

 

[wloff]

i realy dont see why u wouldn't go piety

Well, in all honesty, because it's mostly lackluster.

Opener is good, faith for shrines and temples is good, culture boost + golden age is fine and 10% social policy cost reduction is great for anyone, but culture of happiness is almost useless and, yeah, the 10% gold boost is quite weak too.

And, most importantly, with Piety you can't take Rationalism, which is really nasty -- not only is Rationalism an awesome tree in itself, but you can't even spend all that faith on buying Great Scientists.

Still, at least for me it's fun to find ways to use Piety and other not-optimal strategies. Playing the exact same strategy over and over again gets boring fast.

 

[Matthew.]

Piety is decent for smaller empires, but that is it. Both the 10% gold on temple and 33% culture if world wonder is in city are both tailored to smaller empires, where percentage based modifiers are generally stronger, and you can actually get a world wonder up in all cities.

I'd even go as far as saying the faith policy is for smaller empires as well. Faith generation is already strong in wide empires (part of the reason why Grand Temple was added, to balance tall), so the faith from piety is really just to allow tall empires to compete faith-wise with wide empires.

I'm not sure where the idea that you need massive faith for Byzantium is coming from; they get their extra religious trait slapped on for free once you found your religion. Unless you try and load up on faith-purchase based traits, like holy warriors + pagodas + mosques, but why would you do that when there are clearly no inherent faith advantages?

 

[KGPurrs]

Stonehenge is manditory, if you can't get it might as well re-roll until you do. If you have to go tradition depending on difficulty level just to get it then do it. Faith pantheon is a must, if you don't have desert depending on difficulty level you might have to re-roll. If you are near a faith generating natural wonder settle a new city there as soon as you can. There is also luck involved with ruins, another civ can get the faith pantheon bonus you need just because they got a faith rune.

If you can't dominate the relgion game, you're extra bonus is practically worthless and the civ is practically worthless. This is a very hard civ to play. Make sure you send missionaries to far corners of the map to spread as quick as possible. The goal is 40 cities following your religion.

From there you have the following options:

Enhancer - Always Religious Texts (If this gets taken you are forced to go wide empire with Itinerant Preachers)

Versatile Playstyle (Church Property and Tithe Founders) - This is my personal favorite, you eventually spread out to like 40 cities and the gold per turn is insane. Each founder gives about 80 gold per turn, so that's your civ bonus, 80 gold per turn. That's very good.

Cultural Playstyle (World Church, Cathedrals, Religious Art, Church Property) - Again you get about 80 gold per turn which makes keeping all culture city states as allies very easy. Church Property > Tithe because you get gold early in the game, which is more important then late game. Tithe becomes more powerful later in the game but by then gold is not an issue.

Super Wide and Tall Playstyle (Ceremonial Burial, Ascetism, Religious Center, Pagoda) - Civ bonus provides +2 happy per city over time, probably Pagoda is your bonus.

Conquest (Pilgrimage, Holy Warrior, Ceremonial Burial) - Pilgrimage allows you to pump a unit out like every 4 turns late game, imagine that a cannon or musketman every 4 turns). Just make sure you are teching to cannons for the last couple civs you have left. Ceremonial Burial is huge, allows you not to have to raze puppets. Your civ bonus is basically 40 happiness.

 

[Aaron90495]

I haven't experimented with it, but Pilgrimage + Church Property + Tithe + Itinerant Preachers could be fantastic. Pilgrimage helps get the ball rolling on faith generation, which in turn lets you pump out missionaries for massive gold.

 

[Browd]

No way for even the Byzantines to take 3 founder beliefs (Pilgrimage, Church Property and Tithe).

 

[iconocast]

Well, in all honesty, because it's mostly lackluster.

Opener is good, faith for shrines and temples is good, culture boost + golden age is fine and 10% social policy cost reduction is great for anyone, but culture of happiness is almost useless and, yeah, the 10% gold boost is quite weak too.

And, most importantly, with Piety you can't take Rationalism, which is really nasty -- not only is Rationalism an awesome tree in itself, but you can't even spend all that faith on buying Great Scientists.

Still, at least for me it's fun to find ways to use Piety and other not-optimal strategies. Playing the exact same strategy over and over again gets boring fast.

honestly ur right, rationalism is hard to pass up and the main reason why ppl dont think piety is worth it. but tbh i think it comes down to a play style preference. there are so manny other civs where it makes sense to not get piety, but i think byz isnt one of thos, imo. you can make it work without rationalism. artists to get golden ages instead of scientists isnt a bad trade off in the end as GA are pretty badass in gnk.