Is it ever worthwhile to found an early religion?

[Lennier]

On the lower levels you can also lib agriculture and still win.

I now have a strong temptation to start a Warlord-level game to do this, just to show I can.

 

[Tatran]

I've seen a financial riverside oasis once for 3F4C.

One of the last patches must have changed this, because it's -1C less.
Although with one of the events an oasis can still get +1C.

 

[Gr8scott]

I now have a strong temptation to start a Warlord-level game to do this, just to show I can.

If you do, don't make too many friends...someone might give it to you and mess things up!

 

[Pangaea]

You should Lib it instead

 

[elitetroops]

You should Lib it instead

That's what he said.

But now I'm not sure why I said "on the lower levels". Probably doable on Deity as well. OCC diplo win with a AH/fishing start.

 

[Fractal Spiral]

For a weird Liberalism use, I always wanted to see / do a multiple slingshot somehow. Like what if you could Oracle Liberalism, then Lib for Fusion, then use that Great Engineer to rush build the Taj Mahal? That'd be so fun. Probably only works if you play a solo game (world-builder out all of the other players units hehehe). What kind of Lib slingshot do you think would be the most steps / at what difficulty?
Oh also I wondered sometimes if it is possible to build every single World Wonder. What difficulty would that have to be, maybe on Noble with very careful strategy / lots of luck you could get every Wonder?

 

[Pangaea]

That's what he said.

But now I'm not sure why I said "on the lower levels". Probably doable on Deity as well. OCC diplo win with a AH/fishing start.

Oh yeah, I see that now For some reason I read it as Oracle.

 

[bhavv]

Agriculture is overrated anyway, jus cottage those corns!

 

[rah]

hey, in the other thread you said

Pffft, build farms and libraries instead. Run scientists and build wealth.

 

[elitetroops]

For a weird Liberalism use, I always wanted to see / do a multiple slingshot somehow. Like what if you could Oracle Liberalism, then Lib for Fusion, then use that Great Engineer to rush build the Taj Mahal? That'd be so fun. Probably only works if you play a solo game (world-builder out all of the other players units hehehe). What kind of Lib slingshot do you think would be the most steps / at what difficulty?

I think it's possible to lib anything on any level. Kill all AI but one and leave the last with only one city and no improved tiles. You can even start choking this last living AI from the start to make sure that he never gets to improve his lands. You can also gift him a city in the middle of the desert, then take the former capital, if the capital seems too good for him. And even use spies to increase his misery. Obviously easier to do the smaller the map.

 

[ChaosSlayer]

Sry, but I didn't understand "the strategy" as you call it. What I understood, is, that you're roleplaying CIV and play a mod on top, but what is the strategy? Win later to... ???

Intensify industry, research and gold. keep military to a minimum defensive needs. Keep friends with big opponents, hold off small annoying ones. Break ahead on research, so you always at least 1 tech tier ahead of your enemies (if they are in medieval era, I must be in Renaissance), then wipe them out one by one, take their territory, consolidate, upgrade army, move onto next target. Eventually - roll them over with tanks and nukes. Thats the plan

 

[Triewd]

I usually play a similar way Chaos - It has its strengths and weaknesses

 

[Seraiel]

Intensify industry, research and gold. keep military to a minimum defensive needs. Keep friends with big opponents, hold off small annoying ones. Break ahead on research, so you always at least 1 tech tier ahead of your enemies (if they are in medieval era, I must be in Renaissance), then wipe them out one by one, take their territory, consolidate, upgrade army, move onto next target. Eventually - roll them over with tanks and nukes. Thats the plan

This has nothing to do with the topic of founding a religion and your statement, that you'd get more than 5 Great Prophets during a game.

It's impossible that you intensify industry, research and gold, because if you did that, you would stay away from religions, conquer the Shrines that the AIs have, build Cottages, run Specialists for bulbs, and rely on many Traderoutes (-> effective economy) . Every Prophet that you get is one less GS, that could catapult you through the tech-tree, or it's one less GM that fuels your research for 1000y.

All you write sounds good, except that you roll over the AIs with Tanks and Nukes, instead of War Elephants and Catapults / Trebs.

 

[Seraiel]

I usually play a similar way Chaos - It has its strengths and weaknesses

It has more weaknesses than strengths, if you're having problems to win on Prince with it. Prince is still a level of CIV that can be won without any form of strategy, so if you lose it while following a strategy, that strategy can't be that good.

 

[Triewd]

It has more weaknesses than strengths, if you're having problems to win on Prince with it. Prince is still a level of CIV that can be won without any form of strategy, so if you lose it while following a strategy, that strategy can't be that good.

Well to be fair sometimes it works spectacularly well.

Basically if you survive past the middle ages you stand a good chance of winning.

The major disadvantage is getting to the middle ages - without a bad situation occurring.

If you have done it right past that point gets better and better.

 

[Seraiel]

As Chaos argues with Marathon, I may argue with Marathon too, and I tell you, that one can win Marathon games on Deity difficulty, without even getting into medieval times.

What you find "spectacular" is that a Shrine can fuel a game that's bad in all other economical possibilities. That still makes it a bad tactic though, because improving on the other economical options would be much more powerful. Traderoutes and Cottages easily outproduce the that comes from a Shrine and free Shrines are still better than one's in which one needed to invest a GP + xx for spreading the religion.

 

[Seraiel]

It takes long to understand this, but all the work an AI can do for you, is work you don't have to do yourself. The work that the player has to do in CIV mainly focusses around selecting the right buildings for cities, building units and managing Workers. When the difficulty gets higher, creating the right GPs comes on top of that, but Religions and Shrines, those are really disciplines where the AI does excellent work for the player. AI doesn't go to war while building Missionaries, and AIs create Great Prophets with much higher chances than a player ever could, because AIs build Stonehenge and Temples on top, both things that would wreck a players game unless he knows 100% what he's doing.

 

[ChaosSlayer]

This has nothing to do with the topic of founding a religion and your statement, that you'd get more than 5 Great Prophets during a game.

It's impossible that you intensify industry, research and gold, because if you did that, you would stay away from religions, conquer the Shrines that the AIs have, build Cottages, run Specialists for bulbs, and rely on many Traderoutes (-> effective economy) . Every Prophet that you get is one less GS, that could catapult you through the tech-tree, or it's one less GM that fuels your research for 1000y.

All you write sounds good, except that you roll over the AIs with Tanks and Nukes, instead of War Elephants and Catapults / Trebs.

I am trying to build a nation that will stand the test of time, not a warlord kingdom of Alexander The Great that fell apart immediately after his death.

And religion DOES gives me GOLD. You keep saying: AI will research Religion for you. AI will spread it for you. AI will build Shrine for you. All you have to do is take it.

Ok, now lets consider this scenario - you are on a continent with 2 other AIs and neither of them got one of the early religions - they all on the OTHER continent. And if one of them spreads over - you will have spread it yourself, and it maybe Renaissance before you get the ability to send troops onto another continent, all while you spreading someone else religion and putting money into HIS shrines. And if you choose NOT to take religion at all during this time - you get no extra culture that is so needed for new cities, no extra happiness from religion and temple, no extra research from monasteries, no Organized religion +25% industry bonus. And if you let AI built Stonehedge on top of that - now you REALLY SCREWED, cause you will have to manually build Monument in every new city just to get the borders moving.

 

[elitetroops]

Ok, now lets consider this scenario - you are on a continent with 2 other AIs and neither of them got one of the early religions - they all on the OTHER continent. And if one of them spreads over - you will have spread it yourself, and it maybe Renaissance before you get the ability to send troops onto another continent, all while you spreading someone else religion and putting money into HIS shrines. And if you choose NOT to take religion at all during this time - you get no extra culture that is so needed for new cities, no extra happiness from religion and temple, no extra research from monasteries, no Organized religion +25% industry bonus. And if you let AI built Stonehedge on top of that - now you REALLY SCREWED, cause you will have to manually build Monument in every new city just to get the borders moving.

It was mentioned already many times that you can get confu or tao easily enough, which probably is a good idea if no other religion is present on your continent yet. And "letting" the AI build stonehenge is pretty standard. If you want to play a competitive game on the higher levels, you don't have time for stuff like that. Choose your city locations more wisely, then you don't need to get those borders moving until it's time to build some other culture producing buildings.

Roleplaying with the purpose of making a glorious empire over time is all fine, but you must understand that this is the strategy forum and strategy usually aims at doing things efficiently and finding optimal ways to deal with different situations. Founding several early religions and burning 5 prophets on shrines is not optimal, it's very far from it, so you can't expect people here to say it's a good idea. I don't know what level you are playing on, but I'm pretty sure that if you just dropped the idea of founding religions and building shrines in favor of worker and economy techs and using Great Scientists for bulbs, you'd find the game just as easy to play a level or two higher.

 

[Pangaea]

Not everybody plays the game "competitively" so to speak and that is fine, we all like different things, but if just focusing on the border pop section (so not happiness or gold), then on normal speed.
Monument 30
Missionary 40

They give the exact same benefit in terms of . Obviously religion is good for OR purposes, but like elitetroops mentioned, it's better to focus on worker techs, economy techs, war techs and founding better cities than to try to found many religions and rely on Shrine income.