Is Piety even worth it for cultural victories?

Cromagnus

Deity
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Sep 11, 2012
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I'm going for a Cultural win on Deity with Ethiopia. The only thing in Piety that looks worth it to me is the +33% from Reformation. Finishing it just seems pointless. Then I look at Honor and Liberty and think, I'm better off with either of those. Cheaper unit upgrading is key for turtling, and the +2 culture per garrisoned unit is nice. Obviously, the free GE is great from Liberty.

Also, Religious Tolerance only giving 10% makes me wonder if it's better to go Rationalism and rush to Sydney Opera House. Because if you don't, SOH is going to come way too late. I mean, the free social policy is great no matter what, but for the +50% culture to be of any benefit, you'd have to really hardcore rush to it. I just don't see how you're in the Atomic Era on Deity with a significant number of policies left. You'd better be close to finishing by then or the AI is going to win. And rushing Ecology is going to force you to use specialist slots on scientists instead of artists.

I think both Piety and Sydney Opera House are broken. I might still go for SOH as a closer to get that last policy, but it feels like they need to make it easier to get to earlier.

I have two questions about social policies:

1) Is Representation retroactive? Let's say I've founded 4 cities, and don't intend to found more. If I then get Representation, does it actually help? Or does it only help for cities I found after I get it.

2) Similar question: Is Religious Tolerance worth it unless you rush to it? If it only applies to the costs of future policies, then you'd have to get it way early. Finishing Piety that early just seems like you're wasting opportunities. I'd much rather have finished Honor, Liberty or Patronage at that point in the game.

I think my plan is to go Tradition, Liberty, Honor, Patronage and Freedom. Not necessarily finishing in that order though.

Is it worth entering Rationalism to get to the Industrial Era faster? The sooner you finish Freedom the better, right?

Argh, too many choices!

Thoughts?
 
You wouldnt take Piety as Ethiopia?

Boggle.

There is too much happiness in religion not to take it, I think.
 
I'm going for a Cultural win on Deity with Ethiopia. The only thing in Piety that looks worth it to me is the +33% from Reformation. Finishing it just seems pointless. Then I look at Honor and Liberty and think, I'm better off with either of those. Cheaper unit upgrading is key for turtling, and the +2 culture per garrisoned unit is nice. Obviously, the free GE is great from Liberty.

Also, Religious Tolerance only giving 10% makes me wonder if it's better to go Rationalism and rush to Sydney Opera House. Because if you don't, SOH is going to come way too late. I mean, the free social policy is great no matter what, but for the +50% culture to be of any benefit, you'd have to really hardcore rush to it. I just don't see how you're in the Atomic Era on Deity with a significant number of policies left. You'd better be close to finishing by then or the AI is going to win. And rushing Ecology is going to force you to use specialist slots on scientists instead of artists.

I think both Piety and Sydney Opera House are broken. I might still go for SOH as a closer to get that last policy, but it feels like they need to make it easier to get to earlier.

I have two questions about social policies:

1) Is Representation retroactive? Let's say I've founded 4 cities, and don't intend to found more. If I then get Representation, does it actually help? Or does it only help for cities I found after I get it.

2) Similar question: Is Religious Tolerance worth it unless you rush to it? If it only applies to the costs of future policies, then you'd have to get it way early. Finishing Piety that early just seems like you're wasting opportunities. I'd much rather have finished Honor, Liberty or Patronage at that point in the game.

I think my plan is to go Tradition, Liberty, Honor, Patronage and Freedom. Not necessarily finishing in that order though.

Is it worth entering Rationalism to get to the Industrial Era faster? The sooner you finish Freedom the better, right?

Argh, too many choices!

Thoughts?

I recently did a Cultural OCC of Ethiopia as well, (although not at Deity), and I pondered Piety / Rationalism as well. I decided to go with Piety in the end, full tree, but I ended up having to wipe out like 1/3 of the world with a Battleship/Sub/Ironclad strike force because a lot of the Civ's were out-teching and out-culture'ing me at every turn. They really need to buff the Piety tree overall because as it is now its only use is to give you a slight edge in religious affairs with an expanding Civ. And even then, its mediocre at best.
 
I have the Piety boost mod installed, just to balance out Piety, and it's awesome... well, good enough to be a serious contender to rationalism.

It has numerous boosts, like trading posts giving +1 faith instead of shrine and temples giving +1 faith, and culture boosts from cities with wonders giving 50+% culture instead of 33%, temples giving 25%gold instead of just 10% (the worst policy at the moment), and finally, 15% social policy culture reduction instead of 10%. The changes in this mod, in some form, should be bundled with the Fall patch.
 
You wouldnt take Piety as Ethiopia?

Boggle.

There is too much happiness in religion not to take it, I think.

Not taking piety isn't the same as not taking a religion. In fact, when I'm going religious, I almost never choose piety because I've already built shrines and temples by the time Piety gives me that close to worthless discount.
 
Yes, the Piety branch can be very strong for cultural victories.

I'm assuming we're talking about the revised G&K version (the vanilla version is obviously geared for culture).

In Piety:

- The opener is a bit weak (faster build time of shrines/temples) as is Organized Religion (extra faith from shrines/temples). Theocracy isn't that great either (+10% gold) but it isn't horrible.

- However, Mandate of Heaven (1/2 happiness is added to culture) can give you a major boost to culture in the early game, especially since you will have few cities with your culture goal.

- Reformation essentially gives you +33% culture for your cities (I am assuming you have at least one world wonder in each of your cultural cities). That's bigger than the Sistine Chapel bonus. The golden age doesn't hurt either.

- Religious Tolerance gives you a 10% discount. Not amazing but every little bit helps.

- The finisher gives you culture from holy sites. In the early and mid game, it is easier to get your capital set with a bunch of holy sites than landmarks. The cost reduction will also help out later on when you buy Artists with faith.
 
IMO there are two good uses for the piety tree

1) in a culture game...reformation (+33% culture per city with a wonder), plus the 10% discount on policies are pretty crucial. You can skip theocracy since its not required for those two, and the finisher is not worth it unless you have a lot of extra prophets.

2) taking the opener + organized religion ONLY in a wide game, to secure a good religion. I've had some great games with this strategy, it requires some timing but can make for a very strong game. the idea is to expand a lot while securing tons of happiness via religion, then go on a growth spree.
 
10% off future policies? How is this not awesome for CV's?

1/2 hapiness into culture? Not massive, but is helpful. If you do get ET this becomes very big.

Don't forget the free 15 (with CI) turn GA. If for some reason you delay till after the freedom opener this is even bigger

Obviously the aformentioned +33%, which is pretty much for all cities and is massive.

If you start planting holy sites the finisher can be very useful too, especially with a religion heavy civ like ethiopia.

Ethiopia is strong enough for a decent religion even without piety, but with it, it can work world church very well.

SOH? Can you be sure of getting it? If you can, could you have committed more to culture, buying more CS's/buying museums etc.? What if you don't get a coastal start? 50% for a weaker city would not be that useful for third/fourth city surely? Plus if you rush it, you built a GE which increased the costs of GAs.

I quite like Tradition, 3 from liberty (unless 1 or 2 cities, then ignore), 3 from piety to 33% (or 5 to 10% if ignoring liberty), freedom, 2 more from piety to 10% then whatever works best. I'd definitely take piety.
 
I mean, the free social policy is great no matter what, but for the +50% culture to be of any benefit, you'd have to really hardcore rush to it.

Due to exponential cost growth, the last 10 policies are all that matters. Any bonus you can get on them helps.
 
Due to exponential cost growth, the last 10 policies are all that matters. Any bonus you can get on them helps.

You're implying you're in the atomic era with 10 policies to go, which is going to be at least 50 turns + 10 turns to build the Utopia Project. Tell me how you're keeping up tech-wise with the AI on Deity without going for Rationalism, such that you have Ecology on turn 200. (Assumes you have a GE ready to pop SOH)

The AI *will* win around turn 260-290. So again... I struggle with how you're in the Atomic Era by turn 200 without going full scientist slots, planting academies and Rationalism. In other words, SOH is only good for the free policy + maybe 1-3 policies if you're lucky. Assuming you *wasted* your slots on scientists, thus slowing down your culture growth.

I'm only talking about Deity here. I'm trying to pull off a 4-city Cultural VC, not OCC btw.

Has anyone done it? If I were going Siam I'd go Patronage, but since I'm playing as Ethiopia, I'm thinking of going Honor and relying on early game conquest and puppet cities + my religion spread to give me the extra boost that I won't get with just 4 cities.
 
You're implying you're in the atomic era with 10 policies to go, which is going to be at least 50 turns + 10 turns to build the Utopia Project. Tell me how you're keeping up tech-wise with the AI on Deity without going for Rationalism, such that you have Ecology on turn 200. (Assumes you have a GE ready to pop SOH).

I don't. Which is why I take piety.
 
I don't. Which is why I take piety.

Fair point. I thought you were arguing for SOH. I think I'm going with Piety after all, but just not finishing it until after Freedom.

Edit: My argument for not finishing it until after Freedom is that Theocracy (+Gold) and the Piety finisher don't really contribute towards cultural output. I mean, I guess the gold is nice for rush-buying... I dunno. I'd rather have the double output from GAs than extra gold. But there's no way in hell I'm planting enough GPs to make that finisher worth it. All too often I need those GPs (or the faith I would spend on them) for other things.
 
The problem with the piety tree is it's meant to support both religion and culture games. Religion favors wide while culture favors tall. That's kind of asynchronous in my opinion.

It's the only tree that lacks built in happiness and I know that's because religion has opportunities to provide massive happiness but when going for a cultural victory your pantheon will most likely be a faith producer to make up for the lower number of cities. You're more likely to choose world church over ceremonial burial or peace loving. Cathedrals and religious art instead of pagodas or ascetism or religious center. Sure, happiness is less important to small/tall civs eventually but you'll most likely start working down this tree immediately after finishing tradition in order to get any benefit whatsoever from the religious policies early on when it will have the most impact, you also want reformation and religious tolerance as early as possible just to make them worth taking. At that early point in the game most tall civs do not have the overflow of happiness that they will later in the game. The real kicker is that your cities will be growing like mad after finishing tradition and you can find yourself in the negative real fast while working down a tree that totally lacks happiness which will negate your nice tradition growth bonuses unless you're playing a civ with some kind of happiness bonus or you've sacrificed a belief slot for something that produces happiness instead of culture.

I used to like piety for warmongering games back in vanilla since it could help me through other trees faster and provided a bit of happiness and extra gold too. Now it's really only good for culture games and maybe if you're playing a civ with a temple or shrine UB. It's more situational now and I feel like it kind of puts a hiccup in the flow of early culture strategies. It feels like the devs threw a couple religious policies into a branch that was built for culture games simply because it's called piety and not really because it meshes well with a cultural strategy.

Is it worth adopting for a culture game? Maybe. Obviously having a tech lead is really important to get the wonders you want. It's also important to get to the next culture building faster and to enter new eras faster and to have an up to date military. I think you've got to kind of test the waters, if the other civs are speeding through the techs and beating you on wonders left and right then it might be better to go for rationalism just to help keep up. If adopting rationalism means you can get to archeology and the radio 15 or 20 turns earlier it might negate the loss of mandate of heaven. Yeah, policies may cost more with rationalism but if you don't have a little bit of a tech lead reformation will only affect your capital and hitting the techs with culture buildings and wonders earlier will actually make your cities produce more culture in the long run.

It might sound like I'm against piety but if you're keeping up techwise and you've got plenty of happiness it's worth it. If you're lacking in either of these it's just not worth it.
 
2) taking the opener + organized religion ONLY in a wide game, to secure a good religion. I've had some great games with this strategy, it requires some timing but can make for a very strong game. the idea is to expand a lot while securing tons of happiness via religion, then go on a growth spree.
I've heard quite a few people mention this strategy, never tried it though. But it just KILLS me that you would go that far into piety, knowing you'd eventually negate the two policies for rationalism, and stop right before a policy that gives you a free golden age... AND adds 33% culture in your cities that happen to have a wonder.
I understand that you're not doing the traditional piety->culture VC setup, so you won't have a WW in all your cities. But presumably you'd have at least 1 world wonder, probably in your capital, so that increase in culture combined with the extra 20% during the golden age seems like if you're going to buy two policies that you plan on "making obsolete" later, just going that one step further would be so helpful. As if the culture wasn't enough reason to go one step further, the extra gold and production from the golden age does so much for an empire, especially since you mentioned that this strategy applies to WIDE empires...
To me, this seems akin to having a specialist focused empire, building a dozen academies and a few landmarks, getting 4 policies in freedom, but then just before you double the output of all those great-tiles, opening Order.
 
I've heard quite a few people mention this strategy, never tried it though. But it just KILLS me that you would go that far into piety, knowing you'd eventually negate the two policies for rationalism, and stop right before a policy that gives you a free golden age... AND adds 33% culture in your cities that happen to have a wonder.
Think about what you're negating though. The opener just builds shrines & temples faster. Once all the shrines and temples are built, its worthless...you lose nothing. The second policy gives plus 2 faith per city. Early, this can mean the difference between getting pagodas & not getting pagodas. Later, it doesn't mean as much. so here you are losing something, but not too much. If you stop here, you lose relatively little when you eventually switch to rationalism. If you come away from it with a nice religion with so much happiness that you can actually grow....then it's worth it.

On the other hand, if you DO take reformation...well then you've gone past the point of no return. You are invested.

plus...since I only go wide if there are plenty of unique luxes around, in the midgame I'm typically aiming for protectionism. Taking that third piety policy is going to slow that down, a lot.

I understand that you're not doing the traditional piety->culture VC setup, so you won't have a WW in all your cities. But presumably you'd have at least 1 world wonder, probably in your capital, so that increase in culture combined with the extra 20% during the golden age seems like if you're going to buy two policies that you plan on "making obsolete" later, just going that one step further would be so helpful. As if the culture wasn't enough reason to go one step further, the extra gold and production from the golden age does so much for an empire, especially since you mentioned that this strategy applies to WIDE empires...
I guarantee the extra culture from a golden age doesn't make up for a whole extra policy. It's a much faster route to protectionism to skip it. You can even skip organized religion sometimes...whatever the minimum you need to secure your religion.

A golden age that early is just not that great...at that point the wide empire is still in it's infancy; most of the cities have low pop/productivity and won't benefit much.

As for wonders, it's unlikely I would have any if I was pursuing this strategy.
To me, this seems akin to having a specialist focused empire, building a dozen academies and a few landmarks, getting 4 policies in freedom, but then just before you double the output of all those great-tiles, opening Order.
If my motivation for taking piety was to improve culture, then yeah. But I am only taking it to get a religion. So I get what I came for, and then I get out of there. It can work both ways.
 
- However, Mandate of Heaven (1/2 happiness is added to culture) can give you a major boost to culture in the early game, especially since you will have few cities with your culture goal.

This may be where I'm going wrong. I go aggressive growth early. I trade as many resources as I can to buy things. My happiness hovers around 0 to +3 until my religion gets rolling. So, I just don't benefit much from Mandate of Heaven. But on the other hand, my early production/gold/beakers is possibly more important.

Also, I'm not 100% sold on jacking up cultural output early. Isn't it better to race to the Industrial Era to get Freedom while the policies are still cheap? I dunno.

Hmm. My current plan of attack is to complete tradition first, then go into Piety for Religious Tolerance, then jump straight into Freedom if possible. If not, I'll go into Liberty, working towards Representation until the Industrial Era. At that point it's probably full Freedom, then come back for half of Patronage...

I'll have to see how the timing works out.
 
I have the Piety boost mod installed, just to balance out Piety, and it's awesome... well, good enough to be a serious contender to rationalism.

It has numerous boosts, like trading posts giving +1 faith instead of shrine and temples giving +1 faith, and culture boosts from cities with wonders giving 50+% culture instead of 33%, temples giving 25%gold instead of just 10% (the worst policy at the moment), and finally, 15% social policy culture reduction instead of 10%. The changes in this mod, in some form, should be bundled with the Fall patch.
And this is what usually happens...

One element of the game, in this case the piety tree, is thought by the majority to be underwhelming, and someone beefs it up with intent to fix it and goes WAY WAY WAY too far. To summarize in just one point, the opener to economics is considered to be one of the better openers to social policy trees. You've taken that strong policy, which usually applies to just the capital, and applied the exact same bonus to EVERY city that a player owns and yet still consider that policy to be the worst policy in the tree(your words not mine). Obviously went WAY overboard in "fixing" it. If, as you mentioned, this becomes part of the fall patch, then that's reason enough for me to not get the fall patch.
 
Think about what you're negating though. The opener just builds shrines & temples faster. Once all the shrines and temples are built, its worthless...you lose nothing. The second policy gives plus 2 faith per city. Early, this can mean the difference between getting pagodas & not getting pagodas. Later, it doesn't mean as much. so here you are losing something, but not too much. If you stop here, you lose relatively little when you eventually switch to rationalism. If you come away from it with a nice religion with so much happiness that you can actually grow....then it's worth it.

On the other hand, if you DO take reformation...well then you've gone past the point of no return. You are invested.

plus...since I only go wide if there are plenty of unique luxes around, in the midgame I'm typically aiming for protectionism. Taking that third piety policy is going to slow that down, a lot.


I guarantee the extra culture from a golden age doesn't make up for a whole extra policy. It's a much faster route to protectionism to skip it. You can even skip organized religion sometimes...whatever the minimum you need to secure your religion.

A golden age that early is just not that great...at that point the wide empire is still in it's infancy; most of the cities have low pop/productivity and won't benefit much.

As for wonders, it's unlikely I would have any if I was pursuing this strategy.

If my motivation for taking piety was to improve culture, then yeah. But I am only taking it to get a religion. So I get what I came for, and then I get out of there. It can work both ways.
Still, to me your points only seem to strengthen my conviction that if I were to try this strategy, I would go the one step further. True, one golden age does not compensate in the long run for escalating policy cost, but since you hinted at utilizing the economics branch and going at least three deep with it, the extra culture from the GA combined with the extra 33% bonus* would really help blaze to that point before switching to rationalism and cancelling 3 policies, 2 of which you were planning on cancelling anyway. The extra gold and production, which isn't much by GA standards as you mentioned that this would be occurring early, is still quite significant and I would think would be enough to tip the scales. The only X factor would be the timing of reaching renaissance, where you would want to open ratty ASAP as the opener is so strong.

But like I said, to me it's more observational than practical, because the reason that you wouldn't go one step further, to the third step in the tree, is the same reason why I would never take the first two steps and try this strategy in the first place: each social policy that you get contributes to the ever-escalating (is it exponential, technically speaking?) cost of policies, and I would never burn 2 policies that eventually would be dismissed (and add one unpleasant anarchy turn) but still increase the cost of policies to come. You said that reformation would be "the point of no return," I feel the opener is. While at higher levels this may be the difference between founding a religion and not, I don't think that founding a religion is worth the severe policy-cost handicap to come. For me, founding a religion requires 2 of the following four criteria:
1.)having a religion centered civ
2.)having at least one (usually enough) religious mountain near your empire, optimally 2nd city (not too uncommon since 5 NW's are religious mountains)
3.) starting near, and being lucky enough to have convenient quests from at least 2 religious city states.
4.) going for a CV and getting the piety faith bonus
If two of the above criteria are not met, I'd just watch the religious screen, find out which AI-founded religion best suits my strategy, befriend that civ and wait for him to spread to me (then make a GP and spread it to the majority of my own cities.)


* "never build any wonders" again, if I were to commit 2 social policies to piety, it's not that hard to get one wonder in your capital, and just that single city getting a 33% bonus would go a long way. After all, were you planning on building 2 workers by the early mid-game? That's 140 hammers. For 45 more, you could have the two workers, have all of 'em work 25% faster, and get 1 great engineer point/turn and a culture/turn (well, 1 1/3 culture per turn...) Not that I'm endorsing the pyramids as a great wonder to strive for, but it's very low priority for the AI, making it very accessible if you're planning on doing anything with piety, if the reformation hang-up is that you can't get any wonders.
 
Slapshot,

I think you're underestimating the importance of religion in a wide game. You say you basically only go for a religion when you get lucky with the map or play as a religious civ. I actually agree with that on the majority of maps. However, if you DO find yourself "REXing" then you really need a religion, IMO. And it's worth substantial investments (ie 1-2 piety policies) to get it.

This is a specific strategy for a wide start, only on a minority of maps where you are lucky enough to have room to expand and plenty of unique luxuries. I'm talking 8-10 cities at least, before turn 100. You might think...what's the challenge? sounds like a pretty easy map, right? Actually these types of starts can be dangerous. It's very common to struggle with unhappiness, stagnation, and a poor economy in the early game. Some players stagnate their cities on purpose; I reject that idea on principal, because in my opinion, religion allows you to have your cake & eat it too.

It can single-handedly solve the happiness issue, plus the economy in one swoop (with tithe). You can get something RIDICULOUS like 6 happy per city, with the right beliefs. 3-4 is a lot more common, but still, it's absolutely game changing. Instead of sitting on crappy little cities that can't grow, praying for Notre Dame or to find a Merc CS, you can keep your cities growing constantly, until you have a wide AND tall empire!

Pagodas is definitely the single best belief. It's always best to spread out happiness bonuses rather than get them all at once, and pagodas are perfect for that. You can just set it to auto-buy and get 2 free happy every X turns. That gives you peace of mind. With the first two piety policies, these will be really quick to build, and they also provide more faith & culture in addition to the happiness!! Total win/win. Actually i think they will be nerfed soon.

As for wonders, it just doesn't work. You just can't build wonders and rapidly expand at the same time. If I built wonders I wouldn't have enough cities to make the strategy work. So it doesn't make sense to shoehorn in that 3rd piety policy which all it gives is a golden age, since I won't have enough wonders to get to protectionism faster.

disclaimer: I haven't tried it on deity as of yet. But so far the 2 best games I've had in G&K on immortal both used this strategy.
 
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