Is this the wealthiest strategy ever?

[Floating Pants]

I generally become extremely rich off this strategy. In turn, building more research, more cities, and more buildings with universal suffrage. It completely focuses around religions - founding all of them, building Spiral Minaret for the most populous, and all the shrines. It usually works on noble and prince, but I haven't tried it on monarch or higher. In the later game focus on gaining communism and use state property.

First - Pick Asoka of India. India begins with mysticism and mining, the two gates to all the early religion techs. Also organized trait, -50% civic upkeep.

Research line - 1. Meditation (Buddhism) 2. Polytheism (Hinduism) 3. Masonry 4. Monotheism (Judaism) 5. Priesthood (for Oracle) 6. Writing [... lax techs now, bronze working, animal husbandry, etc. ...] Finish Oracle for theology, attempt to grab code of laws before then.

That's nearly flawless for gaining all the early religions. I normally rush to gain the other technologies I'm missing after that, so I don't get killed by barbarians or aggressive neighbors. Then build several several temples for the priests. I often like to gain philosophy early, for the pacifism great person boost. Building those shrines is all that matters. Also get divine right early for constructing the Spiral Minaret.

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early game complete
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Now, for late game, you can attempt liberalism. I often don't get it first, but still make my way up the chain rather quickly. If you do get it, make sure it's ready for you to snag scientific theory, which leads to communism. If I'm right, liberalism and scientific theory are the only 2 prerequists for communism, and you can gain it right away. Adopt state property, expand widely, and now, brace for war.

This would be the best time to expand rapidly for domination. You'll have 80%-90% research pumping in, 20+ cities, and nothing but a minor army stopping you. Build it up, and invade China.

What do you guys think?

 

[z0wb13]

on higher levels, you can't guarantee both hinduism and buddhism, or even one.

 

[xenex]

Wealthist stragety? Might be, Best stragety? No chance.

Mining doesnt actually help you to get the religions your better off picking someone that start with mystisicm and aggriculture so you could at least improve something while your going for all the religions.

You can not get both Buddism and Hinduism, if you go for Buddism and then go for Hinduism, someone will beat you to it when your on the 2 or 3 turn into it.Having went for Buddism then Hinduism and failed to get Hidnuism, you will again get beat to Judiasm by a bunch of turns.

Why do you need masonry?If you intend to get masonry before monotheism, you might as well forget founding Judiasm.

Having taken so long to get to priesthood, you have a very good chance that you will get beat on the Oracle.

It looks like this tactic consist of destroying any chance of building up your land in the hopes of later being able to rebound in the mid game.

This could possibly work effectivly if you can get phrophets to build all the shrines and then spread religion to all your cities like crazy, for that you probably want egypt for its UU , but they dont start with Mystisicm so you might as well forget the early religions (which you should anyways)

Waiting so long to get AH and BW I dont see how you can consistently defend yourself with just warriors.

By the time you get to spiral minaret on a normal tactic game, your economy has recovered for a long time already and you would be pretty well set economicly.You could easily be running at 80% of the slider by then, but it wouldn't be needed as you would have a good economy and you would want to keep pumping those cities out or be well on your way to taking over land.


This tactic seems to hang a lot on luck and hoping and on the mistake that higher slider means better game.


Edit: I think the best way to get the early religions is to be financial and start with mystiscm, but you shouldn't want to get them they are too costly , not in bearkers but in what other techs you have to skip to get one.Also the religions don't provide any real benefit early on to waste getting one unless you can get a shrine up in which case you dont want 3 religions, just one will do.

 

[Gwynnja]

Why do you need masonry?If you intend to get masonry before monotheism, you might as well forget founding Judiasm.

You might want to take another look at the tech tree.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

The point stands, however, that this strategy is far from consistent on standard maps even on/above noble. It also requires laughably terrible ROI investments into missionary spread (this is probably why you're losing liberalism despite having money) and techs that don't offer a lot of trade value or direct benefit.

If you want a lot of money, turn the slider off in a well-developed empire and you'll be making 1000's/turn. Who cares what % the slider is at when you turn it up? What matters is your actual outputs, not the %.

By the way, it's pretty easy to run the slider at 100% with 0 holy cities and 0 corporations and 20 cities, and such a setup has far less implied setup cost....

 

[Amao]

The point stands, however, that this strategy is far from consistent on standard maps even on/above noble. It also requires laughably terrible ROI investments into missionary spread (this is probably why you're losing liberalism despite having money) and techs that don't offer a lot of trade value or direct benefit.

If you want a lot of money, turn the slider off in a well-developed empire and you'll be making 1000's/turn. Who cares what % the slider is at when you turn it up? What matters is your actual outputs, not the %.

By the way, it's pretty easy to run the slider at 100% with 0 holy cities and 0 corporations and 20 cities, and such a setup has far less implied setup cost....

Exactly. With SP, it doesn't matter how many city you have. 100% is just no problem with no holy cities, no corp (you can't build or use corp anyway). On the other hand, FM/Corps can do the same in the late game as well, just with more investments.

 

[xenex]

You might want to take another look at the tech tree.

Oops, I'll admit I looked at it earlier when replying and again now when you said to look at it and this time I was looking at it wondering what you were talking about till I saw its not on a path to the religions but is needed for monotheism.

Sorry about that, shows how much I know/care about the early religions.

I usually just trade or 1 turn tech those religions and only because i need them for somethign further, like Literature or Philosophy, if it wasn't for them being required for those techs I would probably never learn meditation/polytheism.

Still my point still stands.Its unneeded and costly.

 

[Tristan_C]

You can not get both Buddism and Hinduism, if you go for Buddism and then go for Hinduism, someone will beat you to it when your on the 2 or 3 turn into it.Having went for Buddism then Hinduism and failed to get Hidnuism, you will again get beat to Judiasm by a bunch of turns.

Well he's talking about Prince, where your chances are quite high if you start with mysticism and just suffer with unimproved tiles for a while.



There is a tradeoff going on in the strategy outlined. By shooting oneself in the foot (whoring ALL religions and only being able to build Mines for SIX whole techs), you hopefully push the AIs even farther back by means of denial of religious advantages. Okay, well, that's probably more like shooting oneself in the lung, but whatever.

Whenever we make sacrifices in order to set AIs back, we need to measure the weight of such sacrifices upon us verses just letting the game proceed more quickly for everyone. Provided we can stay ahead of the pack without acting directly to deny them assets, that would in fact be the "wealthiest" strategy. We are proceeding from A to B at the maximum possible speed. Rather than, say, taking a detour over to C to make sure no one else can get there.

 

[Nick Carpathia]

You can't deny your religions getting out. Information wants to be free.

Actually, what you can do is not have any trade connections with anybody. Settle off-rivers and don't build roads, that way, none of your religions will spread.

 

[hr_oskar]

This pretty much boils down to difficulty level. The OP is on to a strat which many of us have probably tried out at some point and found quite satisfying as well as (apparently) powerful... on noble, prince, perhaps even monarch. At emperor this sort of religion mini-game starts to break down.

On immortal, not to mention deity, even if you start with mysticism and research either meditation or polytheism first, the AI will beat you to Buddhism and Hinduism more often than not. Trying to found religions early on stifles your development. There are also important diplomatic reasons to let the AI found religions and spread them to you rather than founding your own. This is essentially a good example of a strategy that only works on lower levels.

 

[coanda]

Good strategy for getting gold: build a holy shrine. Better strategy for getting gold: conquer a holy shrine.

 

[Nick Carpathia]

Agreed, as those cities are often capitals, meaning you can turn them into uber commerce/wealth cities. That's preferable to judaism popping into your 1clam tundra city that you settled to secure copper.

 

[Floating Pants]

Yeah, I have tried it on noble effectively. I tried it on Civ4 original prince successfully, but not BtS (that one seems harder for some reason). It most definitely would not work higher than prince. However, it works 90% of the time on archipelago, with extremely easy routes to spread it.

Founding the religions is not my struggle, I can nearly always get Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, and Confucianism. The late ones are usually snatched, as I'm spending my prophets on shrines. My worst fear? Barbarians, aggressive neighbors. As long as I don't get murdered before the classical era (archery helps), I'm fine.

So maybe it's not perfect, but I've played it many, many times and it works quite well. That's noble and prince.

 

[xenex]

The point is not so much about not being able to get the religions, but on the ineffectiveness of actually doing it.

To get this to work even remotly effectivly you would have to make sure to get phrophets on a consistent basis, to be able to build all the shrines and then use a lott of hammers to spread those religions to all your cities and even more cities of the AI and the worse part of this is you would be doing it at the expense of improving your land, getting better techs and play a subpar game just to make it work.

The worse part of this tactic is that you can do the exact same thing without playing a subpar game, with just simple cottages, expanding and specialist.

 

[Ataxerxes]

My game improved when I stopped chasing religions to found.

When I started I was enthused to found religions, seeing it as an incentive to research certain techs. I found my game improved when I concentrated on early worker techs. At Noble, going for Alphabet to tech trade and then getting to Liberalism for an important tech is often a good way to go.

The other problem is diplomacy. AI's are very fond of religions they found. It's worked better for me to adopt the religion of a neighbor in order to make a friend. When I found the religion, even if I give him a couple of missionaries, he keeps switching out of my religion.

TMIT already pointed out the hammer cost of missionaries. I will aggressively spread my state religion to all my cities but no other religion. I don't think the eventual shrine income justifies the immediate hammer expense.

I'd suggest doing a couple of sample games - one going after all religions and another not worrying about anything but your state religion. I think you'll do better the second way.

 

[Ghpstage]

What everyone else said, but also,
Founding and shrining multiple religions has significant diminishing returns. First off your first religion will spread happily along your trade network, but once a city has a religion second one can't autospread to it, forcing you to spend on missionaries. Next the missionaries have a chance of failing to spread, and this chance increases for every religion already in a city. Of course your Great People become more costly too, so those shrines that become weaker the more you have of them become more expensive too....

 

[Nick Carpathia]

I remember seeing a gimmick game on something like Immortal, where someone founded every single religion in a city with zero trade networks, up until Divine Right, then made the entire world islam.

 

[whats a navy]

This isn't so good because your expansions suffers greatly and you work unimproved tiles for a long time (which you should never do except for the first 20 turns of the game). Plus Ghandi is better because he has philosophical in order to get Great Prophets faster and more shrines instead of Asoka's organized which isn't suited for this strategy.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I remember seeing a gimmick game on something like Immortal, where someone founded every single religion in a city with zero trade networks, up until Divine Right, then made the entire world islam.

DaveMCW did that on monarch. It was painfully inefficient but a fun challenge variant.

 

[Riflin'Joe]

The Religious Economy seems to be like asparagus: you either love it or hate it. Me, I love it, though I have to admit I haven't tried it yet at the monarch level I now play at. I think the way is to ignore the early religions and head instead for the later ones, with an Oracle slingshot to Theology being the key. Build Stonehenge as well and the Great Prophets will roll in, ensuing in great profits...
The best leader for this is surely Ramsses, with the obelisk being a great aid to the strategy. Gandhi is also very good at this.