Need Piety Advice

[earthwulf]

I nearly always go the same route: Tradition-Liberty-Patronage then beyond... I want to play a game using piety as a fleshed out tree. If I'm not playing Boudicca or Byzantium, when would be a good time to head down the tree? I'm on king - don't want to handicap myself culturally or expansionally.

I tend to go for the big initial cultural boost from tradition, then grab a settler from Liberty, then move as is appropriate for my game. Piety is a mystery to me...

 

[Resipsa]

I nearly always go the same route: Tradition-Liberty-Patronage then beyond... I want to play a game using piety as a fleshed out tree. If I'm not playing Boudicca or Byzantium, when would be a good time to head down the tree? I'm on king - don't want to handicap myself culturally or expansionally.

I tend to go for the big initial cultural boost from tradition, then grab a settler from Liberty, then move as is appropriate for my game. Piety is a mystery to me...

If you want to run an Ethiopia game go down the left side of liberty and then finish piety, stele, shrine, temples will create tons of faith in just a few cities. In my game I went four cities until I finished NC around t110 or so and then added more cities and finished liberty as my finisher I used a GE to rush the Sistine Chapel

 

[ezbutton]

There are a bunch of threads which pretty much sum it up correctly and that is piety is one of the weakest trees. The opener and first two policies are pretty good but the rest is pretty mediocre if not just plain awful. Religious tolerance is probably one of the weakest single policies in the game because it requires a set up for minimal benefits (needs a follower from another religion for a pantheon which are most often forgettable). Reformation is meh as well, the only reformation belief that I would think is a good choice is the ability to purchase science buildings (Universities and up) and sacred sites assuming you can pick up two faith building followers and have enough faith. Its not uncommon in lower difficulties to hit influential with some civs before turn 150 with sacred sites. I wouldn't recommend splitting your social policies either. Its probably better to finish tradition or liberty as rushing the finishers is pretty vital for some timing strategies.

Patronage is a pretty useful tree overall, the wonder forbidden palace is pretty damn useful in controlling early World Congress resolutions. Everything in it is pretty useful or cost-effective and the finisher is pretty damn amazing considering it has a chance to give you UU GPs like the Khan and Merchant of Venice.

I heavily favor tradition tree since rapid expansion strategies in BNW tend to fall flat with decreasing returns on science and social policies with every new city plant. I normally try and get early monarchy to get the gold and happiness and try and sell of extra luxuries for GPT to eventually buy a settler.

As always it depends on your play style and victory goal so your choice of social policies will depend on those factors but I just feel as though piety is fairly weak as a whole and doesn't really add much to any victory condition but I might not have tinkered and optimize my strategy to make good use of its policies.

 

[Calouste]

I'd say start with picking Maya, Songhai or Egypt. At least you will get half cost UBs from Piety.

 

[budweiser]

Piety is not week. Any civ can do this:

Open tradition>then 2 in piety. Get a second city, use any pantheon to get more faith. Build shrines and temples. That should get you a religion that you can work with.

I just beat Immortal to space using Morocco Jesuits. I had free mosques, unis, public schools and research labs and 3 scientist to close it out in 6 cities at +100 fpt.

 

[SolDelta]

Piety isn't weak, its just a little...oddly designed. After the opener and organized religion you have three policies that won't help until the religious game is well and truly going, but after these you have Reformation which, ideally, you want ASAP. I like to fill out the left side of Liberty after the piety opener, which sets you up nicely for a faith supported ICS shindig. By that point you should hopefully have a religion, you can snatch up Church Property and a pagoda or mosque, then grab Mandate of Heaven and just keep building faith buildings, relying on the Piety finisher to enhance. This gives you a nice bank of faith to develop a reformation/enhancer strategy with. It's a strange tree, but it is nigh unmatched in its versatility, and with a strong early faith game you can grab a cool little bonus in whatever you want, be it JE for the faith unis, sacred sites for early tourism, glory of god for uh, anything...hell, even evangelism can be very helpful with the right founder beliefs.

 

[earthwulf]

Thanks for all the advice - I appreciate it. I know that there are threads out there, just trying to whittle them down. As far as the civ itself, I go random...

 

[NukeAJS]

Whenever you would start building shrines/temples, pickup the opener. Get the first two in the tree, probably +1 faith from shrines/temples first.

Then get something else.

Religious tolerance can be extremely powerful if someone ganked a pantheon you really wanted and they are close by OR it can be utterly useless.

Reformation beliefs can be interesting. The converting barbs one basically means you can get next to two-three barb camps and never have to build a military unit again.

Theocracy should only be taken if you plan on getting a lot of great prophets. +10% gold alone just isn't worth it IMO.