Pagan Religious Victories

Si No Hay Paz

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Hey all! I've been reading CivFanatics for like 15 years and I wanted to share something I haven't seen much of in DoC discussions - a thread on Pagan Religious Victories!

These are a challenge in that you have to accomplish them relatively quickly to prevent the spread of religion to your cities, and you also end up playing a really expansionist game because of the 15 Pagan Temples requirement. Plus whatever special twist the unique aspect of your civ's pagan religion requires.

I started off with the obvious ones - ancient civs like Egypt, Babylon, Greece, Rome, Carthage, Maya & even China. But then I started playing around with later starts, just to see if it was possible, and you can get some really fun and different games if you invest in the setup required to win a Pagan victory. So far I've won as Germany and England, and I'm working on France, Vikings, & Russia, and I'm most excited about Japan because of their unique condition, but I have to get the setup right (ie preventing the foundation of Buddhism by starting with India and not building Hindu Temples).

Interestingly, if you get the setup right, it is actually really easy to win as the US because you can switch to Theocracy right away to prevent the spread of religions and their unique condition just requires having 20 unimproved forest tiles.

As I achieve them, I'll share other uncommon religious victories I'm working on (like full-game Jewish Babylon, Ancient Jewish Greece, or 1700 AD start Zoroastrian Iran!)

So here are some screenshots of the victory screens, does anyone else have any luck or good strategies with Pagan Religious Victories?
 

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I've never attempted any of the pagan URVs. Very recently during a Rome playthrough I achieved it unintentionally however, for the first time despite having played Rome every now and then
 
One time I almost achieved a religious victory as the aztecs, ironically enough. I was SOOO close, all I needed to do was settle a few more cities and I would have won, but the conquerors got me
 
One time I almost achieved a religious victory as the aztecs, ironically enough. I was SOOO close, all I needed to do was settle a few more cities and I would have won, but the conquerors got me
I've tried a couple different times as the aztecs and I can never get more than a couple cities up before conquerors show up in like the 1400s! I would keep getting really early catholicism spreads too?
 
I've never attempted any of the pagan URVs. Very recently during a Rome playthrough I achieved it unintentionally however, for the first time despite having played Rome every now and then
I held off on a pagan Rome victory so I could keep playing and then switch to the European civs, I gotta go back to my old save and finish it
 
So I played all the way from an India start in order to avoid founding Buddhism as set up for a Japan game, only for a few turns in for Tibet to spawn and found Buddhism anyways. It spreads in ONE TURN from Rasa to Edo, without spreading to any other cities and without having a trade connection. I went back to the India save, founded a city on the plains tile to ensure it didn't have any trade connections through either rivers or roads. The auto-raze feature is evidently not just for Angkor when the Thais spawn though. So even though I'm pretty sure there's no road connection, it happens again after I switch to Japan. Might have to do a light cheat and remove Japan from the historical Buddhist spread area :crazyeye:
 

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So I did the light cheat and removed japan's main islands from the UHV area and just made a rule for myself not to settle anything else until I could adopt Theocracy. That looks like it was the least of my issues though because getting even one Great Spy is a STRUGGLE. I've already built 8 spies, lost 7 of them (lot's of them discovered before even doing anything), and have only gotten 3 points toward the Great Spy. Evidently your spies don't get experience after each successful mission, which makes an already difficult task even harder. I'm at 1600 now and all my neighbors have collapsed...this is gonna be a long game!
 
because getting even one Great Spy is a STRUGGLE. I've already built 8 spies, lost 7 of them (lot's of them discovered before even doing anything), and have only gotten 3 points toward the Great Spy. Evidently your spies don't get experience after each successful mission, which makes an already difficult task even harder.
@Leoreth , I've seen a number of posts like this one saying that gaining GPP for Great Spies is borderline impossible. Has that issue been resolved in a recent update, or is addressing that on your to-do list?
 
Addressing it is on my to do list, it is one of my mid-sized action items before release. I am currently going for more lower hanging fruit but it shouldn't take long before I can get to it.
 
I completed the challenge as Polynesia. Easy, pretty much the same as UHV but slightly different focus.
The Victory did not trigger though. Perhaps a bug @Leoreth ? V16.6
1661357816106.png
 

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The victory code has been entirely replaced since 1.16.6, so there is a good chance that it is working now.
 
Yes, by "since 1.16.6" I meant after the release of 1.16.6.
 
Finished the Mongol Pagan URV, which is another one of those that cuts it close to winning the UHV as well. Also, required a lot of set up. Even though Mongolia starts pagan, it flips the Central Asian cities that have Islam in the 600 AD start, so to fulfill the third condition I started from my pagan China game and basically just let it autoplay, only intervening to prevent building roads that would spread religion to the unconnected pagan cities. Even so, I had to be careful not to capture more cities with religion than without it, as well as founding 7 more cities. As always, I beelined doctrine to adopt Theocracy so I didn't have to worry about religion spreading anymore. This was a really fun game, and the Mongols are probably a great candidate for winning any religious victory because they are so flexible and can take an region they want with their starting stack. Definitely want to try a secular victory later.
 

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Please upload the save from before the crash.
The year 1766 from 1.16.7 where no victory triggering, and the year 1612 from 1.16.0 where game crash
 

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Trying to do the Inca URV and failing for awhile now, so I took the opportunity to take control of the Colombians that kept killing me. If you can't beat em...

Starting with at least tech parity, a good army, and access to Theocracy, Colombia has the same URV goals as Inca but is much more equipped to accomplish them. I researched techs for gold buildings and only started going for full gold after consumerism. After that it was pretty much just whipping as many gold and trade buildings as possible, and trying to get Great Merchants. [/SPOILER]
 

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Finished a US Druid victory that ended up being my 3rd highest score. It's the quickest URV I've done to date, because you have some ideal conditions - starting access to Theocracy and the easy Celtic conditions that only require 20 unimproved forest tiles, of which there are plenty in America.

From the 1700 start you flip a bunch of cities with religion so I tried from 3000 bc just for fun and after about 2 hours of wait time I got...still a bunch of cities that flipped with religion. So I reloaded and razed New York, Boston, and Charleston before they flipped, and then refounded them with my starting settlers. It still ended up being a more militaristic game than I thought and I was pretty much just building military units the whole time to fight native spawns and eventually capture the French and indie cities nearby. I refused 2 flips at a congress and ended up at war with most of the world, which delayed my win till after Canada spawned so ended up at war with them too. Fun, quick game overall
USA Pagan Victory conditions.png
USA Pagan Victory.png
 
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