kingofsealand
Warlord
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- Jul 14, 2013
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Just wondering who else has tried the new faith driven scenario and what faith you went with? Some of my own thoughts below.
Path to nirvana?
- Thread starter kingofsealand
- Start date
kingofsealand
Warlord
- Joined
- Jul 14, 2013
- Messages
- 279
I went with chola for a first run on prince, the AI did alright with their monks and priests but didn't use gurus hardly at all so hopefully that changes with higher levels. The gurus left promotion track is essential to buff your monks/missionaries movement and theological strength.
Cholas bonuses are nice enough although confused me at first. I was excited to faith buy workers, only to realize you can't remove features. At start there are only a couple of tiles near your homeland worth improving and some out of reach fish (food sources can be harvested still).
The real value to them is faith buying traders and early lighthouses. Every city state starts with a trade route quest, so take the policy to make the first envoy count as two and start buying those traders! The lighthouses will help you grow and move through the cultures quickly.
their homeland in general is production rich, especially once you reach lumber mills. Makes it easy to build what you want, I went for temples everywhere I had a holy site and the mahabodhi temple in my capital, the other two wonders come so late idk if they'd be worth it.
About halfway through, I switched over to policies that gave +1 faith per envoy, and doubled HS building output. That gave me so much faith, I could easily buy a monk every turn. I spent a few turns buying up a large force, and managed to convert all of ghazanid, Mahayana, and was making inroads on Lhasa and Vietnam by the games end. I enjoyed joining up my disjointed faith borders by filling in the missing cities.
I finished with a score of 929, Taoism was in second place with 520ish. Of the bonuses, chola and Taoism seem strongest to me, although I would really like to try turfan defending their mountain kingdom looks like a blast.
Overall I really enjoyed this scenario, and can't decide of the four so far which I like best. I'm sure I will get around to trying every start position eventually.
Cholas bonuses are nice enough although confused me at first. I was excited to faith buy workers, only to realize you can't remove features. At start there are only a couple of tiles near your homeland worth improving and some out of reach fish (food sources can be harvested still).
The real value to them is faith buying traders and early lighthouses. Every city state starts with a trade route quest, so take the policy to make the first envoy count as two and start buying those traders! The lighthouses will help you grow and move through the cultures quickly.
their homeland in general is production rich, especially once you reach lumber mills. Makes it easy to build what you want, I went for temples everywhere I had a holy site and the mahabodhi temple in my capital, the other two wonders come so late idk if they'd be worth it.
About halfway through, I switched over to policies that gave +1 faith per envoy, and doubled HS building output. That gave me so much faith, I could easily buy a monk every turn. I spent a few turns buying up a large force, and managed to convert all of ghazanid, Mahayana, and was making inroads on Lhasa and Vietnam by the games end. I enjoyed joining up my disjointed faith borders by filling in the missing cities.
I finished with a score of 929, Taoism was in second place with 520ish. Of the bonuses, chola and Taoism seem strongest to me, although I would really like to try turfan defending their mountain kingdom looks like a blast.
Overall I really enjoyed this scenario, and can't decide of the four so far which I like best. I'm sure I will get around to trying every start position eventually.
I played it through for the first time last night, on Emperor, and managed to squeak through a win as the Ghaznavids.
To be honest I really wasn’t clear on all the rules out of the gate, and was fully prepared to drop it as a practice run but Civ being Civ I kept playing to the end.
So I didn’t figure out lighthouses (in fairness Persia only has the one coastal city) so didn’t get more trade routes short of one or two commercial districts. Instead I figured with Islam I should go for missionaries with their extra spread. But the mosque comes so late, and as in the main game, missionary conversions are less important than Monks and winning theological combat, so I soon gave up on that and churned out Monks and Gurus. Policy and build wise I focussed faith, but netted the Mahabodhi and Angkor Wat.
Checking the score I saw I was pretty low to begin with, so I didn’t bother checking back and focussed on converting India, where the Chola are the main resistance. My biggest problem was with Tufan monks coming down from Tibet, who had a lot of the Silk Road City states and much of northern India already off the Pula.
My Temple and Guru boosted Monks managed to prevail though, and at one point I chained enough Religious victories to convert Lhasa over the mountains, but Tibet had enough Monks to flip it back.
With 10 turns left and India pretty much all under the crescent moon, I checked the score to see myself at second place, with China a notch above me. This coincided with my meeting a bunch of Taoist monks in Burma. So in the last few turns I had to desperately eke as many cities as I could off the Chinese while stopping the Tibetans from taking any of India back.
By turn 50 I had gotten Pagan, kept hold of India and had a couple of monks going through the Himalaya to try to squish the Tufans. But I struggled to get the eastern Silk Road cities out of Buddhism, and at the end of my turn my score was still slightly below China. I sighed and hit one more turn, and.... won?!
I’m not exactly sure how I managed it (especially considering the One More Turn button is annoyingly disabled for scenarios). I figure China must have lost a city when the AI took their turns. My score was 780 or so.
Still the scenario was quite fun, a good showcase of the Gurus and the new Religion Lens. However thematically I didn’t find it as interesting as the ones with a more solid historical context, like (my favourite) the beautiful Nile scenario, or the Polish/Viking ones.
I also didn’t notice the AI using too many Gurus on Emperor - they hugely focussed Monks from what I could see.
To be honest I really wasn’t clear on all the rules out of the gate, and was fully prepared to drop it as a practice run but Civ being Civ I kept playing to the end.
So I didn’t figure out lighthouses (in fairness Persia only has the one coastal city) so didn’t get more trade routes short of one or two commercial districts. Instead I figured with Islam I should go for missionaries with their extra spread. But the mosque comes so late, and as in the main game, missionary conversions are less important than Monks and winning theological combat, so I soon gave up on that and churned out Monks and Gurus. Policy and build wise I focussed faith, but netted the Mahabodhi and Angkor Wat.
Checking the score I saw I was pretty low to begin with, so I didn’t bother checking back and focussed on converting India, where the Chola are the main resistance. My biggest problem was with Tufan monks coming down from Tibet, who had a lot of the Silk Road City states and much of northern India already off the Pula.
My Temple and Guru boosted Monks managed to prevail though, and at one point I chained enough Religious victories to convert Lhasa over the mountains, but Tibet had enough Monks to flip it back.
With 10 turns left and India pretty much all under the crescent moon, I checked the score to see myself at second place, with China a notch above me. This coincided with my meeting a bunch of Taoist monks in Burma. So in the last few turns I had to desperately eke as many cities as I could off the Chinese while stopping the Tibetans from taking any of India back.
By turn 50 I had gotten Pagan, kept hold of India and had a couple of monks going through the Himalaya to try to squish the Tufans. But I struggled to get the eastern Silk Road cities out of Buddhism, and at the end of my turn my score was still slightly below China. I sighed and hit one more turn, and.... won?!
I’m not exactly sure how I managed it (especially considering the One More Turn button is annoyingly disabled for scenarios). I figure China must have lost a city when the AI took their turns. My score was 780 or so.
Still the scenario was quite fun, a good showcase of the Gurus and the new Religion Lens. However thematically I didn’t find it as interesting as the ones with a more solid historical context, like (my favourite) the beautiful Nile scenario, or the Polish/Viking ones.
I also didn’t notice the AI using too many Gurus on Emperor - they hugely focussed Monks from what I could see.
kingofsealand
Warlord
- Joined
- Jul 14, 2013
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- 279
Ghaznavid looked like a much harder start compared to chola, kudos on pulling out the win!
Tao was in the position in my game that you describe, their monks sat across from mine in Burma but they hesitated to attack seemingly knowing it was lost and just sat there the last 5 turns. That's unfortunate about the AI gurus, that radial theological strength buff is everything.
I somehow still haven't tried gifts of the nile! I know what I'm doing tomorrow.
Tao was in the position in my game that you describe, their monks sat across from mine in Burma but they hesitated to attack seemingly knowing it was lost and just sat there the last 5 turns. That's unfortunate about the AI gurus, that radial theological strength buff is everything.
I somehow still haven't tried gifts of the nile! I know what I'm doing tomorrow.
Cossackaiser
Chieftain
Just out of curiosity is Australian in this scenario? Because Ed Beach hinted that there might be a city state on the australian continent in the livestream.
- Joined
- Jun 20, 2004
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- 4,843
It stops before the map hits New Guinea
The map roughly stretches from Afghanistan and Uzbekistan in the west (where the Ghaznavids start, and Samarkand City State starts the Silk Road chain to the north of the map), across to what I believe is the Korean peninsula in the east (where there's a city state). Then down from the Silk Road to Indonesia, stopping short of New Guinea, as bite says. No Australia, no Japan, no Mongolia.
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Small correction there is Japan
Oh really? My mistake. I guess this is what happens when you start in the west. They aren't a playable civ though, right?
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No a City State
cvb
Prince
- Joined
- Jun 12, 2017
- Messages
- 446
Kind of stumbled right now over GamerZakh's video Indonesia Path to Nirvana Scenario & Religion Updates! published on Oct 26, 2017 ... (The Gameplay begins @ 3:05)
Tried out this scenario in multiplayer today, it was a lot of fun. One thing that I couldn't figure out was my religion was supposed to have +1 production for fishing boats but I couldn't see that appearing. Several things are a bit strange with production so perhaps I was missing something. By the end you are faith buying a unit per turn so production doesn't matter much but next time I'll skip the builders to improve lands if the production doesn't count.
Trengilly
Prince
Played Khmer (Theravada) on Emperor. Spent the first 20 turns or so building my infrastructure while everyone else fought and killed each others units around me. Then pumped out a bunch of units (was faith buying 2 a turn and also hard building them). First killed guys in my home territory and then once I had enough units pushed out in all directions. Piece of cake.
Then tried Tufan (Vajrayana) on deity. This was actually easier as they are so isolated you don't need to worry while you build your infrastructure. About half way through the game I was ready to attack - East into China with a dozen units. West into Islam with another 10 or so. And a couple turns later added a push South into India. By the end of the game all three fronts had linked up and the only areas unconverted was parts of Burma and the Indonesia islands.
In both cases the trick was to build up infrastructure first and only push out when you have a large force of monks backed by gurus. A few priests are helpful for cleaning up any units in your territory. Stick to all the combat bonus promotions and your units en masse are overwhelming for the AI. They just suicide their units against yours and you just slowly advance. I don't believe the AI managed to kill a single unit, and no they don't seem to have a clue what do do with their Gurus.
I found it fun but ultimately disappointing at how utterly useless the AI is.
Then tried Tufan (Vajrayana) on deity. This was actually easier as they are so isolated you don't need to worry while you build your infrastructure. About half way through the game I was ready to attack - East into China with a dozen units. West into Islam with another 10 or so. And a couple turns later added a push South into India. By the end of the game all three fronts had linked up and the only areas unconverted was parts of Burma and the Indonesia islands.
In both cases the trick was to build up infrastructure first and only push out when you have a large force of monks backed by gurus. A few priests are helpful for cleaning up any units in your territory. Stick to all the combat bonus promotions and your units en masse are overwhelming for the AI. They just suicide their units against yours and you just slowly advance. I don't believe the AI managed to kill a single unit, and no they don't seem to have a clue what do do with their Gurus.
I found it fun but ultimately disappointing at how utterly useless the AI is.
Cossackaiser
Chieftain
can someone list the city states?
DutchJob
Prince
WillowBrook
Lurker
That list only has the regular game city states, not those in the scenarios
Guandao
Rajah of Minyue, Hlai and Langkasuka
I think they mean the City-States in the scenario.
I played the scenario for the first time yesterday as China (Taoism). I managed to win.
I found the biggest threats/competitors to China were the Pala (Mahayana Buddhism) and Tufan (Vajrayana Buddhism). I managed to convert two of Tufan's cities to Taoism. The Khmer (Theravada Buddhism) were a secondary threat. I started out using Missionaries. The Priests seem very weak, especially against the Monks. I eventually used the Monks with some Gurus to combat the other Civs.
The faction with the lowest score was the Ghaznavids (Islam).
Guandao
Rajah of Minyue, Hlai and Langkasuka
Here's the list of City-States in Path to Nirvana:
Heian-Maritime
Kaesong-Religious
Zhongjing-Cultural
Xingqing-Industrial
Gaochang-Trade
Turpan-Religious
Kucha-Cultural
Khotan-Trade
Kashgar-Religious
Samarkand-Trade
Delhi-Religious
Somnath-Religious
Ujjain-Industrial
Goa-Maritime
Pagan-Religious
Dali-Trade
Thang Long-Maritime
Lamphun-Industrial
Vijaya-Religious
Lamuri-Religious
Temasek-Industrial
Palembang-Trade
Bandar Brunei-Maritime
Tondo-Maritime
Malabang-Religious
Heian-Maritime
Kaesong-Religious
Zhongjing-Cultural
Xingqing-Industrial
Gaochang-Trade
Turpan-Religious
Kucha-Cultural
Khotan-Trade
Kashgar-Religious
Samarkand-Trade
Delhi-Religious
Somnath-Religious
Ujjain-Industrial
Goa-Maritime
Pagan-Religious
Dali-Trade
Thang Long-Maritime
Lamphun-Industrial
Vijaya-Religious
Lamuri-Religious
Temasek-Industrial
Palembang-Trade
Bandar Brunei-Maritime
Tondo-Maritime
Malabang-Religious
Thanks for your advice. I won on Prince as the Khmer on my first run through. Then tried Tufan on deity, and won easily. As you pointed out, build up commercial districts & markets early to get the traders out, along with granaries and at least one aqueduct for Angkor Wat. I eventually built all three wonders. And I was allied with about a dozen different city states. It was almost turn 35 before I began converting cities outside my territory, but then won easily.
It was nice to read "You have unlocked every single achievement. Congratulations!"
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