Persia, being the only Zoroastrian civilization, basically has two sets of unique victory objectives. The Zoroastrian URV is fun, doable, and challenging, and is quite different from the heavily conquest-based UHV (although it does involve a fair bit of conquest, too). This guide is based on a Regent/Normal game.
The goals are:
This means you have to survive until then — and flourish. Unfortunately, you are in the Middle East, which means you will likely have to deal with:
Legendary culture
Zoroastrianism will spawn in Parsa on turn 1 (I think, as a game design choice, it would be better for Zoroastrianism to appear some time after the Persian spawn, but for now that's what happens). You should immediately focus everything in this city on culture. It is important to achieve this goal as fast as possible, since you don't want the world population to be too large then, in order to win the 10% goal.
Build the Apadana Palace in Parsa, and any other wonders you can, except maybe Gondeshapur—it gives the Medic promotion to units, but you won't be building many units in your capital. Build all the culture buildings. Discover literature and build a theater and hire an artist. Ignore anything related to the military, but do build walls, a market (for the shrine income) and some workboats, as this is your only important coastal city.
Importantly, build cathedrals: they have a neat +50% culture bonus. Since your empire will teem with religions, it should be no problem building at least three. I had a Zoroastrian Royal Fire, a Jewish Sanhedrin and a Buddhist Chaitya. Maybe I could have built more, but there tends to be a limit on the numbers of religions in a single city.
If you get a Great Artist early, settle them; if you get one towards the end of the game, detonate a culture bomb instead.
When you reach the Renaissance, the Louvre wonder and the National Gallery are must-haves. The Tolerance civic also has a +50% culture bonus in your capital (and is useful besides to offset the negative effects of having a large religious diversity).
Zoroastrianism to 10%
No need to worry about this until relatively late, but do spread your religion to all your cities whenever you have the chance. It is important to note that Zoroastrian Magi cannot spread the religion to civilizations who don't have it as a state religion! This means you'll have to achieve this by having a large empire. (I'm not sure about whether you can spread to pagan civs; the action was available when I tried spreading to an Aztec city, but my missionary failed and I didn't try again.)
At the beginning, you will flip Shush. Build a third city in Afghanistan, next to the horses. Later, you can fit a 4th core city in NW Iran on the Caspian Sea. Conquer Babylon, which is a top-tier city and likely contains at least one wonder. After that, your empire will wax and wane. You can conquer Samarkand, Jerusalem, Sur, any cities in Anatolia, all of Egypt, etc., but know that it may not be easy to keep all of them. This is fine. The goal is to maintain a strong, prosperous civilization in terms of technology and military while Parsa builds its culture. I found Egypt in particular to be useful and not too bothered by foreign intervention—even the Arabs didn't really try to conquer it after I refused the flip.
In 1703, I had Zoroastrianism in 13% of the world without much difficulty. I may have been lucky that England had collapsed and European colonization was slow, though. Besides Iran and the Middle East, I controlled Egypt, Somalia and Ethiopia, and I had begun spreading the religion in the New World through the conqueror events. Zoroastrianism was also present in the Turkic cities of central Asia (an area that I controlled prior to the Turkic spawn, but didn't bother retaking, since the Turks had taken Zoroastrianism as their state religion); it also naturally spread to a couple cities in India.
I'm not sure if prosecuting religions would have an impact, but in any case I didn't do it much. Beware, though: Zoroastrianism may start disappearing from your cities naturally, since it is supposed to be a declining religion. It's not, you're making sure of that, but the game doesn't know. Just spread it again if that happens.
Six incense
As I discussed in the map suggestion thread, this goal doesn't really make sense, since Zoroastrians don't seem to have cared much for incense, unlike virtually all other religions. But never mind that.
You get two incense copies in Iran itself, so you need four more. There are actually five copies that are available in Arabia and the Horn of Africa. Just make sure to conquer these areas some time before you reach the legendary goal.
Other tidbits
(For those who can read French, I was reading a really good graphic novel about Zoroastrianism at the same time I was playing this game: Ainsi se tut Zarathoustra, by Nicolas Wild.)
The goals are:
- Acquire 6 incense resources
- Spread Zoroastrianism to 10%
- Have legendary culture in the Zoroastrian holy city
This means you have to survive until then — and flourish. Unfortunately, you are in the Middle East, which means you will likely have to deal with:
- Greek conquerors against most of your cities, around the time of Alexander's conquests;
- Roman conquerors against whatever cities you have in the Near East and Egypt;
- Byzantine spawn in 330, affecting Near Eastern cities (may not happen);
- Turkic spawn in 552, affecting the Samarkand area;
- Arab spawn in 620, affecting Mesopotamia, the Levant and Egypt;
- Turkic conquerors, spawning in a few waves (two I think) during the Middle Ages near most of your cities;
- Mongol hordes, annoying as ever and spawning all over the place;
- Ottoman spawn, if you didn't manage to prevent the Turks from conquering any of your cities (so, make sure you do).
Legendary culture
Zoroastrianism will spawn in Parsa on turn 1 (I think, as a game design choice, it would be better for Zoroastrianism to appear some time after the Persian spawn, but for now that's what happens). You should immediately focus everything in this city on culture. It is important to achieve this goal as fast as possible, since you don't want the world population to be too large then, in order to win the 10% goal.
Build the Apadana Palace in Parsa, and any other wonders you can, except maybe Gondeshapur—it gives the Medic promotion to units, but you won't be building many units in your capital. Build all the culture buildings. Discover literature and build a theater and hire an artist. Ignore anything related to the military, but do build walls, a market (for the shrine income) and some workboats, as this is your only important coastal city.
Importantly, build cathedrals: they have a neat +50% culture bonus. Since your empire will teem with religions, it should be no problem building at least three. I had a Zoroastrian Royal Fire, a Jewish Sanhedrin and a Buddhist Chaitya. Maybe I could have built more, but there tends to be a limit on the numbers of religions in a single city.
If you get a Great Artist early, settle them; if you get one towards the end of the game, detonate a culture bomb instead.
When you reach the Renaissance, the Louvre wonder and the National Gallery are must-haves. The Tolerance civic also has a +50% culture bonus in your capital (and is useful besides to offset the negative effects of having a large religious diversity).
Zoroastrianism to 10%
No need to worry about this until relatively late, but do spread your religion to all your cities whenever you have the chance. It is important to note that Zoroastrian Magi cannot spread the religion to civilizations who don't have it as a state religion! This means you'll have to achieve this by having a large empire. (I'm not sure about whether you can spread to pagan civs; the action was available when I tried spreading to an Aztec city, but my missionary failed and I didn't try again.)
At the beginning, you will flip Shush. Build a third city in Afghanistan, next to the horses. Later, you can fit a 4th core city in NW Iran on the Caspian Sea. Conquer Babylon, which is a top-tier city and likely contains at least one wonder. After that, your empire will wax and wane. You can conquer Samarkand, Jerusalem, Sur, any cities in Anatolia, all of Egypt, etc., but know that it may not be easy to keep all of them. This is fine. The goal is to maintain a strong, prosperous civilization in terms of technology and military while Parsa builds its culture. I found Egypt in particular to be useful and not too bothered by foreign intervention—even the Arabs didn't really try to conquer it after I refused the flip.
In 1703, I had Zoroastrianism in 13% of the world without much difficulty. I may have been lucky that England had collapsed and European colonization was slow, though. Besides Iran and the Middle East, I controlled Egypt, Somalia and Ethiopia, and I had begun spreading the religion in the New World through the conqueror events. Zoroastrianism was also present in the Turkic cities of central Asia (an area that I controlled prior to the Turkic spawn, but didn't bother retaking, since the Turks had taken Zoroastrianism as their state religion); it also naturally spread to a couple cities in India.
I'm not sure if prosecuting religions would have an impact, but in any case I didn't do it much. Beware, though: Zoroastrianism may start disappearing from your cities naturally, since it is supposed to be a declining religion. It's not, you're making sure of that, but the game doesn't know. Just spread it again if that happens.
Six incense
As I discussed in the map suggestion thread, this goal doesn't really make sense, since Zoroastrians don't seem to have cared much for incense, unlike virtually all other religions. But never mind that.
You get two incense copies in Iran itself, so you need four more. There are actually five copies that are available in Arabia and the Horn of Africa. Just make sure to conquer these areas some time before you reach the legendary goal.
Other tidbits
- A worthwhile goal to pursue is to fulfill two of the UHV goals, which will grant a golden age—especially good if you build the Great Mausoleum. Ignore the 7% territory goal and focus on the other two: controlling two shrines and seven wonders. You want shrines for the income anyway, and wonders are always useful. You should be able to get enough wonders by building a couple and conquering the rest in Babylon and Egypt.
- I totally ignored the subcontinent, but maybe there are good strategies that can be devised around India. It's outside the stability areas and dealing with the Mughals seems annoying, but on the other hand the cities there grow big and won't be targeted by the Mongols. There's also an incense there.
- The Old Synagogue is a must! You'll have lots of Jewish cities, and +2 gold per Jewish building is really strong. It's also one of the few wonders you can build while having the Zoroastrian state religion.
- Speaking of which, it may be worth switching to other religions to get their wonders. I didn't, since it felt wrong to do that in order to win a Zoroastrian game, but you could.
- The Dome of the Rock is another useful wonder you can build, if you have the Temple of Solomon and spread Islam in Jerusalem. With this, the Old Synagogue, and the shrines of four religions, I was able to put 100% of my income in a combination of science and culture.
- Founding Islam before the Arabian spawn is easy and fun. It taunts them.
- Keep some immortals around even after they are obsolete. Their attack bonus against archers is great.
Spoiler :
(For those who can read French, I was reading a really good graphic novel about Zoroastrianism at the same time I was playing this game: Ainsi se tut Zarathoustra, by Nicolas Wild.)
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