Piety seems weak because rationalism is so good
- Thread starter Artifex1
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I haven't really given it too much thought since the July patch, but Piety is awesome for culture, for example. If you are going for a cultural victory, or are having absolutely no issues with scientific supremacy, but are in need of a cultural or happiness boost, then Piety does make a lot of sense.
Artifex1
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What did the july patch nerf peity?
buchengshi
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I would actually phrase this the opposite way:
Why would you take rationalism if you were playing on anything below deity?
Unless you really need a big tech boost, piety serves you better (in my opinion). Both basically give you +2 happiness/city (+3 occasionally with piety) from buildings, but the piety buildings are early buildings with low hammer costs (and piety gives you a bonus when building them). Happiness can quickly limit growth in the early game, and I'd rather have more pop/another city early on than have to wait two more eras to unlock rationalism. While waiting for the renaissance to roll around, I could be halfway through piety. Then I can either finish piety, or go into freedom.
Edit to add:
I play on marathon. When everything takes a lot longer to happen (like getting to renaissance) things that help earlier in the game tend to help more than some future reward. A happiness bonus right now (and culture boost) is better than a science boost 200 turns from now.
It changed it, at least. IIRC a boost more than a nerf. But rationalism was also boosted.
I can't say that I agree. If you want to grow a wide empire early, yes, but not necessarily a "large" empire. A viable alternative is to shoot for Industrial Era (and Freedom) super fast to get the food and happy breaks from running specialists, and then build Specialist buildings everywhere (and assign Specs everywhere, natch). Given the amount of Specialist slots you can get in one city, Freedom's Democracy Policy may be the singlemost largest happiness break you can get in all the Policies, in a mature empire.
The limiting factor is that it requires lots of tech, and lots of hammers to see this potential realized. Also, you need lots of food.
Piety might be better if you are going for a culture victory. But then with just a small empire and no Rationalism you will have to work hard to get even in science.
ArcaneSeraph
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Piety is great for culture. Same as rationalism is great for science. So do you want more culture or more science?
I know that may be overly simplified but in strikes pretty close to my game experiences. if you look at piety, it has a lot of dud policies. The opener, mandate of heaven, free religion, reformation, and the finisher all solely boost culture (and a free GA). If you complete the tree you also get +10% gold and +2
/city. +10% gold is a joke. It's a way worse than building a market. There's no reason to take it besides wanting to finish the entire tree. Mandate of heaven is also rather useless but it's another must have if you want to finish the tree.
So basically piety gives you lots of +
and +2/city.
Rationalism on the other hand, doesn't really have a dud policy. It provides the same amount of happiness per city (albeit somewhat later) and pushes your science forward significantly.
Basically if you want science (all victory conditions but culture) rationalism plays out better.
I know a lot of people make the argument that piety is great for happiness and I don't deny that it does provide a nice earlier boost (earlier than rationalism at least). However if you can learn to play without relying on that boost, you'll be far better off targetting rationalism for most situations.
Consider for victory conditions other than culture:
1) if you are a small empire you don't really need the extra happy that desperately so rationalism is better.
2) if you are a wide puppet / conquered empire, then honor will provide you more happy than piety and will also help you win your wars. So again honor followed by rationalism is better
3) if you are a wide, hard built empire, you are going to have massive policy costs. Dumping a bunch of policies into piety that do nothing but increase your culture is actually going to make it harder to take any future policies that provide any real benefit to you. You would've been better off taking a handful of policies in other trees rather than bother with piety. In this case order or honor or rationalism would be your best happy + extra branches.
I know that may be overly simplified but in strikes pretty close to my game experiences. if you look at piety, it has a lot of dud policies. The opener, mandate of heaven, free religion, reformation, and the finisher all solely boost culture (and a free GA). If you complete the tree you also get +10% gold and +2
/city. +10% gold is a joke. It's a way worse than building a market. There's no reason to take it besides wanting to finish the entire tree. Mandate of heaven is also rather useless but it's another must have if you want to finish the tree.So basically piety gives you lots of +
and +2/city. Rationalism on the other hand, doesn't really have a dud policy. It provides the same amount of happiness per city (albeit somewhat later) and pushes your science forward significantly.
Basically if you want science (all victory conditions but culture) rationalism plays out better.
I know a lot of people make the argument that piety is great for happiness and I don't deny that it does provide a nice earlier boost (earlier than rationalism at least). However if you can learn to play without relying on that boost, you'll be far better off targetting rationalism for most situations.
Consider for victory conditions other than culture:
1) if you are a small empire you don't really need the extra happy that desperately so rationalism is better.
2) if you are a wide puppet / conquered empire, then honor will provide you more happy than piety and will also help you win your wars. So again honor followed by rationalism is better
3) if you are a wide, hard built empire, you are going to have massive policy costs. Dumping a bunch of policies into piety that do nothing but increase your culture is actually going to make it harder to take any future policies that provide any real benefit to you. You would've been better off taking a handful of policies in other trees rather than bother with piety. In this case order or honor or rationalism would be your best happy + extra branches.
ArcaneSeraph:
You know, I wonder about that. I play at King, so I always win, and most of the time, it's a breeze and I can just do whatever the hell I want. I even have a bunch of self-imposed restrictions.
I generally play with a vast, hard-built empire with cities I built, or annexed cities towards the end of my games. It seems to me that Piety is more than just a "freebie" tree - I think it actually accelerates policy acquisition towards the 5 trees necessary for the culture win.
If you spread the Wonders around to the core culture generators, you get +33% culture, in addition to the 10% reduction in Policy costs for the Finisher. And you get free +2 Culture per City since they're all naturally going to have Monuments and Temples.
Mandate of Heaven's not completely useless, either. Towards the roaring end of the game, I tend to have excess happiness in the 20+, even though I have bunches cities in the 20's size (the effect of Eiffel Tower + Stadium spam+multiple Happiness Policies). It's just about +10 to +30 extra culture per turn. Kinda weak, but not negligible, either.
I'd broadly agree that taking policies with actual hard effects outside of culture is mechanically stronger for alternative win conditions, but Piety really speeds the Culture Vic considerably, to the point where it's actually viable for a world-spanning empire.
You know, I wonder about that. I play at King, so I always win, and most of the time, it's a breeze and I can just do whatever the hell I want. I even have a bunch of self-imposed restrictions.
I generally play with a vast, hard-built empire with cities I built, or annexed cities towards the end of my games. It seems to me that Piety is more than just a "freebie" tree - I think it actually accelerates policy acquisition towards the 5 trees necessary for the culture win.
If you spread the Wonders around to the core culture generators, you get +33% culture, in addition to the 10% reduction in Policy costs for the Finisher. And you get free +2 Culture per City since they're all naturally going to have Monuments and Temples.
Mandate of Heaven's not completely useless, either. Towards the roaring end of the game, I tend to have excess happiness in the 20+, even though I have bunches cities in the 20's size (the effect of Eiffel Tower + Stadium spam+multiple Happiness Policies). It's just about +10 to +30 extra culture per turn. Kinda weak, but not negligible, either.
I'd broadly agree that taking policies with actual hard effects outside of culture is mechanically stronger for alternative win conditions, but Piety really speeds the Culture Vic considerably, to the point where it's actually viable for a world-spanning empire.
ArcaneSeraph
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Roxlimn:
I definitely agree on the cultural victory piety thing. It is definitely the tree to take for that.
Anyway what I was more getting at on the 3rd point there was. Say you are going for some victory condition other than culture. Lets say you wanted to complete the liberty tree, patronage tree, and order trees. Let's break this down into 2 options: without piety, and with piety.
Without piety, you have 18 policies to get. With piety, have 24 policies to get. Now the question is, did that extra culture, reduced policy costs, and free policy from piety help you to get the desired branches faster. I could be wrong but I believe the answer in most cases will be no. The costs of policies go up so fast, 24 costs a way more than 18 so if all you really wanted was those 18... you would've been better off ignoring piety. That was all I was getting at
.
I couldn't tell you for sure that this is always correct. It depends on what your definition of wide is and what you usually build and how big your cities are and all that jazz so it becomes very hard to say "this is the way to go". That's a good thing. Strategy is about making choices not just following a dotted line.
I definitely agree on the cultural victory piety thing. It is definitely the tree to take for that.
Anyway what I was more getting at on the 3rd point there was. Say you are going for some victory condition other than culture. Lets say you wanted to complete the liberty tree, patronage tree, and order trees. Let's break this down into 2 options: without piety, and with piety.
Without piety, you have 18 policies to get. With piety, have 24 policies to get. Now the question is, did that extra culture, reduced policy costs, and free policy from piety help you to get the desired branches faster. I could be wrong but I believe the answer in most cases will be no. The costs of policies go up so fast, 24 costs a way more than 18 so if all you really wanted was those 18... you would've been better off ignoring piety. That was all I was getting at
.I couldn't tell you for sure that this is always correct. It depends on what your definition of wide is and what you usually build and how big your cities are and all that jazz so it becomes very hard to say "this is the way to go". That's a good thing. Strategy is about making choices not just following a dotted line
.ArcaneSeraph:
It also has to do with styles of play. Without the necessity of finishing trees to win via Culture, you're freer to mix and match. Getting 24 Policies is much harder than getting 18, but the question often isn't like that. For instance, Order's United Front strikes me as something that a highly militarized, wide empire could easily do without. Since you don't really need to finish Order, you could instead get Reformation, which nets you a Golden Age and +33% Culture in any city with a Wonder. This makes it easer and potentially more profitable to set up for Socialism once you get your Buildings up during the Golden Age.
Granted, one of my self-imposed limitations is that I should always finish trees that I start, as much as possible.
It also has to do with styles of play. Without the necessity of finishing trees to win via Culture, you're freer to mix and match. Getting 24 Policies is much harder than getting 18, but the question often isn't like that. For instance, Order's United Front strikes me as something that a highly militarized, wide empire could easily do without. Since you don't really need to finish Order, you could instead get Reformation, which nets you a Golden Age and +33% Culture in any city with a Wonder. This makes it easer and potentially more profitable to set up for Socialism once you get your Buildings up during the Golden Age.
Granted, one of my self-imposed limitations is that I should always finish trees that I start, as much as possible.
I disagree with most of what people are saying here. In my latest game (epic speed) as Arabia I was very wide with over 20 cities by the end of the Renaissance era. I destroyed Persia to my north in classical, and askia to my west in Medieval.
My social policy order was Liberty (finished by Medieval), Piety (finished by late Medieval), 2/3 of Commerce (til Industrial), Order (finished late Industrial) 1/3 Commerce (finished by Modern). And will finish Honor in about 60 turns or so. I am going for a time victory, as I haven't actually achieved that yet.
In contrast my previous game with England I went Rationalism as I had only founded 7 cities by the renaissance era and had only 2 puppets. I thought I could achieve a cultural victory as I had many wonders and a very nicely landmarked Hermitage. I waltzed to a space victory by early 1900's as culture would have taken me another 50 turns or more. The benefits of piety would have helped me achieve that, as many of my cities were founded near peaks. I had no access to incense or wine so I chose rationalism.
Overall I would say the following about the two competing trees here.
Piety : Good for tall empires whose goal is culture most likely OR for wide empires who's goal is domination / diplomacy. Piety has good synergy with Liberty, Commerce and Order policies.
Piety's policies are all pretty good, except for mandate from heaven if excess happiness isn't abundant. However it can pay for itself pretty easily if happiness rides above 20 for most of the game by forcing some cities to stay small and work only essential plots. Piety has good synergy with Liberty, Commerce and Order policies.
A puppet city is a lot more likely to build a monument and temple than it is to build a university and public school. With 10% more gold from temples this just increases their value by that much more. A newly founded city can produce 4 culture per turn in about 10-15 turns after it's founded, then up to 11 once a temple (20 or so turns) is up (and +25% more with Sistine Chapel). Those are the first two things I will have on the build list for a new city as it helps a lot with new social policy acquisition and happiness mangement.
Rationalism : Good for tall empires so they can compete in the tech race OR for medium empires who's goal is space. Rationalism has good synergy with Tradition, Commerce or Patronage and Freedom.
The bigger a city is the more specialist it can hire which sweetens the deal for a Rationalism empire, better leveraging the % bonuses of the science buildings.
Universities, Observatories and Public schools are much more expensive, and as such need a bigger city in order to complete them in a reasonable amount of time. Observatories also require the map to be kind and allow locations suitable for building them whereas monasteries aren't as particular. Therefore happiness buildings and luxury trades will play a larger role in keeping the empire happy until they can be hooked up.
There is little doubt that Rationalism offers a bigger boost overall compared to Piety on paper. The difference is that piety allows you to either stay small and culture up, or go wide and outgrow at a much earlier stage of the game than a rationalism empire. Cities founded earlier means they will have key infrastructure up sooner to suit their specialty. More cities means you can build more units quicker, leveraging your wide empire in acquiring more land to fuel your puppet empire.
With over 25 hard built cities now and about another 1/2 of that amount as puppets my fifth tree will only take 15 turns to unlock and I'm not focusing culture in any of my cities.
My social policy order was Liberty (finished by Medieval), Piety (finished by late Medieval), 2/3 of Commerce (til Industrial), Order (finished late Industrial) 1/3 Commerce (finished by Modern). And will finish Honor in about 60 turns or so. I am going for a time victory, as I haven't actually achieved that yet.
In contrast my previous game with England I went Rationalism as I had only founded 7 cities by the renaissance era and had only 2 puppets. I thought I could achieve a cultural victory as I had many wonders and a very nicely landmarked Hermitage. I waltzed to a space victory by early 1900's as culture would have taken me another 50 turns or more. The benefits of piety would have helped me achieve that, as many of my cities were founded near peaks. I had no access to incense or wine so I chose rationalism.
Overall I would say the following about the two competing trees here.
Piety : Good for tall empires whose goal is culture most likely OR for wide empires who's goal is domination / diplomacy. Piety has good synergy with Liberty, Commerce and Order policies.
Piety's policies are all pretty good, except for mandate from heaven if excess happiness isn't abundant. However it can pay for itself pretty easily if happiness rides above 20 for most of the game by forcing some cities to stay small and work only essential plots. Piety has good synergy with Liberty, Commerce and Order policies.
A puppet city is a lot more likely to build a monument and temple than it is to build a university and public school. With 10% more gold from temples this just increases their value by that much more. A newly founded city can produce 4 culture per turn in about 10-15 turns after it's founded, then up to 11 once a temple (20 or so turns) is up (and +25% more with Sistine Chapel). Those are the first two things I will have on the build list for a new city as it helps a lot with new social policy acquisition and happiness mangement.
Rationalism : Good for tall empires so they can compete in the tech race OR for medium empires who's goal is space. Rationalism has good synergy with Tradition, Commerce or Patronage and Freedom.
The bigger a city is the more specialist it can hire which sweetens the deal for a Rationalism empire, better leveraging the % bonuses of the science buildings.
Universities, Observatories and Public schools are much more expensive, and as such need a bigger city in order to complete them in a reasonable amount of time. Observatories also require the map to be kind and allow locations suitable for building them whereas monasteries aren't as particular. Therefore happiness buildings and luxury trades will play a larger role in keeping the empire happy until they can be hooked up.
There is little doubt that Rationalism offers a bigger boost overall compared to Piety on paper. The difference is that piety allows you to either stay small and culture up, or go wide and outgrow at a much earlier stage of the game than a rationalism empire. Cities founded earlier means they will have key infrastructure up sooner to suit their specialty. More cities means you can build more units quicker, leveraging your wide empire in acquiring more land to fuel your puppet empire.
With over 25 hard built cities now and about another 1/2 of that amount as puppets my fifth tree will only take 15 turns to unlock and I'm not focusing culture in any of my cities.
