Priest/shrine economy

[brothatactics]

For my next SP game, I am planning on choosing Ramses and giving the "priest/shrine" economy a whirl. I believe that Ramses starts with mysticism. My plan was to try and get one or two of the early religions, build obelisks, temples etc and just run priests in most cities and then go for University of Sankore/Oracle while building shrines with the great prophets that I get. When going for this strat do most of you get the religions before the important worker techs ad bronzeworking or afterwards? Also, any tips or general strats that you go for are welcome as well. Thanks.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

It's not really an economy, it supplements one.

Ram doesn't start with mysticism. Arguably you might get better mileage with wang kon, capac, or izzy, though they don't have as many priest slots then.

Thing is, priests don't really come into their own unless you get angkor wat, and the religious buildings (boosted by AP, sankore, spiral) are much stronger than priests w/o AW. The shrine city, AW city, and city with multiple religions ---> temples can run more priests.

You might also consider sal, for while he lacks elite traits he also gets 2 extra priest slots (from libraries) and he starts with mysticism.

 

[T-hawk]

I agree with TMIT, the strategy is overrated. The shrine gives 1 gold per city. Whoopee, that's equal to just one river segment. In the medieval era with gold multipliers it gets up to 2, still just equal to one coast tile. With Wall Street it is 3 and a drop in the bucket by then next to multiple mature towns or Representation specialists.

One shrine is better than none, since you'll likely spread one state religion around anyway. But spreading multiple religions to boost multiple shrines is not cost effective. You can get better economic payoff with 40 hammers (and more considering the failure chance) towards a library or bank or courthouse. It's all about the primary religion, which can pick up bonuses from Sankore and Spiral Minaret and the AP. Secondary or tertiary religions have virtually no benefit beyond the shrine income (unless going for culture win of course), only if you really want more monasteries or temples.

Settled great prophets do help for a while (+5 gold is big when your entire civ's income is around 20 and no cottages are mature). But as TMIT says, religion is a supplement, not an entire economy in itself. It feels like the strategy should feed on itself - more shrines generate more prophets generate more shrines - but in practice it isn't so hot.

But don't just listen to me, try it and see how it works out.

 

[brothatactics]

yeah, I'm just gonna give it a shot since I never play that way

 

[Ataxerxes]

If you're going for a religious supplement to your economy, don't forget the Spiral Minaret and Apostolic Palace. Your temples and monastaries will be very valuable buildings.

It's OK to do for a change, but the first 2 religions take valuable early research. I often do found Judaism because I like Organized Religion, but even that may be a mistake.

 

[DrakenKin]

I think it depends on the difficulty level you play. Up to Noble and Prince I was running multiple religions and it didn't get in the way of my other stuff, since you get an easy tech lead anyway. But once I started playing Monarch I felt the need to abandon relying on the inefficient religious income and skip it entirely.

You just rely on other civs spreading *some* religion to you so you can use the civics and as a diplomatic card.

In all cases if you want to give it a shot :

- Try to get multiple religions in the same city. If you hold off your expansion for a little while (again on prince or lesser), you can tech the 2-3 first religions and since you have no other cities than your capital it will have all 3 shrines.
- Make the shrine city your science city... this way you will convert the income nicely into beakers using libraries/universities/etc on top of the academy from a scientist.
- When using missionaries, spread the religion to the AIs capital first. Do this before you even spread it to your own cities... the sooner you do it the more chances for it to spread to the other cities on its own.

When going for this strat do most of you get the religions before the important worker techs ad bronzeworking or afterwards?

I used to race to the religious techs first so I can found 2-3 of them early, and 2-3 others later to force the AI to stick to my initial religions. If you let them found their own they will usually switch to it.

Also needless to say a religious strat has the most synergy with a diplomatic victory (as early as apostle palace) but also the cultural victory. Not only you get bonus culture from religions, but you also get diplomatic bonuses when you keep the AI on the same religion as you. This means they will be friendly to you and you can concentrate on building culture / not worry about military warfare. Even if someone declare you, your neighbors have your religion and you can drag them into the conflict so they serve as shields stopping enemy troops before they get to you.

 

[Grashopa]

I had a deity game on here where I founded 2 religions in the capital and luckily still managed to block off more land than the average. Problem was at the time I never built enough workers and fell behind mightily. But 30 gpt from shrines by 1 AD is nice and well worth the hammers into missionaries. That and I controlled who had what religion - that is very powerful.

 

[Freyas]

Make the shrine city your science city... this way you will convert the income nicely into beakers using libraries/universities/etc on top of the academy from a scientist.

A small correction- shrines give gold, not commerce, so the income doesn't get funneled through science multipliers. On the other hand, a good shrined city makes a perfect wall-street location. I'll typically build wall street in a captured holy city to give the juicy multiplier to the free income from the shrine (assuming the religion has been spread decently).

As for trying to base your economy off of shrine income, it seems like that would cost a lot of hammers in missionaries, and won't work at higher levels, as the chances of getting a religion go way down, outside of occasionally Confucianism or Taoism (maybe Christianity if you're beelining for AP). I suppose you could probably found Islam somewhat reliably if you wanted, though I don't know why you'd want to sink that many beakers into Divine Right, and in any case, that's a long time to wait if you're wanting religion to play a significant role in your economy. By that time many AI's will be running Theocracy, and have religions in most cities already which will make it really hard to spread. It may be something to try for fun, but don't count on it as a staple for your games.

 

[Caewil]

The shrine economy can be very valuable if you use the right civics. If you have multiple shrines in the capital, bureaucracy can really pay off in a big way. I wouldn't go for more than three, however - You start getting diminishing returns fairly rapidly.

The main thing is that spreading the religion allows you to offset (with bureaucracy) 3 gold/turn maintenance per city with two shrines in the capital and the religions present in each of your cities. Because this income is independent from your research/economy/culture slider, you can set research as high as possible even in a large empire, with less worry about maintenance. With banks, et al, it gets even better. This is ignoring the income from other civilizations the religions spread to.

Optimally, I'd run Asoka, Isabella or Saladin. Asoka is the best choice IMO, since organized lends itself very well to this sort of large empire strategy. With halved maintenance costs, each new city may even start out making you more money from shrines than it costs in maintenance. (of course you keep missionaries on hand to convert them from day 1)

Isabella has expansive, but the reason to choose her is that she starts with fishing. If you start near a freshwater lake, that 2 commerce/turn can really help your chances at grabbing the early religions before anyone else. Then use expansive to grow faster. She works well with an early/mid military strategy. Theocracy + vassalage + barracks + citadel = 13 experience catapults. Since they start out at level 4, they qualify for the heroic epic as well. Use the shrines to offset the horribly high civic maintenance costs and go on a rampage. Remember to switch back to organized religion and get rid of vassalage once your units are built in order to get more missionaries to convert cities after conquest (Change civics again when rebuilding the army. Yay spiritual!). As each religious city adds to your income, you can use the freed-up commerce for research or culture to counter war-weariness.

Saladin has philosophical. This means more great prophets, earlier. You can set up those shrines much faster or use them for a tech advantage. He works well if you plan for a cultural victory, but you must remember to set up your second city to produce ONLY great artists. Make a city near lots of grassland/flood-plains, build only farms, mines on hills, use excess food to support artists. Your capital will have so many great prophet points from religious wonders/shrines that getting an artist from there will be an exercise in futility.

 

[Jehoshua]

Shrine economy is definitely powerful, even better with a good cottage or specialist economy.

In a recent emperor game i did with Saladin on the earth map, i got flukishly lucky and got 3 techs from huts (masonry, hunting and fishing) now i got polytheism first and founded Islam (choose religions) since i got masonry i immediately went monotheism for Christianity in my second city (jerusalem) i then teched priesthood, writing and managed to get the oracle for code of laws which founded me Judaism also in jerusalem.

So i got three early religions with only buddhism being founded by Asoka to compete. and thus the money rolled in until i started conquering people. (Egypt, Persia, Greece and Rome) for a empire big enough to protect my three culture cities (Mecca, Jerusalem and Baghdad).

Disclaimer: This was only possible due to absolutely flukish luck with huts.

 

[vicawoo]

The shrine economy can be very valuable if you use the right civics. If you have multiple shrines in the capital, bureaucracy can really pay off in a big way. I wouldn't go for more than three, however - You start getting diminishing returns fairly rapidly.

The main thing is that spreading the religion allows you to offset (with bureaucracy) 3 gold/turn maintenance per city with two shrines in the capital and the religions present in each of your cities. Because this income is independent from your research/economy/culture slider, you can set research as high as possible even in a large empire, with less worry about maintenance. With banks, et al, it gets even better. This is ignoring the income from other civilizations the religions spread to.

Optimally, I'd run Asoka, Isabella or Saladin. Asoka is the best choice IMO, since organized lends itself very well to this sort of large empire strategy. With halved maintenance costs, each new city may even start out making you more money from shrines than it costs in maintenance. (of course you keep missionaries on hand to convert them from day 1)

Isabella has expansive, but the reason to choose her is that she starts with fishing. If you start near a freshwater lake, that 2 commerce/turn can really help your chances at grabbing the early religions before anyone else. Then use expansive to grow faster. She works well with an early/mid military strategy. Theocracy + vassalage + barracks + citadel = 13 experience catapults. Since they start out at level 4, they qualify for the heroic epic as well. Use the shrines to offset the horribly high civic maintenance costs and go on a rampage. Remember to switch back to organized religion and get rid of vassalage once your units are built in order to get more missionaries to convert cities after conquest (Change civics again when rebuilding the army. Yay spiritual!). As each religious city adds to your income, you can use the freed-up commerce for research or culture to counter war-weariness.

Saladin has philosophical. This means more great prophets, earlier. You can set up those shrines much faster or use them for a tech advantage. He works well if you plan for a cultural victory, but you must remember to set up your second city to produce ONLY great artists. Make a city near lots of grassland/flood-plains, build only farms, mines on hills, use excess food to support artists. Your capital will have so many great prophet points from religious wonders/shrines that getting an artist from there will be an exercise in futility.

A few mistakes:
bureaucracy does not effect gold
Saladin's not philosophical.

a missionary for one religion gets just as much as a missionary from another religion, so multiple shrines are not necessary. If there are so few spare cities you can spread religion to all of them twice over, then you're better off settling or getting an academy.
And if you have multiple religions in your capital, you either refused to grow and stunted your empire growth or moved your capital to someone else who did.

---
And note that if your capital generates say 50 commerce, with bureaucracy the academy will generate 37.5 beakers at 50% research, which is better than most shrines. A priest can also bulb theology, which is worth a lot of trade value and can give you control of the game.

And one nice trait of shrines (and academies) is the culture, especially if you can get it to double.

 

[Backwards Logic]

The shrine economy can be very valuable if you use the right civics. If you have multiple shrines in the capital, bureaucracy can really pay off in a big way. I wouldn't go for more than three, however - You start getting diminishing returns fairly rapidly.

Bureaucracy does not affect Shrine income. EDIT: vicawoo beat me to it.

Isabella has expansive, but the reason to choose her is that she starts with fishing. If you start near a freshwater lake, that 2 commerce/turn can really help your chances at grabbing the early religions before anyone else. Then use expansive to grow faster.

Just wanted to clarify on the bolded bit. Expansive doesn't actually help you *grow* faster by itself. The bonuses the trait give ultimately can help you grow faster with faster production speed of workers and granaries, but the +2 health by itself does not help grow a city faster (unless you're in floodplain spam land, but scenarios like that are on the rarer side).

Plus getting the three shrines like you're suggesting is also difficult in itself if you're trying to build them yourself (read, not capturing them). Just spreading the religion around to make the shrine viable is a huge expense of hammers, since religions will only spread to one city by themselves. After that city has one religion, subsequent religions have to be spread via the missionary. That's a lot of hammers to burn. A better strategy if you've popped a few extra Great Prophets is to use one to bulb Theology, then trade it around to pull yourself out of a tech hole.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Actually the difference between a 1-chop or whipped EXP granary and a standard granary can be pretty staggering. Health indeed only helps one grow faster is if avoids food surplus loss.

It's true that hammer ROI is pretty bad on missionaries, although it's worth another look on marathon where units are balanced to be cheaper relative to buildings and mara is usually used on larger maps with more cities (= more powerful shrines/corps).

These things are almost completely irrelevant to tile improvements though. Almost...and tile improvements are sort of how people define economies kind of.

 

[cabert]

These things are almost completely irrelevant to tile improvements though. Almost...and tile improvements are sort of how people define economies kind of.

untrue
I like the commerce from trade routes (no tile involved, although you need to feed the city)

 

[Jerrymander]

I like popping out a few great prophets early as Egypt and settling them. Makes early expansion quicker.

 

[NihilZero]

Going for an early religion is always dubious (even when it works), but Ramesses is tailor made for the uber-temple spam strategy. Obviously you want to be Spiritual, and Industrious takes a lot of the pain out of building the all-important wonders. Last time I did it I captured the Hindu holy city with war chariots, Obelisked myself a Great Prophet for the shrine, and went from there. If you are going priest-heavy you can get some bulbs to both keep the religions out of everybody else's hands to make sure your religion becomes the dominant one, and get a headstart on the religious wonders.

While they have the potential be excellent in the early game where gold can be hard to come by, the big problem with shrines in my opinion is that by the time you build up a captured one by missionaries, it's too late for it to be game breaking. Likewise, if you capture one that is already bringing in 40+ gold...it's probably 1500 AD and 40+ gold is not such a big deal anymore.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

untrue
I like the commerce from trade routes (no tile involved, although you need to feed the city)

People say TRE and usually when they say so don't even bother to tally most of their output. Without GLH, it's hard to imagine trade routes making anywhere near a majority. Even with it, it hardly defines one's activity outside of "prioritize coastal sites", such that it's a piss-poor definition anyway. You might as well say GLH economy or something.

 

[Dr.Null]

Last time I did it I captured the Hindu holy city with war chariots, Obelisked myself a Great Prophet for the shrine, and went from there.

Capturing the shrine-city of a popular religion seems to be a great strategy.

I've had less luck founding the religion myself.

 

[UncleJJ]

TMIT, there is a lot more to a properly developed trade route economy than simply building GLH and favouring coastal sites. It has a quite different economic strategy from other economies, a different research path (avoid Economics perhaps?) a different military strategy for expansion (capturing offshore cities) and a different development plan for its cities.

It works best on water heavy maps for obvious reasons and some not so obvious. The main aspects to take note of are the +100% trade bonus for overseas and +50% for harbour and the development of several large cities (size 20+) on other landmasses. The domestic trade routes between 2 size 20 cities can be be worth 7 commerce in each city, if they're far enough apart and on separate landmasses. A trade route economy based on the GLH would also try to build castles in its best cities and later airports. These best cities would tend to prioritise MGB and research multipliers to make the most of the extra commerce.

In the best cities in the late game with 6 routes averaging 7 = 42 commerce, which compares favourably with (say) 15 coastal tiles (30 commerce) needed to grow the city large enough. These are significant commerce cities that compare with what Dave McW would call a "good cottage city" with 10 towns and implicitly 3 much weaker trade routes (assuming smaller size and inland site).

I am not in favour of naming an "economy" simply on the basis of where it gets most of its commerce or research from but rather the economic strategy that has to be followed. Simply getting the GLH is not enough you need to do a lot more to get the best out of trade routes and that affects a lot of other aspects of the game.

 

[Silu]

TMIT, there is a lot more to a properly developed trade route economy than simply building GLH and favouring coastal sites. It has a quite different economic strategy from other economies, a different research path (avoid Economics perhaps?) a different military strategy for expansion (capturing offshore cities) and a different development plan for its cities.

Why would you avoid a tech that gives more trade routes through FM (assuming no Castle in every city) in a "trade route economy"?