It definitely goes first or almost first in every game. If you find a relic on turn 1 you can get it, or if you find 1-2 religious city-states first in your first couple turns you can sometimes get there first too. But it's definitely going to be gone if you simply get to code of laws, run God King (or whatever it's called that gives 1 faith in the capital), and wait the 25 turns to generate enough.
Rate the Beliefs - part I: Pantheon beliefs
- Thread starter kaspergm
- Start date
It definitely goes first or almost first in every game. If you find a relic on turn 1 you can get it, or if you find 1-2 religious city-states first in your first couple turns you can sometimes get there first too. But it's definitely going to be gone if you simply get to code of laws, run God King (or whatever it's called that gives 1 faith in the capital), and wait the 25 turns to generate enough.
Lily_Lancer
Deity
Right, you have to get it before T10, considering AI have +80% faith bonus even a relic at T1 isn't solid if AI got a relic before T3.
Lily_Lancer
Deity
Playstyles only apply to cases when two strategies have similar strength( e.g. finishing time).
If two strategies are of different strength that one outperforms another significantly, that's not playstyle.
As for discussion, I don't think all these ratings apply for a player who always follow the in-game advisors' advice and takes 500 turns to finish a game. If you want to discuss "playstyle", please find a rating for him( By the way, he absolutely won't follow but follow the in-game advisors'
, and say yours only applies to your situation)
Spudsie74
Warlord
I have never gotten "Goddess of the Harvest," as it is always gone before I get a Pantheon. To be fair, I sually aim for other choices, but have tried to pick it up since reading this thread. (About 10 games). It goes quick, and probably accounts for the dreaded apostle spam.
KmDubya
King
When did "Goddess of the Harvest" change to apply to clearing jungles and forests?
I tried it long ago on a jungle heavy map with Norway and discovered to my dismay that chopping jungles did not get any faith.
One thing to consider is that faith costs increase per era. Maxed out clear cutting at the end of the tech tree is great but a strong steady faith producer like the desert or tundra ones or even a stone heavy location could make more of an impact as it happens much earlier. A theocratic Arabia mass buying Mamluks is going to be better off with early faith rather than waiting until the Information Age to clear cut the planet to shave a few turns off a foregone conclusion. At that part of the game you have limited amounts of resources that can be cleared and will be receiving more like 50 or 75 faith rather than 500.
I tried it long ago on a jungle heavy map with Norway and discovered to my dismay that chopping jungles did not get any faith.
One thing to consider is that faith costs increase per era. Maxed out clear cutting at the end of the tech tree is great but a strong steady faith producer like the desert or tundra ones or even a stone heavy location could make more of an impact as it happens much earlier. A theocratic Arabia mass buying Mamluks is going to be better off with early faith rather than waiting until the Information Age to clear cut the planet to shave a few turns off a foregone conclusion. At that part of the game you have limited amounts of resources that can be cleared and will be receiving more like 50 or 75 faith rather than 500.
Kouvb593kdnuewnd
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Some players play with rules that ban alot of the exploits used against the ai and may even ban stuff such as city conquest completely. In such case your playstyle need to be adopted to those conditions.
I consider finish time secondary to actually winning the game. A strategy that provide 100% win rate no matter map conditions is stronger than one that can win the game 50 turns faster but only win 99% of the map conditions.
In fact I don't consider quick victories important at all because I don't try to compete with winning quickly anyway. You rate harvest very highly even though you know at the point you are going to use it the game is already won and thus make what parthenon you have completely meaningless.
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I wouldn't dismiss it without testing. If you can use it to a great effect with Theology I would imagine that that's exactly what wins you the game, it also allows you to neglect holy sites in favour of other districts. If this can in fact be done then it is definitely a winning strategy.
Kouvb593kdnuewnd
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I did not dismiss the parthenon. What I said is if you withold the use of the parthenon to the point the game is already over, it have no real value and could aswell be given a rating of 0.
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I understood that, but is the game usually over for you by theocracy? For me it is usually when the deciding moment happens.
Kouvb593kdnuewnd
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No, the game should not be over at that point. Here one strategy with harvest would be a missionary rush, using the chops to build temples, holy sities, theatre squares (very important to get reformation as quickly as possible if you target religious victory and don't plan on conquering enemy cities).
Neglecting holy sites if you plan on a religious victory sound like a doubtful move. I have done calculations and the amount of faith you can get just from the buildings + specialist is atleast 24 with +100% faith from buildings, assuming a place of workship give 3 faith. Without place of workship you can still get 16 faith per turn.
Im not sure harvest is the best way to win a religious victory against deity the hardcore way of converting them (no city conquest) but how strong your religion will be depend alot on how quickly you are able to get the missionaries out for easy conversions.
The best way to stop a religion is to kill it of as soon as it is founded, once dead it never come back so a few early missionaries can maybe save you tons of faith later.
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You may very well forget that on deity you often have to PURCHASE a great prophet partially with faith in order to even have a shot at religious victory at all
The harvest pantheon certainly helps satisfy the most crucial step of RV in that regard...
Early holy sites don't do much... you can just rush-chop them when theocracy comes online. Building them early does nothing. (Oh but make sure you don't found your religion before you get all the holy sites you want up) and early missionaries are absolutely useless when you could just "convert" all your cities with a great prophet (no, I did not mean apostles, I meant prophet). This allows you to save your faith by not having to spend any charges on your own cities.
River Goddess, hands down. I always take it if I'm maxing my power base.
It essentially makes your first district, the holy site, free. Then you take + food from shrines/temples, and the +2 food building. And you have a free +8 food yielding tile that does't need to be worked, and oh, provides faith to buy great people or units.
It essentially makes your first district, the holy site, free. Then you take + food from shrines/temples, and the +2 food building. And you have a free +8 food yielding tile that does't need to be worked, and oh, provides faith to buy great people or units.
Kouvb593kdnuewnd
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Missionaries are not used to convert your own cities but your opponents. For a hardcore religious victory faith is very important for obvious reasons so I doubt you can get away with neglecting holy sities. Yes I can guess a strategy would be to spam campuses/theatre squares, finish one of the trees. Found a religion and then take out the ai religions fueled from 200 faith chops but Im not sure that is the best way to win a religious victory.You may very well forget that on deity you often have to PURCHASE a great prophet partially with faith in order to even have a shot at religious victory at all
The harvest pantheon certainly helps satisfy the most crucial step of RV in that regard...
Early holy sites don't do much... you can just rush-chop them when theocracy comes online. Building them early does nothing. (Oh but make sure you don't found your religion before you get all the holy sites you want up) and early missionaries are absolutely useless when you could just "convert" all your cities with a great prophet (no, I did not mean apostles, I meant prophet). This allows you to save your faith by not having to spend any charges on your own cities.
Yes information age religion may be a very reasonable religious strategy.
They do give faith, or atleast their building does. Even with just a shrine you still get 4 faith out of each of them and having them ready allow further development with temples and maybe place of workship. Their main compeitiors would be campuses and theatre squares because both science and culture would increase the gains from harvest. Commerce/dock trade can provide faith and gold can be used to rush shrines and temples but Im not sure they are worth the district spot, could be the fourth district or third if you abandon either campus or theatre square.
Anyway to me it is a huge difference between using a parthenon as a key piece in a strategy such as late religion and using it just to get a quicker victory in an already won game.
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I think it also depends very much on whether your game strategy includes holy sites or not. Some games (Russia or Arabia), I'm basically building a holy site in every city, and will definitely be running the +100% faith cards, so anything that helps those is king.
But a lot (most?) of my games, I will often neglect holy sites almost entirely. Maybe I'll build one if I have a good location, and will capture a couple. But in those games, the pantheons that give bonuses to holy sites directly are obviously not worth it. Most of the time there, I would rather run one of the pantheons that gives production/food/culture, unless if one of the faith-giving ones will actually net me enough faith.
Like my current game, I chose wrong. I'm running stone circles, and it's giving me maybe +10 or +12 per turn. But that really doesn't give me anywhere close to enough to be usable. So it's basically a waste, since I'd rather my pantheon give me something more than a couple faith buys 100 years out. It'll barely afford me a naturalist.
However, if I had more stone, then maybe it would be enough. If I could get up to +20 early on with that one, then you're starting to hit enough that you can at least run a partial faith econy supplemented with some other sources. Or if running the harvest one, even without changing my strategy, a chop every couple turns is enough to work with. And certainly if you spend a bit more effort to maximize that, by going overboard with harvesting crabs in the arctic, for example, that can really pay off.
But a lot (most?) of my games, I will often neglect holy sites almost entirely. Maybe I'll build one if I have a good location, and will capture a couple. But in those games, the pantheons that give bonuses to holy sites directly are obviously not worth it. Most of the time there, I would rather run one of the pantheons that gives production/food/culture, unless if one of the faith-giving ones will actually net me enough faith.
Like my current game, I chose wrong. I'm running stone circles, and it's giving me maybe +10 or +12 per turn. But that really doesn't give me anywhere close to enough to be usable. So it's basically a waste, since I'd rather my pantheon give me something more than a couple faith buys 100 years out. It'll barely afford me a naturalist.
However, if I had more stone, then maybe it would be enough. If I could get up to +20 early on with that one, then you're starting to hit enough that you can at least run a partial faith econy supplemented with some other sources. Or if running the harvest one, even without changing my strategy, a chop every couple turns is enough to work with. And certainly if you spend a bit more effort to maximize that, by going overboard with harvesting crabs in the arctic, for example, that can really pay off.
Lily_Lancer
Deity
Right, you can consider the winning rate. But this is meaningless.
With all strategies you can win easily, so there's no difference here, all strategy provide 100% winning rate, so to compare strength you have to focus on finishing time.
Hmmm. I'm not sure that speed would be the next choice. What about rating strategies based on flexibility/adaptability/versatility? Which I distinguish from capability under any map conditions.
Which strategies would allow you to pursue the most victory conditions simultaneously while also allowing you to thwart the victory attempts of the ai?
EpicWestern
Warlord
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For culture and science, yes, for domination no.
Religion is tricky. Divine spark makes getting a great prophet around 20-25% easier which is probably the biggest difficulty in achieving a religious victory on deity. However, there's that huge dropoff once you get it as the pantheon suddenly becomes nearly worthless. You really have to get a feel for what speed other civs are getting great prophet points, and check the point screen every turn. I would say most of the time you can get away with just using holy prayers, but I've had plenty games where I've seemed to be way ahead and skipped my prayers for a builder, monument, or whatever and suddenly the prophets are gone. With five pastures I think I'd have to go ahead and gamble, but I would still feel uneasy about it.
Lily_Lancer
Deity
1: Goddess of Harvest if available
2: God of Forge if available
If the above two are both not available, even with 2 pastures I think I'll pick God of Open Sky rather than Divine Spark, no matter which VC condition I'm going to take.
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