Secret Societies Synergies

[kryat]

I’ve personally been having a blast playing secret societies, even if the AI is a bit daft with it. In the games I’ve played, I typically try to pair my society with my leader, and there’s a few combos that are awesome to pull off.

To name a few:
Owls with RR Teddy
This one can be nuts. Owls give an envoy when you send a trade route. Teddy gets 2 envoys whenever 1 envoy is sent to a CS with an active trade route. If you send a trade route to a CS that wants one as it’s quest, it gives 4 envoys instantly.

Owls also combo nicely with Hungary, Georgia, and Pericles, but especially with RR Teddy.

Owls also combo nicely with Mali with the bank.

Hermetic Order with Scotland, Russia, England, Brazil, or Sweden
These civs have a very strong great person play. Leylines give yields equal to every GP earned (not even used). Leaning heavily into Oracle, Divine Spark, or Bologna if available means that you can have very powerful single tiles in your empire. It should also be noted that while leylines cannot be built upon, they can be settled on, granting nice bonuses to adjacent districts and not “wasting” the tile.

Voidsingers with Khmer, Eleanor, Kongo, Poland, or Rome
This one has gotten a lot of attention, but yeah, anyone with strong relic play should pay attention to this one. And Trajan obviously likes this one to give him a surprisingly strong faith economy.

Vampires with ????
Obviously meant to be good with warmongers, there synergies are a bit harder to spot. I haven’t played with them yet.

Have you found any strong combos?

 

[Kmart_Elvis]

Vampires with Gran Colombia. Add in a CG to escort your vampire which now has +5 CS and 4 MP.

 

[GunsGermsandSteel]

I used Vampires to bolster my military side of things while I was going for a RV as Georgia. Seems you are looking for min/max type synergies. Good combos can also exist on the balancing end. Owls could be very beneficial to Domination victories, where securing city states from the trade routes +1 envoy could be nice, and if you're going with a military-related government having an extra economic slot could be nice. Not to mention the Domination requires lots of gold for unit maintenance and upgrades.


I think Voidsingers have an interesting synergy with Mapuche loyalty play as well - haven't tried it yet though.

 

[Deadly Dog]

Vampire Castles are nice in Maori rainforests. Any built after you have Marae+Conservation are pretty sweet. Maori vampires also get nice ocean movement. Debuff stacks with Toa.

Also as Maori can generate a lot of faith they make good Voidsingers I expect.

Trying Catherine (Magnificience) with Hermetic Order now. Jury is out. No shortage of ley lines though:

Spoiler :

 

[Amrunril]

I think the vampire's main source of synergy comes not from the vampire units themselves but from the castles. Any civ that's good at generating tile yields (so most unique improvement civs) can get a lot of value by doubling up on those yields with a vampire castle. There's also a lot of potential for synergy with city states, world wonders and natural wonders as well (and with soothsayers, if you're combining the two fantasy-ish modes).

 

[CoconutTank]

Been playing Scythians + Sanguine Pact for a few sessions now and warming up to the synergy. Vampires being able to heal on kill is great for keeping them on the front lines (and it also feels in character). Feels like Vampire Castles are pretty good regardless of which civ one plays as.

I think Vampires will benefit a lot from civs that can give them additional healing or mobility. Vampires are melee range, so they'll get hurt pretty often and need a lot of help moving into a good position. Being able to camp the Vampires over something they can pillage for big healing will be really good, esp if they can stay adjacent to a city and keep scraping the walls from that position.

 

[enKage]

Sincerely, Hermetic Order is antisynergistic with every civ.

+1 adj is crazy weak and 2nd promotion is weak as well. The real bonus comes too late to really matter. And before you reach lvl3 promotion, hermetic order disturbs more than helps.
Leylines is a dead tile and spawn only on tiles with no feature. This means you have very few in habitable terrain with woods/jungle and some clusters in inhabitable terrain like tundra, desert etc.
It leads to situation, when you want to place a +3 campus on a tile surrounded by jungle, but suddenly layline spawn there and you are blocked with building any campus before bronzeworking.
When I see a place for 2f/3f/11gold Mekewap and layline spawn there, I simply rage quit.
not t mention HO is very uncommon among AI, leading to even more diplo tensions.

The only possible synergy I can see is Indonesia, because Gitarja can settle weak terrain when there are lots of laylines. But why should she take Hermetic Order over anything else?


Vampires OTOH has great synergy with absolutely everyone.
Not because of free unit gaining strength, but because of Vampire castles, which come t80-90 on deity.
In one turn you get massive food/hammers/gold boost to your capital, so you can do everything you want. It allows you to build Colloseum in few turn, Kilwa in few turns, spam units every 2 turns, spam settler every 3 turns. Your capital will grow fast unlocking additional districts, which you can build even faster.
That means, that the most beneficial it is for civs, that rely more on domestic trade. You can have crazy internal routes from sending traders to such a capital with every possible leader, butit really shines with Persia. Add Sankore (which can be build crazy fast because of vampire palaces) and you have real madness


I suppose most civs have huge range of choice.
Maybe only Kongo is very limited. Being able to easily generate relics while having very limited space for them (no temples!) forces kongo to go voidsingers

 

[kryat]

Sincerely, Hermetic Order is antisynergistic with every civ.

+1 adj is crazy weak and 2nd promotion is weak as well. The real bonus comes too late to really matter. And before you reach lvl3 promotion, hermetic order disturbs more than helps.
Leylines is a dead tile and spawn only on tiles with no feature. This means you have very few in habitable terrain with woods/jungle and some clusters in inhabitable terrain like tundra, desert etc.
It leads to situation, when you want to place a +3 campus on a tile surrounded by jungle, but suddenly layline spawn there and you are blocked with building any campus before bronzeworking.
When I see a place for 2f/3f/11gold Mekewap and layline spawn there, I simply rage quit.
not t mention HO is very uncommon among AI, leading to even more diplo tensions.

The only possible synergy I can see is Indonesia, because Gitarja can settle weak terrain when there are lots of laylines. But why should she take Hermetic Order over anything else?


Vampires OTOH has great synergy with absolutely everyone.
Not because of free unit gaining strength, but because of Vampire castles, which come t80-90 on deity.
In one turn you get massive food/hammers/gold boost to your capital, so you can do everything you want. It allows you to build Colloseum in few turn, Kilwa in few turns, spam units every 2 turns, spam settler every 3 turns. Your capital will grow fast unlocking additional districts, which you can build even faster.
That means, that the most beneficial it is for civs, that rely more on domestic trade. You can have crazy internal routes from sending traders to such a capital with every possible leader, butit really shines with Persia. Add Sankore (which can be build crazy fast because of vampire palaces) and you have real madness


I suppose most civs have huge range of choice.
Maybe only Kongo is very limited. Being able to easily generate relics while having very limited space for them (no temples!) forces kongo to go voidsingers

I disagree. I think the better way to think about the HO is that they spend the first half of the game searching and preparing for the third promotion, which is like a sudden discovery of mini, but supercharged, natural wonder tiles. Sure the tiles are very weak initially, but your goal should be charging them up.

Ideally, you would have a core of cities generating as many great people as possible, and also have a massive colonization effort to claim leylines as early as possible, especially the ones in deserts and tundra which tend to have more workable in an area.

The beautiful thing about the leylines is that they don’t need a high population or district infrastructure in their city to benefit from. A 2-pop city that can work 3 15+ culture/science tiles (counting city center) is very powerful. You could find several of these out in the tundra. If you go for engineers, these tiles can also add massive production.

The way I see it, their first promotion is meant just to help you find them, not getting the adjacency.
The second promotion is meant to help generate GPP for the third promotion. Everything leads to that third promotion.

 

[Inhalaattori]

Sanguine Pact should work well with Civs that get universal meaningful bonus to all of their units: Aztecs (+strength), Scythia (+healing) and Gran Colombia (+movement).

Some leaders like RR Teddy, Chandragupta and Cyrus get situational bonuses.

 

[enKage]

I disagree. I think the better way to think about the HO is that they spend the first half of the game searching and preparing for the third promotion

And I would agree if 3rd promotion came earlier.
But it comes when everything is decided. 3rd promo can help only to sometimes level civs with other societies.

And whatever yields you get from those laylines, you would get at most the same amount as from added cards of Minerva (even if you use eco card from +1 ammenity per city and wildcard of lvl3 promotion for +2 every yield from suzereined city state, which are not even the strongest cards you can choose)

 

[8housesofelixir]

I would say Owls also combo nicely with Phoenicia, the other trade-oriented civ (probably the only one other than Mali and Netherlands). Phoenicia's planning is entirely revolving around Cothon, and if investing into Commercial Hubs after Cothon you can double the number of trade routes. A Commercial Hub next to a river and a Cothon will also have good adjacency and contribute to the yields from gilded vault.

For a similar logic, Owls also works very well with Netherlands (major adjacency Commercial Hubs)

 

[Foulweather]

I just played an emperor game as Rough Rider Teddy and the Owls, and I finished my Diplo game around turn 215 with 11 suzerainties and 160 envoys without really trying to earn CS quests. That’s... quite a combo.

Makes Merchant Confederation quite the money maker.

 

[MisterBoomBoom]

I think I made a mistake with the Owls and Suleiman. Not sure if his Grand Bazaar is replaced by their Gilded Vault but hey I had a Commercial district next to two natural wonders hexes with Machu Picchu built. With Reyna and the adjacent Harbor, I'm cranking 10 Gold, 10 science and perhaps 10 culture each (?) ....Not sure...I'll see when I promote in the Medival period.

 

[Datian]

I confirm that Minerva+Phoenicia is amazing.

On a small continents map, almost all of my 28 cities had a CH and cothon triangle, which led to 60+ trade routes.
Half of them were wisselbanking my two spaceports, and led me get a ridiculous GPT, like 7500 or something.

Whether you get 1500 GPT or 7500 GPT is the same, you just have too much money and in the endgame, and it happens regularly with Mali or naval civilizations.
However, Minerva lets you get there much sooner, with tons of culture as frosting on the cake.

 

[Pfeffersack]

Not sure if his Grand Bazaar is replaced by their Gilded Vault

In the Ethiopia livestream one of the Firaxians said that the secret societies buildings replace UBs, that it is intended this way and no change is planned (reason: you are free to decide , if you want to go that certain secret society anayway or to pick another). So I think if it fairly safe to say that the Grand Bazaar will get replaced.

 

[iammaxhailme]

I think a civ that can get super high tile yields, like say a highly adjacent auckland Dutch Polder or Australian outback Station, may do well with the sanguine pact as you can duplicate those yields with vampire castles (and then amplify those castles with MORE castles).

 

[tedhebert]

Voidsingers is very synergitic with Ethiopia ! It's insane.

 

[Pfeffersack]

Lautaro can probably do well with the Voidsingers - you can support their loyalty draining cultists by some pillaging and unit kills.

 

[newbie2]

Am i doing something wrong or do leylines don't give adjecency to unique districtcs (like seowon or observatory?)

 

[8housesofelixir]

Am i doing something wrong or do leylines don't give adjecency to unique districtcs (like seowon or observatory?)

Unique Districts like seowon or observatory follow their own rules of adjecencies.