Strategy to tech fast without overly depending on RAs

[prince_caspian]

This requires a bit of luck but should be manageable. I can vouch for this on emperor so this is a disclaimer: I am not sure whether it will really work on immortal/deity.

Basically you need to found a religion, for this get
Founder: Interfaith Dialogue
Followers: Mosques, Pagodas, Monasteries, in that order, otherwise get any belief that will boost faith
Enhancer: Holy Order

If you don't know what each belief does check here.

Here's the MO of the strategy. You need to tech to Theology asap, get Great Mosque, while also generating enough FPT (faith per turn) to spawn the 2 prophets needed to found and enhance the belief. Do whatever it takes - ally a religious CS, Stonehenge, pantheon belief, build UBs, whatever. Make sure that you have at least 10-20 fpt so that you can get the above beliefs before someone else gets it.

BUTTTTTTT....do NOT ever send any missionaries or prophets to spread your religion at all, exceptions being CS who request for your religion. Wait for other civs to found and spread their faith to a number of cities. When they have sufficient number of followers then make your move - buy missionaries from the city with Great Mosque (most probably your capital), go spread, but NEVER convert any city unless it's your own.

In the meantime, you will need open borders with mostly everyone and a few DOFs especially with religion founders. I find that DOFs are offered very liberally compared to vanilla, as in civs still DOF you even if you DOFed their enemy so that's an advantage there. The open borders are to prevent the missionaries from being zapped away by attrition before they can reach the civ's core cities especially the holy city.

Everything being in place, here's what you can expect:
-One missionary spread will grant (Number of dominant foreign religion followers * 10) beakers. If spreading in a holy city it can usually shave off one turn of your research, give and take.
-Each missionary will shave off a total of 3 turns of research as such.
-Due to Holy Orders you will get cheap missionaries thus enabling you to spam one about every 2-4 turns (depending on the era). Sending 2 or 3 at once is more practical however.
-AI will be busy spamming inquisitors and prophets to lower the pressure from your religion instead of missionaries.
-No fear from AI gaining higher beakers than you unlike RAs.
-You do not incur any diplo penalty because you never converted any city.
-You continue to dialogue because you never converted anyone!

The catch? You cannot in any way spread your religion mapwide other than a handful. You're at a disadvantage if you founded your religion too early, as by the time you actually go into this the pressure system would have already converted many cities. It is most effective at medieval/renaissance while starting to lose effectiveness on industrial, so make use of the missionaries to get you to Plastics aka labs asap. You still need to focus on beakers - NC, academies, universities, etc. And you should still sign RAs where possible - more beakers wouldn't hurt, and RAs need DOFs anyway. If you accidentally converted any founder's city, the hit will be quite big so use your missionaries with care.

Optimal civs? Obviously Mayans because Theology is their must-beeline and pyramids give both faith and science, but Ethiopia and Celts are great for fast religion. Spain if you're lucky getting the faith wonders, Sweden purely for the DOF and peace, Babylon/Korea if you managed to get the beliefs (adding cathedral for Korea instead of pagodas), their science will be beyond OP like in vanilla. Anyway if you put your mind to it, any civ can do this provided they're not going domination.

I was tech leader as Ethiopia using this strat, with only 4 cities and only 2 to 3 RAs per 30 turns. While I'm already in Industrial, the others were struggling to reach even Renaissance, and Theodora basically got pissed because I already built the wonders she coveted even before she actually got the tech.

So that's it, happy dialoguing and discuss!

 

[Andulias]

Yeah, I thought this would be possible, but didn't want to try it. The religion system is new, so I expect this to be nerfed accordingly.

 

[Largio]

Yeah I played a similar game with Byzantine and it worked very well. It was prince difficulty though so that made it pretty easy.

I also had my second city in the middle of desert with 4 desert/hill sheep and desert/hill marble. That city with desert tile faith bonus and Petra was simply amazing! I was able to buy a missionary like every 1-2 turns. The beakers I gained from missionaries were very substantial, especially during the renaissance era.

Higher difficulty level might be helpful because I think you also get beakers from converting your own cities that turn into AI's religion? In this game I had the most dominant religion by far.

 

[Khadroth]

I wonder if capturing an enemy prophet like I did yesterday and then bouncing their religion back and forth with yours from your own missionaries for a couple of turns would give double the returns.

 

[prince_caspian]

Yeah, I thought this would be possible, but didn't want to try it. The religion system is new, so I expect this to be nerfed accordingly.

The science gain per missionary tapers off late-game so it's not that imbalanced. You still need pure beakers and RAs.

Also, tried and true on emperor. See what happens when you dialogue talk a lot:

Spoiler capital :

Spoiler city 2 :

Spoiler city 3 :

Spoiler doubting Thomases :

Spoiler this is how :

Also see this

 

[prince_caspian]

I wonder if capturing an enemy prophet like I did yesterday and then bouncing their religion back and forth with yours from your own missionaries for a couple of turns would give double the returns.

Possible, but converting your own cities back is a huge hassle

 

[calla]

so should i be setting up a rotation of 3 missionaries per civilization and making sure they spread my religion in different cities?

 

[prince_caspian]

so should i be setting up a rotation of 3 missionaries per civilization and making sure they spread my religion in different cities?

3 missionaries in different directions, otherwise the pressure will unwittingly convert cities and you actually don't want that to happen with this strat.

 

[Khadroth]

I'd like to try this but Tithe is just so damn powerful.

A couple of questions then:
1.) Do you know how much it actually adds per missionary use? Like it is based off your own science rate?
2.) Does it include spreading by Prophets as well?
3.) Do you actually have to make some form of progress with the spread? Or can I simply walk up to my 10 pop capital with 10 follows, hit spread religion, and get the bonus?

Because right now my concerns are:
-Tithe is just so much money, money which can in turn be used to rush buy science buildings, rush buy production buildings to help with Wonders, sign RA's, and ally more city states for their patronage research bonus. That's all on top of the obvious economic benefits to more gold generation.

-If you can't just keep getting the bonus without having to make some form of tangible progress on spreading your Religion, then you'll be either severly limited as to how much research you can gain once your Religion is dominant everywhere or have to take massive diplomatic hits and keep spreading your Religion to the surrounding AI's. Again Tithe on the other hand can be spread simply by inate pressure with no Diplo hit if need be. Then again this would depend on just how massive the research gain from Missionary use is.

 

[prince_caspian]

I'd like to try this but Tithe is just so damn powerful.

A couple of questions then:
1.) Do you know how much it actually adds per missionary use? Like it is based off your own science rate?
2.) Does it include spreading by Prophets as well?
3.) Do you actually have to make some form of progress with the spread? Or can I simply walk up to my 10 pop capital with 10 follows, hit spread religion, and get the bonus?

Because right now my concerns are:
-Tithe is just so much money, money which can in turn be used to rush buy science buildings, rush buy production buildings to help with Wonders, sign RA's, and ally more city states for their patronage research bonus. That's all on top of the obvious economic benefits to more gold generation.

-If you can't just keep getting the bonus without having to make some form of tangible progress on spreading your Religion, then you'll be either severly limited as to how much research you can gain once your Religion is dominant everywhere or have to take massive diplomatic hits and keep spreading your Religion to the surrounding AI's. Again Tithe on the other hand can be spread simply by inate pressure with no Diplo hit if need be. Then again this would depend on just how massive the research gain from Missionary use is.

For this I'd refer you to this thread:

1) I can't say for sure but

You get the number of followers of foreign religions times ten in research points. It's quite powerful if there is another civ nearby with a large holy city. In my current game, Siam has a holy city which yields me about one turn's worth of research per conversion attempt. Before the modern era it was quite profitable.

2) No, prophets will convert cities thus nullifying the strat. You DO NOT want to use prophets - if you have extras just settle them somewhere or keep in case some aggressive AI sends one to convert yours.

3) You can only spread - and not convert in the process - your faith to cities of other religions (which may include your own), in order to gain the beakers. Wording of the founder belief makes it quite clear on this.

As for the "power" of Tithe my reply is:

As with all other religion bonuses, you have to decide what victory path you want to pursue. If you're going peaceful cultural/science then Interfaith Dialogue works wonders. The name speaks for itself doesn't it? You're playing nice with other faiths not pissing them off. Think of it like modern-day John-Paul II.

Think of Interfaith Dialogue in this way. I have the usual RAs, universities, academies, etc, but because of the extra beakers from missionaries I get techs faster than anyone else, I build wonders/public schools/labs earlier than anyone would have possibly gotten the tech. The effect snowballs - my labs increase my bpt even higher, my RAs even more beakers while my friends only piecemeal science, I get the atomic and info techs first. True, maybe I'll have to hard build stuff rather than simply buy as I don't have money, but what's the use of having so much if I can't buy or produce the building? I'm sitting on a hill of gold but damn, that dude already built Pisa, PT and gotten his free GS while I'm still struggling to get there.

Tithe looks powerful on the surface, until you examine it a bit further and find that it can actually harm you, as you're forgoing other vital founder beliefs. It's the belief that only Byzantines can choose due to their bonus. Metaphoric but you get my point.

If you're going war-science (as with China via paper makers in puppets) or war-culture (Aztec) then you should be picking something like Ceremonial Burials in particular. You don't really need the money from Tithe as puppets are cash by themselves. Spread, convert, piss the hell out of other founders cos that's what you will eventually do anyway. Religious wars are to be expected unless you're playing duel, then you'll be spending faith buying missionaries too and GMD will be even more important as you need to stretch the faith buck.

As everyone knows, religion is the most flexible system in GAK. We don't have to go one path - convert everyone. There should be different approaches, which is apparently the case.

Finally, I'd like to emphasize that you DO NOT have to convert any city for this strat to work, and you MUST NEVER convert any city anyway. It's even better if the stupid AI spams inquisitors/prophets to remove your religion - they're wasting their faith on a reactionary action, they can't raise hell with you because technically you didn't do anything wrong, and you can send in missionaries to cities with a "clean slate" which is even better!

 

[Ritzy Cat]

Not sure if this is something else or I'm just confused. I want to try this out, but usually it only takes one missionary spread for me to entirely convert a city.

 

[calla]

its an interesting way to increase your science production. when you send out your missionaries, you have to mouse over the cities that you can see on the map to make sure those other cities actually have a dominant religion.

all you want to do is just add the pressure of your religion to a city that already has a religion. I havent seen the ai try to build inquisitors to clean out my religion but the founder trait is very noticeable if you're going for a cultural victory.