Syncretism Warmongering

[Bhawb]

Yeah, not being able to spread your religion means you lose out on votes (and the potential utility of a good Founder as opposed to basically being locked to Hero Worship) and any other follower beliefs you could have for your own religion. And Reformation is a pain.

With a Pagoda strat, I assume you could have spread your religion and just let another civ convert you with Missionaries/Pressure, but if you're killing everybody before they have the chance to convert you, then you have to spend the Faith to first convert your cities and then spend Faith to convert your cities to another Religion, so that's difficult/inefficient. I didn't think that you'd be killing everybody ASAP, that there would be time for another civ to convert you before you kill them, which is why I proposed Pagodas.

Syncretism is hard to use efficiently, because you give up on per-Follower beliefs in your Secondaries for both the sake of your Capital and your Founder choice is limited. There are also times when other Enhancers can just be more yield-heavy with less work. But it is interesting so thanks for sharing your game!

I find it a little odd how you say your Capital is 100% Syncretism but your cities have all been converted to Catholicism? Surely all that Pressure will create at least 1 follower?

There is an absolute ton of pressure in my capital. Around 360 pressure for Catholicism in my capital compared to 30something for my Syncretism religion. So I am pretty constantly using Inquisitors to keep my capital at high Syncretism faith. But the huge amount of faith generated from Syncretism basically pays for the cost of inquisitors so it isn't too bad. As my capital gets significantly past 30 pop (the max needed for follower beliefs) it won't be so bad, but we're only at 31 right now so it'll be a while before I can really get past having to constantly deconvert my holy city.

 

[Bhawb]

Last update before I post an end of the game update. I'm at turn 345 (1925) with 24 cities. I have captured 4 other capitals and completely dominate my continent, with Rome, Spain, and Portugal as my vassals. I could have vassalized Germany but I wanted to keep a land-based punching bag around. At this point I am #1 in every demographic except Approval, I have 71 techs compared to the 2nd place of 62, and have 9 Order policies compared to the rest of the world which has Freedom, and ~5 policies each. I have gotten every single wonder for quite a while, with 32 total wonders for me compared to 24 for every other civ. My capital is at 41 pop and growing, and Syncretism alone is giving 203 of each yield, making my capital have over 850 base production. As you can imagine building a wonder in ~4 turns and a unit every single turn is pretty good, as is the 565 science per turn.

At this point I'm 100% going to win the game with a science victory even if I stop trying too hard and just coast on my overwhelming lead, but I'm going to have fun and instead use my tech lead to have submarines demolishing fleets of frigates.

I definitely think Syncretism played a significant role in my lead this game. I actually had a worse position than the last game I played as Mongolia, but the huge strength of Syncretism's production and science puts you in the lead pretty nicely if you can just get some cities off of someone. I'd say either Syncretism or God of War/Orders Zealotry are the best warmongering strategies for full-on warmongering.

 

[Bhawb]

Final update: I ended up accidentally winning a culture victory. I'm honestly not even sure how I got this much tourism (I admit to playing most of the last couple of nights significantly drunk), but I was so far ahead I could have won through any means honestly. This is by far the most dominant game I've had. I had completed the entire tech tree (90 techs) while the 2nd highest tech leader was at 67 techs, so that is one way to see just how ridiculously ahead I was. Overall I think the strategy is very solid for a warmonger that can consistently make use of it, but I don't think it would be that insane in any other situation, but could potentially be decent if you expect your religion to get taken over anyway.

 

[andersw]

Final update: I ended up accidentally winning a culture victory. I'm honestly not even sure how I got this much tourism (I admit to playing most of the last couple of nights significantly drunk), but I was so far ahead I could have won through any means honestly. This is by far the most dominant game I've had. I had completed the entire tech tree (90 techs) while the 2nd highest tech leader was at 67 techs, so that is one way to see just how ridiculously ahead I was. Overall I think the strategy is very solid for a warmonger that can consistently make use of it, but I don't think it would be that insane in any other situation, but could potentially be decent if you expect your religion to get taken over anyway.

How did you end up going with religion?
What stuff did you end up taking?
I can see god of expanse -> inspiration? and hero worship.
Enhanceing with syncretism and scholarship? here was the debate I guess that some thought Pagodas were better.
Did you spread to own cities so you could reform or did you skip reforming?

Testing it myself and have some heavy religious nutters nearby so it will probably spike sooner or later.

 

[Bhawb]

How did you end up going with religion?
What stuff did you end up taking?
I can see god of expanse -> inspiration? and hero worship.
Enhanceing with syncretism and scholarship? here was the debate I guess that some thought Pagodas were better.
Did you spread to own cities so you could reform or did you skip reforming?

Testing it myself and have some heavy religious nutters nearby so it will probably spike sooner or later.

God of Expanse, Hero Worship, Discipline, enhance with Scholarship, Syncretism, and reform with Crusader Spirit. I think Pagodas over Scholarship would be very strong if you plan on getting an early reformation and not being as aggressive as I was, but I was initially planning on enhancing ASAP and taking over a nearby religion, which got stopped by near constant 2-4 sided wars.

I did actually end up reforming in the mid game. I had an obscene amount of faith from Spain's religion which had God of War, so I flipped enough of my cities to reform and then flipped them back. It was a huge sink of faith but I was pretty sure the game was going to be a blowout so I didn't care much, plus Crusader Spirit more than made up for the faith cost.

 

[andersw]

God of Expanse, Hero Worship, Discipline, enhance with Scholarship, Syncretism, and reform with Crusader Spirit. I think Pagodas over Scholarship would be very strong if you plan on getting an early reformation and not being as aggressive as I was, but I was initially planning on enhancing ASAP and taking over a nearby religion, which got stopped by near constant 2-4 sided wars.

I did actually end up reforming in the mid game. I had an obscene amount of faith from Spain's religion which had God of War, so I flipped enough of my cities to reform and then flipped them back. It was a huge sink of faith but I was pretty sure the game was going to be a blowout so I didn't care much, plus Crusader Spirit more than made up for the faith cost.

Yeah I can see it takes quite a lot of faith to flip for a reform but the faith gains from hero worship is big.
I got boxed in the middle of the map which gonna turn really ugly soon, already mostly took out france, even the light skirmishers are so so strong with that insane movement.

 

[andersw]

How did you enhance a different religion?
I only generate GP's of my original religion and can't use them for enchancer.

Regarding the strat, I probably need to try again, I'm stomping a bit too hard as is just being mongol on king it seems.
But 50 hammers in capital already from religion is a bit bonkers.

 

[Bhawb]

How did you enhance a different religion?
I only generate GP's of my original religion and can't use them for enchancer.

Regarding the strat, I probably need to try again, I'm stomping a bit too hard as is just being mongol on king it seems.
But 50 hammers in capital already from religion is a bit bonkers.

I didn't enhance a different religion, my original religion was what I enhanced to Syncretism and the religion I ended up unofficially adopting (it wasn't my official religion) was already enhanced and reformed by its original owner.