The Underrated, Overlooked, Dark Horse Beliefs, Civs, Policies

[GKShaman]

Hello All,

So often we talk about the best strategies and make lists and I feel that most of the beliefs in the game have a "optimal situation/use"

So this thread is for a belief or strategy that surprisingly turned out great but didnt look good at first/on paper.

Religion

Choral Music - Looks a little underwhelming at first but with a wide empire with Liberty Opener, Monument, Amphitheater and Temple is providing 2+1+1+2 culture a turn. Works really nicely even just with monument and temple since shrine is a easy thing to build.

Goddess of the Hunt - Makes making money and growing a city the SAME end goal. A deer w/forest becomes 4 food 2 production! A camp on grassland is 3 food 3 production! Often I find in golden ages I work the money tiles and my city stops growing. Not the case here! Also mosts camps provide some points of production so yippy kay yae!

Cathedrals - Built that new city and need some tiles?
Well save some of that gold - buy a cathedral and move a great work to the new cathedral! Grows the borders naturally and citizens can work the best tile!

Civs

Indonesia- Your UA works GREATLY when ideologies come a knocking - thats when ppl need happiness and magically the world gets new luxuries. Also on most maps its easy to find a place to settle. In addition CSs and other civs WANT these luxuries!

Policies

Their Finest Hour (Cities combat strength improved by 33% Freedom) -
I agree not the sexiest but stacked with Traditions oligarchy - WOW does a city become a soldier. Really crushes most units and if the city has fort and arsenal/garrison - sweet stuff. Really good choice if surprise invaded or sudden attack on a city.

Feel free to add your experience!

 

[Paszczak]

Scholasticism - depending on the stage of the game and your # of CS allies that sweet little policy can give you between 5% to 15% increase in /turn which is great! I've finished Deity games without opening Rationalism and took full Patronage instead and never felt it was a bad tradeoff. What makes Scholasticism shine IMO is that it doesn't make you rely on signing multiple Reserach Agreements with cry-baby AIs.

 

[Vitruvius]

Underrated by who? Civfanatic people?

America. People only seem to value the sight range for scouting. I dont know why nobody values tile buying. Cheap tiles really gets you ahead early. The extra sight range also makes conquest so much easier.

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[VicRatlhead5199]

Underrated by who? Civfanatic people?

lol good call. I purposefully go out of my way to do things different from the popular consensus.

It's funny, it's made me choose Denmark a lot. They're anything but the underpowered joke Civfanatics make them out to be. I like to rush metalcasting then DoW in the medieval just to pillage like a madman with berserkers, no need to take cities. You get the pillage money plus the AI paying insane sums for a peace treaty. You hit education later but the early workshops and extra money get your cities well developed and unis up fast.

 

[Mr. Grieves]

I just saw a thread that denoted Byzantium as a lowest tier Civ. While a small faith bonus would make them better, (+1 for improved coastal land tiles or sea-based trade routes maybe?), Byzantium can be an incredibly powerful Civ to play, as long as you push for a religion. The fact that the Byzantium AI usually doesn't even get a religion makes it painfully obvious it's in need of a faith buff, of course.

 

[vivalamexico]

Polynesia. Verdict seems to be mixed on them, but I have seen many very low opinions of them. On a watery map, moais give absolutely INSANE culture bonuses. Also, the UA gives a great headstart

Exploration. Again for watery maps. Ok, not as good as rationalism of course, but if you have lots of coastal cities, it gives great , , and buffs. Also great for a powerful navy

 

[Krajzen]

I am fan of Exploration. Bonus to sight and speed make... exploration way easier, policies may not be the best ever but they are decent, with exception of this one which gives +3 production per coastal city - this is absolutely awesome. And the finisher reveals hidden antiquity sites - as a great fan of culture, I love it.

 

[redwings1340]

Opening honor and going honor/piety on emperor-below difficulty. I think sometimes on here strategies are optimized for playing deity, without all that much thought to why it works on deity. As a result, we miss out sometimes on some great strategies on lower levels, most notably playing a religious game. On deity, if you start out near a religious civ, you should forget about religion, because you're going to get missionary spammed to death. The lower difficulty you go though, the better religion is, as you can dominate more and more of the world with it.

Going piety, at least to before religious tolerance, helps significantly with happiness issues that come out of warmongering. On lower difficulties warmongering and religion are more effective, and these policy trees become much better. They also work together very well to help a warmongering empire avoid happiness and gold issues that they otherwise would have.

 

[Navelgazer]

America. People only seem to value the sight range for scouting. I dont know why nobody values tile buying. Cheap tiles really gets you ahead early. The extra sight range also makes conquest so much easier.

Exactly. You know how when someone wins the lottery, they're given the choice of whether to take around half of it right away, or all of it portioned out in smaller amounts over like 20 years or so (maybe you don't. this might not actually be common knowledge.) Anyway, Shoshone is the former option, and America the latter. Shoshone gets a starting UU with the ability to choose bonuses from goodie huts. America gets to find the goodie huts faster throughout the game (which matters on some maps.) Shoshone gets more tiles immediately, America gets more tiles for their money throughout. And in the end America will usually be the wiser choice, in my opinion.

For my own picks, though, I would say:

Carthage: I've been a Carthage fanboy for a while, but I like that it really makes Liberty worthwhile, and might be the civ best-suited to getting around the seeming prohibitions of REX in Civ V. Grab Messenger of the Gods (usually won't be too difficult), research The Wheel. Expand until you own all the coast you can. (On a side note, one aspect I love about this is that it helps you found the World Congress later, because the more coast you own the more you control the ability of AI civs to meet one another. At least on the maps that I tend to play.)

Commerce: Ideally you want this in combination with Rationalism, not instead of it, but commerce is key to an aggressive science victory. When you can just buy your science buildings while focusing on wonder construction it's hard for the AI to keep up.

 

[GoStu]

Hello All,
Indonesia- Your UA works GREATLY when ideologies come a knocking - thats when ppl need happiness and magically the world gets new luxuries. Also on most maps its easy to find a place to settle. In addition CSs and other civs WANT these luxuries!

Agreed! So many people bemoan the seeming impossibility of fast-expanding to islands to take advantage of the UA while somehow pumping Kris Swordsmen out. You're one of the few other people that seem to get this: the ability is great mid-game, sometime around the renaissance as you can find a new continent and new people to trade with. Meanwhile, captured Missionaries or passive spread make your garden a Faith monster.

Underrated by who? Civfanatic people?

lol good call. I purposefully go out of my way to do things different from the popular consensus.

It's funny, it's made me choose Denmark a lot. They're anything but the underpowered joke Civfanatics make them out to be. I like to rush metalcasting then DoW in the medieval just to pillage like a madman with berserkers, no need to take cities. You get the pillage money plus the AI paying insane sums for a peace treaty. You hit education later but the early workshops and extra money get your cities well developed and unis up fast.

Agreed. Way, way too may people here spend way too much time thinking that everything is played on Deity (an obnoxious game mode at best), and that deviating a little bit from "4-city Tradition, must max science" is a disaster. While the game is a bit biased against warmongering in a 1vAI game, it'd be pretty vicious if the AI was actually smart. Only the warmongers would be left to race to Alpha Centauri...

 

[BenitoChavez]

Sacred Path - +1 from Jungle tiles.
Feed the World - Shrines and Temples provide +1
Religious Community - +1 for each follower.

I love these religious beliefs. Sacred Path can easily get you 5 or more in a city very early in the game. Feed the World can make your empire tall very easily. Religious community I pretty much pick up every game now. Without it I struggle to make all the infrastructure I need. With it I make everything I need, everything I want, and then some. The best part is that the AI rarely takes these beliefs.

 

[cpm4001]

Sweden - Uh....they're a low-tier Civ because you actually have to think about how you play them? Sure, they suck in multiplayer, but in singleplayer you can peacefully dominate the first four eras and then wipe out everyone after the Industrial.

World Church - I don't know if this is really underestimated, but I rarely hear about people taking it as a belief. In my opinion, this is really one of the most powerful tenets available on large maps; even spreading it to a few large cities will shave ridiculous amounts of time off between your SPs.

Honor (at least the opener) - Actually eerily powerful. As @Redwings has noted, it pairs up well with Piety for war- and faith-mongering strategy (see: Spain), but also can be very useful for wide-building, more peaceful empires. Just knowing where barb encampments are means you can actually send settlers out unescorted, while some of the other policies (the free Great General, etc.) are much more powerful and useful than people might think.

Agreed. Way, way too may people here spend way too much time thinking that everything is played on Deity (an obnoxious game mode at best), and that deviating a little bit from "4-city Tradition, must max science" is a disaster. While the game is a bit biased against warmongering in a 1vAI game, it'd be pretty vicious if the AI was actually smart. Only the warmongers would be left to race to Alpha Centauri...

Yup, you're right. I deliberately don't play on Deity because I find it completely unfun (you HAVE to do everything this way or it's Game Over), and it gets on my nerves when people say that just because they play Deity they're the greatest Civ players in the world. It's a game, guys! Relax and have fun and try different things!

 

[Zaimejs]

Sacred Path - +1 from Jungle tiles.
Feed the World - Shrines and Temples provide +1
Religious Community - +1 for each follower.

I love these religious beliefs. Sacred Path can easily get you 5 or more in a city very early in the game. Feed the World can make your empire tall very easily. Religious community I pretty much pick up every game now. Without it I struggle to make all the infrastructure I need. With it I make everything I need, everything I want, and then some. The best part is that the AI rarely takes these beliefs.

You make religious community sound much better than it is. +1% per follower, up to 15%. If it really were 1 hammer per follower that would be amazing.

 

[Zaimejs]

maybe this is a no brainer, but i like God of the Sea. I love to see it stack with lighthouses, etc. If I can found a second city with four fish tiles, I have a strong city in the making.

 

[Calouste]

Sweden - Uh....they're a low-tier Civ because you actually have to think about how you play them? Sure, they suck in multiplayer, but in singleplayer you can peacefully dominate the first four eras and then wipe out everyone after the Industrial.

World Church - I don't know if this is really underestimated, but I rarely hear about people taking it as a belief. In my opinion, this is really one of the most powerful tenets available on large maps; even spreading it to a few large cities will shave ridiculous amounts of time off between your SPs.

Honor (at least the opener) - Actually eerily powerful. As @Redwings has noted, it pairs up well with Piety for war- and faith-mongering strategy (see: Spain), but also can be very useful for wide-building, more peaceful empires. Just knowing where barb encampments are means you can actually send settlers out unescorted, while some of the other policies (the free Great General, etc.) are much more powerful and useful than people might think.



Yup, you're right. I deliberately don't play on Deity because I find it completely unfun (you HAVE to do everything this way or it's Game Over), and it gets on my nerves when people say that just because they play Deity they're the greatest Civ players in the world. It's a game, guys! Relax and have fun and try different things!

The Honor opener is quite useful for a number of civs and situations. Obviously it works great for civs that like to hunt barbarians like the Aztecs, Songhai and Germany, but it can also be very useful for trade civs like Venice, Arabia and Morocco because it makes protecting trade routes so much easier. And if you want to fulfill Barb camp quests (Greece and Siam), it's also useful when you know where the camps are so you can move your units there and just wait for a city state to generate a quest before you clean it out completely.

 

[kaspergm]

I am fan of Exploration. Bonus to sight and speed make... exploration way easier, policies may not be the best ever but they are decent, with exception of this one which gives +3 production per coastal city - this is absolutely awesome. And the finisher reveals hidden antiquity sites - as a great fan of culture, I love it.

Exploration is not the greatest of trees, but if you get single rights on the hidden antiquity sites (which is often the case because AI doesn't seem to fill this tree very often) you can get all the culture and then some back from finding the special Great Works of litterature and pick the cultural renaissance, which will at this point of game easily net you between 5.000 and 10.000 culture - each! In fact those special digs are pretty imbalanced and is only weighed out by the sheer number of horrible policies you need to go through to get to them.

A pet favorite of mine is Initiation Rites - I know many players scoff at this belief because it will not net you as much gold as Tithe in the long run, which is true, but with an early fast religion spread it can net you fairly massive amounts of gold in early game which can really help me get a boost an push my empire several levels up. Combined with Boroboddur it's awesome.

 

[bevelnator]

Feed the World, Swords into Plowshares, and Fertility Rites may seem weak individually, but if you can combine all of them (and if lucky Temple of Artemis) then you can grow massive cities quickly without food trade routes or any food buildings more advanced than a granary.

 

[Nick31]

Scholasticism - depending on the stage of the game and your # of CS allies that sweet little policy can give you between 5% to 15% increase in /turn which is great! I've finished Deity games without opening Rationalism and took full Patronage instead and never felt it was a bad tradeoff. What makes Scholasticism shine IMO is that it doesn't make you rely on signing multiple Reserach Agreements with cry-baby AIs.

Scholasticism can be even more power than that. I play on Large maps on Immortal, and recently had a game were I was generating 25 to 30% extra from city state science. The key is having barb killer units spread to the corners of the earth, so you can take advantage and quickly ally with cs.

I beeline to scholasticism, and I think I was generating something like 70 science from my 9 allies when I still was creating only 200 myself. Later, when I was generating 800 myself, I was getting 200 from my 16 allies. Patronage FTW. Especially helpful if on higher difficulties you're squeezed for land and can't do more than a 3 or 4 city opening. I often complete the left branch of Patronage (Scholasticism and Increased cs gifts for the happiness) before going to Rationalism.

 

[Vitruvius]

Patronage is very powerful with the right civs. Just pray theres no greece etc. If you see him kill him. If he gets fat he spends all his gold on city states.

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[Navelgazer]

Patronage is very powerful with the right civs.

Since I just made this point on a neighboring thread I might as well make it here - Patronage is a great compliment to Honor with the Aztecs, letting them focus entirely on war while earning useful bonuses from City States for doing so.