Thought about Holy Warriors

[darune]

Second game of G&K. Again i picked the celts and difficulty Immortal. Map type: Terra. Quick speed. Opening: stonehence. Basicly i pissed every single civ off by a half turn war against a CS to grab a worker. From about entering classical era the game went into War mode, with basicly everybody at war with their neighbor.

So taking pagodas and 2nd holy warriors. Founder was +1 happiness per city.

With faith in the +30 to +40 + faith from picts, i can buy a pictish warrior every other turn, a composite archer every 3 turns and later xbow man in each 4-5 turns for example. I also had cities built some units, but later more focused on buildings. First attack against etiopia was a failure mainly due terrain and their +30 city combat and UA. I still had a big army which just became bigger and bigger, enough to take Moscow - which i did. The downside was a large budget deficit.

All in all i think about this as a lot of 'free' units. The downside of course was i didn't buy so many GP and missionaries. But all in all i think its a very usefull belief for early wars. My problem was the gold and to some extent happiness(I was selling last luxes so not to hurt science too much), so next time i will try to remedy somehow.

I don't think Holy Warriors is OP or anything. Just pretty damn good and fun.

What is your take or have any tips ?

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

I haven't used holy warriors much but I do know that the cost in faith for a military unit is about twice as much as the cost to produce that same unit.

I would say that 2 faith equal one production. This means that you could think of that a shrine ads a half production and a temple ads one production to your city. This however is a bad trade because a shrine takes 80 turns to pay back its production cost and a temple takes 100 to pay back its production cost and then the have the upkeep of the shrine and the temple. That said I wouldn't build tempels and shrines Just to be able to get more use from holy warriors. Getting the buildings that is purcased with faith just to get even more faith seams to also be a bad trade, why not get the units earlier.

Others ways to get faith to holy warriors may be worth it but you should always think about if it is worth it. Its not a good trade to work a open thundra of that one faith instead of a mined hill.

I think if you want to make heavy use of holy warriors you should consider to finish piety if it is soo that the cost reduction works on military units. Also give your religion pilgrimage to get more faith and just war to kill the enemies easier.

 

[Miravlix]

I think the key to understanding the value of pantheons, is that they are only about what you get out of them in the first two ages, after that the return dies out.

Getting +1 faith from a tundra tile may allow your empire to overcome the difficulty of that start, by getting a religion earlier with buffs.

 

[darune]

Thanks for tips.

Well, you are rush buying units (and may i add, at a rate that cannot be achieved with gold this early in the game). In the beginning the faith cost of a unit is half the gold cost. At the reneasance the price doubled i think.

Well i agree that building temples just to get more faith to purchase units with is a bad trade.
But even so, maybe it is more fair to compare against rush buying with gold -even though gold in generel is of course better. Means you can get units up where you need them when you need them.

In conclusion you can have a larger army than you could with conventional means.

Anyways next game i will try to build a religion around Holy Warriors again - definately picking Tithe or maybe the +100 gold first bonus. Picking some honour policies could also makes sense.

 

[shostrock]

I've been playing a game as Washington (Prince difficulty, random (continents) map and normal speed). Started in the northern tundra so picked Dance of the Aurora for my Pantheon belief, then built Stonehenge and when I got my Great Prophet I chose Church Property (+2 gold for each city following religion) and Holy Warriors. I was boxed in by Arabia and knew war was coming, especially since he was attacking my friend Sweden to the south, so thought picking Holy Warriors would be a good idea. Ended up conquering Arabia easily in the end (and reviving Sweden who had already been conquered).

I didn't feel like I used Holy Warriors all that much - maybe bought half a dozen or so units with Faith in total. My production was pretty good so I was able to build up most of my army with production, though the extra units purchased with Faith certainly helped.

I don't think Holy Warriors is OP or anything. Just pretty damn good and fun.

I agree!

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

Maybe it could be good to spend the gold to become allies with religous city states however I do not know how much faith they gives but I think it is 4 or 8 and if you can get 15 turns of alliance for 250 gold you shold get between 60 to 120 faith which may not be worth it but if you can get a religous city stat cheap it may be well worth the cost.

 

[Buccaneer]

I was very glad I had chosen Holy Warriors since I was generating about 40 faith per turn. Getting Great Prophets would be a waste since I had all of my slots filled and had no interest in spreading my religion beyond my sphere of influence. So every time I got close to 500, I would buy 2-4 units with faith.

 

[bonafide11]

I chose Holy Warriors once and found it to cost too much faith to buy units. I also didn't have my highest faith output that game so maybe that was the problem, but I just found it not as useful as I hoped.

 

[Barghaest]

Holy Warriors is also a way to convert faith to gold (assuming you have lots of excess faith and don't want/need any more units/buildings) you can buy a unit with faith then disband it for gold.

Really assists with economy in slow research games.

 

[bryanw1995]

If you can grab SH plus either a religious NW or CS, then holy warriors can be awesome.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

Adding on to what Barghaest said you can also gift the units to City States for influence. Just a little bit, but if you have nothing better to do with your tons of faith (until you can buy Great People with them, of course)...

 

[bryanw1995]

Adding on to what Barghaest said you can also gift the units to City States for influence. Just a little bit, but if you have nothing better to do with your tons of faith (until you can buy Great People with them, of course)...

You're better off just accumulating the faith and spending it later on for GP, instead of spending that much faith for the paltry CS bonus IMHO.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

Well I didn't want yet another Great Prophet.

 

[Prophet Skeram]

I chose Holy Warriors once and found it to cost too much faith to buy units. I also didn't have my highest faith output that game so maybe that was the problem, but I just found it not as useful as I hoped.

You really need a good faith generating pantheon (+ a bit of luck with your start) and ideally a civ that gives bonus faith through in some way (Celts, Maya, Ethiopia, Songhai to a lesser extend . . . etc.) - if that happens, you will get faith like crazy and really need Holy Warriors to even spend it meaningfully.

It can be really fun if you want to go warmongering - other than that, I wouldn't really recommend it.

 

[Buccaneer]

That's a good point. I don't see the value of Great Prophets (beyond the first two) and if I didn't need the units, I would've made sure I picked something else that I could spend faith on. It becomes a bit of micromanagement (nothing wrong with that) in making sure you don't pop Great Prophets.

 

[Gucumatz]

I played Spain in a multi game and was generating 35 faith per turn in the very early game. (Old Faithful + Mt. Kailash) and went Holy Warriors to survive a good Atilla player.

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First time I used Holy Warriors but was pretty fun and interesting to try out.

 

[dexters]

Second game of G&K. Again i picked the celts and difficulty Immortal. Map type: Terra. Quick speed. Opening: stonehence. Basicly i pissed every single civ off by a half turn war against a CS to grab a worker. From about entering classical era the game went into War mode, with basicly everybody at war with their neighbor.

OT, but needs mentioning as you're not the first to still be using the DoW trick to steal workers.

Bully them for a worker instead of DoW

Yes it takes more effort, but it's a trade off.

That's a good point. I don't see the value of Great Prophets (beyond the first two) and if I didn't need the units, I would've made sure I picked something else that I could spend faith on. It becomes a bit of micromanagement (nothing wrong with that) in making sure you don't pop Great Prophets.

They are useful if you need to force convert a CS or foreign capital with a competing religion and to build pressure quickly as a prophet can covert a whole bunch of people in big cities and do it 3 (or is it 4) times. You need a lot of missionaries to do that otherwise and or Religious Texts to let natural spread take its course. It's more situational for sure, but if I get a 3rd one because I forgot to watch my faith before I hit Industrial I find uses for it.

Probably one issue hindering GProhphet tile improvement is there are no Faith multipliers in game yet. I think Shrines should give additional bonuses as the game progresses, perhaps even diametrically opposed to the waning influence of religion in politics post Renaissance, Shrines could start generating happiness, culture and gold (independent of piety buff to shrines), to reflect the fact lots of people still fall back on religion in these uncertain times.

 

[Barghaest]

That's a good point. I don't see the value of Great Prophets (beyond the first two) and if I didn't need the units, I would've made sure I picked something else that I could spend faith on. It becomes a bit of micromanagement (nothing wrong with that) in making sure you don't pop Great Prophets.

Great Prophets improvement is pretty useful (especially if you're going Piety tree), but after all of my cities have a Holy Site I usually prefer my large accumulation of faith NOT to go bye-bye when a prophet spawns pre-Industrial.

Prophets are also excellent at spreading religion since they get 4 uses and work as both Inquisitor and Missionary (if Inquisitors could be used on CS/other Civs then an Inq/Missionary duo would be FAR cheaper, but Inq are restricted to your controlled cities where GP is not) and do not suffer attrition if you have to trod through closed borders to get to that distance city you want to convert (usually AI capital/CS).

 

[mabalogna]

I think its a good choice for warmongering. You can produce with Hammers, trade away resources and buy with gold, or hold onto your faith and buy some units.

I had a few games where I wasn't first in religion and decided to take it - being slightly behind in one game I was a target for the more aggressive england, and since i had been generating so much faith i was able to rush buy 2 Cataphracts early on to defend my borders. The game ended up being a flop, but i did find the value in being able to rush buy units without having to dip into my precious early gold.

 

[AbenHumeya]

Yeah, it's very good for warmongering, it can help you really exponentially increase your army. I have bought navies with gold and bought armies with Holy Warriors. It is useful if you develop faith in abundance.