Thoughts on civ economy/civic/religion synergies

[UnforcedError]

In this case RoK with arete is better.

Why Arete? Do you have that much success with a rush-buy economy as the Lanun? Sure, it gets stuff done quicker but at the price of (presumably) giving up your tech lead which the Lanun are actually dependent on having fairly non-descript UUs.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

well, as lanun you get plenty of both food and commerce so conquest + arete/military state allows to convert both into hammers which is nice. I'm not a fan of conquest as I like to keep my cities growing and build settlers/workers when at happy cap, but it's nice for Falamar: form of the titan via charismatic Saverous + Conquest means level 3 units right out of the gate. coupled with slavery + citystates + religion you can expand fast, develop fast and defend well. with Hannah aristograrian looks good even as Lanun, you'll be abusing financial for all its worth and then some more

 

[UnforcedError]

Sure, but you don't need Arete for SoK abuse. Also, any civ can profit from SoK with HE + CPs, even more so than the Lanun if they have some decent UUs (not to mention the formidable Orcish warrens). I actually tend to adopt FotL with the Lanun on water maps because growing forests everywhere and lumbermilling them gives you a decent hammer advantage over any other civ (as they won't be able to feed their cities from water tiles alone). Ancient forests are less important for the Lanun, I agree. So I usually only stay in FotL until I build a few priests.

 

[doktarr]

For elves, the synergies with GoN and dis-synergies with Agrarianism are obvious. With up to +20 from GoN, they don't need Aristocracy to help them convert into -- they can do it directly with a better to ratio from cottages or use specialists.

I agree that the argument against Agrarianism for the elves is obvious. But is an aristocratic farm clearly a bad idea? It will start with 2 more and 1 more compared to the cottage on the same tile. Of course, eventually the cottage will get 4 more , but as long as the city has room to grow under the happy cap, speeding that growth can be handy. And as you point out, the happy cap is going to be sky-high for them in late-game.

In the long run, those two extra food can translate into an extra specialist, which means 3 extra or . So the total output matches a fully developed cottage tile, even before we consider the GPP or the versatility of being able to change the specialist.

Granted, you're going to have to build more health buildings to handle those ~30 pop cities. And perhaps you would rather run a different government civic instead of being tied down to Aristocracy. I'm just saying that Aristocracy still has merit even if you're not running Agrarianism.

 

[akatosh]

doktarr - certainly agree that it's possible that aristocracy can be useful. Or maybe it's that some farms are useful to help you reach the GoN happy cap. Let's say you have sanitation in. Then an ancient forest farm is 5 1 . An ancient forest aristofarm without agrarianism is 4 1 2 . The cottage starts at 3 1 1 .

I think it's possible that aristocracy can be useful for elves in some situations. But in the unlimited growth scenario, it might be better to just have a handful of pure farms in some cities to get more pop in quickly. I am just not sure that a 1 1 advantage early on is enough to warrant giving up a civic in most cases.

 

[doktarr]

doktarr - certainly agree that it's possible that aristocracy can be useful. Or maybe it's that some farms are useful to help you reach the GoN happy cap. Let's say you have sanitation in. Then an ancient forest farm is 5 1 . An ancient forest aristofarm without agrarianism is 4 1 2 . The cottage starts at 3 1 1 .

I think it's possible that aristocracy can be useful for elves in some situations. But in the unlimited growth scenario, it might be better to just have a handful of pure farms in some cities to get more pop in quickly. I am just not sure that a 1 1 advantage early on is enough to warrant giving up a civic in most cases.

Yeah, I suppose I agree. For some reason I was thinking it was a 2 edge; a 1 edge isn't worth nearly as much. At that point it takes two aristofarms to support an extra specialist compared to towns, while the towns will be producing 3 more per tile, so in the long run it's 1.5 less hammers/commerce per tile from the aristofarms.

Still, there's probably a long stretch of the game between when God King loses effectiveness and when Republic/Theocracy/City States becomes the best choice, when you're likely to run Aristocracy anyway.

 

[doktarr]

A couple quick comments on the Mercurians (plus why not bump the best thread in the strategy forum):

Mercurians - I have never played them, only summoned them, but I think the basics are pretty straightforward. Your comes from the deaths of units that follow RoK, Empy, and Order, so you want to spread these religions as much as possible. Since you are a warfare-oriented civ, but don't have any particular economic bonuses, RoK's extra gold and Order's maintenance savings can both translate to a larger empire and more for your ingenuity trait. You already have iron from your palace so you don't need the Mines of Gal-Dur, and they will probably be gone by the time you enter the game anyway. Same goes for Bambur. Arete can help with GP production if you are going for an Altar victory--Kurios build first 3 Altar levels, summon Basium, switch to Basium, pump out the last few prophets yourself. Even so, RoK's benefits are nice but can probably be obtained using it as a secondary religion. Get your 1 stonewarden and switch.

Order's probably a better primary religion than RoK for a few reasons. 1) RoK temples can be built with it as a secondary religion, but Basilicas cannot. 2) Spreading Order itself produces extra military units which can be sacrificed for the cause. 3) Combined with Altar levels, Confessors with Spirit Guide can be used to maximize XP flow to your Angels to build up a crack army of well-promoted troops. 4) Social Order is available if you need it, although admittedly I am not sure if it is better than Arete. With an aristogranarian economy using mines and plains cottages, you can probably get a large enough happy cap using gambling houses. But using Arete locks you out of Apprenticeship which means less starting XP for your angels. And religion provides +5 with RoK/Order/Empyrean temples by itself, which might be as much as you need. Or you might want Scholarship to boost research, etc, etc.

The other choice is Empyrean. This really comes down to a choice of whether you need the economic benefits Order provides, or you need the sheer ass-kicking power of Chalid. This assumes Chalid is still available when you're summoned, but he probably will be because your summoning civ most likely beelined Mercurian Gate because you were playing it. Right?

Leaves and Esus are out as they are for most everyone else, but what about OO and Veil? I am not sure about this, but I think that when YOUR OWN living units die, they also spawn an angel regardless of what religion they followed. Now I believe Basium purges Veil from all of his cities every turn, so you can't follow Veil. OO might be an option though, if you need Cultists for some reason. But I don't think Drowns or Stygian guards turn to angels when they die, so think carefully.

First, does Apprenticeship (or Form of the Titan, et al), actually boost the XP of Angels (or werewolves, or Lunatics)? I don't believe it does. I think Angels just get the XP of the figure that died (and the others I mention get zero). This is part of why the Mercurians can get away with running Slavery.

You're right that your own living units become angels when they die no matter what religion they are. So spreading good religions to other civs is nice, but it really doesn't matter what religion your own cities are, unless your team has the shrine.

OO is a pretty nice religion for the Mercurians. As you note, Drowns and Stygians are a bad idea, but Cultists are great, and Hemah is pretty nice if you get up the Arcane line. And of course this enables slavery/Lunatic spam if you need more troops, although you can leave OO after getting an Asylum (only for Empyrean or Runes, though - Order will take you out of the Undercouncil and Slavery civics and break the strategy). Being OO makes you work harder spreading religion if you need the happy from same-religion cities, but it's not too big a deal.

A lot depends on (a) whether Chalid is available, and (b) what religion your summoning civ was running. Depending on the situation, any of the good religions, or OO, can all make sense.

 

[doktarr]

Also, the Elohim have two interesting bits of synergy with Council of Esus.

• First, Gibbon is the only Archmage you can get before Corlindale in most games. This is useful because there's a pretty strong incentive to use Corlindale to bag some of the non-spammable T3 spells - Graft Flesh, Trust, and (especially) Domination - and then cast Peace whenever you need it. Gibbon lets you Resurrect him... after building the shrine.
  
  I generally wouldn't want to spend too much time following CoE in most games, but switching to CoE when you get Corlindale, rolling with both Corlindale and Gibbon for a while, then resurrecting Corlindale when he dies, then leaving CoE, is a pretty good way to go. It works better in longer games as the time spent waiting for their XP to build is a shorter slice of the game.
  
  This same strategy is potentially handy with any civ that gets its shrine hero early in the game (except the Luchuirp, who can bring Barnaxus back without any help) but the additional synergy of being able to hit the reset button on Corlindale's promotions makes it especially nice for them.
  
  
• Second, and much more generally useful, is that you can upgrade your free Nightwatch into a Devout. This does not require CoE as your religion, and it is devastatingly awesome. You can enter anyone's land, even without agreements. (Gibbon can do this too, but a CoE Devout can do it even if you are following a different religion.) This tactic really comes into its own after you get Nox Noctis built. Your CoE Devout can wander around spreading the Council of Esus to a new city every turn, rapidly building the cash return on Nox Noctis. I've never won a religious victory this way, but I suspect it's possible (the hard part is not building CoE, but rooting out the other religions), and the cash is fantastic either way. This creates an extremely strong incentive for the Elohim to reach Deception first.
  
  If you manage to get Aeron's Chosen on this Devout, then the unit can build experience to godlike levels at an alarming rate. Once you find some soft targets, put on your mask and do some killing. If you happen upon something scary, reveal nationality and go back to religion spreading. After a while, everything stops being scary, and the Esus Devout basically becomes an unending, one-unit undeclared war machine. Instead of turning the Devout into a Shadow, You can upgrade to a priest and then a Druid/Paladin/Eidolon, and retain hidden nationality (although you can't flip HN on and off any more).

 

[scutarii]

OO and mercurians - with asylm - angels do not go crazy but living units do - build bunch of cheap units and reap angels later.

 

[doktarr]

OO and mercurians - with asylm - angels do not go crazy but living units do - build bunch of cheap units and reap angels later.

Sure. Personally, though, I rarely build units with the Mercurians aside from boats, Adepts, and disciples/priests, and never in the Asylum city. In my current game, I have so many troops that I can barely keep my economy afloat at 100% gold, Aristograrian, Consumption, even without building many units directly. When my recent conquests come out of rebellion and I build a Summer Palace, my economy should turn around, but right now it's just barely supporting the Mercurian steamroller.

My favorite units for the "living base" of the Mercurian army are Lunatics and Werewolves. Lunatics are covered extensively in the what are lunatics good for thread - even if you can't control the council and get slave trade running, you can get a pretty steady supply of slaves using the slavery civic, and promote them at your Asylum for 33 gold a pop. This works well if you are running any religion except Order, who have to be good and can't run slavery/undercouncil.

As for werewolves, it's obviously harder to line up. In my previous Mercurian game I missed out on the Baron, but I had Chalid, so I was doing it with massed Lunatics and Pillar of Fire. This game I missed out on Chalid (unless you count that kickass angel I got when I killed him) but I've gotten a highly promoted Baron Duin (mutated light by Hemah's wonder, carrying Orthus's axe). It's a phenomenal combo, because if the ravenous werewolf wins you get a nice new frontline unit, and if the ravenous werewolf loses you get another angel to fill in your garrison as your army rolls on. My typical attack sequence is to soften a city with Tsunamis and Fireballs, attack out the top defender or two with Hemah summons/T4 angels/blooded werewolves, let the Baron blitz his way through the lower-tier defenders, then clean up with angels or cultists. The ravenous werewolves usually die in their first few efforts but win the last couple fights.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

other guys that can resurrect Corlindale indefinitely are Sphener and Yvain

akatosh, how would your analysis change with lumbermills on ancient forests and shadows requiring Esus religion? it should make those two religions more attractive for many civs..

 

[doktarr]

other guys that can resurrect Corlindale indefinitely are Sphener and Yvain

Sure, sure, and of course you can just promote an archmage up that line. But those approaches are pretty late in the game, while Gibbon is midgame. By the time Sphener is bringing back Corlindale, do you really still need him?

akatosh, how would your analysis change with lumbermills on ancient forests and shadows requiring Esus religion? it should make those two religions more attractive for many civs..

Ancient Forest Lumbermills are a step in the right direction but probably don't move the needle that much. Ancient Forest Lumbermills are already possible; they just require planning ahead. That hasn't led to a lot of people using FoL.

Shadows are great units and might motivate some folks to go with CoE, particularly if they can get the Aeron's Chosen Shadow, which approaches Chalid-like power IMO. The same sorts of civs that would pick Empyrean for Chalid might be tempted to Esus for Shadows. It's also a stronger motivator for Khazad and Luchuirp, although Khazad are pretty locked down on RoK.

 

[akatosh]

I'm with Doktarr. An AF lumbermill is a good tile but not a great tile. Two AF lumbermills at 6F 4H is not that far from a fully upgraded workshop at 0F 5H 1C supported by a 4F 2C aristofarm. The AF lumbermill looks better with the +0.5 health and +1 happy of course, but the fundamental problem it faces is that it doesn't provide any commerce. And compare to two AF cottages, which are 6F 2H 10C. AF lumbermills require archery, FoL, and priesthood for Bloom, plus guardian of nature. That's a lot of tech required that's off of the main tech path for a lot of civs.

All that said, I have been experimenting with non-elf FoL after reading Horatius' post about satyrs. I've found that FoL can work for two civs: Lanun and Sidar. The thing that both these civs have in common is that they can generate commerce from nontraditional sources, e.g. pirate coves and wanes. This means they are not as dependent on tile yields to generate commerce. They are also not dependent on agrarianism.

FoL Lanun's not bad when your cities are half water and half land. The AF lumbermills provide hammers and happiness, and the water provides commerce. Lanun cities tend to grow fast with all the rich food resources in the water so the extra happiness is nice. The problem is that it takes time to get it all set up (blooms, workers, all the tech) and if you have decent land tiles you're better off just developing them. FoL can be good to backfill some of those empty plains and grass tiles though.

The other problem for Lanun is that it's usually just simpler to go with OO. They already have fishing and I usually finish OO in the capital around the same time that HT finishes. Then you can 1) go off your tech path for hunting and FoL or 2) go straight on your tech path and just start attacking with drowns and cultists. I find that #2 is usually better, as more land > slightly better land. I do think that FoL has its merits for Lanun in a long builder type game, mainly for the extra happiness.

For Sidar, the idea is that you want to run a lot of specialists so the extra food and happiness is nice. Therefore Sidar don't even need the tiles for commerce since everything is coming from sages, merchants and wanes. This can work if you are planning for a peaceful approach to Sidar--in fact, if you are playing a buildery Sidar, FoL is a very good religion. I also liked the idea of having free xp sources and producing 9/4 satyrs out of the gate, and fighting defensive wars with homeland and the woodsman II promotion. I found this to work sort of well.

Unfortunately, Sidar's traditional tactics are still better. Order is still the best religion for them because of Confessors' XP transfer and social order getting you big happy caps without losing a +XP civic. Horse archers are still the best military unit simply because they are so easy to use with 85% withdraw chances, and can afford to take long-shot fights that have big XP rewards. That means you need +6 xp out of the gate on higher difficulties, which means you probably lost Form of the Titan and the free general from military strategy, which means you need Theocracy, Conquest and Apprenticeship all at the same time.

Finally, I have had some luck using FoL with Spiritual civs but not necessarily using a lot of AF lumbermills. Here, I mainly switch into FoL for the priests. I'll use a mix of Priests of Leaves and Ritualists in offensive stacks, so basically at priesthood you get summons, collateral, and decent fighters all at one tech. As the game continues I'll add Stonewardens and Confessors for buffs, and some support units from Empyrean. This is religion-hopping though, and more using FoL for military rather than economic purposes.

So in closing, yeah, AF lumbermills can still work for some civs. Try it out yourself and post your thoughts.

 

[doktarr]

Long story short: GoN is such a great civic that AF lumbermills can work for the civs with "non-standard" economies.

 

[UnforcedError]

I tend to use FoL with the Lanun and the Sidar for a short period of time until I can build some priests for blooming / military purposes. Never tried to stay in GoN for an extensive period of time but I agree that it could in fact be optimal on some map settings (e.g. isolation with not too much land).
Great discussion, keep going

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

I got to a lightning quick altar victory with FoL Kuriotates a couple days ago: a couple farms for growth, mines on hills, cottages everywhere else and I kept the forests intact for GoN happiness. it worked really well.

I was a bit vulnerable at first due to squeezing as much as possible out of the initial PHI trait ( pacifism, elder councils and libraries oh my! ) , but once I switched to FIN, got out of pacifism and started spamming centaurs I looked tough enough to keep the AIs at each others' throaths and leaving me alone.

I had 2 cities on small size the whole game, I could have gotten a third one through conquest but I got lazy there

second trait switch was to SPI for quick temples and to squeeze even more happy out of religion civic once I got to my GoN happycap. I actually managed to found all religions in my second city, but this was an Noble so it doesn't really count

third trait switch was back to PHI for quick prophets for the altar.

 

[Qgqqqqq]

First, Gibbon is the only Archmage you can get before Corlindale in most games. This is useful because there's a pretty strong incentive to use Corlindale to bag some of the non-spammable T3 spells - Graft Flesh, Trust, and (especially) Domination - and then cast Peace whenever you need it. Gibbon lets you Resurrect him... after building the shrine.

Why domination?
Sure its 10% wastage is mitigated when (if? Not sure here...) it comes back after sacrificing/dying, but I don't think thats really worthwhile for a low/non-combat archmage, nor a good spell in general.

 

[doktarr]

I would basically never give domination to a regular archmage, because every time it fails you lose the promotion, and those promotions are hard to replace. But Corlindale and Gibbon are disposable, so their promotions are as well.

Domination can be a very nice spell for grabbing mages or (especially) priests of other religions. Just one Stonewarden and one Confessor makes a big difference. And if you dominate a priest of leaves, then suddenly creating a flesh golem (another T3 spell that you don't want to use an archmage for) becomes a reasonable idea, as you can add mutated tigers and get a powerful figure for free.

Corlindale is actually a very reasonable figure to put in your combat stacks, because his 0 strength makes him immune to assassination.

After resurrecting him (or if I don't plan to resurrect him) I'll generally give Corlindale something like Nature 3, Law 3, Chaos 3. Let him cast valor and vitalize when I'm at peace, and he can join up during wartime and cast wonder.

 

[UnforcedError]

I rather use the command promo instead of domination in order to get priests of other religions. Sure, it's not reliable but at least you won't lose the promo either.
I never bothered with flesh golems so far in my games. I guess instead of spending 20 turns on upgrading one I can also do some other useful stuff with that mage required for the mutation and that priest of leaves. When Craft Flesh becomes available I'd usually be looking to finish the game, so trying to put some extreme effort into a super unit just doesn't pay off for me.

 

[doktarr]

I agree that even with disposable promos for Body 3 from Gibbon/Corlindale, and a mage/PoL combo to give you free promos on the flesh golem, Graft Flesh is marginal. If you're playing on large/huge maps, and longer game lengths (I've played Huge/Marathon more than once), then it starts to become a decent strategy.