Tips Wanted [Deity] - How To Slow Down another AI's Culture-Snowball/Run?

[Pengwin7]

Just finished a Deity game where I painfully watched one AI (Khmer) just absolutely run away with the culture lead.
I try to win in 200 turns... and just couldn't keep him close. By the time I hit Rock Bands (turn 188 with Tamar/Georgia), I had less than 100 foreign tourists to the Khmer's 276 domestic count.
[For clarity, it's not my own "100" that I'm concerned about... obv - that's for me. But is there ways to keep him from getting as high as 276 domestic tourists in 188 turns?!]


I do buy all GreatWorks - as soon as available - from the lead-culture AI.
Khmer barely had any gold or luxuries all game...
I'm guessing it was the pantheon(Sacred Path) + religion(Choral Music) that zipped him up his own culture tree.

[War, pillaging, yes, one answer... it's something I haven't tried, because I've had issue with the grievances damaging other aspects of cultural victory push.]


One interesting reddit thread I found suggests that 'wiping out Religion of the Choral Music AI' (which is/was Khmer here) is a good tact.
But... on Deity, his religion was up 10 turns before mine and his populations are so populous that it seemed like a fruitless thing to try when my faith could be going towards empire/infrastructure.
[Anybody that has played Khmer probably knows well how nicely his population/religion can explode.]

https://www.reddit.com/r/civ/comments/urq876/advanced_tip_for_fast_culture_victories

Are there things people do to SIGNIFICANTLY slow another AI from running away with their own culture/tourism?!?

[For those that like numbers, I didn't catch Khmer for Domestic Tourists until turn 189, when I/Tamar had 275 and he/Khmer had 276. This is obviously way too late to hope to win a fast culture victory, I like to win in sub200 turns on Standard/500.]
The '275 domestic tourists' at turn 189 is a really high number in itself.
I think it's the highest number I've seen in my games... and I like to track the numbers.
First time I've seen Deity AI beat me at sending Rock Bands. His were in my land by turn 186... mine in his at turn 188. And he had locked my Rock Bands out by turn 198. Those are firsts, for me, within 200/500 standard turns.

Spoiler :

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

I understand that you have said that you don't like to war much, but the only consistent answer in this case is war, even when considering grievances.
Not using this option is essentially removing a very important tool in your kit to get the job done, which is particularly important if you are trying to push your deity win times to shorter and shorter time frames.
You can somewhat compare the situation here to an AI that builds a big wooden door that stands between you and victory, and the longer you spend your time getting to that door, the stronger that door gets.
And in order to break that door, you need the correct tool.
The correct tool to use in this situation is a sledgehammer to break through, hitting hard and fast to knock it down to reach your victory.
Sure you can technically use a different tool like an axe, a carpenter's hammer or possibly even a drill or a saw to try to gain entry as you slowly grind away at the door, but the most efficient tool here is to just use your sledge sledgehammer and demolish that door immediately.

In order to stop the AI in this case, you want to just take them out (or at the very least cripple them extremely hard, leaving them with just a bad city or two), ideally before they get the chance to run away on culture.
Taking their cities lowers their culture (which fuels their rise in domestic tourist count), lets you pillage them (which sets them back and gives you a ton of faith for more rock bands or GMC purchased units) and lets you actively "fight" their rock bands (they dont get killed, but pushed back to their nearest city).
Screw the diplomatic penalty in this case - You can set up trade and open borders before you go to war (which lasts 30 turns anyway, which is "forever" at this point), and as long as you keep renewing friendships when they run out, most people will stay friendly to you and let you continue trading for open borders.
Either way, going to war against one enemy is usually not killing your diplomatic relations that much, especially if you use a casus belli.
And if that enemy is your only remaining roadblock (only AI that you aren't dominant over), even ruined relations are worth it since you will be winning the CV right after you take them out (since their pool of domestic tourists that prevented the CV, is now gone, thus granting you the win).

Either way the tourism modifier from open borders (25%) is really overrated in this particular case (one AI runaway).
Don't get me wrong, its a really good bonus in almost all cases, but its not worth fretting over and then have an AI run away on culture, just to keep that 25% bonus with everyone (especially not if you're dominant over them already, or about to be).
Either way, trading open borders for 30 turns with others before declaring war, is more than enough to finish off an AI and win the CV.

An additional exploit here is to offer other AI to join your war, in which case you can actually get strengthened relations with them out of that war.
A lot of AI will happily join you in that endeavour for 1g, which has the positive side effect of also killing off any trade routes and open borders with the runaway AI culture civ and your new wartime buddies.

At your stage of the game, bombers and tanks/cavalry units (to take out the city after the bombers reduced them to 1 hp) is usually the quickest way to delete an AI within a handful of turns, and its probably wise to kill them off entirely so that their domestic tourist roadblock disappears completely.
If you want to declare on a runaway AI earlier though (right before they start to become a real runaway), you can "just" cripple them with heavy pillaging and taking a few cities before declaring peace, for a relatively low diplomatic cost.
You probably can't get open borders with them any time soon, but you don't need to since they are now crippled culture wise for the rest of the game (and its "just" 25% anyway).

One interesting reddit thread I found suggests that 'wiping out Religion of the Choral Music AI' (which is/was Khmer here) is a good tact.
But... on Deity, his religion was up 10 turns before mine and his populations are so populous that it seemed like a fruitless thing to try when my faith could be going towards empire/infrastructure.

The correct use of faith here (seeing as you wanna pool up faith for naturalists and rock bands as much as possible) is to blow it on military units.
It's way cheaper and much less tedious than trying to wage religious warfare, which will just bleed you dry on faith even with Yerevan suzerained.

 

[DeckerdJames]

I have built ski resorts all over to prevent a culture victory by another. I have not tried it and I don’t know if the grievances are high for doing it but you could bomb their tourism improvements or build enough of your own that they don’t become dominant.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

I have built ski resorts all over to prevent a culture victory by another. I have not tried it and I don’t know if the grievances are high for doing it but you could bomb their tourism improvements or build enough of your own that they don’t become dominant.

That does not prevent a CV by someone else, as placing ski resorts only increases your foreign tourism pressure, not your domestic tourism (which is fuelled by culture, and what you want to increase to guard against someone else's offensive tourism).
Generally speaking, tourism (as a yield) is your offensive weapon, while culture (as a yield) is your defence.

 

[Pengwin7]

If you want to declare on a runaway AI earlier though (right before they start to become a real runaway), you can "just" cripple them with heavy pillaging and taking a few cities before declaring peace, for a relatively low diplomatic cost.
You probably can't get open borders with them any time soon, but you don't need to since they are now crippled culture wise for the rest of the game (and its "just" 25% anyway).

Yes - this is the part of my game I probably (sigh) have to commit to a 'learn' on.
Generally, the first 55-60 turns of my games are the same - trying to get 2-3 cities to have good holy sites (at least 1 w/shrine).
In my last run w/Tamar (always /500 standard speed), my key marks (per the Era log):
turn 47 - Golden Age at end of Ancient Era
turn 56 - Holy Prophet [*I'm basically using production ONLY towards holy sites/prayers until my religion.]
turn 57 - Religion
turn 60 - Political Philosophy (I assume this is always a key mark for war, with the +4 strength gov)
[I don't have save files to check what I used my first post-HolySite production on... but I did build Apadana - which is a LOT of prod, chops w/Magnus - bc I had relic and wanted to create Relic spots and get Envoys for Tamar. Apadana + WonderHeavy capital is sometimes a strategy-path... and one has to abandon, I think, all other paths (military) - to commit to it fully. I also went harbor + Maus in that same capital to take advantage of Imhotep charges. And it was a great, great game for ME... but it also meant that I couldn't, in this case, commit to military push on Khmer...]


As an estimate, how many units are required to:
i) Take a city - assuming they don't get Ancient Walls up
ii) Take a city - assuming they get walls up and have some defense (couple archers)
iii) Take a city with some heavy defensive terrain (behind a river, or maybe mountains two sides, or coast on two tiles)


As an example, I think this guy (boesthius) is pretty popular for Civ6 videos.
I watched this series hoping for tips... only to find out that he didn't complete it...
I speculate he didn't complete it... because the war on Germany didn't result in any 'keeper' cities and he used a LOT of production/chops on creating military units.
Units created - without cultural benefit - is something you look back on as "Well - I could've used those turns differently".

[2nd to last comment shows he didn't make a "Part 3"...]

*Unfortunately, this is one of the only sub200 culture videos I've ever seen that include 'war'. Maybe there are more out there (?!?)... but I haven't found them.
So I don't have a good tutorial to be doing TWO paths with an empire - balancing a military with continuing on cultural path.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

As an estimate, how many units are required to:
i) Take a city - assuming they don't get Ancient Walls up
ii) Take a city - assuming they get walls up and have some defense (couple archers)
iii) Take a city with some heavy defensive terrain (behind a river, or maybe mountains two sides, or coast on two tiles)

See my response in the other thread you have going, regarding what I'm looking for specifically when invading a target.
The thought process relies on a lot of factors, but with some practice this feels like second nature to evaluate as you go.

That being said, what you are asking for here is an early game rush, whereas the situation you commented above is a late game invasion with the aim of killing off another civ, and those are two different things.
In the latter case you pretty much only need access to bombers to guarantee taking out the AI (they are incapable of defending against it, and they level a city incredibly fast), the rest takes care of itself.

As for an early game rush, your timings regarding a religion already show that you are strong at the early religion opener, and if you want to learn early game rushes I suggest you play around with crusade and ideally an OP civ for a few games to practice taking out your first neighbour (the hardest target in the game, the rest are a cakewalk because you snowball at that stage).
There is probably no better candidate for this than Theodora, because not only are you almost guaranteed a religion, you also get "free" combat strength from just having a religion (+3), and the real kicker - you passively spread when you defeat an enemy unit, making crusade spread in no time and guaranteeing you enormous amounts of free era score (+3 every time you flip a city passively through combat).
You also get tons of free culture from her holy sites, so it lends itself extremely well to practicing a cultural playstyle with warfare mixed in.
Then after you master the religious rush opener, you can transition into other civs that don't have her OP kit, and find out that with some adjustments you can do just as well through abuse of the crusade belief.
Essentially you're just doing your regular religious opener (2-3 cities, straight to HS in all, prayers when needed), then abusing work ethic to pump out tons of cheap units, place them around their city while you "seed" that AI city with crusade, and just jump them to take them out before they can react.

Regarding your question of "how many units", that is impossible to answer in a quick manner, so check out my post in your other thread to pick up the signs you need to look for.
Mostly its about their city combat strength (telling you which units you face and how many you need of your own), their military strength (which tells you what initial resistance will be like and the amount of forces that are hidden in the fog of war), and their science output (telling you how soon you can expect a nasty surprise in terms of higher tech units).
Very generally speaking though, I take at the very least enough warriors +1 to siege their city (having at least one extra lets your rotate warriors in and out easier and still maintain a siege), pre-build a battering ram in case I sense that walls are about to come up (you can tell from the city animation that a wall is being built), and two archers (because worst case, if they get walls and you have not pre-built a battering ram, the archers can rotate to keep shooting the walls every 5 turns and less, which prevents them from repairing the wall).

The most important skill is playing the tactical game though - meaning that you get an intuitive feeling of what a relative difference in combat strength means between units, and being able to calculate what sort of combat strength you get from defending versus attacking (you generally want the AI attacking you when fortified on rough terrain because you trade immensely well then, even on deity).

As an example, I think this guy (boesthius) is pretty popular for Civ6 videos.
I watched this series hoping for tips... only to find out that he didn't complete it...
I speculate he didn't complete it... because the war on Germany didn't result in any 'keeper' cities and he used a LOT of production/chops on creating military units.
Units created - without cultural benefit - is something you look back on as "Well - I could've used those turns differently".

Boesthius isnt the worst of the bunch, but he does indeed do some questionable things as you point out.
Generally I am not a fan of chopping out units early on, because it is an extremely risky strategy that puts you all in against your target.
If it fails its basically game over right there and then, since you cannot recover from such an extreme investment.
Which is why I always advocate for the religious opener because of how consistent it is at wiping out the AI (unless you play some civ that gets an insane early power spike without it, like Nubia, Gaul, Babylon etc.).
I have even used the opener on Deity++ (a mod that simulates two difficulties higher than deity), which goes to show how consistent it is at taking out target civs that have a starting lead (assuming you get an adjacency pantheon, which is the hardest part if you cant get lucky on spawn yields, tribal huts or CS pillaging).

 

[Pengwin7]

Great reply.
Theodora/Crusade is 100% on my list of things to try - with a pivot to culture victory.
I think it would water-down this thread to go back to that... and what other CIVs that works well for.

Few notes for clarity:
1. I have no desire/intent for 'late war' with bombers or other such. (not sure on how that was interpreted - my apologies if my language was cloudy)
2. Yes, definitely possibly meant 'early war', with pillaging where beneficial.*
3. *Tough thing here is, for me, it's very conditional. Like - this SPECIFIC play-through... on retrospect I can say: Khmer was close (15-tiles capital-to-capital... and 10-tiles in a Stonehenge city he forward-settled towards me... AND he was the one who benefitted from his rainforests/SacredPath/Choral Music. With experience... i.e. now! and going-forward!... I will look out for these types of things and want to prepare myself for a way to hurt his development. But... if Khmer was two AI away... 25+ tiles... or wasn't even the Khmer... an early-war would just bee too far a travel. By the time my units arrive... they'd likely be outdated by turns to the quick-start of AI-DeityScience-push. (*I kind of want/hope that the whole Crusade, take-out-neighborAI isn't so "doable"... every game... because then... I'd lose interest if there is a 'routine' to winning sub200 culture games consistently.)


As is... I still haven't seen/found a set of videos where somebody wins Deity CV, consistently, different leaders, *with* intentional early-war. (i.e. 'Routinely')
I'd really like to watch a video like that. I'm a visual learner.

(I'm not doubting any advice... I can vibe that it's possible with somebody as skilled as you... but I also know that I can't/won't learn it unless I see every-single-step-along-the-way... which basically means I need a video to learn it. As an example, one has to watch somebody... eval their target... and see how many - what type of units - and how they place and attach with those units - when they pull back, heal, shuffle placement... etc... I've tried - and I was just incredibly far from being effective... so far... it feels... impossible on deity unless one lucks out or can get that 'help' on war from other-side neighbor of the target).

Thanks again though!

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

Few notes for clarity:
1. I have no desire/intent for 'late war' with bombers or other such. (not sure on how that was interpreted - my apologies if my language was cloudy)
2. Yes, definitely possibly meant 'early war', with pillaging where beneficial.*

I dragged up the example with bombers because in a late game scenario like the one you described (where you want to make the t200 mark but a single runaway AI is preventing you from it), bombing them into oblivion while performing more rock concerts is the only proper answer.
Usually you cant tell for sure in the ancient/classical era if someone specific is going to be a runaway in the late game around the t200 mark that is your only remaining roadblock for a CV.
Thus the point of early war (ancient/classical) is generally not to stop someone from being a late game threat, but to set up a snowball for yourself.

Especially with the religious crusade opener, you can afford to spew out a ton of cheap units in record time after establishing your religion, due to work ethic (so that your opportunity cost for waging war is very low).
That production invested in warriors/archers (assuming you take over your neighbour and/or a few city states) pays massive dividends almost immediately, since you are getting free and developed cities (the AI has often built a few districts in them, improved the lands and usually built a monument+granary in them).
Contrast this to building your own settlers and developing those settled cities, and the cost of spending 5-10 turns building warriors and archers is a joke of an investment if you can get 3-5 already developed cities out of it.
And it synergizes well with your peaceful plan anyway - at this stage (after you just founded your religion), there isn't much to build anyway (you have HS in place, and probably not teched CH, TS or campus yet), and the only worthwhile items are really just military units and/or monuments.
Assuming you secured monumentality and have a work ethic/crusade religion and a nearby neighbour that is ripe for attack, there is zero incentive for you to not be at war, because you can just spend that production on a bunch of warriors/archers/battering ram, while you spend your faith on settlers and rotating Moksha to essentially do what you would do on a peaceful play (Moksha also fantastic on a push where your city borders theirs, since you instaheal).
Sure you gotta spend faith on at least one missionary, but pillaging will soon make all that faith back and then some, which fuels more settlers/districts.

Also FYI, assuming you just take out 1 neighbouring AI and not go on a huge rampage later on, the diplomatic cost of taking out one AI is quite manageable (many AI dont care, and the ones that do sober up after a short while as grievances decay fast this early in the game), especially if you already had friendly relations with others before the DOW (and especially if you pay them 1g to join in, they often love you for it).

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

I'll see if I can make some screenshots explaining my thought process one day.
Haven't played civ for over a week now, but I still have the autosaves from the game where I played as Mansa Musa (to showcase the crusade opener), and I guess I could take some screenshots from different turns and explain my thought process on a tactical level.
Essentially my goals (tactically) is to either overwhelm a city fast (so not to take losses, usually being the first city that I jump), OR inflict slow but steady damage on the enemy (whether his units or his cities), where I try to take zero losses in units in order to maintain consistent pressure (zero losses to mitigate the defender's advantage).
Health losses are fine as long as I can rotate the unit out and still maintain the siege, but unit losses are only acceptable if they are necessary to gain a large advantage (such as taking a particular city before walls are up).
Farms are your friend for health pillaging purposes, and fortunately the idiot AI tends to build a lot of them right next to their cities, which is usually a big green sign for me saying "please invade".

 

[Pengwin7]

Now - with the Crusade - the whole assumption is that you CAN convert the neighbor AI city with missionary(s) prior to your attack.
And... with Khmer being the discussed-neighbor - or currently I'm playing a game with Inca as neighbors - we are talking 3-4 missionaries... bc the pop is, typically, 7-9 and religion is established there.
[In my current game, playing Eleanor-England, I needed 4 charges to convert a 6 pop Inca city... and the Inca are already returning 3 missionairies to re-charge the city... and have two other neighboring cities, their religion, and Holy Sites - I've typically found/learned that the bigger cities, with earlier established religions, are just going to push missionairies back and undo any conversions.]

Also - as you surely know - a (likely) runaway culture CIV is apt to be that sort of faith/culture/ChoralMusic/high-pop-city type of AI that has the missionairies coming to re-charge a converted city.
[In my current game, the grievances from converting the one city - and being asked NOT to - ... are already being met with disdain from some of the other AI...]

So... if I spend all my faith in trying to convert neighbor city, while producing units, and the attack city isn't converted on units-arrival...
Then what?

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

Now - with the Crusade - the whole assumption is that you CAN convert the neighbor AI city with missionary(s) prior to your attack.
And... with Khmer being the discussed-neighbor - or currently I'm playing a game with Inca as neighbors - we are talking 3-4 missionaries... bc the pop is, typically, 7-9 and religion is established there.
[In my current game, playing Eleanor-England, I needed 4 charges to convert a 6 pop Inca city... and the Inca are already returning 3 missionairies to re-charge the city... and have two other neighboring cities, their religion, and Holy Sites - I've typically found/learned that the bigger cities, with earlier established religions, are just going to push missionairies back and undo any conversions.]

Also - as you surely know - a (likely) runaway culture CIV is apt to be that sort of faith/culture/ChoralMusic/high-pop-city type of AI that has the missionairies coming to re-charge a converted city.
[In my current game, the grievances from converting the one city - and being asked NOT to - ... are already being met with disdain from some of the other AI...]

So... if I spend all my faith in trying to convert neighbor city, while producing units, and the attack city isn't converted on units-arrival...
Then what?

The assumption holds though.
As long as you have decent faith output and a shrine while getting your religion around T50-60 as you say, you are in a position where you can convert the nearest city.
The AI usually doesnt have much if any missionaries at this stage, and they are not converting their own cities beyond the minimum stage anyway (and religion is in place in most of their cities when they founded one in a city with a HS) but rather they use any missionaries they do have (which is rare) to spread their religion to non-religious cities.
The only thing you need to worry about when jumping the nearest city is to convert it (should take 1-3 turns depending on whether you use 1 or 2 missionaries), while having your units outside the city ready to jump it.
Once the city is flipped you immediately jump in, and the AI will have no time to react and re-convert it by sending in its own missionaries (in fact, doing so would have their missionaries at risk of being killed, which would aid your religious spread even further).
Missionaries are either way subject to zone of control from your military units, and cannot spread back immediately without losing a turn, so even if they try to you just kill them with military units as they stand there helplessly.

Remember, you are not waging religious warfare here (where they will convert back), you are waging an actual war, and missionaries just cannot re-convert their cities when you have military units there.
At most you need 2 missionaries around T60ish to convert the nearby city in the case where someone like Khmer has a high pop city, but thats the absolute maximum.
Once you invade you only need to pillage a bit and grab the city, and the rest of the cities tend to fall pretty fast (though in all honesty, the second city is usually the hardest to take out, because you lost the element of surprise and you probably struggle on loyalty in the first city - this is where you need to pay attention and not mess up).
Further cities can easily be converted by running a missionary on top of a warrior that is sieging the city though.
Even if the next city isnt converted yet for crusade, you should have multiple warriors that you can rotate in and out while the missionary converts, and once converted its just a matter of a few turns until the city falls.
If you have Moksha in the first city that you took, you can probably just rotate wounded warriors back in to instaheal them and keep up the pressure.

Again, I'll see if I can make some screenshots to explain the process, as it's rather straightforward when you get good practice at it.
After that you can pivot into fully peaceful play, enjoy your guaranteed golden age, the free developed real estate you just took, and no future contest on nearby settling spots.

 

[Pengwin7]

I love your tips - and I did a huge trial last night - very, very carefully.
I think it would derail this thread to explain what I like and dislike about it... so I won't post it here.
But it is appreciated.


If the runaway culture leader is NOT a reachable neighbor by military... this war effort, I think, does/can derail from expansion.
Every unit produced for the war effort could've gone to a different infrastructure/builder/settler.
And where I normally take the 30% savings on missionary/apostle... to go WorkEthic/Crusade means you aren't saving on your first of those... losing faith.
Can't say I'm a big fan... because in an 8-leader game, there's only 1/7 chance... maybe 2/7... that the culture leader is war-able early.


[will post my Theodora WorkEthic/Crusade effort in my sub200 thread for your review]

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

If the runaway culture leader is NOT a reachable neighbor by military... this war effort, I think, does/can derail from expansion.
Every unit produced for the war effort could've gone to a different infrastructure/builder/settler.
And where I normally take the 30% savings on missionary/apostle... to go WorkEthic/Crusade means you aren't saving on your first of those... losing faith.
Can't say I'm a big fan... because in an 8-leader game, there's only 1/7 chance... maybe 2/7... that the culture leader is war-able early.

The thing is, you dont know who is going to be a late game runaway around the time you hit your timing for a religious crusade rush.
Maybe someone is coasting along at 40 culture per turn at T60 (which is huge culture at that stage), but that doesnt mean that they are still a runaway at T190.

Thus the rush is simply for snowballing purposes, where the goal is to exploit a vulnerable neighbour.
Heck if the neighbour is too strong at this stage in terms of science and culture per turn (which happens), they are less desireable to take out in a rush because they might field stronger units soon.
While the religious rush can deal with classical era tech quite easily (while you field warriors and archers) due to crusade bridging the combat strength difference, the same is not true for medieval era tech.
If the enemy has men at arms, coursers or crossbowmen vs your warriors and archers, you're gonna have a bad time.

The 30% discount on missionaries/apostles is a huge trap, and its a really bad pick unless you're going for a RV.
The discount is rather miniscule in the long run because - Unless you're actively converting your neighbours, how many missionaries and apostles do you really need in a game?
Do the math on how much faith that saved you, and you'll see that the faith amounts saved are tiny.
Especially when considering how much faith you typically pillage during a conquest (especially with the Raid card slotted, which is fantastic).
Usually you will make back more faith than you saved on missionaries and apostles, so there's really no point getting that discount.
Heck even if playing purely peacefully, I'd instead get a juicy founder belief early instead before someone else snags it up, just because it frontloads yields right away.

If you're gonna go for a RV, then of course, get that belief since you're gonna churn through a ton of apostles anyway.

 

[Pengwin7]

Thanks - I'll hard disagree w/ the 30% Missionary/Apostle being a 'huge trap'.

As you do/have-mastered with the Crusade-AI war...
I've got a really good handle on when to go after an adjacent HolyCIV...
If my religion comes on early... and an adjacentAI is 'still to come' (checking on GreatPeople for Prophets)... having enough missionairies to get over to their land and wipe their religion out is HUGE.
I also love having OG-Kongo in game, bc if I can push enough early missionairies over there... early... it spreads for you!
[They make good point that Religious Colonization is great choice if maybe your faith is somewhat low, but you plan to push pure settlements AND/OR can push religion to adjacent CIV that will be high settler - though most AI are doing the stock 8-10 cities.]

If you can spread religion... that Apostle Evangelize to choose either the Culture or Science for 4-followers... is ENORMOUS.
That's usually the way that I rocket up either the Tech or Civic tree.
(Usually it's science that I choose... but in the Mali game I'm playing... I went culture... we'll see how that goes. I also took one golden age and went with the +2 Apostle/Missionary and movement... and I converted a booming Cree empire and am just leveling incoming missionaries as they show up on borders - which pushes religion to other adjacent AI)


I mean... for your style... if you have mastered CRUSADE... yeah, absolutely best choice for you - MUST HAVE if you gain from early war.

For peaceful culture - and knowing wiping out and spreading religion can be used for Culture or Science... it has worked great for me.
I always watch the Culture or Science numbers *pop* when I evangelize... it's always big... like +20 or so in the turn 90-110 zone, if I do it there.
30% means that where 400 faith might buy somebody else 3 missionairies, I'm getting 4.

Soger/Kaine put it high on their own list... and from what I've found on the internet... Soger has the best YouTube mastery of quick-Culture victories...

List below has the Enhancer... and they have your CRUSADE at the top3 along with my HOLY ORDER (30%)...
[Soger disagrees with Crusade being 'top choice' at 6min mark... but he mostly plays peaceful-Culture... like me...]

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

The bottom video unfortunately shows that soger doesnt understand the purpose of crusade as a tool to set up a snowball, and that he doesn't have much experience opening up with it.

Quote:

"If you're going heavy faith, you're not gonna have the science to go early war".
"It doesnt make sense to me"
"I guess the +10 makes up if you're behind in tech, but then you're just making up a weakness, you'd be better off going science".

With those quotes in mind, the point of crusade is that it acts as a temporary stopgap that is indirectly boosting your "science", in that it nudges you up to a combat effectiveness that your current science output usually wouldnt allow for, and it does so extremely early.
Meaning, attacking a deity AI late ancient/early classical until around T80-85 with warriors and archers is usually not possible, but crusade allows it to be possible, and once you tech iron working (swordsmen), you extend that period with another 20 or so turns, even though your science output is bad.
Also regarding the last quote: There is no way you ever get into a better position with science spam this early. Even if you have very good campus locations, you will be behind the deity AI that just crushes you on science on this stage in the game.
Heck, even if you by some magical chance happen to keep up with an AI that is pumping out +40 science by T70, you are at best equal to him in military tech and are thus fighting at a disadvantage.
Going heavy on science usually starts paying off later in the medieval era as you start to slowly overtake the AI.

Note my screenshot: I had teched iron working some time before T75, and had a swordsman that just took one of Hungary's cities - meaning that my swordsman is essentially a man at arms, in terms of raw combat strength.
That is man at arms levels of power, at T75, when the Hungary deity AI was still fooling around with heavy chariots.
There is just no way you reliably hit man at arms tech at T75 by going science, outside of playing Gaul or Babylon that get the tech for free through the eureka (the Gaul/Babylon man at arms rush being a very viable rush by itself, absolutely).

The reason I don't like holy order is that after having played (too) much with it before, and after discovering how incredibly strong crusade is, it's the opportunity cost that just kills holy order for me these days.
I am not saying its a bad pick in a vacuum, its good for spreading and saving faith.
The problem is that actively spreading the religion to others (outside of selective targeting for crusade only) first of all costs a ton of faith (where the -30% does come in handy), and the yields (from world church etc.) scale poorly over time and in a rather linear fashion.
While it is pretty strong early on (it can easily double your culture/science per turn), in the late game all that spreading amounts to a fraction of your total output, as the yields scale linearly rather than exponentially (which is what snowballing is all about in the first place).
The other problem is that there is again an opportunity cost to be paid - spending faith for spreading that religion means you are not faith buying settlers and districts, and this will hurt you in the long run, as settlers (= cities) and districts do scale exponentially with the late game bonuses, meaning they keep growing in power as you progress. Also, spending faith for settling more cities is nice, because you are creating more cities that get your religion, and usually these cities get your religion for free through passive spreading rather quickly assuming you have a strong religious pressure base.
The final problem is that the AI tends to actively fight your religious spreading if you are spreading it to targets that are not your own cities (other AI and CS), which means you have to pay additional faith to maintain the religion, making it a rather expensive endeavour compared to if you just settled your own cities and spread it to those (god knows why the AI doesn't actively spread to the player these days anymore).

That being said, while I do not pick holy orders in most cases, except under the rare circumstance where I have no neighbours and a huge landmass to settle freely (= a fully peaceful game), it can be worth to pick it, and I'm definitely not saying it's bad compared to the other alternatives (bar crusade).
But that's more a testament to how most other enhancer beliefs are terrible, so I might as well save a bit on cheaper apostles for enhancing my religion (I dont use these to spread but usually only enhance, as I want my faith to go into more cities and districts as fast as possible).

Heck, there is a reason why the people that made the BBG mod (better balanced game, which is more or less mandatory for multiplayer pvp games), have nerfed crusade down to +3 or +5 combat strength (as well as reverted work ethic back to a flat % modifier), as +10 is just that good when you abuse the AI with it.
It's just far too much power, too early in the game.

 

[Pengwin7]

Love reading your thoughts.
I 100% see the benefit in Crusade for those that can & know how to effectively build & use a military.
I think it is the more 'powerful' choice for an 'elite' gamer.

I think Holy Order is a more 'reliable' and 'flexible' choice for non-elite CIV players.
Personally, I push out probably 8-10 missionaries per game and 4-20 apostles (depends on relics, whether I think I can wipe-out a religion... very, very INSPECT-and-DECIDE conditional).

What I don't like about Crusade is that it is as useful... as your use.
For 'domination' - brilliant pick.

For 'culture' as we discussed, if you are using it to turn 85 and then bailing on war...
Well, what good is it doing you rest of game?

I love Holy Order... I think it is very effective at defense AND offense all game.
I (me... how I play) am always creating religious units and attending to that part of the game - 30% is real... and basically a full game "Monumentality" towards religious units.
Missionary cost is about 150-200 for the first 4-5. (So 50 faith saving per, say)
Apostle cost is about 250-300 for the first 4-5. (So 75 faith saving per, say)
If you go 4 each, that's 500 faith saved - which is like TWO early-ClassicalEra settlers.
That's significant. And it's just not the cost savings... it's that this savings is there ALL GAME... whenever you need that religious offense or defense - buy them, faith saved.

As for Soger's comments towards Crusade - it's possible he has said things that aren't accurate.
I haven't seen him really show a high-end military side in any of his playthroughs... and sometimes when these YouTube people are doing full-cover of a list they 'need to say something'.
So they mail-in the stock-issue "This is for Byzantium" and then move on.

It's super amazing that you've mastered the usage for all leaders / most-to-all starts/conditiosn...
It's not in my play-style right now... but if I'm ever forced into tighter AI-neighbors... I do want it available.
And next time I see Khmer w/Choral Music as a neighbor... it's going into use!

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

For 'culture' as we discussed, if you are using it to turn 85 and then bailing on war...
Well, what good is it doing you rest of game?

It's wise to think of it in terms of "what does this cost me", and "what does this bring me", as it's pretty easy to model the two scenarios in terms of short and long term benefit.

In my Mali example, I could at T55 (when I established the religion) have spent 10 turns to maybe finish one settler in my ancestral hall city (high settler prod).
Or, I could set two of my cities to producing warriors and a few archers for 10 turns.
After that the gameplay is the same on the "home front" - I faith buy settlers that settle down, then buy the holy sites/+any other districts, and just go pure standard peaceful CV play, trying to build a big infrastructure core.
Meanwhile while doing all this as a "peaceful player" at home, I also have a bunch of wild barbarians (in terms of military tech, aka. my warrior/archer horde) that go out conquering nearby cities.
In my Mali case, I had all but demolished Hungary, taking 3 cities (including the capital), pillaged a big extra chunk for my "peaceful homefront" for more settlers and gold, and the last 2 cities would fall in probably another 6-8 turns depending on RNG.

Let's put that into numbers:
Instead of having spent time trying to hardbuild a settler + any other basic building like a monument or granary (lol) or builder (essentially the only things that are worth building at this stage, granary being extremely questionable), I spent it on a short burst of units instead, which is a very short "investment" in terms of it being a 10 turn delay (on not too important stuff at this stage, since your most important stuff is faith buying settlers and districts).
For that I gained (soon) 5 cities.
Often a nearby CS falls too if they stand in my way and are hostile - make that 6 cities.
That's an extra 5-6 cities that I get for a measly 10 turn unit investment, very early, for the rest of the game.
That's like getting 5-6 settlers (in terms of cities) out for the cost of 10 turns of unit production.
Those conquered cities are also cities that I can developed in parallel to my other self-settled cities, and who can eventually get their own TS, comm hub, HS + whatever to help get ahead and essentially more "fuel" for the late game (reaching critical late game civics early because I simply have more cities making culture that gets me there faster).
In your case you had 12 cities(?) in your screenshot.
Adding another 5-6 on top of that is big, since you're now coasting around 17-18 cities that just create an essentially 50% bigger snowball (50% increase in cities compared to playing peacefully off of 12).
I know that you cannot directly compare a hypothetical scenario like that since every game is different, but that's essentially what you're looking at in terms of upside when you get the experience to pull it off (and its a question of when really).

I think Holy Order is a more 'reliable' and 'flexible' choice for non-elite CIV players.

And speaking of experience that I meantioned above, don't sell yourself short, you're already pretty damn good when you can get below 200 turns on deity.
Most people (according to the statistics someone posted a few years ago), showed that only a very small minority ever even plays on deity - winning it is even harder, especially in 200t (many people cheese and just wait for GDRs and have all other wins disabled).
I think that you can definitely pull even further head when you just get used to new things and try to open other avenues.
T191 is already pretty solid, and I wouldnt be surprised if you got your first 180ish win rather soon, with how fast you're progressing atm.

From your screenshot btw I noticed a few things that I will comment on at some later time, but which could probably help improve a bit if you're not already doing it (hard to tell from the screenshot as its more of a "meta" thing with how you want to play the early game "milestone wise").