Totally Insane Assyrian Piety Dominationa Guide

[Monthar]

The goal of this strategy is to get the Heathen Conversion reformation belief and use the barbs to help you dominate the planet as quickly as possible.

Capital BO
Scout, Monument, Scout, Shrine, Archer, Archer, Settler, Granary, Caravan. Then archer/settler until you can build siege towers. Build at least 2 siege towers.

Techs
Pottery, Archery, Mining, Animal Husbandry, Luxuries, then beeline to mathematics for the siege towers.

Settle new cities on top of luxuries.

2nd-N city BO (N is 4 to 6 cities, depending on number of unique luxuries in the area and space.)
Shrine, Monument, Archer, Worker (if you need it), archers until you can build Siege Towers.

Demand tribute from any CS you can to keep your cash up. Use the first trade route to send food to your other cities to get them going. You won't need the food at the capital yet, if you're just building settlers.

Policies
Piety Opener, extra faith from shrines/temples, cheaper purchases, Beeline the reformation. If you haven't enhanced by the time the next policy comes up, finish the tree for the free prophet to enhance.

Religion
Pantheon - Whatever gives the most faith for your cities followed by whatever gives the most faith + culture.
Founder - Ceremonial Burial 1 global happiness for every 2 cities following your religion. Yes is was changed in BNW from every city to every 2 cities, but it's still global happiness.
Follower 1 - Mosques because they give more faith than Pagodas, which will help you buy all of your buildings faster.
Follower 2 - Pagodas, Cathedrals, Monasteries.
Enhancer - Holy Order - Missionaries and inquisitors cost 30% less faith.

As soon as you enhance buy a missionary. Only use 1 of its conversions on one of your cities or a CS. Then run it around to all the barbs to get free troops.

As soon as you have a few archers send them and your starting warrior to the nearest AI. You don't have to wait for the siege towers for the first target if it's early enough. In fact if you start sending your units towards them but not close enough to get them to ask about your units, you can watch for when they send a settler out. If it's early enough, 2 archers and your warrior should be able take the settler if it's escorted by a warrior. Anything stronger and you'll need another archer or two. If you're lucky you can catch one unescorted.

Try to capture settlers or steal workers from the AI civs, not the CS's. You should be able to get plenty of workers without pissing off all the CS's any more than demanding tribute does.

After your religion is enhanced. Go into Patronage to Consulates and pledge to protect every CS. After these two policies, go with whatever you like.

Once you get a few siege engines out and a few missionaries running around converting barbs, all that's left is to just march across the map killing off all the AI's. At this point you can start building whatever support buildings, wonders, etc. that you want, because you shouldn't need to build any more troops.

Raze every non-capital city you capture. This not only keeps your happiness in check, it also leaves plenty of space for new barb camps to spawn so your missionaries can get fresh troops.

Refuse all peace offers.

Soon you'll find you're #1 in tech and #1 military and are easily walking all over all the AI's.

I've only tested this strategy on Emperor. However, it can probably be pulled off on Immortal or Deity, if you can found your religion, because the AI almost never takes the Heathen Conversion reformation belief.

 

[Fire0rb]

The problem with Religion based strategies on Deity is that faith is so easy to come by for the AI that you got sometimes 2 enhanced religions by turn 50.

I would like to know about timings of your strategy because i dont see this anyway near happening because you get no early bonusses to food or settler production with denying Trad and/or liberty.

But i find it very good that we try to get use out of all the reformation beliefs but this is one which is in my opinion utterly useless on Deity because you wont find a lot of barbs Turn 50+ and i doubt you get any of these religious buildings which are essential for the strategy.

In my last Deity game i founded turn 35 with a good DF start as the 3rd religion and Ethopia alrdy enhanced and guess what was not there...yes any of these buildings but the monasteries...sometimes it is really painful on Deity with religion

 

[Monthar]

The only thing that really matters is getting Heathen Conversion as long as you are able to found a religion that is. You don't even need high faith production as long as you have plenty of culture to blast thru the piety tree, because if you can finish the tree quickly you'll get a free prophet at the end that can be used to found a religion even if it's the last religion founded in the game. Of course if your game has several of the highly religious civs in it, you probably won't be able to get the religion.

Also, as I specified, I only tested this on Emperor. There are a lot better immortal and deity players than I am so I'd like to request those players help test this strat out on those difficulties. I am about to try it on deity myself to see if I can pull it off.

 

[Hammer Rabbi]

how does the missionary conversion mechanic work? do you just walk up to them and they get converted or is there an action they have to take to convert them?

 

[Monthar]

Just walk up to them and they convert. It'll even convert multiple barbs at the same time if the missionary an get next to more than one at a time. Imagine there's a barb camp with 1 barb in it and 1 in each of the 6 tiles around it. Your missionary has enough moves left to walk all the way to the camp. As it gets next to one of the barbs that barb converts. The missionary then walks to the same tile that barb is on converting the one in the camp and the two next to the first one converted. Now the missionary walks into the now cleared camp's tile and converts the 3 on the other side of the camp. Now you have 7 new units and a cleared barb camp.

 

[Hammer Rabbi]

interesting. thanks for clearing it up.

 

[torni]

With this strategy, is it better to clear the barb camp or leave it intact and just harvest the new barbarians that pop up next to it?

 

[newarkinvaders]

Gah I had a game I was in the middle of but now I am going to go home and play this instead !

 

[Monthar]

If you wanted to keep the camp you'd have to leave the missionary at least 2 tiles from it, because if it's next to the camp the converted barb will clear it as soon as it spawns.

I usually just clear camps, because that's a little extra cash. However, you could keep the camps going and just farm units until several CS's ask for the camp to be cleared.

 

[BorisTheCat]

you wont find a lot of barbs Turn 50+

It may pay to dip into unhappiness, then. I can't find the thread atm, but it's been confirmed that Heathen Conversion works on the barbs spawned due to unhappiness.

This strat does seem pretty nutty, but I'd like to try it. Biggest weakness seems to be the lack of gold income. I guess you would have to stockpile gold from conquering cities since you're probably running a deficit. I'd think it would be hard to keep the momentum going however, when you're gathering barbs from all over the place and gathering them together across rough terrain with no roads.

 

[kwidem]

.

 

[Monthar]

You can send trade routes to the CS's to keep your economy from crashing. You can also leave the some of the AI's with a small city to send a trade route to after you've taken their capital. You can gift some of the converted barbs to the CS's. Lastly, there's demanding tribute from the CS's for cash, which if you're #1 in military is fairly easy to do with just a unit or two near their borders.

 

[Deau]

It's a bit of a bubble strategy - that is, you grow, but at the same time your economy and happiness are so bad that the bubble might 'pop', and you may not be able to consolidate your new position.

But then you would be able to grab newly created barbs from unhappiness via the UA and either zerg or sell obsolete units to recover gold.

I wonder if this would be doable. Stay below <20 happiness all game and just keep on warmongering from spawned barbs (that would probably eventually outtech you millitarily)

 

[mrs0x]

Very interesting Piety start.. i shal try this...

 

[Hammer Rabbi]

im curious, are the barbs generated from revolt the same as barbs from huts? would this work if you sent your happiness to -50?

 

[Light Cleric]

Also don't forget on immortal and esp deity the AI is often VERY aggressive with barb hunting, often sending huge squads a long way to clear camps.

 

[Monthar]

im curious, are the barbs generated from revolt the same as barbs from huts? would this work if you sent your happiness to -50?

Yes, the "rebels" are the same as regular barbs and can be converted. In BNW you only need to be at -10 or higher unhappiness for the rebels to spawn. Since you don't really need to build anything else, nor settle any new cities once you've got the Heathen Conversion and some siege towers, the production hit, prevention of growth and prevention of building/buying settlers doesn't really mater.

Also don't forget on immortal and esp deity the AI is often VERY aggressive with barb hunting, often sending huge squads a long way to clear camps.

That's another reason this strategy is more for Emperor and below. However, when the AI is warring it's less concerned with the barb hunting. Also as you defeat AI's keeping only their capitals and razing all their other cities, that leaves large area for new camps to spawn, especially if playing on pangaea.

If you're worried about barbs pillaging your trade routes to the CS's, just station some missionaries along those trade routes, just don't put them to sleep. Then when a barb is moving in to pillage the route, the missionary can run over and convert it.

It also helps to at least open Honor after you get your reformation belief so you know when new camps spawn and where they are.

 

[Hammer Rabbi]

ive only dealt with revolt a handful of times. i thought maybe the deeper you go into unhappiness the more frequent or more units are spawned by it. i think i remember seeing 6 units spawn at once when I had a mega-unhappy number. is there anything to that?

 

[Monthar]

I don't know if it'll make the rebels spawn faster. However, keep in mind that for each -1 you have a combat penalty of -2% up to a max of -40% combat penalty at -20 .