Hey all, relatively new Vox player here. I got tired of warmongering and hearing that wide play was the only way to go, so I set out to build the tallest Civ possible. This was the result and I'm pretty pleased with it, so here goes an attempt at a guide.
A Brief Preface
This strategy is based on four principles:
1) Massive Population Growth
2) Steady streams of assorted Great People
3) Wonder hoarding
4) Ignoring the rest of the world because they're losers who cannot into space. Especially Poland.
This is achieved by compounding several wonders, beliefs and abilities together to make them far greater than the sum of their parts.
Why China Works
At first glance, China doesn't appear to have a strong Science game. Sure, the Paper Maker is great, but that can't carry you to such an early Science Victory. What's really carrying China is the insane growth ability:
Imperial Examination
Cities gain +75% Growth during Golden Ages and We Love the Empress Day. Great People grant Golden Age points and trigger 10 turns of We Love the Empress Day when born.
For the longest time, I thought this meant that you just needed a Golden Age or a We Love the Empress Day. I was wrong. These effects stack. I'm sure some of you are saying, "Well, duh..." but this blew my mind when I found out. That means any city with both effects has 150% increased growth. If you're using these abilities correctly, you should absolutely have a lead in population and thus specialists against every other Civ. Even India doesn't see this kind of bonus growth until much later in the game.
This is easily China's strongest ability in my opinion, and what we're going to use to snowball, but there's other important things to consider. As it says, birthing a Great Person provides 10 turns of We Love the Empress Day and grants Golden Age points. Combined with the fact that we will be gaining a fair amount of Merchants, which grant 10 turns for every city, we can easily maintain a permanent Golden Age and We Love the Empress Day.
Aside from the normal benefits provided by these, our Founder belief is going to synergize with WLtED as well:
Theocratic Rule
We Love the King Day boosts the output of a city by 15%.
China is uniquely suited to taking advantage of this founder belief due to the ease in which you get them. This will make your raw yield outputs much stronger than even your massive population would suggest.
This leads into our Enhancer belief, which is once again uniquely useful for China:
Sainthood
+1 in Holy City per 6 Foreign Followers.
Gain 100 Faith each time a Great Person is expended, bonus scales with Era.
One of the issues with going tall with a heavy emphasis on Faith is simply not generating enough of it. Traditional Faith generation favors wide play greatly, so we need to look for other avenues.
This is our other other avenue. Sainthood doesn't care what kind of Great Person you create, and you get a hefty sum of Faith when you do. 900+ late game. For comparison, I was only generating 360 Faith per turn when I won my Science Victory. Civs like Korea may have a bonus to generating Great People, but they won't have the population to actually slot into the specialist slots as fast as China. This allows us to buy far more Scientists in the end game than most Tradition Civs, and that's key: it's not about generating the most Scientists throughout the game, it's about generating them at the right time.
General Overview
Religion
Spoiler:
Our, Pantheon, Beliefs and Reformation picks are surprisingly flexible, but the Founder and Enhancer beliefs are very important. The most important thing though is to get a strong early Culture Pantheon so we can get key early Wonders. The ideal setup is as follows:
Ancestor Worship
Theocratic Rule
Cathedrals
Cooperation
Sainthood
To the Glory of God
Ancestor worship is great because, if you prioritize Councils early, it is a strong early Culture Pantheon that will also work in any situation. The fact that it scales well for China (70+ Faith per turn late game) is a nice extra. If you can get an absurd 4 Wheat start for God of the Sun, or another equally strong starting location dependent Culture opener, go for that instead.
Theocratic Rule is simply made for China. By the time you hit the Industrial Age you will have a permanent We Love the Empress Day in every city.
Cathedrals is an obvious choice because we are going to be building farms on every inch of land we can, but it can be hard to get. It's also not required to succeed. If it's available when you Found, grab it. If not, don't sweat. Consider slow building Notre Dame in your capitol for the free Cathedral if it's still up and you have hammers to spare.
Cooperation is nice, and I feel like the AI doesn't prioritize it much since it was nerfed, so you should usually be able to get it. In ideal games, I've had it popping 2-3 times a turn until my cities were all 60+, so it definitely scales well.
Sainthood is the one that probably seems out of place, but it's actually key to the strategy. Unlike most Science Victory Civs, we're not prioritizing Great Scientists exclusively, so we're going to be getting a massive amount of Faith from popping Great People. I'd hazard to say that it's the main source of Faith generation late game. It's that good.
To the Glory of God is really good, but not actually required. We will be going Tradition, Piety and Rationalism, so we can already purchase our most important Great People. Definitely get it if it's up, but don't worry if you cant.
Wonders
Spoiler:
Here's our basic shopping list of Wonders. Most of them are very key, so we will be using Great Engineers to ensure we get them. These will be marked with a hammer to indicated this, with two indicating multiple Great Engineers.
Pyramids
Hanging Gardens
Oracle
University of Sankore
Red Fort
Leaning Tower
Porcelain Tower
Statue of Liberty
Empire State Building
Hubble Telescope
CERN
That's a lot of hammers. There's only one really required Wonder though: Oracle. The reason we devote so much of our early game to Culture is to guarantee we can get this with our first Great Engineer. This is because the slight advantage in policies is what allows us to snowball the rest of the Wonders. I've still won games without it, but it can delay you as many as 50 turns if you miss it.
I've been able to consistently get the Pyramids even in Immortal difficulty. The extra Growth, Worker strength, Culture and GE points are all good, so I'd say go for it. But, if you're feeling it's too risky, or you noticed Egypt next door, you can just build a settler instead and it won't hurt too much. Hanging Gardens and Sankore are also both nice things to have that you can usually get, so we slow build them.
Red Fort is basically just a freebie. You'll already have the tech from grabbing Musketmen, so you just pop a GE to build it, pop the GE it gives you to build Leaning Tower then pop the GE that gives you to hopefully build the Porcelain Tower. C-c-c-c-combo!
The last four will be discussed in the detailed guide, but assuming you've built the ones I've mentioned, you should have no problem building the others.
Special mentions:
Stonehenge - Major crap shoot these days. On top of that, it's actually a later Pantheon than building Shrine first for Tradition. Don't bother on higher difficulties.
Mausoleum of Halicarnassus - I know what you're thinking. Think of all the Culture this will give you over time! You have the policies and the techs. It's right there...
Be strong. Resist it. This is a trap. You don't have the hammers or the engineers to waste on this right now. Send it a postcard from space.
Slater Mill - I will GE build this if I have very little to no coal in my borders.
Sydney Opera - Sometimes you will not quite have enough policies for the Hubble Telescope, which is basically how you close out the game. If you have a coastal city and an extra couple Great Engineers coming up, build this. It'll save you some turns.
Great People
Spoiler:
As I mentioned, we're basically going to be churning out all of them eventually. What we do with them is key though. Once you hit Atomic Age, your first Faith purchase of each Great Person actually nearly pays for itself due to Sainthood, so you should buy at least one of each aside from maybe Generals and Musicians due to cooldown limits.
Prophets
I never Faith purchase these as I generate enough in the early game. My first two are always used on my Religion, and the rest are used to spread enough that I can build my Religion National Wonder. If you find that you're surrounded by Faith mongers, use the second one to spread and consider building the Hagia Sophia for the third to Enhance.
Artists
Use the first one for a Great Work, but after that they should all be popped for a Golden Age. Purchasing two generally ensures a near permanent Golden Age after Industrial.
Musicians
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I have never gone for a Culture victory intentionally, so I just make Great Works.
Writers
Pop for Culture every time. You'll want to buy about three, but wait until you have your Guilds set up.
Diplomats
We'll be getting these later than any other Great Person, but you should still make use of them. Try to get Embassies with City States if you can, but if not, use them to secure temporary alliances for key strategic resources like coal for factories if you have none.
Generals
I just use these to steal key resources, otherwise they sit around in case of a surprise DoW.
Admirals
Free luxury! You'll should only ever buy one though.
Merchants
Always send to City States. They will give every city 10 days of We Love the Empress, which we want for all kinds of reasons. I usually buy two max, always at least one.
Engineers
Build all of the things, of course. Never plant. You'll need to Faith purchase about 2-4 of these, and all free Great People should be used on this.
Scientists
Finally, on to the meat of the strat. I basically plant Scientists on non farmable lands in my capitol until I have a Research Lab in every city, though I will sometimes bulb one to reach Research Labs if one is born close to then.
Here's the surprising part: do not buy a single Great Scientist until you have a Research Lab in every city and you're working nearly every specialist. Once you do, you're basically done buying other Great People. Just set your religion to auto buy them on cooldown and bulb them when they come up. This is how we make a mad dash through the tech tree and finish so early.
Settling Cities
Spoiler:
You will only ever settle four cities. Even if you capture one, burn it to the ground or liberate it or something. Having additional cities does not substantially increase your Science production due to so much of it being in your capitol, and it tanks your policy acquisition.
Obviously this means that the cities you do settle need to be carefully planned. Unlike most strats, we're not terribly concerned with things like Luxuries or strategic resources. Those are just bonuses. What we want are three things:
1) Space for workable land. We're going to have massive populations, so you're going to need places to put them. You don't need to ensure max tiles for every city, but avoid settling at minimum ranges or mostly coastal locations. You want farms as far the the eye can see.
2) Trees to cut. Tradition has absolutely garbage production outside of the capitol, and this will do a lot to help set up your three additional cities. At the very least, it will help you get Walls up in time.
3) As few tiles that cannot take a farm as possible. This means avoid desert and tundra, obviously, but also avoid hills without a river or heavily mountainous regions. Forests are perfect due to all the free production.
That's about it. Try to keep an eye out for strong Culture tiles like Wheat for your Pantheon, but don't worry about it too much. Ancestor Worship is usually good enough. Oh, and settling on rivers is nice for a slight edge with Baths and Wells, but it's not a huge deal.
Full Guide
I've always found step by step guides to at once be too hard to follow and not quite detailed enough. As such, I'm going provide lists of techs and policies to follow, then write a more general walkthrough explaining my thought process and priorities at different points in the game.
Research Priorities
This is mostly going to serve as a quick reference book for what you should be working towards. I won't be naming every Tech from Agriculture to Future Tech, so if nothing is mentioned from A to B then assume you can just click the next one and turn off your brain.
Spoiler:
The Wheel
Calendar
Trapping
Animal Husbandry
Bronze Working
Construction
Iron Working
Writing
Philosophy
Engineering
Metal Casting
Machinery
Education
Civil Service
Astronomy
Banking
Economics
Scientific Theory
Chemistry
Metallurgy
Railroad
Steam Power
Industrialization
Electricity
Penicillin
Military Science
Combustion
Ecology
Robotics
Particle Physics
Future Tech
Piety Opener
Organized Religion
Divine Right
Iconography
Monasticism
Syncretism
Rationalism Opener
Enlightenment
Scientific Revolution
Empiricism
Academics
Free Thought
Freedom
Universal Healthcare
Avant Garde
Civil Society
Urbanization
Whatever Tier 2 fits the moment.
Space Procurements
Walkthrough
Spoiler:
Okay, for the most part, you'll want to settle on spot. The only reason you shouldn't is if you can gain a Culture tile for one turn of movement. You then want to build:
Shrine
Monument
Scout
Council
Archer
Your warrior should be using this time to get a lay of the land. He's mostly looking for nearby settling location though, so don't let him stray too far. He needs to be back in time to protect your first worker.
At some point in there, you'll buy the worker and gain a Pantheon. Unless you have something like a four wheat start for God of the Sun, that Pantheon should be Ancestor Worship. Your worker should be spending his time connecting resources for trade and chopping treas. If you have very little to trade, including horses and iron, you're going to have to research Trade early and get a Market and Caravan up as soon as possible. This is usually not necessary, but don't let yourself go bankrupt. Dedicate Monuments to the Ancestors for extra Culture when prompted.
As soon as you have enough policies, you should build:
Pyramids
Archer
Settler
Archer
Settler
Archer
Hopefully you should be chopping trees in your capitol to speed up this section significantly. Always have an Archer escorting your Settler and have them garrison in the new city.
In the new cities, if I have trees to chop for them I will build:
Council
Monument
Shrine
Walls
We start with Councils due to Ancestor Worship. Obviously if you did not take this, you do not need to prioritize these. We build Monuments second because with Dedication to Ancestors and Tradition's Splendor Policy, they provide a whopping 4 Culture each. If there isn't many trees to chop, or I have a hyper warmongering neighbour like Askia, I will build the Walls before the Shrine.
When you gain enough Faith to Found, you should always grab Theocratic Rule and, if available, Cathedral. This will hurt your Faith generation in the short term, but it doesn't matter because you just won Religion by getting Cathedral. Sit on your Faith until you can Enhance and then start spreading after that.
If you cannot get Cathedrals, just grab Cooperation. In this case, you should buy two Missionaries before your next Great Prophet because the increased Faith generation should offset the cost. Hopefully you can use your 4th Spread Religion to convert a Civ without a Religion. Later, when you reach Machinery, consider building Notre Dame in your capitol for the free Cathedral if you have the hammers to spare.
At this points I will usually buy more workers and train a few Spearmen in the capitol. This will depend on your GPT though, as you're still tight for cash and don't want to bankrupt. The goal is to have 1 Archer, Spearman and Worker for each city, but spend what you can. You'll also have your first Great People born around now. Make a Great Work with the Artist (this is the only time we'll do this), plant the Scientist and, if he's born before you can build the Oracle, save the Engineer. If you can be bothered, you should micro manage your Specialists so your Engineer is born right when you need him. Make sure to keep your forces upgraded as funds become available. See Great People section for in depth uses for each type.
After these have been completed, I will typically build these in every city:
The capitol should interrupt this order to build the Hanging Gardens whenever it becomes available.
Once you have Machinery, hopefully you have either snagged the Cathedrals Follower belief or built Notre Dame in your capitol. Combined with the huge amount of farms you should already have, this should solve your gold issues for now. This is good because you absolutely need Chu-Ko-Nu as soon as possible. I cannot tell you how many times a Civ has declared war against me around this time. These units will absolutely be the difference between a sacked city or not. Best case scenario though is that they discourage your neighbours from attacking in the first place.
Because you should have hopefully solved your Gold issues by now, you'll want to start sending Internal Trade Routes from your capitol. If you have a weak start for production in your satellite cities, you'll want to send hammers. But if they're doing alright, you should send food. We want to be getting growth in every city every 2-3 turns so they're ready for the end game.
From now on, I'll just give you the building priorities for every city:
Don't forget oddball buildings like the Zoo and the Military Academy. I kept forgetting they had Scientist slots.
Once you hit Public Schools, you'll be able to Faith purchase Great People. I usually start off with an Artist, Merchant and Engineer. The Engineer will likely be used on Red Fort. Use the Engineer from Redfort to build Leaning Tower. Use the Engineer from Leaning Tower to build the Porcelain Tower if it's still up. Bask in the awesomeness of this combo.
Upgrade Chu-Ko-Nu to Musketmen. These will be what protects you from the barbarian hordes while you escape to space.
Believe it or not, we're nearing the end game now. Once you reveal coal, you should use another Great Engineer to build Slater Mill if you have none. Use the extra coal to build a Train Station in your capitol and a Seaport in your coastal city if you have one. You'll need more though because you need Factories for Spaceship Factories, so look for potential Great General land grabs or City State alliances for coal if you have none. It's fine to lose Alliance later as long as you get the buildings up first. If you can, pass the World Science Initiative in the WC.
You should be buying Writers and Engineers now. If things are going right, you should finish Rationalism before hitting Electricity. Take Freedom and immediately pop a Great Engineer to build the Empire State Building. Use the free Great Person for an Engineer and use that to build the Statue of Liberty. It is really unlikely, but if another Civ is Freedom and has as many techs as you at this point, you can spend 3 Engineers to build both of them in two turns. Better safe than sorry.
By now you should have around 1000 GPT from all your specialists and (Empire State Building + Academics = Insane GPT) so you should rush buy the Research Lab and Medical Lab.
Once you have your Military Academies in every city, it's time to start Faith purchasing Great Scientists. You'll want to have one Engineer on hand and one coming up soon though, because Hubble and CERN require four Engineers in total. Buy another if you don't. Bulb every Scientist, obviously.
Things are about to accelerate like crazy, so you need to be ready for some stuff. If you have no Aluminum in your borders, you need to build Recycling Centres in every city. Once you hit Ecology, you can build Wind/Hydro plants in every city, but we'll have to sell them later to free up Aluminum for Space Parts. You're also going to want to start saving Gold, because we'll need about 20,000g for space parts soon.
If you've done everything right, you should be riding a wave of Great Scientists towards Robotics by around turn 310. Hopefully you have enough Policies for Hubble. If not, hopefully you have enough extra Great Engineers to hammer out a Sydney Opera in a coastal city. If that's not an option, just purchase an extra Writer and suffer in your inefficiency.
Double Great Engineer the Hubble and bulb the two free Great Scientists. This will instantly get you to Satellites. Build the Apollo Program for another free Great Scientist and bulb that too. Hopefully you get your last natural born Great Scientist around this time and you can instantly bulb to Particle Physics. Double Great Engineer CERN and that should basically take you to Future Tech.
Spend two turns buying Space Parts in 3 cities. You should be able to instantly launch them, so you only need 3 Spaceship Factories and three spare Aluminum for a total of 6. Sell off Wind/Hydro plants until you have enough.
Congratulations. If everything went well, you should have a Science Victory around turn 325.
Conclusions
So there you have it. I think you get a cookie if you got through all that. I'm not gonna give you one though, you have to go get it. I just meant to say that you're morally obligated a cookie.
I said you'll finish around 325, but I've actually finished on turn 295 on an intentionally ideal map on Prince. The sky is the limit for this strategy. Or space, I guess. You get the picture.
I'd appreciated any criticism about the actual build or the guide itself, especially about the walkthrough section. I'll admit I kind of blew through the latter half of it, so I'm sure it's completely illegible. I'd also love some stories from people trying it out, so let me know if you do.
Cheers
edit: Added an explanation as to why I think China is the best for this strat. It makes for some redundancies later, but I'd rather have them still in their easily referenced sections than take them out.
Perhaps you should outline why China is a good pick for this strategy.
I have been doing a pretty similar strategy with Korea for a while, emphasizing culture to get wonders and produciton, and not focusing science till later on. After reading your guide I do think that China is a viable choice. The Chu Ko Nu has a big advantage over the Hwacha in that its upgraded units don't need iron, that can be very important.
Have you had difficulties founding a religion? You don't mention world congress in your walkthrough
You're right, I'll edit in a detailed explanation of why this works well as soon as I have caffeine in me.
Korea is another Civ I've been meaning to try with this general build, but I have a feeling that it won't perform better. China's insane population growth is actually what makes it so strong here, which Korea doesn't have at all. As I mentioned, only having four cities means that traditional late game Faith generation is pretty weak. China (actually India does this pretty well too) is uniquely able to take advantage of Sainthood as a Faith generator in both the early and late game due to filling out specialist slots much faster.
I had trouble founding at first, but that was mostly solved by building Shrines earlier. If you have very little production in your satellite cities, you may have trouble founding. This is one of the reasons it's important to look for trees to chop. Oh, and I forgot to mention that you'll actually be getting quite a bit of Faith from Ancestor Worship, even in the early game. My capitol very quickly hits 9 population due to early We Love the Empress days and your satellite cities should hit 3 within a dozen turns or so. That's an extra 6 Faith per turn very early in the game, which helps a lot with getting your first Great Prophet. You may not be first, but you should be able to found.
Growth buildings are a bit odd though. Aqueduct and Granary are both prioritized quite early due to there simply not being much to build at that point, and you get free Hospitals from Freedom. That just leaves the Agribusiness and the Medical Lab, both of which I end up rush buying as soon as they come up because I have more than enough gold by that point.
As for pop allocation, it's a bit of a balancing act. The rule of thumb is that you want to be growing each city at least every 2-3 turns during Golden Ages and We Love the Empress Day. If you're comfortably managing that then you can slot more specialists. Honestly though, China has so much growth that I often just leave them on auto pilot and let them sort themselves out. Internal food trade routes usually get you where you want to be.
On Emperor and Immortal, I usually get 2-4 Declarations of War in a game, and most of these are pre Industrial (sometimes it feels like my hidden starting bias is Next to Shaka.) That's why it's so important to have a strong defensive force of Crossbowmen/Musketmen to repel these attacks.
I finished a game with this strategy and really enjoyed it. However, do you restart at the beginning if you don't like your start? I had to roll 3 times before I saw anything that could farm as you described
I probably over stressed the importance of getting farm land. It's a nice bonus, but it's only an extra few food and production in the grand scheme of things.
It may also depend on your map type, because things like Communitas tend to have so many resources on them that it's difficult to get farm clusters going. I exclusively play Pangaea myself, so maybe that's colored my perception.
edit:
By the way, how did it feel compared to Korea? Just curious.
I wonder if Aesthetics would be better than Piety with the free pickable GP and general boosts to culture and cultural GP generation, meaning more Artists. I guess Piety is mostly about the internal trade route boosts and extra Faith/cheaper Faith buying?
I'm also really surprised a guide to a Science Victory with China never even mentioned Synagogues, though I pretty much default to Cathedrals + Farm spam myself anyways.
I never realized China's boosts from GA and WLTKD stack either. Nice guide, I'll have to try it myself at some point.
You're right, Synagogue is easily the second best religious building and should be grabbed in the event that you can't get Cathedrals. I just forgot to mention it. Will edit the guide. Much appreciated.
I considered Aesthetics, but Piety has a lot more going for it than people realise. Aside from the things you mentioned, there's a lot of useful free yields provided in the mid game to help your less than impressive satellite cities. Syncretism and the finisher alone provide 7 production for each city, not to mention all the other yields and Scientist slot. The reduced cost for Faith purchasing is easily going to be more valuable than the free GP in the long run, which comes at a time when we honestly don't need a free GP anyway. That just leaves the increased Artist, Writer and Musician generation. After Industrial, you're going to have a permanent GA anyway, so the extra natural Artists are wasted. The Writers could be nice, but we already have enough in our build in time for Hubble, and that's all that really matters post Industrial. Musicians are simply a non factor.
I probably over stressed the importance of getting farm land. It's a nice bonus, but it's only an extra few food and production in the grand scheme of things.
It may also depend on your map type, because things like Communitas tend to have so many resources on them that it's difficult to get farm clusters going. I exclusively play Pangaea myself, so maybe that's colored my perception.
edit:
By the way, how did it feel compared to Korea? Just curious.
I was on communitas. Generally I like it compared to Korea (and Babylon).
The biggest upside is that China gets much better use out of religion. The UUs all have various strengths and weaknesses; the paper maker is in a better spot on the tech tree than the Seowon, I was next to Askai and found military and production techs to be much higher priority than education. With this I didn't really get much science until the mid game, when I surged. It was a fun comeback, the pyramids+chop lots of forests is an excellent combo for this start. As Korea I fount myself working a food tile over a specialist quite often, which felt bad. I was putting more into world congress than you are, as Korea you can work any specialist really. Playing tall your score can be rather low, I've had world science initiative gave me +15% science when I was already tech leader, and its nice to be able to block scholars in residence and defend against tourism or diplomatic policies.
The downside with China is I wish I unlocked archers a bit earlier, Korea's extra science was really great in the ancient era.
Thanks for the reply. Lots of interesting things to think about.
I hadn't considered the flexibility of Korea's specialists and how that could let you have more of an impact on the WC while still being Science focused. I often hoped the Science Initiative was passed for the reasons you mentioned, but rarely had the ability to ensure it was passed myself. I'll have to try prioritizing Great Diplomats much earlier and see if that can get me enough control of the WC to reliably get it.
I had trouble founding at first, but that was mostly solved by building Shrines earlier. If you have very little production in your satellite cities, you may have trouble founding. This is one of the reasons it's important to look for trees to chop. Oh, and I forgot to mention that you'll actually be getting quite a bit of Faith from Ancestor Worship, even in the early game. My capitol very quickly hits 9 population due to early We Love the Empress days and your satellite cities should hit 3 within a dozen turns or so. That's an extra 6 Faith per turn very early in the game, which helps a lot with getting your first Great Prophet. You may not be first, but you should be able to found.
It's hard to imagine how you can count on founding if you build shrines outside your capital third or fourth... except for Ancestor Worship, which I've never tried. Otherwise you use basically the same religious approach that I do. And Like Crazy G, I'll probably focus on GDs more. It'll be my first game ever using Piety outside of Byzantium. I'm really looking forward to it, though, because I still have only achieved a Science Victory on Immortal with the Aztecs, going Authority/Statecraft/Rationalism/Freedom. Mainly, I want to see how to avoid the unhappiness that's crippled me on progress at this level.
I think it might have to do with the amount of pop and culture I generate on Emperor vs Immortal... and I'm embarrassed to admit that until now, I pretty much use my GWs and GAs to create Great Works. So that's how all you guys have permanent WLTKDs late in the game! I can't believe I've gotten as far as I have without that. There are a lot of ways to skin the VP cat, I guess.
Councils no longer have maintence of -1 gold which is going to help this build substantially. I played with a little bit more, I would say its a bit greedy. When it works its awesome and unstoppable, but if you fall short just a little bit it can really sting you (china in general seems to be a bit of a "win more" civ). For example in a recent game I started near Songhai and even after reloading, I could not both defend and found religion, and if you don't get a good religion I would say that Korea does a better job. With that said some extra gold from no maintancence councils will be great in the early game
I'm also not convinced that Piety is ideal, the middle row is great but the other 2 are not, the border growth seems useless, +1 happiness from temples shouldn't matter. I would maybe consider grabbing 2 Aesthetics policies if you get To The Glory of God. Also consider more diplomacy investments, the smaller your empire the larger those CS yields are.
To be fair, Songhai is probably the most difficult civ to defend against, even in the hands of the AI. In any given game, unless I'm going warmonger myself, I almost always expand away from them if possible to reduce border tension and present less juicy targets for him to attack. I'll even give up good settling spots, as I know I'll lose more yields defending than I'll gain from the better location.
You're right that not founding is very punishing though, as it can add as many as 80 turns to your victory, and this strategy is definitely a Win More deal, but I was able to found in the vast majority of my test games.
As I outlined before, Aesthetics really doesn't have much going for it, and I definitely wouldn't recommend splitting your policies. Sure, you'll gain some culture from every GP, but you'll lose the University of Sankore, which gives science for every GP and a free Mosque, which gives +20% culture during golden ages, so basically all the time by that point. The right policy adds 6-9 science and 4-6 production to every city, which is very nice for Tradition's production starved cities. Border growth is deceptively powerful: it gives you more time to react to declarations of war, casts a wider net for late game strategic resources and lets your cities work potentially better tiles faster. On top of that, you're missing out on Piety's amazing finisher of +3 to every yield for every city, 33% increased internal trade route (which the guide uses extensively) and you cannot purchase Great Artists in the event that you fail to get To the Glory of God. This is even less attractive now that Hubble has reduced policy requirements as you're trading all that for maybe more culture that you don't really need.
I actually missed Sankore twice (on immortal and emporer), but I suppose that if I keep my eye on the win condition you are right the culture of Aesthetics doesn't matter. You have certainly played this build more than I, there is probably room for refinement in my play, and some bad luck (honestly being next to Songhai is like playing a difficulty level higher). With that said I do love watching all those yields roll in once this strategy gets going, it feels awesome to play.
The new patch seems to make building Scrivener's Office, Chanceries and Wire Service no-brainers for this strategy. How does this in turn affect choosing Piety over Statecraft (or a mix with Piety and Aesthetics)?
Yeah, the changes are definitely interesting. I'll have to play some games as Statecraft and update the guide. My gut feeling is actually that it won't be any faster though, and often much harder to control the outcome due to the swingy nature of the WC and CS. One of the reasons I ignored diplomacy was so that you wouldn't be dependent on outside forces and conditions to win, so Statecraft is going to require significant benefits to be better than that.
Basically, I think building Chanceries earlier will be strong, but playing Statecraft may not be. Will have to test though.
I often played Korea as statecraft and frankly I don't think you are going to get much out of it with this play style, unless I'm really underestimating those changes to chanceries. But for this build I think you really want to avoid war, so getting friendly with too many city states is risky. Instead I would just work the diplomat at all times, get a few embassies out and invest printing press to make yourself the host. This should give you enough power to get 2 good proposals through (science initiative and peace accords), after that just play defense and make weak proposals to make friends. You should be a strong diplomatic player all game, but not so strong you become a threat to the other civs. Statecraft just won't help the science victory much, scholasticism is going to be a drop in the bucket compared to your regular science output. Maybe if your religion spread like wildfire or the other nations just weren't strong in the Congress you could push for diplomatic, but I doubt it would come before science.
I spent some time trying to piece together a strategy where you only grabbed that part of piety, but I think just straight piety is best. Here is my breakdown
-Piety's opener - it can help you get the population to reform which is something. I consider this pretty weak overall
-Organized Religion -25% faith costs is incredible, the slight boost from temples is eh, but the savings are enormous due to how many great people get bought
-Iconography - You work a ton of specialists so +1 faith per is great, the free artist starts your golden age spam
-Monastery -a great building and very cheap, the extra scientist is important if you are going for the under 300 turn win
-Syncretism - The production is ok, the science is pretty negligible. You are hyping this up, and its not bad but I would say its below par for a policy.
-Divine Right - Frankly this policy doesn't do much, but you grab it just to finish. I like your optimistic approach to the border growth but you could just buy the tiles fairly cheap, and my empire was always very happy at this point
-The finisher is quite strong, its what I was overlooking before. It seems stronger in a wide empire, but the artist purchase, Sankore, and the boost to internal production routes are solid. I say internal production routes because I'm pretty sure if you are running internal food at this point, you are doing it wrong though. If you have some degree of influence you get bonus food growth in your city from international trade, as well as the gold. In my recent game I got 8% boost form my neighbor, compared to 12 food per turn on the route. So that comes out to slightly less food but gold and science, plus tourism which improves that yield later on.
Its interesting because the first 2 policies are fairly slow to impact, and the last two are pretty bad, but overall its really strong. I think Bob's right you just don't need the culture from Aesthetics, you can already get policies at a good enough pace. After putting it down like this, I really don't know why I thought Piety was geared for wide play, those benefits are serious and if you don't value tourism Aesthetics provides much less. I going to try Piety more often with other civs
I've tried this three times now at Immortal level. In my first two games I bailed out at around 100 turns both times. In both cases, I hemorrhaged money, and had no idea how to help that. In the first case, I failed to get a religion. In the second case, I got a religion by moiving up the shrines, but lost a city to a neighbor that noticed how weak my army was. I also didn't get the Pyramids the second time around. In my third game I got a corner start with plenty of forests and a peaceful neighbor, and plenty of ruins. I founded a religion and got the Oracle. But Ethiopia became a runaway, and won a CV on t294. I was 2d in science, 13 techs behind, and had just risen to 4th in pop.
I have no doubt that this strategy works for you a certain amount of the time, but think it's too dependent on plentiful chopping, but a lot can go wrong for an approach that has the downside of having to stick to a strict regimen (ie, less fun).
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