Using late religion and spreading that

[Gumbolt]

Okay i tried a religious game on Earth 18 with 18 civ. The hit from being in another religion can be -3.

Played a fun game with Spanish. Spanish start is horrible and i had no intention of waiting for AH. I bee lined BW/masonry and Oracle techs after the wheel.

Rushed 4 AI with warrios. (French/German/Romans) English capital defended by a warrior got attacked by an axe in a galley.

Spammed wonders. Oracle got COL. Took Stonehenge and mids. English had Jewish holy city. I got 2 great priests and built the shrines.

Overall got 5 religions. Built most of the wonders up to democracy. Mainly in Madrid, Paris and Berlin. Expanded to about 14-15 cities. Taking out the Greeks once i had axes and catapults.

Russians did dagger attack me at one point but only had a 6-7 unit stack. I whipped a few swords and phants and used rest of the force that killed the Greeks. Think AP got me peace. Most of the AI adopted Christianity. I followed suit very early on.

My 3 legendary cities were producing just over 1k culture a turn at the end. The AI was busy attacking whichever AI the AP thought was necessary. Managed to vassal Eygptians and Arabians at the end. It was all over by 1370ad. The AI were well behind me in tech. A few cities flipped to me on the final few turns. The Russian border cities were getting swamped by my culture. Could of finished sooner if I had more pure GP farms. Ran 4 golden ages in a row. AI did have 30+ strong stacks near the end but I could of drafted rifles if things went bad. I had a good stack of 12-15 Spanish UU. I was positive gold wise and running 100% culture for 70+ turns.

Not too much value in spreading religion outside your borders if you have the shrines. Plus some Ai will spread your religion anyway. I spread the 5 religions till i had at least 12 of each for the religious buildings.

 

[nmindos]

Okay i tried a religious game on Earth 18 with 18 civ. The hit from being in another religion can be -3.

Played a fun game with Spanish. Spanish start is horrible and i had no intention of waiting for AH. I bee lined BW/masonry and Oracle techs after the wheel.

Rushed 4 AI with warrios. (French/German/Romans) English capital defended by a warrior got attacked by an axe in a galley.

Spammed wonders. Oracle got COL. Took Stonehenge and mids. English had Jewish holy city. I got 2 great priests and built the shrines.

Overall got 5 religions. Built most of the wonders up to democracy. Mainly in Madrid, Paris and Berlin. Expanded to about 14-15 cities. Taking out the Greeks once i had axes and catapults.

Russians did dagger attack me at one point but only had a 6-7 unit stack. I whipped a few swords and phants and used rest of the force that killed the Greeks. Think AP got me peace. Most of the AI adopted Christianity. I followed suit very early on.

My 3 legendary cities were producing just over 1k culture a turn at the end. The AI was busy attacking whichever AI the AP thought was necessary. Managed to vassal Eygptians and Arabians at the end. It was all over by 1370ad. The AI were well behind me in tech. A few cities flipped to me on the final few turns. The Russian border cities were getting swamped by my culture. Could of finished sooner if I had more pure GP farms. Ran 4 golden ages in a row. AI did have 30+ strong stacks near the end but I could of drafted rifles if things went bad. I had a good stack of 12-15 Spanish UU. I was positive gold wise and running 100% culture for 70+ turns.

Not too much value in spreading religion outside your borders if you have the shrines. Plus some Ai will spread your religion anyway. I spread the 5 religions till i had at least 12 of each for the religious buildings.

sounds fun, what difficulty was this on?

 

[ntz]

I am playing a peacefully mostly ... this super-early attacks against Ai with warriors only seams to me almost like gaming the system ... for me the challenge is elsewhere ... waging wars against Ai is fun but too easy ... I find the most satisfactory victories in beating everyone by my our prosperity and tech advance

 

[Gumbolt]

sounds fun, what difficulty was this on?

Immortal. To be fair the ai start with warriors. Getting 3 ai capitals by 2000bc or so felt like a huge advantage.

 

[Gumbolt]

I am playing a peacefully mostly ... this super-early attacks against Ai with warriors only seams to me almost like gaming the system ... for me the challenge is elsewhere ... waging wars against Ai is fun but too easy ... I find the most satisfactory victories in beating everyone by my our prosperity and tech advance

Very hard to play Spain peacefully as you have terrible land to start with. Slow teching hunting/AH on a huge map is tough as techs require more beakers. You can probably get 2 cities in her small corner of the world. Then maybe cross the channel or sail somwhere. There is a lot of dessert around Mali/Egypt. If lucky maybe swipe an English city spot.

I played the map. You need 12 cities if you want every legendary city to have a cathedral or similar building after you have built all the temples. Assuming culture. Cheese is always an option.

Which Civ did you pick/play?

 

[ntz]

it depends .. I play the very most of Civs but right, I don't play European coutries a lot because there's indeed no space to grow .. I love to play for instance Saladin and I am not waging wars myself but during the play I am typically being attacked ... Other Civs that I like to play are Japan or Indians ...

As I've been saying above - I am guy who knows the Civ4 for two decades from the beginning but I don't play it a lot .. instead I have kind of streaks that I like to play intensively for few months and then a sit back for years .. I have kind of ambiguous relationship with Civ4 .. I love strategic games but civ4 seems to me just a casual and honestly non-challenging so I love to explore some sub-optimal ways of playing that just for fun, as for instance my religious game or a diplomacy game (where I spent a lot of resources to bribe other civs against each other and giving them units and so on) and so on ... from the nature of how it is I just hate waging the wars in civ4 .. well, not hate to do it when I must but I don't enjoy a warmonger play style ... My the most beloved strategy games are HoI3 and Gary Grigsby's war at east/west ...

 

[Jellybug]

there have been plenty of wars centered around religion so having them as a catalyst for conflict seems right in the sense of being a somewhat accurate abstraction of realism, if perhaps not right in the sense of ethics. of course, because the game tactfully treats religions as identical, these wars seem particularly hollow.

to concur in part with ntz, the non-bloody interactions with religion could be more robust in this game, though it would be hard to implement in any meaningful way without some outrage. no matter how many espionage points i spend i can't open a hot yoga studio in karakorum, for instance.

 

[ntz]

the non-bloody interactions with religion could be more robust in this game, though it would be hard to implement in any meaningful way without some outrage..

well, I see your point .. but certainly there are other strategy games (like for instance my favourite TW series) where the concept is implemented in I would say non-flat but yet unoffensive way .. Only saying, replying to your point .. it is what it is, not blaming now Civ4

 

[Harv]

My the most beloved strategy games are HoI3 and Gary Grigsby's war at east/west ...

Late checking in. You mentioned HoI3. I have it on my machine, but it does not seem stable yet and the learning curve is intimidating. I am currently finishing off a UK campaign in Darkest Hour. Gummy would be disappointed to find out that we are once again playing without a plan. And hi!

I checked into this discussion because I love the Earth 18 Scenario. However, I think it is a scenario to play for fun and not to learn how to play the game. We might also call this roleplaying, where we are not playing for an ideal strategy to win the scenario, but follow a set of roleplaying guidelines.

Which civilization were you playing that you wanted to spread a late game religion?
(I started up an Egypt game and played to a little after 1000BC, long enough to get Alphabet.)

I agree with your point about religions. If we define "Winning Religion" as the one that builds the Apostolic Palace, then I suspect it is almost always Buddhism, Hinduism, and Judaism.

Going back to Egypt, I am trying to understand the Obelisk Unique Building and the role it plays, particularly on the Earth 18 map. I believe with my current Leader and the Map, we really only need to build one and that will be where I placed my Capital. (1NE on the Red Sea) This provides the cheapest Great Prophet Points I can think of. We replace 2 Desert Mines (6 hammers) with 2 Priests (2 hammers, 2 commerce, 6 Great Prophet Points). It is then 25 Turns on Epic Speed to produce the first Great Prophet and 50 more Turns to produce the second.

This might have an application in your game, because we are potentially building a late-game Religion followed by its Shrine. But what Civilization are you currently playing?

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

I like releasing cities as colonies but I don't like the way they trade away your technologies. Giving them a different religion from everyone else will reduce this problem.

Spoiler :

This is on immortal difficulty, not deity. Turn 145 is late because I was not micromanaging. I was just trying to create this screenshot as quickly as possible.

Edit: 800AD, Roosevelt converts to Islam. Role-playing is too much fun.