Vampires or extra policy slots?

[Larsenex]

Greetings!
This seems to be a 'no brainer' but I had to ask. Which one is the pick for you?

Vampires with Doomsayers

Or

Extra policy slots with owls

To me it seems like Owls is my number 1 pick >>>> every time.

I have not tried the others at all.

 

[Hans Castorp]

Not hugely impressed by Vampires; extra policy slots are great; Voidsingers give you stupid amounts of faith and are definitely worth a go. Hermetic order are pretty hit and miss, but if you get lucky you are going to have some pretty impressive yields from the ley lines by the late game.

 

[Karmah]

The choice is strong capital VS extra policies +caravan for me. So far it has been situational. Sometimes my capital needs those extra medieval free tiles. It's like having 6 to 8 pop for free of amenities and other growth penalties. It is strong. Especially when you have access to the natural wonder with worked tiles in your territory.
The owls are a tad more long term but once the ball starts rolling it is super strong. I think all in all I prefer owls but in
practice I chose both equally in terms of raw number of games.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

I was personally a bit disappointed with Owls, even if the general consensus seems to be that they are strong.
The early extra yellow card is great, but more often than not I find that I can make do without it (without it affecting me too much), and sometimes I even don't find any proper strong cards to slot there (making me for instance slot extra builder production in, even though I'm not focusing on builders now, but other options are even less attractive).
And the value of extra card slots do fall off over time, as the relative increase in cards compared to new governments is less than what it is in the Ancient Era (also the fact you can get card slots through certain wonders if you really need them).

Vampires on the other hand, I'm very impressed with.
Getting an extra unit out is great for my playstyle (I often tend to take out my nearest neighbour early if I can), and the fact that it automatically scales in combat strength and stacks every kill into additional combat strength, makes the unit properly OP in some early war scenarios.

Yesterday for instance I was struggling to beat Russia on Deity with my warriors and archers, but once I got my first horseman, the horseman and vampire alone were enough to beat down the remainder of Russia's cities without the help of the warriors I'd relied on up until then.
Vampire castles are also great, so there's that.

The real OP secret society is Void Singers though, and the real kicker is the 20% of faith converted to science, culture and gold starting from the Medieval Era.
Even if you don't have lots of faith production from Holy Sites etc., building monuments (which turn into Old God Obelisks), lets you get a very significant boost to these yields.
Heck, even for domination games, I value Void Singers as equally strong as the Vampires, simply because you get such a huge number of cities after a while all containing Obelisks, which secures your top spot for science and culture, nets you enough gold to keep up with army expenses, and gives you tons of faith which you can buy units with through the Grand Masters Chapel.

After playing with all the secret societes for a while now, I'd personally rate the Owls as one of the weakest tbh, considering the competition.
And yes, that includes the Hermetic Order which are also pretty bad.
Void Singers on the other hand are great regardless of what victory you might pursue.

Greetings!
I have not tried the others at all.

Try out the Void Singers, and you probably won't look back.
I tried Owls once, and immediately regretted my decision when the Medieval Era hit, whishing I'd just taken Void Singers instead.

That being said, I wish they nerfed Void Singers so that there was more of a choice, because as of now I find myself defaulting to Void Singers about 80% of the time (in all my peaceful games, and about half of my domination games).

 

[nauberry]

The best thing about owls in my opinion is the ability to simply gain envoys by sending a trade route to a city state.

 

[IsabelBraganca]

I usually take Voidsingers or Vampires. The extra trade route from OWL requires an extra district, so it usually takes sometime to start to make a difference.

With Voidsingers you have the science and culture from faith and Cultists with industrialization. Cultists have been nerfed, but their relics are still a good source of faith, culture, science, gold and tourism, and in case your neighbor falls in a dark age, you can take some of their cities without penalty.

If you use vampire castles well, and rebuilt them periodically, they can be an outstanding source of food and production for your capital. When I manage to built a Petra City with lots of hills, I improve the hills and build a castle in the middle. All that food, gold and production to your capital without the need of working the tiles. I did that as Gaul, so there was culture as well. Your capital will be a powerhouse. Only housing will be a limitation.

 

[Kotofei]

Vampires and their castles take a little practice but are hilariously OP once you figure it out. On my first attempt I was disappointed, on my second try I got 3 of them properly supported by siege units and they were....not fair. Keep them in a tight formation so they can all benefit from kills, and pretty soon it's like having GDR's in the Modern Era.

 

[HiRezAudio]

I usually go the Owls route too, but as said above it is situational - Voidsingers work well with Eleanor, for example as those extra great work slots on the revamped monument really help, plus with a strong faith income you really can spam out those cultists and the extra Loyalty pressure as Eleanor kills opponents deader than Jacob Marley's Ghost.
BTW - in the Babylon pack, I wonder if their monument slots get added to if they play as Voidsingers, giving 4 slots? Now that would be totally OP

 

[Vargas1]

That being said, I wish they nerfed Void Singers so that there was more of a choice, because as of now I find myself defaulting to Void Singers about 80% of the time (in all my peaceful games, and about half of my domination games).

Hard agree on this. I've tried several games using Owls and Vampires (haven't played much with Hermetic), and while they add a new wrinkle and can be fun to play with, at least to me the clear "right" choice seems to be Voidsingers. The snowball effect with them is just so big - you're going to build monuments in every city anyway, and generally pretty early on, so right from the first dozen turns of the game you're starting to build in extra faith. And with monumentality golden ages, Grand Master's Chapels, Rock Bands, etc., faith is now a very large part of the economy.

I think a simple change of reducing the faith to match the culture output (i.e. 2 faith, or 1 plus 1 loyalty when needed) would make it much more of a realistic choice about which society to join.

 

[iammaxhailme]

The voidsingers are so good (for my playstyle) that when I get tired of taking them I just shut SS mode off entirely becuase it feels like a waste to choose anyone else.

 

[UWHabs]

Hard agree on this. I've tried several games using Owls and Vampires (haven't played much with Hermetic), and while they add a new wrinkle and can be fun to play with, at least to me the clear "right" choice seems to be Voidsingers. The snowball effect with them is just so big - you're going to build monuments in every city anyway, and generally pretty early on, so right from the first dozen turns of the game you're starting to build in extra faith. And with monumentality golden ages, Grand Master's Chapels, Rock Bands, etc., faith is now a very large part of the economy.

I think a simple change of reducing the faith to match the culture output (i.e. 2 faith, or 1 plus 1 loyalty when needed) would make it much more of a realistic choice about which society to join.

A big part of the problem with voidsingers is that they get a massive faith bonus early, and then you get to the medieval bonus and they get science/culture/gold boosts that by the time you get to the modern era and cultists, the game is done for. The others all have a "slow" era - vampires take a little bit of time to get going, ley lines are pretty bad early. Even the guilded vault is just late in coming that it can't really boost you.

But having monuments (a building you have in every city) give you +4 faith from the ancient era on, and then also essentially add +1 science/+1 culture/+1 gold from the medieval era with the Ritual boost just makes them so strong.

I think they'd be better balanced if the old gold obelisk was only +2 faith. And then maybe even if the Ritual bonus turning faith into other yields only applied to cities with governors, for example. That would at least reduce the overall potency of the bonuses and probably get a little closer to balanced with the others.