Vel's Strategy Thread

[BigWilly1974]

It's been a few days since I looked at this thread, but I've changed my views on fast early expansion.

After a handful of games on Prince where I expanded relatively slowly, trying to expand at an about equal rate to the AIs, I found that I was having trouble keeping up militarily and in tech.

Without making a real conscious effort in my current game, I built an additional 1-2 early settlers and was attacked, leading to the taking of a couple of cities early. I thought I was going to be hamstrung at first when my science slider was auto-dropped to 30% for quite some time, but I never fell behind.

Without having the numbers to back it up, I think that while the 30% should have had me falling way back, I only slipped a little because I had twice as many cities as anyone else and once the cities starting to grow and develop, I had way more overall commerce/tech.

The entire game, my points total continued to outpace the AIs, growing wider and wider every turn. By 1850'ish, my score is almost double that of my nearest rival (3700 to 2000), I'm only a few techs behind, and am rapidly closing on a domination victory.

[Arrian]

It seems to me that 1 religion is enough. Preferably one of the early ones (Bud, Hind, or Jud). The gold is ok, but for me the real advantages are w/regard to diplomacy (convert a close neighbor and negate those border tensions) and culture (+1cpt in cities w/state religion).

Founding more religions is a gold-only thing: you're not going to switch over to the new religion, are you? Probably not. Thus no added cultural benifit and no diplo benifit. That leaves gold (and later on, happiness w/free religion), and that requires sending missionaries around to convert more cities... there are better ways to make money.

Once I've got my one religion, I'm done with that area for a while - there are many other things that need to be researched/built.

-Arrian

[Velociryx]

Amen!

When I go for an early religion, I shoot for one, and then drop to some other branch of the tree to pursue something else. One meets the requirements I'm after and gets me the gains and benefits I'm looking for. If I get a good (river) start with a civ that has mysticism, I usually only have to spend a dozen turns on that branch of the tree, before turning my attention to something else, which is an insufficient amount of time to fall terribly behind on anything else, and even if I'm 1-2 cottages behind...what's that....2-3gpt in exchange for more culture, better diplo relations, increased flexibility and hugely important military information later....that's a good trade!

-=Vel=-

[Harovan]

Cities can hold 2 religions. If you leave one slot open, you give another player (or the AI) an opportunity to constantly spy. So if I can found 2 religions I will do so and spread both over all my cities. In my last game I discovered Christianity and shortly after it got a great prophet (while already having a shrine), so I used him to speed up Islam, too.

[Arrian]

You can have more than 2 religions in a city. The chances of your missionary failing increase when there are more religions already present, but I know I've added a 3rd religion to cities before.

The reason I got Islam in my last game was the same as you: Great Prophet. And Taoism... well, I guess I'd opened a decent tech lead by then. I was surprised when I founded it!

-Arrian

[Harovan]

Really? I tried to give more religions to a city a couple of times, but all attempts failed and so I thought 2 is the limit.

This looks a bit exploitish - since with Free religion you get a happy face per non-state (duh!) religion you theoretically (wasting lots of missionaries) can get +7 's in a city.

[Arrian]

True. I've founded 3 religions in a number of games and I've spent a little time & effort making sure that each city (at least my homeland cities) had at least 2 religions. It gets harder to get that 3rd religion in, though! I'm not really sure the cost-benifit works out, given the time/production you must spend on missionaries.

In my 2nd-to-last game, I encountered an AI continent where about 4 of the world's religions had been founded. I was Hindu, Christian and Muslim (Hindu state rel). I sent over several Hindu missionaries. I converted two cities (each had 2 religions already) and failed twice.

-Arrian

[Jcg316]

They can have more than two there are just higher fail rates for missionaries after that. Free religion seems to come late enough for me that happiness isn't an issue then, might be good for a score bonus at the end though.

Without mysticism do you shoot for (assuming you have sufficient tech) Code of Laws (conf) or Philosophy (tao) later to go with Caste or Pacificism? Or rather get an early religion from a neighbor? Though, with a spiritual civ that isn't as much of an issue.

Later with the right buildings you might be able to get that one Prophet you need from priests quick instead of needing the right wonders early that could wind up giving you Great Prophets later when you don't need/want them. The later religions avoid some of the early religion techs so you might not have those temples when you need the priests, however.

[Arrian]

Without Myst on medium diff (Noble, Prince), I'd say shoot for the Oracle and position yourself to use your Great Prophet to nab one of the later religions.

Or beeline for Code of Laws/Philo, yeah.

-Arrian

[Velociryx]

Anyone who spams cottages would have a vastly better chance at later religions. Three cottage'd cities with three Great Scientists will provide vastly more beakers than you can manage using Great Prophets at shrines to keep a tiny amount of beakers at 100% science. With cottages later you can't catch up and would need great scientists to match that many beakers. Earlier cottages can lead to giant tech leads.

I would argue that this is not an extreme early game possibility (and certainly not in the same timeframe that a player could found at least one religion...in fact, there's nothing preventing said player from founding a religion or two and then setting up cottage cities of his own....the two notions don't really exist in the same timestream, because if you take three EARLY cities and devote them to cottages and gold production, that means you commit yourself to working those tiles, which means that you AREN'T working high production tiles (so you don't have much production), and in that case, you are just as susceptable to fast military players as someone who opted to take a few early turns to found a religion.

There is absolutly no comparison between cottages and religious gold from shrines. One can let you have vastly larger amounts of beakers at 40-50% science rate and still vastly more gold at that rate. By the time you have three shrines built you will never catch up to someone with three cottage'd cities with labs. Once you get your cities fully improved they would not even come close to matching the three labs at a significantly lowered science rate. Seven shrines does not match three scientists and four merchants on expeditions, just sticking seven merchants into a city can do as much as shrines plus benefits from representation later or early with pyramids.

This is quite correct as far as the analysis goes, but there are other benefits, besides simple gold gain or research, to be had by founding a religion (as mentioned).

The diplomatic gains alone would be enough to put a founding on par with a few more early cottages, but when you factor in the better information and additional cultural gains on top of it, then it makes a pretty compelling argument. Add to it the ability to get an early game 25% discount on wonders and infrastructure (organized religion), and it's more compelling still.

The ability of one player to border lock you and choose whether or not you can even use what you just worked so hard to get will happen sometimes. Any player going for fast military will crush you, and they would love to when they could wind up with multiple holy cities that may already have shrines.

And this could easily happen to a player spamming cottages as well. Not a situation unique to a player opting for a religous founding. Rather, something that any one but another early militarist runs the risk of encountering.

With how badly returns will decrease as you fail umpteenth times to get even your own cities converted you are going to constantly fall further and further behind in production just for a fourth or fifth religion, let alone seventh.

One's all you need to reap the benefits. Anything more than that is part of a denial strategy, at best, I would think. (denying the religion itself, or stocking your cities with the two easies to prevent spying)

One shrine can be a hugh benefit letting a confucian, caste system, labbed out science start fly past everyone for example. Returns on multiples decrease quickly, however.

Exactly! And the sooner you start, the more time it has to spread (saving you time and missionaries).

-=Vel=-

[vmxa1]

On lower levels, where you can found many religions, you often end up with most of the other civs in the same religion and not yours.

So it seems that you may be better off to not make more than 2 or 3 relgions, to allow others to have different ones from each other.

I would think that if I have founded two and the other 5 where spread around, I could expect more stress and strive between the civs.

If you are not going to send out missionaries, you will not spread the state religion all that much. I tried the asking them to convert and found it is not too useful. This is becasue they converted again to something else.

I see a big advantage IF a civ has your state religion and it is spread in most of their towns. It is often useful to see into their towns, but really it can be done with open borders anyway.

But that is going to probably be only the first religion you found and if it became your state religion.

[Jcg316]

One early religion certainly can be great but multiples only have a shade of the benefits of the first and at more cost. Just talking about the strategy of going after many/all of them.

By Borderlock I don't mean just war, another player seeing you building missionaries could close the borders and damage you more than a player building anything they can do alone, regardless of being able to travel into other empires. Growth independent of other nations isn't limited by not being able to travel into them. There are few situations where the AI would close borders and not go to war, plus religion should spread to them quicker possibly befriending them very quickly, so that is only an issue for multi-player.

You might be able to galley around the outside of borders as well but it would slow the spread of the religions.

You can always get diplomatic gains with a neighbor and the other benefits (besides seeing cities and shrine income) if they found a religion and in single player as that AI would develop the same religion modifier high enough it shouldn't be a problem letting an ally see into your cities. You can always be the spread-to, instead of the spreader, and not really lose much. War with that player would be a different story but if they would be a friend it would work nearly as well. If you start with mysticism it certainly works better to get the religion but you could wind up with a religious war with a neighbor you wanted to convert to yours.

[Velociryx]

OH! Jihad!

-=Vel=-

[Arrian]

Yeah, the downside is definitely there. I've had a number of civs HATE me because I was a heathen. -4 or so. Then again, in that same game I had a +6 from my friend & ally for caring about their fellow Buddists. Since that friend & ally was the #2 civ, I was all set.

I've noticed that sometimes a civ will flat-out hate you for having a different religion and sometimes it's a much more mild effect. I've seen -4, I've seen -1. Anybody know the mechanics on that?

Edit: maybe those civs are running Theology? That would make sense... (I've typically been running Pacifism)...

-Arrian

[Velociryx]

Early game decision tree synopsis has three basic components:

* Civ
Who are you (what civ are you playing? what are their traits? what techs does that civ start with?)

* Land
What is the prevailing nature of the starting terrain? What specials or other resources are there, if any? Do those specials/other resources play naturally into your existing traits/starting techs?

* Desires
What are your aims and goals in the immediacy? Do your aims and goals mesh with either the prevailing conditions of the terrain, or with your starting abilities and techs?

Assuming that you aren't playing a random Civ, your desires and the starting abilities of your civ of choice will typically be in alignment. If so, then the only question that remains is the lay of the land.

If you're playing blind, then likely, you don't have any pre-defined goals or aims, in which case, finding some synchronous balance between the abilities of your civ and the prevailing nature of the terrain will inform you of what strategy would be optimal.

One thing I still do not have a feel for yet is at what point unit maintenance begins to appear for your civ. Is it as simple as X units per city, or is there some formulatic approach? (and a good follow-up question would be...does it vary as difficulty level increases?). So far, the only time I've seen ANY troop maintenance has been while running Pacifism, so my guess is that the numbers are fairly high (cos even in games where I ranked 1-2 militarily, I've still not had any troop maint. costs, save for running Pacifism).

-=Vel=-