New Diplomatic Victory

[Arrian]

I built the AP once. I only built it b/c I had gotten enough production to build it in 4 turns and nobody else had gotten around to it. So I built it way late.

My state religion was shared by 1 neighboring civ. There was an election, wherein I voted myself resident. I never heard from the AP again, though the +2 hammers was nice.

I've seen it built by the AI in other games, typically by civs overseas. I've never see it have any impact.

-Arrian

[Verrucosus]

In my last game (Noble), I tried the strategy suggested by Saurus using Confucianism. I had drawn the Germans (Mining, Hunting), so I missed all of the early religions and had to settle for Confucianism.
Afterwards I immediately went for Theology and started building the Apostolic Palace in Berlin while spreading Confucianism throughout my six-city empire. I did not start to spread Confucianism in other empires until I had shipped three missionaries to the most far-away lands. Once they were in place, they brought Confuciansim to these remote civs in a single turn. Luckily, none of them had switched to Theocracy and all of the missionary actions succeeded. I quickly built three more missionaries to do the same to my three immediate neighbours, so the Palace Membership went from 1 to 7 within a course of five turns. As a result, the other six members have only very few votes yet and I was able to win as soon as the proposal comes up.

The attached zip-file includes the starting turn, the turn prior to victory (1200 AD) and the oldest autosave in the folder (1040 AD).

[Arrian]

Hmm. Seems wonky.

-Arrian

[Verrucosus]

Having looked up "wonky" in my dictionary, I agree.

[Dominae]

Originally posted by Risa
Assuming player have six cities by the time AP is built (the minimal number on standard map even for builder), that is a total of 24 hammers per turn, or a meresy 17-turn long duration of return of investment.

You still have to build Temples and Monasteries in all those cities. In my games at least those are not auto-builds (unless I'm Spiritual).

Also, other nations get the bonus too. The more powerful the AP's diplomatic effect is for you, the more free Hammers you're giving to other civs (remember they don't need to build the AP, just the buildings). There are ways to play this to your advantage, but that's part of what makes the Wonder fun/strategic.

Still I agree that the Apostolic Palace is (usually) a game-defining Wonder.

Considering these hammers are spent in production rich city and are gained in possibly production poor cities (GP pump, cottage spam, or fishing village), they worth more than number suggested.

So free Hammers are good in pretty much every city, right?

[rah]

Yeah, but those low production cities have to build the building which may not be at the top of the priority list.
But I guess that's what the whip is for.

[Arrian]

Thus more synergy for SPI civs. Not only is the AP cheaper, but so are the temple builds.

Odd that I've seen almost no impact from the AP so far.

-Arrian

[jbp26]

Originally posted by Arrian
Thus more synergy for SPI civs. Not only is the AP cheaper, but so are the temple builds.

Odd that I've seen almost no impact from the AP so far.

-Arrian

if its built by a minority religion it can be totally inconsequential. other games it can dictate the course of the game. i had one game where i was on a conquering rampage and then the palace got built and stopped me cold- everyone i had contact with shared the same religion so any further warfar would mean crippling unhappiness from fighting against the same religion and defying resolutions, so i was totally blocked, jsut like that. from there the palace leaders caused all kinds of havoc with resolutions (banning trade, declaring war, etc) left and right. finally i got fed up, found the city it was in, and burned it down.

[ColdPhoenix]

It can be quite an easy way to win early, Theology's now a good choice for the Oracle tech. The only difficulty is if the religion isn't spreading to someone like Tokugowa who won't open borders. I guess you could found a useless city close to him, plant the religion in it and gift it to him.

[Risa]

Originally posted by Dominae


You still have to build Temples and Monasteries in all those cities. In my games at least those are not auto-builds (unless I'm Spiritual).

Also, other nations get the bonus too. The more powerful the AP's diplomatic effect is for you, the more free Hammers you're giving to other civs (remember they don't need to build the AP, just the buildings). There are ways to play this to your advantage, but that's part of what makes the Wonder fun/strategic.

Oh, that bonus is for all people? I don't know about that! It would definitely change the calculation.

[ColdPhoenix]

Everyone with the AP religion as their state religion gets the hammers bonus.

[khearn]

Originally posted by ColdPhoenix
It can be quite an easy way to win early, Theology's now a good choice for the Oracle tech. The only difficulty is if the religion isn't spreading to someone like Tokugowa who won't open borders. I guess you could found a useless city close to him, plant the religion in it and gift it to him.

I won a game recently with just this scenario. I vassalized everyone on my continent and then created the AP and beelined for Optics. I sent out missionaries with my caravels to find the other continents and spread my religion ASAP. The only problem was that the first civ I encountered was Tokugawa, who wouldn't open borders. But when I found the other civs, I discovered that Hannibal did have open borders with Toku, so I just dropped a missionary in one of Hannibal's cities that was close to Toku's border and in a dozen turns or so the religion spread to one of Toku's cities. That worked out before I managed to get a German city converted because the first 3 missionaries I sent to German cities all failed. :-/

But eventually I got a city infected in each civ and won an AP diplomatic victory. To be honest, it felt pretty cheap. There should be some sort of requirement that a certain percentage of the world population follows your religion or something like that. As it is, you just need a few dozen population with the religion in your civ, and an infected size 1 city in each other civs and you can win the game.

I think for my next game I'll play on a Pangea map and see how early I can win the game this way. Maybe I'll do it as a One City Challenge.