When to go for Buddhism for sure?

[Zealot]

I usually am the first one to get to Hinduism or even Judaism, since it's safer to get than Buddhism, because everyone seems to go for it and try their luck.
Still, I'd like to know what should I be looking for from my starting position that guarantees me as the one who gets Buddhism before anyone else on an Ancient Start.
For example, if my starting location has 2 clam, or 1 unmined gold, or whatever, I can confidently go for Buddhism.

I usually play with Portugal, but I appreciate if it changes anything if I played with the Persians or Germans.

[TriMiro]

What difficulty are you playing on. On Prince level in warlords I would usually go for Hinduism with a civ that does not start with Mysticism and I would get it more often than not. In BtS, however, I would almost always fail (Prince).

Sea resources are good, gold is good too, but my guess would be that you want to start with Mysticism and an Oasis.

Caravans from near and far would come to the oasis, some would simply rest and leave, some would stay for days to trade, but all would talk. From ever since he was a kid, the young man would listen to the stories, about people, about life, how different lives could be for people from different places. How some people were greedy and eve though they had riches beyond measure, they were always angry and acted as everyone wants to steal their gold. How some people were living from day to day having barely enough food to eat and were always smiling and always happy. So one day the young man sat beneath the palm three and thought about life and suffering and happiness, and he thought and he thought and he became Buddha.

[wodan11]

What TriMiro said. Mysticism is a must, and then the overriding factor is what tile you plan to work from game start. Oasis is ideal.

Wodan

[rah]

yes, at anything but the lower levels, unless i start with myst and have at least 3 coins at the start, I won't go for the bud.

[Zealot]

Originally posted by rah
yes, at anything but the lower levels, unless i start with myst and have at least 3 coins at the start, I won't go for the bud.

Mighty Rah, I welcome ye advice from the heart, but would you happen to remember which ones have 3 coins from the start?

And if you don't go for Buddhism, what do you go for? Hinduism?


In the end what I'm really looking for is someone l33t to tell me something like "right, if you have Mysticism, you can only go for Buddhism and are guaranteed to get it first if you can get 3 coins for pop 1 and get pop 2 after 5 turns of game start making 2 coins" and "if you don't have Mysticism it's impossible to be first for Buddhism EVER if any other civ started with Mysticism" or "it's theoretically possible to get it without starting with Mysticism if you get 3 coins for pop 1, pop 2 under X turns on 2 coins and pop 3 after Y turns of pop 2 with 2 more coins, unless an opponent has a similar location start".

Any expert to volunteer on this experiment?

And is there anything else other than Oasis?

[snoopy369]

3 coins would mean (1 coin from city center) plus (Oasis, or trade-bonus resource on river), generally. (He's excluding the palace commerce).

You are never guaranteed to get anything first, unless you're the only Myst. civ (and even then someone could pop Myst. in a hut on turn 1) ... someone could always get just as good of a tile as you, and win the coin toss

[johnmcd]

Financial, fishing and myst with a coastal start are about your best bet, so if you're playing Isabella you have a good shout at it.

[rjmatsleepers]

As Snoopy has said, nobody will be able to give you an answer without some "ifs", "and"s and "but"s. There are a lot of factors - some are controllable and some are random; among the random factors, some are knowable and some are unknowable. Any answer must involve probabilities.

Let's start with the coins. To get three commerce from a tile, you need to have the financial trait. If you are financial and have fishing (Elizabeth for example), any coastal tile will do (a food special is good) or fresh water. Otherwise, you need an oasis or a 1 commerce resource such as wine, spice, silver, etc next to a river.

To stand a chance to get Buddhism at higher levels, you also need to start with Mysticism which means (IIRC) one out of Pacal, Wang Kon or Huayna Capec. And (again IIRC) no financial leader starts with Mysticism and Fishing, You could get the technology you're missing by popping a hut when you found the city, otherwise you need the oasis or resource plus river to get the three commerce.

Even if you do start with Mysticism, (with six opponents) it is about a 90% chance that at least one other civ also has Mysticism and at the higher levels, they need less beakers than you to learn Meditation - hence the need for three commerce.

However, there can be no certainties. If you do start with Mysticism, there is a small chance nobody else does. If so, this would give you a good chance of getting Buddhism even if you have no extra commerce. Or if you're really lucky you might get a good result from a hut.

If you don't go for Meditation, you can try Polytheism. This seems to be less popular with the AI. Or you can wait and get a later religion. In my experience, you should be able to get Confucianism if you go for it reasonably early.

RJM

[Blaupanzer]

Also, you can let everyone choose their religions (in a custom game). Then, if you are first to a religion you can pick BUD. Some chance it will be there even for the later religions.

[TriMiro]

Originally posted by Zealot

In the end what I'm really looking for is someone l33t to tell me something like "right, if you have Mysticism, you can only go for Buddhism and are guaranteed to get it first if you can get 3 coins for pop 1 and get pop 2 after 5 turns of game start making 2 coins" and "if you don't have Mysticism it's impossible to be first for Buddhism EVER if any other civ started with Mysticism" or "it's theoretically possible to get it without starting with Mysticism if you get 3 coins for pop 1, pop 2 under X turns on 2 coins and pop 3 after Y turns of pop 2 with 2 more coins, unless an opponent has a similar location start".

Any such computation would depend on both the map size and the difficulty level. For some difficulty levels and map size you should be able to do the math yourself (start with Myst then compute the cots for Med. for you and the cost for Med for the AI then work it turn by turn to see how many coins one should make to win the race).

[Zealot]

Thanks for your input guys, some very very interesting points here.

I do apologise for being ambiguous, but I don't need to be told that the AI needs less beakers on higher dificulty levels.
What I'm after is indeed the "average" levels, the ones we play on multiplayer games and where the AI doesn't have any bonus.

So there are too many variants on Civ 4 to be able to claim the first to reach Buddhism, regardless of one's best effort, but, on the other hand, how often do all those events DO happen?
In the end, what I was looking after might have been answered already. Have Mysticism for starters, being Financial is a big plus, and have an oasis or a coin producing square next to a river. The odds that another civ is in the same situation or even better get pretty slim.

Do you agree?

[wodan11]

Originally posted by Zealot
Have Mysticism for starters, being Financial is a big plus, and have an oasis or a coin producing square next to a river. The odds that another civ is in the same situation or even better get pretty slim.

Do you agree?

That's where map size and # of civs come into play. If you're on Huge with 34 civs, obviously that's a lot different than small or even normal with 2-10 civs.

Wodan

[TriMiro]

OK simple calculation:
Civ A has only the 8 beakers from the Palace
Civ B has 8 + 3 more = 11 beakers
Both start with Mysticism and go for Buddhism and Med costs the same amount of beakers for all.

Turn 1: A = 8, B = 11.
Turn 2: A = 16, B = 22.
Turn 3: A = 24, B = 33 Thus civ B has one turn advantage before civ A and if Med costs 25 or more beakers civ B would win the race.

However, if Med would to cost 24 beakers, neither civ would have clear advantage. Actually everything would be determined by the sequence in which the civs take turns. Suppose civ A acts before civ B.

Turn 1: A presses enter A = 8, B presses enter B = 11.
Turn 2: A presses enter A = 16, B presses enter B = 22 (2 beakers short).
Turn 3: A presses enter A = 24 and founds Buddhism, B presses enter B = 33, discovers Meditation, but no Buddhism.

8 to 11 is a drastic difference, the difference 9 to 11 would be smaller and Meditation if meditation costs more than 27 only then victory for civ B is assured. You can do the math for the rest.

Smaller maps and slower game speed make the competition tighter.

As to how often it happens, I cannot tell you statistics, depends on the map I guess. You can chose to start with Myst and Fishing map size and speed, but the rest is random (exactly how many beakers you would get).

[joncnunn]

Well, I play choose religions on, and so I pick Buddhism as my first religion when there is neither nearby stone nor marble nearby.

Anyway I only go research Meditation if:
1. I started with Mystism
2. My starting area doesn't look good enough to go for the bi religious capital. (The Polytheism-Masonary-Monotheism beline)

[snoopy369]

Indeed, don't forget about the cathedral multiplier resource. Very important to know that