+1 movement for every unit in the game straight off? By gods, everything else is just adding to the overpoweredness for no good reason at that point.
Yeah, that bonus is uh, pretty crazy! Early on just the difference it makes to grabbing goody huts (Omnomnomnom) can be pretty silly - or the way it snowballs builders and settlers
Be very interested to see if/how they nerf it
...though that said i will also cry because GOTTA GO FAST AND THIS IS FUN
Oh man, Aus is freaking fun. Also beat my domination game as Gran Coloumbia - Took longer than i'd have liked, but it was very funny watching Seoul get conquered by Modern Armor... in 1820. I do not rember this day in history class at all
...Though i find myself always gunning for Earth Goddess. Maybe i'm overrating it, but it feels like it's just reallly nice. Doubly so with Aus, but even not on them - pile up the faith, use monumentalality early to let you expand and build things up, and later on you can just direct the faith income towards great people. Or hell, even having a religion. Currently playing on prince though, so it's not ,like the ai is exactly challenging.
but it was very funny watching Seoul get conquered by Modern Armor... in 1820. I do not rember this day in history class at all
I don't know why they bother including the in-game calendar. It has never done a good job of matching the actual technology level of the world in any iteration of Civ.
The expansions just made it even more noticeable by adding new ways to get bonus science and culture, allowing you to breeze through the tech/civic tree faster.
Hrm, decide to start a game as chandragupta, end up on island by myself somehow with no land routes to other civs.
On the other hand, its not really a bad island per se, should be space for 8 or 9 cities, but it makes me really wish I’d got this map as, say, Gitjara.
but it was very funny watching Seoul get conquered by Modern Armor... in 1820. I do not rember this day in history class at all
I don't know why they bother including the in-game calendar. It has never done a good job of matching the actual technology level of the world in any iteration of Civ.
The expansions just made it even more noticeable by adding new ways to get bonus science and culture, allowing you to breeze through the tech/civic tree faster.
Are you implying that Australia successfully colonizing an exoplanet in 1836 AD might in fact, not be accurate to the timeline!?
Damn and blast. What am i going to do with this exoplanet now then!?
Personally, i like it just because it gives me a laugh and it's pretty funny seeing how history gets distorted.
Also that was a fun game - Earth Goddsess early, all of Ausse's delicious adjacency bonuses, whole armada of costal cities (...though i am embarssingly fumbled being able to build the Masoluem, whoops!), got the +envoys when you make wonders wonder, and the +crazy crazy crazy % bonuses for being Suzerin in my cpatial, and stacked that to basically carpet my capital's territory in Wonders. a campus making +12 science and +12 production offi t's adjacency is fair and balanced, right?
I nearly fell backwards into a Diplomatic Victory to on the way to the space victory, but the AI voted me down. Rude.
but it was very funny watching Seoul get conquered by Modern Armor... in 1820. I do not rember this day in history class at all
I don't know why they bother including the in-game calendar. It has never done a good job of matching the actual technology level of the world in any iteration of Civ.
The expansions just made it even more noticeable by adding new ways to get bonus science and culture, allowing you to breeze through the tech/civic tree faster.
I just figured that the difference in the time scale is due to the fact that real life civilizations aren’t ruled by immortal, semi-benevolent god-kings with a laser focus on maintaining civilizational advancement and meeting clearly defined goals over thousands of years.
Jealous Deva on
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Mr_Rose83 Blue Ridge Protects the HolyRegistered Userregular
edited June 2020
The “problem” with the timeline in Civ is that, despite actual dark ages, there is no Dark Ages gap In Europe between the classical and medieval periods where sociological and technological development drop almost to zero because no-one wrote anything down because the big empires fell and took leisure time with them.
Maybe that could be a thing though? Whenever you finish a war, win or lose, there’s a chance of losing a random technology so you can’t create or repair anything that depends on it (you keep any examples you do have) until you finish researching it again.
The “problem” with the timeline in Civ is that, despite actual dark ages, there is no Dark Ages gap between the classical and medieval periods where sociological and technological development drop almost to zero because no-one wrote anything down.
Maybe that could be a thing though? Whenever you finish a war, win or lose, there’s a chance of losing a random technology so you can’t create or repair anything that depends on it (you keep any examples you do have) until you finish researching it again.
Would this be fun? No. Which is why Sid didn't put it in 30 years ago.
enlightenedbum on
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
The “problem” with the timeline in Civ is that, despite actual dark ages, there is no Dark Ages gap between the classical and medieval periods where sociological and technological development drop almost to zero because no-one wrote anything down.
Maybe that could be a thing though? Whenever you finish a war, win or lose, there’s a chance of losing a random technology so you can’t create or repair anything that depends on it (you keep any examples you do have) until you finish researching it again.
Would this be fun? No. Which is why Sid didn't put it in 30 years ago.
I don’t know a great way to truly model regressive periods without being unfun.
All the games I remember trying something like that either make them random/deterministic and it comes down to “oh, you are poland in 1700, time for massive revolt risk for 50 years you have no control over” or “oh shit you rolled a 1 on your percentile dice at the beginning of this turn, time for either 50 turns of suck or a quick autosave reload”.
Or they make it avoidable through good play or meeting certain criteria, and it ends up being something the player avoids at all costs and just causes a hinderance for the ai.
My most common victory is culture, when I manage to play a game all the way to the end. I've done science and diplomatic. So, I tried religious next, seeing if I could cover all the bases.
I hate it. The game already fights against me at times, dragging me into council screens, trade offers, pleas to join wars, and generally slowing me down. When it became obvious that I was about to spend a full day moving missionaries around, I bailed. I like trying new win conditions, but holy shit was that dull.
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KetarCome on upstairswe're having a partyRegistered Userregular
My most common victory is culture, when I manage to play a game all the way to the end. I've done science and diplomatic. So, I tried religious next, seeing if I could cover all the bases.
I hate it. The game already fights against me at times, dragging me into council screens, trade offers, pleas to join wars, and generally slowing me down. When it became obvious that I was about to spend a full day moving missionaries around, I bailed. I like trying new win conditions, but holy shit was that dull.
I did my religious victory playing against a single AI on the smallest map. I'd tried on my usual settings and map size a couple of times and it just wasn't fun at all.
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The Escape Goatincorrigible ruminantthey/themRegistered Userregular
Religious victory is broken with 6 or less civs and impossible with more
My most common victory is culture, when I manage to play a game all the way to the end. I've done science and diplomatic. So, I tried religious next, seeing if I could cover all the bases.
I hate it. The game already fights against me at times, dragging me into council screens, trade offers, pleas to join wars, and generally slowing me down. When it became obvious that I was about to spend a full day moving missionaries around, I bailed. I like trying new win conditions, but holy shit was that dull.
I did my religious victory playing against a single AI on the smallest map. I'd tried on my usual settings and map size a couple of times and it just wasn't fun at all.
I rigged it even more by making my opponent Kongo.
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
Yeah I just had a religious game on a small map where I converted 5/6 civs then just gave up because it was pretty obvious it was just going to be a giant war of attrition. One of the civs was khmer and after I converted them and my guys moved on they just popped 3 or 4 apostles from one random city I missed and converted their capital and major cities right back... So you really have to convert every single city with a holy site if you want it to stick.
The big problem I have with religion is it takes all the effort of domination, but you don’t get anything from it until you win (other than maybe some gold or whatever if you pick the right belief.)
Tourism is the same way, it has no impact on the game until you hit your victory screen.
I’d love to see more reward for converting other civs or dominating their tourism. Like maybe a huge and meaningful diplomatic boost so as you convert the world you start to form a bloc of same faith or culturally friendly nations.
Yeah I just had a religious game on a small map where I converted 5/6 civs then just gave up because it was pretty obvious it was just going to be a giant war of attrition. One of the civs was khmer and after I converted them and my guys moved on they just popped 3 or 4 apostles from one random city I missed and converted their capital and major cities right back... So you really have to convert every single city with a holy site if you want it to stick.
The big problem I have with religion is it takes all the effort of domination, but you don’t get anything from it until you win (other than maybe some gold or whatever if you pick the right belief.)
Tourism is the same way, it has no impact on the game until you hit your victory screen.
I’d love to see more reward for converting other civs or dominating their tourism. Like maybe a huge and meaningful diplomatic boost so as you convert the world you start to form a bloc of same faith or culturally friendly nations.
I had totally assumed that one would get exactly that sort of bonus.
All that going for a religious victory run seems to have done is put me way behind where I would be in research if I'd invested early into science districts instead of holy ones.
Maybe you're meant to go holy war styley and use the ability to buy troops with faith instead of money?
Yeah I just had a religious game on a small map where I converted 5/6 civs then just gave up because it was pretty obvious it was just going to be a giant war of attrition. One of the civs was khmer and after I converted them and my guys moved on they just popped 3 or 4 apostles from one random city I missed and converted their capital and major cities right back... So you really have to convert every single city with a holy site if you want it to stick.
The big problem I have with religion is it takes all the effort of domination, but you don’t get anything from it until you win (other than maybe some gold or whatever if you pick the right belief.)
Tourism is the same way, it has no impact on the game until you hit your victory screen.
I’d love to see more reward for converting other civs or dominating their tourism. Like maybe a huge and meaningful diplomatic boost so as you convert the world you start to form a bloc of same faith or culturally friendly nations.
I had totally assumed that one would get exactly that sort of bonus.
All that going for a religious victory run seems to have done is put me way behind where I would be in research if I'd invested early into science districts instead of holy ones.
Maybe you're meant to go holy war styley and use the ability to buy troops with faith instead of money?
I never really noticed one, maybe its there but just insignificant?
Tomyris hated me and denounced me before I converted her, and continued to do so after I converted her.
I feel like religion is really the worst victory type now, they improved diplomatic victory a lot with just small tweaks.
My most common victory is culture, when I manage to play a game all the way to the end. I've done science and diplomatic. So, I tried religious next, seeing if I could cover all the bases.
I hate it. The game already fights against me at times, dragging me into council screens, trade offers, pleas to join wars, and generally slowing me down. When it became obvious that I was about to spend a full day moving missionaries around, I bailed. I like trying new win conditions, but holy shit was that dull.
I did my religious victory playing against a single AI on the smallest map. I'd tried on my usual settings and map size a couple of times and it just wasn't fun at all.
Too OCD for that. I play all my games on the same settings and I always play Teddy. He's super flexible, so I figured I could get every victory type with him. But on a huge map, religious and domination seem to be a matter of insane willpower.
Domination has some steamroll Civs that can make even regular games doable. Alexander the Great is pretty much Domination king. He never suffers from war weariness, so you can slam enemy civs forever.
the main problem with religious games imo is how start-dependent they feel; if you don't immediately find some source of faith to springboard you toward a pantheon/prophet you're in big trouble cause they get gobbled up quickly in a full size game. You can get behind on other stuff early on and make up the ground later, but for religion you need to be a bit lucky (or play one of the couple civs that basically hand you a prophet.)
with that good start it's actually pretty easy to win even on large maps (the AI is even worse at managing religious units than it is at military combat), though it can take a while sometimes
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
I've won plenty of religious victories on huge maps, so here's some advice if you're having trouble. Most of these will probably seem pretty obvious though.
Try to choose a pantheon that generates faith.
If you're shooting for religious victory, you should be prioritizing faith over other yields anyway. Now, this rule isn't absolute. God of the Open Sky, God of the Sea, Goddess of Festivals, Goddess of the Hunt, and Lady of the Reeds and Marshes will still benefit you more in the long run if you have a huge amount of the resources and features they care about. But all other things being equal, you should try to choose a pantheon that specifically generates faith over one that's just generally useful for all victory types. Even a bad faith-generating pantheon like God of War will still provide you with more help achieving religious victory than a good pantheon that doesn't generate faith like Religious Settlements.
If you're worried you won't be able to found a religion at all, you might be tempted to choose Divine Spark as your pantheon, but I strongly advise doing this only as a last resort. While Divine Spark will help you get a prophet, it stops being useful to religious victory after you have founded your religion. You want to get a pantheon that's going to help fuel your religious engine throughout the entire game, not just at the beginning. Trying to get a Classical Era golden age so you can choose the Exodus of the Evangels dedication, rushing the mysticism and political philosophy civics so you can run the Revelation policy card, or even just having your cities run the holy site prayers project are all better alternatives than being stuck with Divine Spark for the entire game. Of course, there is another way get a great prophet…
When to try for Stonehenge.
There are two factors that need to be considered when you're deciding if you want to go for Stonehenge or not. First of all, if you didn't get the eureka for astrology very early in the game, then you are very unlikely to get Stonehenge. Even if you did get the eureka early, it's almost always safer to just invest your production in good holy site locations and maybe even run the prayers project a few times than it is to try for Stonehenge. A big exception is if you're playing as China. China has the fastest religion rush tactic in the game, since you can buy builders with money and use them to complete Stonehenge. If you ever get a message saying an unmet player has completed Stonehenge at what seems like an unreasonably early point the game, it's because China is somewhere on the map.
Very rarely, you'll have a game where you get to the point where you can research drama & poetry, but no one has built Stonehenge yet. If this happens, it's because no one else in the game started next to a stone resource. In this situation, you should absolutely try for Stonehenge, even if you've already invested heavily into earning a prophet the normal way. Completing Stonehenge will give you the inspiration for not only theology, a very important religious civic, but also drama & poetry, which is a prerequisite to theology. At this point, you'll certainly already have the Corvée policy that comes with the state workforce civic, so the production cost of building Stonehenge won't even be that high.
Your first two beliefs.
It's important to choose religious beliefs that will make your religion self-sustaining. The first belief you'll be asked to choose is your follower belief. Just like when choosing your pantheon, you need to prioritize faith over other yields. That means choosing either Divine Inspiration or Reliquaries. Of the two, I prefer Divine Inspiration, as there are a few wonders you're going to want to build very soon. We'll talk more about that later. However, Reliquaries can also score you loads of faith if you know how to take advantage of it, so don't hesitate to pick either.
Next, you'll be asked to choose either a worship belief, a founder belief, or an enhancer belief. Worship beliefs give you unique buildings you can build in your holy site district. Founder beliefs reward you for spreading your religion aggressively. I recommend choosing an enhancer belief first, as those are the beliefs that most help you spread your religion, so you want to get a good one before your opponents take them all. I'll go over what beliefs from each category to prioritize in another section below.
Do not spend your precious faith on anything but religious units.
This is vitally important. Each religious unit you buy increases the faith price of that same unit. Most games where you shoot for religious victory are going to end with a grueling war of attrition between you and a dominating religion on another continent. You're going to need loads of religious units to even get a foothold in a foreign continent that's already heavily invested in another religion, so the faith costs are going to start getting absolutely outrageous in the late game. I cannot emphasize this enough. Every. Point. Of. Faith. Matters.
That means no Monumentality dedication, no Grand Minister's Chapel building in the government plaza, no national parks, and no rock bands. Even your chosen worship building should be hard-built with production, not purchased with faith. Unless you're playing as Arabia of course, since they get free worship buildings when purchasing with faith.
I bring this up now because there is a Follower belief called Jesuit Education that allows you to purchase campus and theater square buildings with faith. Even if you cannot get Divine Inspiration or Reliquaries, you must avoid Jesuit Education at all costs if you intend to try for religious victory. Do not spend your faith on buildings! You will need them for apostles later!
Complete your religion before you start spreading.
Once you found your religion, you can buy missionaries and start spreading. But don't! Save your faith to buy two apostles instead, so you can complete your religion and and get all the good beliefs before your opponents do. Being the first civilization to complete your religion will also give you some era score, so it's definitely worth it.
Adding a belief to your religion requires an apostle with at least three spreads, which all apostles start with by default. However, if you're trying for religious victory, then it's likely that your apostles will have bonus spreads from various sources like the Exodus of the Evangels dedication, mosque worship buildings, or the Hagia Sophia world wonder. Adding a belief to your religion will always consume the apostle no matter how many spreads it has available, so any spreads beyond three will end up going to waste. If your apostles do have extra spreads, promote them, use their spreads until they only have three left, and then send them back to one of your holy sites to add a new belief to your religion.
The triumvirate of world wonders.
There are only three world wonders that significantly help in achieving religious victory, but they are all unlocked at around the same point in the game. Getting all three of them will require putting a significant amount of your civilization's infrastructure on hold. However, if you do manage to get all three of them, your religion will become an unstoppable juggernaut, so it is absolutely worth the risk. Thankfully, the Gothic Architecture policy unlocks with the divine right civic, which has an inspiration requirement of building two temples, which is something you'll end up doing early if you're attempting a religious victory, so you'll already be in a good position for rushing wonders.
The first world wonder is Mahabodhi Temple, which gives you two free apostles upon completion. This is significant because apostles can normally only be bought with faith, and they are very expensive. Building Mahabodhi Temple is like getting to create two apostles with production, which will save you loads of faith! If you haven't completed your religion yet, you can can use these two apostles to do so. If you have, you can send them out to quickly convert some high population cities.
The second world wonder you'll want to shoot for is Meenakshi Temple, which gives the otherwise underwhelming guru unit several bonuses that make it much more valuable. This wonder won't be immediately useful, but when you're facing off against your final rival on his home continent, you'll be glad you went through the trouble of getting it.
The third and arguably most difficult wonder to obtain is the Hagia Sophia, which gives each of your religious units an extra spread if recruited in the same city. Unlike the other two, the Hagia Sophia is unlocked in the tech tree, not the civics three. If you've been pushing for religious victory, you might be falling behind on science a bit, but now is the time to catch back up. Once you have the Hagia Sophia, you should only ever build religious units in that city and no others.
Don't be fooled by Kotoku-in. It's more of a military wonder masquerading as a religious wonder. With so many better wonders to choose from in the medieval era, you should definitely pass on this one.
What beliefs to choose.
I'll start with enhancer beliefs, since I mentioned before that I recommend choosing an enhancer belief first. The big prize here is Missionary Zeal. Since you're playing on a big map, there are bound to be all sorts of obstructions between your religious units and their destinations. Missionary Zeal makes that a non-issue. Combined with speed bonuses your religious units will get from the Exodus of the Evangels golden age dedication and starting next to a guru if you built Meenakshi Temple, your religious units will be zipping around the map like lightning! If Missionary Zeal has already been taken, choose Holy Order instead. It gives you a discount on missionaries and apostles, potentially saving you mountains of faith over the course of the game.
Truthfully, all the enhancer beliefs are good for religious victory except Crusade and Defender of the Faith, which behave more like founder beliefs. Whatever you do, don't choose either of those.
Next, lets talk about worship buildings. The one you want to go for is the mosque. It's like having a Hagia Sophia in every city. If the mosque is already taken, then you'll want a faith-generating worship building instead. If you managed to complete your religion in the medieval era or before, the dar-e mehr will give you the most faith in the long run. If you didn't complete your religion until the renaissance era or later, choose the synagog instead.
Founder beliefs usually reward you for spreading your religion, rather than making your religion easier to spread. There is one exception, however. Papal Primacy is a founder belief that adds religious pressure to a city state whenever you invest an envoy in it. This is one of the only ways to quickly convert a city to your religion without having to spend any faith at all. While converting city states isn't required for religious victory, it's still useful because all cities converted to your religion, including city states, will apply religious pressure to all other nearby cities. Papal Primacy is like an enhancer belief that somehow got mixed in with the founder beliefs. Choosing it effectively allows you to have two enhancer beliefs. If Papal Primacy is already taken, Pilgrimage is a good second choice. Converted cities will generate faith for you, allowing your religious units to pay for themselves over time. Lay Ministry also generates faith, but not as much as Pilgrimage, so only choose it if both Papal Primacy and Pilgrimage are already taken.
You don't need to babysit your religious units.
The most common criticism I hear about religious victory on big maps is that it is "too tedious". However, this perception of tedium often comes from players who feel like they need to micromanage their religious units all across the map. This is, I assure you, not necessary. By the time you start aggressively spreading your religion, most of the barbarian outposts on the map will have been cleared, so as long as you've been doing a good job maintaining positive diplomatic relations, your religious units will have nothing to fear as they make their long journeys to distant shores. Just tell them where you want them to go and leave them alone until they get there.
Don't start spreading with apostles until missionaries are more expensive than apostles.
This is the biggest mistake I see people make when trying to achieve religious victory. Apostles are exponentially more expensive than missionaries. A horde of missionaries can do the job of an apostle at a fraction of the cost, so keep spamming those missionaries! I know it's frustrating when you've used up two or three missionaries on the same city and it still hasn't converted. The temptation to just send in an apostle to speed up the process will be very strong. But just keep at it! Eventually, your missionaries will convert that city as long as you're stubborn enough to keep sending them.
Make passive spread work for you.
It's hard to be aggressive about spreading your religion if you're also playing defense, so take advantage of passive spread mechanics to make your religion an impenetrable fortress. The more a city is surrounded by other cities following the same religion, the harder it will be to convert that city to a different religion. Convert your own civilization first, then your immediate neighbors, then their immediate neighbors, and so on. Entrench your religion so deeply into your own continent that opponents won't even try to convert you. More distant lands can wait until later.
How to convert an opponent who has their own religion.
Converting opponents who did not found a religion of their own is easy, but opponents who did found their own religion must be handled delicately. After converting your first city in their civilization, they will always, without fail, make a diplomatic request for you to knock it off. Politely instruct them to pound sand. This will cause you to get a small amount of grievances with every new city you convert, but these grievances dissipate so quickly that they never achieve the critical mass necessary to provoke an opponent into declaring war on you unless you've been doing something else to antagonize them. Begin with low population cities, the easiest to convert, before moving on to high population cities. Most crucially, save the holy city of their religion for last. The reason why this is important is because it is very likely the opponent will declare a religious emergency against you after converting their holy city. But if you've already converted their entire empire, they will have nowhere to recruit religious units from, even if they do declare the emergency. You can check the religion screen, accessible though the button with wings in the upper lefthand corner, to see which city is the holy city of each religion in the game.
Get the most out of apostle promotions.
Apostle promotions should be prioritized in the following order: Proselytizer, Translator, Pilgrim, Orator, Debater, Martyr, Indulgence Vendor, Chaplain, Heathen Conversion.
The Cardinal governor has a promotion at the end of his promotion tree which gives every apostle you make two promotions instead of one, and beelining that promotion is absolutely essential for religious victory. This is yet another reason to hold off on making apostles for as long as possible. You don't want to start spending valuable faith on them until they are fully functional super-apostles.
There is a city state called Yerevan with an absolutely broken suzerain bonus. It allows you to choose your apostle promotions from the entire list of possible options. Yes, just like those spy and rock band policy cards that don't unlock until the future era. If you happen to run into Yerevan on your map, keep your diplomat governor parked there permanently. An apostle with both Proselytizer and Translator as well as a few extra spreads from a mosque and the Hagia Sophia can often convert an entire foreign civilization singlehandedly.
Do not suffer a foreign religious unit to live.
Even if you've made your civilization an impregnable wall of faith, you may still see units belonging to your rivals passing through your territory on their way to easier targets. Do not allow this heresy to stand! Use one of your apostles to start an inquisition. Once you've done so, you'll permanently gain the ability to buy Inquisitors, inexpensive religious units who have lots of theological combat strength, but only within your own borders. Remember, every religious unit you take away from your opponents is more faith that they have wasted, so swarm their units with your inquisitors the moment they enter your civilization. Missionaries are easy to pick off. Apostles are tougher, but if you built Meenakshi Temple, you can back up your your inquisitors with gurus for extra theological combat strength. I told you that wonder was going to come in handy later!
Don't use gurus to heal your inquisitors if they get banged up. Instead, just park them on top of holy sites inside your borders, and they'll heal on their own over time.
Just like with adding a belief to your religion, apostles only need three spreads to start an inquisition, but they will be consumed if they start one regardless of how many spreads they have. Make sure to use up extra spreads before sacrificing the unit.
Retired apostles.
Normally, you'll want to use up all the spreads on your apostles. However, there are a few promotions that incentivize leaving apostles with one single spread.
First among these is Debater, which makes the apostle much stronger in theological combat. Your main rival will assuredly start recruiting apostles and possibly even inquisitors of his own to stop your religious steamroll. When that happens, you'll want to have a few of these Professional Debaters on hand to show his units who's boss. Professional Debators work best when accompanied by an entourage of two gurus, especially if you built Meenakshi Temple. Keep them close to their debaters to enhance theological combat strength and expend their charges to heal their debaters. Gurus are quite inexpensive, so send in more if the ones you have start to run low on charges. However, remember that the theological combat strength of the gurus is quite weak, so position them carefully to prevent enemy units from circling around your debaters and engaging with your gurus instead.
Another promotion that will make you want to keep one spread on your apostle is Martyr, especially if you chose the Reliquaries follower belief. Since you're trying for religious victory, you're bound to have built lots of temples with empty relic slots that need filling. Just like with debaters, you want to send your Professional Martyrs deep into the heart of enemy territory. Unlike debaters, you'll want them to get wrecked by enemy units. Don't worry if you can't find any units right away. Just park your martyr behind enemy lines and somebody will come along to take care of it eventually. I like to have my martyrs sit right in the holy site of my main rival's holy city, just to be extra obnoxious about it.
The final promotion that may make you consider keeping an apostle around at one spread is Chaplain. This gives your apostle the same healing aura as a medic unit. This healing effect only works on military units, not other religious units, so it won't be much help with achieving religious victory. Still, having a few chaplains around can come in handy if you find yourself suddenly embroiled in an unexpected war.
Government choices.
Obviously, the theocracy government is the choice you should make in the renaissance era. The huge faith bonuses it provides make it a no brainer.
In earlier and later eras, you'll want to focus on yellow card slots. Three of the most important policy cards for religious victories, Scripture, Simultaneum, and Religious Orders, are all yellow cards. Since you'll be trying to build at least three wonders, yellow slots will also be useful for policies that boost the production of wonders. If you chose Papal Primacy as your founder belief, you'll want some green slots as well. And the Theocratic Legacy card you get from constructing a tier 2 government plaza building while having the theocracy government should be a permanent resident of one of your purple slots from the moment you get it.
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Mr_Rose83 Blue Ridge Protects the HolyRegistered Userregular
The big problem I have with religion is it takes all the effort of domination, but you don’t get anything from it until you win (other than maybe some gold or whatever if you pick the right belief.)
Would you be interested in a system where beliefs were more like civics, things you can ‘research’ with Faith that anyone can get but you dynamically allocate to your religion via s screen similar to the policy cards?
Tourism is the same way, it has no impact on the game until you hit your victory screen.
I’d love to see more reward for converting other civs or dominating their tourism. Like maybe a huge and meaningful diplomatic boost so as you convert the world you start to form a bloc of same faith or culturally friendly nations.
I liked the old permanent alliance that you used to get with cultural dominance, but it makes no sense for that to happen with people you aren’t friends with In the first place, not sure what to do there.
The big problem I have with religion is it takes all the effort of domination, but you don’t get anything from it until you win (other than maybe some gold or whatever if you pick the right belief.)
Would you be interested in a system where beliefs were more like civics, things you can ‘research’ with Faith that anyone can get but you dynamically allocate to your religion via s screen similar to the policy cards?
Tourism is the same way, it has no impact on the game until you hit your victory screen.
I’d love to see more reward for converting other civs or dominating their tourism. Like maybe a huge and meaningful diplomatic boost so as you convert the world you start to form a bloc of same faith or culturally friendly nations.
I liked the old permanent alliance that you used to get with cultural dominance, but it makes no sense for that to happen with people you aren’t friends with In the first place, not sure what to do there.
On point one, I’m not sure. I like the card system but I don’t know if I would want to just add it in. I think the problem is more to do with religious victory than religion itself.
In regards to 2, I don’t know. It might seem a bit weird for a civ who hated you to all of the sudden like you just because you hit a culture threshhold or religion flip them (I think its actually more appropriate for religion than culture though).
The big problem with religion and to a lesser extent cultural victories are they aren’t self reinforcing the same way science and domination victories are (diplo is a little weird but with the latest tweak allowing you to tread water in world congress if you vote well rather than letting the ai just shut you down it self-reinforces as well).
Like domination relies on production and to a lesser extent science. When you capture cities you get more production and science, and your enemies get less. You also hurt the enemies capacity to do other victory types. A civ with its capital and half the other cities taken is going to have a hard time competing in science or culture, and probably even religion and diplo. The downside is that the ai is more likely to band together to resist than other victory types. But as you get more cities and wipe out more civs the other victory types get easier too, so you can often pivot to a science or culture victory, or even a religious victory.
Science relies on science and production, and most of the science techs give useful things that help science and production, so there tends to be a snowball effect. Science and production often give you useful goodies for other victory types, and science often ends up being a default pivot victory if other victory types don’t work out because most of the time you’ll keep science up anyway.
Culture is really useful, but not quite as much as science and getting a cultural victory tends to be more of a thing that requires focus than science. Tourism is pretty useless until you win, and requires a lot of setup with terrain improvements, units, etc. On the other hand, culture is still pretty useful, and gives a lot of nice advantages, just not quite to the extent science does. Some advantage to high tourism would be nice though.
Religion is a big investment in the beginning to even get started in, and continues to require a massive focus throughout the game. There are a lot of useful things available with faith and religious beliefs for helping out with your civ or other victory types, but those require you to basically cripple your chances for a religious victory to actually use. Unlike domination where you spend production and gold to weaken your opponents, with a religious victory all your opponents are totally full strength until you cross the finish line. Also unlike culture and diplomacy, which have a similar finish line factor, religion pisses other civs right the fuck off so they hate you diplomatically. It basically combines the worst parts of domination and culture.
Its almost never to your advantage to actively go for religious victory unless you want the acheivement. Even with a faith focused civ most of the time you are going to be better off picking another victory type and tailoring your pantheon and religion to support it.
I always find the religous mini game to be boring. Especially since there is no way to fight it if you dont generate a lot of faith your self.
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
Current Civ VI game on PS4 it looks like I am going to secure a science victory here with little opposition. This is because I am essentially England with all the AI on one continent and they hate one another. So much so despite being at turn 300 nobody has even attempted to attack me - primarily because they know my Navy - including three naval armies - will mince meat anything they send at me instantly.
Also they hate one another and are constantly fighting.
I could very well win this without a single war on my part.
So I've read 3 articles on trade routes and I'm still not sure I understand them...
When you create a trader the game gives you the option of selecting an origin city and a destination city. The trader will perform a loop between them and then you can choose another city or choose to repeat the original route? Does this mean I can reap multiple routes from one trader unit if each route is short? What then would be the benefit of long trade routes? After some number of turns a trade route is "finished", what does that mean?
1) Provide to the origin city some yields per turn. This is mostly based on the districts at the destination city (domestic trade routes get +1 food for Holy Sites, Campuses, Theatres, and Entertainment, +1 hammer for Encampments, Commercial, Harbors, and Industrial, the Government Plaza gives +1 for both; foreign trade routes it's +1 of the relevant resource)
2) Create a road on the path of the trade route
3) After a certain number of turns the trade route finishes and you can select a new route or repeat the one you just did
4) When the trade route finishes, creates a trading post in the destination city. This extends the range of your traders and provides +1 gold if future foreign trade routes go through that city. Additionally, trading posts in major civilizations give you +1 era score. This also increases your intelligence with them.
5) You get a +25% bonus to tourism with any civilization that you have an active trade route to.
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So I've read 3 articles on trade routes and I'm still not sure I understand them...
When you create a trader the game gives you the option of selecting an origin city and a destination city. The trader will perform a loop between them and then you can choose another city or choose to repeat the original route? Does this mean I can reap multiple routes from one trader unit if each route is short? What then would be the benefit of long trade routes? After some number of turns a trade route is "finished", what does that mean?
When you establish a trade route, it lasts for a set duration of turns, established by your chosen game speed. When that duration ends, the trader unit will be able to establish a new route as soon as it returns to the origin city. As such, the distance in tiles between the origin city and the destination city is mostly irrelevant.
While a trade route is active, you will receive its yields every turn. The physical position of the trader unit on the map does not matter.
When a trader unit returns to its origin city after the duration of its route has expired, both origin city and destination city will be marked with a trading post if they did not already have one. Trading posts extend the range of your trade routes. Establishing them in cities will allow you to reach more distant cities, as well as grant you a small amount of era score.
If a trader unit is plundered by an enemy unit before it can complete it's route or a war breaks out between yourself and the owner of the destination city, the route will be canceled and neither city will receive trading posts.
If war breaks out between you and the civ you are trading with, what happens to the trader? If it's not attacked, I mean.
Bahahahaha. The Nihang unit is getting hit with the nerf bat. 200 faith to purcase a unit that can be 70 str. And get up to 97str as an army + it's final promotion. All for a 200 faith to buy unit... and it has 2 gold as it's maintenance. so you can make em free with the right upgrades, if i understand the mechanics correctly!
Also, as an aside: The Gaia Map script is just fantastic. I've long been frustrated by Civ's maps, but i really like what this does - it generates very believable worlds with believable terrain and continents.
I’m waiting for the patch to come to Mac before I do a full Apocalypse Mode game. But when I do, I’m definitely playing as Canada, and I’ll make sure one of the AIs is Sweden.
Tip for that: getting a Soothsayer early and burning forests can get you amazing yields, as can nabbing the great bath and repeatedly flooding a river (like you could get 20 faith flood plain tiles)
On the flip side volcanos are not all worth settling near - 2 tile erruption radius means I saw one of my cities loose 6 pop on a single turn
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Yeah, that bonus is uh, pretty crazy! Early on just the difference it makes to grabbing goody huts (Omnomnomnom) can be pretty silly - or the way it snowballs builders and settlers
Be very interested to see if/how they nerf it
...though that said i will also cry because GOTTA GO FAST AND THIS IS FUN
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...Though i find myself always gunning for Earth Goddess. Maybe i'm overrating it, but it feels like it's just reallly nice. Doubly so with Aus, but even not on them - pile up the faith, use monumentalality early to let you expand and build things up, and later on you can just direct the faith income towards great people. Or hell, even having a religion. Currently playing on prince though, so it's not ,like the ai is exactly challenging.
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I don't know why they bother including the in-game calendar. It has never done a good job of matching the actual technology level of the world in any iteration of Civ.
The expansions just made it even more noticeable by adding new ways to get bonus science and culture, allowing you to breeze through the tech/civic tree faster.
On the other hand, its not really a bad island per se, should be space for 8 or 9 cities, but it makes me really wish I’d got this map as, say, Gitjara.
Are you implying that Australia successfully colonizing an exoplanet in 1836 AD might in fact, not be accurate to the timeline!?
Damn and blast. What am i going to do with this exoplanet now then!?
Personally, i like it just because it gives me a laugh and it's pretty funny seeing how history gets distorted.
Also that was a fun game - Earth Goddsess early, all of Ausse's delicious adjacency bonuses, whole armada of costal cities (...though i am embarssingly fumbled being able to build the Masoluem, whoops!), got the +envoys when you make wonders wonder, and the +crazy crazy crazy % bonuses for being Suzerin in my cpatial, and stacked that to basically carpet my capital's territory in Wonders. a campus making +12 science and +12 production offi t's adjacency is fair and balanced, right?
I nearly fell backwards into a Diplomatic Victory to on the way to the space victory, but the AI voted me down. Rude.
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I just figured that the difference in the time scale is due to the fact that real life civilizations aren’t ruled by immortal, semi-benevolent god-kings with a laser focus on maintaining civilizational advancement and meeting clearly defined goals over thousands of years.
Maybe that could be a thing though? Whenever you finish a war, win or lose, there’s a chance of losing a random technology so you can’t create or repair anything that depends on it (you keep any examples you do have) until you finish researching it again.
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Would this be fun? No. Which is why Sid didn't put it in 30 years ago.
I don’t know a great way to truly model regressive periods without being unfun.
All the games I remember trying something like that either make them random/deterministic and it comes down to “oh, you are poland in 1700, time for massive revolt risk for 50 years you have no control over” or “oh shit you rolled a 1 on your percentile dice at the beginning of this turn, time for either 50 turns of suck or a quick autosave reload”.
Or they make it avoidable through good play or meeting certain criteria, and it ends up being something the player avoids at all costs and just causes a hinderance for the ai.
I hate it. The game already fights against me at times, dragging me into council screens, trade offers, pleas to join wars, and generally slowing me down. When it became obvious that I was about to spend a full day moving missionaries around, I bailed. I like trying new win conditions, but holy shit was that dull.
I did my religious victory playing against a single AI on the smallest map. I'd tried on my usual settings and map size a couple of times and it just wasn't fun at all.
I rigged it even more by making my opponent Kongo.
The big problem I have with religion is it takes all the effort of domination, but you don’t get anything from it until you win (other than maybe some gold or whatever if you pick the right belief.)
Tourism is the same way, it has no impact on the game until you hit your victory screen.
I’d love to see more reward for converting other civs or dominating their tourism. Like maybe a huge and meaningful diplomatic boost so as you convert the world you start to form a bloc of same faith or culturally friendly nations.
I had totally assumed that one would get exactly that sort of bonus.
All that going for a religious victory run seems to have done is put me way behind where I would be in research if I'd invested early into science districts instead of holy ones.
Maybe you're meant to go holy war styley and use the ability to buy troops with faith instead of money?
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I never really noticed one, maybe its there but just insignificant?
Tomyris hated me and denounced me before I converted her, and continued to do so after I converted her.
I feel like religion is really the worst victory type now, they improved diplomatic victory a lot with just small tweaks.
Too OCD for that. I play all my games on the same settings and I always play Teddy. He's super flexible, so I figured I could get every victory type with him. But on a huge map, religious and domination seem to be a matter of insane willpower.
with that good start it's actually pretty easy to win even on large maps (the AI is even worse at managing religious units than it is at military combat), though it can take a while sometimes
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Try to choose a pantheon that generates faith.
If you're shooting for religious victory, you should be prioritizing faith over other yields anyway. Now, this rule isn't absolute. God of the Open Sky, God of the Sea, Goddess of Festivals, Goddess of the Hunt, and Lady of the Reeds and Marshes will still benefit you more in the long run if you have a huge amount of the resources and features they care about. But all other things being equal, you should try to choose a pantheon that specifically generates faith over one that's just generally useful for all victory types. Even a bad faith-generating pantheon like God of War will still provide you with more help achieving religious victory than a good pantheon that doesn't generate faith like Religious Settlements.
If you're worried you won't be able to found a religion at all, you might be tempted to choose Divine Spark as your pantheon, but I strongly advise doing this only as a last resort. While Divine Spark will help you get a prophet, it stops being useful to religious victory after you have founded your religion. You want to get a pantheon that's going to help fuel your religious engine throughout the entire game, not just at the beginning. Trying to get a Classical Era golden age so you can choose the Exodus of the Evangels dedication, rushing the mysticism and political philosophy civics so you can run the Revelation policy card, or even just having your cities run the holy site prayers project are all better alternatives than being stuck with Divine Spark for the entire game. Of course, there is another way get a great prophet…
When to try for Stonehenge.
There are two factors that need to be considered when you're deciding if you want to go for Stonehenge or not. First of all, if you didn't get the eureka for astrology very early in the game, then you are very unlikely to get Stonehenge. Even if you did get the eureka early, it's almost always safer to just invest your production in good holy site locations and maybe even run the prayers project a few times than it is to try for Stonehenge. A big exception is if you're playing as China. China has the fastest religion rush tactic in the game, since you can buy builders with money and use them to complete Stonehenge. If you ever get a message saying an unmet player has completed Stonehenge at what seems like an unreasonably early point the game, it's because China is somewhere on the map.
Very rarely, you'll have a game where you get to the point where you can research drama & poetry, but no one has built Stonehenge yet. If this happens, it's because no one else in the game started next to a stone resource. In this situation, you should absolutely try for Stonehenge, even if you've already invested heavily into earning a prophet the normal way. Completing Stonehenge will give you the inspiration for not only theology, a very important religious civic, but also drama & poetry, which is a prerequisite to theology. At this point, you'll certainly already have the Corvée policy that comes with the state workforce civic, so the production cost of building Stonehenge won't even be that high.
Your first two beliefs.
It's important to choose religious beliefs that will make your religion self-sustaining. The first belief you'll be asked to choose is your follower belief. Just like when choosing your pantheon, you need to prioritize faith over other yields. That means choosing either Divine Inspiration or Reliquaries. Of the two, I prefer Divine Inspiration, as there are a few wonders you're going to want to build very soon. We'll talk more about that later. However, Reliquaries can also score you loads of faith if you know how to take advantage of it, so don't hesitate to pick either.
Next, you'll be asked to choose either a worship belief, a founder belief, or an enhancer belief. Worship beliefs give you unique buildings you can build in your holy site district. Founder beliefs reward you for spreading your religion aggressively. I recommend choosing an enhancer belief first, as those are the beliefs that most help you spread your religion, so you want to get a good one before your opponents take them all. I'll go over what beliefs from each category to prioritize in another section below.
Do not spend your precious faith on anything but religious units.
This is vitally important. Each religious unit you buy increases the faith price of that same unit. Most games where you shoot for religious victory are going to end with a grueling war of attrition between you and a dominating religion on another continent. You're going to need loads of religious units to even get a foothold in a foreign continent that's already heavily invested in another religion, so the faith costs are going to start getting absolutely outrageous in the late game. I cannot emphasize this enough. Every. Point. Of. Faith. Matters.
That means no Monumentality dedication, no Grand Minister's Chapel building in the government plaza, no national parks, and no rock bands. Even your chosen worship building should be hard-built with production, not purchased with faith. Unless you're playing as Arabia of course, since they get free worship buildings when purchasing with faith.
I bring this up now because there is a Follower belief called Jesuit Education that allows you to purchase campus and theater square buildings with faith. Even if you cannot get Divine Inspiration or Reliquaries, you must avoid Jesuit Education at all costs if you intend to try for religious victory. Do not spend your faith on buildings! You will need them for apostles later!
Complete your religion before you start spreading.
Once you found your religion, you can buy missionaries and start spreading. But don't! Save your faith to buy two apostles instead, so you can complete your religion and and get all the good beliefs before your opponents do. Being the first civilization to complete your religion will also give you some era score, so it's definitely worth it.
Adding a belief to your religion requires an apostle with at least three spreads, which all apostles start with by default. However, if you're trying for religious victory, then it's likely that your apostles will have bonus spreads from various sources like the Exodus of the Evangels dedication, mosque worship buildings, or the Hagia Sophia world wonder. Adding a belief to your religion will always consume the apostle no matter how many spreads it has available, so any spreads beyond three will end up going to waste. If your apostles do have extra spreads, promote them, use their spreads until they only have three left, and then send them back to one of your holy sites to add a new belief to your religion.
The triumvirate of world wonders.
There are only three world wonders that significantly help in achieving religious victory, but they are all unlocked at around the same point in the game. Getting all three of them will require putting a significant amount of your civilization's infrastructure on hold. However, if you do manage to get all three of them, your religion will become an unstoppable juggernaut, so it is absolutely worth the risk. Thankfully, the Gothic Architecture policy unlocks with the divine right civic, which has an inspiration requirement of building two temples, which is something you'll end up doing early if you're attempting a religious victory, so you'll already be in a good position for rushing wonders.
The first world wonder is Mahabodhi Temple, which gives you two free apostles upon completion. This is significant because apostles can normally only be bought with faith, and they are very expensive. Building Mahabodhi Temple is like getting to create two apostles with production, which will save you loads of faith! If you haven't completed your religion yet, you can can use these two apostles to do so. If you have, you can send them out to quickly convert some high population cities.
The second world wonder you'll want to shoot for is Meenakshi Temple, which gives the otherwise underwhelming guru unit several bonuses that make it much more valuable. This wonder won't be immediately useful, but when you're facing off against your final rival on his home continent, you'll be glad you went through the trouble of getting it.
The third and arguably most difficult wonder to obtain is the Hagia Sophia, which gives each of your religious units an extra spread if recruited in the same city. Unlike the other two, the Hagia Sophia is unlocked in the tech tree, not the civics three. If you've been pushing for religious victory, you might be falling behind on science a bit, but now is the time to catch back up. Once you have the Hagia Sophia, you should only ever build religious units in that city and no others.
Don't be fooled by Kotoku-in. It's more of a military wonder masquerading as a religious wonder. With so many better wonders to choose from in the medieval era, you should definitely pass on this one.
What beliefs to choose.
I'll start with enhancer beliefs, since I mentioned before that I recommend choosing an enhancer belief first. The big prize here is Missionary Zeal. Since you're playing on a big map, there are bound to be all sorts of obstructions between your religious units and their destinations. Missionary Zeal makes that a non-issue. Combined with speed bonuses your religious units will get from the Exodus of the Evangels golden age dedication and starting next to a guru if you built Meenakshi Temple, your religious units will be zipping around the map like lightning! If Missionary Zeal has already been taken, choose Holy Order instead. It gives you a discount on missionaries and apostles, potentially saving you mountains of faith over the course of the game.
Truthfully, all the enhancer beliefs are good for religious victory except Crusade and Defender of the Faith, which behave more like founder beliefs. Whatever you do, don't choose either of those.
Next, lets talk about worship buildings. The one you want to go for is the mosque. It's like having a Hagia Sophia in every city. If the mosque is already taken, then you'll want a faith-generating worship building instead. If you managed to complete your religion in the medieval era or before, the dar-e mehr will give you the most faith in the long run. If you didn't complete your religion until the renaissance era or later, choose the synagog instead.
Founder beliefs usually reward you for spreading your religion, rather than making your religion easier to spread. There is one exception, however. Papal Primacy is a founder belief that adds religious pressure to a city state whenever you invest an envoy in it. This is one of the only ways to quickly convert a city to your religion without having to spend any faith at all. While converting city states isn't required for religious victory, it's still useful because all cities converted to your religion, including city states, will apply religious pressure to all other nearby cities. Papal Primacy is like an enhancer belief that somehow got mixed in with the founder beliefs. Choosing it effectively allows you to have two enhancer beliefs. If Papal Primacy is already taken, Pilgrimage is a good second choice. Converted cities will generate faith for you, allowing your religious units to pay for themselves over time. Lay Ministry also generates faith, but not as much as Pilgrimage, so only choose it if both Papal Primacy and Pilgrimage are already taken.
You don't need to babysit your religious units.
The most common criticism I hear about religious victory on big maps is that it is "too tedious". However, this perception of tedium often comes from players who feel like they need to micromanage their religious units all across the map. This is, I assure you, not necessary. By the time you start aggressively spreading your religion, most of the barbarian outposts on the map will have been cleared, so as long as you've been doing a good job maintaining positive diplomatic relations, your religious units will have nothing to fear as they make their long journeys to distant shores. Just tell them where you want them to go and leave them alone until they get there.
Don't start spreading with apostles until missionaries are more expensive than apostles.
This is the biggest mistake I see people make when trying to achieve religious victory. Apostles are exponentially more expensive than missionaries. A horde of missionaries can do the job of an apostle at a fraction of the cost, so keep spamming those missionaries! I know it's frustrating when you've used up two or three missionaries on the same city and it still hasn't converted. The temptation to just send in an apostle to speed up the process will be very strong. But just keep at it! Eventually, your missionaries will convert that city as long as you're stubborn enough to keep sending them.
Make passive spread work for you.
It's hard to be aggressive about spreading your religion if you're also playing defense, so take advantage of passive spread mechanics to make your religion an impenetrable fortress. The more a city is surrounded by other cities following the same religion, the harder it will be to convert that city to a different religion. Convert your own civilization first, then your immediate neighbors, then their immediate neighbors, and so on. Entrench your religion so deeply into your own continent that opponents won't even try to convert you. More distant lands can wait until later.
How to convert an opponent who has their own religion.
Converting opponents who did not found a religion of their own is easy, but opponents who did found their own religion must be handled delicately. After converting your first city in their civilization, they will always, without fail, make a diplomatic request for you to knock it off. Politely instruct them to pound sand. This will cause you to get a small amount of grievances with every new city you convert, but these grievances dissipate so quickly that they never achieve the critical mass necessary to provoke an opponent into declaring war on you unless you've been doing something else to antagonize them. Begin with low population cities, the easiest to convert, before moving on to high population cities. Most crucially, save the holy city of their religion for last. The reason why this is important is because it is very likely the opponent will declare a religious emergency against you after converting their holy city. But if you've already converted their entire empire, they will have nowhere to recruit religious units from, even if they do declare the emergency. You can check the religion screen, accessible though the button with wings in the upper lefthand corner, to see which city is the holy city of each religion in the game.
Get the most out of apostle promotions.
Apostle promotions should be prioritized in the following order: Proselytizer, Translator, Pilgrim, Orator, Debater, Martyr, Indulgence Vendor, Chaplain, Heathen Conversion.
The Cardinal governor has a promotion at the end of his promotion tree which gives every apostle you make two promotions instead of one, and beelining that promotion is absolutely essential for religious victory. This is yet another reason to hold off on making apostles for as long as possible. You don't want to start spending valuable faith on them until they are fully functional super-apostles.
There is a city state called Yerevan with an absolutely broken suzerain bonus. It allows you to choose your apostle promotions from the entire list of possible options. Yes, just like those spy and rock band policy cards that don't unlock until the future era. If you happen to run into Yerevan on your map, keep your diplomat governor parked there permanently. An apostle with both Proselytizer and Translator as well as a few extra spreads from a mosque and the Hagia Sophia can often convert an entire foreign civilization singlehandedly.
Do not suffer a foreign religious unit to live.
Even if you've made your civilization an impregnable wall of faith, you may still see units belonging to your rivals passing through your territory on their way to easier targets. Do not allow this heresy to stand! Use one of your apostles to start an inquisition. Once you've done so, you'll permanently gain the ability to buy Inquisitors, inexpensive religious units who have lots of theological combat strength, but only within your own borders. Remember, every religious unit you take away from your opponents is more faith that they have wasted, so swarm their units with your inquisitors the moment they enter your civilization. Missionaries are easy to pick off. Apostles are tougher, but if you built Meenakshi Temple, you can back up your your inquisitors with gurus for extra theological combat strength. I told you that wonder was going to come in handy later!
Don't use gurus to heal your inquisitors if they get banged up. Instead, just park them on top of holy sites inside your borders, and they'll heal on their own over time.
Just like with adding a belief to your religion, apostles only need three spreads to start an inquisition, but they will be consumed if they start one regardless of how many spreads they have. Make sure to use up extra spreads before sacrificing the unit.
Retired apostles.
Normally, you'll want to use up all the spreads on your apostles. However, there are a few promotions that incentivize leaving apostles with one single spread.
First among these is Debater, which makes the apostle much stronger in theological combat. Your main rival will assuredly start recruiting apostles and possibly even inquisitors of his own to stop your religious steamroll. When that happens, you'll want to have a few of these Professional Debaters on hand to show his units who's boss. Professional Debators work best when accompanied by an entourage of two gurus, especially if you built Meenakshi Temple. Keep them close to their debaters to enhance theological combat strength and expend their charges to heal their debaters. Gurus are quite inexpensive, so send in more if the ones you have start to run low on charges. However, remember that the theological combat strength of the gurus is quite weak, so position them carefully to prevent enemy units from circling around your debaters and engaging with your gurus instead.
Another promotion that will make you want to keep one spread on your apostle is Martyr, especially if you chose the Reliquaries follower belief. Since you're trying for religious victory, you're bound to have built lots of temples with empty relic slots that need filling. Just like with debaters, you want to send your Professional Martyrs deep into the heart of enemy territory. Unlike debaters, you'll want them to get wrecked by enemy units. Don't worry if you can't find any units right away. Just park your martyr behind enemy lines and somebody will come along to take care of it eventually. I like to have my martyrs sit right in the holy site of my main rival's holy city, just to be extra obnoxious about it.
The final promotion that may make you consider keeping an apostle around at one spread is Chaplain. This gives your apostle the same healing aura as a medic unit. This healing effect only works on military units, not other religious units, so it won't be much help with achieving religious victory. Still, having a few chaplains around can come in handy if you find yourself suddenly embroiled in an unexpected war.
Government choices.
Obviously, the theocracy government is the choice you should make in the renaissance era. The huge faith bonuses it provides make it a no brainer.
In earlier and later eras, you'll want to focus on yellow card slots. Three of the most important policy cards for religious victories, Scripture, Simultaneum, and Religious Orders, are all yellow cards. Since you'll be trying to build at least three wonders, yellow slots will also be useful for policies that boost the production of wonders. If you chose Papal Primacy as your founder belief, you'll want some green slots as well. And the Theocratic Legacy card you get from constructing a tier 2 government plaza building while having the theocracy government should be a permanent resident of one of your purple slots from the moment you get it.
I liked the old permanent alliance that you used to get with cultural dominance, but it makes no sense for that to happen with people you aren’t friends with In the first place, not sure what to do there.
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On point one, I’m not sure. I like the card system but I don’t know if I would want to just add it in. I think the problem is more to do with religious victory than religion itself.
In regards to 2, I don’t know. It might seem a bit weird for a civ who hated you to all of the sudden like you just because you hit a culture threshhold or religion flip them (I think its actually more appropriate for religion than culture though).
The big problem with religion and to a lesser extent cultural victories are they aren’t self reinforcing the same way science and domination victories are (diplo is a little weird but with the latest tweak allowing you to tread water in world congress if you vote well rather than letting the ai just shut you down it self-reinforces as well).
Like domination relies on production and to a lesser extent science. When you capture cities you get more production and science, and your enemies get less. You also hurt the enemies capacity to do other victory types. A civ with its capital and half the other cities taken is going to have a hard time competing in science or culture, and probably even religion and diplo. The downside is that the ai is more likely to band together to resist than other victory types. But as you get more cities and wipe out more civs the other victory types get easier too, so you can often pivot to a science or culture victory, or even a religious victory.
Science relies on science and production, and most of the science techs give useful things that help science and production, so there tends to be a snowball effect. Science and production often give you useful goodies for other victory types, and science often ends up being a default pivot victory if other victory types don’t work out because most of the time you’ll keep science up anyway.
Culture is really useful, but not quite as much as science and getting a cultural victory tends to be more of a thing that requires focus than science. Tourism is pretty useless until you win, and requires a lot of setup with terrain improvements, units, etc. On the other hand, culture is still pretty useful, and gives a lot of nice advantages, just not quite to the extent science does. Some advantage to high tourism would be nice though.
Religion is a big investment in the beginning to even get started in, and continues to require a massive focus throughout the game. There are a lot of useful things available with faith and religious beliefs for helping out with your civ or other victory types, but those require you to basically cripple your chances for a religious victory to actually use. Unlike domination where you spend production and gold to weaken your opponents, with a religious victory all your opponents are totally full strength until you cross the finish line. Also unlike culture and diplomacy, which have a similar finish line factor, religion pisses other civs right the fuck off so they hate you diplomatically. It basically combines the worst parts of domination and culture.
Its almost never to your advantage to actively go for religious victory unless you want the acheivement. Even with a faith focused civ most of the time you are going to be better off picking another victory type and tailoring your pantheon and religion to support it.
Also they hate one another and are constantly fighting.
I could very well win this without a single war on my part.
Just look at these yields:
Volcanos, Everyone!
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I did not think this possible.
When you create a trader the game gives you the option of selecting an origin city and a destination city. The trader will perform a loop between them and then you can choose another city or choose to repeat the original route? Does this mean I can reap multiple routes from one trader unit if each route is short? What then would be the benefit of long trade routes? After some number of turns a trade route is "finished", what does that mean?
http://steamcommunity.com/id/pablocampy
1) Provide to the origin city some yields per turn. This is mostly based on the districts at the destination city (domestic trade routes get +1 food for Holy Sites, Campuses, Theatres, and Entertainment, +1 hammer for Encampments, Commercial, Harbors, and Industrial, the Government Plaza gives +1 for both; foreign trade routes it's +1 of the relevant resource)
2) Create a road on the path of the trade route
3) After a certain number of turns the trade route finishes and you can select a new route or repeat the one you just did
4) When the trade route finishes, creates a trading post in the destination city. This extends the range of your traders and provides +1 gold if future foreign trade routes go through that city. Additionally, trading posts in major civilizations give you +1 era score. This also increases your intelligence with them.
5) You get a +25% bonus to tourism with any civilization that you have an active trade route to.
When you establish a trade route, it lasts for a set duration of turns, established by your chosen game speed. When that duration ends, the trader unit will be able to establish a new route as soon as it returns to the origin city. As such, the distance in tiles between the origin city and the destination city is mostly irrelevant.
While a trade route is active, you will receive its yields every turn. The physical position of the trader unit on the map does not matter.
When a trader unit returns to its origin city after the duration of its route has expired, both origin city and destination city will be marked with a trading post if they did not already have one. Trading posts extend the range of your trade routes. Establishing them in cities will allow you to reach more distant cities, as well as grant you a small amount of era score.
If a trader unit is plundered by an enemy unit before it can complete it's route or a war breaks out between yourself and the owner of the destination city, the route will be canceled and neither city will receive trading posts.
It appears back at its starting city, ready to make a different journey.
Bahahahaha. The Nihang unit is getting hit with the nerf bat. 200 faith to purcase a unit that can be 70 str. And get up to 97str as an army + it's final promotion. All for a 200 faith to buy unit... and it has 2 gold as it's maintenance. so you can make em free with the right upgrades, if i understand the mechanics correctly!
Also, as an aside: The Gaia Map script is just fantastic. I've long been frustrated by Civ's maps, but i really like what this does - it generates very believable worlds with believable terrain and continents.
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Accidentally.
I was farting around getting GDR so i could go for a Very Stompy Gran Colombia win... and got a diplomatic victory (Despite everyone hating my guts).
Whoops?
Just because i was nice and gave them gold due to all the climate disasters. (Apocalypse mode is very good for diplomatic victory it seems)
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I want to drown in Diplomatic Favor.
On the flip side volcanos are not all worth settling near - 2 tile erruption radius means I saw one of my cities loose 6 pop on a single turn
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Pretty sure at least some of those changes went in with the last update.