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Are you, in fact, a pregnant lady who lives in the apartment next door to Superdeath's parents? - Commodore |
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Holy Warriors - Civilization 5 (BNW) Succession Game
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Ok, so I started playing. I decided to allow us only one scout, with a restriction to not use it for attacks (even if upgraded in a ruin). Hopefully no one founds this solution to be too bad; I was really torn about what to do, but I didn't want to delay playing the save any further. I tried to find a compromise between fun and variant and that's what I ended up with.
Anyway, on to the game.  I've settled our Capital of faith on the Marble, which gave us the 15% wonder boost. I renamed the Capital to Faith, but we should probably choose a better name for it. Started on the scout we are allowed to build, research on pottery -> trapping, plan is to go scout -> monument -> granary -> worker.  We soon found a ruin, which gave the +1 pop result. This reveals how food poor our Capital is, forcing us to work a 1/1/2 tile. Not great, but what can you do?  We met Monaco, which is pretty close and appears to be in a peninsula of some sorts... I don't think we'll have any opponents near it, so I pledge to protect it already, for the +5 influence. It's a cultural CS, so no free units for now. You didn't think it would be that easy, right?  Finally, the reason why I'm reporting so soon: we got enough faith for a Pantheon and I think that's an important enough decision to stop for a bit. Here's the revealed terrain:  There's nothing revealed so far that points towards a specific faith-generating pantheon... There's non-forested tundra, but I don't see us working such poor tiles only for faith purposes. My initial thought was to get the Goddess of the Hunt pantheon, which gives +1 food from Camps; that'd probably help with our very low food Capital (+3 food from what we can see so far, enabled pretty early). Not game breaking, but useful, at least. For a thematic choice, there's God of War, which gives faith for units killed near our cities. Ithink we get faith even while killing units by bombardment, so that could add up when the barb invasions arrive. So, any opinions? After thinking about it, I'd probably go with God of War. It's probably the best faith generating option we have + it's fun. With no clear best option in sight, I guess that's good enough. 
My preference when there's no clearly prevalent resource to improve with religion is Fertility Rites. It would give +0.5 food per turn right away, and would only get better with time
God of War is only relevant for defence vs barbs? I don't think flat faith bonus will be particularly relevant by the time we start fighting with other civs Also, Liberty is not looking good so far, I don't see a single spot I would like even for the second city, and I would say Tradition is better unless we have space for 6-7 cities
Oh I didn't see that the starting square is on that second, little, river. Would have said to settle in place to get the 2nd hammer from being on the hill. Not much difference though.
Yeah I'm not sold on God of War. Fertility Rites is a standard choice, but I think God of Craftsmen might be a bit better, its productivity is better leveraged in bootstrapping new cities rather than rich-gets-richer on big ones. Or Dance of the Aurora? We've got some tundra, and the 2nd city could go between the tundra deer and the truffles, which gets the Celts full faith bonus.
@yuris: yes, not great land so far. presumably the scout will go NE and find nontundra. Just sort of bad luck going towards the edge first. (Heh, another difference from civ4, where you could usually tell whether you were north or south of equator from the forest graphics). and agree, I think tradition unless a lot of good land. I'll defer to you on 6/7 cities being the cutoff, haven't done enough BNW to have a good idea where it shifts.
For pantheon - this thread claims it is +4 faith for each kill, and yes city bombardments count. I don't see that amounting to too much, in my experience there are only a handful of harassing barbarians early and doubt we will defend against the AI much. The tundra belief would be intriguing if there were tundra hills (just as good as any other hill) but looks like it is all flat. Cheekily I think the best faith-making pantheon is desert folklore. if some floodplains/desert hill city sites found it will be much better, I honestly think that while it may have a total strikeout the expected value of faith made is still the best. Goddess of hunt gives us +3 food early-ish at capital (truffles + 2 deer). That's strong enough early for me to favor it over Fertility if we go for a nonfaith pantheon.
God of war gives half the strength of the unit killed in faith. 4 faith for barb brutes, but it gets better as units get stronger. Still hard to compete with a constant faith per turn pantheon, though.
Does fetility rites give its bonus based on the total food generated or only the surplus food? If it's only the surplus, I think God of Hunt is better (+3 food in Capital, +2 in T-hawk suggested second city, we'd 50 food surplus to reach that). If we take the Tundra pantheon, perhaps we should aim to kill Monaco early; maybe with Pictish warriors, if possible. It has some decent tiles to get faith from. 
No no no on God of War. How often do you get a barbarian kill near home, maybe once every ten turns or so on average? You need heavy combat with opposing civs for any of the per-kill stuff to work relevantly. We're not doing that here, certainly not early.
Fertility Rites only operates on surplus food, as do all +% food modifiers. I still want to make an argument for God of Craftsmen, as it could be quite helpful in going wide in poor terrain. Goddess of the Hunt is less good than Civ 4 players think. Unlike Civ 4 where food can always be whipped into production, in Civ 5 the extra food does nothing until there are tiles with 3 foodhammers for the laborers to work and even then doesn't pay back much. Production is actually more valuable than food in my Civ 5 experience, since food diminishes in returns faster and is more easily available from granaries and such. Especially in this variant, where production can get us more faith but food can't. If the team wants Goddess of the Hunt though, I'll go along with it. No we wouldn't be able to kill Monaco for quite some time. We're at least a hundred turns away from buying any units with faith. |
