Holy Warriors - Civilization 5 (BNW) Succession Game

[Ichabod]

Considering God of Craftsmen vs. Goddess of the Hunt, I think it's tied to what choice of SP we decide to go. Craftsmen seem more appropriate if we go Liberty amd city spam, while Tradition gets more from the food in the Capital from Goddess.

I think Liberty is a better option here. Our revealed terrain is bad, so a lot of small cities that benefit from per city bonus seems the way to go. + Our Capital is very hammer heavy, which favours the Settler building SP.

Besides, there's nothing in faith production that benefits from Tradition, except for Faith generating Wonders (which aren't a big deal; the best of them is Stonehenge, to get an early religion, which is irrelevant considering our UA) and perhaps the Grand Temple (national wonder, requires temple in all cities, 8 faith per turn). The best way to generate faith that I can think of is spamming Holy Sites, but that depends on having enough faith to generate GPros to begin with. We have few options to generate this faith, mainly the UA, shrine (1 faith, +1 with SP) and temple (2 faith, +1 with SP). Big cities won't generate more faith, we need more cities getting these small bonuses to have a significant faith production (these cities don't even need to grow big, they just need to be near forests and get the shrine + temple combo going).

So, I'd go Liberty + God of Craftsmen, planning to get a good amount of cities going early.

But the thing is, I'm not sure how much the +5% tech cost increase per city will hurt us, if we choose such a strategy. Not enough experience with the game.

So, if we decide to go Tradition, I think Goddess of the Hunt makes more sense.

[Wyatan]

iirc, there's a belief that makes every Wonder generate faith, and it can add up to a respectable amount (although it may be more of an OCC thing).

And what's that talk of Tradition vs Liberty ? If you mean to conquer the world with Holy Warriors, Honor is the way to go ! :P
(been a while since I've looked at any Civ 5 stuff, but I seem to remember a coupla players getting good Deity results going the unorthodox Honor + Piety opening, so my comment's not totally tongue-in-cheek ).

[Ichabod]

Yet another quick report. Civ 5 has quite a lot of decisions to take early that I don't find interesting for a player to take by himself in a SG, so I'm stopping this more than usual. I'd feel bad to choose our SP path without consulting everyone.

Anyway, on to the game.

*I chose Goddess of the Hunt as our Pantheon, since everyone seemed okay with it.I think this will end up being a good decision, considering what the map revealed so far (a lot of camp resources).

*We met Ragusa (Maritime CS) near Monaco, a bit more to the West. It has an unique happy resource, as Monaco does. I forgot to pledge to protect it, I'll do it when I get back to the game. There's also a barb camp pretty near it, which can be a quick shortcut to Ally state.




*The scout proceeded NE, and found 2 opponents: Russia and Rome. Rome is very, very close, near a tempting city spot that gets Cotton, another deer and river tiles. I'm not sure we can settle in this direction without prompting Rome to attack us, so we need to be careful about settling choices.




*Our Capital is actually a bit better than we previously thought:




I thought about buying the tiles we need to get the deer and wheat in range, but didn't do it yet. The ocean tiles cost 100 gold and we still don't have enough to afford ocean tile + deer/wheat. By the way, if we buy the ocean tile, does our next cultural expansion goes for the wheat/deer or would it still prefer the fish? I'm not sure how this works. Something to consider, I guess, since we still haven't had any border pops.

*Finally, what made me stop is that we popped a ruin for 20 culture, which allows us to choose our first SP. So, Tradition or Liberty? Here's the map so far:







My opinion, after seeing the map, is that we should go for Tradition. We can't expand towards Rome or we'll put ourselves in danger of early war. So, we'll be boxed in in what seems to be a little peninsula, without that many cities, which favours Tradition. We can settle a city where T-Hawk suggested and another one near the Ivory, in the place with 3 adjacent forests, and start accumulating faith for Pantheon + units. With the faster development we get from Tradition, we can perhaps attack Rome and free more space for ourselves.

Actually, I might consider going Honor + Piety, like Wyatan suggested. With Rome so close, we might need to attack soon and having the combat bonus from discipline (+15% for an adjacent military unit) and a free great general (from warrior code) will help. + Piety opener, Organized Religion (+1 faith for shrines and temples) and Mandate of Heaven (20% discount on unit buys with faith). That's 6 policies, which is a lot, but I think we can manage to go with only 5 in an initial attack against ROme: we start with Honor, for the bonus versus barbs (+culture if we kill them); we go for Piety opener as the second SP, to get faster shrines and temples (we can delay building them until there); after that, Organized religion, for more faith; 4th policy, Mandate of Heaven, to get the discount on bought units; finally, we can get the free General or the Discipline bonus when we are ready to attack Rome.

It's a bit unorthodox, but that might work. We don't need to finish the Honor branch, just get the early policies. It also enables for us to build the Statue of Zeus, which gives +15% strength when attacking cities, also useful.

Perhaps I'm completely misguided about this, but I wouldn't mind trying this approach.

[yuris125]

I don't see where we would get units from to attack Rome. I can't find a list of faith costs for units, but I remember seeing that Archer costs 80 faith somewhere. So that's 100 faith for religion, then 80 more for each Archer. This is not going to happen fast enough to justify taking Honour, which would be useless until we get there. I can see Honour being useful at some point, but not this early

Tradition opener then two policies in PIety seems like the best play to me

[Ichabod]

Faith cost is double the unit's hammer cost. Mandate of Heaven gives a 20% discount. Archer is 64 faith with MoH, pictish warrior is 90 faith with MoH.

Religion requires 200 faith (for the first GPro).

[T-hawk]

I believe we can settle towards Rome without incurring anger if the city is closer to our capital than theirs. 2S of the cotton would be the place to do it. Although the backyard locations may be better anyway.

By the way, if we buy the ocean tile, does our next cultural expansion goes for the wheat/deer or would it still prefer the fish? I'm not sure how this works.

You can't know ahead of time, at least not without completely reverse-engineering the tile picker formula. I do know it pretty much always prioritizes 2nd-ring resources over 3rd-ring though. I think it will pick at least the 2nd-ring fish, grassland, and plains, before the 3rd-ring resources. I'm not sure whether it's better to put gold towards these tiles, or save for a worker/settler which are the most efficient buys in the early game.

I think you just can't ever go wrong with Tradition, yeah. If you want the capital to acquire any of those tiles in any reasonable time, it's going to be necessary.

WE ARE NOT RUSHING ROME. We're a hundred turns away from any units with faith and two hundred from an invading army.

I could see this plan: all of Tradition, take Piety + Organized Religion + Mandate of Heaven, then take Honor and Warrior Code when we might be ready to attack somewhere around turns 200-250, then up to Reformation in the industrial age for the Religious Fervor Reformation belief.

[Ichabod]

After having my conquest delusions brought back to our militarlyless reality, I proceeded with the game choosing the Tradition opener. I also chose Oligarchy during my turn set, another Tradition SP (which is now a prereq for the more useful Tradition SPs, like Legalism, Landed Elite and Monarchy). The reasoning is the following: We can still get the piety opener + organized religion pretty soon (before building a shrine even), if the team decides to do so, but we can also choose to fill all the Tradition policies before doing it. I just postponed the decision of choosing between these paths to the next player.

*We got 95 gold from a hut.

*We met Hiawa...The Iroquois (to the NW):




*We found Russia. My limited Civ 5 experience says Russia is one of the more competent AIs. Their Capital is pretty good, so they may end up being one of the thoughest opposition for us.




*I think I also found our second city spot:




That's the King Solomon mines, with its 6 hammer yield. We could settle a city near it with wheat + Ivory + lots of camp resources and a 2-hammer city tile. That's an incredible spot and I think we should make a priority to settle it.

Anyway, I stopped before turn 25 because I think we have an important decision to take. We just finished a granary and we need to choose our next build. We can get a settler in 10 turns:




Or we could go for a safer play, building a worker, perhaps with this tile configuration:




I'm leaning towards a settler for the King Solomon mines spot. We'll have enough money for a worker purchase once we settle this second city, so we can quickly improve the wheat and the camp resources. Not sure if the Solomon Mines are worth such an effort, so I want to ask the team's opinion. Since we are up to turn 22, I decided to stop. Next player can play until turn 40, to make things more rounded.

Things to notice:

*The warrior is pretty close to the Capital; if we want him to escort the settler, I think he should go back now. There's a barb cam nearby, which could make things tricky for an unescorted settler.

*We need to choose our third SP soon (3 turns, I think). I think we should just finish Tradition before going for Piety, but if the team decides differently, we can choose Piety opener and still get Organized Religion pretty soon.

*I have the Capital on production focus with all wanted tiles locked, so we get the free production when the city grows. Keep an eye when the city grows to then select the appropriate tile, otherwise the new citizen will work a hill tile.

*We are finishing research on Trapping. Any opinions about where we should go next?

*I forgot to Pledge to Protect Ragusa once again, so next player should do it.

The save: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2124...0.Civ5Save

Good luck to the next player (Rowain)! Let me know if the save is working.

[timmy827]

OOPS, xposted with ichabods turns 9-22. But leaving it as most of the faith stuff is still relevant for the future. (Not saying it's right or optimal though

Disclaimer: It's a little hard for me to do anything beyond "do what Thawk says" because I know he's played way more Civ5 than I have.

How to get Faith: I agree that a wide Liberty/Piety build would be best if we could do it. but if we have no units and fear any AI attacks from close settling, we apparently just don't have the room to do so. So favor Tradition.

I wouldn't sneeze at stonehenge. The hammer/faith ratio is worse than shrines/temples with both Piety policies, but better than temples before those policies (not to mention no GPT cost, and GE point for another wonder later) and the policies are a ways off if we do all Tradition first. And while we will found a religion with the UA alone, henge would guarantee we get there before any AI and thus get the belief we need. (Granted the UA is pretty likely to get us there first anyways).
We can't spam GProphets for holy sites. Assuming we use the 300 faith GP for enhancement its spemding 500 for 6 per turn - not worth it. We may settle 2 (Hagia Sophia, Piety finisher) however.

The faith-from-wonders belief might be decent (+2 per wonder) but we can't take it until enhancement (assuming we pick holy warriors 1st since the variant is built on it).

[timmy827]

Yes, agree on King Solomon's site for next city, besides being good it should block that western shore of our lake hopefully. I think you're suggesting the hill 1NE of the wheat? Looks best on what we can see now. Agree with build settler now/save for buy worker, and warrior escort, but would like the warrior to poke a few tiles west of King Solomon's first, he should have a couple extra turns before settler is done

DON'T WORK THE FISH OVER THE TRUFFLES.
even if not building a settler. +4 gold instead of +2 total means we can buy the worker a lot sooner. (hopefully the scout will find a city state or something for gold, but same principle applies).

Agree on finishing tradition. Not sure about tech.

It's a ways off, but think a good city spot (maybe #3) is 4s of the capital. The deer and wheat will eventually be in cap's borders but it would grab them sooner, plus other resources in the south.

EDIT: save opened fine for me.

[T-hawk]

Looked over the save. You forgot to protect Ragusa.

I say to both build a worker and buy one. Build a settler next after a worker. A new city without a worker is crap. The timing may work well to buy a worker in the new city just as the settler gets into position.

Yes, work truffles over fish.

We will be first to religion even without Stonehenge. I don't think anyone else even has a pantheon yet. Rome and Moscow visibly don't, and there's nothing in the event log about any others.

Stonehenge is borderline worthwhile generally, and certainly on theme. But the problem is the tech doesn't do anything else for us, with no stoneworks or plantation resources. I think I want to head for Masonry next to get the marble online for selling.

Continue on Tradition, yes.

Also I think our warrior should come back home for barb defense, particularly to protect the upcoming worker. Cut through the fog a little ways towards Rome but move him generally homewards.