Sid Meier's Civilization V

Sid Meier's Civilization V

Not enough ratings
Colonialist Legacies: The Dene
By Ashardalon125 and 1 collaborators
The Dene people, with a unique combination of skills, prove capable of defending their own and using religion to unify their people and the world.
   
Award
Favorite
Favorited
Unfavorite
Introduction
With both a UGP and a UI, the Dene already set themselves apart from the average mix of civs. With an emphasis on religion, the Dene prove more than capable of taking and securing their land.

CivFanatics Link: http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=23012
Steam Community Link: https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=286913450
History

First off, apologies for the short history segment. If anyone has any more information regarding the Dene, please comment and I'll add to it.

The modern Dene people have been made from the speakers of Athabaskan from various tribes, such as Chipewyen, Tlicho, Yellowknives, Slavey, and Sahtu tribes. Note, however, that Pacific Athabaskans and Southern Athabaskans are not counted among the Dene. The common threads of the Dene are not so much a tribal name as a way of living. The beliefs held common amongst the people, and the common language, allows them to detect each other amidst the other tribes in the area.
UA: Soul of the Tundra
The Dene UA, like the Inuit, is an involved one:
Shrines and Temples contain slots for Great Works of Music
If a Shrine or Temple is in a the capital or a city working a Tundra tile, it will give extra faith when the slot is filled.
Holy Sites built on Tundra yield +1 tourism

The obvious angle of the ability is to build a powerful religion, and use that religion to win via culture. The first two parts of the UA synergize well with the UI and the second part synergizes with the UGP. By itself, it gives more reason to build shrines and temples in every city, since they'll provide more slots, something that always seems to fill quickly.


As viewed on the right, the shrine has a slot even as early as the turn you build it, but filling it will be harder.

The extra faith from filled tiles comes in handy much later in the game, since Acoustics isn't until the Renaissance and the earliest available musician points come at Metal Casting for the Dene. But when it does come through, it helps create later game faith sources short of settling new cities. With the price of Sacred Drummers going up, and missionaries going up as the ages progress, filled shrines and temples help keep the faith going.

The Holy Site bonus becomes all the more powerful when paired with a finished Piety tree. Each Holy Sites will yield 3 gold, 3 culture, 6 faith and 1 tourism. Additionally, if Dance of the Aurora is picked, an additional 1 faith is applied to the tile and if New Deal from Freedom is taken, it adds another 4 faith for a grand total of 3 gold, 3 culture, 11 faith and 1 tourism from a singular tile. If one builds tall enough in a wide enough tundra zone, the bonus provided can be ridiculous.

As for the synergies...
UGP: Sacred Drummer


The Sacred Drummer is a Great Prophet Replacement that earns its place as possibly one of the greatest unit replacements. Its base stats are the same as the normal unit: sight, movement, conversion strength, etc. The important difference is in its production.

Whenever a Sacred Drummer is produced, it begins a few turns worth of a "Prophet Dance," in which EVERY city connected to the capital, whether by harbors or roads, produces +3 local happiness and has a +25% Great Person generation rate. This is perfect for a tall OR a wide empire, since the wide empire will benefit more from the happiness, but the tall empire will benefit more from the GPG.

Sometimes, the birth of a Prophet can be helpfully timed, though early on, it's still up to random chance. It can help tide a wide empire over early on if religion is rushed, allowing time to settle a city and improve a resource or two. And for those who build massive empires and have 13+ cities, it just gets better.

Ideally, your first two Sacred Drummers (produced by building all the religious buildings possible early on) should be used to create and enhance your religion. After that, they should be used for Holy Sites, as the faith will help later on for Missionary spam and also produce the passive Tourism bonus.

A Discussion on Beliefs
For the Enhancer Belief, Messiah is tempting, as it reduces the cost of Prophets, and, by extension, Sacred Drummers. The belief might allow you to squeeze in an extra one or two in the course of the game, but you'll only get the benefit of the reduced cost, seeing as all of them will be used for Holy Sites rather than conversions. This can be semi-useful, and is mainly up to the player as to which belief they think is the best. In the grand scheme, if the belief is picked as soon as the second Sacred Drummer has been spawned, it will make the others come quicker, allowing the faith to roll in, and eventually, the other yields, and also begin generating the tourism earlier.
UI: Yellowknife Encampment

The little tipis off to the sides of the faith strip are Yellowknife encampments. Note that the right one is on iron.
The Yellowknife encampment is a very early improvement that comes in at mining. It yields +1 food and +1 faith and is only able to be built on Tundra, and metal resources (iron, aluminum, copper, silver, gold), so it has to be thought through. Additionally, they may not be built next to each other, so think ahead when building them. Also consider the fact that they are fighting for the same slots as Holy Sites and plan carefully. It is important to note that it does improve the tile, yielding the aluminum or iron for use or the luxury for trade.

The Yellowknife encampment gives an odd incentive to pursue some of the bottom techs for a normally top tree approach. Iron Working, which also grants Swordsman, gives each Yellowknife encampment +1 food. And Metal Casting makes each one generate one great musician point apience, giving a tall player who might normally ignore those for a while reason to pick them up. Since Engineering is on the way to Metal Casing, there's a possibility of picking up the Great Wall. And since Yellowknifes can improve Iron, the Iron Working will actually get some use helping build defensively, or possibly, offensively while still providing food and faith. Note that a Yellowknife encampment doesn't produce as much production as a mine, so pick carefully, particularly if you're going to pick order and could benefit from the 5 Year Plan tenet.
Strategy: A Haunting Tundra Melody
Early on, tech Pottery absolutely first and try to snag the first pantheon. Take the pantheon that will yield the most faith, even if it's only a little. Shrines should be prioritized highly in order to get the faith rolling. Teching mining fairly early to get the Yellowknife encampment is also a good idea, but don't neglect lux techs or Philosophy. Try to secure as much Tundra land as early as possible, and when choosing beliefs, pick ones that will give the most faith yield. Make sure that cities grow fairly large, since you'll need the citizens to work the Holy Sites and Yellowknifes in order to take full advantage of them. Between buildings, make sure to put the iron to good work by building a defensive army, since the Holy Sites and religious pressure will aggravate neighbors.

Mid-game, try and work Musician slots before the others, since the musicians also improve faith yield in addition to the tourism from Great Works of Music. Opera Houses will have to wait to be filled, since the bonus faith is more immediately useful. By now, Sacred Drummers should be slowing down, so one might consider sending out Missionaries if they haven't already to secure a large religious buffer zone. With the Holy Sites producing Tourism and the musicians doing so as well, some of the weaker culture civs should be experiencing some issues. Dipping Patronage for the Forbidden Palace will help World Religion pass, increasing the power of your faith. But as for a main policy, Aethetics will boost musician generation, as well as the tourism yields.

Late game, culture victory should be coming closer. Freedom is probably the best ideology to take, as it will allow the New Deal tenet to improve the already powerful Holy Sites. Having Radio Towers in all cities will increase tourism, and will yield more music slots to boot. Always mantain a standing army, since people will begin arming when they fear your victory is near. The bonus to tourism from religion should be helping the end touches, and using a few musicians for tourism isn't the worst plan, especially if there are no more shrine or temple slots. Eventually, all the world will know the tune of the drums echoing forth the memories of your grand people.
Thanks!
Once again, my thanks to:
Zigzagzigal for inspiring these guides with his excellent work
TPangolin for making the mods and allowing me to write for them
And you for reading!

Like, comments, ratings, and suggestions are all appreciated! Please do keep in mind however that if it's not by TPangolin or LastSword, I do have to ask to do a piece on it.