Basically, the idea is to focus upon other techs, ignore the early "religious" techs.

Happiness: get Theatre as soon as convenient, build everywhere

Main benefits: can focus upon another Tech track, such as economic or military

Combat: doesn't really matter (see below). If you like, you can focus upon combative techs, and with the time saved by ignoring religious techs, you can be at the forefront of combat techs, getting horse archer, cavalry, musketman before anyone else. (If religious techs are needed as prereqs, get them late, when you can pop them out in 1-2 turns instead of 20+ turns which is what they cost early. Or, you can trade AIs for them in a multi-tech trade.)

AI relations: if close to one of the AIs, expecially Isabella or another Religious leader, adopt their religion as soon as they ask. They'll love you for it, all game.

Monasteries: optionally, as religions spread to your civ, build monasteries in most of your cities to get the science bonus... monasteries are cheap & fast to build, and make missionaries to spread

Organized Religion: optional, if you like it, go for it; combined with the Monastery trick, you'll get all the religious bonuses without wasting time researching religious techs (if you find the religous bonuses of value; if not, you can still ignore Monasteries and OR... basically I'm saying the time spent building Monasteries, while short & fast, is time well spent, but nevertheless you can spend that time elsewhere and have good value there as well)

Victory points: this is subtle yet key. VPs are determined to a large extent by culture. Yet, since you are ignoring religious techs, you will lag behind in culture (until you get Theatres in all your cities, but even then, you'll lag behind; if you do the Monastery trick for Sci bonus, you'll catch up quickly... Theatre + Monastery in all your cities will quickly push you to the front of the Score list, despite behind behind for the first 1/3 of the game). Regardless, who cares what your score is? Even doing this on Deity level, you'll catch up on score and win a score victory, as AIs tend to build more military and non-score producing buildings than humans do.
-- So, you're behind on Score during the first 1/3 of the game. Realize that the AIs are programmed to be "nicer" if your'e behind on score. Think about that for a bit. They won't attack if you're in last place, even if you have a sub-par military. They also will give you favorable trades.
-- So, you can focus upon economic techs. You can build a sub-par military and the AIs won't attack. Meanwhile, you have Bank etc. before the AIs and you can build an infrastructure that will give you the early lead into the endgame.
-- Or, you can focus on military techs and build a good military and selectively attack one AI, and the other AIs will tend to stand aside and let you get on with it. Since you'll have the best military techs before any of the AIs, this is having your cake and eating it too.

Comments?

Wodan

I feel that when i´m down in points, military power science etc... AI is everithing but nice... lol

Anyway i´ve done that and it a posible path, the 8th religion, atheistic. I did not converted so everyone was ok with me until the very end of the game when i needed some alliances.

You get culture for having a religion in your city and you can spread it with missionaries the only diference is you don´t get happiness. In fact i did not tested if theocracy or organized religion would have give me the bonus to each of my non state religion cities.

Someone knows this?

You get culture for having a religion in your city and you can spread it with missionaries the only diference is you don´t get happiness.
You do, however, still get +1 happiness for each temple you build. The only happiness you lose out on is the base +1 from having the state religion in that city.

In fact i did not tested if theocracy or organized religion would have give me the bonus to each of my non state religion cities.

You do not get any benefit from organized religion, theocracy, or pacifism, unless you have a state religion.

The plus of having at least one religion founded by you can be great during the entire early part of the game. This is especially true if you're a conquerer, since your religion often spreads to the cities you take. The bonus from this won't be huge at first, but after you build the religious wonder in your holy city and a few temples, you'll get a modest sum to help finance your warmongering, great prophets to give you a leg up in tech, and extra great people.

If you're peaceful, try and get a religion very early, spread it like mad, and then get the world on your side. If you use religion right, then being an athiestic nation is an incredible loss. You can literally use religion as a vice, and bring the entire world on your side, or under your fist, whether it be through mass spreading of your religion, or holy wars, or both--a PEACEFUL warmonger is possible with the beautiful addition of religion in this game.

I usually dont steer into religious techs until they are old news unless i feel i can get one of the two early ones. I go currency and economics and then i head straight to philosophy and liberalism to try for a free tech and the free- civics. Then i go to railroads. Then i get infantry. Then i head to mass media. Then i play it by ear.

You can't completely skip the religious techs. Banking requires Guilds which requires Feudalism, whuch requires Monarchy, which requies Priesthood or Monotheism. Building monastaries requires Meditation.

You can slkip them early on, but you've got to get them before too long, via quick research when they're cheap, trade, or extortion.

You can get by without banking and make up for it with deeper stuff in the tech tree. When your running 90% research banking isnt a big deal its arguable whether or not its better to even build banks in most cities and just do units instead so you dont have to build units when you have something you care about to build.

To give you an idea its not uncommon for me to build laboratories before i build banks. I haul up that tech tree. Must get deeper go go go~

Besides i generally tech out and trade off stuff to end up with that junk. Think that might be a statistical relationship between aiming deep in the tech tree and getting the AI to trade with you. (Ie the act of getting the deepest tech you can creates alot of trade opportunites on average)

I don't know... I'd have a hard time intentionally giving up shrine income. If you're starting next to Gandhi and know that you can push him over and take a holy city or three, then that's cool. But I just can't see foregoing a shrine for the whole game - the financial boost, even before you build Wall Street, is just too big. I've had 12 city modern civs sustained completely (0% tax) by one holy city. And the line of sight advantage is pretty helpful as well.

Of course, at some difficulty level and leader pick you may not have much of a choice since the AI will just research so much faster. Then you don't waste your time and get the other techs that will provide more immediate benefit even if you don't get them first. But at least into Monarch difficulty where I'm playing at the moment, it seems quite reasonable to snag at least one religion at some point.