Rate the Beliefs - part V: Reformation beliefs

sonicandfffan

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The Results

There have been 17 votes so far, but one vote didn't rate all the beliefs, so they have been calculated using 16 votes. This should still give a good flavour of what people believe to be the best reformation beliefs (having read the whole topic, the ratings heavily reflect the opinions expressed)

3.53 - Charitable Missions: Influence boosts from Gold gifts to City-States are increased by 30%.
2.25 - Evangelism: Missionaries' Spread Religion action erodes existing pressure from other religions.
1.97 - Heathen Conversion: Missionaries convert adjacent barbarians to this civilization.
4.38 - Jesuit Education: May build Universities, Public Schools, and Research Labs with Faith.
1.78 - Religious Fervor: Use Faith to purchase Industrial Era (and later) land units.
3.62 - Sacred Sites: All buildings purchased with Faith provide 2 Tourism each.
4.28 - The Glory of God: Use Faith to purchase any type of Great Person starting in Industrial Era.
1.09 - Underground Sect: Your spies exert religious pressure on the cities they occupy.
1.93 - Unity of the Prophets: Inquisitors and Prophets reduce this religion's presence by half (instead of eliminating it).



I'm going to apologise in advance for stealing this very useful format from kaspergm, he's more than welcome to take over but I'm impatient and couldn't wait for another of these to show up. The "Rate the beliefs" threads were some of the most useful resources I could find when founding a religion and I constantly find myself referring to them to help decide how to shape my religion.

But there's still very little resources on reformation beliefs, which are probably the most powerful of the religious beliefs because they are much more expensive than other beliefs - you have to complete an entire policy tree for them.

So without further ado, I'm going to quote the old rules for these types of topics

Thank you to those who voted in the the previous threads about Pantheon beliefs, Founder beliefs, Follower beliefs and Enhancer beliefs

I'd ask you to put your vote before the name of each belief, like this:
3 - Fertility Rites: 10% faster Growth Rate


Give votes between 0 and 5, where 1 is worst and 5 is best, like this:
5 = Excellent
4 = Very good
3 = Good
2 = Decent
1 = Poor
0 = Bad or Very Bad

When voting, take into account both the strength of the belief and how universal it is in its applicability. To give an example of this, a belief like Desert Folklore is very strong but also very specific (and therefore not universal), in that if you don't have any Desert near your starting location, it's going to be quite worthless. Also of course, how well it suites your playing style or personal likes or dislikes also should influence your vote. How you weight the different things is subjective obviously. I'll try to make some statistics when people have put in some votes to see how things distribute.

The reformation beliefs are:

_ - Charitable Missions: Influence boosts from Gold gifts to City-States are increased by 30%.
_ - Evangelism: Missionaries' Spread Religion action erodes existing pressure from other religions.
_ - Heathen Conversion: Missionaries convert adjacent barbarians to this civilization.
_ - Jesuit Education: May build Universities, Public Schools, and Research Labs with Faith.
_ - Religious Fervor: Use Faith to purchase Industrial Era (and later) land units.
_ - Sacred Sites: All buildings purchased with Faith provide 2 Tourism each.
_ - The Glory of God: Use Faith to purchase any type of Great Person starting in Industrial Era.
_ - Underground Sect: Your spies exert religious pressure on the cities they occupy.
_ - Unity of the Prophets: Inquisitors and Prophets reduce this religion's presence by half (instead of eliminating it).
 
Can someone elaborate on the mechanics of "Unity of the Prophets"? I haven't yet tried it

Normally, when an Inquisitor or GP use their ability, they remove all other religions but their own from the 'targeted' city.

If one religion that would be removed is a religion that has Unity of the Prophets, it instead of being removed will be reduced in half.

Example.

I have a Reformed Catholic religion with Unity of the Prophets, and I am pushing Catholicism into Islamic Arabia. Their city Medina has 9 citizens, 6 of which are Catholic and 3 of which are Islamic. Arabia uses an Inquisitor on Medina. Under non-Unity of the Prophets, after this use, Medina would have 3 Islamic citizen and 6 non-religious citizens. Because I have Unity of the Prophets, though, the result is that 3 of the citizens are Catholic, 3 are Islamic, and 3 are non-religious.

As this example shows, Unity of the Prophets is very good for early religions, because it makes them very hard to dislodge.
 
Normally, when an Inquisitor or GP use their ability, they remove all other religions but their own from the 'targeted' city.

If one religion that would be removed is a religion that has Unity of the Prophets, it instead of being removed will be reduced in half.

Example.

I have a Reformed Catholic religion with Unity of the Prophets, and I am pushing Catholicism into Islamic Arabia. Their city Medina has 9 citizens, 6 of which are Catholic and 3 of which are Islamic. Arabia uses an Inquisitor on Medina. Under non-Unity of the Prophets, after this use, Medina would have 3 Islamic citizen and 6 non-religious citizens. Because I have Unity of the Prophets, though, the result is that 3 of the citizens are Catholic, 3 are Islamic, and 3 are non-religious.

As this example shows, Unity of the Prophets is very good for early religions, because it makes them very hard to dislodge.

That would be good for Indonesia's Candi, no?
 
3 - Charitable Missions: Influence boosts from Gold gifts to City-States are increased by 30%.
Edit: The bonus is applied to your civ, i. e. against all CS.
2 - Evangelism: Missionaries' Spread Religion action erodes existing pressure from other religions.
Situational IMO. If you want to spread your religion wide, this can be good but I think faith has better uses.
1 - Heathen Conversion: Missionaries convert adjacent barbarians to this civilization.
Too situational. And even if you find a barb camp, barbs don't spawn reliably.
4 - Jesuit Education: May build Universities, Public Schools, and Research Labs with Faith.
Looks quite good. FYI, the base cost of these buildings are :c5faith:200.
0 - Religious Fervor: Use Faith to purchase Industrial Era (and later) land units.
Trash. I think devs forgot how their game works when implementing this.
BTW, can I vote -1 for this? :p
3 - Sacred Sites: All buildings purchased with Faith provide 2 Tourism each.
Early tourism boost. Unfortunately they don't get Hotel/Airport boosts though.
5 - For the Glory of God: Use Faith to purchase any type of Great Person starting in Industrial Era.
Best reformation belief IMO. Flexible yet huge benefits.
0 - Underground Sect: Your spies exert religious pressure on the cities they occupy.
How much pressure? Even if it was high, still does not looks good. You have only 1~2 spies for quite long period.
BTW does this work with Diplomats?
1 - Unity of the Prophets: Inquisitors and Prophets reduce this religion's presence by half (instead of eliminating it).
Better defend key cities with inquisitors IMO.
 
0 - Religious Fervor: Use Faith to purchase Industrial Era (and later) land units.
Trash.

I haven't adopted this yet so I'll refrain from giving it a number rank, but I would imagine someone who wants to both pursue a religion and warmonger would find this to be incredibly powerful
 
I haven't adopted this yet so I'll refrain from giving it a number rank, but I would imagine someone who wants to both pursue a religion and warmonger would find this to be incredibly powerful

I don't know the costs of the units, but it's not unreasonable to generate upwards of 100 faith per turn in the endgame. It's basically a second source of income to rushbuy units. If you have tithe as well to boost your gold income your religion alone is going to provide you with an army and trade routes be damned, warmongering is back in fashion.
 
The Glory of God is clearly the very best. You can pray Wonders into existence, buy great works and other useful stuff. If you haven't taken the policy trees that unlock the units you're looking for, it's really useful.
 
4 - Charitable Missions: A straight up beast, but not as good as others.
3 - Evangelism: Great for a GMoD game where you're spamming Missionaries, but otherwise weak. Synergizes well with Holy Order.
2 - Heathen Conversion: Its effects end too early.
5 - Jesuit Education: Incredible. It's really great to buy your Research Labs and Public Schools immediately after researching them.
3 - Religious Fervor: My big beef with Holy Warriors is that the Industrial era comes too soon, so this is a great belief for any high-faith civ.
5 - Sacred Sites: Play an ICS game as the Maya taking Pagodas and either Cathedrals or Mosques, and you'll understand the power of an early Tourism lead.
5 - The Glory of God: VERY good.
1 - Underground Sect: Garbage.
3 - Unity of the Prophets: Good for if you get one of those insane T30 enhancing religions.
 
I haven't adopted this yet so I'll refrain from giving it a number rank, but I would imagine someone who wants to both pursue a religion and warmonger would find this to be incredibly powerful

No, I went for the standard one because I was able to take the pentagon and combined with honor had -66% upgrade cost for the units I could faith buy from the renaissance at a reasonable cost. The faith cost of end game units is insane so you need the option to split cash onto that payment with cheaper units. You can still buy pre industrial units late game with holy warriors and some people, like england, will be glad to be able to keep their UU's power.
 
Gonna self-quote about Religious Fervor.
Faith buying Industrial and later unit belief is one of weaker one.
Most unit :c5faith: cost is :c5production: x 2, and since you get Industrial Era penalty it becomes x4.
With Mandate of Heaven it's :c5faith:3.2 per :c5production:. Since Shrine+Temple produces 5:c5faith: per turn, it translates to 1.5625:c5production: per turn for 2 buildings.
And this becomes worse with Era advance.
 
Also although I haven't tried Heathen conversion yet, a person replied that it also works on rebels. So you can effectively go under -10 unhappy and then just farm rebels for units.
 
Also - in my last game I picked a reformation belief before I enhanced my religion... and I could no longer enhance my religion in that game. Perhaps a bug, perhaps a feature I hadn't seen that noted before
 
Also although I haven't tried Heathen conversion yet, a person replied that it also works on rebels. So you can effectively go under -10 unhappy and then just farm rebels for units.
That's clever! Brainwash the rebels :lol:
Also - in my last game I picked a reformation belief before I enhanced my religion... and I could no longer enhance my religion in that game. Perhaps a bug, perhaps a feature I hadn't seen that noted before
That didn't happened in my game, but you'd better contact support with the save IMO.
 
1 - Charitable Missions: Influence boosts from Gold gifts to City-States are increased by 30%.

1.5 - Evangelism: Missionaries' Spread Religion action erodes existing pressure from other religions.

2.5 - Heathen Conversion: Missionaries convert adjacent barbarians to this civilization.
(There's enough barbs running around in the artic regions for 5)

5 - Jesuit Education: May build Universities, Public Schools, and Research Labs with Faith. (Science is King)

0 - Religious Fervor: Use Faith to purchase Industrial Era (and later) land units. (I rather build all the land units I'm going to early and upgrade)

1.5 - Sacred Sites: All buildings purchased with Faith provide 2 Tourism each.

4 - The Glory of God: Use Faith to purchase any type of Great Person starting in Industrial Era. (BNW still has separate faith based counters for Science, Engineer, etc.)

0.5 - Underground Sect: Your spies exert religious pressure on the cities they occupy.

0 - Unity of the Prophets: Inquisitors and Prophets reduce this religion's presence by half (instead of eliminating it). (With my own Inquisitor parked one tile away it's never an issue)
 
The problem with Unity of the Prophets is that it doesn't work against missionaries does it? I don't see as many Great Prophet spams now in BNW than regular old missionary spams. If it made the religion more resistant against missionaries too... then maybe... nah still probably would be the worst one there
 
I'm surprised to see Jesuit Education rated so highly. Is it because those buildings are rather costly to build or purchase? That belief doesn't really do anything unique like some others do, it just gives you for faith what would have cost gold or production instead. In that case, why do people think so little of Religious Fervor?
 
I tried 2 so far.
- Jesuit Education. At some point it allows filling everything with Universities. Later buildings are more problematic as starting from Industrial you could by GP. My rating is 4.
- Sacred Sites. Very situational. If you manage to grab 2 religious buildings as follower beliefs, the 4 tourism per city is really powerful. Theoretically, you could even get +6 with Byzantium. So, that's from 3 to 5 depending on the situation.
 
I've tried only one:

Heathen Conversion

I took it because I had an isolated start and knew that barb camps would be around long enough. The great part about this Reformation belief is that, if you rush Piety right from turn 1 (which I did, as I was playing the Mayans and knew I'd get good faith-yield while building the UB), it ends up being a barb-broom: just sweep one missionary through the unsettled lands near-by and that one missionary can rake in over 10 units or more, so long as you leave the actual camps alone until the AIs begin to spread towards you. I ended up with 2 horsemen, 4 warriors, 2 handaxe and 3 pikes before the camps were cleared.

Heathen Conversion is economical, though, only if you intend to go Piety immediately, and only really if you know there will be barb camps for a while after you pick it. This means I only give it a 2, because it's not very frequent that it will pay off to take this rather than something else for a Reformation belief. But if you think about it, so long as you have a high enough faith yield and get a religion quickly AND rush Piety, you can end up with a 200-faith investment that pulls in the equivalent of several thousand gold or a significant number of those precious turns of early production.
 
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