What's your ultimate religion?

Imagine.. You're playing as Byzantium, get spawned in the middle of endless floodplains, run into La Venta or Kathmandu at turn 5, and you've got enough production to crank out Stonehenge early.

Under these, or perhaps other slightly less favourable conditions, where you get to choose any beliefs you want, what would your ultimate religion look like?

Mine:

• Desert Folklore, or definitely Sun God if possible.
• Tithe
• Divine Inspiration (Emperor or below)
• Religious Texts
• Peace Gardens (If applicable, otherwise likely mosques)
• Holy Warriors
• Probably Jesuit Education, but even that wouldn't get me to adopt Piety, ever.

i like playing the celts in Desert Storm (large, 11civs+22CS, immortal) so my bias start is next to forest tile altough desertstorm is a desert world.
in most cases im the first to pantheon and first religion founder.
my chices are usually:
desert folklore - cermonial burial, pagodas, religious text and mosques or peace garden.
I am getting it in most of my games and happiness is plenty!!

Ultimate Byzantium in a fashion that uses everything.
Legendary map setting with Wine as primary luxury (total of 8 near you; 3+ workable by capital remaining workable when you found your second, third, and fourth cities).

1. Pantheon: Godess of Festivals (faith & culture from wine)

2. Founder: Tithe (gold)

3. First Follower: Monastary (more faith and culture from wine)

4. Bonus: Religious Texts: (Increase passive spread rate)

5. Enhancer: IP (increase passive spread distance)

6. Second Follower: Cathedrals (art slots of Cultural victory)

7. Reformation: The one that gives tourism bonus to religious buildings so that the above ones give tourism.

I like choose religions that concentrate on a specific game aspect. For example, if I choose the one that gives shrines +1 food, I will also choose the one later that gives shrines +1 happiness so as not to waste the shrine which I will build everywhere anyway.

On the other hand, if I have marble in the area I will choose 15% wonder production and probably Tradition to stack all the wonder building bonuses.

If I am playing a civ that will win by CS relations, like Greece, Byzantium, Venice etc, then I will choose religions that all help spread stuff to CS.

If I figure I am going to wine through domination, I might choose all religious stuff that influences happiness (as wide civs are very unhappy).

So really for me I use religion to support a strategy I have decided on because of starting circumstance.

correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought floodplains don't get the desert faith bonuses?

Mine:

Pantheon: Desert Folklore

La Venta+Kathmandu+Stonehenge+Desert Folklore will mean lots of FP early. To ensure I can use this to create a lot of early bonuses:

1. Tithe (or World Church if going cultural)
2.. Swords into Plowshares or Religious Community (both ensure a huge edge on wonder-building capacity and population growth rate is everything early on)
3. Pagodas (solves happiness problems for early expansion and boosts culture and faith further)
4. Religious Texts (or Itinerent preachers If many cities are just out of reach early and the multiplier will give me enough of an edge) Whicher appears to give the biggest early rate-spreading bonus. Religious texts solves a lot of maintenance problems and work for you later so I default this if there is no clear-cut choice.
5. Jesuit Education: (for later faith utilization-it goes to waste if you don't have a lot of later things to buy)
6. Holy Order

danaphanous said:

correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought floodplains don't get the desert faith bonuses?

Click to expand...

They do.

You may be thinking of Petra; floodplains don't benefit from Petra.

Byzantium:
Triple religious building + sacred sites

Or
world church + itinerary + religious text mass spreading

Or
Pilgrimmage + cheap prophet mass holy sites

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Scientology
Because thats the real religion out there... right next to Mormons... but we're still better because we have aliens

Nah... with all due respect i dont bother much with religion
But i also dont tolerate people converting mine

If you plan to spread your religion to some other civs,one drawback is,you might help them a lot with your follower beliefs,like giving religious community to pachacuti,in this case I often pick swords into plowshares,and provoke wars against him/her,so that they will not receive the benefit of it.But obviously you need to stay peaceful yourself.

I do love playing tall, so Fertility Rites (alternates: Sun God, Goddess of the Hunt, or a good faith-generating pantheon), Feed the World, Swords into Plowshares, with Tithe for money and Religious Texts for pressure. Throw in Temple of Artemis and Hanging Gardens, and you've got yourself a good time.

Arabia with desert folklore, fertility rites and a desert start.
That alone is the perfect religion.