Since Ceremonial Burial is nerfed, what do you take now?

One thing I like to do is to take Interfaith Dialogue and build Borobodur. If I can get Djenne before it, even better. Quite nice, but also situational. Still, I like it. Not my first pick, that would be Tithe.

I find it hard to justify not taking Tithe, and now mostly take other beliefs instead for the challenge. Then again it tended to be my go-to in G&K as well, since I never had happiness problems there.

Interfaith Dialogue remains situationally strong, and with the greater emphasis on CSes in diplo-focused games (and the greater importance of cultural and mercantile CSes generally with the reduced availability of culture and happiness) I often take Papal Primacy (although it's irrelevant once you have alliances, and the AI now seems to love reconverting city-states, so I haven't found it worth the effort very often).

I always chose Tithe before...now with the early gold poverty by design, Tithe is even more important. Ironically, the AI does not seem to favor Tithe because it is almost always available even after several religions have been founded.

Easily the one that gets you 100g per conversion. I got about 2500g from my cities, my neighboring civ and a bunch of city-states. It doesn't natter if they convert to another civ, I already got my bonus.

kaspergm said:

That would require you to convert 50-100 cities?

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Again, it depends. With highly expansive AI civs you can easily spread to say 20-30 cities with missionaries and then let natural influence do the rest. With all that extra faith it can push you to play wide and get instant buys of pagodas/mosques also adding to faith.

Its situational in singleplayer but it can be even stronger in Multiplayer too where Humans don't get insane bonuses. Grabbing Borodubur (Yes I prob misspelled that) + Djenne is also possible in Multiplayer unlike higher SP levels giving you another 9 free religious spreads which you can work to get another 18 faith per turn instantly to buy even more missionaries. [In MP you have a different set of concerns to deal with, trying to convince someone to take your religion or being forced to convert a city state and then sneak the missionary onto opposition cities, but also equally possible]

For some reason if I'm going super religious I like to pick World Church because if I'm on that path I'm likely going for a culture victory, and it can net you some crazy culture per turn if you're super religiously aggressive.

Gucumatz said:

Again, it depends. With highly expansive AI civs you can easily spread to say 20-30 cities with missionaries and then let natural influence do the rest. With all that extra faith it can push you to play wide and get instant buys of pagodas/mosques also adding to faith.

Its situational in singleplayer but it can be even stronger in Multiplayer too where Humans don't get insane bonuses. Grabbing Borodubur (Yes I prob misspelled that) + Djenne is also possible in Multiplayer unlike higher SP levels giving you another 9 free religious spreads which you can work to get another 18 faith per turn instantly to buy even more missionaries. [In MP you have a different set of concerns to deal with, trying to convince someone to take your religion or being forced to convert a city state and then sneak the missionary onto opposition cities, but also equally possible]

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You must play on larger maps than I do to even have the idea of converting 50-100 cities to your faith meaningful ...

It really depends on a lot of stuff. My FPT, how early I got a religion and what the competition is. Ceremonial Burial is still pretty good in general, as is church property & Tithe. Tithe requires more FPT than the other two, for sure. Some are really situational. 2 Friendly atheist neighbors or an atheist continent I'll get to first? Peace Loving or world church. With initiative and a high initial FPT, Pilgrimage is somewhat decent to box out the other religions, handy if you are staring down a slower byzantine uberreligion. Interfaith dialogue is decent conversion of faith to science if you limp in as the last religion or second to last and won't win the spread, or if there is a huge capital holy city nearby. I find initiation rites mediocre unless I need fast money (war, backstab, ICS) or I'm late to a religion and my FPT can't keep up with nearby competitors. If your religion is set to take over the world (say Itinerant Preacher & Texts byzantine uber-religion with desert faith or a natural wonder funding, perhaps with a world religion council vote), world church & tithe are pretty fantastic.