Piety is now Ancient - still very weak.

The QC said:

Personally, I would start Piety only after getting the Settler policy from Liberty and starting to expand. At that point it's probably worth it at least for some civs, especially the Byzantines*. If you get a good amount of culture going, you will be able to eventually finish Liberty/Tradition and Piety before switching to a later tree, like Rationalism.

Click to expand...

Yes, this is my conclusion as well. Which means, with going down piety as a second/blended tree, you will be mostly disregarding or ignoring Aesthetics/Exploration/Commerce because you're already in Renaissance, near Industrial by the time you finally close Piety. Which makes you wonder why you would even want a religion, if you can't synergize it with a culture or diplomatic victory. As with G&K, religion becomes only appealing if you can snag it for free and ignore temples.

I wanted to see how the game would play out without racing to become a pre-0BC superpower but next game I will be going straight for ToA or Hanging Gardens, as completely usual. I'll be making sure my win is locked by turn 100. Boring!

GhostSalsa said:

Which makes you wonder why you would even want a religion, if you can't synergize it with a culture or diplomatic victory. As with G&K, religion becomes only appealing if you can snag it for free and ignore temples.

Click to expand...

Religion is not necessarily a cultural bonus. It can be set up in many ways and I'd say it's actually stronger as a military bonus. Buying armies with faith, gaining combat bonuses near cities of the same religion... Useful stuff.

But, yeah, I wouldn't chase a religion with a civ that isn't religion-oriented. And it is indeed significantly less powerful if you have to rely on buildings for faith instead of a faith-generating pantheon or some other source.

The QC said:

But, yeah, I wouldn't chase a religion with a civ that isn't religion-oriented. And it is indeed significantly less powerful if you have to rely on buildings for faith instead of a faith-generating pantheon or some other source.

Click to expand...

I had both via Shoshone and lots of wine tiles, which I could work because there weren't very many food tiles before Civil Service anyway.

But yes, Tradition tree straight to Aesthetics tree with heavy wonder-spamming seems like the only way to go for culture win. In that way,mthe Piety change is an improvement because useless relgious policies are out of the way of the artist-focused tree.

Ichabod said:

Well, you are only getting a 20 hammers discount on your UB, that's nothing to write home about (in my opinion) - liberty free worker gives you 70 hammers, so you'd need 4 cities to be on a profit when comparing both policies (and that's not counting the other benefits of that SP), while legalism gives you at least 160 free hammers in free buildings (yeah, both these SPs are second tier ones, but the respective openers help getting to these SPs faster). If you analyse it without the flavour and the assumed synnergy, you'll see the actual benefits aren't that much.

Besides, Tradition and Liberty will help you get to more cities faster, which will make you gain benefit of multiple Pyramids faster. I think that's still better than Piety.

Click to expand...

You didn't counted the turns saved by Piety opener to build pyramids which could then be translated to extra faith & science. TBH you are underestimating it. And you can go for liberty or Tradition after taking the opener. Nobody will force you to complete piety first. Also keep in mind that SP costs have gone down so you might still keep pace with SPs while cherry picking Piety.

think it will be strong with Wide Maya (super shrine) and Egypt/Songhai (super temple) (maintenence free temples - HUGE deal early)

Started out with Piety and I don't think it's weak anymore. It's a viable alternative if you are playing the religion game.

The half shrines were huge early on. I was really surprised to find out I was the first to found my religion, which rarely seems to happen unless I'm Ethiopia or Celts.

I struggled with money mightily, but the Temples came at a time where the gold gave me a necessary boost. And because they are half off you aren't wasting too much production on it. And of course you get the extra faith as well

After yet again having to answer the door wearing the towel and cutting my deliciously hot and environment unfriendly shower short.

I wish I could pick atheism and still build inquisitors. -..-

But thats ot. sorry.... The only thing I could think through the thread.

This topic made me wonder, have any of the faith-generating pantheons been rebalanced? I'm looking at you desert folklore...

peddroelm said:

think it will be strong with Wide Maya/Etiopia (super shrine) and Egypt/Songhai (super temple) (maintenence free temples - HUGE deal early)

Click to expand...

Ethiopia's UB is a monument replacement, not shrine replacement.

Bagi said:

This topic made me wonder, have any of the faith-generating pantheons been rebalanced? I'm looking at you desert folklore...

Click to expand...

Nope, but Petra has been rebalanced to no longer give gold per tile, so by extension, desert folklore is slightly less useful.

And on Piety opener... I'm on emperor doing a Tradition/Piety/Honor mixed opener (with no plans to finish any of them until mid game). It's working out okay so far. You have to balance Piety's lack of +culture by taking another tree or selecting a culture-based pantheon. Otherwise it's slowwwwww. I was not first to religion in my game, but did get exactly what I want, and the cheaper missionaries early on help me spread my religion better than anyone else.

The caravan takes a TON of hammers... and the caravansary, and the guilds... you can't just build everything in sight anymore going tall (not even in your capital, especially if it's on the coast). Getting a workshop up early to get free hammers is a godsend, since you have more trade routes than you know what to do with in the early game.

Does anyone know how religious tolerance works if the second most popular religion in your cities has two pantheon beliefs (Byz)- do you get both, of just the one picked as a pantheon belief?

Never mind someone already asked. I guess I missed that post.

I've generally been playing tradition/piety blended, and finish one of them before the renaissance. It helps if your religion has culture boosts, of course.

OK finished the Piety tree. It's really great.

Reformation belief I chose Jesuit Education. I didn't have to waste a single ounce of production on building my universities and public schools (haven't played far enough to medical labs) and that really saved me BIG TIME when I needed to keep up with science but the Zulu were constantly at my doorstep

In other words, maintained my army and navy while keeping up with other buildings

As for myself, being a Culture weenie, Religious Sites (the Reformation belief that gives all of your Faith-bought buildings 2 Tourism) is THE go-to Belief/Social Policy for wide Culture.

I had to be generating at least 50 Tourism a turn before the Renaissance.

seancolorado said:

OK finished the Piety tree. It's really great.

Reformation belief I chose Jesuit Education. I didn't have to waste a single ounce of production on building my universities and public schools (haven't played far enough to medical labs) and that really saved me BIG TIME when I needed to keep up with science but the Zulu were constantly at my doorstep

In other words, maintained my army and navy while keeping up with other buildings

Click to expand...

Jesuit Education is awesome w/a good faith faith generation. I've bought all but one of my unis and all my schools with faith for 7 cities in the game I'm currently playing.

I think it's a great tree... Played as poland with a cultural emphasis and was able to get a fully enhanced religion with a reformation belief before anyone else had founded a religion at all. Probably around 2000bc. That's pretty powerful

Yeah, I think it's really about how you use the religion.

I wanted to spread mine for diplomacy purposes (and to get some +culture in the new culture anemic early game), proposed Islam world religion as my second proposal, and, as I had spread it to my city-state happy w/ Forbidden Palace neighbor and another civ, we got the resolution passed.

I have to say, the new piety tree is the only way to get a strong religion. I had a classic G&K setup... Quick phantom into desert folklore, getting +10fpt off the bat. Took pagodas and ceremonial burial. First to inside, got RT and happy from gardens. Look out world, right?

Wrong. Two neighbors went piety, and my RT is barely keeping my religion alive. those reduced cost faith buys and reformation beliefs pack a wallop, FO SHO.

I was mean when I picked my reformation belief. I took Unity of Prophets, so when I spread to other civs that had their own religion, their inquisitors and prophets couldn't remove my religion. Plus, if they send a prophet to your cities, they can only knock out half per use. That way they waste all their faith trying to clear my religion instead of spamming missionaries all over.

winterstoirm said:

Jesuit Education is awesome w/a good faith faith generation. I've bought all but one of my unis and all my schools with faith for 7 cities in the game I'm currently playing.

Click to expand...

The problem with that belief is that it's not strategically desireable to wait for the Faith like that to buy the Science buildings. You can get away with the wait on the lower diffs, but in the typical Immortal/Deity game you'll want to get Universities as soon as Education is researched. Usually when buying with Faith, it's ok to wait for something like a Pagoda. But what you end up doing with Jesuit Education is maybe Faith buying one University, maybe Gold buying another, then hard building the rest rather than waiting for more Faith. That's provided that you've somehow completed the Piety tree before turn 100-110 Education rolls around.

Overall, the Reformation beliefs are strong, but their benefits are all secondary to Science and Domination VC's, at least the G&K style ones. It just gives you better Faith and easier Faith to input into a system whose outputs don't amount to very much winning power. On this new cultural VC, who knows. It looks like the new culture VC wants a lot of these new policies.

Which brings us to the same problem that Peity had before. You don't want it enough to get it unless your culture is high, and it's usually only high enough when you're going after a culture VC. Being available in Ancient, its opener still gives you no culture. You can literally be stuck on 0 culture getting nowhere unless you build Monuments first everywhere. Granted it makes much more sense and helps religions a lot more, but it is still very awkwardly placed for players to get. You basically have to have a culture generating Pantheon or borrow one, and even so, it's debatable whether that same culture is better spent in Tradtion/Liberty.