Going hard on religion is absolutely pointless past emperor

Absolutely. No matter how dominant you are. No matter how many religious wonders you horde, every single civ around you will found a religion. Even civs with no business founding one will do it just to piss you off. You will never spread your religion around the world simply because of 7 holy cities in a 2 mile radius.


Its stupid and pointless and I will never waste another hammer again on religion. Maybe if they cut down religions to 2 per 8 civs I might try to get one. But all these stupid holy cities everywhere emanating power is toxic

AI also goes insane with prophets and missionaries. It's really damn hard to spread beyond your own borders on higher difficulties.

Oh really? In my last Immortal game as Byzantium I had 60 cities following my religion on turn 200, standard speed and map size. Second strongest religion had 3 cities. No desert folklore, no natural wonder.

But if you fail to get a strong religion, it must be the game's fault, obviously. It's never the player's fault.

So many wrong assumptions on the forums lately. Don't give up as soon as something doesn't work out as planned. Rethink your strategy and try again.

Few tips:
- Get the religion as early as possible.
- Early Philosophy and Organized Religion means 5 faith per city. So without faith boosting pantheons or NWs, build at least 6 cities early.
- A missionary before 2nd prophet can really help against an early foreign religion.
- Mosque of Djenne and Borobudur are both great wonders. Mosque is better combined with Missionary Zeal or cheaper missionaries, Borobudur favors RT/IP.
- Evangelism turns your missionaries into mini-prophets. It's absolutely brutal. I used it in my Byzanz game.

I haven't experienced this yet, at least not on Emperor. Of course, I play using Theo, so she gets the sexy religion (either double spread, or double gold bonuses) which makes it very worth it. Perhaps she is an exception.

Remember that pressure comes from city density, not follower density. Convert low-population cities in a circle around the areas you want to infect convert to maximize the passive spread.

I find that it's almost always wortwhile to found a religion, but I do believe that there are too many religions allowed. This also almost always kills religion-based diplomacy, since everyone has their own religion.

I'm also quite tired of missionary spam. I probably should try a religion-less game one of these days, just so that I can ignore the bastards or be happy when I see them.

Perhaps you're doing something wrong because I almost always manage to get it.
Scout better for possible faith ruins, rush shrine, use a faith pantheon always.
Desert/Tundra starts are easier obviously.

Then you convert all cities of a civ simultaneously, or nearly so, while using RT/IP as a further contagion method.

Religion is like a virus, you must focus on infecting every tile with it.

I agree that there is too many possible religion that can be found, i like religion for GP generation, but spreading it can be so tedious even against normaly non religion based civs that can go crazy with prophets.

The clustering is just a function of the map. If they are clustered around you, then there will be 2 civs across the board who are open to your beliefs. FYI- clustering is cured by Messiah late game. Religious Texts are more important to world game than ever due to the importance of Printing Press.

Can Piety replace Tradition and Liberty? Is it possible to focus enough on religion that it can replace the foundation that Tradition and Liberty gives to a tall and a wide empire respectively? How are you supposed to build with a Piety start? Wide? Tall? When do you put some points into Liberty/Tradition, if ever?

There's some flexibility there, because religions are themselves flexible, but if religion is going to play a big part in your game, it's generally better to go wide. Faith growth is linear and has no per-city penalty, so the more temples, shrines, faith buildings etc. you can put up, the better you'll be able to spend your faith and the more pressure you'll exert. Depending how wide you go and what your lux situation is, you may need to use some of your belief picks on happiness.

IMO, if you're planning to go religious on the higher difficulties, it's often a good idea to go straight Piety. It's not the best of starts in terms of getting set up, but there are only so many good reformation beliefs, and you want to make sure you get one of them. Obviously, if you meet everyone early and see that there aren't many Piety civs on the map (good luck with that), or if you don't care about reformation, you can happily spend a few points elsewhere. The important tenets in terms of actually getting to a religion are the opener for half-speed temples/shrines and the one that increases their faith output. It's quite possible to stop after this if you don't care about reformation beliefs and just want to found and keep a religion.

That said, it's also perfectly possible to play without a religion and just let a neighbour spread to you. You can't really choose which religion you want (although open borders to only that civ will help flip your cities in the long run as long as they're actually proselytizing), but a religion really isn't something you need.

Arrowstorm said:

Can Piety replace Tradition and Liberty? Is it possible to focus enough on religion that it can replace the foundation that Tradition and Liberty gives to a tall and a wide empire respectively? How are you supposed to build with a Piety start? Wide? Tall? When do you put some points into Liberty/Tradition, if ever?

Click to expand...

It's doable on king, but your population and border growth really suffers for it.

Piety bonuses like cheap shrines aren't as good if you found later either :-/

Well maybe in Deity it's useless but in immortal difficulty it's still totally valid and a strong step toward victory.

Religion is not really all that powerful to spent all that time on imo.

I've been experimenting with a hybrid liberty-piety opener to some success, what you do is open up liberty and take the left side then go straight into piety. This will allow you to have the extra 1 per city and extra settler so that your religion has some ground to take up.

I got lucky with cultured city-state alliances, but you'd probably need a good culture pantheon or culture AND faith pantheon to be able to consistently fill out the piety tree. I've never finished it before rationalism was available, but I'm sure with tweaking and going for the right wonders (like oracle, maybe getting more great writers to boost it's doable, and not only doable but economical.

Stonehenge also helps immensely, but a good natural wonder with some shrines and temples will work as well.

@Omni: Played that strategy with the Maya. Ancestor Worship seems to provide enough culture, I was able to get all the important Piety policies before the Renaissance. Of course it would be hard to recommend that with anyone not named Pacal since 99% of the time there are better picks for pantheons.

OmniPotent42 said:

I've been experimenting with a hybrid liberty-piety opener to some success, what you do is open up liberty and take the left side then go straight into piety. This will allow you to have the extra 1 per city and extra settler so that your religion has some ground to take up.

I got lucky with cultured city-state alliances, but you'd probably need a good culture pantheon or culture AND faith pantheon to be able to consistently fill out the piety tree. I've never finished it before rationalism was available, but I'm sure with tweaking and going for the right wonders (like oracle, maybe getting more great writers to boost it's doable, and not only doable but economical.

Stonehenge also helps immensely, but a good natural wonder with some shrines and temples will work as well.

Click to expand...

Rationalism isn't as "must have" as it was before BNW imo. I'm more worried about Aesthetics being much better for culture.