Any benefits to doing nothing on Religion?

Wondered if anyone had played a game where they put no effort into increasing faith, founding a parthenon or religion, etc...

Do the benefits of using this time to build wonders/armies, and then having an AI religion spread to you, out weigh the benefits of having your own Religion and picking the perks that would be best for your civ?

Been away from Civ5 due to Olympics and things but thats finished, the PS3 isn't working so its time to dive back into Civ5. Was thinking of perhaps putting all focus into an early army rather than building a happy society but don't want to get 3 hours in to find myself in the rennaisance era and haivng no chance to catch up due to my lack of religiosity present in my civ's beginings.

Moderator Action: Moved to G&K.

Ignoring religion won't put you behind that much. Their religion won't help them that much when you're conquering their holy city. It's not like you can't adopt their religion either,

So happy in your faith in my ability to rule over a diety game and capture their holy cities so easily. I rarely manage to survive at that level in standard sized games

Thinking of trying without any religion investment to see if this gives me an early edge as my last 10 or so diety games have ended in defeat, although narrow ones.

Generally, while it does leave you out of some nice buffs, you do have the advantage of not having to build religious buildings either. So you can safely ignore Shrines, Temples and whatever Religion-Granting wonders you have. It'll be a bit harder to manage happiness/money usually, but nothing that can't be managed.

The sole advantage is that you don't have to invest in religious infastructure nor pay unit maintanence on missionaries and the like. Outside of that, not much benefit exists to ignoring religion as a mechanic.

I do it a lot. The big thing is not the difference between establishing a religion and not establishing a religion, it is between establishing a religion that dominates a continent or not.

It you establish a religion that only spreads to your own cities then you aren't hugely benefiting from the founder bonus, plus you sunk all that early game growth into stupid temples. You might as well just adopt whatever your neighbor founds.

I usually try to found my own religion (love to pick Papal Primacy), but I don't put much effort into it; instead, I wait for it to come somehow. Do I have extra hammers to build Hagia Sophia? Ok then. Would building Stonehenge delay TOO MUCH my game? Well, fine. Do I have religious UBs or UUs? Then religion it is. I popped a faith hut? Sure, let's found Zoroastrianism.

The only thing I REALLY like to do, and that for me is a must have, is the Pantheon. The Pantheon can be EXTREMELY helpful to develop your early game: once I had loads of deer (9) and furs (4) around my french-tundra-capital. Using the goddess of the hunt basically won the game by itself, my city had a 47 Pop by end game. Pantheons can be quite helpful to enhance strategies (+15% on wonders for Egypt, +2 science per trade route for Carthage, desert folklore for Arabia) and is one of the main reasons I like playing as Byzantium, as I'm never happy with a single pantheon.