Piety is now Ancient - still very weak.

What will make Science not the single best thing in the game? (still talking about single player)

You can probably get a good amount of science through the piety tree as well. Being able to purchase scientific buildings with faith, for example. Plus, the trees are no longer exclusive.

"Buying Tanks, Artillery, and Public Schools with faith is weak? "

Yes. Because you can also buy GS or GP from the faith. And you dont have faith for more that 5 tanks or 5 public school in a game.

I think the problem with that is you'll have a reformation belief well before you completely finish the Rationalism tree. Faith purchasing great scientists will take quite a long time. You could also choose the reformation belief that lets you purchase any great person with faith, which will allow you to get great scientists without having to finish the rationalism tree.
 
If I could afford in a domination game to have a strong religion and use holy warriors and buy great scientists consistently in the current game where piety sucks, I believe I can do it better in BNW where the piety tree is better.

Given the fact that you might not need to complete the whole thing either and jump to rationalism I might forgo getting the right side of commerce for filler policies till the Renaissance.
 
Wasn't it one of the Reformation beliefs that enabled the buying of any GP type? Not Piety itself?

Yes you're right, sorry. But that still means that there are a lot of better options than religious fervor.

Just a small note that reveals how some people are still thinking about religion in BNW (incorrectly): You can't play a game where your main cities do not have other religions. Other Civs decide where to put trade routes, so unless you DOW on sight and then send a fleet of inquisitors to follow your conquest everywhere (in which case, you REALLY need to go at least 3 down in piety to afford all that)... you're going to get other religions in your cities.

You're making it sound like a bad thing, but it's actually pretty good if you ignore religion completely. You want to have another religion in your cities because you still get many of their bonuses. MadDjinn just showed us a game where he actually did so even if was pursuing a cultural/diplomatic victory.

When you consider that the only thing you miss is the founder belief it's really not that bad. Religion is a pretty big investment, it will pay for itself if you actually manage to make it dominant, but if you don't, you're screwed.

And that's what makes the piety tree a risky option, whereas the other tree will always benefit you no matter what happens.
Are you really sure you want to take it at the bery beginning when there's a chance that a super Ethiopia will knock at your door with a thousand missionaries?
 
I think Piety is still effective even if you don't have Religion.

I mean

1. Faith is still required to purchase Great People with finishers, so the output is important (+3 per city from Temple and a Shrine, which you can built half time with Piety)
2. Gold from Temple is pretty big policy now with the removal of most goldf rom tiles etc. you get the picture)
3. The 2nd Pantheon clearly stated that the second most followed religion from a city with a major religion you get the bonus, it stated NOTHING that second most followed religion after your majority... <<< - Meaning that you can benefit from 1.2 religions in each city.

Great Prophets, even though useless can still be used as Holy Sites, which is a powerful way for Cultural Game (with the right policies in Aestethics/World Congress)

The only useless policy is Reformation, which is only benefical to a founder of a religion.
 
Yes you're right, sorry. But that still means that there are a lot of better options than religious fervor.



You're making it sound like a bad thing, but it's actually pretty good if you ignore religion completely. You want to have another religion in your cities because you still get many of their bonuses. MadDjinn just showed us a game where he actually did so even if was pursuing a cultural/diplomatic victory.

When you consider that the only thing you miss is the founder belief it's really not that bad. Religion is a pretty big investment, it will pay for itself if you actually manage to make it dominant, but if you don't, you're screwed.

And that's what makes the piety tree a risky option, whereas the other tree will always benefit you no matter what happens.
Are you really sure you want to take it at the bery beginning when there's a chance that a super Ethiopia will knock at your door with a thousand missionaries?

Piety .. ie finishing it instead of just the first few basically guarantees a religion..cheap shrine, better temple/shrine, and then Free Prophet to finish**

It also makes your religion strong and resilient.. faster enhancement, a number of reformation beliefs will help youre religion spread/survive,

Also if Ethiopia does flood you with missionaries, you will still get the Pantheon belief of your religion (and if you overpower them, you get the bonus pantheon belief of theirs)

[although it might not be the best if you are the neighbor of someone highly religious (since they might take it as well)]


**The Free Prophet opens up a realy big question about Reformation beliefs, what if you take the policy and found a religion later.. do you then get to choose a reformation belief.. if so then rushing through piety is worth it
 
I think Piety is still effective even if you don't have Religion.

Yes, it's not useless, but it's weaker than other trees. First, it has unusable SP. Second, if you wait for foreign religions to come, you get religion bonuses later.

1. Faith is still required to purchase Great People with finishers, so the output is important (+3 per city from Temple and a Shrine, which you can built half time with Piety)

If you're not racing for religion, the bonus is not that big.

2. Gold from Temple is pretty big policy now with the removal of most goldf rom tiles etc. you get the picture)

Other trees have some gold-related SP too and Piety isn't the best here.

3. The 2nd Pantheon clearly stated that the second most followed religion from a city with a major religion you get the bonus, it stated NOTHING that second most followed religion after your majority... <<< - Meaning that you can benefit from 1.2 religions in each city.

The problem is that foreign religion pantheons have significant chances to be quite useless for a player. Still, most likely you're right and you could get 2 pantheon bonuses from foreign religions.
 
Piety .. ie finishing it instead of just the first few basically guarantees a religion..cheap shrine, better temple/shrine, and then Free Prophet to finish**

And that only gives you an advantage on your neighbor if your neighbor doesn't do the same. And Ethiopia among others will likely do that while still retaining its own faster faith gain.

I'm not saying that it's impossible to become the dominant religion anyway, but you'll end up having to fight to get your reward, while with other policies you get your reward instantly and surely.

Faith, temples and so on mean absolutely nothing by themselves, they only give you the means to get the stuff that you actually want.
 
The fact that this is a debate alone shows you how much piety has come along in a very short time. Big question: Have social policy costs been altered? Because given so many more new trees are you going to be able to unlock policies quicker, or you'll just have to pick a few you really like.

I could easily picture a very fun game of Piety/Exploration/Freedom were you are early spreading your faith and maximizing it, then you go after ruins, then you spend your time manipulating the World Congress. Utterly peaceful game but way more fun than right now.
 
I really liked Piety in BNW! My beloved Byzantium got a nice buff from this. Civs that might synergize with the tree:

BYZANTIUM: for obvious reasons. Getting the pantheon bonuses from other civs and a reformation belief on top of your extra belief is going to be very good. Add to that how this tree makes founding a religion easier.

CELTS: well, you've got a faith based UA and a faith based awesome UU, why not? I would love to make a War Religion as them. Things like Just War, Holy Order, Religious Fervor, the barbary missionary conversion could help :)

ARABIA: I was thinking about the Grand Temple on another thread, as it will make for an incredible amount of pressure from trades, I guess. Could be nice to get a better religion overall.

MAYAS: super shrine strategy! A Mayan Pyramid with the appropriate policies and beliefs might give: 3 :c5faith: , 2 :c5science: , 1 :c5culture: , 1 :c5food:, :1c5happy: and is built in 50% the usual time. Great! As the Mayas rely on GP buying (Long Count increases GP costs), the To the Glory of God reformation belief will be very useful for them. Jesuit Education too.

ETHIOPIA: well, their stele is very good, and Piety might help their religion. I wouldn't start with this policy tree as them, though.

SONGHAIS: super temple strategy! A Songhai Mud Pyramid Mosque with the appropriate policies and beliefs might give: 3 :c5faith: , 4 :c5culture: , 1 :c5food: OR 2 :c5happy: , +10% :c5gold: and is built in 50% of the usual time, besides the lack of maintenance cost. Also, the Converting Barbarians reformation belief could be useful for them: convert the barbarians around a camp and take it for 75 :c5gold: with the recently converted units!

EGYPT: super temple strategy! An Egyptian Burial Tomb with the appropriate policies and beliefs might give: 3 :c5faith: 2 :c5culture: OR 1 :c5food: , 4 :c5happy: ,+10% :c5gold: , is built in 50% of the usual time and lacks maintenance costs.

Indonesia: candi says it all.
 
Strongest for Byzantium? Yeah it'd be good, but who won't be taking the first 2 piety beliefs early with the Maya? And they were already strong. Now they get faster better pyramids from the get go, giving them more time to build atlatists on the cheap? They'll be better at the faith game, better at early science and better at early domination. ICyeS you can.
I'd be interested to know if these policies will affect the Indonesian Candi; If Siam can still do the Wat thing that would be a precedent for this kind of thing. If not, I actually think it'd be bad early with Indonesia (though good later on) as the Candi works better if you haven't managed to get an all dominating religion.
edit: On the Celts, it seems rather unneccesary, unless you get no forest; I'd rather have the policies elsewhere and the hammers in UU's if I'm going to get an early religion even without piety. If you're the celts and you get a forest start, you don't bother with lots of early shrines anyway.
 
Just to reiterate, Piety and Rationalism aware no longer mutually exclusive. You can take Piety without divorcing yourself from science.
 
edit: On the Celts, it seems rather unneccesary, unless you get no forest; I'd rather have the policies elsewhere and the hammers in UU's if I'm going to get an early religion even without piety. If you're the celts and you get a forest start, you don't bother with lots of early shrines anyway.

You are right, the tree wouldn't be of much use to the Celts. I just like to create a war religion for them in my games and the barbarian reformation belief could be helpful. I like putting those Pictish Warriors to get +40% combat strenght near enemy cities (20% from their Foreign Territory bonus and 20% from the Just War). It would require enhancing, though, and piety could help you get there faster, as in getting you a GProphet on the finisher. Just some thoughts, I like going liberty with them normally :)
 
And that only gives you an advantage on your neighbor if your neighbor doesn't do the same. And Ethiopia among others will likely do that while still retaining its own faster faith gain.

I'm not saying that it's impossible to become the dominant religion anyway, but you'll end up having to fight to get your reward, while with other policies you get your reward instantly and surely.

Faith, temples and so on mean absolutely nothing by themselves, they only give you the means to get the stuff that you actually want.

Piety there is like Honor, in both cases you have to compete to get something out of them (the reward for Honor is more cities... taken from your enemy.)

And Piety gives you some significant benefits even if you fail (ie your religion gets totally wiped out by another one)**
+10% gold from cheap temples
2 Pantheon beliefs in each of your cities (you do not get to choose them, but they are a bonus)
Cheaper religious buildings/faith purchased army (a possibility, you don't get to choose, and they might not be available, but they may be)
Extra faith for great persons [at the very least you can get Prophets and build a 3 culture 3 gold improvements.. that help you get more 3 culture 3gold improvements]


**just like honor gives you some benefits if you never go to war
 
You are right, the tree wouldn't be of much use to the Celts. I just like to create a war religion for them in my games and the barbarian reformation belief could be helpful. I like putting those Pictish Warriors to get +40% combat strenght near enemy cities (20% from their Foreign Territory bonus and 20% from the Just War). It would require enhancing, though, and piety could help you get there faster, as in getting you a GProphet on the finisher. Just some thoughts, I like going liberty with them normally :)

Celts will thrive in piety, their Pictish Warriors and UA will stack up the faith and Piety and Reformation beliefs will really help you spend that stockpile later in the game. Imagine hoarding a bunch of faith to buy your science buildings, or taken the belief that lets you buy late-game units and Holy Warriors, never spend hammers on units just use faith!
 
Celts will thrive in piety, their Pictish Warriors and UA will stack up the faith and Piety and Reformation beliefs will really help you spend that stockpile later in the game. Imagine hoarding a bunch of faith to buy your science buildings, or taken the belief that lets you buy late-game units and Holy Warriors, never spend hammers on units just use faith!

I think piety will be good for the Celts, just that it's not worth doing it early like Byzantium/Maya, because you'll get religious stuff anyway. Later when you've got pikes and lost the trees, the extra piety stuff will be most useful for the Celtic hand picked religion of course. However, they'd also be good with aesthetics for the cheaper K-Li halls, so policy choice will be interesting in that part of the game.
 
You're making it sound like a bad thing, but it's actually pretty good if you ignore religion completely. You want to have another religion in your cities because you still get many of their bonuses. MadDjinn just showed us a game where he actually did so even if was pursuing a cultural/diplomatic victory.

When you consider that the only thing you miss is the founder belief it's really not that bad. Religion is a pretty big investment, it will pay for itself if you actually manage to make it dominant, but if you don't, you're screwed.

And that's what makes the piety tree a risky option, whereas the other tree will always benefit you no matter what happens.
Are you really sure you want to take it at the bery beginning when there's a chance that a super Ethiopia will knock at your door with a thousand missionaries?


I don't think that was my point at all. I agree that ignoring religion is a fine way to play even in BNW... but it's not the way to play if you're going all the way down Piety. Would you go down Honor if you never wanted to get into a war? Would you go down Liberty if you never wanted to expand? Those trees would be pretty weak in those situations too.

To say that Piety is weak because if certain conditions that you don't want to happen but actually does happen despite your best intentions, is a pretty weird argument.

You have to start with the assumption that you're trying to get a religion if you're going down Piety, whether you ultimately succeed or not. Just like you have to start with the idea that you will fight some wars if you go down Honor, and that you will get more than 4 cities if you go down Liberty. In that case, the first policy saves hammers (which are useful for everything, the same way Liberty's hammer policy and free worker works), the second policy gives you more faith (which is the same way the Liberty settler works, it makes you do what you are trying to do faster), etc. So Yes, you can totally fail and there is risk... but that's the point. You can fail at expanding in Liberty (no more space, unable to take over neighboring AIs). You can fail at war in Honor (fail to take any cities, or lose cities anyway despite bonuses). It doesn't mean those policies didn't help... it just means you failed. Failure happens everywhere. There is always risk (and skill, which spread religion requires as much of if not more as Liberty/Honor).

The only thing you CANT fail at is Tradition, because it is the first tree and best suited for being small and doing nothing/anything. It also doesn't have great bonuses for anything else besides your first 4 cities. It's the ultimate zero risk, decent payoff tree. But, if you DO succeed, Piety, Liberty and Honor*'s payoffs should ALL be bigger than Tradition under its respective ideal circumstances, even if its risk is never worth it mathematically if you play all random and force yourself to decide to go down a particular tree before the game starts (but who plays that way). This is just from a game design perspective.

*Note: A lot of Honor's effect is tied to AI's military power, which is tied to their really crappy military tactics/awareness (compared to how well they expand territory / spread religion). So, it's not as powerful in single player. But, this is the fault of the AI, not the social policy tree. In fact, the only reason Liberty is seen as less risky, is the idea that since the AI sucks at combat, you can always expand by taking over the AI cities. Again, a fault of the AI, not the unbalanced social policy trees. Piety is tied to the AI's ability to spam religion, which, like it's ability to spam cities, is actually pretty good. So, I think your "risk" complaint is really just a roundabout way of saying "but Piety doesn't let me take advantage of the crappy AI military skills as much!" Which, is fine, but is not the point re: balance.
 
I shudder to think of Piety enhanced Mayans. Half price Pyramids in Ancient era everyone, be very afraid.

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.
 
Piety is one of my favourite policy tree. I prefer Cultural victory to Science Victory. and I believe, with BNW, Piety will be stronger than before.
 
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.

It's 20 hammers per city, and it's when you're REXing, exactly when it would take a long time otherwise. Lastly, it's also good for quicker science, which surely is the best final result of all the hammers mentioned.
It's not that the Maya have to reject liberty to do this; it's just 1 or maybe 2 policies, and they'll still be hitting the worker and settler policies, just maybe a policy or so slower.
 
Top Bottom