How advisable is it to start your own religion in Civ V?

In about half my games I start my own religion, while the other half I usually don't have time to devote the resources to it because of other things, like building Archers to defend against Barbarians.

How important is it to start your own religion in Civ V? Do you guys usually do it, or do you get your bonuses from other places like focusing on Wonders or Social Policies?

Extremely advisable. In an FFA you should try very hard to get a pantheon which gives you faith so that you can get a religion with good beliefs. Religion can give you a lot of happiness, money or production.

Getting a religion does not exclude you from getting social policies or wonders. You should be getting all those things. Except maybe wonders. Rushing wonders can hurt you pretty bad if you miss them. Only make wonders when you don't have much else to do or rush all out balls to the wall for one in particular. For example turn 25: Great Library, Pyramids or Stonehenge. Turn 40 or below Hanging Gardens. Or it's later in the game and you notice you can get an old-ish wonder in like 6 turns or so. Not much to lose.

You get some nice bonuses in the end when you have high Faith-per-turn, like being able to buy great people. This helps even if you adopt someone else's religion. Depending on the difficulty, I think it's worth it to found a religion and try to get it to snowball as early as possible (I love the belief that gives +2 Faith per city following the religion). If you fall too far behind, however, it won't be worth the struggle.

If you have local terrain that with a faith pantheon would give a big faith boost, I advise founding your own religion; which assures that both your follower beliefs will be good ones instead of crappy ones the AI often chooses. Going this route, nothing else is needed; your faith from pantheon terrain will cause you to found a religion.
Related to this, if your pantheon isn't a faith one but it's a really good one, the only way to keep use of it the whole game is to found a religion. If you don't an AI will convert it. Going this route, you need a source of faith though. This can be Stonehenge or a religious city ally and when all else falls going Piety.

Edit: Perhaps I should note that I always play with Legendary resource setting. There's almost always some excellent pantheon around even when its not a faith one.

Sometimes not founding can be a good choice if you want to play peacefully. The positive modifier for same religion is great for keeping a close ally.

Founder beliefs are rarely more powerful than many of the wonders and that's mainly what you miss out on when not founding. Look at it like losing a wonder race because that's all it really is, a wonder you didn't get. You still get the beliefs of whatever you got converted to and they really aren't as bad as people make them out to be. The faith buildings are always chosen and more often than not the other ones are pretty useful too. The belief that tends to work poorly for the non founder is the pantheon which is usually chosen based on the founder's local resources/geography.

Obviously you should always try to get a pantheon, the earlier the better. The food, production or culture from the non-faith pantheons can be game changing. Especially because some one who took a faith pantheon is totally banking on founding and isn't getting the benefits of a non-faith pantheon. You can quickly outpace them in the other aspects of the game.

Still build faith even when you aren't founding. It will allow you to buy buildings, units and later on GPs. The best part is while a founding civ is spending all of its early faith on founding, enhancing and spreading, you're banking all your faith to buy buildings and units as soon as you get converted. You can wind up with more faith for GPs in the endgame simply because you aren't in religious battles with annoying spammy AI.

It used to be a while before you got religion in your non-founding heathen empire but trade route pressure and good ol' Borobudur almost ensure your neighboring religious fanatic civ will convert you sooner than in G&K. Religious civs just don't snowball unfairly like they used to.

Having said all that I do still go for religion in any game where I have a good faith pantheon like Jon said. It's a fun mechanic to play with so I like it when I can get it. Is it something you should hang your game strategy on? No.

I think unless you have a civ that has lots of faith (ie Celts), it depends on where you spawn. In a recent game, I spawned right next to 2 religious CSs, plus my second city was by a wonder with extra faith - no brainer there.

Other times you don't get such a start, and the AIs near you are just going to be spamming GPs and missionaries all game.

Founding a religion should be done every game. Give yourself benefits that work for your terrain. IMo the real question is do you PUSH your faith on others? This can often lead to hard feelings and religious wars. If you want to simply defend your own faith and not cause problems, use inquisitors and GP's to re-convert and purify your own cities.

If you have a civ that gets a lot of additional faith bonuses or can benefit a lot from a religion, then yes, absolutely. That's probably not something anyone would disagree on or ask a question about though.

If you have a lot of terrain that can benefit you from a religion (deserts, 2 natural wonders, some quarries, even 1 natural wonder as Spain) then it's also probably worth getting.

Otherwise, it's not necessary. It provides some nice benefits, but also provides one more thing to think about and one more thing to produce for. It could also easily not pay off if Ethiopia is right next to you or something. It can pay off, but it won't necessarily do so. I skip religion and faith in general decently often in my games.

Gary King said:

In about half my games I start my own religion, while the other half I usually don't have time to devote the resources to it because of other things, like building Archers to defend against Barbarians.

How important is it to start your own religion in Civ V? Do you guys usually do it, or do you get your bonuses from other places like focusing on Wonders or Social Policies?

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If you dont found a religion then start the game again, its usesless to continue

Also if you dont build the sistien chapel again restart the game, also if you loose a big city to an AI also start a new game.

Like so many aspects of this game, it all depends on the situation you find yourself dealing with. You always need to pursue the strategy that you perceive has the most synergy with your current situation.

The real joy in the game is not finding a 'best strategy' that will work in all situations, but rather in carefully analyzing your prospects and adapting to them.

For example, if you find your capital has a source of marble, you might consider a 'wonders' strategy, and then pursue a religion early because of the early option to get an additional 15% bonus on early wonder production (if you have some synergy with faith point production) or, you might go after early culture to get the 15% bonus in the "Tradition" track. Or maybe even both.

Look for synergies. There are many paths to victory, you want to choose the one where you are alone or out front, not competing with other civs all the time. Focus on the strategy where you think you have a significant advantage, or if you are the only one pursuing it, and thus avoiding competition.

I have never found a case where not having my own religion was worth the opportunity cost except on one particular game: I was playing venice, and going for the "One to rule them all" achievement so I never puppeted or built another city. It wasn't worth it because my output would have been small enough I couldn't have competed. Also, the other AI spreading different religions to my city allowed me to get all the religious buildings and buy a great engineer and scientist so I didn't need my own for these (what I would've wanted anyway). They would've all been gone by the time I founded one and their religion was better for me.

Religion is typically great if you can spread it to at least one other empire or have a very large empire. It allows you to rake in a lot of extra gold and can help with everything from military to science and wonders via the GP buy option. If you pick the option you can also get some passive early culture from it but this is dwarfed later by tithes in my opinion. If you are a very small empire and don't have a high faith output so it doesn't spread very far your religion won't be as strong and the ire of the AI might not be worth it. In this case you can use some of the abilities of their religions for your own and it might not be worth getting your own.

Yes, if you can get the faith necessary without crippling yourself. This is where it can hurt to be Byzantium if you can't get any easy route to lots of faith.

If you are just going to quit every time your game isn't going perfectly, you kind of are missing the point.

If I have a strategy that will benefit from founding a religion, such as going for becoming the World Religion in a Tourism/Culture win, then it's good. Or if you're playing a religiously strong Civilization.

But I'm just as likely to use my first two or three Great Prophets to build Holy Sites and snowball my faith production, trusting that the AI's religion spread will give me the ability to faith-buy buildings and units. Of course, it sucks if the religion that nabs Jesuit Education never spreads in my direction, but it also sucks to spend my social policy points on Piety so I can get JE myself.

happyturtle said:

But I'm just as likely to use my first two or three Great Prophets to build Holy Sites and snowball my faith production, trusting that the AI's religion spread will give me the ability to faith-buy buildings and units.

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That's a neat approach, I've never tried doing that before. It might be fun.

I actually had a game as Indonesia recently where the neighboring Incas founded a religion with pagodas, mosques and sacred sites while my religion was kind of bad and your approach would have really worked in my favor. I was slow to found and got beat to the good stuff. His pantheon was Dance of the Aurora (he had one of those tundra starts that only the Incas could thrive in) so it didn't help me much. I did get a ton of faith from the Candi so it didn't hurt much and I was able to buy his nice tourism buffed buildings. It really backfired on him because he went tradition tall and I had gone liberty wide. That religion coupled with my UB played right into my favor. Nice early CV with very little effort on my part.

I'm starting to think if you're not going to get a reformation belief it's almost better to adopt the religion of one who has. Jesuit Education and Sacred Sites always go so fast and are so strong in the second half of the game.

if the land isn't well suited for a pantheon, you don't meet any early religious CS or have any religious natural wonders, it's probably not worth it to pursue founding a religion unless you are the Byzantines.

faith buying great people is the best part of religion IMO, but you don't actually need your own religion to do that. you can wait until industrial to start stockpiling faith, and the AI religion is likely to spread to at least 1 of your cities enabling the faith purchases.

chazzycat said:

if the land isn't well suited for a pantheon, you don't meet any early religious CS or have any religious natural wonders, it's probably not worth it to pursue founding a religion unless you are the Byzantines.

faith buying great people is the best part of religion IMO, but you don't actually need your own religion to do that. you can wait until industrial to start stockpiling faith, and the AI religion is likely to spread to at least 1 of your cities enabling the faith purchases.

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What if I was Maya or Ethiopia? Should I pursue my own religion?

It is advisable because when you don't have a religion, you end up with much less faith. Religion gives you more faith because of the grand temple that can be built in the holy city. This is why the faith increase will allow you to shop for more great people that are brought with so much faith. The more faith you invest in, the more great people you can shop for in the future. You don't have to make a religion, but you do have to have a holy city.

budweiser said:

What if I was Maya or Ethiopia? Should I pursue my own religion?

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well it kind of goes without saying, since you basically get one for free from your UB.

Good point though

Alexey86 said:

If you dont found a religion then start the game again, its usesless to continue

Also if you dont build the sistien chapel again restart the game, also if you loose a big city to an AI also start a new game.

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LOL, if some one steals your ruin, you should probably restart as well. After losing your first scout, also restart on that. You should never have to lose a unit. Terrible Game!!