[BNW] Getting rich with religion

Has anyone tried a gold strategy relying heavily on religion? Tithe+ temples providing a 25% gold boost + holy sites seems like a good synergy, but I haven't seen anyone make it work.

The downsides would be having to invest so much in Piety, and getting a high faith count seems necessary to spam GPs, which precludes picking gold-only beliefs. I also considered Tithe and using all faith to spread the religion, but other religions are SO strong on deity Any thoughts?

You have pretty well captured the downsides of that strategy.

Maybe don't look at it as a strategy, but more of an opportunity to be aware of. If you have desert folklore by some stroke of luck, push this since you should have heavy faith. Also if you want to go liberty so you'll have strong faith and many of your own cities to spread to. If not, then just resign the fact that this is not for you this game.

I'd say that religion is a nice way to supplement your income provided that you have other uses for religion as well, but if you want to get rich, you should do that through trade routes, selling excess luxuries, and the commerce tree. Religion is probably more useful for influence, retaining your pantheons, and the buildings that you can buy.

Well I guess the only way to find out is to try it. I'll give it a go with a good faith/money civ, maybe Arabia for DF. Aim for Hagia Sophia, no religious buildings, and try to generate as many Great Prophets before Industrial as possible to build holy sites.

Maybe there is a synergy to be had with getting a ridiculous faith per turn and going for Glory of God reformation belief. Would be nice to pump out GPs like there is no tomorrow as soon as you hit Scientific Theory.

In my current game, I'm pumping out 400 Fpt, with Pagodas, Mosques, Tithe, and temples+25% gold, while in WCongress, I am waiting for World Religion to be voted on (mine, of course) .
Having 34 cities, I'm trying for a culture win; if I don't get impatient and take the last 4 capitals ...
puppet, annex, blow lots of cash to insta-build-- and Presto!! 8 Fpt !!, wait a few turns, take another city ... warmonger penalty?, the AI's KNOW what's coming .

I think to really get the best out of religious game and make a strat out of it you need to start with one of the religious mountains. Only then can you go all out into Peity to build a dominant religion. The AI get so much faith most of the time they end up overwriting everything you do unless you take over their cities.

Piety tree sucks. Much better to go down Patronage or Commerce for money, since they bring other benefits. Tithe is pretty nice though.

I would probably want the beliefs that give +happiness for pre-existing infrastructure, and use faith for missionaries/inquisitors.

If you time the build times with piety right you might work it out with a few restarts. For example, you could have a monument start, research pottery and build the shrine in 2 turns after you have piety opener and then build the beginning scouts.

I played a game with the Maya a few days ago to test the viability of the Piety tree post-patch. I'd previously played a bunch of games with the Celts, but have come to the conclusion that forest faith and Pictish Warriors are just too unreliable, and the Ceilidh Hall comes too late to provide the happiness needed for a really wide empire.

So I moved to the Maya and went for a mix of Piety and Liberty, settling five cities and concentrating on faith and science. I used Earth mother to get it going, plus Pyramids, plus Piety boost. I went for Tithe and Pagodas. I think I reformed before I enhanced (can't remember exactly, too lazy to check). Maria of Portugal beat me to Jesuit Education so I went for Heathen Conversion to test it, but no barbs could be found (never mind, it is Deity...).

I went for Religious Texts, and since Montezuma went absolutely ICS crazy and didn't found his own religion, I ended up with a huge chunk of cash. I had to fight Maria to stop her from spamming her own religion into the Pangaea, but it was an ultimately successful diplo victory.

The thing is though, that the conditions were absolutely perfect. Faith pantheon + Maya + Monty not making his own religion + Hagia Sophia, etc, etc., and it was still pretty tough doing all the religious stuff and still having resources left over for holding Monty at bay.

Overall, my conclusion is that the boost to Piety makes getting a religion spread harder for human players because the AI goes full Piety even more often now, and can enhance and reform really early.

So yeah, I echo what others have said that a diplo victory is still much more easily achieved using Freedom (or Autocracy) + Commerce.

dasaard200 said:

In my current game, I'm pumping out 400 Fpt, with Pagodas, Mosques, Tithe, and temples+25% gold, while in WCongress, I am waiting for World Religion to be voted on (mine, of course) .
Having 34 cities, I'm trying for a culture win; if I don't get impatient and take the last 4 capitals ...
puppet, annex, blow lots of cash to insta-build-- and Presto!! 8 Fpt !!, wait a few turns, take another city ... warmonger penalty?, the AI's KNOW what's coming .

Click to expand...

400fpt, holy crap... Couldn't you just mass spam some scientists to win a SV too?

reddishrecue said:

If you time the build times with piety right you might work it out with a few restarts. For example, you could have a monument start, research pottery and build the shrine in 2 turns after you have piety opener and then build the beginning scouts.

Click to expand...

I can’t see the half price shrines being worth the opportunity cost of the delay to aqueducts (Tradition) or free worker and half-price settlers (Liberty). Do you have some larger game play in mind? I think opening Piety before the last couple of SP in Liberty makes sense, so I plan to try that out in my next few games.

dasaard200 said:

In my current game, I'm pumping out 400 Fpt, with Pagodas, Mosques, Tithe, and temples+25% gold, while in WCongress, I am waiting for World Religion to be voted on (mine, of course) .
Having 34 cities, I'm trying for a culture win; if I don't get impatient and take the last 4 capitals ...
puppet, annex, blow lots of cash to insta-build-- and Presto!! 8 Fpt !!, wait a few turns, take another city ... warmonger penalty?, the AI's KNOW what's coming .

Click to expand...

uh did you reform with sacred sites?

With sacred sites and all these religious buildings, you would get so much more tpt. Each religious building generates +2 tourism with sacred sites.

I had 1108fpt my last game, but that game was already decided by that point. It certainly didn't hurt that I had Glory of God, too.