Your favorite follower belief?

Mine is pagodas.

Depends on faith output and objectives, I think an underrated one is Holy Warriors

Cathedrals (BNW only) - Earlier spot for Paintings

+1 Food from Shrines and Temples

and the other 10% when not at war for food.

Pagodas
Monasteries with wine/incense
Cathedrals
Mosques
Swords into Plowshares / Feed the World
Religious Community

TheKingOfBigOz said:

10% when not at war for food.

Click to expand...

I like this if I have founded a religion and have Tithe for the founder's belief

If I am adopting someone else's religion, I hope it will have one of the religious buildings as the follower's belief.

TheKingOfBigOz said:

Cathedrals (BNW only) - Earlier spot for Paintings

Click to expand...

These are good, either for yourself directly, or to help other civs collect great works which can be traded for or plundered.

TheKingOfBigOz said:

and the other 10% when not at war for food.

Click to expand...

Isn't it 15%?

For personal and sheltered religions my favourites are:

Feed the World/Swords to Ploughshares. (StP can be ruined in MP from permanent war)
Religious community.

Religious community.
Swords into Plowshares.
Religious art.
Pagodas/Mosques/Cathedral.

I nearly never tried feed the world. Maybe, I should try it.

Religious Community. I find myself taking it almost every time. Pagodas and Cathedrals are also very good, and Swords into Plowshares is nice too.

Feed the world can be a good backup since a free +2 food helps out a little bit. But if you'r enot planning on building many shrines and temples, StP is generally better.

Divine Inspiration
The one that give up to %15 production based on number of followers

For some reason I find myself going with:

Asceticism (Shrines provide +1 happiness in cities with 3 followers)
Religious Center (Temples provide +2 happiness in cities with 5 followers)

They're far from being the most popular choices, but 2 buildings that I normally build now give me +3 Happiness per city. I hardly ever have to worry about Happiness for the rest of the game . . . until my neighbor's Missionary/GP spam invades my territory forcing me to declare war. But that just makes the game more entertaining.

My two most favorite are:
Feed the World
+2 faith from Temples : Doesn't require faith to build (unlike Pagodas)

Third choice is the one giving up to +15% production if I get beat out to one of the above two.

With sufficient wine, I also like Monasteries.

Pagodas AND Mosques together is sick. I got this on my India game. The extra happiness allowed me to go almost 50% wider and ramped up early faith and culture. Seeing as how I won culturally I should've taken Cathedrals...but honestly...I tend to get by on wonder slots and the cathedral doesn't have a theming bonus. I prefer the +3 faith and extra happiness per mosque as it makes the next buy that much quicker. By end-game after also finishing out piety and 16 cities I was getting +450 faith a turn and killing it with the buy all GP with faith reformation belief.

Only downside of the above is AI gets the exact same combo. Really turned my neighbor Netherlands into a nasty powerhouse as well and he also went super-wide. (wider than usual even) We left the world in the dust in science/culture/tourism/money.

If I'm spreading my religion wide then obviously, you don't want a combo that benefits the AI as much as you.

How does the wine benefit work for monasteries? Does simply having a source of wine help all your monasteries? Does it only apply it to the tile of the city with the wine and monastery? Does it only apply to the city with the wine in it's zone and enhance the monastery itself? Does the bonus increase for ever wine you have in excess?

I have never used them as I've never been clear on this. I always just pick Pagodas if I'm early enough to get a building.

Usually I'm not though, so being a production fiend lately, I also really like religious community. I actually don't feel so bad being too late to a religion to get a religious building because it means I can take religious community guilt free.

Abraxis said:

How does the wine benefit work for monasteries? Does simply having a source of wine help all your monasteries? Does it only apply it to the tile of the city with the wine and monastery? Does it only apply to the city with the wine in it's zone and enhance the monastery itself? Does the bonus increase for ever wine you have in excess?

I have never used them as I've never been clear on this. I always just pick Pagodas if I'm early enough to get a building.

Click to expand...

With no terrain considerations, Pagodas is, hands-down, the best building in my opinion because of the extra +2 happiness. Really eases problems during growth of cities, allowing them to all grow 2 pop higher and ramping up early faith and culture.

Monasteries you take only if you have a special terrain, kinda like the pantheons. Building a monastery provides +1 faith and culture on the tile of a wine or incense source plus an immediate +2 faith and culture in city. This is in addition to the +1 faith and culture from the wine/incense pantheon for a total of +2 faith/culture per source. So if you only have 1 wine or incense by a city it has the same number of additions as the other buildings. If you have 2 sources it will be better giving +4 to faith and culture. But if you have the world's monopoly and 2 by several city sites it ends up giving you more than any building in the beginning really ramping up early faith and culture. It probably won't end up as good long-term though unless you have at least 6 sources, but early culture/faith is arguably more useful, starts you off really strong and you'll be through 2 trees in no time and enhanced with established religion.

On a side note: because the culture addition is on the tile it later converts to tourism via the proper buildings.

Do people favor Pagodas over Cathedrals? I thought the artist specialist slot made the latter better? Did things change with BNW?

beetle said:

Do people favor Pagodas over Cathedrals? I thought the artist specialist slot made the latter better? Did things change with BNW?

Click to expand...

It's totally up to opinion. I really began to be sold on Pagodas when I transitioned from playing small (4-5 cities) to the more challenging wide-settling strategies. some people love Cathedrals because they get a lot of early artists and there are no standard buildings to put the works until museums. You can run into the problem where you have an artist but can't create a work. You'll never have this problem with cathedrals. If you fill them early that's early +2 tourism and culture making a pretty nice building and the very best for a culture victory strategy. However, if I'm not playing cultural (and even sometimes when I am) I typically don't have enough artists to really utilize them. You already have 1 slot in the palace and probably a few more in wonders you pick up. The wonder ones also have theming bonuses too and the cathedral doesn't.

So, in my opinion Pagodas are the most reliably useful due to the +2 maintenance-free happiness which is huge early on, and you need to count on no side additions such as terrain, artists, etc. to make it competitive. Pagoda supports a wide empire fantastically, accelerating early border growth and curbing unhappiness, and if you get it, it's benefits are best used by building more early cities. I assume the cathedral people aren't playing as wide as I usually shoot for, because otherwise there would be no way they could fill all those cathedrals until archaeology whereas the pagoda benefits are just as useful in your 15th city as your 1st. The benefit keeps stacking up the more cities you can manage to support.

Conclusion: in a game where there are few actual happiness buildings and most come late, pagodas adds 2 more and allows you to expand faster in the beginning, meaning all those cities mature quicker and are more productive in the long-run. Every city can support 2 more early population before you drop into global unhappiness. translate that to extra science and you get why it can be so useful in the beginning and long-term.

Swords into Plowshares

I am still not sure about Pagodas/Mosques/Cathedrals. Normally my faith output isn't that great, and by the time I get 2 Great Prophets for enhancing the religion and making the holy site I start to doubt the value these buildings add for their faith price. Why spend 400 faith on a Pagoda when 500 faith will give you a Great Person for your victory condition? And yes, I don't invest in Piety for Sacred Sites.

500 for a GP? I thought they cost 1000? Plus you can't buy till industrial and I need something to do with all that faith before then. In my experience the buildings aren't that expensive in the beginning. ancient/classical/medieval they're dirt cheap.

I actually used to feel your way though until I tried a Piety game. Those first 2 policies + opener guarantee a killer faith output and cheap purchases regardless of the rest of the tree. I used to be confused how the AI spammed so many missionaries until I tried Piety...ridiculous...you'll have more of the stuff than you can use. They don't cheat at all for this, I was able to do the exact same thing.

It's not the "best" one but I'm starting to like the +2 happy for gardens one.