A rethink on religion follower beliefs

I only go for two religious buildings if I have a lot of faith generation (probably from a pantheon).
Lastly, religious tolerence can get you a faith generating pantheon which let's you spam even more missionaries!

I never seem to find much use from religious tolerance. One game thought I did get religious settlements so that was kindof cool to have faster border growth but in the end it's still possibly the worst policy of the Piety tree due to it's unreliability.

Firstly another Civ has to actually have a pantheon you can use and secondly you have to get their religion into your cities which can be done through trade routes but it can be quite difficult under several circumstances and usually I find the pay off isn't there.
For simplicity they should just let you choose a pantheon of any Civ you have discovered. I know that dumbs it down a lot but the current system is just bad investment for a policy point. The only reason why you take RT is because you want the reformation belief.

That said though there probably should be some restrictions on who you can take a pantheon from. Maybe you need a Declaration of Friendship first. It would seem a bit odd just choosing a pantheon from any Civ, even one that hates you....
 
I never seem to find much use from religious tolerance. One game thought I did get religious settlements so that was kindof cool to have faster border growth but in the end it's still possibly the worst policy of the Piety tree due to it's unreliability.

Firstly another Civ has to actually have a pantheon you can use and secondly you have to get their religion into your cities which can be done through trade routes but it can be quite difficult under several circumstances and usually I find the pay off isn't there.
For simplicity they should just let you choose a pantheon of any Civ you have discovered. I know that dumbs it down a lot but the current system is just bad investment for a policy point. The only reason why you take RT is because you want the reformation belief.

That said though there probably should be some restrictions on who you can take a pantheon from. Maybe you need a Declaration of Friendship first. It would seem a bit odd just choosing a pantheon from any Civ, even one that hates you....

Agreed. The only real good use I've had for Religious Tolerance is when I'm fully taking over someone's territory, and I'm flipping their cities to my religion. Pantheons are often good for whatever the founder's territory is, so it's nice if you're moving right in. For example, if you were taking over Arabia and they had Desert Folklore, it'd be pretty sweet to keep that Pantheon to add a lot of Faith, while still being able to use your own religious buildings, etc.

Problem is that it's SO damn rare to get a good second Pantheon. You'll almost always have a second Pantheon show up somehow, it's just usually totally irrelevant (Dance of the Aurora in your Grassland, Stone Circles in your Plains, etc.)
 
Agreed. The only real good use I've had for Religious Tolerance is when I'm fully taking over someone's territory, and I'm flipping their cities to my religion. Pantheons are often good for whatever the founder's territory is, so it's nice if you're moving right in. For example, if you were taking over Arabia and they had Desert Folklore, it'd be pretty sweet to keep that Pantheon to add a lot of Faith, while still being able to use your own religious buildings, etc.

Problem is that it's SO damn rare to get a good second Pantheon. You'll almost always have a second Pantheon show up somehow, it's just usually totally irrelevant (Dance of the Aurora in your Grassland, Stone Circles in your Plains, etc.)

Yeah- you can actually occasionally get a really good second pantheon it just often isn't worth the effort if you can't access one easily. Hence why I like the idea of choosing a free pantheon that a Civ you have a DoF with. After all that sortof is historical.
If you consider Christianity, many pagan tribes in Europe converted to Christianity but the Church by and large did tolerate many of the native practices (even if they were modified to fit with Christian beliefs)...
An example is the carry-over of Easter bunnys and eggs into Easter which I believe comes from some pagan fertility rite.
 
It can be tricky and does not always work out but if you manage your trade routes it can perhaps not be powerful but at least give you an advantage. I had a Swedish dessert empire with the folk lore as pantheon. And had a lot of cotton and incense around my cities and askia had culture from plantageons as his pantheon so I sent my trade routes to him giving me lots of extra culture.

But most often it is kind of worthless.
 
Jonny's got it right. It's a little tedious, but trade routes plus Religious Texts makes manipulating 2nd pantheon benefit pretty straightforward. Not game changing, but I find it interesting and engaging.
 
Jonny's got it right. It's a little tedious, but trade routes plus Religious Texts makes manipulating 2nd pantheon benefit pretty straightforward. Not game changing, but I find it interesting and engaging.

Yeah well if your neighbour has God of the Open Sky or Oral Tradition it is really good. Actually I just noticed my current game, England is my neighbour with Oral Tradition as a Pantheon but she has no religion....
Anyway I only have 1 plantation in my entire Civ so I guess either way it doesn't matter in that case,
 
I take this one a lot. The only time I wouldn't is if it was a domination game. Most other times, you can end the war after a few turns. Its good to stack this with Fertility Rites and Full Tradition.

We agree but my style is peaceful. Of course there's times and esp. on the highest two levels where you can't expect to be very peaceful.
 
God of the sea, extra hammer from fishing boats is one pantheon I will never take again. First of, it does not help you get the fishing boats out quicker to connect the fish and what not is out there. If it would have been one extra hammer for every sea resource then it would have been a great choice.

Since it takes so long to actually get any benefits from it by the time you have all your fishing boats out and think you are setting up a nice coastal production empire another civilization that picked a pantheon that generates faith comes along and converts your cities before you get the chance to found your own religion. Dessert folklore is great for a coastal civ... I guess with a some religious buildings and a religious wonder you could still generate some faith to get a religion. But you should be building fishing boats and not religious buildings if you are a coastal city or you will have happiness problems and nothing to trade with.

I wish you could get to pick from the pantheons when founding a religion, like Byzantine can do. They would still have a religious advantage since they can pick one extra. That way you could get faith from pearls or stone quarries (often found around coastal city spots) and then get that production boost from the fishing boats. And it would make more sense to worship fishing boats when you actually have them.
 
I wish you could get to pick from the pantheons when founding a religion, like Byzantine can do. They would still have a religious advantage since they can pick one extra. That way you could get faith from pearls or stone quarries (often found around coastal city spots) and then get that production boost from the fishing boats. And it would make more sense to worship fishing boats when you actually have them.

It would be cool if the Devs added a Polytheism belief that lets you choose a second Pantheon as a follower belief in the rare occasion that the dirt you have is good.

The main issue I have with God of the Sea is having to build work boats. Early game work boats require a lot of hammers and the yield isn't that great unless your connecting a sea luxury. But for fish it's just 1 more food and 1 gold at optics I think.

Normally for sea resources I put a priority on the lighthouse but I usually don't get full workboats out until the mid game at earliest - I just find there's other things I need to be doing instead and workboats tend to get pushed back.
 
I've always thought that they should kill off religious as the game goes on, and this may be a way to do it. Assume an 8 Civilization game. Six religions can be founded, first come first serve. Then when half of the Civs are in the Renaissance era, the smallest or least influential religion dies, and the most influential religion on the Holy city gets their pantheon. Then the same thing happens in the modern Era to bring it down to four.

I also think it would be cool to be able to use a GP in the atomic or info Era to create a secular state, which would wipe out your religion, make it extremely difficult for your people to convert to other religions, and convert all of your faith output into science.
 
I've always thought that they should kill off religious as the game goes on, and this may be a way to do it. Assume an 8 Civilization game. Six religions can be founded, first come first serve. Then when half of the Civs are in the Renaissance era, the smallest or least influential religion dies, and the most influential religion on the Holy city gets their pantheon. Then the same thing happens in the modern Era to bring it down to four.

I also think it would be cool to be able to use a GP in the atomic or info Era to create a secular state, which would wipe out your religion, make it extremely difficult for your people to convert to other religions, and convert all of your faith output into science.

Well I realise I'm potentially opening a can of worms here but personally I think it's a bit of a modernist/progressive/humanist fantasy that religion will die out. That idea was most popular particularly in marxist circles when religion was viewed as a tool by the Tsars & Monarchs etc to 'drug the masses'. These days It's only perceived that religion is dying in the West because western society has become very hedonistic, materialist and individualistic. And that is largely because much of western media, academia & bureaucracies is stacked with atheists/progressives/secularists that usually dictate popular debate, government policy etc, this does create a bit of group-think outlook where people have convinced themselves that religion will fade into insignificance. Just take a course in an arts or humanities degree at a western university to see what I mean ;)

I think evidence has and is continuing to show the opposite. For instance after the USSR fell the resurgency that the Russian Orthodox Church experienced was very surprising considering the communist party spent decades trying to shut it down.
And to be honest communism and fascism (particuarly nazism) built a religion focused on 'Cult of Personality' as a means to control the masses... That basically was developing into an organized religion which tended to incorporate pagan festivals and other ideas like racial purity, the motherland etc..... So even the most avowed atheistic dicatorships (Nth Korea, Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, Khmer Rouge etc) were building their own religion to control people, no different from what Marx was against.

In the west today. Europe may be very strongly secular and atheistic but America is still quite religious. And the West only encompasses a small proportion of the Worlds population. People still think of Rome or the USA as the centre of Christianity but today the demographic centre of the church is actually closer to Africa or China than to Europe or the USA.

The reality is that religion if anything is actually becoming more influential today (the West being the exception of course). Case in point is that nearly every day there is news about the rise of islamic fanaticism etc...

The issue of same-sex marriage also intertwines in this. It is often perceived as being a major human rights issue that has enormous popular backing but in reality it's only a handful of the most secular western countries (which in turn represent only a tiny minority of the human population) that is legalising same sex marriage. In Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Russia etc there is no or very little popular push towards same sex marriage as those regions are still either very religious or the culture is still very traditionally patriarchal.

The other point in regards to killing off religion (I think religion in Civ 5 is ok) but consider Judaism for a moment, it has less than 20 million adherants and is only a fraction of 1% of the human population but it still thrives and has a strong foundation that will allow to continue even though it has had the rockiest history of any religion.

If you wanted to have an option to get rid of religion than arguably it should be through the Order and Autocracy ideologies. Perhaps a Cult of personality policy (would remove the effect of religion in the city and provide a happiness/culture bonus instead). I'm sure those Parades that the North Koreans do can count as culture :rolleyes:
Freedom/Rationalism does I guess reduce the effect of religion (as it co-incides with the rise of secularism) but by that stage of the game the effect of religion is pretty trivial anyway, it's usually a small amount of culture and happiness that you don't take much notice of, or the passive aquisition of faith to buy great people.
By the time you get ideologies religion is usually not something you're worrying about.
 
God of the sea, extra hammer from fishing boats is one pantheon I will never take again. First of, it does not help you get the fishing boats out quicker to connect the fish and what not is out there. If it would have been one extra hammer for every sea resource then it would have been a great choice.

Agreed on that. Same thing with a lot of Pantheons that require tile improvements to benefit you, like Goddess of the Hunt. You lose a lot of the early game benefit, so unless it's an overwhelmingly good choice for midgame I tend to go with something else.

The only time I take God of the Sea is actually with Byzantine. Their bonus belief comes late enough to where you can (and probably should) get fishing boats up reasonably fast, and you still have your original Pantheon for that early boost. I've had a lot of success going God of the Sea + Exploration with Byzantine and a nice coastal start. The two combined can easily add up to an average of +6 production per city, and even more if you have Order or Liberty.
 
Agreed on that. Same thing with a lot of Pantheons that require tile improvements to benefit you, like Goddess of the Hunt. You lose a lot of the early game benefit, so unless it's an overwhelmingly good choice for midgame I tend to go with something else.

The only time I take God of the Sea is actually with Byzantine. Their bonus belief comes late enough to where you can (and probably should) get fishing boats up reasonably fast, and you still have your original Pantheon for that early boost. I've had a lot of success going God of the Sea + Exploration with Byzantine and a nice coastal start. The two combined can easily add up to an average of +6 production per city, and even more if you have Order or Liberty.

At least with the other pantheons (Goddess of the Hunt, Stone Circles, Oral Tradition, God of the Open Sky, etc.) the improvement in question is made by a Worker. Improving those Bonus resource tiles was going to be a high priority and I'll steal a Worker to make it happen even faster. The Work Boat though... Not an attractive prospect at all compared to all the other things I've got to do early on.
 
Like all pantheons, Extra Hammers from Fishing Boats is very situational. However, if you have a coastal capital with 4+ sea resources (and especially without many hills around), it's actually quite strong. Yes, you may lose out on religion because you don't have a faith generating pantheon. But if you apply yourself in prioritizing work boats, you can get a capital which suddenly goes from 10 hammers to 14 hammers. That's strong.

Also, on harder levels you can often piggyback on AI religion anyway. I've had some great Coastal Tradition games where that Pantheon made my capital hammer-strong despite only growth tiles. On Immortal and below, you can use those hammers for things like Oracle, Tower of Pisa, etc.
 
God of the sea : seems so japanese to me :) since they might be able to build more fishing boats without building work boats...and the bonus stacks nicely on tiles they want to work anyway. Even then, the tile improvements come late (compared to terrain benefits)

I tried it as Venice recently with some success. even with just a pantheon it paid off nicely helping me get a couple wonders. It never lasts of course, its only so long until there are prophets floating around my city trying to convert. and as Venice I naturally have every darn religion poking into my city from trade routes.

Venice is really awful for religion.
 
???? Build the Grand Temple. I found Venice to be fantastic for religions. But the game is very different, because you can faith purchase in puppets.
 
Like all pantheons, Extra Hammers from Fishing Boats is very situational. However, if you have a coastal capital with 4+ sea resources (and especially without many hills around), it's actually quite strong. Yes, you may lose out on religion because you don't have a faith generating pantheon. But if you apply yourself in prioritizing work boats, you can get a capital which suddenly goes from 10 hammers to 14 hammers. That's strong.

Fishing Boats are a vastly inefficient investment in the early game. Unless you desperately need the happiness from a Sea Lux, there are dozens of other things that demand the priority of your early hammers. God of the Sea obviously improves the return on that investment, but it’s still bad. Once you have the Boats up it’s a fine bonus, but by that time a faith pantheon is probably founding it’s religion.

I actually think that taking GotS with the Byzantine bonus belief is a brilliant idea (for the right situation). The timing with respect to when you can actually afford to build Boats is far more appropriate. And it would not interfere with the faith pantheon --> found religion process, so you should still have a fine chance at getting religious building follower beliefs as well.
 
Well, to each their own, but you do realize that 4 Fishing Boats with GoS in your capital is a low-grade Petra right? 4 Food, 4 Hammers, 4 Gold... which are base yields, so can then be modified as the game goes on.

I don't know, seems hardly 'inefficient' provided your capital has that kind of yield in its three-ring.

My favorite Immortal GoS game (I certainly don't choose it often) was when I had a truly bizarre capital spot, coastal peninsula, no river or mountain, one hill, a few desert tiles and even two jungle tiles in the three ring, but 7 coastal resources (after moving settler). But, I think I would still have grabbed it with only 4.
 
Well, to each their own, but you do realize that 4 Fishing Boats with GoS in your capital is a low-grade Petra right? 4 Food, 4 Hammers, 4 Gold... which are base yields, so can then be modified as the game goes on.

I don't know, seems hardly 'inefficient' provided your capital has that kind of yield in its three-ring.

You would get the food and gold no matter what, the only thing that GotS is adding is the hammers. If you want to equivocate that to something, it’s similar to what you might get from a Workshop. Obviously there’s nothing wrong with Workshops, but it’s unwise to divert early hammers from Worker/Settler/Granary/Mill/Library/Shrine/Lighthouse etc. The capital also needs to build NC and Cargos. Depending on how fast you tech you may reach Education and still not have had time to set up your Boats, at which point you will have to delay once again for Universities. I'd say that the earliest it might be wise to spam out the Boats would be right when you normally would build actual Workshops.

Once you finally have time to set them up, it will be a decent bonus. But the reality is that you will be effectively without a pantheon for a long period of time. In a game so reliant on snowballing, that is a highly dubious strategy.
 
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