faith without religion?

if you don't manage to found a religion, is there any point in the faith? what can it be used for?

Faith can still be important in the later stages because if you run out of money or something, you can purchase a great merchant from completing the commerce social policy, for example..

Yep, purchasing Great Persons with faith from industrial era onwards is a great use of faith. It just requires that the AI have spread a religion (any religion) to at least one of your cities and that you have completed the relevant social policy tree that unlocks the desired GP.

If the AI spreads a religion to you that has other useful outlets for faith (e.g., buying pagodas, buying science buildings, buying military units) or is otherwise beneficial (e.g., nice culture or happiness beliefs), once that religion spreads to one of your cities, you might want to buy a missionary to spread that religion to your other cities (rather than waiting for the AI to do it for you, which can take forever, or maybe never happen).

Doesn't really matter if you manage to found a religion or not, the use of faith is pretty much exactly the same. Founding your own religion will "only" boost your faith gain/happiness/income, but if you don't manage to found one yourself, then most of the time it's still very useful to improve your faith gain as much as possible.

Pretty much the only things the founders of religions get that non-founders don't are founder beliefs, some reformation beliefs, and a higher score. Oh, and maybe the slower influence decay with CS that share the founder's religion, if we really want to include everything. And the positive diplomatic and tourism modifiers for shared religion, but I think that benefits both the founder and the non-founder.

Basically what I'm trying to say is that even if you didn't found a religion, you can still get quite a lot of benefit out of someone else's religion.

Something to check: The purchase of certain Great People by finishing certain policy trees is not tied to religion, is it? That means that, as long as you have the faith for it, even if your cities have no religion at all (admittedly quite unlikely to happen in the Industrial Era) you can still buy GPs?

LoneRebel said:

Something to check: The purchase of certain Great People by finishing certain policy trees is not tied to religion, is it? That means that, as long as you the faith for it, even if your cities have no religion at all (admittedly quite unlikely to happen in the Industrial Era) you can still buy GPs?

Click to expand...

No need to check. You must both have a religion (any religion) in a city before you can buy Great Persons with faith in the industrial and post-industrial eras in that city and have finished the social policy tree that unlocks that GP.

There is a reformation belief (To the Glory of God) that allows purchases of all Great Persons, regardless of whether you have finished the relevant social policy trees, but it can only be used by the religion's founder -- even after that religion spreads to your cities, you cannot use it.

Browd said:

No need to check. You must both have a religion (any religion) in a city before you can buy Great Persons with faith in the industrial and post-industrial eras in that city and have finished the social policy tree that unlocks that GP.

There is a reformation belief (To the Glory of God) that allows purchases of all Great Persons, regardless of whether you have finished the relevant social policy trees, but it can only be used by the religion's founder -- even after that religion spreads to your cities, you cannot use it.

Click to expand...

Ah thanks. It would certainly be strange to be able to faith-buy Great People without having any religion. But as I mentioned, it's practically unheard of for cities to not have any religion yet by the Industrial Era, anyway.

LoneRebel said:

Pretty much the only things the founders of religions get that non-founders don't are founder beliefs, some reformation beliefs, and a higher score. Oh, and maybe the slower influence decay with CS that share the founder's religion, if we really want to include everything. And the positive diplomatic and tourism modifiers for shared religion, but I think that benefits both the founder and the non-founder.

Click to expand...

Some of those things are BNW not GnK. But my favorite perk to founding is EZ quests to convert CS.

beetle said:

Some of those things are BNW not GnK. But my favorite perk to founding is EZ quests to convert CS.

Click to expand...

I forgot about that one. That's another of the fringe benefits of founding.

When you are lucky, you can get religion spread to your city which have pagoda or mosque belief (even better if the pantheon suits your terrain).