Please explain REFORMATION BELIEFS (piety tree)

What is the best policy for religious domination? Honestly, I don't usually even finish rationalism for faith-purchase GSes. I'm quite content sofar with faith-purchasing GEs for wonder spamming.

Especially because, industrial era DOES contains some PRETTY JUICY wonders, wonders which I WANT and NEED. I will NOT lose on these wonders because I have already tradition finished, with faith purchasing the GEs.

Reformation policies are the reward for finishing piety tree, for whatever it's worth. Certain policies don't seem to work quite as I would imagine they worked.

1. Evangelism - what does this policy ACTUALLY do for you? I honestly thought that for the rest of the game, you won't get any religious pressure anymore, from any religion, but maybe I'm mistaken in this belief. But, I suppose it's not applied retroactively.

2. Glory to God - I suppose this is the best policy other wise, so you can get any GP, whether you finished a policy tree or not.

3. Heathern conversion - how does this work in practice, what happens to missionary?
Let's say that, you put missionary into same tile, with your musketman. Musketman and missionary go adjacent to a barbcamp. Now, three barbarians are adjacent to the musketman (one of them being inside barbcamp). How do the barbarians get converted? This could potentially be a very nice policy, although it relies little bit on spawning enough barbs, so you can convert them. (at least it's cheaper than buying units straight up, with holy warriors/religious fervor, from cities ?)

4. Jesuit education - What's the point of this, this is already too late in the game for that kind of thing. Buying science buildings mid-late game, and being straddled with weak-ish piety tree doesn't exactly make this a nice strategy, in my opinion at least. Better to beeline key techs and use gold, serves the same purpose.

Can you at least buy research labs, before reaching the corresponding tech, if you faith-buy them in this way?

5. sacred sites - small but not insignificant tourism boost for all religious buildings heck yea, if culture victory is your thing?!

1) Meh, not worth it.
2) You wasted a tree to get that belief... when did you have time to do that if you didn't have time to finish Tradition or Rationalism?
3) Barbarians are immediately converted upon being adjacent to the missionary, so the missionary can safely walk up to a barb camp solo. It clears the camp. It's pretty fun with raging barbarians, and once you get Astronomy, you can scout the world converting triremes and every camp you find.

Usually though, you have to walk those units all the way home to upgrade them... it's not worth it. It's just fun to play with.

4) So awesome. It starts with universities... which is right about the time someone reforms their religion to add this belief. Don't take this belief, it's counter-productive. Full Tradition is better for science than full piety + Jesuit education. But DO steal it from other people by giving them open borders to encourage visiting missionaries or outright DoWing to capture missionaries. It's juicy.

5) Sacred sites, on low levels = super-fast culture victory. Otherwise, IMHO, Piety is not efficient for culture victory. Steal this belief like #4)

You're also missing out on a free tech by not finishing rationalism.
And unless your skipped policy was the one that boosted research agreements, you're also missing out on a big portion of the rationalism bonuses even if you never plan on geting a faith based GS.

By far, the best overall reformation belief is Jesuit. Faith based Universities / Public Schools / Research Lab. You need the tech to faith buy the buildings. If your faith output is high enough it's much faster than manual building and can be faster than gold buying. Note that this is extremely popular with the AI.

But if you've already locked yourself into going for a cultural victory, then if your religious beliefs also allowed religious building construction, then Sacred Sites giving tourism from them is good.

As to Glory to God; that depends upon your other choices along with method of victory. It's best at the weird Cultural victory without finishing Asecthics. Also good if you don't finish Tradition but want GEs anyway.

Heathen Conversion: Decent with most settings. Even better with raging barbs.

I'd just skip Evanglism.

Also, Piety isn't designed as a late game tree. It was actually designed to be an alternate to the standard Tradition & Liberty choices. (Closer gives a free great prophet which is much more useful if you haven't already enhanced your religion) But it's not as good as Tradition when playing tall; nor is it as good as Liberty when self founding wide, so the tree tends to be disliked. It's still better than Honor start.

You will never get Jesuit Education on your own if the AI decided to go Piety. That and Sacred Sites are usually gone before you can even get to Reformation, unless you lucked out on culture ruins and rushed a culture pantheon. Sometimes, I hate this game.

It's probably easier to snag Jesuit Education from a rival AI than build it yourself on some difficulties. Watch the beliefs screen. If someone else gets it and you're not bothing too much with religion, Open Borders to get at least one city converted.

Part of the reason Piety is so not worth it (usually) is the Reformation Belief goes to anyone you spread the religion to.

Well, realistically, you aren't going to be spreading religion anyway on Immortal+. You are going to be fending off the AI missionary and prophet spam and pray your cities don't get converted.

In very rare occasions you happen to be close to some big civ who didn't bother with religion and had no one else spam them with missionaries.

adcarrymaokai said:

You are going to be fending off the AI missionary and prophet spam and pray your cities don't get converted.

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Holding off the AI for a tall empire is easy: Just build and park 3 or 4 Inquisitors after you've enhanced your religion while waiting for Industrialism to be allowed to faith buy GEs.

It's trying to get someone else you've converted once to stay converted that's impossible.

Sacred Sites is a risky ICS CV strat. You can win with Sacred Sites incredibly early if you play it right and get a good map. It's risky, though, because if you don't win CV by Industrial era or so, you probably aren't going to make it, and Hotels/Airports aren't really going to help you.

(In terms of the AI's priority, they sometimes take Sacred Sites early, but not all that often - it's a middling pick for them. They pretty much always grab Jesuit Education first though.)

adcarrymaokai said:

You will never get Jesuit Education on your own if the AI decided to go Piety. That and Sacred Sites are usually gone before you can even get to Reformation, unless you lucked out on culture ruins and rushed a culture pantheon. Sometimes, I hate this game.

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You have to back in to it, I play Celtics semi-wide (6-8 cities) with the Piety Tree. You can sometimes reform second or even third and get Jesuit Education, GTG, or Sacred Sites. Its not optimal play but you can be successful going piety. Another fun Piety Civ if you have the dirt for it like tears of the gods paired with holy warriors is Songhia for Domination-you can get your culture through half price MMP and can skip on Opera Houses.