Any disadvantage to religion?

From what i can see so far there is no down side to adopting a religion.
Surely in terms of good game play it would be better for it to be a harder choice in that religion should give you benefits in some aspects and a downside in others?

I guess trying to spread your religion to a civ already with one is an example of a downside with gains (diplo hit)

I think if there are going to be downsides then it should come after adopting a religion. Having no downsides upon adopting really forces players to try and found a religion early and gives you the incentive to spend production on a shrine early on

Not as far as I can tell besides spreading it to another area; which is kind of a shame. Would be interesting to have holy wars and the like, but I guess that's something a bit too complicated for the Civ genre.

If you want something with more indepth religion, I'd suggest checking out EU III. It's pretty indepth, more than I care to explain or really understand (as is the case for most Paradox games), but none the less a great and interesting mechanic.

The cost of a religion is the hammers and time you spend to get that religion going. Why, instead of building that shrine, you could have built a warrior, or so on. So the only real cost I feel, is an opportunity cost.

Nyanko said:

The cost of a religion is the hammers and time you spend to get that religion going. Why, instead of building that shrine, you could have built a warrior, or so on. So the only real cost I feel, is an opportunity cost.

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Agree. Chasing a religion (or diverting resources to make a religion more effective/powerful) is a strategic choice, meaning you've chosen not to pursue other paths, and all choices have consequences. Beyond the hammers and turns lost building shrines and temples (when you might have been churning out an earlier granary, an archer or a second scout), if you are chasing a religion you might have chosen to try to build Stonehenge or Hagia Sophia or the Great Mosque (and either gotten it/them or received wonder-fail gold) rather than other wonders (like the Great Library or Oracle). Or you might have dumped some gold on a religious CS to get early faith (rather than saving that gold to buy a settler or friending on a mercantile CS for food to help your capital grow). Or you might have chosen to settle your second city by a faith-generating natural wonder, but the city location is otherwise meh (and Monty is angry that you settled there, so an early DOW may be on the way). And so on. It's all about choices. I usually find the investment in a religion to be worthwhile, but sometimes I do skip it and accept someone else's religion.

Ok, whilst on the same sort of theme - many of the benfits of religion are increased religion, and some are extra science or production.
So, apart from garnering some extra science, production or happiness, there isn't a long term 'win' form religion is there? I was looking for a religious victory condition where you have converted the globe to your religion, but it wasn't there. Is that just too much of a contravetial victory type?

There have been a number of threads discussing the merits/demerits of adding a separate religious VC (e.g., religion in 75% of all cities, plus dominant in every other capital?). But, it doesn't exist in Civ V, so religion is just a tool to help you acheive some other targeted VC, by generating gold, happiness, hammers, science or faith, which can be used to buy other great persons (beginning in the Industrial Age).

Some religious beliefs grant hefty bonuses to other civs. I never pick Religious Community because I don't want to give my neighbors like 10% extra hammers.

Fair point, but debatable. The question is, can you do more with the production bonus than the AI can, given that the AI already has steep production bonuses (at higher levels) than you do? Put another way, are you better off denying the production bonus to yourself (and your AI neighbors -- although some AI will probably take it for itself, and it may spread to your neighbors anyway), or taking the bonus but having to share it with your neighbors? IMO whether and to what extent that is a concern depends on the map and how broadly you expect your religion to spread. If you are late founding, and your nearest neighbors have their own religion, I see much less of a concern. In the specific case of Religious Community, I never take it as my first follower belief, but often consider is strongly as a second if I'm going tall (little point taking it if I'm going wide with a bunch of 5-7 pop cities).

The disadvantage should be the commitment in gold/hammers to get your religion and on higher difficulties you might see some of this since you need to be decent quick to beat the AIs to the maximum number of Religions.

However... You get some free faith from a number of sources... Pantheon that triples your faith and all the sudden you #$% out a religion out of near nothing. (Yes I think this is perhaps an RNG balance issue)

So I guess there really isn't much of a disadvantage to getting a religion.

I used to think that religion is very important, because of the benefits. But the biggest benefit is buying GS with faith and bulb yourself through the tech tree. Maybe it is better to have no religion and just collect faith. There are 1-3 GProphets I wish had not popped -because of the waste of faith.

g3istbot said:

Not as far as I can tell besides spreading it to another area; which is kind of a shame. Would be interesting to have holy wars and the like, but I guess that's something a bit too complicated for the Civ genre.

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That would actually be pretty cool imo

Where are shrines? I have no shrine in pottery tech. Where are they now?

nokmirt said:

Where are shrines? I have no shrine in pottery tech. Where are they now?

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Shrines are still in the Pottery tech as of today with the Fall Patch installed. Do you have G&K?

Kwami said:

Shrines are still in the Pottery tech as of today with the Fall Patch installed. Do you have G&K?

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Yes, I preordered it before it first came out. Not sure why shrines are not showing up. The strnge thing is that the rest of GnK is there. The African forest elephant, the techtree seemed to be correct. Only shrines missing. I decided to reinstall from the disc. My files from steam must be corrupted somehow.

You can tell Steam to verify your installation and repair any corrupt files. Failing that, you can try to reinstall through Steam. Depending on your download speed, Steam might be faster or slower than using the disc.

Do you have any mods installed? Might one of them be messing with Shrines?

Kwami said:

You can tell Steam to verify your installation and repair any corrupt files. Failing that, you can try to reinstall through Steam. Depending on your download speed, Steam might be faster or slower than using the disc.

Do you have any mods installed? Might one of them be messing with Shrines?

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Some are installed, but not enabled. In any case I was in single player mode. I got the disc in now anyway. It is done let me try once more.

This is like complaining that there's no downside to building the Great Wall. It's all opportunity cost.