A rethink on religion follower beliefs

Vitruvius said:

If you want smileys you can take shrine or temple happiness. If you don't have faith to buy religious buildings early you will end up paying tons of faith in later eras for them which you could better use for great people.

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I'm starting to see Goddess of Love as a really strong pantheon - +1 happiness for a city of size 6+ (providing you're going wide).

If you take the 2 opening policies in Piety (alongside your Tradition or Liberty policies) each city with a Shrine & Temple is now equal to a Stonehenge in faith output so arguably the faith pantheon is not needed.
The maintenance cost of Temples is a problem but if you can get Theocracy later on it's probably worth it (and far better than the Commerce opener) for a 25% bonus to gold in all cities which means they usually end up paying for themselves.

Follower is nearly always % of production. I dropped religious building, except in domination games.
I wonder how you can have 4 pagodas before rennaissance. It needs faith for pantheon, 200 for prophet, 200 for missionary, 800 for pagodas/mosquees. It's over 1 200 faith. With a Rennaissance near T140, it's 10 faith per turn from T20 (and it's early).

When I get a building belief, I often start buying them before enhancing. HW, buildings, missionaries costs all scale with era. Great Prophets costs are independent of era (except for the random aspect). So considered enhancing late and spending that faith on other things while costs are low. The downside to enhancing late is weaker choices, and fewer turns for that second follower belief to work.

budweiser said:

I take this one [Swords to Plowshares] 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.

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Even (especially) in my non-Dom games the last thing I need is motivation to avoid war. Usually I only DoW once per game, but that war needs to last a while, so as to get the most out of it. And when an AI starts it, I want to end on my terms with a sweet offer and lots of XP, not because I made a poor belief choice.

Vitruvius said:

Don't take Religious buildings and holy warriors if you don't have high faith income.

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I agree that HW needs decent faith income, but not the buildings. With HW you want as many as possible. With the buildings, you're just buying a few and even if you don't get them as early as you like, they still pay for themselves.

tetley said:

That +1 smiley/shrine vs. +2/temple is a tough call to make, I think.

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Agreed, especially the +2 which is the main reason the religious buildings are attractive. Sadly, that seems like a popular pick with the AIs!

Memoryjar said:

I wonder how you can have 4 pagodas before renaissance. It needs faith for pantheon, 200 for prophet, 200 for missionary, 800 for pagodas/mosques. It's over 1,200 faith. With a Renaissance near T140, it's 10 faith per turn from T20 (and it's early).

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It's not too hard really. You may not even need a single missionary. If your expos are not far, you founded in your cap, and you are not facing early missionary spam, default pressure will take care of the spread. (Yes three variables, but collectively seem to be the case in half my games.) That early missionary costs the same as an early building, and the early building then has even longer to generate faith.) But it's not a big deal if you only get three faith building pre-renaissance and the fourth cost more.

Messenger of the Gods: +2 science for each city with a connection to the cap.

I read on another forum that this helps combat the science penalty for expansion cities. Hello Dido. I am going to check this out soon.

If you want 4 pagodas, it makes more sense to go piety and get tbe 20% off discount. You're getting more than 20% because of the cheaper era cost, and faith payback because you built it earlier (and a little culture to boot--probably to go finish off piety while you're there). If you're having a good fpt game, you probably want in the race to The Glory of God.

I don't like planting second prophet for this, because the pagoda itself is generating faith. I do, however, like building the first pagoda before the second prophet. 160 faith is not that big a detour, and you're making that faith back. The more critical race is to Reformation--not to the Enhancer. The pagoda makes culture. I usually have no problem getting Messiah enhancer next, pagoda, pagoda, pagoda, then plant the 3rd-6th prophets (which only cost 375, 600, 900 faith, respectively, +piety finisher). Once you finish piety, those holy sites will later become tourist sites. With any luck, Glory of God reformation belief will still be available so you can take advantage of all that faith, but actually you have multiple good options with Reformation, such as sacred sites.

I haven't played BNW enough to decide how much I like the Piety tree as compared to the alternatives. It is has been lots of fun so far though. I agree with you about the first pagoda before the second prophet. One thing I am on the fence about: missionary or save for prophet? With GnK, I pretty much skipped missionaries entirely.

tetley said:

If you want 4 pagodas, it makes more sense to go piety and get tbe 20% off discount. You're getting more than 20% because of the cheaper era cost, and faith payback because you built it earlier (and a little culture to boot--probably to go finish off piety while you're there).

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I remain skeptical, here's my thinking at the moment: If all you want is 4 pagodas, it makes little sense to go piety just for the 20% discount. On its face, you would need 5+ faith buildings for that faith payback. Even with meager fpt, if all you want is four faith buildings before leaving Renaissance, it's easy, and almost no opportunity costs.

I'm not saying to absolutely do piety, but I'm saying it does make more sense than before. If you get all 4 pagodas before renaissance anyway, you are still getting them earlier in medieval, which means more faith (and culture, and...). So it's more than 20% face-value. But then you're buying missionaries anyway (at 20% off), and it is on your way to reformation and piety finisher. I don't like starting piety and not finishing at all: the game-changing SP's are the last two.

I agree with your points. Just a couple of missionaries (or an inquisitor, but you might not be able to anticipate that need) changes the math. I also agree that the last two piety SP are very, very strong.

I don't like opening any tree that I won't finish. The ideologies are making that bias hard for me! I very much appreciate how much easier SP are to acquire than with GnK. They are fun! I also like how Piety is compatible with Rationalism now.

I am in the process of rethinking the way that I use religion too. Previously if I ever took the Piety path, and took a Reformation belief, I would use the one that made Missionary converts as powerful as GP converts, and couple that with the follower belief that made Missionary's cheaper. This turned out to be very powerful, and let me dominate my continent with my religion, but I'm finding that it makes everybody hate, and eventually gang up on me and invade me. I've been thinking about scrapping this, and going for other reformation beliefs, and only using GP's and Missionary's on CS's and converting other cities through religious pressure (except maybe using units to convert cities in the late game when allegiances are cemented anyway).

There's a few things I really like about Pagodas, even over the other beliefs that add bonuses to the Temple:

1) A newly founded city can get a Pagoda the day after a missionary shows up, or after high pressure makes them your religion. A Temple is a low priority for a new city for me, even with reduced cost (if I have Piety). Further, you need like 5 believers to make that happen, so that's typically a 6+ pop city.

2) The Pagoda costs no maintenance and gives +2 Culture and +2 Happiness in addition to the +2 Faith. The Temple, with full Piety, gives 3 Faith and generates some extra gold, but still costs hammers to build and won't give you Culture AND Happiness without sinking both Follower beliefs into it.

Generally speaking, if I'm playing a high religion game, I try and snag Pagodas or settle for Mosques/Cathedrals as my first belief. The second I often compromise to +2 Happy/Culture on the Temple, meaning that I can faith-buy one of the bonuses but can hammer-build the other.

beetle said:

I haven't played BNW enough to decide how much I like the Piety tree as compared to the alternatives. It is has been lots of fun so far though. I agree with you about the first pagoda before the second prophet. One thing I am on the fence about: missionary or save for prophet? With GnK, I pretty much skipped missionaries entirely.



I remain skeptical, here's my thinking at the moment: If all you want is 4 pagodas, it makes little sense to go piety just for the 20% discount. On its face, you would need 5+ faith buildings for that faith payback. Even with meager fpt, if all you want is four faith buildings before leaving Renaissance, it's easy, and almost no opportunity costs.

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I prefer Mosques for a tall 4 city game. I never had problem with happiness in tall empires.

Trackmaster said:

I am in the process of rethinking the way that I use religion too. Previously if I ever took the Piety path, and took a Reformation belief, I would use the one that made Missionary converts as powerful as GP converts, and couple that with the follower belief that made Missionary's cheaper. This turned out to be very powerful, and let me dominate my continent with my religion, but I'm finding that it makes everybody hate, and eventually gang up on me and invade me. I've been thinking about scrapping this, and going for other reformation beliefs, and only using GP's and Missionary's on CS's and converting other cities through religious pressure (except maybe using units to convert cities in the late game when allegiances are cemented anyway).

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It only make other people hate you if you manually spread your religion to people who found there own religion. Secret is to spread it to people who did not found there own religion. So, try to spread it early, before they found own religion and avoid spreading after. But even after you can spread it to city states and this create pressure, so your religion take root and become hard to weed out.

Also, if you are an early founder, pay attention to which civs have pantheons at the time the first civ enhances its religion. There is little benefit to missionary-spreading your religion to the capital of a civ that is still eligible to found a religion, since the act of founding their religion will nearly wipe out your religion in their holy city (usually their capital). Best is to spread to CSs, to civs without pantheons, and to secondary cities of civs with pantheons.

Browd said:

Also, if you are an early founder, pay attention to which civs have pantheons at the time the first civ enhances its religion. There is little benefit to missionary-spreading your religion to the capital of a civ that is still eligible to found a religion, since the act of founding their religion will nearly wipe out your religion in their holy city (usually their capital). Best is to spread to CSs, to civs without pantheons, and to secondary cities of civs with pantheons.

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How useful do you find spreading religion to nearby CSs on Immortal/Diety? I find on the higher difficulties every city outside my Civ I convert (which costs a lot of faith in missionaries & prophets) gets wasted. AI Prophets come continually and convert the CS I've invested in. Prophets do remove all existing pressure right.

Redaxe said:

How useful do you find spreading religion to nearby CSs on Immortal/Diety? I find on the higher difficulties every city outside my Civ I convert (which costs a lot of faith in missionaries & prophets) gets wasted. AI Prophets come continually and convert the CS I've invested in. Prophets do remove all existing pressure right.

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You need piety - mandate of heaven with high faith output to be able to pull this off. I recommend pilgrimage as founder belief and any faith generating follower belief and pantheon. Do NOT take religious buildings, you want to be able to continually pump out missionaries until renaissance at least. The objective is to convert as many cities as possible, AI cities and CSes alike. And rely on the passive pressure to maintain these cities under your religion. As for enhancer beliefs, passive pressure is good. Because you are intending to convert alot of cities, itinerary preachers is best. Cheaper missionaries are OK too. If you can work your way to reformation belief, take the unity of prophets so your religion is hard to cleanse. At some point (after renaissance) you are going to stop the missionary spam and just reap the benefit of pilgrimage.

Yeah I second Unity of the Prophets - probably the most underrated belief if you are intent on spreading your religion.
The problem being Diety is having to fill out the Piety tree, this generally means ignoring Rationalism so science will suffer.

Redaxe said:

How useful do you find spreading religion to nearby CSs on Immortal/Diety? I find on the higher difficulties every city outside my Civ I convert (which costs a lot of faith in missionaries & prophets) gets wasted. AI Prophets come continually and convert the CS I've invested in. Prophets do remove all existing pressure right.

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Spreading to CS is for the initial influence, keeping them converted is much less important IMHO. Tithe works on number of followers and does not depend on the city having your religion as majority, so it keeps right on working. If you are not vested in keeping CS converted, you don't need much faith income because the first few GP are inexpensive, and are so efficient at spreading.

beetle said:

Spreading to CS is for the initial influence, keeping them converted is much less important IMHO. Tithe works on number of followers and does not depend on the city having your religion as majority, so it keeps right on working. If you are not vested in keeping CS converted, you don't need much faith income because the first few GP are inexpensive, and are so efficient at spreading.

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When you say early influence do you mean the pressure that bounces back on your own cities from nearby converted citystates, making them exert more pressure in the long term?
Plus for citystates conversion quests I guess.

Regarding faith income there is one more benefit that noone here has mentioned yet - Citystate quest for leading faith. That is a forgotten benefit of a religion based strategy.

Redaxe said:

When you say early influence do you mean the pressure that bounces back on your own cities from nearby converted citystates, making them exert more pressure in the long term?

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No, I mean just the CS conversion quests. Seems to me those are often so remotely located that it helps your spread not at all, unless you make that a main focus.

Regarding faith income there is one more benefit that noone here has mentioned yet - Citystate quest for leading faith.

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Sure, but that seems kind of random in my games, even when I fill out Piety. And by definition does require high fpt. I am partial to the strategies where faith buffs your game, but is not really a major focus of your play.

I only go for two religious buildings if I have a lot of faith generation (probably from a pantheon).

If I don't, I usually go for super temples or shrines.

Interfaith diaglog and super-cheap missionaries can be really fun, especially if you have The Great Mosque. That means each missionary you spread with will give you six turns of science, which is equal or almost equal to a whole technology. Downside is that you are going to make someone really angry by sending a missionary into their territory every ~10 or so.

INTFD requires you to go into piety to do correctly, but I think the minimum two SPs in piety is well worth the 5-6 free techs you'll end up getting. Especially when you switch to rationalism later on. Also, if you want to invest more into piety, heathen conversion can be interesting because you'll be spamming tons of missionaries. Lastly, religious tolerence can get you a faith generating pantheon which let's you spam even more missionaries!