When to found an early religion

Hello! I'm a long time lurker on these forums, and I thought I'd finally give in and register. So here I am!

I was thinking about attempting a cultural victory since I've never won that way before. I play on Prince, and decided getting an early religion (either Buddhism or Hinduism) would be best to reach that goal. Well, the AI beat me to it every time! Is going for an early religion always a bad move, or will there be times where it'll be worth it? I was thinking it might be best to just focus on worker techs first and then take a religious city later.

What Leader were you playing? If you don't start with Myst it is not worth it usually on higher levels.

I rarely ever get an early religion. Let the religions spread and found Conf, Christ and/or Tao later with bulb or Oracle. Of course, you can always conquer holy cities too, but for culture, religions should spread to you anyway unless you are isolated.

Worker techs are always more important IMO.

Thanks, lymond. I normally just get CoL through the Oracle, but wanted to try something different.

I was playing as Pacal II, so I felt that if I had mysticism it might be worth a shot. But I'll just gun for the later religions then.

With pacal on prince, you probably have a very good chance to get an early religion. Not saying never do it, I just generally don't. I always thought it weird that he starts with Myst. He's an excellent leader with great traits.

Isabella on a coastal start gives you the best shot at Buddhism or Hinduism.

If you can limit the loss of turns working special tiles to very few, then early religion is worth considering if you have mysticism. Something like triple-deer monty/bren/boudica or seafood-only izzy are examples although on high levels the AI can still beat you there.

Justinian and Charlemagne can consider settler 1st + religion if the start favors it. Pacal, wang, and HC can consider it if they start with an oasis tile (3f 3c) or other power commerce tile...and those are probably safest of the early religion guys.

Notably, these are all situational, but then again so is everything in civ.

Gwynnja said:

Isabella on a coastal start gives you the best shot at Buddhism or Hinduism.

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You mean Isabella with a lake or a seafood tile in the BFC, right ? That != coastal ... a landlocked start with a lake will do exactly as good as a coastal one with seafood in this regard

Early religions are quite iffy of paying out the investement you make in teching towards them vs the best of the other teching options ( normally something for workers or WB to do ), even if you start with mysticism. This is because having founded a religion will not have a big early effect ( shrines come far later, you only get the bonus if you adopt it, and espionage bonus are far away of you mind ... ok, you got more culture in the cities with the religion and acess to temples and monasteries earlier, but the first is of little relevance most of the times and temples and monasteries are something you will both only have necessity and capacity to build some turns in the future ), unlike the option of building farms, mines, pastures, camps , cutting woods, working water tiles and make WBs ... so you are trading a early advantage for a later one. That in this game is normally a bad idea.

The diplo manipulation possibilities are probably a far more important factor in it, but that laso plays against founding religions early, simply because you don't have the necessary intel to decide if it is a good idea diplomatically to be the founder of a religion in t8 or 10 .You can found a mega love fest ( not always good for you ), a bitter cold war between the two early religions, a three kinddom religion board with judaism or confu as the third partner, your religion might be only spread to your cities and become a minority even being early ... in resume, there are a lot of scenarios, not all good for you , that you can be creating by your action, but they are shrouded both by the intel you still don't have ( it is unlikely you know everyone and everywhere when you start teching meditation or polytheism ) and by the various RNG interventions in this issue ( religious autospread , but also AI teching decisions, events, barb moves ... ). So , diplomatically speaking, founding a early religion becomes a huge gamble, just because you don't know what will come from that. and with the huge role religion has in this game, that alone is enough to kill your game if you chose unwisely .

And to add, there is very little diference between founding a early religion or capture the holy city from a neighbour of yours that founded a early religion .... and again, the advantage of actually having the holy city of a religion might be from 0 to huge depending of factors you have very little control

In resume: IMHO, unless you know the map before you start the game it is normally not worthwhile as a metastrategy to found a early religion. It may surely pay off in a lot of games, but in general it is just too risky for the average benefits of the move.

Huayna is excellent for early religion not just for the financial trait if you get an oasis or riverside dye or something, but because his other starting tech is Agriculture. If you have corn/wheat/rice in your capital, you can just go worker first like normal and sometimes barely even notice that you went for a religion.

Hey, thanks for the discussion everyone.

I played out a start with Pacal II where I actually got the religion (Hinduism) and them promptly discovered that my new worker had no work to do - the trade-off r_rolo was talking about. Montezuma turned out to be my nearest neighbor (who also founded Buddhism) and our different religions put me off to a bad start.

Ah, well. Now I know better.