[G&K] Religion: Founder Beliefs (G&K)

Browd submitted a new resource:

Religion: Founder Beliefs - Religion: Founder Beliefs

Religion
Founder Beliefs

“At the core of all well-founded belief, lies belief that is unfounded” - Ludwig Wittgenstein​

Introduction

A religion consists of a set of beliefs that are intended to enhance your ability to win the game. Many of the beliefs will benefit any civilization following a religion, but a religion’s “founder beliefs” -- which can provide happiness, gold, science, faith, culture or...

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Since it looks like this is the first comment to this particular article, let me start out by thanking Browd for a fantastic series! The G&L religion system was totally opaque to me until I found these articles. They are informative while being easy to read, and I also very much appreciate the time that went into the organization and formatting. The base article should be part of the Civ5 “Info Center”, not just a thread on the one sub-forum of the Strategy & Tips forum.

I would like to point out that, while organizing beliefs by what they give you (happiness, faith, gold, etc.) is entirely sensible, for founder beliefs (and only founder beliefs, interestingly enough), the more important distinction is actually if the benefits depend on your ability to spread your religion. At higher levels of play, you are lucky to maintain your religion in your own cities, and even that can be work. Initially converting a foreign city can be easy, but the AI competition means that a foreign city keeping your religion through passive religious pressure alone is the exception rather than the rule.

This being the case, at higher difficulty levels, founder beliefs which are not dependent upon foreign cities are the only ones worth considering.

Founders beliefs with benefits entirely dependent upon keeping foreign cities converted: Peace Loving, Pilgrimage, World Church, Papal Primacy. If you are not successful at keeping your religion spread outside of your civilization, these four founder beliefs are essentially worthless. Keeping your religion spread at Deity is almost always impossible.

Thanks for the shout out!

What you describe is an entirely sensible, and perhaps more useful, way of looking at the founder beliefs. I chose to present them using a "what are the rewards from these beliefs?" approach, since that was consistent with how the pantheon and follower beliefs were done, but analyzing them through a "do the rewards depend on comprehensive spread?" lens is potentially more useful. Tried to do that in the commentary about each belief, but not always consistently.

I fully agree with and support the organizational choices made for articles!

This “rewards depending on comprehensive spread” aspect only occurred to me after all the tutoring you have provided on other threads! Since it seems that I am usually struggling to spread my religion, I almost always pick Interfaith Dialogue when it is available.

Thank you Browd, for this guide to Religion in Civ V. I have only started reading the Civ V Strategy & Tips forum, having gradually worked my way up to Emperor. I pretty much ignored religion in my games (sometimes I got a Religion others not and didn't worry too much about it). However I recently tried a game with the Byzantines where it is important, if you are going to make use of the UA anyway, and started wondering about what beliefs give the best return. I just used to go Tithe before that but Interfaith Dialogue seems a good way to catch up quicker on techs, especially if you are a warmonger.

Thanks to this post I can at least make an informed choice

Interfaith Dialogue is my favorite founder belief. Keep in mind that it only works if your religion is not spreading.

I had a fun game with Theodora where I had both Religious Texts and Itinerant Preachers. That was probably at King, not Emperor though.