Useless beliefs

Over the course of patches and now BNW - I think some beliefs really need some changes/buff, otherwise they're just totally useless. Many have at least situational usages, but the ones I list below are so inferior that you'd only pick them if you have absolutely no choice - usually not the case.

I can think of the following

Pantheon:
Ancestor worship - 1 is really low for requiring a shrine. There's no reason why anyone would take this over, say, oral tradition or god of the open sky - in a 4 city empire you just need a total of 4 plantations or 4 pastures - very easy to find - to trump ancestor worship.

God of war - 4 tiles is really limiting, and the it generates is pretty small (I think is combat strength of the unit killed) so taking this pantheon almost means taking no pantheon at all. If you have a closeby barb camp that you can farm, then maybe, but otherwise it's very unreliable, especially since you're not likely to be fighting around your cities a lot unless on deity (so maybe this will work for deity players who spawn next to Shaka with no good passive faith generating pantheons to choose from)

Goddess of love - yes, + is nice, but really, needing 6 followers means that it doesn't kick in until pretty late, when what you really need in that early part of the game when pantheons matter most is or or ... 1 is not going to do it. And on difficulty levels where the is useful, picking this pantheon means you are not very likely to get a religion - which means when you really need it, the pantheon gets wiped by someone else's religion.

Religious settlements - why not just open tradition instead and take something like Fertility rites?

Founder belief:
Church property - might have been good in pre-BNW days, but city spamming is hard now and AI works much harder at spreading religion. +2 isn't a lot when you can realistically get maybe a max of 10-15 cities following your religion. Tithe, in my experience, is almost always stronger because you don't need to be the majority to get the bonus and it scales nicely throughout the game - so late game your capital alone is giving you 8-10

Papal primacy - the opportunity cost of taking this over tithe, ceremonial burial, or peace loving is really high, and with consulates+pledge you don't really need that extra 15. If they nerf consulates slightly (as they should) then this would be a useful belief.

Pilgrimage - again, you really need to work it to get much benefit out of this. The extra you get won't compensate you for the you spent spreading.

World church - basically a crappy version of peace loving. Yes, this can be enemy civs too, but 1 is worth a lot less than 1

Follower:
Liturgical drama - do people even build amphitheatres anymore other than the minimum number you need to house writers? +1 is a joke. There are a lot of good follower beliefs to choose from, no reason ever to pick this.

Enhancer:
I find there to be no truly bad enhancer - each can have its uses. My only gripe is that the science and gold value are not scaled for epic/marathon games, but the faith cost for missionary/prophet is - so the faith to gold/sci conversion ratio is horrible, making them bad choices for those game lengths. Missionary zeal is probably the weakest since the difference is not really that noticeable in my experience.

Reformation:
Religious fervor: between GPs and units, it's hard to justify buying units when the faith cost is so high and you can buy a great engineer or scientist or musician or whatever. You have to be really desperate to use it to buy units. Maybe if the cost comes down.

That's my take on beliefs anyway. The others usually at least have some usefulness. What do you think?

MarshalN said:

World church - basically a crappy version of peace loving. Yes, this can be enemy civs too, but 1 is worth a lot less than 1

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You're underestimating the potential, if you use it correctly, you can get to produce more culture so that by monument/amphitheatres/etc.

Agree with all of them except pilgrimage.
You spend 200 faith to get 2 (or 3 with great mosque) cities early in the game, and unless you spawn next to a prophet spammer, I'm sure they will be following your religion for at least 100 turns or so, most likely until the end of the game; coupled with the fact that your faith gets "auto-spent" on great prophets until industrial, think of it as a way to "bank" your faith.
Also with a good enhancer auto-spread works pretty well if all your neighbors don't have their own religions. You'd be looking at maybe at least 40 faith/turn late game (unless your religion is completely snuffed out), which isn't bad.

MarshalN said:

Over the course of patches and now BNW - I think some beliefs really need some changes/buff, otherwise they're just totally useless. Many have at least situational usages, but the ones I list below are so inferior that you'd only pick them if you have absolutely no choice - usually not the case.

I can think of the following

Pantheon:
Ancestor worship - 1 is really low for requiring a shrine. There's no reason why anyone would take this over, say, oral tradition or god of the open sky - in a 4 city empire you just need a total of 4 plantations or 4 pastures - very easy to find - to trump ancestor worship.

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Sometimes I take it if I'm already planning to build Shrines and Temples in all my cities. But if I do, then I'll probably also take Feed the World, and something else shrine/temple related for the synergy.

Or if I'm just in a hurry to unlock the free settler in Liberty and I can't take Open Sky.

God of war - 4 tiles is really limiting, and the it generates is pretty small (I think is combat strength of the unit killed) so taking this pantheon almost means taking no pantheon at all. If you have a closeby barb camp that you can farm, then maybe, but otherwise it's very unreliable, especially since you're not likely to be fighting around your cities a lot unless on deity (so maybe this will work for deity players who spawn next to Shaka with no good passive faith generating pantheons to choose from)

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Playing on a Maxi-Map with 21 other civs, and raging barbarians, God of War is a fairly reliable way to make sure I found a religion. I've taken it twice so far.

Goddess of love - yes, + is nice, but really, needing 6 followers means that it doesn't kick in until pretty late, when what you really need in that early part of the game when pantheons matter most is or or ... 1 is not going to do it. And on difficulty levels where the is useful, picking this pantheon means you are not very likely to get a religion - which means when you really need it, the pantheon gets wiped by someone else's religion.

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Yeah. I've never taken it either.

Religious settlements - why not just open tradition instead and take something like Fertility rites?

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Yeah. Never taken it.

Founder belief:
Church property - might have been good in pre-BNW days, but city spamming is hard now and AI works much harder at spreading religion. +2 isn't a lot when you can realistically get maybe a max of 10-15 cities following your religion. Tithe, in my experience, is almost always stronger because you don't need to be the majority to get the bonus and it scales nicely throughout the game - so late game your capital alone is giving you 8-10

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Yeah. And strangely the AI always leaves Tithe available even if I'm picking last.

Papal primacy - the opportunity cost of taking this over tithe, ceremonial burial, or peace loving is really high, and with consulates+pledge you don't really need that extra 15. If they nerf consulates slightly (as they should) then this would be a useful belief.

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I'd rather they nerf pledge. Either that or require more in order to get the benefits of pledge. (Like have it only work in CS you could demand tribute from, or require you to go to war whenever the CS is at war, the same as if you had a defensive pact with another civ.)

Consuls at least requires you to open the appropriate policy.

Pilgrimage - again, you really need to work it to get much benefit out of this. The extra you get won't compensate you for the you spent spreading.

World church - basically a crappy version of peace loving. Yes, this can be enemy civs too, but 1 is worth a lot less than 1

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Lol. Yeah. To be honest the only founder beliefs I ever take are Tithe and Primacy (because I hate pledging).

Follower:
Liturgical drama - do people even build amphitheatres anymore other than the minimum number you need to house writers? +1 is a joke. There are a lot of good follower beliefs to choose from, no reason ever to pick this.

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If I'm last picking my Second belief, sometimes I take the one that gives you a bonus for Hermitage, so yeah. I'll need amphs in every city (besides also Hermitage might be necessary for the extra art slots.)

But the +1 faith is hardly noticeable. Usually I take the Hermitage belief instead of Liturgical Drama.

I guess you might want it if you're the Celts - maybe.

Some of those beliefs work a lot better in multiplayer - in fact, many design concepts that don't make a lot of sense in single player suddenly have new uses for human vs. human conflict.

For example:

"Religious settlements - why not just open tradition instead"
Team games - like 3x3 - are popular. Skirmish map is usually picked, and 1 player on the team is the "religion guy." He picks the pantheon that will benefit the team the most and converts everybody, so the guy on the front line can pick extra border growth to steal enemy tiles, in 60 turns he will have a new improved pantheon anyhow.

"Church property"
This is actually banned in some team games for being too strong! 3x3 on skirmish map, dominant religion can have 40+ cities converted, +80 gold/turn is huge, it ends up being bigger than 1 gold for 4 followers.

"Religious fervor: between GPs and units, it's hard to justify buying units when the faith cost is so high"
Spain + faith natural wonder and +4 faith per natural wonder (turns into +8 with ridic Spain bonus) buying a unit every turn with faith turns the tide of war... Spain almost always banned in team games.

MarshalN said:

Pantheon:
Ancestor worship - 1 is really low for requiring a shrine. There's no reason why anyone would take this over, say, oral tradition or god of the open sky - in a 4 city empire you just need a total of 4 plantations or 4 pastures - very easy to find - to trump ancestor worship.

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Yeah, it stinks - unless someone else has already taken the beliefs for Plantation luxuries or Pastures, or you're planning on letting another player spread their religion to you and just want some easy early-game culture.

MarshalN said:

God of war - 4 tiles is really limiting, and the it generates is pretty small (I think is combat strength of the unit killed) so taking this pantheon almost means taking no pantheon at all. If you have a closeby barb camp that you can farm, then maybe, but otherwise it's very unreliable, especially since you're not likely to be fighting around your cities a lot unless on deity (so maybe this will work for deity players who spawn next to Shaka with no good passive faith generating pantheons to choose from)

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This one is rather "meh", yes.

MarshalN said:

Goddess of love - yes, + is nice, but really, needing 6 followers means that it doesn't kick in until pretty late, when what you really need in that early part of the game when pantheons matter most is or or ... 1 is not going to do it. And on difficulty levels where the is useful, picking this pantheon means you are not very likely to get a religion - which means when you really need it, the pantheon gets wiped by someone else's religion.

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Not un-useful if you're building tall, or, again, you're planning on letting someone else spread their religion to you.

MarshalN said:

Religious settlements - why not just open tradition instead and take something like Fertility rites?

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This one's bad?! 'Fraid you're wrong there. If you're going Liberty (or straight into Piety), this is a very, very useful belief.

MarshalN said:

Founder belief:
Church property - might have been good in pre-BNW days, but city spamming is hard now and AI works much harder at spreading religion. +2 isn't a lot when you can realistically get maybe a max of 10-15 cities following your religion. Tithe, in my experience, is almost always stronger because you don't need to be the majority to get the bonus and it scales nicely throughout the game - so late game your capital alone is giving you 8-10

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If there are a lot of low-pop AI cities (i.e., Hiawatha's in the game), this belief can pay off better than Tithe.

MarshalN said:

Papal primacy - the opportunity cost of taking this over tithe, ceremonial burial, or peace loving is really high, and with consulates+pledge you don't really need that extra 15. If they nerf consulates slightly (as they should) then this would be a useful belief.

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Currently useless; I do hope they nerf the Pledge + Consulates semi-exploit so this belief begins to serve a purpose.

MarshalN said:

Pilgrimage - again, you really need to work it to get much benefit out of this. The extra you get won't compensate you for the you spent spreading.

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If it's a big map it will.

MarshalN said:

World church - basically a crappy version of peace loving. Yes, this can be enemy civs too, but 1 is worth a lot less than 1

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I beg to differ. I'm playing a Marathon Speed game as Spain right now, and took this belief as part of my religion because (as it's a 22-civ map) I didn't want to go Domination. I'm getting ~75 Culture per turn from this belief, which is helping me to speed through Social Policies despite having a wide empire.

MarshalN said:

Follower:
Liturgical drama - do people even build amphitheatres anymore other than the minimum number you need to house writers? +1 is a joke. There are a lot of good follower beliefs to choose from, no reason ever to pick this.

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It's pointless, yes.

MarshalN said:

Reformation:
Religious fervor: between GPs and units, it's hard to justify buying units when the faith cost is so high and you can buy a great engineer or scientist or musician or whatever. You have to be really desperate to use it to buy units. Maybe if the cost comes down.

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This one is weak, but not totally bad (if only for the fun of having Holy Nukes.)

kb27787 said:

Agree with all of them except pilgrimage.
You spend 200 faith to get 2 (or 3 with great mosque) cities early in the game, and unless you spawn next to a prophet spammer, I'm sure they will be following your religion for at least 100 turns or so, most likely until the end of the game; coupled with the fact that your faith gets "auto-spent" on great prophets until industrial, think of it as a way to "bank" your faith.
Also with a good enhancer auto-spread works pretty well if all your neighbors don't have their own religions. You'd be looking at maybe at least 40 faith/turn late game (unless your religion is completely snuffed out), which isn't bad.

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Well, I think you gotta put it in perspective here. Faith on its own is not terribly useful - you can use it to buy GPs late in the game. Otherwise, faith that generates more faith has to do it fast enough and early enough to make it worthwhile.

In this case, let's say you spread to a new city at turn 100, which is about when you really get to spread it beyond your initial city (20 turns for pantheon, 30 for first prophet, 30 for second prophet, then missionary - or just plain pressure conversion). Let's say the city was converted for free, and you win the game at, say, turn 270. That leaves about 150 turns of somewhat useful faith generation - the last few turns the game is over anyway and there's always some wasted faith.

So that's about 300 faith generated from one city, for this belief. But that's assuming the faith came with no cost. If you had to spend 100 faith (1/2 of an early missionary) then the "profit" is 200 faith. If you spent 150 faith on it, then the profit is about 150. If you got a modern era missionary then your faith profit is so low it's probably not worth it at all. Realistically, you can have, what, 1500 faith total from this belief, net? That's a pretty optimistic assumption (since most of the conversions would happen later than turn 100), I think, and that's worth about one GP - and that's only at turn 250. So its benefit is marginal at best, I think.

This is all assuming your city doesn't get converted in the meantime to something else - which is pretty common nowadays in BNW. In fact usually by industrial I give up trying to defend the religion - the AI spams so much it's pointless. With these beliefs that only give you stuff for cities that have a majority of believers, it's a lot more costly to try to keep the benefit, versus things like tithe, which just give it to you as long as there's one believer in a city.

cpm4001 said:

I beg to differ. I'm playing a Marathon Speed game as Spain right now, and took this belief as part of my religion because (as it's a 22-civ map) I didn't want to go Domination. I'm getting ~75 Culture per turn from this belief, which is helping me to speed through Social Policies despite having a wide empire.

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Well, on a huge 22 civ map there will be lots of civs with no religion, and a lot more space for your religion to grow. I think if you move away from standard settings (8 civs, standard size) there are always situations where the beliefs can be useful. My post, I guess I should've made clear, is also made on the assumption of standard settings. Otherwise we're comparing apples and oranges.

Religious settlements is awesome for venice.

I agree with most of these... I will admit that I don't even know what a lot of these will do in the game. I usually just take Tithe, Pagodas... the one that increases Wonder faith and the one that spreads religion or the one that makes prophets stronger. I agree with most of what was said here, except for this:

Follower:
Liturgical drama - do people even build amphitheatres anymore other than the minimum number you need to house writers? +1 is a joke. There are a lot of good follower beliefs to choose from, no reason ever to pick this.

I build ampitheaters because they lead to the rest of the cultural buildings that you need!

kojax said:

Playing on a Maxi-Map with 21 other civs, and raging barbarians, God of War is a fairly reliable way to make sure I found a religion. I've taken it twice so far.

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Game should not be balanced around your personal favorite settings.

I mostly agree with the OP, but deeply disagree in Goddess of Love. This is my pantheon of choice if I am playing Egypt, Ethiopia, Maya and maybe even Celts, to a lesser degree. With these civs I wil usually do a 5~7 cities Liberty opening, which is very effective up to Immortal. In Ethiopia and Maya cases, this opening pretty much guarantees first or second religion even without a faith-boosting pantheon. This means that I will probably get Pagoda, or at worst case Mosque at least, and will be able to have enough happiness to grow an extremely strong hybrid of wide and tall. With Egypt is even easier, as Burial Tombs substitute Pagoda, so I can be happy even with something like 4th religion, and I will have the faith generation to keep Inquisitors at hand to protect myself. Stacking Goddess of Love with Liberty roads is very strong.

Also, you got the wrong info, you don't need 6 followers, just 6 citizens, so you start getting the bonus as early as Classical era.

I love World Church, I've been in situations where my religion is producing more culture then the output of cities + city states with this belief. Throw in Golden Ages, World's Fair and maybe play as Poland and watch the policies pour in.

What's also nice about it is that it only requires followers, not converted cities.

things like World Church and other beliefs that depend on number of cities converted, i sit back and take into account:
what Civ am i playing? where's my cap, in relation to tiles that can produce faith (and my pantheon)? am i even going to try to bother to build HG in this game? is my win goal CV or Diplo?

if i sense that the majority of these things are "no" then i don't pick any "number of cities converted" beliefs. this happens in the large majority of games. i'll pick hammer beliefs if my pantheon is hammer based. and/or growth. if these style beliefs are still available. if not, i'll go for gold beliefs.

I almost always pick tithe because it just seems so much better than the other ones. Whenever I think I should try something else, when the screen pops up asking me which to take, I can't help but go with tithe. Even if you don't spread your religion much, it still can help out a lot just from your holy city. I sure wish they would boost the others to put it up at that level.

I almost always go with religious texts too, which also seems like the best policy of its type.

bonafide11 said:

I almost always pick tithe because it just seems so much better than the other ones. Whenever I think I should try something else, when the screen pops up asking me which to take, I can't help but go with tithe. Even if you don't spread your religion much, it still can help out a lot just from your holy city. I sure wish they would boost the others to put it up at that level.

I almost always go with religious texts too, which also seems like the best policy of its type.

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Religious texts is good only inasmuch as it's ALWAYS good. Defender of the Faith can be dramatically more effective depending on circumstance, as can any other enhancer. Religious texts is just never a bad choice; it's not always the BEST choice.

Speaking of which Itinerant Preachers sucks now that trade routes are affected by Religious Texts.

civ54lyfe said:

things like World Church and other beliefs that depend on number of cities converted, i sit back and take into account:
what Civ am i playing? where's my cap, in relation to tiles that can produce faith (and my pantheon)? am i even going to try to bother to build HG in this game? is my win goal CV or Diplo?

if i sense that the majority of these things are "no" then i don't pick any "number of cities converted" beliefs. this happens in the large majority of games. i'll pick hammer beliefs if my pantheon is hammer based. and/or growth. if these style beliefs are still available. if not, i'll go for gold beliefs.

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Exactly, and I feel that in a normal game with BNW the AI bring super aggressive with their religion, my chances of keeping converted cities is usually pretty crappy

MarshalN said:

In this case, let's say you spread to a new city at turn 100, which is about when you really get to spread it beyond your initial city (20 turns for pantheon, 30 for first prophet, 30 for second prophet, then missionary - or just plain pressure conversion).

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The order is wrong there. Always pop at LEAST one missionary before the second prophet. Two if you are a faith monster.

Look at all the cities on you continent. Look where other religions are spreading from. Convert two very strategic cities with that first missionary. Ideally placed so that the maximum number of cities have +12 or +18 pressure.

When you then pop the prophet and get either texts or itinerant, or really any other spread bonus, the whole continent should convert quickly.

If you pop the prophet before missionary it isn't nearly as effective. Cities are bigger abd harder to convert by then and the AI religions will be creeping in, making cities even harder to convert.

The multiplier on that first missionary, moving cities from +6 to +12, or +18, is way more powerful than religious texts or itinerant. Those policies only start owning when they are radiating from many cities.

In terms of pantheons, it obviously depends on where I start (e.g: desert folklore for desert, sacred path for jungle). If I don't start near desert or jungle, I would mostly choose fertility rites, because it is one of few pantheons that really pay off in the long run, unlike say oral tradition or sacred circles.

With the religious beliefs, in terms of founders, I am basically addicted to tithes. They are just too good, especially since BNW is tilted towards tall play. I would only choose papal primacy if I had a swab of CS' near me and even then they are the first targets for religious civs. Also, one of the happiness beliefs was nerfed (from 1 for every 1 city with this religion as majority to 1 every 2 cities). Why was that nerfed? that was a fairly balanced belief because fighting for majority control for religions is usually hard because you are most likely going to encounter 1 or 2 nearby religious civs.

With followers, I usually prefer passive abilities such as plowshares unless I am focusing heavily on . Pun intended: playing a game really requires a leap of faith.

Enhancers are decent but with BNW, just war isn't that good anymore unless you neighbour multiple non-religious civs. I tend to choose religious texts for faster religious spread (the nerf seems fair too) or sometimes defender of the faith if I suspect a tough war or if I play Ethiopia (40% combat bonus whilst defending!).

All reformations are great, except the secret society one, which is pointless in SP and dumb in MP. Only choose heathen conversion if you know you are going to get 10-19 whilst warmongering. And AI usually loves that reformation so you have to get oracle to help you get it, or go as Poland.

Peng Qi said:

Game should not be balanced around your personal favorite settings.

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With so many beliefs, having some beliefs that work better for certain settings is hardly balancing the game around them. Some people do play settings other than standard, it's nice that there are beliefs for everyone. If you feel beliefs are "useless," don't take 'em.

Personally I think Religious Settlements is very useful if for whatever reason you didn't take tradition, especially for a civ like Iroquois.

Ancestor Worship, I can imagine being useful in certain circumstances where you know you're going to make a lot of cities and a shrine in each one - then it's basically the same as the liberty opener, which isn't nothing. That said, I've never taken it.

edit: and Blitz Spearman is right about Goddess of Love, I've also used it as Poland who are very capable of pulling off wide/tall hybrid.