tu_79
Deity
Hi again. This time we'll explain Religion for Vox Populi newcomers. Most of it is very similar than CIV V:BNW, but a little reminder doesn't hurt.
(Updated for 2018-08-17)
Taking a Pantheon/Religion gives several bonuses that usually make up for the trouble as Beliefs. There's lots of Beliefs and they are pretty easy to understand reading their descriptions, so I'm not going to explain them. But there are some hidden effects that is good to know:
Faith is a resource. Faith is needed for the 'Religion game' and can be used to purchase Great People by lndustrial Era. Even if you don't want to involve with religions, purchasing GP is too good to let it pass.
Early on, the only ways to get faith is:
Once you get enough faith points you might obtain a Pantheon. Pantheons usually give bonuses to all your cities, normally more faith yield to some tiles, but also culture, gold or other miscelaneous things. Every new settled city will have your pantheon until you found a religion. After you've founded a religion, new cities begin with no pantheon or religion at all.
Pick the right Pantheon for your game and you'll get your first Great Prophet in no time (~100 turns in standard)
When you have enough faith points, they are automatically expended to buy a Great Prophet. This will be happening until Industrial Era, so if you cannot expend your faith points in something else, a new Prophet will appear anyway. Prophets can be expended in the following.
Take your Prophet to any city you own and have him take the 'Found religion' action. This city will become the Holy City of your religion.
The founder of a religion gets to choose a Founder Belief and a Follower Belief. Founder beliefs are bonuses for the founder, that usually get better the more followers of that religion are, but some are just better when following a certain game style. Follower beliefs are bonuses to any cities that are of your religion. They usually yield something the more followers there are, or allow faith-purchasing of religious buildings or units.
Not all players in a game can found religions, so if you want to profit from being the founder, you better hurry.
This Prophet action must be taken in the Holy City, and it will enhance the religion by:
A second follower belief and an enhancer belief. Enhancer beliefs make spreading your religion cheaper, stronger, faster, farther or more resilient. Also allows to purchase inquisitors.
This Great Prophet Improvement can be build any almost any terrain, connects strategic resources and yields faith, culture and tourism. Best for players trying a cultural victory.
I will explain later how conversion works, but let's say that a Prophet is way better at spreading because it can ignore previous religions.
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A city is following a religion when the majority of its citizens share this same religion. A Holy City starts following its own founded religion.
A religious city:
Usually the best way to benefit from a religion is spreading it to as many cities as you can, but you might spread it at least to your own cities and friendly CS. Initially all citizens are atheists, or pantheon followers, but let's call them all heathens. Once a city becomes religious and has some followers, it begins producing faith pressure for itself and for every city at reach. These pressure faith points are added to the city pool, for every religion that reaches the city. Followers of each religion are distributed in the same proportion that religious pressure points from every religion. Heathens are considered followers of a religion with two differences: they cannot produce religious pressure in their city and offer no (or little) resistance to conversion.
(*pathfinder steps is an algorithm that looks for the fastest, not the shortest, path between your unit and its target, and says how many steps any normal unit would take to arrive. Moving over rough terrain takes 2 steps, moving on road takes 1/3 step.)
The Holy City has naturally increased religious pressure, and you can raise the religious pressure of your cities by:
Faith per turn in the city can be increased by
If you ever manage to spread your religion to a large part of the world population, you might build your Founder's World Wonder. It gives a bonus to yields and also reforms your religion, allowing you to pick a Reformation Belief. A Reformation Belief strongly improves one aspect of the game.
NOTE: You can also reform your religion by building Cathedral of St.Basil Wonder.
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Once there are followers of a religion in a city, every citizen with a different belief, including atheists, increases unhappiness. You can address this by picking the 'Free Thought' Social Policy, in the Rationalism Tree, or by converting the unfaithful (actively or passively).
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The conquered player can still produce Great Prophets of the conquered religion as long as he stays alive.
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(Updated for 2018-08-17)
WHAT IS A RELIGION GOOD FOR?
Taking a Pantheon/Religion gives several bonuses that usually make up for the trouble as Beliefs. There's lots of Beliefs and they are pretty easy to understand reading their descriptions, so I'm not going to explain them. But there are some hidden effects that is good to know:
- Sharing a religion gives a bonus to diplomacy and another bonus to tourism. Fealty finisher gives extra tourism for shared religion.
- Sharing a religion with CS makes it easier to stay friends (through quests and beliefs).
- If you get your founded religion chosen for world's religion in the UN, you get 2 extra delegates.
- If you can reform your religion by your holy building, you get another 2 delegates.
- Resistance is lower when you conquer a city that follows your founded religion. (need confirmation)
FAITH
Faith is a resource. Faith is needed for the 'Religion game' and can be used to purchase Great People by lndustrial Era. Even if you don't want to involve with religions, purchasing GP is too good to let it pass.
Early on, the only ways to get faith is:
- Build the shrine building, the Stonehenge wonder, or unique buildings/improvements like the Ethiopian Stele.
- Meet a religious CS.
- Find it in some Goody Huts (not available the very first turns).
- Work a Natural Wonder that yields faith, like Mt Sinai.
PANTHEON
Once you get enough faith points you might obtain a Pantheon. Pantheons usually give bonuses to all your cities, normally more faith yield to some tiles, but also culture, gold or other miscelaneous things. Every new settled city will have your pantheon until you found a religion. After you've founded a religion, new cities begin with no pantheon or religion at all.
Pick the right Pantheon for your game and you'll get your first Great Prophet in no time (~100 turns in standard)
GREAT PROPHET
When you have enough faith points, they are automatically expended to buy a Great Prophet. This will be happening until Industrial Era, so if you cannot expend your faith points in something else, a new Prophet will appear anyway. Prophets can be expended in the following.
- Found/Enhance a Religion, if the limit has not been reached.
- Improve a tile with the Holy Site Great Person Tile Improvement.
- Once you have a religion, convert citizens to your religion, three times. If you convert a city with a Prophet, then that Prophet will only be allowed to be spent in further convert actions.
GREAT PROPHET ACTIONS: FOUNDING A RELIGION
Take your Prophet to any city you own and have him take the 'Found religion' action. This city will become the Holy City of your religion.
The founder of a religion gets to choose a Founder Belief and a Follower Belief. Founder beliefs are bonuses for the founder, that usually get better the more followers of that religion are, but some are just better when following a certain game style. Follower beliefs are bonuses to any cities that are of your religion. They usually yield something the more followers there are, or allow faith-purchasing of religious buildings or units.
Not all players in a game can found religions, so if you want to profit from being the founder, you better hurry.
GREAT PROPHET ACTIONS: ENHANCING A RELIGION
This Prophet action must be taken in the Holy City, and it will enhance the religion by:
A second follower belief and an enhancer belief. Enhancer beliefs make spreading your religion cheaper, stronger, faster, farther or more resilient. Also allows to purchase inquisitors.
GREAT PROPHET ACTIONS: HOLY SITE
This Great Prophet Improvement can be build any almost any terrain, connects strategic resources and yields faith, culture and tourism. Best for players trying a cultural victory.
GREAT PROPHET ACTIONS: SPREAD RELIGION
I will explain later how conversion works, but let's say that a Prophet is way better at spreading because it can ignore previous religions.
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RELIGIOUS CITY
A city is following a religion when the majority of its citizens share this same religion. A Holy City starts following its own founded religion.
A religious city:
- Can purchase Missionary and Inquisitor (after enhancing) units expending faith points. Both units will actively spread the followed religion in the city where they were bought.
- Benefits from the follower beliefs of this religion: Can purchase with faith some religious buildings, units, or receive extra yields.
- Passively spreads the followed religion.
SPREAD RELIGION
Usually the best way to benefit from a religion is spreading it to as many cities as you can, but you might spread it at least to your own cities and friendly CS. Initially all citizens are atheists, or pantheon followers, but let's call them all heathens. Once a city becomes religious and has some followers, it begins producing faith pressure for itself and for every city at reach. These pressure faith points are added to the city pool, for every religion that reaches the city. Followers of each religion are distributed in the same proportion that religious pressure points from every religion. Heathens are considered followers of a religion with two differences: they cannot produce religious pressure in their city and offer no (or little) resistance to conversion.
SPREAD RELIGION: ACTIVE
These are ways to spread your religion spending faith. You purchase missionaries and inquisitors with faith points and use them to actively spread your religion. Mind that these units belong to the faith that the city was following when they were purchased.- Great Prophet. This unit may spread religion three times with a base strength of 1000 pressure points. The Prophet first removes previous pressure points and then adds its strength to the religious pressure in the city. The Prophet always spreads the religion of the founder.
- Missionary. This unit may spread religion twice with a base strength of 1000. The missionary just adds its strength to the religious pressure in the city. If the religious pressure pool in the city is already big, the effect of a single missionary is barely noticeable. A missionary always spreads the religion followed in the city where the unit was produced. A captured missionary will spread always its original religion.
- Inquisitor. (Available after enhancing). This unit can prevent the 'spread religion' action from both Prophets and missionaries if stationed inside or adjacent to an owned city. Additionally, it can perform the 'remove heresy' action in an owned city, that removes other religions pressure points from the city pool. The inquisitor, like the missionary, works for the religion followed in the city where it was produced. They cannot prevent traders or passive religious pressure.
SPREAD RELIGION: PASSIVE
Each follower of a religion in a city produces 'religious pressure' that slowly converts other citizens within reach, origin city included, to the religion they are following (technically, they add pressure points to the city pool). Cities that are within 7 pathfinder steps* in the same land mass receive 100% of the religious pressure of a city with religious followers. This value is linearly dumped up to 0% for cities that are at 12 pathfinder steps.(*pathfinder steps is an algorithm that looks for the fastest, not the shortest, path between your unit and its target, and says how many steps any normal unit would take to arrive. Moving over rough terrain takes 2 steps, moving on road takes 1/3 step.)
The Holy City has naturally increased religious pressure, and you can raise the religious pressure of your cities by:
- Building Temples
- Getting religious buildings that boost pressure (from the follower beliefs or world wonders)
- Organized Religion (Fealty) adds 50% pressure to nearby cities only for your own religion
- Enhancing your religion. Some enhancer beliefs increases pressure.
SPREAD RELIGION: TRADE ROUTES
An established trade route between two cities generates religious pressure in both cities based on the faith per turn production, meaning that a city with more FPT production, as Holy Cities usually are, generates more pressure via traders. This pressure can be boosted by a religious enhancer.Faith per turn in the city can be increased by
- having a nicely scaling pantheon
- building shrines and temples, and the Grand Temple
- getting faith producing religious buildings (via follower beliefs or world wonders)
- some religious world wonders just yield faith, others offer faith in a themeing bonus
- Veneration follower belief
- Organizing Religion (Fealty) gives +1 faith to every specialist, completing Fealty gives +2 faith to every city.
- planting and working Holy Sites (Great Prophet Tile Improvement)
- Capital (not Holy City) receives faith points from friendly religious city states
- Settling near a natural wonder that yields faith
SPREAD RELIGION: SPIES
One of the religious enhancers allows the spies to exert religious pressure on the cities where they are working.REFORM RELIGION
If you ever manage to spread your religion to a large part of the world population, you might build your Founder's World Wonder. It gives a bonus to yields and also reforms your religion, allowing you to pick a Reformation Belief. A Reformation Belief strongly improves one aspect of the game.
NOTE: You can also reform your religion by building Cathedral of St.Basil Wonder.
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RELIGIOUS UNREST
Once there are followers of a religion in a city, every citizen with a different belief, including atheists, increases unhappiness. You can address this by picking the 'Free Thought' Social Policy, in the Rationalism Tree, or by converting the unfaithful (actively or passively).
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RELIGIOUS CONQUEST
If you have found your own religion, conquering a foreign Holy City does nothing. If you haven't found your own religion, conquering a foreign Holy City makes you the 'usurper' of this religion. An usurper has the same privileges as the founder, benefiting from founder believes and being able to enhance/reform. If you get to be usurper for more than one religion, your official religion will be the most popular in your empire (more cities/citizens following).
The conquered player can still produce Great Prophets of the conquered religion as long as he stays alive.
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