How Do You Spend Faith In Your Games

[TW_Honorius]

Hello, I am trying to figure out how to best use faith in late game as i have typically ignored it in my games and want some input on how people use faith in their games and what strategies they use. Any tips are welcome.

Cheers

 

[ptoss1]

hmm... I'm having trouble getting faith

it seems to me like whoever gets the 60 faith ruins has a big advantage

 

[trooth]

I buy great engineers and use them for wonders. It requires order though. It gets expensive. It went 3000, 4500, 7500 for the 3 I have bought. Still very nice to turn faith into GE get cs quest completion then wonder then more cs quest completions.

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[Dai]

I like to put at least one faith building as a follower belief. They stay relatively cheap and eventually pay for themselves, while also providing other nice benefits. Pagodas in particular push the balance of the game into a place where happiness issues become a lot easier to deal with.

 

[Harv72b]

I've run cathedrals + pagodas as my follower beliefs a lot, which eats up my faith through the mid-game. Then for the rest of the game I just buy whatever great people I have available whenever I can.

If you want my full-game strategy, being the first or second to found a religion is a big help--both because it gives you more choices for your beliefs and because the rest of the map is pretty open to spread into. So I do put a bit of emphasis into faith early (shrine is always the first thing I build in a new city). Then once I've founded it buy a missionary ASAP & use it to create a couple of expansion nest-eggs, then save up for the second great prophet so I can enhance...again, I'd like to be the first civ to enhance my religion, or second at worst.

If you can entrench your religion throughout your own territory and into your neighbors' before anyone else on the continent has founded one, it's a huge advantage for the rest of the game.

 

[ahawk]

Missionaries and Inquisitors are the only things you can always purchase via faith.

Harv72b's suggestion is good, if you can get those beliefs (Cathedrals/Pagodas/Monasteries/ edit: and Mosques).

Other than that, the only real option that is easy is to, as trooth said above, to pick up Social Policies that allow for buying Great People.

It is possible, but not as common, to be in the pre-Industrial era in the late game. If you are in this position a lot, consider picking up the belief that allows you to buy pre-industrial units with Faith.

 

[Barghaest]

Late game? Well apart from snagging any cathedrals/monastaries/etc for new cities I tend to spend it on GPs as needed (whichever ones I've unlocked with a few prophets thrown in to spread my religion and the rare inquisitor).

Of course, currently playing a modded game where you can buy workers/settlers with faith (any religion, doesn't need to be unlocked) which makes a lot of sense when you think about it - lots of religious people volunteer to help the community or go out to found their own. Anyhoo, in this game I spend it on Settlers mainly (1000+ faith a settler isn't small but usually better than stagnating a town or dumping gold on em).

 

[Adreno]

Missionaries and Inquisitors are the only things you can always purchase via faith.

If you don't have your own religion you can't purchase them with faith. I don't know if you can purchase GP either?

 

[Antonin Dvorak]

I use faith to cement space race victories. I do this by getting rationalism and order so that I can buy both Great Engineers and Great Scientists. The Great Scientists discover technologies that allow the Great Engineers to be able to rush the science oriented wonders that come with them.

 

[KillingMeSoftly]

I use faith to cement space race victories. I do this by getting rationalism and order so that I can buy both Great Engineers and Great Scientists. The Great Scientists discover technologies that allow the Great Engineers to be able to rush the science oriented wonders that come with them.

^ This~

Tradition/Rationalism/Order with a heavy focus on Religion is very nice. Did this with Ethiopia (Desert Folklore pantheon) and it was just silly.

 

[ahawk]

If you don't have your own religion you can't purchase them with faith. I don't know if you can purchase GP either?

You can't purchase them unless the religion in your cities is your own? I've not had a game where I didn't found my own religion, so I didn't know this. I had sort of taken it for granted that you could always make those two units as long as you had any religion at all in the city (with the missionary spreading that religion rather than your own).

 

[merubhanot]

You can't purchase them unless the religion in your cities is your own? I've not had a game where I didn't found my own religion, so I didn't know this. I had sort of taken it for granted that you could always make those two units as long as you had any religion at all in the city (with the missionary spreading that religion rather than your own).

Yeah, you can't.

I've found this to be the major problem with religions on Immortal+. It's often hard to keep your religions around with any consistency since you keep getting religion bombed (usually by the Maya if they're in the game). I actually had a game where I generated something like 60 faith/turn but all my cities were converted in a period of a couple of turns and I was locked out of using my faith for the rest of the game because of the religious pressure.

Generally though, I think that I generally use faith to first buy a building (usually the 3 faith one), then missionaries for Tithe and then later maybe another building or some GPs. Unfortunately everything costs a lot of faith, so you often end up wasting a lot of it (like Culture). I like the idea of fitting in the religious building with a specialist slot into a Korea strategy though.

 

[Brichals]

Last game with freedom filled out I was buying great artists and great merchants for a culture victory. It worked out pretty well.

 

[Micael]

merubhanot, if you keep an inquisitor in a city then you can't be religion bombed. It can still spread naturally, but its not that hard. to keep on top of that. The only downside to that is you have to take them out if you want to purchase a worker/settler, but I haven't seen the AI keep a missionary / great prophet in my borders for longer than a turn once they notice they can't do anything- they always seem to go bomb something easier.

In regards to the OP, I spend my faith on getting Great Prophets / Great Artists and littering useless tiles (such as Snow or middle of the desert) with Holy Sites / Cultural Doohickeys. Coupled with the Freedom Policy Finisher, you get a ridiculous amount of faith / Culture, and you just spend the faith on getting more Great Prophets/Artists, and topping off friendly city state culture when you want it.

Admittedly, I don't tend to go higher than Prince unless I'm OCCing, but it works for me.

- Micael

 

[BranjoHello]

Great engineers from order for rushing wonders, great prophets for converting city states and great merchants from commerce for squeezing gold from city states. Faith is really nice addition but can be somewhat dull in lategame.

 

[Vatras]

With Austria I bought GE and GS for building towards science victory (price was 1500 at start for GE and 2500 for GS and went cumulatively up from there).

In my current game I buy lots of holy warriors to wage war upon my german neighbour.

I needed 10 composite archers and 3 camel archers to finally conquer the first city of his - it lay amidst jungle on a river, so was pretty hard to reach, and he defended with Landsknechte. The whole siege took me 18 turns or so, due to barbarian archers interfering, and more Landsknechte coming from his next city. Anyway, I bought five of those units with faith, what is a considerable percentage.

 

[drakar8888]

I use only the Great prophets that you receive automatically when you hit certain amounts of faith. First one - found the religion, second - go on a tour of the empire and spread to all cities as needed, third - enhance religion.

I have no idea why would you want to spread your faith to anything other than your own-built cities and city-states that give you a quest. The potential bonuses you can receive from spreading faith to foreign cities just seem so irrelevant when you look at the big picture.

Basic plan = never spend faith on missionaries/inquisitors and just wait for it to accumulate to 2500 at which point buy 2 great scientists/artists. These 2 great people(and the extra happiness from beliefs) seem as the most relevant bonuses you can get from the whole faith system in the long run. Holy warriors is nice, but very situational - only if you are in a position to generate ridiculous amounts of early faith.
And yeah, don't open your borders randomly in order to avoid enemy preachers.
Emperor/Immortal diff.

 

[Randall_Flagg]

I use mine for GP and Inquisitors only. GPS are for capitols, and Inqisitors to scare away others GP's. I only worrry about faith until enhancer though. Seeing some peoples faith count at end game is funny. I tend to like mine to spread with Church text, and by bombing holy cities. And you really do not need a lot of prophets for that.

 

[Adjuvant]

I make friends with the strongest AI, get open borders and use a dozen missionaries to block roads and mountain passes.

 

[lordrune]

I like the special buildings. Cathedrals, pagodas, and such. Bonus culture, happiness, and faith in every city - cannot go wrong with that.