I often find rationalism necessary to keep up with the AI in science, especially in higher difficulties.
Agree. King level or below, you pull a Louisiana move - blue bayou. (blew by you.)
I often find that by the time you finish piety its already late in the medieval or renaissance era, and by that time faith is pretty much useless other than to generate great people at the end of the game.
religious buildings.
except when I'm playing a culture game, where I feel obliged to take Piety (although it really isn't all that great)
Not that great for culture? Most culture games, people stick to fewer cities and try to get a WW in each, so piety gives +33% culture to all cities, extra culture for happiness, more faith for religious buildings which are cheaper, 10% reduction in SP cost, a free GA, rocking holy sites, and 10% gold to boot. Which policy tree is better for culture wins?
The lack of happiness in the Piety tree can be offset if you pick Pagodas or Mosques. Essentially +2 happiness per city.
you can build religious buildings whether you pick piety or not. they become cheaper and you generate
slightly more faith, but most people look at the total number of happiness points you can add, and the total for piety is 0. This is the equivalent of saying that the rationalism tree would be just as good if it offered 1/2 price theaters and stadiums instead of +1 happy per observatories, public schools and research labs, which would probably cause forum riots.
I do agree with the general consensus of the thread, rationalism is better for 3 out of 4 victory conditions. If I'm trying to min/max to do everything possible to finish the game one... turn... earlier..., then I'd use piety only for culture wins. But it isn't
that bad for other situations. the real sting for me is that there's no increase in total empire happiness, which I weight highly in SP evaluation early to mid game. I still like my proposal from the other thread - remove the opener (as it currently is), make the faith bonus from shrines temples the opener(access one policy earlier would really help found a religion) and make org rel. +1 happy for 2 of the culture buildings, or +1 happiness for every 10 points of faith accumulated per turn.
But every game, I usually try to find something new to try. My next two games will be experimenting with a culture win not using piety, and a non-culture win using piety. I think someone like Ramky, who gets a lot of bonus culture from UB and CSs will do great with rationalism for a culture win since the bonus research will 1.) provide earlier access to the culture buildings and 2.)more rapidly progress to new eras, which adds more culture from CSs. For the following game, a strong warmongerer (thinking China, but haven't ruled out Huns or Mongols) could make a crazy army with a strong faith pantheon, Mosques and HOLY WARRIORS! Anyone wanna be able to faith purchase another battering ram every other turn?