Religion Spread Further, or Faster?

[Byrsa Suffet]

I am about to enhance my religion where I have already selected Papal Primacy as a Founder Belief. I'm on a continent with a great number of City States (about a dozen). Is it more beneficial to take Religious Unity to spread doubly fast to City States, or go with Religious Texts to spread more quickly regardless, or Itinerant Preachers to spread further away?

 

[Halcyan2]

I am about to enhance my religion where I have already selected Papal Primacy as a Founder Belief. I'm on a continent with a great number of City States (about a dozen). Is it more beneficial to take Religious Unity to spread doubly fast to City States, or go with Religious Texts to spread more quickly regardless, or Itinerant Preachers to spread further away?

Generally you are probably better off with Religious Texts or Itinerant Preachers.

Assuming you have a normal map with normal amounts of city states, Religious Unity isn't all that great. (Might be better if the map is overpopulated with CS).

Pre-BNW, Religious Texts seemed to be favored more over Itinerant Preachers, but they are closer now. With BNW, Religious Texts (used to be 33%/66% and now just 25%/50%). However, the range benefit to Itinerant Preachers is less valuable due to religion spreading through trade routes.

The difficulty level and the expansion flavor of the AI's will also play a major role since it determines how many cities will be around.

 

[joncnunn]

With BNW, assuming your holy city is coastal; Religious Texts is still highly preferred due to RT's full power working regardless of distance in cities you have a trade route with.

Also, even before BNW; IP needed to be jump-started by using a Missionary while RT would spread your religion to your own cities without help, which leads to any time you want faith buildings choosing RT.

I always downsize city states to a 1:1 ratio (from the 2:1 ratio), which in my own games renders Religious Unity useless as there are only one or two city states that would be within normal range and I rather not forego the cash that comes from a trade route with the AI from having one with a city state. But perhaps if playing Germany it's better.

Papal Primacy: I'm wondering if the OP is going for an achievement : There's many founder policies than that.

 

[vivalamexico]

Papal Primacy: I'm wondering if the OP is going for an achievement : There's many founder policies than that.[/QUOTE]

Papal primacy is actually quite good when paired with consulates under the right circumstances. If you can religiously dominate your area, you get the old consulates + pledge

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[beetle]

I am always looking to take Papal Primacy, but have yet to find a map where it made more sense than RT or IP. For it to be really directly beneficial, you would have to have several CS close, but not have made friends with them yet!

PP also has an actually counter-productive aspect as it means you are quite unlikely to get the “convert me” quests from your CS neighbors (because they will already have been converted). So is that not like trading 15 points of influence for 45? Maybe it is good for long term founder benefits?

 

[Talamare]

I am always looking to take Papal Primacy, but have yet to find a map where it made more sense than RT or IP. For it to be really directly beneficial, you would have to have several CS close, but not have made friends with them yet!

PP also has an actually counter-productive aspect as it means you are quite unlikely to get the “convert me” quests from your CS neighbors (because they will already have been converted). So is that not like trading 15 points of influence for 45? Maybe it is good for long term founder benefits?

The trick with Religious Unity and Papal Primacy (and Consulates) is that you use Missionaries for the initial religion spread, with a little time they will become Friendly. Which doubles the religious pressure making it difficult for enemy pressure and missionaries to take it away from you. You can easily reach +100 pressure with a few city states overlapping each other. Another (Arabian specialized but anyone can pull off) trick with it is to pay/complete quest with the City State then use trade routes to get your religion in. Arabia gets about 50 pressure from a single caravan from the Capital doing this.

Between IP and RT, I suggest IP for ICS style empires. RT for every other situation.

 

[beetle]

I guess PP could work well for a cluster of CS that are not necessarily near your core empire? I had not thought of that before. I was thinking that the pressure would have to be from your own cities, but that’s not true.

Not that you always have a choice, but pick RT if your outermost cities are within 10 hexes of each other, use IP if they are within 13. For three cities laid out more-or-less in a line, IP is about 50% stronger than RT.

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

Relixious Texts shoudl always be picked over the Iteriant Preachers.

Iteriant Preachers doesn't stack at all. it just spreads further. THat's it. Religious Texts actually stacks, becoming more powerful with each city it converts.

 

[Vitruvius]

Relixious Texts shoudl always be picked over the Iteriant Preachers.

Iteriant Preachers doesn't stack at all. it just spreads further. THat's it. Religious Texts actually stacks, becoming more powerful with each city it converts.

What do you mean IP doesn't stack? IP should always be picked of you are going wide with cities very close to each other.

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[beetle]

Religious Texts shoudl always be picked over Itinerant Preachers.

Just not true. Do the math, assuming 5 or 6 tiles between your cities. Going wide isn’t the main factor. I am not sure what you mean by stacking, because even without RT or IP there is compounding of religious pressure when multiple cities are close to each other. Trade routes mix things up a bit though.

 

[GAGA Extrem]

For me it is more of a geographical question.
I'd say that Religious Texts has become stronger in BNW due to its effect on religious pressure from trade routes, but Iterate Preachers can be very powerful if a potential gateway city is just a few hexes outside of your initial reach.

I recently had a game where the map layout & CS placement allowed Iterate Preachers to affect 4 more cities early on, which led to a giant snowball effect deep into low pop-areas with newly founded cities and in return made it impossible for the AI to counter my religion until the modern era. So it is all about the map setup.

 

[Browd]

Both beliefs "stack" in the sense that, if multiple cities are in range (10 tiles vs. 13 tiles) of a target city, the pressure on that target city will cumulate. The main differences are the amount of pressure (base 6 pressure for IP vs. 7.5 per city (or 9 after printing press) for RT) and trade route pressure stacking. Because IP reaches out 13 tiles, you have to send trade routes to cities farther away to get the trade route benefit. Unless you can use cargo ships, or invest in caravanasaries (otherwise a poor use of hammers), RT will give you more opportunities for trade route pressure stacking than IP will.

 

[AlbTroll]

As far as Enhancer Beliefs go.... I used to prefer Religious Texts over Itinerant Preachers but I have since switched my thinking on this.

Itinerant Preachers I prefer to Religious Texts because it usually helps the religion stand up to pressure better than Religious Texts. If you do "jump start" your religion by using a missionary or two your cities do better protecting themselves against the conversion from pressure.

With Religious Texts your religion probably will spread out faster but in the face of another "Religious" Civ like the Celts or Byzantium you will end up dealing with both pressure from them converting other cities as well as them trying to convert yours. You can protect yours with Inquisitors (from direct conversion from missionaries / GPs) but not from the pressure. You are likely to get "rolled back" if us use Religious Texts over IP much quicker and easier.

As for Religious Unity I find that the better pressure of IP and the liberal use of Missionaries/Inquisitors/GPs tends to be more effective keeping city states in the fold.

If you do get to be the dominant religion on your continent with IP you are like a rock and you are very difficult to convert. It usually costs to much faith to break you up.

 

[phillipwyllie]

I always pick Itinerant Preachers now as that extra 3 tiles of range seems to do the most damage. Someone posted a thread on how much extra area you get, but I forget where it is. Assuming you enhance your religion first you don't need to buy any missionaries, except one to convert 2 of your cities and let passive pressure do the rest. This only works if your immediate neighbor(s) doesn't found a religion but there's a "DOW" button to deal with that......

 

[beetle]

RT is a multiplier of 1.25 or 1.5. IP is 1.3*1.3 (because it is an area effect) or 1.69. 69 > 50.

 

[Vitruvius]

IP is better because there is a higher chance to have an additional city within 13 hexes than 10. The additional city will add on top of the pressure making it +12 vs +9 for RT.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

Well if you get a religion enchanted early maybe the best pick will be holy order, espacially with piety for very cheap missionaries because the majority religion will be the one that pressure most +all the other advanatges you get for having your religion in many cities early on

 

[Dr. D]

I prefer IP over RT but that's because I prefer wider empires, capitalizing on IP's strengths. When I go RT, I definitely miss those extra three tiles of pressure provided by IP.

 

[Primacide]

I've played both ways. Just from personal experience, IP seems to make cities convert faster and generally stay converted. I've found that I can leapfrog cities, meaning convert one, skip one, covert the next in the line. Pressure coming from two directions (helped by IP) will turn the city I skipped pretty quickly.

(Thanks to adwcta's guide to playing small for the religion tips - totally changed my approach.)