This is why you can't count on neighbors for religion... xD

[danaphanous]

I've seen a lot of players argue for not-founding a religion. They usually say you'll get the chance to get some good stuff through AI converting your cities. I heavily disagree. You miss early pantheon bonus, founder belief, and usually there is good stuff left like religious community even if nothing else.

And some games this happens...off on a peninsula playing 7-city liberty with a neighbor that hates me on Deity. This is her religion...absolute trash. Religious community is nice but everything else is basically aimed at conquering me and gives me little benefit. No happiness whatsoever to help out my wide empire. On this particular game I missed getting a religion by a few turns after a shrine-expo rush. There were no good faith pantheons for my lux distribution unfortunately :/

I'm struggling to grow tall cities without my usual religious options. I'm wondering if wiping or causing her to be wiped out will encourage the other AI to finally come evangelizing? They haven't sent a single missionary...several of my cities are still my pantheon lol.

Seriously Spain...chill with the holy war thing. At this rate she'll make me waste faith on troops too just so I can keep up. I've already seen her build up a 20-unit army in just 20 turns before failing her last rush. She's buddhism...the more of my cities convert to her religion the more danger I'm in with this religion. Basically primed for conquering neighbors who accept your religion from the looks of it.

I think she took me stealing the only nearby natural wonder personally

 

[adsin15]

Im with ya. I always go for a religion or at least a pantheon. Often you can get it from just citystates if you can ally a religious one early enough.

Question...if you capture an enemy holy city...do you become the founder of that religion? If not...what if you capture every one of their cities and eliminate them from the game? do you become the founder then?

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

I've seen a lot of players argue for not-founding a religion. They usually say you'll get the chance to get some good stuff through AI converting your cities. I heavily disagree. You miss early pantheon bonus, founder belief, and usually there is good stuff left like religious community even if nothing else.

And some games this happens...off on a peninsula playing 7-city liberty with a neighbor that hates me on Deity. This is her religion...absolute trash. Religious community is nice but everything else is basically aimed at conquering me and gives me little benefit. No happiness whatsoever to help out my wide empire. On this particular game I missed getting a religion by a few turns after a shrine-expo rush. There were no good faith pantheons for my lux distribution unfortunately :/

I'm struggling to grow tall cities without my usual religious options. I'm wondering if wiping or causing her to be wiped out will encourage the other AI to finally come evangelizing? They haven't sent a single missionary...several of my cities are still my pantheon lol.

Seriously Spain...chill with the holy war thing. At this rate she'll make me waste faith on troops too just so I can keep up. I've already seen her build up a 20-unit army in just 20 turns before failing her last rush. She's buddhism...the more of my cities convert to her religion the more danger I'm in with this religion. Basically primed for conquering neighbors who accept your religion from the looks of it.

I think she took me stealing the only nearby natural wonder personally

The last game I played where I didn't go for a religion it didn't go so well. I'm not sure why anyone would say to forego a religion in Civ 5. It's not really like you make a major tradeoff to get it like in Civ 4. You just have to build a shrine and pick a good pantheon for your available land. The shrine is really synergistic with common early game play. And the bonuses can just be silly. I mean 15% bonus to production... tithe...pagodas... I just don't see a real benefit to relying on getting a good religion from an AI when you're really not getting any major benefit from not getting your own.

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[z284pwr]

I generally base it on the start. If I get a start that would make for a good pantheon then I will focus on a shrine early. However if my start doesn't much in the way of a good pantheon option then I generally don't bother with it.

 

[Sclb]

Question...if you capture an enemy holy city...do you become the founder of that religion? If not...what if you capture every one of their cities and eliminate them from the game? do you become the founder then?

You can't get other religion's founder beliefs if you aren't the founder. The only way to remove the holy city status is to capture the city and use inquisitor on that city. It also doesn't matter if you manage to eliminate that religion's founder civ from the game. That's why it's always better to found a religion if possible. If you don't like it, you can just let AI convert your cities. Once you get the AI religion's benefits, you can always convert your cities back to your own religion with prophet if it's better.

 

[Primacide]

Im with ya. I always go for a religion or at least a pantheon. Often you can get it from just citystates if you can ally a religious one early enough.

Question...if you capture an enemy holy city...do you become the founder of that religion? If not...what if you capture every one of their cities and eliminate them from the game? do you become the founder then?

If you didn't found the religion, you will never be the founder. You cannot get the benefits by conquering the founding city.

To the OP: I don't know that I would argue not to found a religion. I think that people (like me) advise not going for it on a high level simply because it usually doesn't work. When it does, it can quickly turn into a source of uneccesary conflict. I found when I can because I love pagodas. Just love them. However, on deity I don't make a push for it for the same reason that I don't go for Alhambra. It just doesn't seem to pan out for me consistently at that level.

 

[stormtrooper412]

You can't get other religion's founder beliefs if you aren't the founder. The only way to remove the holy city status is to capture the city and use inquisitor on that city. It also doesn't matter if you manage to eliminate that religion's founder civ from the game. That's why it's always better to found a religion if possible. If you don't like it, you can just let AI convert your cities. Once you get the AI religion's benefits, you can always convert your cities back to your own religion with prophet if it's better.

yeah once the founders lose their holy city, you can use an Inquisitor but you don't need to really, it's a matter of principle

 

[beetle]

My favorite thing about founding is the easy CS quests. Founder benefits are mostly negligible. Initiation Rites, if you can get it, can be helpful early.

However if my start doesn't much in the way of a good pantheon option then I generally don't bother with it.

It is hard to find a start that wouldn't benefit from a pantheon. Even if you just do God King, the hammers from that alone pays off the early shrine.

Pantheon == Early Free Yields

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

My favorite thing about founding is the easy CS quests. Founder benefits are mostly negligible. Initiation Rites, if you can get it, can be helpful early.


It is hard to find a start that wouldn't benefit from a pantheon. Even if you just do God King, the hammers from that alone pays off the early shrine.

Pantheon == Early Free Yields

Exactly. And most starts offer land based bonuses that can give good culture and faith boosts. It's rare that taking God King is the most beneficial but even then, the yield bonuses are welcome.

 

[danaphanous]

Totally agree with all comments here. Even on Deity I think a religion is worth pursuing, there is little opportunity cost and significant payoff. Here's my take on it:

- Early pantheon bonuses can significantly improve your terrain or generate extra faith. What do you need to do to get the bit of faith for a pantheon? Pump out scouts, check out ruins, terrain, and CS, and build a shrine early if needed. Most of these things you do anyway. You want pottery first because it's on the way to libraries and has a granary build which boosts your early growth. Building the shrine is only 5-7 turns and getting that early faith started has benefits down the road even if you don't found a religion. So it's worth it for getting pantheon even if you don't found.

- If the terrain or civ is good for going for a full religion go for it. I usually go for it every game regardless but especially so if a faith pantheon is viable. The ONLY thing you are giving up is a different kind of pantheon so the only way you lose out is if you fail to found a religion. You lose out on 50-70 turns of a nice pantheon. But even if you fail getting loads of early faith means you can buy the AI's religious buildings or great people later so again, not a huge opportunity cost unless you gave up +1 food from camps or something with 10 camps around your expos. I will admit if a non-faith pantheon pick is this powerful I usually pick it. Then I'll build some early shrines and hope for 5th. Often it works, but even if not I got a very early powerful pantheon so the investment was worth it.

- finally, if you do get a religion, even 4th or 5th one, You can pick tithes and religious community nearly every time and often either +2 happiness from gardens or temples is left. All are pretty good and still allow you to buy the AI's religious buildings even if you don't get your own. I prefer tithes to initiation rites. Even with my own small empire it is usually netting 15+ gold quite early every turn. On my wide games tithes gets over 100 gold a turn by late-game because my large empire pressure is spreading it everywhere without me having to try. Even for the small empire case, it's better than 100 gold from each conversion especially if you won't be evangelizing much (often the case with late religions) as that'll only get you 400-500 gold in a 4-city tradition game. If you really need 500 early gold just borrow it from an AI friend for a luxury or gpt. I never am short enough on early gold initiation rites is better.

So definitely try. There's little downside and in the case of a pantheon I'd say you'd be silly not to get one as the benefits can be big. If it works out and you get the religion great! But you'll never have the chance if you don't try. If you had to give up tons of stuff to try for the religion it'd be riskier but you really don't.

 

[adsin15]

I've been avoiding Tithe recently and here's why:

1 - Ive been using it as a crutch for my terrible economic management.
2 - Enemy missionaries + GPP take your GPT away when they convert your people...huge pain the butt with no simple fix beyond buying an inquisitor.
3 - takes too long to reach parity with Initiation Rights and the one that gives you +2 per city. Gotta have 8+ followers in each city before it becomes comparable...takes between 50-100 turns to equal Initiation rights.
4 - Tithe is clearly superior to the other two after around turn 150 but I'd rather have the better boost earlier. The 10-20 extra gold you get from Tithe after around turn 150 or so becomes less important because later in the game you have lots of gold coming in via trade routes and buildings.

 

[danaphanous]

you're welcome to try other gold-giving beliefs but most of the community accepts that tithes is just...better. It's really not an argument.

I'll address your points, but many of them become clearer when you establish WHEN religions are founded. Most normal games the earliest you can expect to found a pantheon is around turn 20 and the earliest you can expect to found a religion is turn 60 (~5 fpt for those 40 turns). In practice many humans take longer to get the faith rolling from improvements and faith pantheon and are founding more like turn 80. Then it might take another 20 turns for it to start to spread and convert but usually longer if you are growing fast. You might expect to start getting gold from non-cap cities around turn 100.

Now, why do I bring this up. To emphasize that religions come relatively late. By turn 80 you should have settled every city and have NC and be growing fast in a tradition game. Your AI neighbors have done the same. On my last Deity game many AI were at cap population 12 by turn 80 already and growing fast. In a wide game you still should have settled 7 cities or so already by turn 80. Because of this, initiation rites is NOT like El Dorado. Getting 500-1000 early gold isn't gonna get you any settlers or workers out earlier (you're done settling). So you get a lot of gold suddenly but not a lot you can do with it that makes your game significantly better like if you'd gotten all that gold at turn 25. And then you get nothing again. Initiation rites only works once per city. Now it HELPS. Initiation Rites gold comes in time to buy 2-3 expensive buildings in slow cities and could get 2 earlier universities, but is that worth giving up what is at this time already 15 gpt extra and soon to be far more gold every turn? I think not...and as far as universities I usually find I can get the lump gold I need to purchase them early by borrowing from AI friends with my extra gpt or luxes. So it isn't needed.

Now, how does tithes compare in this window? Since it is already turn 100 when religion starts to spread, if you've been growing properly most cities are getting near pop 8 anyway in a tall/tradition game so already tithes will break even with initiation rites in 50 or less turns, do I need to mention that even that fastest games have at least 120 turn of play left? For AI and your capital it is already near turn 30 break even. Tithes gets better VERY fast. Since your cites are near 8 pop already at this time it's kinda a no brainer why tithes is also better then +2 gold per city.

The only time these other ones are considerable to me is if I found super-early. For instance, Celts then I find mt. sinai and have a religion with desert folklore and know my religion will spread far. INitiation rites in this case actually gives you an edge early game and might be better and you could use it to buy lots of stuff for your little cities quicker. But on the levels I play founding this early and having the pressure to quickly have your religion sweep through many little cities is the exception not something to count on. On Deity the AI found extremely quick and do this first. You need someone like Celts/wide to pull it off reliably and they might be the only one. ANd even so, tithes is just as powerful in my opinion. On games like this where my religion spreads due to a wide/liberty empire tithes quickly nets 100+ gpt. Some games it nets me more then 200 gpt by the end of the game in these cases. But you could argue buying early settlers/workers and buildings for a while is better in this rare case.

 

[Browd]

Actually, I very much like Initiation Rites on higher levels (where the AI is much more likely to spam missionaries and GPrs and generally roll back any early gains I make in converting cities). The burst of gold usually comes at opportune times (helping accelerate early to mid-game development) and, frankly, on higher levels trade-route gold (and beakers) is so plentiful as to be almost game-breaking, so the late game benefit from tithe is not so compelling (assuming you can stem the tide of AI missionary spam). And if you are playing a fast domination game, tithe is really irrelevant (since there is no late game).

Yes, in your example (playing wide/liberty, where you essentially out-spam and out-pressure the AI with tightly packed cities and your own spam), tithe may withstand the AI onslaught, but that's not the case in most games (in my experience). And in that empire, I wonder how much gold you are getting from city connections and AI trade routes? How much of a difference does 100-200 gpt from tithe make? And that's before asking, what are you spending that extra tithe gold on at that point in the game? Workshops in cities 15, 16 and 17? At a certain point, wide empires just keep growing because the law of large numbers says they must, regardless of where you get your gold.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

Personally, I prefer to take other options if they are available. I absolutely love pagodas and the production option of up to 15% bonus is pretty awesome. As for the onslaught of AI missionaries, it's not really a given. I play immortal and can keep my religion in most of my cities without too much effort. I've also seen plenty of Diety playthroughs on YouTube where the player was able to combat AI missionaries. It also depends on the AIs in the game.

I'll often take tithe when (if) I enhance my religion since extra gold is never a bad thing. Particularly if I lose trade routes from war declaration or a trade embargo against a high value trading partner.

 

[beetle]

I've been avoiding Tithe recently and here's why:

1 & 2 make no sense. The logic is like how some people avoiding lux trades with the AI because they don’t want to be dependent on the AI. Secondly, it is not that much gold.

I understood that the conventional wisdom to be that Initiation Rites is clearly superior to Tithe as early gold >> more gold long term. The problem is that the AI frequently pick IR.

Tithe is better than the one that gives +2 per city because it pays fractionally. Even with just counting your own four cities, it is pretty easy for Tithe to be the better better. Plus tithe pays for followers elsewhere even when you don’t have the majority.

 

[danaphanous]

Actually, I very much like Initiation Rites on higher levels (where the AI is much more likely to spam missionaries and GPrs and generally roll back any early gains I make in converting cities). The burst of gold usually comes at opportune times (helping accelerate early to mid-game development) and, frankly, on higher levels trade-route gold (and beakers) is so plentiful as to be almost game-breaking, so the late game benefit from tithe is not so compelling (assuming you can stem the tide of AI missionary spam). And if you are playing a fast domination game, tithe is really irrelevant (since there is no late game).

Yes, in your example (playing wide/liberty, where you essentially out-spam and out-pressure the AI with tightly packed cities and your own spam), tithe may withstand the AI onslaught, but that's not the case in most games (in my experience). And in that empire, I wonder how much gold you are getting from city connections and AI trade routes? How much of a difference does 100-200 gpt from tithe make? And that's before asking, what are you spending that extra tithe gold on at that point in the game? Workshops in cities 15, 16 and 17? At a certain point, wide empires just keep growing because the law of large numbers says they must, regardless of where you get your gold.

I generally can keep my religion. I box out missionaries and GPr's with troops generally till the missionaries die of attrition. Also I don't get this from all sides onslaught that you guys speak of very often. I frequently have friends with a religion that are nice and don't evangelize letting us coexist. Only some of the religious guys try aggressively to convert me.

As for timing, I totally agree, IR comes at a time that is perfect for buying workshops and universities to accelerate your cities. However, it is still fairly late. Religions unless you get an amazing start take a while to spread beyond your capital and you need about 550-660 gold to be buying the buildings you need. As a result you are usually not spending the gold till you get the tech for universities around turn 110-120--it comes too late to buy really critical stuff like settlers and workers which is why I classify it as midgame gold. On the game you describe where you convert a few cities and the AI roll it back that's what? 5-8 cities? so 500-800 gold, rolled back to 4 cities if I assume you are talking standard tradition/4-city. That's just one university, not very powerful for turn 110-120. Plop that in a bad production jungle city and it's pretty good, but IR just isn't enough gold to make a massive midgame difference for me. It makes a difference but nothing I can't get in other ways. Why do I say that, I'll try to explain what I do:

Now how does tithes measure up at this time? I find pretty well. At this time your fast tradition cities and AI neighbor core cities are pops 8-16 already. Those take a long time to convert with passive pressure so IR effect is delayed quite a bit. However, tithes starts brining in money IMMEDIATELY when even one citizen is first converted. So it actually takes effect and start giving you gold far BEFORE IR for many cities, especially in the case where you can't afford many missionaries and are relying on passive pressure. (very common early since you are saving for 2nd prophet) Tithes will bring in money even from cities that never fully convert in foreign lands as well. I find tithes to break even with IR for this reason in as little as 30-40 turns. But when cities convert what then? Surely IR gives more early game gold even though it applies a bit later right? Well yes and no.

I can actually get lump gold immediately from my tithes money as well as be saving it earlier for universities and workshops as the religion starts to spread. How? By trading gpt for lump gold with friends 1 gpt from tithes for 25 lump gold. I do this every game to quick-buy universities and sometimes workshops too. If I need a bit more I trade some resources, or a duplicate lux as trades expire until I get the immedaite gold I get to buy the critical buildings quickly. So I get both doing this. And tithes keeps paying after those 30 turns expire!

Now tithes gold for lump is less effective then IR. Average city sizes at Turn 100 on Deity are 8-14 generally and when they first convert only 50-60% of the population is the religion, so on average you only get about 1/2-3/5 the gold of IR doing this at this early time, but it's enough for me to get what I need early and still get the advantage of tithes later to keep repeating the process for public schools, observatories, and research labs. So at least in my experience you give up nothing going for tithes and the payoff late-game is worth it.

Arguably tithes usefulness grows the bigger your empire as there are more building to buy and slow cities, but in my example with wide empire I was actually saying initiation rites might be a good choice since pop stays lower longer and you get the rites from like 20+ cities as it spreads. In a general game where I might convert 6-8 cities max before the AI rolls it back to my 4 that is when I was saying rites was generally weaker. 600-800 gold is not worth giving up tithes all game in my opinion. But 1000-2000 early gold from IR as it sweeps through little cities? Far better, especially given in a wide game my cities stay at a lower pop so tithes breaks even over a longer time frame. I still think tithes is better though because for a wide empire because I'm also buying buildings longer though making me always appreciate even lategame gold.

This is how I play with tithes and it works well giving me gold as early as IR and also late gold when the deals with friends wear off.

 

[Callonia]

Do you know that the AIs tend to lump cities together and grow them high in population? Iroquois is the particular offender of this. Spread your religion to those AIs fast, and you'll be rolling in gold because of AI bonuses lol.

 

[Matthew.]

there is little opportunity cost and significant payoff.

I don't know if I agree with this.

I mean okay if you have a start which practically gives you religion, then no reason not.

But in the games where you need to try and force it? I'd say the opportunity cost is very high. My games always go better when I just focus on winning the game rather than trying to get a religion.

It is actually one of my gripes with the game, that religion is too random. It is also the reason why many of us rank Byzantium so low, specifically because it is so difficult to brute force getting a religion without sacrificing elsewhere. And also a reason why Civs like Ethiopia/Maya are generally ranked higher up, because they don't need to make that sacrifice.

I'm not here to argue any point, just sharing my own experience. When I compare games going in with the idea of "I'm going to get a religion" and ones where I normally play, well, they don't go as well. Too much time spent on things not moving the game forward.

There is another thread talking about putting off colloseums for as long as possible. Well, I feel that way about shrines and temples... probably more so. And if you are supporting a religion without them, that means you got lucky with natural wonders/desert folklore/whatever, in which case that falls under the second sentence of this post. The game gave you a free religion, so run with it.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

I don't know if I agree with this.

I mean okay if you have a start which practically gives you religion, then no reason not.

But in the games where you need to try and force it? I'd say the opportunity cost is very high. My games always go better when I just focus on winning the game rather than trying to get a religion.

It is actually one of my gripes with the game, that religion is too random. It is also the reason why many of us rank Byzantium so low, specifically because it is so difficult to brute force getting a religion without sacrificing elsewhere. And also a reason why Civs like Ethiopia/Maya are generally ranked higher up, because they don't need to make that sacrifice.

I'm not here to argue any point, just sharing my own experience. When I compare games going in with the idea of "I'm going to get a religion" and ones where I normally play, well, they don't go as well. Too much time spent on things not moving the game forward.

There is another thread talking about putting off colloseums for as long as possible. Well, I feel that way about shrines and temples... probably more so. And if you are supporting a religion without them, that means you got lucky with natural wonders/desert folklore/whatever, in which case that falls under the second sentence of this post. The game gave you a free religion, so run with it.

I'm not sure I've ever experienced a start which I had to force getting a religion. On Immortal I've never missed once. Generally, pottery first is a given as another poster already mentioned. A shrine is really cheap and comes before I have a worker to chop out a settler and there really isn't much else to build that would constitute a missed opportunity. Unless the start is totally devoid of tiles that can get faith from a pantheon (which is relatively rare), I'm rarely even the last to found a religion. Actually, I'm often 2nd or 3rd depending on the AI leaders in the game. This is also off my experience, though, so everyone's mileage may vary.

But, honestly, even if I did have to work a bit to get a religion, it can totally be worth it. Pagodas have bailed me out of negative happiness more than a few times and the culture has helped speed up SP times.

I dunno, maybe I just enjoy religion in this game so much more than civ4 that it's clouding my judgement [emoji6]

 

[Sclb]

There's a big difference on deity. You can actually miss a religion even if you work on getting one.