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Religion: Follower Beliefs (BNW)

Religion
Follower Beliefs


"A civilization is a heritage of beliefs, customs, and knowledge slowly accumulated in the course of centuries, elements difficult at times to justify by logic, but justifying themselves as paths when they lead somewhere, since they open up for man his inner distance." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery[/SIZE]​

Introduction

A religion consists of a set of beliefs that are intended to enhance your ability to win the game. Although a religion's "founder beliefs" benefit only the founder, that religion's "follower beliefs" -- which can provide :c5happy:, :c5science:, :c5faith:, :c5production: or :c5culture: -- will benefit any civilization with a city that has adopted that religion as its majority religion. The attractiveness of a religion's follower beliefs is an important factor in determining whether a civilization will accept that religion, and, as more cities adopt that religion, the founder benefits all the more from that religion's founder belief.

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Select a Follower Belief
As with other beliefs, your choice of follower beliefs will strongly influence how your game develops. This article provides an overview of the available follower beliefs:
Other articles in this series provide an overview of the religion system, explain how to found and enhance your religion, review in detail the many available pantheon, founder, enhancer and reformation beliefs and provide advice about how to spread and defend your religion.

Key Concepts

  • Faith :c5faith: - a type of "currency" or yield that is central to the religion system. For an overview of faith and how to generate it, see "How Does the Religion System Work?"

  • Belief - the core element of any pantheon or religion, providing specific benefits depending on circumstances

  • Pantheon - a pre-religion belief that is absorbed into (and superseded by) a religion. When incorporated into a religion, the pantheon belief functions as an additional follower belief. For an overview of pantheons and how to found them, see "How Does the Religion System Work?" and "Pantheon Beliefs."

  • Religion - a set of beliefs, consisting of a pantheon belief, a founder belief, two follower beliefs, and an enhancer belief. Establishing a religion includes two major steps: founding the religion and enhancing the religion. A religion also may add a reformation belief by selecting the Reformation policy in the Piety social policy tree.

  • Founding a Religion - using a Great Prophet to select a founder belief, a follower belief, and a name and symbol for the religion

  • Enhancing a Religion - using a Great Prophet to select a second follower belief and an enhancer belief

  • Great Prophet - a type of Great Person that can be used to found or enhance a religion, to spread a religion or to create a Holy Site (a tile improvement that has a base yield of 6 :c5faith:)

  • Followers - population of a city following a pantheon or religion

  • Pressure - a mechanism used to convert followers of a pantheon or religion to another religion (or to convert non-followers of any pantheon or religion to a religion)
Follower beliefs

There are only 16 follower beliefs. As with pantheon, founder and enhancer beliefs, each follower belief can be taken by only one religion. So, if you choose to pursue a religion, it is important to found your religion as early as possible to ensure that you can get your choice of follower belief, and that you enhance your religion quickly, to claim your second follower belief. For more information about how to found and enhance your religion, see "How to Found and Enhance a Religion."

The most commonly claimed follower beliefs allow certain religious buildings to be purchased with faith or provide yield enhancements to existing buildings, such as shrines, temples, and amphitheaters, but there are founder beliefs that provide production, growth or military benefits. The 16 follower beliefs can be divided into 6 categories:
Religious buildings

There are four follower beliefs that allow the purchase of religious buildings with faith. Although each building provides some amount of faith, building purchases with faith are not justifiable on the basis of their faith yield (in most cases, even for buildings purchased in early eras, it will take anywhere from 70 to 200 turns for the building to repay the initial faith investment). Rather, these buildings are usually valued most for their other yields -- culture and happiness -- although the happiness they provide is local city happiness (happiness limited by city population, as with circuses and colosseums), rather than global happiness. Also, unless you have strong levels of early faith generation, a strategy based upon purchases of religious buildings may be difficult to execute.

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Mosque
  • Cathedrals: Use faith to purchase Cathedrals (+1 :c5faith:, +1 :c5culture:, +1 local city :c5happy:, 1 Great Work of Art slot). Although Cathedrals only provide an aggregate of 3 yield (1 faith + 1 culture + 1 happiness), the Great Work of Art slot makes this building particularly compelling for a culture victory. The only other early-game buildings with Great Work of Art slots are the Palace and the Parthenon. One particular benefit of Cathedrals is that they will allow you to aggressively deploy Archaeologists to dig Artifacts before while you are building Museums.

  • Monasteries: Use faith to purchase Monasteries (+2 :c5faith:, +2 :c5culture:, more with Wine or Incense). Monasteries will provide +1 faith and +1 culture for each source of wine and incense worked by the city, regardless of whether the wine or incense tiles are improved.Monasteries are commonly viewed as inferior to the other three religious buildings, primarily because they provide no happiness. However, Monasteries cost 25% less faith to purchase and, if there are multiple sources of wine and incense that can be worked, can be very cost-effective and powerful, particularly for any strategy that will benefit from significant culture generation.

  • Mosques: Use faith to purchase Mosques (+3 :c5faith:, +2 :c5culture:, +1 local city :c5happy:). Mosques provide an aggregate of 6 yield (3 faith + 2 culture + 1 happiness.) Of the four buildings, Mosques have the quickest pay-back time for the initial faith investment. Note also that the Great Mosque of Djenne provides a free Mosque, even if you have not adopted this follower belief.

  • Pagodas: Use faith to purchase Pagodas (+2 :c5faith:, +2 :c5culture:, +2 local city :c5happy:). Pagodas are commonly viewed as the most attractive of the four religious buildings, mostly because they are well-balanced and are the only religious building that provides 2 happiness.
Building enhancements

There are seven follower beliefs that provide additional yield from one or more buildings. In many cases, these are buildings that you would otherwise build, enhancing the value of that investment.
  • Asceticism: Shrines provide +1 local city :c5happy: in cities with 3 followers. Since even smaller cities will usually have at least 3 followers, this shrine enhancement can be a valuable source of happiness, particularly if you select a gold-based founder belief. Also, since puppets are likely to build shrines fairly early, this belief is even more helpful for a wide puppet empire. Asceticism is often a key element of a so-called "super shrine" strategy.

  • Choral Music: Temples provide +2 :c5culture: in cities with 5 followers. Like the other Temple-based follower belief (Religious Center), Choral Music requires a higher number of followers (5 followers) to provide its benefit. This belief is arguably most useful in a culture game, where you are more likely to have a smaller number of tall cities and to build temples in all of your cities.

  • Feed the World: Shrines and Temples provide +1 :c5food: each in city. This is a helpful belief for a wide range of strategies, including taller, specialist-oriented strategies and any :super-shrine" strategy.

  • Liturgical Drama: Amphitheaters provide +1 :c5faith: in cities with 3 followers. This is not a highly favored belief, due to its meager faith yield, its tie to a building that may be somewhat later in your build order than shrines, and its ability to be replicated easily enough by taking the Piety policy Organized Religion. However, if culture-providing beliefs are no longer available, this belief may be somewhat useful in a culture victory.

  • Peace Gardens: Gardens provide +2 local city :c5happy: in city. The happiness yield is very attractive, but, like the pantheon belief Sacred Waters, its potential benefit is limited to cities in which you can build a garden (river-side or lake-side cities, and the city in which the Hanging Gardens wonder is built). Although many players will prioritize settling cities on rivers, not every prospective city site will (or should be) located on a river.

  • Religious Art: Hermitage provides +5 :c5culture: and +5 :tourism: in city. As a supplement to the Hermitage's 50% boost to city culture, this is a very attractive belief for culture victories or tall empires seeking a culture and tourism boost. Because Hermitage will increase its own base yield by 50%, this belief provides greater culture output than 3 cities with Choral Music.

  • Religious Center: Temples provide +2 local city :c5happy: in cities with 5 followers. Like the other temple-based follower belief (Choral Music), Religious Centers requires a higher number of followers (5 followers) to provide its benefit. This belief is arguably most useful in a culture game, where you are more likely to have a smaller number of tall cities and to build temples in all of your cities. Also, because puppets are less likely to build early temples, this belief is not as reliable for a wide puppet empire as Asceticism.
Faith-giving beliefs

Besides Liturgical Drama, there is only one other faith-giving belief:

  • Divine Inspiration: Each World Wonder provides +2 :c5faith:. Unless you plan to build a large number of wonders, the benefit of this belief is too meager to have a meaningful impact. But this belief can be particularly attractive for a world wonder-focused empire, as it will generate significant amounts of faith that can be used for late game Great Person purchases or to pursue an Interfaith Dialogue/Holy Order strategy, which depend on significant amounts of faith generation.
Production beliefs

There are two follower beliefs that provide production boosts.

  • Guruship: +2 :c5production: if city has a Specialist. This belief is not highly regarded, as its yield is poor in relation to others. However, in smaller cities, an additional 2 hammers may yield a greater benefit than Religious Community. For example, Guruship can be useful in a super-wide or ICS-style strategy where city sizes will remain small (often 5 or 6 population or smaller), with relatively low production, but where, by the mid game, most cities (including puppets) will be working at least one specialist (usually a University or Workshop specialist, or, in the case of puppets, a Market specialist).

  • Religious Community: +1% production for each follower (max +15%). This can be a powerful belief for taller empires, where there will be a large number of followers in each city and base production will be high enough for the percentage increase to make a meaningful difference.
Military beliefs

There is only one follower belief that provides a direct military benefit:

  • Holy Warriors: Use Faith to purchase pre-Industrial land units. This is a popular belief for aggressive playstyles, but requires significant levels of faith generation to have a meaningful impact. Even for defensively oriented players, this can be a very useful outlet for large amounts of faith in the pre-Industrial era, allowing city production to be diverted to more pressing needs. You will want to do most of your purchases of units in earlier eras, when their faith costs are lower. If you have sufficient gold for upgrades, you can purchase inexpensive units with faith shortly before you finish researching their upgrades, and then purchase upgrades after the research is complete. This belief is potentially dangerous, however, if you spread your religion to your neighbors; they too will be able to buy units with faith, potentially overwhelming you with even more massive armies.
Growth beliefs

Finally, there is one belief that provides a specific growth benefit:

  • Swords into Plowshares: 15% faster growth rate for city if not at war. Like other growth rate modifiers, this belief operates on food surplus, not raw food yields. So, this belief has more impact where there are large food surpluses, and therefore has the most utility in taller empires that are pursuing a peaceful strategy. Since the benefits of this belief are lost when a city is at war, it is not appropriate for militarily aggressive strategies and it is vulnerable to extended wars initiated by other players. For these reasons, this is not a highly favored belief at higher levels, where the AI tends to initiate more wars.
Strategic considerations in selecting follower beliefs

Together with a pantheon belief, your religion's follower beliefs should be selected with a view toward your desired victory condition, to fill gaps or to strengthen already powerful elements of your empire. Accordingly, some follower beliefs (and combinations of follower beliefs) are more helpful to certain play styles than others.

When pursuing a tall strategy, with a limited number of larger cities and few puppets, favored follower beliefs are those that provide a benefit based on the number of followers in a city (notably Religious Community), a growth boost (Swords into Plowshares or Feed the World, particularly when stacked with the Fertility Rites pantheon belief), a more significant benefit based on a larger number of followers in a city (such as the temple-based follower beliefs), or in the case of a culture victory, a significant amount of culture (notably Cathedrals and Religious Art). The religious buildings are popular in taller empires, as they provide generous yields and can be purchased in all cities of a tall empire with relatively modest levels of faith generation. If your cities are founded on rivers, the extra happiness from Peace Gardens can be particularly attractive if you did not select Ceremonial Burial as your founder belief.

When pursuing a wider strategy, particularly one involving many puppets, follower benefits that capitalize on buildings that you (or your puppets) will otherwise build are most attractive. The so-called "super shrine" strategy tries to maximize the benefits of shrines; coupling the Ancestor Worship pantheon belief with the Asceticism and Feed the World follower beliefs results in a 40-hammer building providing 1 food, 1 happiness, 1 culture and 1 faith (2 faith with the Piety policy Organized Religion). Since shrines are likely to be early in each city's build order, and puppets are more likely to build shrines, this combination of beliefs can provide significant benefits to a wide empire. Religious buildings that provide happiness are attractive for wider empires, but require significant levels of faith generation to build them in all cities and, since the happiness they provide is local city happiness, require cities be somewhat larger to justify the investment. Also, puppets cannot faith-buy religious buildings (like Cathedrals and Pagodas), so a large puppet empire will derive little benefit from a religious building belief, particularly as compared to Asceticism.

Finally, players pursuing an aggressive military strategy may find Holy Warriors and Asceticism a strong combination, with the former providing a steady stream of replacement units and the latter helping defray unhappiness in puppeted cities.

Conclusion

The right combination of follower beliefs can provide helpful advantages in an aspect of the game where you anticipate weakness, whether it is happiness, food, culture, or faith. As with all religious beliefs, which follower beliefs you select should be consistent with, and helpful to, your strategic goals and be reinforced by your founder belief and your anticipated enhancer belief.
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