Religion
Founder Beliefs
"At the core of all well-founded belief, lies belief that is unfounded" - Ludwig Wittgenstein
Founder Beliefs
"At the core of all well-founded belief, lies belief that is unfounded" - Ludwig Wittgenstein
Introduction
Select a Founder Belief
A religion consists of a set of beliefs that are intended to enhance your ability to win the game. Many of the beliefs will benefit any civilization following a religion, but a religion's "founder beliefs" -- which can provide happiness, gold, science, faith, culture or city-state influence -- only benefit the founder of a religion. If the founder's Holy City is conquered by another civilization, the conqueror does not gain those benefits. If the founder is completely eliminated from the game, no one receives founder benefits, but the religion continues to exist.
As with other beliefs, your choice of founder belief will strongly influence how your game develops. This article provides an overview of the available founder 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, follower, enhancer and reformation beliefs, and provide advice about how to spread and defend your religion.
Key Concepts
- Faith
- 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- Pantheon - a pre-religion belief that is absorbed into (and superseded by) a religion. 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 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 )
- 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)
There are only 9 founder beliefs. Since each founder belief can be taken by only one civilization, 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 founder beliefs. The most commonly claimed founder beliefs provide happiness and gold benefits, but there are founder beliefs that provide culture, faith, science and city-state influence, all of which can be helpful. Unlike many pantheon beliefs, founder beliefs are not terrain or building dependent; rather, founder beliefs depend upon where and how well your religion has spread.
The 9 founder beliefs can be divided into 6 categories, based upon the yield or other benefits the belief provides:
- Happiness-giving beliefs
- Faith-giving beliefs
- Gold-giving beliefs
- Culture-giving beliefs
- Science beliefs
- City-state beliefs
Happiness-giving beliefs
- Ceremonial Burial: +1 global
for every 2 cities following this religion. In Gods & Kings, this was one of the most popular beliefs, since it provided 1 for every city following the religion. In Brave New World, its bonus has been cut in half, making this belief much less popular. However, it remains one of the more powerful founder beliefs for a religion that is expected to be spread widely and remains very helpful to successful execution of a super-wide or ICS-style strategy.
- Peace Loving: +1 global for every 8 followers of this religion in non-enemy foreign cities. Like Ceremonial Burial, this belief was weakened in Brave New World and remains weaker than Ceremonial Burial, as it provides no happiness for your own cities' adoption of your religion and applies to foreign cities only when you are not at war with the civilization that owns that city.
- Church Property: +2
for each city following this religion. Regardless of population or the number of followers in a given city, you will receive 2 gold per turn if your religion is the majority religion in this city. The benefits of this belief are lost when the city converts to another religion, but will resume if the city is re-converted to your religion. The benefits of Church Property are greatly enhanced if your religion spreads early, and is reinforced by one of the two most powerful spread enhancer beliefs: Religious Texts or Itinerant Preachers.
- Initiation Rites: +100 when each city first converts to this religion. This belief pays off only when a city first converts to your religion, and equals 50 turns of Church Property gold. There is no additional benefit if the city re-converts to your religion after converting to another religion. Accordingly, this belief is best for games in which you expect other religions to eventually overtake your religion, and can be profitably paired with the Messiah enhancer belief (Great Prophets are 25% more powerful and earned with 25% less faith) and the Great Mosque of Djenne (which provides Great Prophets and Missionaries purchased in that city with an additional conversion spread).
- Tithe: +1 for every 4 followers of this religion. This belief provides gold for every 4 followers, wherever located. There is no requirement that you have a multiple of 4 followers in a single city. Accordingly, like Church Property, the benefits of Tithe are greatly enhanced if your religion spreads early, and is reinforced by one of the two most powerful spread enhancer beliefs: Religious Texts or Itinerant Preachers.
There is only one faith-giving belief:
- Pilgrimage: +2 for each foreign city following this religion. This belief is commonly regarded as one of the weakest founder beliefs. Not only are there many more efficient ways to generate faith, but this belief provides no faith for your own cities' adoption of your religion. However, if your faith generation is otherwise lagging, the extra faith from Pilgrimage may allow you buy an extra Great Musician to help you overtake a cultural runaway or Great Writer to grab a much-needed social policy or tenet.
There is only one culture-giving belief:
- World Church: +1
for every 5 followers of this religion in other civilizations. This belief is not viewed as a particularly strong belief, although it can have its uses (particularly when seeking a culture victory). Like Tithe, its benefits are based upon the number of followers, not cities in which your religion has a majority of followers. However, it is limited to foreign cities, so this belief provides no culture for your own cities' adoption of your religion.
There is only one science-giving belief:
- Interfaith Dialogue: Gain Science when a Missionary or Great Prophet spreads this religion to cities of other religions. The benefit provided by this belief (10
for every follower of another religion in the target city) arguably has the greatest impact in the early and mid-game. Note that there must be another religion that is in the majority in the target city; if you are spreading your religion to cities with no religion or only a pantheon, there is no science reward. Accordingly, as discussed in more detail below, this belief works best when you are relatively late to found your religion and one or more other religions are well-established.
Finally, there is one belief that is specifically intended to provide an advantage in relations with city-states:
- Papal Primacy: +15 to influence resting point with city-states following this religion. When combined with the Patronage social policy Consulates (which increases your city-state influence resting point by 20 points), this founder belief can provide permanent "friend" status with all city-states that have adopted your religion, without the negative diplomatic consequences of broad use of pledge to protect.
The most effective founder beliefs work in conjunction with specific types of enhancer beliefs. Every founder belief benefits, to some extent, from any enhancer belief that facilitates broad spread of your religion. The major passive spread enhancer beliefs, Itinerant Preachers and Religious Texts, are always popular for that reason, but even less well-regarded enhancer beliefs can be efficiently paired with particular founder beliefs. For example, pairing Papal Primacy with the Religious Unity enhancer belief (religion spreads to friendly city-states at twice the rate) can be a very efficient way to maintain a broad-based city-state friendship strategy (especially when also coupled with the Charitable Missions reformation belief -- influence boosts from gold gifts to city-states are increased by 30%).
Pairing Interfaith Dialogue with the right enhancer belief requires careful thought. Because Interfaith Dialogue only provides benefits from manual spread of your religion (using Missionaries and Great Prophets), you do not want your religion to passively spread to become the majority religion in too many foreign cities. Accordingly, you will not want to pair this belief with any of the major passive spread enhancers, like Itinerant Preachers or Religious Texts. Also, you will want to use Missionaries to spread your religion more often than Great Prophets. Great Prophets are quite effective at converting nearly the entire population of a city to your religion; while ordinarily helpful, it can be self-defeating if you are trying to maximize the benefits of Interfaith Dialogue. The fact that Missionaries often have little effect on the religious composition of cities with well-entrenched religions makes them particularly attractive for an Interfaith Dialogue strategy. An optimal enhancer belief for Interfaith Dialogue would be Holy Order (Missionaries and Inquisitors cost 30% less faith), allowing you to generate a constant stream of inexpensive Missionaries who generate
every time they ineffectually try to convert a foreign city (optimally another religion's holy city, where the Missionary can spread on multiple turns without having to travel to any other cities).Finally, the three gold-giving founder beliefs often engender spirited debate. All three have their utility. Initiation Rites provides all of its benefits up-front, when it can be used to rush-buy settlers, workers, military units and buildings relatively early in the game. But, its benefits quickly end, requiring that you replace that stream of gold with trade route, city connection and trading post income. Church Property provides the most consistent level of income, but requires that you maintain majority religion status, which may require more frequent Missionary and Great Prophet missions to keep your religion in the majority. Tithe arguably provides the greatest amounts of gold over the course of the game, and may require less frequent manual intervention, but its benefits are more back-loaded than Church Property (and far more back-loaded than Initiation Rites).
Conclusion
The right founder belief can accelerate your progress and provide helpful advantages in an aspect of the game where you anticipate weakness, whether it is gold, happiness, culture, or faith. As with all religious beliefs, which founder belief you select should be consistent with, and helpful to, your strategic goals and be reinforced by your anticipated enhancer belief.