Social Policy: Piety (BNW)

Introduction

The Piety tree is one of four social policy trees available from the Ancient Era. Each of the Ancient Era policy trees rewards investments into different aspects of the early game: Tradition rewards smaller empires that focus on population growth and infrastructue, Liberty rewards empires that focus on early expansion and claiming land, and Honor rewards the player who invests in military units and buildings, while Piety rewards empires that focus on religion.

Religions, especially organized religions, have had a huge impact on civilizations and governments throughout history. The Piety social policy tree provides policies that enhance players' ability to found, enhance and reform their religions and obtain other benefits from pursuing a religious strategy.

Unlike in vanilla and G&K, Piety in BNW no longer conflicts with Rationalism -- both Piety and Rationalism can be open at the same time.

The Policies

• Piety
• Mandate of Heaven
• Organized Religion
• Theocracy
• Religious Tolerance
• Reformation
• Finisher

General use

The Policies

Piety

Adopting Piety allows you to build Shrines and Temples in half the usual time. Unlocks building the Great Mosque of Djenne.

Unlocking the Piety branch presents the player with +100% production when constructing Shrines and Temples. It can be quite helpful in early stages, where newly founded cities will often include a Shrine in their early build order, to improve the chances of founding an early religion. Since the Piety opener halves the time to build Shrines, it gets your cities, and your religion, a faster start. Similarly, fast Temples can save valuable mid-game production. If you want to take advantage of the Piety opener, it is best to adopt it earlier rather than later, since the production bonus gradually becomes less significant.

The Great Mosque of Djenne is one of the stronger religious wonders, providing +3 Faith, +1 Culture and a free Mosque (which itself provides +3 Faith, +2 Culture and +1 Local Happiness). In addition, Great Prophets and Missionaries purchased in the Great Mosque city have one additional spread mission (for a total of 3 spreads per Missionary and 5 spreads per Great Prophet). Note, however, that this bonus only applies to Great Prophets purchased beginning in the Industrial Era; it does not apply to Great Prophets that are spontaneously generated before the Industrial Era or from building Hagia Sophia or completing the Piety policy tree.

Mandate of Heaven

20% discount on all purchases of religious units and buildings with Faith.

Although this policy can save considerable amounts of faith over the course of the game, it is usually one of the last policies taken in Piety, since it is not a prerequisite for any other policy. The benefits of beelining Reformation usually outweigh the benefits of early Mandate of Heaven. Note that this policy does NOT reduce the faith cost of Great Prophets or any other Great Persons that are purchased with faith from the Industrial Era.

Organized Religion

+1 Faith from Shrines and Temples.

While the opener halves the time to build faith buildings, Organized Religion doubles the faith output of Shrines and multiplies the faith output of Temples by 1.5. With the opener and this policy, each new city can generate 2 per turn with an investment of (essentially) 20 production in a Shrine. This bonus could be significant in early stages, because it significantly increases the odds that you can found and enhance a religion.

Theocracy

Temples increase a city's Gold output by 25%. Holy Sites provide +3 Gold.

Although this policy can generate considerable amounts of gold over the course of the game, it is usually one of the last policies taken in Piety, since it is not a prerequisite for any other policy. As players that choose Piety are likely to build Temples in all cities, Theocracy essentially provides each city with a second Market. Note that this bonus does not apply to city connection or trade route income, which will make a large portion of the empire's gold output. Players of Egypt and Songhai that aim for a large puppet empires will be especially blessed by this policy, as the "commerce governors" of puppet cities usually prioritize civilization-specific buildings.

This policy also encourages the settlement of spare Great Prophets to form Holy Sites. The gold generated by Holy Sites is multiplied by other gold-multipliers, including this policy's Temple bonus.

Religious Tolerance

Cities with a majority religion also get the Pantheon belief bonus of the second most popular religion.

This is widely regarded as the weakest of the Piety policies, but it is the prerequisite policy for Reformation, so it will typically be the third Piety policy taken (after the opener and Organized Religion), in order to unlock Reformation as quickly as possible. This belief tends to have more impact on higher difficulty levels, where the AI civilizations are more likely to aggressively spread their religion. If your religion remains the majority, the pantheon belief of the second most popular religion may or may not be useful in that city. For example, if the pantheon belief of the second most popular religion is Religious Idols and your city has no gold or solver, Religious Tolerance is essentially useless in that city.

Reformation

If you founded a religion, gain a bonus Reformation belief.

A Reformation Belief can be a powerful addition to any religion. Most approaches to Piety involve a beeline to Reformation (opener --> Organized Religion --> Religious Tolerance --> Reformation). For a description of possible Reformation Beliefs, see Reformation Beliefs. If you take Reformation before you found a religion, you should be prompted to pick a Reformation Belief when you do found your religion.

Finisher

Adopting all Policies in the Piety tree causes a Great Prophet to appear and Holy Sites provide +3 Culture.

The Great Prophet from the Piety finisher is a truly "free" Great Prophet, in that it does not increase the faith cost of subsequent Great Prophets. When combined with Theocracy, Holy Sites provide +6 faith, +3 gold, and +3 , before gold and culture multipliers.

General Use

Piety should be reserved for players who intend to make religion the backbone of their strategy. Piety itself provides no happiness or growth benefits for your empire, and provides relatively modest gold, production and culture benefits (in fact, no culture bonus until the finisher). Accordingly, if you want to plow through Piety, you need to have an independent source of culture (such as cultural City-State friends and allies or the Aztec's unique ability) or a culture-substitute (such as Poland's unique ability, which provides free social policies) or prioritize culture in your religious beliefs. For example, since a Piety strategy means you will be relying on Shrines and Temples for most of your faith generation, you might select a culture-giving pantheon (such as Ancestor Worship (+1 culture from Shrines), Oral Tradition (+1 culture from plantations) or Sacred Path (+1 culture from jungle tiles)) and/or the Choral Music follower belief (+2 culture from Temples in cities with 5 followers) to provide the culture you will need to plow through Piety.

Given its limitations, Piety often works best as a second tree, complementing your investment in another Ancient Era policy tree. For example, some will pursue a strategy where they first open Liberty, and then take Republic and Collective Rule, before shifting to the Piety opener and Organized Religion. After spamming multiple cities and building quick Shrines, your faith generation will likely exceed 10 faith per turn, putting you in solid shape to establish a religion. Whether you then continue with Piety or return to Liberty will depend on the religious landscape. If most of the AI civilizations are pursuing a Piety-only policy (as happens in many games), further investment in Piety may not be worthwhile. In those instances, returning to Liberty may be the most prudent course. If, on the other hand, the AI civilizations seem to be ignoring religion, it may be best to continue plowing through Piety (to Reformation), and perhaps trying for the Oracle, for its free social policy.

For a mixed Tradition/Piety strategy, consider taking the Tradition opener, then Piety through to Reformation, while pursuing cultural City-State friendships and alliances for the culture you need. Although the +3 culture from the Tradition opener ordinarily doesn't speed your way through other policy trees more quickly, Piety is an exception, given the dearth of culture in that tree.

Finally, there is the "Sacred Sites ICS" strategy for a quick Cultural Victory. The cornerstones of this strategy are (1) obtaining the Sacred Sites Reformation belief (all buildings purchased with Faith provide 2 Tourism each), (2) selecting religious buildings (Pagodas, Mosques, Cathedrals and Monasteries) as your follower beliefs, (3) spamming as many cities as possible, wherein you build nothing but more Settlers and Monuments, Shrines, Temples and defensive military units, and (4) faith-purchasing every religious building you can as quickly as you can. Although this strategy is nearly impossible to execute on the highest difficulty levels, it can be more easily executed on lower difficulty levels. For more information about this strategy, see this thread.



Note: Amended from vanilla Piety article by Bibor and the G&K Piety article by LordLeoz.