Best founder Belief?

[The A.K.T]

Cerimonial Burials is very strong. If it spreads, you wont have to wory about Happiness anymore.
Church proberty is also strong. Given a nice gold bonus to help u throw the game.

World Church is ok. In a Game with Etiopia About a 1/4 of my culture was from it.

What do u think is the best Founder Belief.

 

[bhavv]

Tithe is very powerful in a tall empire.

 

[Randall_Flagg]

Tithe hands down for me, I almost feel dirty taking it, it is so good.

 

[Schalke 04]

MY favourites are Cerimonial Burials and Church property with a strong emphasis to the first one. I try to get as much happiness as I can, to have full felixibility to grow my own cities or to conquer others...

1 happy = 1 Population = 1 full tile yield and science. And a tile yield is worth more than just two gold in many cases. That is the reason why I consider the happiness belief to be stronger than the gold belief.

If you have a crappy terrain and not much room to expand, happiness is not so effective though, as you can't use the extra population properly. However, you still have the military option


I got a question here. Some belliefs count as 'per city' and some as 'per x followers'. Does the latter work per follower, even if it is not the majority in a city?

Example: 'Tithe' = 1 Gold for every 4 followers. If you have 1 single follower in 4 enemy size 10 cities you should get 1 Gold out of this, am I right?

 

[comatosedragon]

Tithe hands down for me, I almost feel dirty taking it is so good.

Exactly. I think the only time I didn't pick tithe was my very first game of G&K. It's just crazy powerful, especialy with the refinements to the economic game. I expect it to te toned down at some point.

 

[Khadroth]

Yea I'm going with Tithe atm as I tend to play taller than I do wide (otherwise I think Church Property wins out). Though I'm interested to see just how much science Interfaith Dialogue adds.

 

[Randall_Flagg]

MY favourites are Cerimonial Burials and Church property with a strong emphasis to the first one. I try to get as much happiness as I can, to have full felixibility to grow my own cities or to conquer others...

1 happy = 1 Population = 1 full tile yield and science. And a tile yield is worth more than just two gold in many cases. That is the reason why I consider the happiness belief to be stronger than the gold belief.

If you have a crappy terrain and not much room to expand, happiness is not so effective though, as you can't use the extra population properly. However, you still have the military option


I got a question here. Some belliefs count as 'per city' and some as 'per x followers'. Does the latter work per follower, even if it is not the majority in a city?

Example: 'Tithe' = 1 Gold for every 4 followers. If you have 1 single follower in 4 enemy size 10 cities you should get 1 Gold out of this, am I right?

No, you need 4 followers per city.

 

[Schalke 04]

No, you need 4 followers per city.

Hm, then I don't know why you find the belief to be so strong. You need 8 followers in a city to get the same amount of gold out of it like with church property. You need 12 followers to get 1 Gold more than from church property. A small size 3 city is easier to convert for 2 Gold.

Maybe I am not seeing one important thing here?

 

[Randall_Flagg]

Hm, then I don't know why you find the belief to be so strong. You need 8 followers in a city to get the same amount of gold out of it like with church property. You need 12 followers to get 1 Gold more than from church property. A small size 3 city is easier to convert for 2 Gold.

Maybe I am not seeing one important thing here?

Depends on your mode of play i guess, I play Marathon games, Cities get huge!! My capitol was 92. 23 Gold just for my capitol, I also had Spains Capitol which was at 47. As well as my other 2 cities each at 42. Not to mention numerous 20 + and 30+ cities from other civs and city states. Granted it would be less I guess on Standard speeds and lower, but Epic and Marathon games it is insane.

 

[Veneke]

Yeah, Church Property is probably the strongest given the relative abundance of happiness I've found in G&K. Tithe is good but you don't start to see it overtake Church Property until the end of the early game, beginning of the mid-game, by which time I've found the need for a large gold boost has passed. Tithe might work out better in the long run, but Church Property gives you more gold now, which I've found to be the most restraining thing in the early game.

Where Tithe works pretty well is if you're able to convert high pop AI cities on the higher difficulty levels (Edit: or slower game speeds apparently), which regularly have very large populations by the mid-game on Immortal. It does require more faith investment but given that you need to convert over half the population to your religion anyway for Church Property if you get in early it isn't that big a difference.

 

[Schalke 04]

@randall: Ah OK, I see your point. I always play at standard pace. Wow, capital size 92...!? That's insane.

Someday I will try a game on marathon as well

 

[Lyoncet]

Along with pace, difficulty can play a huge role in determining if Tithe or Church Property is better. I play exclusively on Immortal, where it's not uncommon to see tall AIs get into the 90s of population, and even the wide empires can get 40+ before too long because of the happiness bonuses they get. Another thing to consider is that to get that +2GPT from Church Property, you need to have majority religion in the city. If another civ has 50 people in its city, and you can only convert 12 of them, you're getting 3 more GPT from Tithe than you'd be getting without it, because with Church Property you'd be getting 0. You also have to consider how much the AIs in your game are focusing on religion since that can dictate how much they focus on religious spread; you can usually get a grasp of that by when the other civs found/enhance their religions.

 

[JanghanHong]

Tithe is Tits

 

[Gali]

Tithe is the ultimate except in my current games where I go decently wide, half a dozen cities, let em grow and then conquer. Industrial and on happiness isn't an issue but Ceremonial Burial can really help smoothe out any rough edges until I get there

 

[Huaojozu]

Simple:
Tall empire: Tithe
ICS empire (especially nice with Carthage coast spam): Ceremonial Burial

Tithe can get you huge amounts of money if you spread your religion aggresively. Ceremonial Burial combined with Meritocracy and say Pagodas allow for limitless City spam all over the world. If you use Carthage and pick the right Pantheon belief, you are pretty much unstoppable.

 

[Harv72b]

@randall: Ah OK, I see your point. I always play at standard pace. Wow, capital size 92...!? That's insane.

Someday I will try a game on marathon as well

Other advantage is that Tithe does not require you to have the majority religion in a city; if there are 4 followers you get your gold, regardless of whether there are 50 followers of a different religion. Most of the other founder beliefs require your religion to be the dominant one in each city.

 

[Cyon]

What about papal primacy? +15% city state influence + pledge to protect 10% + 20% for the aesthetics sp = permanent friends as minimum!

 

[spfun]

It completely depends on the settings you use before you start the game.

I play standard size map standard settings, and on that church property is clearly better for me as my games end around the 1800s. I'm the majority religion in pretty much every city, except most of those cities are only around size 3 or 4. By the time tithe overtakes church property the game is well over.

In my first game I conquered the map & ceremonial burial was excellent there. Most my games though are Tall empires. My last game i did a emperor OCC and picked world church, it was ok netting me around 90 bonus culture by the 1700s (when i was 1000+ per turn)

There are many options i would never pick though.

 

[stlh2opolo]

The culture one is great towards end-game once you can spread it. I have about 80 cpt from it in my current Ethiopia game. (Only a fraction of my total cpt, but every bit helps)

 

[Trik]

Go Byzantine get both gold based beliefs; profit, A lot of profit!!