Ceremonial Burials is the greatest thing ever.

[KevinJK]

Most AI civs don't focus much on religion, so they'll happily accept yours. Convert several rivals and you're looking at several dozen happiness just from others, on top of having an extra happiness in all of your own cities.

For this same reason, Church Property is another great option.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

I do like Church Property, but the Happiness Beliefs are pretty irelavant due to how common happiness is from luxuries and mercantile city-states, at least in my experience. I picked Sacred Waters and it seems pretty worthless now because I have over 20 happiness, mostly from luxuries.

Edit: at this point in a vanilla game, I would be scrambling to build happiness buildings to facilitate more growth.

 

[RohirrimElf]

wouldnt it be helpfull if u go mass growth/conquering citys?

 

[KevinJK]

It's also helpful now that Golden Ages are harder to trigger and more powerful. Extra happiness is never wasted.

 

[Xichael]

Tithe.

I was popping out ~80g/turn by the Renaissance.

 

[zan_laurin]

Tithe.

I was popping out ~80g/turn by the Renaissance.

Money doesn't buy happiness, in case you did not get the memo.

On a more serious note, I dont think you can ever have to much happiness. If I have extra I focus on getting my up super aggressively. Extra population means more of everything 99,999% of the time including GPT!

 

[satyadaimoku]

I went with Mayans, on Emperor level, built the Great Mosque of Djenne and I currently have +54 happiness from Ceremonial Burial. It's been pretty solid for me - I now have a massive population spread across half my continent without a single happiness building, nor have I had to worry much about mercentile city states.

Mayans are pretty killer for the religion game - adding science to shrines makes it a lot more attractive to immediately build shrines everywhere, while my first post-Theology GP was perfectly timed to ensure my religion was immediately enhanced. Next time I want to try out church property.

Might be hard to recreate the strategy at higher levels, since it's harder to make a beeline for Theology when you need to think about protecting yourself from the very beginning, although the UU helps there as well.

 

[Randall_Flagg]

Well I do not know names yet, but i had growth issues in my 3 cities due to being cutoff by the arabs, so I used the pantheon growth, and the Founder growth, and my cities started rocking. With the chage in commerce and city states, I do not see being able to monoply the Maratime city states, so the grwoth also rocks!! This also has the added benifit of having your tech take off.

 

[Cicero63]

Money doesn't buy happiness, in case you did not get the memo.

On a more serious note, I dont think you can ever have to much happiness. If I have extra I focus on getting my up super aggressively. Extra population means more of everything 99,999% of the time including GPT!

If you use to by a circus, coliseum, or a stadium it does

 

[zan_laurin]

If you use to by a circus, coliseum, or a stadium it does

Hehe yes

Only thing is that early from faith does not require you to waste turns building Coliseums and whatnot, also requires no maintenance after. Keep in mind that is easily compounded % by buildings, while has only a few % modifiers, mostly policies and more recently religion.

If I have excesive , pump up the population. if I still have ridiculous amounts of happiness I build more towns to get extra and strategic resources. Expand aggressively, give every other jealous civ the finger while building all the world wonders. Then when they attack you, get their lands as well

 

[Seek]

Well I do not know names yet, but i had growth issues in my 3 cities due to being cutoff by the arabs, so I used the pantheon growth, and the Founder growth, and my cities started rocking. With the chage in commerce and city states, I do not see being able to monoply the Maratime city states, so the grwoth also rocks!! This also has the added benifit of having your tech take off.

In my current game I've got those beliefs plus the ToA and Trad filled out: +60% food in my capital ftw! ... I only wish I had been able to snag HG...

Interfaith Dialog is pretty amazing too.