Cost/Benefit of Founding a Religion at Monarch

[riapopia]

It seems like it is relatively expensive to found a religion and I wanted to get some opinions on this. Do people make founding a religion a priority in their games with any great frequency?

It seems like there is one hard and one soft benefit to founding a religion (versus obtaining a religion from a rival) -

1. Hard Benefit - Once you build a shrine, and broadly spread it, you can generate significant shrine income.
2. Soft Benefit - By founding an early religion, you will have more predictability around having an early religion at all. Meaning without founding one of the early 3 religions, you may well have to wait sometime before a religion naturally spreads into your lands.

The problem I see with #1 is that it take a LOT of beakers/hammers/GPPs required to achieve this. Typically you have to-

1. Beeline down the religious tech tree. Especially if you don't start with Mysticism. Opportunity Cost: Beakers
2. Spam missionaries to spread to your cities and surrounding civs. Opportunity Cost: Hammers
3. Prioritize an early Prophet. Potentially this means building Stonehenge when you wouldn't otherwise do so. Opportunity Cost: GPPs and Hammers (maybe)

As for #2, this really only seems important if happiness is a major issue. If I have no luxuries nearby I might consider running down the religious tech tree.

So...am I missing something? Am I not valueing this part of the game correctly? For background, I'm a Monarch player about to move up to the next level. So I realize I'm no expert.

 

[Shadzy19]

The main problems with founding 1 of the 3 early religions at higher difficulity levels are :

- Its actually hard to get budd/hind without working a comm tile first .

- Late worker techs and BW , your already slower in the start cause of their bonuses and focusing on a religion increases this gap .

- diplomacy , if other civs have a diffrend religion then you will get involved in religious wars and this is exactly what u dont want at higher levels , you want your wars to come out well planned when you are ready for them .

It can work on certain maps with not many AI's around you but its 95% of the times better to pass up on founding one of the 3 early religions .

 

[Shoot the Moon]

I don't believe it is worth it to go out of your way to found a religion (the first three count as out of the way). However, I usually wind up founding Confucianism first because I prioritize CoL for the courthouses. I don't think you should prioritize a tech because of the religion though.

 

[duende29]

I usually do this with Mysticism civs, specially Ghandi's India:

- Worker techs first.
- After BW and AH (or Archery if nothing pops), Pottery.
- Meditation -> Priesthood
- Chop Oracle while researching Writing. CoL, you found Confucianism. Spread.
- Oracle gives Prophet, builds Shrine.

But I do this mostly for Caste and Courts. You decide if you should adopt Confucianism or just go along with the rest of the landmass' religion.

The annoying thing is that you'll have 2-3 cities and you might get it founded where you don't want it to. But otherwise going for Hinduism/Buddhism early on isn't that hot unless you have Myst/Fishing and coastal seafood.

 

[Refar]

I prefer taking MC from Oracle while teching CoL myself - usually its fast enought for religion.

The annoying thing is that you'll have 2-3 cities and you might get it founded where you don't want it to. But otherwise going for Hinduism/Buddhism early on isn't that hot unless you have Myst/Fishing and coastal seafood.

This is actullay the only reason i go for the really early religions - to make sure it's in the Capital - of course only if for some reason the Capital seems to need it (LOTS of commerce and planning Wall Street there.)

 

[qwertz]

If you really want a good holly city, let the AI found a religion, spread it and build the shrine. The only thing you have to do is to take it out of their cold dead hands

 

[kazapp]

Yes, it is much cheaper to have the AI spread a religion than build all those Missionaries yourself...

So if you have Isabella around, just open your borders, and when all your cities are converted (and believe me, they will be), you simply have to "loan" her holy city for a while (the rest of the game )

 

[Hereditary Rule]

I usually do this with Mysticism civs, specially Ghandi's India:

- Worker techs first.
- After BW and AH (or Archery if nothing pops), Pottery.
- Meditation -> Priesthood
- Chop Oracle while researching Writing. CoL, you found Confucianism. Spread.
- Oracle gives Prophet, builds Shrine.

But I do this mostly for Caste and Courts. You decide if you should adopt Confucianism or just go along with the rest of the landmass' religion.

The annoying thing is that you'll have 2-3 cities and you might get it founded where you don't want it to. But otherwise going for Hinduism/Buddhism early on isn't that hot unless you have Myst/Fishing and coastal seafood.

I don't play monarch, but another advantage to the late religions is that one of the earlier ones may spread to you before you found the late one, and diplomatically you may decide it's the best move to convert to that religion. You can then forget about the late religion all together (or found but don't convert).

Along with Code of Laws, I also frequently found a religion with Philosophy.