Excellent Religion Combinations

[Seabastian Civ]

This is one of my favorite religious combos- add yours! I'd love to see some different religion strategies.

Pantheon: Any with + Faith generation
Founder: Tithe (+1 gold for every 4 followers)
Follower: Pagodas (+2F, +2H, +2C)
Follower: Aesthetics (+1H from shrines w/ 3 followers)
Enhancer: Itinerent Preachers (+3 spread)

Best for: Domination/Diplomatic Victory

Man, this gets you just rolling in cash and happiness, the two main ingredients for a domination victory! Aesthetics helps with puppets since they like shrines. I like itinerent preachers better than religious texts, but they're both great.

 

[Dogmouth]

I bet tons of people use your first three (Faith+, Tithe, and Pagodas). I know I do (desert folklore, tithe, and pagodas are my go-to if I have ample desert hills and/or floodplains). I also use itinerent preachers or religious texts depending upon the map. My only disagreement is with Asceticism. Happiness is easy to get from Mercantile CSs and Pagodas. I prefer Religious Community (up to +15% hammers) to beef up production.

 

[tommynt]

I m allmost 100% sure that 2 gold per city offers more gold overal then 1 for 4 followers - at least if u can get your reli to spread to CS and ai cities and aint playing occ

Pantheon depends 100% on land but if not sure what just get the 15% wonder bonus its difference between 5 and 6 classical wonders - and all of them are good

the 50 faith per used dude is also usually best for fast finsih times

 

[clif9710]

I'm a food freak - anything that offers more food, hence growth, allows my usual tall game to thrive. My cap city often grows to twice the size of that of any other civ.

Swords into Plowshares - +15% growth when not at war, is great early on before protracted wars get started.

 

[kaspergm]

I m allmost 100% sure that 2 gold per city offers more gold overal then 1 for 4 followers - at least if u can get your reli to spread to CS and ai cities and aint playing occ

Tithe will generally earn you more Gold in the long run, basically any town with >8 followers will earn you more Gold from Tithe.

My favorite combinations follow those listed above pretty closely:

Pantheon - either +Faith from Desert, Stone Circles or Religious Idols (very powerful if you get a Gold/Silver heavy start). Oral Tradition or the one that provides culture from Jungles is also really good if neither of the faith ones fit with my starting position.
Founder - Tithe nearly always. That's a very significant input of Gold, it's just hard to turn down. I do take the Science one occasionally.
Followers - Pagodas is a must. I also like Religious Centers or Feed The World or the one that gives production per follower. The other religious buildings are also fine, occasionally I've even taken two different building beliefs, but that does require a very high faith output to get them both in all cities. Once you hit Industrial it really starts to hurt to buy new buildings.
Enhancer - Religious Texts is WIN. Watch your religion rush over everybody else like a tital wave without even using Great Prophets. The one that makes it spread further is also good if Texts has been claimed.

 

[Moriarte]

I generally pick happiness/faith enhancers (divine inspiration/Ceremonial) - good for tall and domination

As a secondary - +15% production; cheap prophets or religious texts.

Pantheon depends on map and diff. level, of course. I found that +15% for wonder production rocks on lower levels, especially, when stacked with marble, Egypt and aristocracy .

In cultural games - Cathedral is a nice addition.

 

[kamex]

This is one of my favorite religious combos- add yours! I'd love to see some different religion strategies.

Pantheon: Any with + Faith generation
Founder: Tithe (+1 gold for every 4 followers)
Follower: Pagodas (+2F, +2H, +2C)
Follower: Aesthetics (+1H from shrines w/ 3 followers)
Enhancer: Itinerent Preachers (+3 spread)

Best for: Domination/Diplomatic Victory

Man, this gets you just rolling in cash and happiness, the two main ingredients for a domination victory! Aesthetics helps with puppets since they like shrines. I like itinerent preachers better than religious texts, but they're both great.

Its Ascension, not aethetics. But yeah, fairly good combo, though not the best.

 

[Browd]

Tithe will generally earn you more Gold in the long run, basically any town with >8 followers will earn you more Gold from Tithe.

One of the benefits of tithe is that its bonus is based solely on your number of followers, not just cities (or followers in cities) where your religion is in the majority (i.e., you get gold even if your followers are in the minority). Particularly with itinerate preachers or religious texts, I always have a decent number of followers in a much larger number of cities than where my religion is in the majority (recent Maya game, I had 39 cities in the majority, but I counted another 15 or so where I had a minority of followers, including three other players' holy cities). I still take ceremonial burial when it's available, but tithe is sweet.

 

[Syntax Error]

Tithe/Ceremonial Burial nearly always.
Pagodas nearly always (that +2 happiness is sooooo good!)
Religious Texts nearly always (Itinerant Preachers for Water-heavy maps).

The other follower for me is:
Guruship if I want quick Production but plan on staying small
Swords to Plowshares if I plan on being peaceful all game long
Religious Community if I want production (the +2 hammers in Guruship is great. This will only eclipse that at around 20-30 base production in city)
Cathedrals if going for culture
Monasteries if the area is heavy on Wines and Incense

As for Pantheons:
Can I get more faith from the lay of the land? Get the appropriate Faith Generating Pantheon. (Desert Folklore, Religious Idols, etc)
Are there tiles that can become more useful with them? Get the appropriate Tile Enhancer (God of the Open Skies, Sacred Path, etc)
Am I too lazy to think? Fertility Rites. You can never go wrong with Fertility Rites. It's like a free Temple of Artemis. Except you can get it on Turn 5 if you're Celts!

 

[cakes]

i've been wanting to try out a super shrine build that gives you happiness, culture and food for shrines. would be good for new cities; especially so for the maya

 

[SnowKomodo]

Pagodas - I almost always choose them if I don't have any particular strategy in mind because they are fairly useful for just about any game style.

 

[adsin15]

I have done the Super temple strategy. Its pretty insane.

+2 culture per temple, + 2 happiness per temple and if you are Byzantium you can get + 1 food per temple.

 

[tommynt]

Tithe will generally earn you more Gold in the long run, basically any town with >8 followers will earn you more Gold from Tithe.

yeah thats contradicting - lets say u establish religion in turn 50 and end game in turn 200 - in turn 125 (medium) you d have to have more cities with 8 followers as with just the religion - kinda unlickly - maybe on deity were ai and cs grow huge fast - but not otherwise

 

[Halcyan2]

+ Faith beliefs can be problematic because they will help other civs found their own religions (thus displacing yours).

Might work out if all the other religions have already been founded or if the + faith is conditional enough that only you will benefit from it.

 

[Syntax Error]

yeah thats contradicting - lets say u establish religion in turn 50 and end game in turn 200 - in turn 125 (medium) you d have to have more cities with 8 followers as with just the religion - kinda unlickly - maybe on deity were ai and cs grow huge fast - but not otherwise

It doesn't need to be majority religion.

12 foreign cities with one follower each is still +3 GPT. What makes tithe appealing is that it can easily overtake Church Property VERY early.

If you make it a habit to use the next 200 Faith after the first Prophet to buy a missionary, you can start spreading your religion quickly.

 

[JanghanHong]

+ Faith beliefs can be problematic because they will help other civs found their own religions (thus displacing yours).

Might work out if all the other religions have already been founded or if the + faith is conditional enough that only you will benefit from it.

Yeah, I don't really recommend +faith founder beliefs that doesn't give you a huge bias, because all your neighbors will have get their own religion and replace yours if you spread it to them.

 

[kaspergm]

yeah thats contradicting - lets say u establish religion in turn 50 and end game in turn 200 - in turn 125 (medium) you d have to have more cities with 8 followers as with just the religion - kinda unlickly - maybe on deity were ai and cs grow huge fast - but not otherwise

No, I can't prove the exact numbers, but I don't recall a single time checkin where Titche would have given me significant less money than the 2 Gold/city. In my current game, there are 28 cities following my religion out of just over 100 cities total on the map. Tithe earns me 98 Gold per turn, which is almost double of what I would get with 2 Gold/city. Admittedly this is late game, I can't give you numbers from earlier in the game at the moment.

 

[Tavenier]

If I go tall I take the plus 2 gold for every city. If I go wide I take the plus 1 happy face per city.

 

[Cyon]

here is some kombo ideas -


domination kombo:
- goddes of protection, god of war, faith healets or any faith pantgenon
-pilgramage (the one with faith from followers)
- holy warriors
- any bonus belief
- just war ( bonus vs cites with your religon)


growth combo:

- +10% growth pantheon
- cermonial burryal ( to get happines for your big poppulation) or papal primacy to easier get martime cs influense
- feed the world (food from shrines)
- +15 growth when peace

culture combo:

-culture from pasture, gold, wine (this is the best uf you have wine or i.) or jungle pantheon
- world church
-cathedrals
- monestary if you have wine, otherwise church music
-any spread easier enchanser

and so on

 

[LostInTime]

No love for Cathedrals?

They only give one happy, but the artist specialist and 3 culture is very good for warmongering games. (you usually don't want to spend hammers on culture buildings then)

Culture is the real limiter to warmongering, if you can keep rolling in culture, you should never have big problems with unhappiness.

I usually pick pantheons like in this order (faith, 10% growth, 1 hammer 3 followers, fishing boats if huge coastal start)

-Ceremonial Burial, Tithe.

-Cathedrals.

-Pagodas if they are there and I have decent faith gen, 15% hammers if not.

-Itinerant preachers or the faster spread. Cheaper missionaries/inq if both are taken.