[R&F] Faith, holy sites, and no religion

[acluewithout]

I’ve been playing some Norway and Japan in Vanilla (Emperor - Immortal, Continents). I fairly consistently get religion with both. But I’m wondering fun can you have with faith, holy sites, and religion, but where you don’t found your own religion. Happy to hear answers for Vanilla or R&F.

A few thoughts / questions:

- If you’re shooting for a culture victory, I feel like there’s some good synergies between the faith for appeal pantheon (if you have lots of woods) / goddess of harvest (if you have lots of jungle), appeal bonus from holy sites, and national parks.

- Does anyone deliberately infect themselves with a religion? You could presumably get some good beliefs that way, eg the one that gives culture from holy site faith output (choral music i think). This may make more sense once religion affects loyalty in th next patch.

- If you do want to ‘infect yourself ‘, what’s the best way? Do you have much control?

- Missionairies are pretty cool for exploring.

- I wish you could get great writer or artist points from holy sites or some adjacency for TDs without. wong Russia.

 

[Uberfrog]

Pantheons are definitely worth having - particularly Goddess of the Harvest (insane faith generation, and it's boosted by Magnus!) and Earth Goddess for culture victories as you say.

I wouldn't expend any effort infecting myself with a foreign religion - in my experience you're at the mercy of whoever is nearest, or most zealous in their missionary spam. You have no choice over their follower beliefs so they rarely amount to more than a hill of beans. If some nice beliefs spread to me, great, but there's little you can do to encourage a particular religion into your borders.

Faith can be useful for generating GP, and buying things with Monumentality/Grandmaster's Chapel. In fact without needing to expend faith on religious units to spread/defend your religion, you have much more faith for other things if you don't found a religion. I might build a Holy Site or two if there are good adjacency bonuses (after building the Campus first of course), in order to get some extra faith. But it's not a priority.

I feel religious followers, and indeed religion in general need a little bit of love in terms of being valuable enough. It's better in R&F with the early Era Score, but still, it's a lot of investment for not much reward.

 

[Art Morte]

In Rise and Fall you can definitely do things with faith, golden age monumentality perhaps the best thing (where you can buy builders and settlers with faith. Traders, too, I think.) I've only bought a great person with faith a couple of times.

But is it really worthwhile - even in RnF - to build a few holy sites without getting religion before you've built the districts that help you towards a victory condition you can achieve, I don't know.

 

[acluewithout]

I agree religion needs some love. But I’m just trying to see if there are some fun strategies to try.

One thing I’ve been thinking about is lumber mills. I often build lumber mills to preserve appeal, so I can build national parks later. As a result, I take a hit in terms of production, because mines give so much more production. Mines are then even better if you build an IZ or two for adjacency (yes, I know IZs are like so two years ago).

I wonder if you can replace that lost production with faith, given holy sites get adjacency from woods?

To be clear; I’m sure building holy sites is inefficient. Just looking for interesting strategies which might be fun.

For example. I recently had a low production start as japan (lots of flat grass land). I was impatient, so I tried to sword rush Rome which had better territory, and that went how you might expect. But now I wonder if I should have gone holy sites and lumber mills, and then theocracy and Samurai.

 

[Jackanape]

I've found that a strong faith economy is vital to all my game play these days. With Jesuit Education, should you found a religion, you will never fall behind in science or culture, and as has already been mentioned, Golden Age dedication that allows you to buy civilian units like settlers and builders--heck, combine that with a promoted Magnus, and pump out settlers, making it a REAL golden age--its win win all around.

Even if you should not found a religion, Grandmasters Chapel is a huge boost to defense should you be pursuing a VC other than domination...and do I need to mention national parks?

Faith FTW in my book. In fact, I usually build a holy sites first in every game, because faith in general is more valuable than gold in Civ VI...

 

[vaejovis]

Golden Age dedication that allows you to buy civilian units like settlers and builders--

You can also faith buy archaeologists!
That’s probably the best part about monumentality when paired with Jesuit Education and a stellar faith economy

 

[agonistes]

I've found that a strong faith economy is vital to all my game play these days. With Jesuit Education, should you found a religion, you will never fall behind in science or culture, and as has already been mentioned, Golden Age dedication that allows you to buy civilian units like settlers and builders--heck, combine that with a promoted Magnus, and pump out settlers, making it a REAL golden age--its win win all around.

Even if you should not found a religion, Grandmasters Chapel is a huge boost to defense should you be pursuing a VC other than domination...and do I need to mention national parks?

Faith FTW in my book. In fact, I usually build a holy sites first in every game, because faith in general is more valuable than gold in Civ VI...

I spam holy sites like zits on a teenager.

 

[Scaramanga]

Sharing a religion boosts religious tourism if you can get a relic.

 

[aguliondew]

Without a religion faith can only be used for 2 things buying units or great people. It is cheaper to buy units with faith but it take until mid game to get that govern building. For any of the other victory types having faith without a religion is not worth it. The Holy district building do not provide enough to be useful unless you have a religion. If the holy districts would have to provide something more for it to be useful over a commercial or harbor district.. Also great prophet points should be useful late game instead of going to waste. The golden/heroic age bonus to great prophet point does not make since you get that boost to late for it to be useful.

 

[Jewelrunna]

If you have a really strong faith generation you can funnel a ton of Great People into your empire. Plus if the religion that passes to you has Jesuit Education, you can faith-buy important buildings. And if you get that one tier-2 government building, you can faith buy units, which is really helpful. There's a lot you can do with faith, it's a useful resource to have.

 

[MaryKB]

I like to build Holy Sites so I can use Monasticism in my Dark Age. I can get ahead on science very quickly!

 

[criZp]

Thing that annoys me with faith is that the only unique stuff you can use it for is religious units and naturalists. And if you don't found a religion then the only unique is the naturalist. There should be another thing you can only purchase with faith, available from the early game.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

Thing that annoys me with faith is that the only unique stuff you can use it for is religious units and naturalists. And if you don't found a religion then the only unique is the naturalist. There should be another thing you can only purchase with faith, available from the early game.

Shaman? Plant him in a cave to make some culture/happiness.

 

[WillowBrook]

Great prophets should have uses beyond founding a religion, so you can make use of great prophet points even after all religions are founded.

 

[Jackanape]

The worst is the Medieval Age Dedication that gives you +4 Great Prophet points. A full age past any religions being founded...

I was going to type how it made me feel, but it would have been axed by the incredibly observant mods. I'll let y'all guess.

 

[aguliondew]

They could make great prophets give out additional pantheon bonus or something extra.

 

[acluewithout]

I think prophets would work better if, in addition to letting you founded your religion, they also let you (1) evangelise belief (instead of apostles doing that) and (2) has some other appropriate great person effect (eg grant a relic, boost loyalty in that city).

That way, if you found a religion, you’d be competing with everyone else (whether they founded a religion or not) to get additional beliefs, and people that didn’t have a religion could still compete for religious great people.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

They could make great prophets give out additional pantheon bonus or something extra.

I'd be happy if the great prophets danced jigs outside your holy sites, giving the city +1 amenity. Anything to give them a purpose.

I just hate the whole idea of a great person category being exhausted. Any category. "Sorry folks, that's it for great writers. It's just social media drek from here on out." At least science has "Future Tech". Could we get "Future Writer" if we run out of historical writers?

it's just most noticeable with great prophets, which are exhausted so quickly and are literally single purpose entities. They could be eliminated completely in favour of just accumulating the requisite points to found a religion. Why even bother going through the great person process as they're set up now?

I think prophets would work better if, in addition to letting you founded your religion, they also let you (1) evangelise belief (instead of apostles doing that) and (2) has some other appropriate great person effect (eg grant a relic, boost loyalty in that city).

Well, sure, those ideas are a little better than having them dance jigs. They could work, too.

 

[acluewithout]

I dunno. Dancing a jig would liven things up more.

I’d like to end this post with a religion and dancing related pun, but I’m drawing a blank.