Favorite Religion

[ADP101]

Hi, im fairly new to this mod and im just wondering, what do u guys like in these religions, i know each one is different and creates different units, and also effect the timer. (also im wondering about the counsel of Esus and the Empyrean religons cuz the entries for them arent in the Civopedia.)

 

[westamastaflash]

I love Octopus Overlords. Can't go wrong with an extra mage in Hemah .

 

[Monkeyfinger]

A note: Religions allow:
Temples (you know what these are)
Disciples (units that are upgraded missionaries and have medic promotions as well as limited spellbooks of varying strength)
Non-disciple generic units (these are spammable units that do all sorts of different things)
Heroes (one of a kind units that cost a lot and kick ass, multiple empires with the same state religion must race to these as only one can have them)

I'd order them like so:

Octopus Overlords: Available early, best culture bonuses, best heroes, allows the Globe Theatre clone, and a good midgame generic unit. What's not to like? The early generic unit kinda sucks though.

Council of Esus: Slave trade = insanely fast rushbuying of wonders and buildings. No diplo penalties = it's easy to make friends. Ability to declare war without getting your units expelled from the victim's borders = easy way to get rid of someone you're sick of. It's insanely easy to spread since unlike other missionaries, Esus "missionaries" don't sacrifice themselves to spread their religion. Lacks temples and generic units, though, and its one hero isn't that good.

Empyrean: The Ratha is the best generic unit in the game. 4 move + the ability to paralyze an entire stack, and it can be spammed? YES PLEASE. Good hero too. Empyrean has little to offer a builder, but provides so much in a fight as to be worth it.

Order: Basically becomes State Property + normal religious benefits in the lategame. Before that point, though, all it has is a decent hero (Valin) and ease of spreading (when order missionaries spread their religion to a city belonging to an empire that has order as its state religion, that city spawns a free missionary.) Not really worth it unless you like playing for the lategame.

Fellowship of leaves: +1 food in all forests, and gives you some extra health options to make use of it (though the opportunity costs are high.) Their hero Yvain rapes, but doesn't show up for a long time. This religion, like order, shines late. Early, happiness caps are too tight for the food bonus to be that great. Late, the caps go into the 30s and the food helps a lot. I rank Order higher because its disciples are better.

Ashen Veil: Allows the best civic in the game (Sacrifice the weak) and respectable disciples. Has nothing else going for it (meh hero, crappy temples, a gimped holy shrine) and has a HUGE drawback: It raises the armageddon counter, which has a ton of nasty side effects. It might be worth it to found it so that it doesn't spread, thus controlling armageddon, but... don't take this as your state religion. Seriously, don't.

And the bizarre outlier:

Runes of Kilmorph: Grants you lots of extra gold. Heroes are terrible, but disciples and generic units are great. Allows your mines to produce one extra hammer apiece with a certain civic. The drawback? It's the only religion which gives you NO CULTURE. This religion is great for creative leaders (the drawback means squat to them), and ranks above only ashen veil for everyone else.

 

[zxcvbnm]

no poll?

I like different religions on different civs, so it's impossible to decide the ultimate favourite.

 

[Pyr0mancer]

I'd order them as follows:

Empyrean: Radiant Guards make excellent defenders b/c of Blinding Light, Rathas are even better due to massive speed. Overcouncil is pathetic compared to Undercouncil though. Chalid is very good, practically a 1-man army once he gets a few combat promotions and Crown of Brilliance. I like their temples too, +10% unit production is always nice.

OO: Hemah, Saverous, and Tower of Complacency are all good, Drowns are excellent on archipelago maps and other maps with lots of water because you don't need to waste time building as many transports.

Order: Valin's good for an early hero, especially for Raider-trait. 3 move + commando + (later) mobility II means he can deep strike with impunity. Temple is pretty nice, as is the free unit when you spread it. Free Crusaders as you convert your enemies by the sword. Social Order is good for late-game super-cities.

RoK: Can give you a HUGE research advantage due to tons of gold, and Bambur is fairly useful for early Enchanted Blade if not much else. Combined with Undercouncil/Slave trade basically means rushing everything with legions of slaves.

FoL: Good for elves but otherwise I'm not too fond of it. Ancient forests aren't that great compared to other improvements, especially next to rivers since you lose the +1 commerce bonus. Yvain is great, but comes far too late. I tend to spread this to my larger cities for the temple health, but don't convert.

AV: Only good for bringing about Armageddon, although I usually try to found it to control spread. I occasionally use a Great Sage for Stigmata for kicks and giggles, but that's about it. Only ever converted to it when I'm planning to play Infernal anyway.

For me, the oddball is CoE. I ALWAYS go for CoE as the first late religion to found, since slave trade is so powerful. I rarely convert to it though, since as has been mentioned the units and hero aren't that good. Even when playing as good civs I'll do a bit of religion-flipping to become neutral for Undercouncil and druids.

Generally, I have Empyrean and Order in all my cities regardless of what my state religion is, for the temple production bonuses.

 

[Ecofarm]

Costs approximate (within ~100) and quick speed:

FoL: 500
Hidden: 1000
(1500 total)
Net Religious Civic Gain: 1 happy per forest, 5 health

Way of Wise: 500
Order: 1000
Religious Law: 1500
(3000 total)
Net Religious Civic Gain: 1 happy per unit, no health

So you can get Guardian of Nature in 1/2 the time of Order. By the time the someone getting Order gets it, you are a 20 pop capital. He never catches up.

Now, I like city raider 3 + blitz (fed) vampires upgraded to paladins as much as the next guy... but Order is too expensive. Getting to righteousness is about the same as getting to strength of will (probably more expensive, and much more difficult to lightbulb), and paladins do not compare to archmages.

FoL ftw
2. Esus (Shadows)
3. Strength of Will (oh, that's not a religion? It should be, because I worship it)

Honorable mention: Empyrean (radiant guards promoted city raider and then upgraded to rathas and promoted flanking also). This is a nice bonus for evil civs that need to go neutral in order to get druids (example: Balseraph). But I would go FoL 1st, then pick up empyrean and switch to it at the beginning fo a golden age, spam radiants and upgrade (must be in religion to make and upgrade them), and switch back to FoL before the end of golden - neutral, with CR2 Rathas, and ready to make druids [with balseraph domination/pit beast casting, and with dwarf crush/elemental casting] + yvain.

 

[Madhatter4]

Quick N00B question about the Ashen Veil.... When that religion spreads it brings up the AC? Now I know that razing the AV founding city decreases the AC but does razing any AV city have the same impact?

 

[Pyr0mancer]

Yep, spreading AV to a city raises the AC by 1, and razing an AV city reduces it by 1 as well (for standard size maps). If you want to lower the AC, go burn down some AV cities and sanctify the ruins too.

 

[Alzara]

What's this about "Seriously dont accept Ashen vale as state religion"?

Do you have any idea how advanced you can become if you found this religion early on and keep a great sage ready to get that holy city set up?

My present game is turn 400 (epic speed) and Stigmata on the Unborn is giving me +47 science ALONE. This is without modifiers like an academy, library, crown of akharien etc.

The other civs may as well be barbarians. I dont care if the AC raises high. It makes all the heros that Ive built in the holy city (which have stigmata) SUPER hard.

Also since when can you say that the AV heroes are crap? Sure Rosier isnt great, but Madero kicks all ass, and The Meshaber of Dis is just silly

AV is great. Long live the demons (barring Hyborem who practices "artificial stupidity" instead of AI).

Play with AV but use compact enforced. Bend the world to your will. Laugh as plague hits and you are affected least (sacrafise the weak), and let nations marval at your technological advancement!

Al

 

[slowcar]

i like order best as the low maintenance helps me keeping my growing empire together. the heroes are a bit on the lower side but at least they are quite fast and, with orthus or blitz, capable of decimating large numbers of low level units. ring and pillar of flames are some of the best spells.

 

[Alzara]

Hehe yeah order is good for that (lol you'd so be my enemy on a multiplayer map ). I usually try and keep good trade relations to keep my empire growing. That and market places help early on. The -1 science from a market isn't so bad at all to an AV player

Al

 

[DharmaMcLaren]

I like FoL for the flavour. Call me a hippy, but...

 

[ADP101]

i founded AV in one of my games and made the mistake of switching to the devils civ. Dont get me wrong it was awsome, but when i say mistake, i mean the spawning point was terrible. Low food and low production. But i LOVE the hero i just took him with 1-3 other units and just killed my neighbor (i spawned in the middle of his teretory) yea i wanna do that again, hopfully with a better spawning point tho

 

[Nikis-Knight]

Low food and low production

Food is irrelevant for the Infernals, you get your pop by adding manes (produced by razing cities or killing units with AV or OO or CoE religions.)

 

[Alzara]

Lol yeah Hyborem is quite hard if you get there early enough. Personally I don't play with him (I use compact enforced which gets rid of him entirely - he's never summoned).

Reasons I don't play with him:-

1) If I choose not to switch to him he's just a waste of time and only functions as a hell terrain generator. His AI is terrible.

2) I don't like the fact that although I'm leading in tech when it comes to AV stuff, hes far more likely to build the infernal grimoire than me if I don't got for it immediately. That's just wrong - technological advancement should give you the edge of being able to start work on wonders before other civilisations.

3) I play on maps using the PlanetGenerator map script. My maps have just under 3x the amount of squares as a huge map. Hell terrain spreading on a map like this kills the speed of the game so it's best not to use it.

Also even if I was to use him in the game I certainly wouldn't play as him. I find him really boring. No growth to monitor, no happiness or health. Just plain old "built units and kill things". There's no fun in just randomly slaying others. Where is the lovely empire building? His cities don't even grow unless loads of evil things die. Definately boring to play with unless you like mindless slaughter

However, if you like him, who am I to question your preferences?

Al

 

[Roghar]

I'm actually quite a big fan of RoK, although admittedly its not as powerful in terms of units and heroes as most of the others

However if you're heading down the melee line you get the pre-req early, the extra gold from temples lets you expand more easily, Bambur is awesome early for enchanted blade and useful in combat and for repair. Between the earth mana with Tablets of Bambur and the Arete civic you can easily set yourself up for huge production and likely all the metals you will need. Trade-off with apprenticeship is obviously the issue there, unless you are Luchuirp and don’t' care much about xp. Further it normally pushes you to neutral alignment, a positive for diplomacy and druids.

This suits particularly well with the dwarven races obviously, but is handy for any military strat.

Note that with cultural defence bonuses less powerful the lack of extra culture is slightly less of an issue

If I don't go RoK I tend to OO, particularly if I need fishing early. Units and heroes (especially)awesome. The water mana comes in handy for blight and slavery is a blessing early if you are high on food.

 

[Bad Player]

A note: Religions allow:
Temples (you know what these are)
Disciples (units that are upgraded missionaries and have medic promotions as well as limited spellbooks of varying strength)
Non-disciple generic units (these are spammable units that do all sorts of different things)
Heroes (one of a kind units that cost a lot and kick ass, multiple empires with the same state religion must race to these as only one can have them)

I'd order them like so:

Octopus Overlords: Available early, best culture bonuses, best heroes, allows the Globe Theatre clone, and a good midgame generic unit. What's not to like? The early generic unit kinda sucks though.

Council of Esus: Slave trade = insanely fast rushbuying of wonders and buildings. No diplo penalties = it's easy to make friends. Ability to declare war without getting your units expelled from the victim's borders = easy way to get rid of someone you're sick of. It's insanely easy to spread since unlike other missionaries, Esus "missionaries" don't sacrifice themselves to spread their religion. Lacks temples and generic units, though, and its one hero isn't that good.

Empyrean: The Ratha is the best generic unit in the game. 4 move + the ability to paralyze an entire stack, and it can be spammed? YES PLEASE. Good hero too. Empyrean has little to offer a builder, but provides so much in a fight as to be worth it.

Order: Basically becomes State Property + normal religious benefits in the lategame. Before that point, though, all it has is a decent hero (Valin) and ease of spreading (when order missionaries spread their religion to a city belonging to an empire that has order as its state religion, that city spawns a free missionary.) Not really worth it unless you like playing for the lategame.

Fellowship of leaves: +1 food in all forests, and gives you some extra health options to make use of it (though the opportunity costs are high.) Their hero Yvain rapes, but doesn't show up for a long time. This religion, like order, shines late. Early, happiness caps are too tight for the food bonus to be that great. Late, the caps go into the 30s and the food helps a lot. I rank Order higher because its disciples are better.

Ashen Veil: Allows the best civic in the game (Sacrifice the weak) and respectable disciples. Has nothing else going for it (meh hero, crappy temples, a gimped holy shrine) and has a HUGE drawback: It raises the armageddon counter, which has a ton of nasty side effects. It might be worth it to found it so that it doesn't spread, thus controlling armageddon, but... don't take this as your state religion. Seriously, don't.

And the bizarre outlier:

Runes of Kilmorph: Grants you lots of extra gold. Heroes are terrible, but disciples and generic units are great. Allows your mines to produce one extra hammer apiece with a certain civic. The drawback? It's the only religion which gives you NO CULTURE. This religion is great for creative leaders (the drawback means squat to them), and ranks above only ashen veil for everyone else.

Ironically RoK was the most powerful religion easily when FFH2 was first around and there was a time when AV was the most powerful also.

 

[Monkeyfinger]

Note that with cultural defence bonuses less powerful the lack of extra culture is slightly less of an issue

No it's not.

The great thing about religious culture is that you can immediately put your religion in a new city, getting it a fast border pop without having to invest the city's limited starting hammers in a monument. Can't get that with RoK, unless you are creative.

 

[Alzara]

Yeah religious culture boost is handy from most religions. My recent game has been amusing me no end though. I have 10 cities, each with a dancing bear and 7 more bears waiting to be "trained" in my capital

Al

 

[Mailbox]

No it's not.

The great thing about religious culture is that you can immediately put your religion in a new city, getting it a fast border pop without having to invest the city's limited starting hammers in a monument. Can't get that with RoK, unless you are creative.

You can pop a Thane for a culture boost, which is usually more than enough to last it until you have time to build a monument. Of course, this means that each new city is going to require 2 thanes, but it's not that bad in times of peace.