I'm in the habit of building Stonehenge EVERY game

[Astennu]

Stonehenge and Pyramids gets you a great engineer to nab Notre Dame. You just need to hold off on the liberty finisher until after the engineer is popped.

I prefer Sistine or Pisa if its available.

Notre Dame goes incredibly early in my Immortal games and happiness isnt as big an issue for me cpmpared to low culture and policy acquisition

 

[phillipwyllie]

Stonehenge + Pyramids + GW will get you your GE well before the liberty finisher, even if you build the Oracle. Even on emperor Stonehenge isn't guaranteed as I've seen it go on t47. If you are building the GL then there's a chance you wont get it. In regards to Hagia Sophia I've seen it not built until the industrial era, other times it's built very early(after Borobudur).

To answer to OP if care about religion I go whole hog and snag Stonehenge, Borobudur, and Hagia Sophia. If I decide to open Piety then GMD is second in that list.

 

[budweiser]

To break the habit of Stone Henge, which I used to do most of the time: Pottery, mining, calendar, tradition, aristocracy on immortal, instead focus on an early trade game. Get AH and try for a caravan route by t50 while you are filling up the good city spots with 3 or 4 cities. Don't obsess over NC and get a market. You can make 50 to 75 GPT in the 900 BCs and be in really good shape.

 

[Memoryjar]

Immortal / Deity, I look at neighbor. If it's a religion civ (Celts, India, Maya, Portugal, Spain, Byzance, Arabia), I take its religion.
I need faith after Industrial era to buy Great person. Before, it a little boost, and have party I lost because my strat was based on my pantheon/beliefs (sun god and +10% when in Peace). I loosed my religion cause AI prophet spam. So my plan crashed.

Below, its costs is one or two inquisitor to keep it all the game. War for religion is not efficient.

I was a fan of Stonehedge over GL. I was.

 

[beetle]

I can't bypass getting a religion as it bugs me how much I'll miss out if I don't get one.

I could not empathize more. I tend to try for Pyramids more often than Stonehenge. It is also good the GE points and neglected by AI civs. Those two are the only early wonders I can ever seem to get (I also play at immortal level). If I have no luck with religious CS or ruins, and not playing a civ with a faith generating UA, then I will go for the henge over the mids.

I'm thinking of changing my strategy to liven things up a bit, so can anyone convince me to do so by pointing out all that I'm missing by always focusing on an early wonder?

I think building one early wonder is more than justified! I would recommend changing things up a bit, especially if you get lucky with CS or ruins.

 

[Wodan]

Try this strategy: avoid faith buildings and yes Stonehenge until midgame. Then, when you start to get religions spreading to your cities, go nuts on getting faith income.

Why do this? Because you can build all the faith buildings, spreading first one and then another religion to each city. No longer do you have to settle for just one, you can get Pagodas and Cathedrals and Monasteries and Mosques in all your cities.

Takes a little micromanagement, but the payoff is well worth it. And, it allows you to focus your early game on other things, such as getting the Great Library or spawning settlers.

 

[beetle]

Try this strategy: avoid faith buildings and yes Stonehenge until midgame. Then, when you start to get religions spreading to your cities, go nuts on getting faith income.

If you don’t found a religion, doesn’t that mean that you can’t use faith to purchase GP?

Sounds interesting though...

 

[Justice1337]

Relating to the Great Engineer point, I was a fan in Civ IV of getting Ancient Wonders for Engineers to use on future wonders, but that was when GP made sense. In Civ V, I found myself liking the Engineers, then using them to rush Porcelain Tower and Leaning Tower of Pisa. Basically increasing the counter 2x to net one useful Scientist. The 300 GPP for the next one relative to the 100 + 200 for the first 2 makes this an utter waste of Hammers.

So in Civ V, I avoid accumulation of GP points unless they are of the type I am actively slotting specialists for. That means Scientists with all civs other than Venice.

Try this strategy: avoid faith buildings and yes Stonehenge until midgame. Then, when you start to get religions spreading to your cities, go nuts on getting faith income.

Why do this? Because you can build all the faith buildings, spreading first one and then another religion to each city. No longer do you have to settle for just one, you can get Pagodas and Cathedrals and Monasteries and Mosques in all your cities.

Takes a little micromanagement, but the payoff is well worth it. And, it allows you to focus your early game on other things, such as getting the Great Library or spawning settlers.

I actually played a game once as Indonesia where I did exactly this. Well, I actually set out to play my own Religion, and managed to found one with Goddess of Festivals. When I was beaten to Monasteries though, I threw my hands up and tabled the game for a while. Then, I returned to it with the intent of seeing what I could do with the Candi anyway, and I was really impressed. I opened Piety late, then saw huge mileage out of the double-stacked Pantheon beliefs, and had something like 8 FPT from the Candi, 6 Tourism from the Holy Sites reformation. All you need is 1 turn as one majority religion, then the a-hole AI flips it back anyway. If I were to do it again, I would pick up the Interfaith Dialogue + Holy Order combo on top of what I had.

Long story short, founding your very own, custom-picked religion is overrated, and overall FPT in Medieval/Renaissance is much better. Indonesia made me realize that in just about every game I had 3-4 religions represented per city, and that a lot of the time on Immo/Deity it is pointless to fight too hard for your Founder (I had chosen Tithe). I have been wanting to do this same thing with Austria/Venice, since you can pick up a city state on the map for its religion and spread at will. Definitely something to look at to build your FPT during Renaissance for the purpose of Industrial Era GP's.

 

[Koiranputki]

If you don’t found a religion, doesn’t that mean that you can’t use faith to purchase GP?

Sounds interesting though...

You just have to have a religion in a city to purchase GPs...doesn't have to be your very own religion...

 

[Justice1337]

You just have to have a religion in a city to purchase GPs...doesn't have to be your very own religion...

Yes, it's the thing that gives you the ability to buy GP that matters. If your civ has unlocked an SP tree, then you can buy a GP of that type in any city. And if your Civ picked up the To the Glory of God reformation belief, you just need to buy in a city that has your religion.

 

[beetle]

Thanks! So, if I don’t found a religion, is the only thing I lose out on is a founder belief? (And those tend to be of pretty marginal benefit with all the AI missionary/GP spam.)

 

[Browd]

You lose founder belief and whatever you would have chosen as your follower beliefs. If the AI spreads a religion to you, you get whatever pantheon and follower beliefs come with that religion. May be useful, may be not so useful. Also, it may take a long time for the AI to spread its religion to you, or it may happen quickly.

Punch line is that if the AI has founded a couple of religions and one or both have beliefs that provide attractive bonuses and they are reasonably close by (so reasonably early spread to your cities is likely), it may make great sense to ditch plans for your own religion and divert hammers to focus on other aspects of your empire's development. All it takes is one of your cities to flip and you can buy a missionary or two to finish spreading your desired religion to the rest of your cities.

 

[beetle]

Thanks Browd!

Presumably, trading following beliefs is a net gain, so that is fine.

Losing founder beliefs is probably not a big deal at immortal/deity anyway: the benefits mostly come from your religion being widely spread outside your empire — and we are discussion scenarios where that isn’t happening. So that’s okay too.

If I don’t found a religion, will I still be offered CS quests to convert them?

If I don’t found a religion, and I have built temples in all my cities, can I still build the Grand Temple national wonder?

 

[Browd]

You will not get CS quests to convert them to someone else's religion. If you don't found a religion, no quests. You will still get faith-generation quests.

Grand Temple can only be built in a Holy City. No religion, no holy city. If you conquer someone else's Holy City, you can build the Grand Temple there.

 

[beetle]

Try this strategy: avoid faith buildings and yes Stonehenge until midgame. Then, when you start to get religions spreading to your cities, go nuts on getting faith income.

I still don’t think I am willing to give up founding a religion, because...

You will not get CS quests to convert them to someone else's religion. If you don't found a religion, no quests.

I am not willing to give those up I don’t think. After barb hunts, these are the easiest.

 

[GhostSalsa]

Losing founder beliefs is probably not a big deal at immortal/deity anyway: the benefits mostly come from your religion being widely spread outside your empire — and we are discussion scenarios where that isn’t happening. So that’s okay too.

Tithe is still strong even only in-empire.

Interfaith dialogue is very attractive in BNW since the AI is constantly flipping every city in reach to their religion, you never run out of places to farm another 80 beakers from. You get basically 1 turn of Medieval science per missionary out of this belief. Strong in mid-game. However, requires high early fpt to leverage, as obviously you want to already have your building purchases all done by then. Good with Maya / Indonesia / desert faith.

 

[beetle]

Tithe is still strong in-empire.

I respectfully disagree that it is accurate to characterize tithe as “strong” even only in-empire. It nets you 1 gpt per 4 pop. Relative to the turn, that is a negligible amount. OTOH, several founder beliefs get you nothing in-empire, and it is better than those!

Interfaith dialogue is very attractive...

I quite agree! Unfortunately, it seems to be available only half the time. Do you find that it is available more-often-than-not with a late-founded religion? Maybe I just have bad luck?

My second choice (for these sort of games) is Initiation Rites, as it has synergy with the CS conversion quests, and gets more early gold than Tithe (or Church Property). Unfortunately, Initiation Rites seems to be even more popular with the AI civs than Interfaith Dialog.

Also, I have to take the opportunity to thank Browd for his guide to Founder Beliefs!

 

[GhostSalsa]

I respectfully disagree that it is accurate to characterize tithe as “strong” even only in-empire. It nets you 1 gpt per 4 pop. Relative to the turn, that is a negligible amount. OTOH, several founder beliefs get you nothing in-empire, and it is better than those!



I quite agree! Unfortunately, it seems to be available only half the time. Do you find that it is available more-often-than-not with a late-founded religion? Maybe I just have bad luck?

Like I said Interfaith Dialogue is ideal for a civ with strong early faith generation, so usually you would be founding early, ie Maya or Ethiopia. I did snag it on my Indonesia game but that was with Piety and Earth pantheon - obviously it would be risky to bank on a Candi-IfD strat if you can't found early.

I observe my gpt from tithe as strong in most of my games, even though I almost never spread to other civs, but I tend to play wide-ish. The thing about tithe is you are still getting paid for dispersed believers in cities that don't follow your religion. This means AI missionary spam to CS's still leaves you with some income, but not AI prophet bombs, so obviously there's a lot of variation.

 

[Justice1337]

Thanks! So, if I don’t found a religion, is the only thing I lose out on is a founder belief? (And those tend to be of pretty marginal benefit with all the AI missionary/GP spam.)

Yeah, you won't get a Founder, an Enchancer or a Reformation if you don't found. But most Founders are not that hot. The best ones in G&K were Tithe and Ceremonial Burial. On Tithe, religion Gold was nerfed due to over-availability of it elsewhere. For CB, Happiness was nerfed via going Wide being nerfed, on top of it being nerfed by half directly. For enhancers, you don't need most of them if you don't have religion to spread, obviously. And finally for Reformations, you shouldn't have a problem founding if you opened Piety.

On top of that, Religion in this game is funny in that some beliefs apply to your religion, other beliefs and policies apply instead to your empire, while some of both apply in their own unique ways. All while not mentioning in the tooltip exactly how they work. And so yeah, I've found that beliefs that require your religion or followers are generally overrated due to the common assumption that early Missionaries plus a good passive-spread enhancer is enough to keep control. This mentality must come from lower difficulties on gamed starts, because in most of the games I've played, I've been Prophet bombed 2-3 times by each nearby Religion. After a while, I just bought one Inquisitor to sit on the Holy City and let the Follower beliefs come and go.

Since in the end, Follower beliefs that unlock Faith purchases are extremely good because they function to full effect even in a brief window. That's basically all the Religious buildings. Compare Pagodas to Religious Center, for example. Not that Pagodas isn't seen as the best ability, but the AI values Religious Center pretty high, I've noticed. Pagodas cost Faith, but they re-earn it. Also, followers like Divine Inspiration, Religious Community and Religious Art are underrated because they provide nearly all of their benefit even while restricted to your Holy City only. Then when you get a buliding Follower from an AI religion in a border city, you take advantage of that window to Faith-buy. I would even consider buying Missionaries of an AI's religion to accomplish this while I own my own, particularly for Mosques, Pagodas, and a Monastery in any city with Wine/Incense. You'll have earned the Faith back by Industrial where you start to buy GP's, and you don't need your own religion.

Founders and Enhancers are where I think most people go wrong, though. Initiation Rites and Interfaith Dialogue are the best on higher diffs, imo, because they don't depend on spread. For enhancers, I think RT and IP are not very good, while a lot of the community values them as the best. I prefer Holy Order or Messiah. In fact, I am pretty sure both Messiah and Reliquary function at 100% even if your Holy City gets wiped out. Messiah is my all-time favorite because I just plant Prophets, pick up the New Deal in Freedom Ideology, and hopefully have Glory of God or other good Faith dumps.

Reformation beliefs I have not been able to figure out fully. Some of them seem to apply to your empire, not your religion. Charitable Missions does not even seem to have anything to do with Religion, at all. But the best for most cases though, imo, is Glory of God, which at worst requires you to have at least one city of your Religion, a condition you can easily fulfill. In fact, you probably don't want to waste much Faith on active spread with this belief, if at all in BNW. Purchasing GP's seems to be one of the only VC-related uses for religion, in the end. It used to be useful just for building up empire size, but empire size is not as important in general with this X-pac.


Short version, steal all the Faith buildings you can, FPT >> Founder spread, and neither Stonehenge nor founding a religion yourself is necessary for the GP's you should be using your Faith on.

 

[beetle]

Interfaith Dialogue is ideal for a civ with strong early faith generation...

I think IfD works well anytime you can pick it up, as you don’t need strong faith generation to take advantage of it. If I am playing Maya or Ethiopia though, I would be strongly tempted to be more aggressive with my religion.

I observe my gpt from tithe as strong in most of my games, even though I almost never spread to other civs ... the thing about tithe is you are still getting paid for dispersed believers in cities that don't follow your religion.

Excellent point, I stand corrected. I didn’t consider that Tithe generates income even when your religion is not the majority for a city.