In Defense of Piety

[cakes]

i like piety except that mandate of heaven and religious tolerance come at a time when i'm saving up for a great prophet by not buying anything with faith and no religion is powerful enough to reach my cities. i feel like i'm wasting two policies in the early game just to grab a good reformation policy next and i don't have the free worker or free cultural buildings to show for it. also the free great prophet tends to come after i've already enhanced my religion. it seems like a waste.

 

[SnowKomodo]

i like piety except that mandate of heaven and religious tolerance come at a time when i'm saving up for a great prophet by not buying anything with faith and no religion is powerful enough to reach my cities. i feel like i'm wasting two policies in the early game just to grab a good reformation policy next and i don't have the free worker or free cultural buildings to show for it. also the free great prophet tends to come after i've already enhanced my religion. it seems like a waste.

I won't argue with you on the first few points but for your last point, how is a free great prophet bad in any circumstance?

If anything, it's good that you've already enhanced your religion. That way you can use your great Prophet to either (1) Spread your religion and reap your founder/follower/enhancer beliefs or (2) Plant your Great Prophet and earn a tile that includes a very solid +3 gold and +3 culture from the Piety tree, among other yields

 

[RealHuhn]

It certainly can be powerful but I have a feeling that relying on Piety 100% is too dependant on luck.
Also, as others have mentioned, policy 3 and 4 are useless at the time you get them. A fast reformation belief is also fairly useless, especially those ones you mentioned.

So it might be a better idea to mix Piety with 2-3 policies from other trees, either after opener and organized religion, or before.

 

[King_Course]

I have done both, going full Piety, and going Organised Religion then Tradition. Both work, depending on the map. I had games where the Jesuit Reformation was taken apparantly, and they don't tell you that when someone chooses Reformation. Like when someone chose a Pantheon.

So if you want Piety for the Jesuit Education, I think you need to focus solely on Piety. This will of course, force you into pursuing culture one way or another. I even tried Honor and Raging Barbs, just to see what the added Barbs will do. But it don't work . Barbs dry out and you are stuck.

Maybe Montezuma could use Honor to race through the Piety tree and then show the world some holy warriors or something.

The Shoshone btw, are great for a Piety opening.

 

[Arrowstorm]

Can anybody tell me exactly why religion would be good enough to spent your SPs on it, losing on the benefits every other civ otherwise has? Religion can be nice and good, but I really just see it as a provider of small bonuses. Sure you can buy great people with it later on, but still.

 

[joncnunn]

Can anybody tell me exactly why religion would be good enough to spent your SPs on it, losing on the benefits every other civ otherwise has? Religion can be nice and good, but I really just see it as a provider of small bonuses. Sure you can buy great people with it later on, but still.

That's not even the most powerful reformation belief; the most powerful one is the Jesuit one allowing science buildings from faith. (Even ignoring Siam abuse)

It's very easy to get over 50 faith per turn with Piety.

And with Piety you'll get the religion much earlier than otherwise; giving you a much higher chance of getting whichever beliefs you wanted.

 

[Bandersnatching]

Can anybody tell me exactly why religion would be good enough to spent your SPs on it, losing on the benefits every other civ otherwise has? Religion can be nice and good, but I really just see it as a provider of small bonuses. Sure you can buy great people with it later on, but still.

Well, in a Byzantine game I have going right now, each of my non-capital cities is generating 8 tourism from religious buildings only, and this is at the start of the Renaissance. If I'm able to keep up the pace then I should win the game culturally before the modern or Information eras. This is all because of the Sacred Sites reformation belief (+2 Tourism from each faith-bought building, of which there are four), which allows you to generate massive quantities of Tourism before anybody has a real defense against it, and can win the game really early if you are lucky/do it right.

My biggest problem with Piety right now is that there are two policies that are in the way of the reformation belief and are dead for the first part of the game. Sure the payoff is worthwhile if you plan things accordingly, but it is definitely harder to go through the Piety tree as quickly as you can go through Tradition or Liberty even.

 

[Karmah]

Going full piety right from the start just seems counter-intuitive to me, simply because after the first 2 policies you get stuff that give no real advantage at first. You won't have temples yet (not that it would matter because 10% in the early game is literally nothing), you won't benefit from the reduced cost of religious stuff when you are probably still waiting for your prophet to spawn.

I do like to get the first 2 policies if I plan to play religious, but after that I always take some policies from tradition or liberty before I fill the piety tree.

I m pretty sure that s how an opening on piety is supposed to be played.

Well, in a Byzantine game I have going right now, each of my non-capital cities is generating 8 tourism from religious buildings only, and this is at the start of the Renaissance. If I'm able to keep up the pace then I should win the game culturally before the modern or Information eras. This is all because of the Sacred Sites reformation belief (+2 Tourism from each faith-bought building, of which there are four), which allows you to generate massive quantities of Tourism before anybody has a real defense against it, and can win the game really early if you are lucky/do it right.

My biggest problem with Piety right now is that there are two policies that are in the way of the reformation belief and are dead for the first part of the game. Sure the payoff is worthwhile if you plan things accordingly, but it is definitely harder to go through the Piety tree as quickly as you can go through Tradition or Liberty even.

Interresting strat, how many cities do you have before renaissance ?

 

[Adjuvant]

on Civ IV i went to war many times to only to get holy cities...

so on this point, if you capture a holy city on civ v you get their founder belief as well? havent checked this

No. You do not get opponent religion founder or enhance bonus.

Also, I guess AI generally found religions in their capitol because it's where the prophet spawns. You don't have to do this, though.

Move the initial prophet to a centrally-positioned city. This way the pressure radiates in all directions...

OR move it to your city closest to an opponent, if they have already founded religion. This way your holy city's pressure will contrast their pressure, and unless they have itinerant preachers, you can keep all your cities "in your backfield" under your religion more easily.

Another good reason to initially shift your holy city is if you think you'll have the opportunity to make the world religion yours by congress. Capitols generally have good food supply but not always great production. If you can found religion in a decent food/great production city and build up the wonders with stackable tourism (not just ww's but also nw's have tourism stacking bonus), holy city of world religion gets +50% tourism.

 

[Iry]

Ethiopia.
Build: Stele, Shrine, Stone Henge OR Great Library.
Social Policy: Adopt Tradition, Adopt Piety, then keep filling out Piety and ignore Tradition for the rest of the game. Grab Hanging Gardens at some point just to be snarky.
Very nice Culture/Faith opener.

 

[RealHuhn]

I actually prefer to mix Piety with Liberty. The more cities you have, the more powerful is your religious pressure and faith output.

Pagodas/Monasteries with +2 Tourism or Mosques with Jesuit should be priority.

Culture per turn is a problem though. The 5th or 6th policy usually takes forever to get. So I think a cultural pantheon is essential here. Or a faith pantheon combined with world church although that kicks in much later and you lose the gold bonus from Tithe.

A few other reformation beliefs sound interesting as well. Missionaries erode other religious pressure from cities could be very powerful combined with Mosque of Djenne and reduced faith costs for missionaries. I haven't tried that. Should be interesting for Byzantium with two follower beliefs.

 

[BorisTheCat]

I think you'd need a cultural pantheon to effectively start with piety.

I started an Arabia game yesterday (inspired by this thread) and decided to open with piety (against most of the advice given). I found it very tough to earn subsequent policies and in the end had to buy cultural city states with some help from patronage.

It has now paid off, I've got mosques+pagodas in every city and other religions beaten back to their holy cities. But it definitely felt suboptimal.

 

[Ulthwithian]

There are a couple of options when it comes to Piety-rush:

1) Choose a Culture Pantheon.

This is not my favored approach, but it can certainly get the job done. The most likely one you want is probably God of the Open Sky (+culture to Pastures), since those are production tiles. Sacred Path should be avoided.

2) Have another method of generating early culture.

2a) Dip into another tree. I actually prefer Honor, because this also settles Barbarians quite nicely. This will still probably slow down your rush through the tree, but not by a lot.

2b) Play a Civ that counteracts this issue. Obvious choices are the Aztecs (get Honor opener without choosing it), the Polish (beeline Theology, and get two free SPs to 'finish' Piety), and, ironically, the Songhai. With the Songhai, you get Culture and ersatz gold from your Temple which are half cost, which is a definite way of rushing the Piety tree.

The faster you get through the Piety tree, the more likely you are able to get the building beliefs, which promotes both Culture Victories (by biasing you towards Sacred Sites) and wide empires (both to put them in more cities and also for the happiness).

Also, something I would recommend to the Devs is to make Tithe one of if not the first Founding belief taken. I once got the sixth(!) religion in a game, and Tithe was still available. I was rather shocked.

 

[Thuellai]

I think you'd need a cultural pantheon to effectively start with piety.

I started an Arabia game yesterday (inspired by this thread) and decided to open with piety (against most of the advice given). I found it very tough to earn subsequent policies and in the end had to buy cultural city states with some help from patronage.

It has now paid off, I've got mosques+pagodas in every city and other religions beaten back to their holy cities. But it definitely felt suboptimal.

I also went opening piety with Arabia

Stuck with the desert faith pantheon though and got quite a bit done. The big thing is holy sites - there are enough sources of free great prophets (Hagia Sophia, finishing Piety) to easily get a religion finished, and then each holy site is worth 6 faith, 3 culture, 3 gold, and can get even bigger. By end-game I had entire fields of 5-culture generating holy sites that also funded my diplomatic victory. It helps that one of the Reformation beliefs makes Great Prophets even cheaper and stronger (which also helps spread the religion if you don't need any more holy sites - 1250 religion spread 4 times can clear out a lot of foreign religion)

Then pick up whichever culture trees get you the great people you want, watch the faith roll in from your enormous collection of religious monuments, and GP your way to victory. I went Commerce, and being able to buy Great Merchants combined with Big Ben and Mercantilism meant I could afford to buy just about anything I wanted.

 

[Bandersnatching]

I m pretty sure that s how an opening on piety is supposed to be played.



Interresting strat, how many cities do you have before renaissance ?

I have six cities (including Constantinople) with room for four or five more within my domain. I might have had more, but I placed a city too close to Carthage (which was then friendly to me) and have since gotten into two wars with them, which basically shot my economy and positive happiness. I definitely didn't keep up the momentum, but you can imagine how powerful my Tourism would be if I had.
Persia enhanced Zoroastrianism slightly after I founded my religion (but I did get Stonehenge!), taking Pagodas and Monasteries, and I had Mosques and Cathedrals; I converted my cities to Zoroastrianism and purchased its religious buildings with my massive faith output, then re-converted them back to my religion. It can be a wonderfully effective strategy, and you can do it peacefully if you don't settle too close to other civs.
I think that the next time I try this I'm going to take all Piety policies but Theocracy, then take the Aesthetics opener, then fill out Liberty, finish Piety, and work on Aesthetics until I can pick an Ideology.
I would highly recommend a culture pantheon. I chose Ancestor Worship (+1 from Shrines) and it worked really well to mitigate Piety's lack of early culture.

 

[Bad Wolf]

Piety is amazing now!

It used to be a tree you only took if you were pursuing a culture victory, because
a) Its bonuses were completely oriented towards a culture victory;
b) It prevented you from taking Rationalism, which is unacceptable (especially if you're playing against, for example, Korea), and
c) It unlocked around the same time you were trying to finish Liberty or Tradition, and by the time those are finished it's often time to start dipping into Patronage, Commerce and eventually Rationalism, all of which are more fun/useful than Piety.

By making it an ancient-era tree, making it TOTALLY focused on religion, and not causing it to block Rationalism, they have made it a totally viable opening strategy, for all the reasons the OP said. You can pursue a religion aggressively and get it early, and a religion in the early game is just as powerful as any SP, maybe even more so.

 

[tomtom5858]

A little strategy I use as the Maya:

Full ICS. Settle anywhere and everywhere.
Go full Piety. Policy order: Opener. Organized Religion. Mandate of Heaven. Religious Tolerance. Reformation. Theocracy and finisher.
Religion: Prime pantheon (faith pantheon if possible, otherwise something like MotG or God of Craftsmen). Ceremonial Burial. Pagodas. (Either Mosques or Asceticism). Religious Texts. Sacred Sites.

This lets you get an extraordinary amount of Tourism early in the game, letting you become Influential before other Civs are Exotic.

 

[msawchuk]

Piety is very powerful if you have a lot of culture to finish it early and still get policies from other trees. It is often a good idea to open tradition, then put policies into piety until you have four cities with monuments, the. Get legalism and finish piety. After that, go back to tradition, get asthetics if going for a culture victory, or get rationalism if you are in the renaissance era and don't want to finish tradition first. It can be a good idea to get world church as a founder belief to get culture for finishing tradition. Full piety with no mixing is also great if you have no other piety civs neaby and a good pantheon.

 

[Jatta Pake]

Is Piety still worth pursuing if all of the other civs have gobbled up all of the religions first?

 

[Bad Wolf]

Is Piety still worth pursuing if all of the other civs have gobbled up all of the religions first?

Probably not... frankly if you're not going to take it right away it doesn't seem like the best choice. There are better options available later.