In Defense of Piety

[seancolorado]

I've seen a lot of people write off Piety, but I firmly believe it's just as viable a SP tree to open with even before Tradition, Liberty or Honor. I think because of the variables involved, people are turned off by it. But you shouldn't be. The benefits are not written out for you in an obvious way like Tradition and Liberty, but look under the covers and you will find they are just as strong:

Piety Opener

"Adopting Piety allows you to build Shrines and Temples in half the usual time. Unlocks building the Great Mosque of Djenne."

Founding a religion isn't always easy. Getting first pick, or one of the first picks, of your pantheon is even harder. The reduced cost for building shrines allows you to spend almost no time at all getting up your shrine. (Bonus tip: If there is a religious city-state within reasonable distance, do everything you can to get it on your side. Send trade routes to it. Clear out barb camps. You are pursuing a religion, so don't half-arse it.)

Organized Religion

"+1 Faith from Shrines and Temples."

Without a shadow of a doubt this is the first Social Policy you want to select from the Piety tree after opening it. Because you had just built your Shrine in almost no time, you begin your game rolling in +2 faith almost immediately. There are many culture related pantheons to help keep your culture the same pace as any other tree. There are many faith related ones to boost yourself towards a religion almost instantly. These are literally the same types of benefits you get from other trees, only with the ability to mix and match your pantheon, founder, follower and enhancer beliefs as needed. Sure, anyone can found a religion - but Organized Religion ensures you get the ripest fruits for the pickings.

Mandate of Heaven

20% discount on all purchases of religious units and buildings with Faith.

If you pick a Cathedral, Mosque or Pagoda this is a huge SP. It also synergizes amazingly well with Reformation Beliefs (see later on).

Theocracy

Temples increase a city's Gold output by 10%. Holy Sites provide +3 Gold.

Tradition has Monarchy and Oligarchy. Liberty has Representation. Honor has the Honor Closer and Professional Army. Piety's big money-saving social policy is Theocracy. Planting your Great Prophet is now very viable. Not just for the extra faith but for the early gold and later on culture from the closer.

Religious Tolerance

Cities with a majority religion also get the Pantheon belief bonus of the second most popular religion.

This can sometimes be quite strong, sometimes not as much. In any case, it's always helpful. With the trade routes exerting religious pressure, you don't have to actively worry about gaining the benefits of this SP. But in any case, this is just the set-up for the real hero of the Piety tree...

Reformation

If you founded a religion, gain a bonus Reformation belief.

This is why pursuing and sticking with Piety is so viable. Sure, you can use it as a dipping tree. But you lose out on getting the best SP of the entire tree. I'll let the text speak for itself:

• Charitable Missions: Influence boosts from Gold gifts to City-States are increased by 30%.
• Evangelism: Missionaries' Spread Religion action erodes existing pressure from other religions.
• Heathen Conversion: Missionaries convert adjacent barbarians to this civilization.
• Jesuit Education: May build Universities, Public Schools, and Research Labs with Faith.
• Religious Fervor: Use Faith to purchase Industrial Era (and later) land units.
• Sacred Sites: All buildings purchased with Faith provide 2 Tourism each.
• The Glory of God: Use Faith to purchase any type of Great Person starting in Industrial Era.
• Underground Sect: Your spies exert religious pressure on the cities they occupy.
• Unity of the Prophets: Inquisitors and Prophets reduce this religion's presence by half (instead of eliminating it).

Here, you have a variety of diverse beliefs to fit your playstyle - from tourism bonuses to diplomatic ones. But my personal favorites are Jesuit Education and The Glory of God. Very, very powerful beliefs and worth pursuing aggressively. With Jesuit Education, I bought 6 research labs at once as soon as I unlocked it. Let that sink in for a second. And The Glory of God...I mean, do I need to even explain it? If you miss out on getting Great Engineers or Great Generals from Tradition or Honor, you get them anyway just from Piety.

Piety Closer

Adopting all Policies in the Piety tree causes a Great Prophet to appear and Holy Sites provide +3 Culture.

Send him out to convert other religions, or plant him for a solid faith, gold, and culture bonus. (Or enhance your religion, but you should have done that by now...)

----------------


So what are your thoughts? What are your experiences using Piety in previous playthroughs? Which civs did you use? Still disagree? Would love to hear any and all of that.

 

[MadHaxxor]

I agree, I have a nice strategy with Poland where I get a ton of faith per turn and have 2 buildings for my religion. What I do is settle a new city, immediately put a holy site there (because great prophets are very common with all the faith you should be generating) for the easy culture and of course, more faith. Then I spread the religion with my missionary, then buy the 2 buildings and gain 4 tourism thanks to my reformation belief. This allows you to gain insane tourism levels just for building a new city. I'm also often able to put a great artist in the cathedral's slot as soon as the city is built. This makes your new cities gobble up all those tiles nearby

 

[pilot00]

I wouldn't say I prefer it to tradition as a start but I complete the tree as in between consistently.

 

[Evie94]

play a Piety start with the Byzantines. no need to defend Piety, its perfectly capable of it all by itself

 

[ToodleElNoodos]

Found this useful for Wide approach: Feed the World with Piety opener makes growing new cities easier. Since you can open Piety and easily obtain a religion, Shrines are faster than Granaries. Doesn't really kick-in till later, but building a Shrine with +1 food in 15 turns instead of the granary in 30 is great!

 

[SheckyS]

I'm an expansionist - which is probably just a holdover from Civ IV. So I love the Liberty tree with it's free settler and worker.

But you've convinced me that it might be fun and very interesting to try Piety first and see how it goes.

 

[Antarion]

I've seen a lot of people write off Piety, but I firmly believe it's just as viable a SP tree to open with even before Tradition, Liberty or Honor. I think because of the variables involved, people are turned off by it. But you shouldn't be. The benefits are not written out for you in an obvious way like Tradition and Liberty, but look under the covers and you will find they are just as strong:


So what are your thoughts? What are your experiences using Piety in previous playthroughs? Which civs did you use? Still disagree? Would love to hear any and all of that.

i mostly agree except with one thing. the opener as stand alone (without another tree imho sucks). if u want the fastest piety opening u would need monument, pottery and then build ur shrine. but in most situations i rather open liberty or tradition and after i settled my 2nd city i go for piety.7

but now im trying a combo for arabia with piety first and liberty after this. my understanding of abusing the doubled pressure from trade routes make me rethink to settle my holy city in the capital, but rather to the coast for later sea trade routes!

and it works great!

 

[Gyra Solune]

I think people dismiss Piety mostly because it provides little up-front bonuses. Everything in the tree has to do with generation of Faith and boosts to Faith buildings, which, on their own, do nothing for the growth and development of your cities. However, religion is very very powerful if you get it up and running quickly, especially given how much you can boost your culture. Crank up the pink with your religion, plant several Great Prophets, get your Faith-bought buildings rolling (Cathedrals especially), and you'll be pumping out so much culture that you could afford to fill out both Piety and Tradition/Liberty in the same time anyone else could manage to just do the former.

Obviously, it requires a bit of investment, and takes a little bit more time to kick in, but if you really invest and make sacrifices on other shiny early-game things, and you can get some crazy bonuses from your religion. This is definitely the tree that, above all, promotes you churning out Settlers manually from the get-go. Cheaper Shrines with 2 faith (3 as the Maya, asdf the Maya would make such good use of this especially considering it's no longer mutually exclusive with Rationalism) means you can kick out Missionaries and Great Prophets like it's nobody's business, which are extremely powerful around the Classical and Medieval eras.

 

[seancolorado]

play a Piety start with the Byzantines. no need to defend Piety, its perfectly capable of it all by itself

Indeed. Byzantium and Piety are a match made in heaven

I was thinking about it and the Maya actually gain big time for choosing Piety because of the Pyramid +2 science and +2 faith. The half time to build shrines allows you to research techs so much faster than your average civ early on, then the +1 faith from Organized Religion just adds more fuel to what is already arguably the best UB in the game

Indonesia also synergizes, somewhat. Since your cities are already fostering the bringing in of foreign religions, the Religious Tolerance policy is a good thing. And having a lot of excess faith from Candis gives you a variety of options in purchasing various units and buildings.

And then there is Arabia and Ships of the Desert who can find a lot to work with from Piety and potentially gaining more bang for their buck from the founder and follower beliefs due to more effective religion spreading. Just don't miss out on Desert Folklore!

 

[Carl5872]

You've convinced me of its power; however, how do you get it going.

You start the game with 1 culture per turn. Building a monument brings that to 3. Then what? While you can get culture from a pantheon belief, I believe the strongest are desert folklore/the tundra faith per tile ones. These won't give you any culture, so the social policies will come slowly right?

(The tone of this post is meant to be with a desire to learn and not mocking/doubting)

 

[mabalogna]

I've been trying to readjust my ICS build style since there is no more river/coast gold to pay for buildings, I may try and work a Liberty/Piety build, and use Piety as a unit of production to buy science buildings the way i used to use gold when i went Liberty-Commerce-Big Ben

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

You've convinced me of its power; however, how do you get it going.

You start the game with 1 culture per turn. Building a monument brings that to 3. Then what? While you can get culture from a pantheon belief, I believe the strongest are desert folklore/the tundra faith per tile ones. These won't give you any culture, so the social policies will come slowly right?

(The tone of this post is meant to be with a desire to learn and not mocking/doubting)

Indeed. I have found that trying to go Piety right of the bat tends to peter out because you can't get enough culture to keep getting policies. Civs who can acquire culture through other means can push through the tree better than others. Or hit the Tradition or Liberty openers prior to starting it.

 

[seancolorado]

You've convinced me of its power; however, how do you get it going.

You start the game with 1 culture per turn. Building a monument brings that to 3. Then what? While you can get culture from a pantheon belief, I believe the strongest are desert folklore/the tundra faith per tile ones. These won't give you any culture, so the social policies will come slowly right?

I find that the culture pantheons are just as strong as the faith ones. Religious Idols c5culture:, from gold, silver) and Sacred Path c5culture: from jungles) in particular keep you at the same culture pace as the other trees, I've found in my experiences.

But if not just go for the faith based pantheons and skyrocket yourself towards founding a religion quickly. Then as a Follower belief choose Cathedrals, Mosques or Pagodas (or Monasteries which is crazy powerful when combined with Goddess of Festivals pantheon). You get culture a little bit later but because of Piety's Mandate of Heaven you can realistically buy these buildings in your cities very quickly which helps you catch up. (And then planting those Great Prophets earns you that +3 culture if you need more still.)

Also, the tree largely revolves around the Reformation Belief which does a good job at justifying choosing Piety. If you dip into other trees first, you lessen your chances significantly at founding a religion and you can't utilize the Reformation beliefs if you don't have your own religion. That is why I believe this particular policy carries more weight than your average one and is the light at the end of the tunnel for Piety.

 

[Kintara]

You've convinced me of its power; however, how do you get it going.

You start the game with 1 culture per turn. Building a monument brings that to 3. Then what? While you can get culture from a pantheon belief, I believe the strongest are desert folklore/the tundra faith per tile ones. These won't give you any culture, so the social policies will come slowly right?

(The tone of this post is meant to be with a desire to learn and not mocking/doubting)

Well, firstly, there's nothing wrong with Sacred Path if you have jungle to exploit. But if you do have Dance of the Aurora or Desert Folklore, then the only thing you need to turn that into culture are Pagodas or Choral Music or something along those lines. It won't take long if you're going Piety to farm up those Prophets. Also, you can complement less culturally-focused religion with an early wonder like the Parthenon or Oracle. Even a Pantheon belief like Monument to the Gods can be put to use in its own way.

That all being said, sometimes you just need to stop pursuing Piety if you don't think you can keep up with the AI. Sometimes there's just too much religious nonsense going on, and all the good choices for your start are being gobbled up.

 

[DerCivMeister]

I honestly see the most potential in opening piety with the Mayans. Half speed pyramids sound good to me. However, if I was playing the Byzantines, I would open tradition then aristocracy for stonehenge, then go into piety.

 

[joncnunn]

I honestly see the most potential in opening piety with the Mayans. Half speed pyramids sound good to me. However, if I was playing the Byzantines, I would open tradition then aristocracy for stonehenge, then go into piety.

The main reason I would start with Piety (if I'm going to open the tree at all) is that Shrines are available to be built with Pottery, which would probably be the first tech you'd research even if Shrines weren't present between allowing a Granary and being the prereq to Writing.
I hate the idea of wasting any part of a social policy benefit, and so would open Monument (speed up that first policy), then something else, and then start the Shrine the moment Piety is opened. I would then pick the increased faith from Shrines & Temples next to double that faith output, especially if the plan is to choose a faith enhancing pantheon.

 

[Bagi]

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.

 

[Montezumas Hat]

I figured it'd be necessary to combine Piety and Trad/Lib, but I'm not sure anymore. Whenever I do that, I hit Piety and Organized religion first, then fill out the second tree. But by the time I'm filling out the rest of Piety, it takes so long to get policies it hardly seems worth it. That's why I've been trying for more culture pantheons/beliefs. I usually aim for the culture/faith for gold/wine, or culture for pastures/plantations/jungle, but culture from shrines works well too, and makes up for the culture from the lib opener. Add culture from shrines for your follower and you have two quick easy culture buildings that also give you faith.

That's actually my favorite way to play Byzantium - Culture from shrines as the pantheon, fill out the two follower beliefs and the extra belief with culture from temples and happiness from both. Each city will have 5 faith, 3 culture and 3 happiness once it hits five followers, and you still have more bonuses from your founder/enhancer/reformation.

 

[Nocturnal]

i big down for me in Civ V is that a holy city is always a capital, unless you nagged their original capital from them i guess (not proved it)

 

[Nocturnal]

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