Is it ever ok to not found a religion?

I do not bother with a religions since BNW unless I just feel like playing with the religion mechanic. Letting a neighbor give you their religion improves relations with them nicely, and spares you resources constructing faith buildings. You can even intentionally trade with somebody who has a religion you like just to get that religion and then go back to trading with people normally (which spreads your chosen religion).

Venice is very cool when you do that with someone else's religion.
 
In my opinion, no. Too many bonuses to loose out on, and city state missions. Sharing the same faith as a nearby civ is also good for your relationship.
Unless you are trying to get the achievement with Venice.
 
I just noticed last night that you can actually buy a faith building of the religion in your city.

For example: I had no religion, Celts had Christianity. When their religion spread I was able to faith buy a monastery. I'm eager to see if I can buy other buildings when my game progresses. The Celts seem to have died off some how :)
 
Unless you start near a faith natural, religion isn't free. In my more aggressive domination-oriented games I often just ignore religion. Shrines/temples take hammers and gold maintenance, both of which can be used on more military.

Otherwise I will attempt to get one if the opportunity presents itself. Even if you only half-ass it, it can be a long time before the AI overtakes your religion on your core cities. Unless of course you spawn next to Pacal or al-Rashid and they spam you with a billion prophets and missionaries.
 
IMHO, not founding a religion is a viable strategy for Indonesia to maximize Candi bonuses.
It's also worth if you want very focused early game without time for building shrines. Huns are good example.

For other cases religion looks like a must.

Candis are more powerful if you have your own religion imo. Lets say Jakarta is your holy city and you build a candi there, you are already making 4 faith per turn. Once you start forming sea trade routes to faraway civs of different religion, the pressure is usually enough to give 1-2 followers, and +2 faith for every unique religion this way. Of course you can also choose to make a different city your candi trade hub, I'm assuming you get followers even faster when the holy city pressure isn't factored in.

Another reason to form a religion is that you will be getting so much faith that a reformation belief to spend it is pretty much necessary, the one for GP is my favorite. This means filling the piety tree is essential.
 
In my game, I closed Piety but failed to found a religion. Having a Founder's bonus would have been nice, but I've been able to manipulate the religions of my cities allowing me to build the buildings of multiple religions in my cities. I'm churning out monster Faith that I now use to buy military units.

Without founding a religion, I feel like my empire has greater adaptability rather than being boxed in with single religion's bonuses. Let history show that while my people were bloodthirsty conquerors, they were extremely tolerant of different religions.
 
When I go for early domination wins, i don't bother with a religion unless I get a pantheon that works for me. If I have a desert start, like Persia.. I'll do desert folklore, then get the Buy units with faith belief, and just use faith as bonus units while I tear thru the AI. For non domination rush games, Relig is fairly important to me on diety..especially If I want to win something other than domination.. But when It looks like I can't win any other way, Killing off the leading tech/culture civ always helps.
 
Most games I find maintaining my own religion in my cities and spreading it is not competitive in a fun way, but merely tiresome.

I find Venice in particular more enjoyable if I don't bother with it. My puppets tend to be spread across the map and isolated within other people's religions. I can trade purely for money and ignore what pressure is going where, and not give a toss about spammed missionaries/prophets constantly swimming around the map zapping everyone.

With 18 trade routes you can have so much money, food and production there's little benefit to religious beliefs. The other civs constantly missionary-battled over my cities; my capital must have switched religion about 6 times. I accumulated enough faith via the puppets' religious buildings and some wonders to buy some great people and some pagodas/monasteries but I would not have missed the faith if I hadn't had it. I never even built a shrine.
 
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