Is the an argument for Choral Music or Jesuit Education over Work Ethics?

Civ_MD

Chieftain
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When I play any game utilizing any form of religion, I tend to choose Work Ethics almost exclusively as long as I have 4+ adjancency in my holy sites. All of my turn 200-ish Culture/Science victories use Work Ethics. But is there any situation where Choral Music ro Jesuit Education will be more beneficial? If you have low adjacency, would Choral Music be a lot better for cultural victory?
 
Yes, in a few cases.
That being said, Work Ethic (given a +4 base adjacency or more, as you say) is hard to beat out, so the cases aren't that numerous.
My answer will assume play on Deity:

Choral Music is often picked long before the player gets to pick his/her religious beliefs, and thus Choral Music is most often not a viable strategy to build around anyway.
Civilizations that can pick up Choral Music early is for example Russiam but in that case, why would you, when Work Ethic tundra is available?
Byzantium and Japan can also get a religion up and running somewhat early, and in those cases you might want to pick it up, granted there is no possibility to grab high adjacency holy sites and you get to pick first or second.

As for Jesuit Education, which warrants a whole different consideration.
Do you play a civ that can gain tons of faith, even without focusing on holy sites?
In that case, Jesuit Education might be a good pick, in some cases better than Work Ethic.
Spain, Bull Moose Teddy (with decent appeal start and Earth Goddess pantheon, even if nerfed) and Ethiopia are such civs that can swim in faith without even trying.
That being said, you want to be gaining a lot of faith for Jesuit Education to pay off, because there are just so many things to spend faith on to begin with, all competing with the Campus/TS buildings you want to buy.
Examples: Civilian units from Monumentality, faith buying districts with Moksha, military units with GMC, great people, missionaries and apostles, naturalists and rock bands.
If you think you will still have surplus faith even considering those expenses, Jesuit Education is an excellent pick, as it essentially lets you skip holy sites (you dont need them for the faith anyway) and build campuses/TS instead, which you can instantly fill with the most modern buildings.
Spain is one of my favourite picks here for Jesuit Education, because their Mission (and trade routes) is so good to spam anyway, with the added bonus of a metric ton of faith on top of the strong base yields.
Playing as Spain, you can essentially just get 1-2 holy sites for your early religion, and then forget about building them as you paint every corner of the map with Missions and rake in the faith needed to fuel your buying spree (and if you do build holy sites, the adjacency is irrelevant as you want to surround them with Missions anyway for that sweet science bonus).
 
I think the Oberinspektor said pretty much all there is to say. I agree that if you can get a pantheon that gives you good Holy Sites adjacency, or alternatively just starts near a lot of mountains, there's not much arguing that Work Ethic is best. Jesuit Education looks good on paper, but there are just too many faith sinks to make it viable in almost all situations. As for Choral Music? Yeah, good luck with getting that on higher difficulties.
 
I haven't tried it with new-Spain, but Jesuit Education with Ethiopia can be fun, because you can get just ludicrous amounts of faith without putting much into religion beyond a handful of holy sites. So if you're going for a cultural victory, you can use monumentality to spam settlers, build/buy/chop theater squares everywhere, and then just buy up all the buildings with faith.
 
Production is easy to get while cuture has few avenues. Also the culture is worth more per point than the production in the scale of things early..
You also have to consider that if you alrady have a fair amount of production, a little bit more does not really rocket you forward.
Later in the game both are meaningless, early in the game both are useful.
There are really a few considerations
1. Will you benefit significantly from a culture boost
2. Are you in a production poor area. Not only will the production help a lot more but the building of faith buildings becomes overbearing
3. Just what are your chances of getting Choral music
 
In civ 5, Jesuit Education used to be a lot better than in civ 6 because there used to be more ways to build faith with pantheons than without the need for a religious district. For example, in civ 5 there used to be stone circles pantheon spread to different cities with quarries that wouldn't always need to have a religious district and you would still make a lot more faith that way than you do in civ 6 because in civ 6 pantheons dont spread as fast as it does in civ 5. Thus, Jesuit Education had more faith in the coffers in civ 5 than in civ 6 after a given time to be able to purchase the educational buildings. Other cities need focus on other things too like defense, overall science, culture, or finance even and it's difficult to use Jesuit Education more in civ 6 because even though you can build religious districts in every city to pump out every ounce of faith, you won't be able to focus on other overall things that your overall civilization will need from the different cities. The only good thing about the new strategy in Jesuit Education is that it allows the purchase for cultural buildings. However, I usually still end up building universities and research labs sometimes when I don't have the necessary faith particularly when there is a technology competition with other civilizations. The faith with Jesuit education doesn't add up now like it used to and with the new cultural purchases I estimate it won't add up either.

Work ethics used to be less beneficial in civ 5 but now, work ethics in civ 6 is a lot more beneficial because it doesn't have to be built in every city and you can have that one city build units or whatever it is you need and if it is, you can build up the research buildings faster as long as everything else overall.
 
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ecause in civ 6 you have to have a religious district in that city to get the faith from whichever pantheon you have...


That's not accurate. For something like stone circles you absolutely don't need a religious district in order to get the faith, and in fact, I find it generally only makes sense to take a faith-producing pantheon (stone circles, earth goddess, fire goddess, etc.) if I'm not planning on building many holy sites, so that I still have a reliable way of generating faith for monumentality.
 
They've given many ways to spend your faith, so Jesuit Education really only shifts how you can spend it, it doesn't even give you a discount on it. And I find that if I want to actually get something out of it, I need to dedicate a bunch of faith to actually spreading and maintaining my religion, since the AI is often super aggressive. So I just find it doesn't make sense to put all that effort into the religious game when all I get in return is the right to spend my faith on something else. I'd rather just not worry about spreading my religion, let the AI do that for me, and use all that faith on great people or units or rock bands or whatever.

At least Choral Music or Feed the World or Work Ethic, I can literally do the math by thinking that's it's basically turning faith to spread my religion into culture or food or production or whatever belief I choose. As for which of them is best, to me it comes down to a few main factors:
1. Are my holy sites gaining yields from high adjacency, or just from general bonuses? Like, do I have a ton of super holy sites, or am I in a Desert Folklore game where I can cram a +5 holy site in every city? Or am I just forced to use "normal" holy sites, and mostly end up with lower adjacencies? Work Ethic scales on adjacency, whereas Choral Music scales on number of locations. It's the "Wide vs Tall" debate of districts, essentially
2. What am I gaining otherwise? Like, if I am playing as the Khmer, where I'm already getting culture from my Prasat, then I don't overly need the culture from Choral Music. But if I'm playing a religion game where I build more holy sites, then that takes up district slots, so if I don't have another reliable source of culture, Choral Music can be a game saver.

Now, sometimes it doesn't hurt to double down. Like if I ended up with a religion as Germany, Work Ethic + Germany can lead to some superhuman production which can be converted to other uses. But as mentioned above by people as well, more often than not, Choral Music goes first to the AI, so you almost need an ideal setup to actually get that choice. Although occasionally, I wonder if it would be worth it to buy missionaries to spread an AI's Choral Music religion through my cities. Generally speaking, the various follower beliefs probably mean more to me than the special founder belief they get from the religion. Usually I don't so that I don't accidentally help them to a religious victory, but there's definitely a few times where I'm cheering on one side of those religious battles going about in my lands.
 
When I play any game utilizing any form of religion, I tend to choose Work Ethics almost exclusively as long as I have 4+ adjancency in my holy sites. All of my turn 200-ish Culture/Science victories use Work Ethics. But is there any situation where Choral Music ro Jesuit Education will be more beneficial? If you have low adjacency, would Choral Music be a lot better for cultural victory?
I almost always go for Reliquaries. For domination and scientific victories I don't even attempt to found a religion. For cultural victories the extra tourism is wonderful. For religious victories the extra faith is wonderful. BUT, it's really necessary to get either Suzerain of Yerevan or Mont St Michel, so you can guarantee to pack your temples (and palace, and National History Museum) with relics.
 
That's not accurate. For something like stone circles you absolutely don't need a religious district in order to get the faith, and in fact, I find it generally only makes sense to take a faith-producing pantheon (stone circles, earth goddess, fire goddess, etc.) if I'm not planning on building many holy sites, so that I still have a reliable way of generating faith for monumentality.
I agree, the stone circles pantheon still works well as it does in civ 5 but the other pantheons that used to spoil you with faith like desert folklore or dance of the aurora really did give you that much more faith to build the research and the cultural buildings a lot faster than they do now.
If these still existed, how much powerful dance of the aurora and desert folklore would've been for cultural victory! But as for civ 6, this is where the need of having a holy site comes in. The bonuses have been reduced to only adjacent desert tiles for desert folklore to the holy site and adjacent tundra to the holy site for dance of the aurora.
 
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My preferred tactic is Tithe + Itinerant Preachers. Then it is very much worth it to spread my religion, as one soon generates insane amounts of gold.
 
Jesuit Education can be great with Civs who have a ton of faith yields.

- Take Mali for example, has a production penalty for buildings and units already. So while desert folklore and work ethic is still great, it’s still weaker than it would be for another Civ. Once you place Mali’s unique commercial district you get a faith discount, so now all those buildings are cheaper to purchase as well. So basically all you have to do is place the district, which has no production penalties and then purchase the buildings instantly.

- Khmer as well. Insane levels of faith if you can get aqueducts in every city.

Those would be the main 2 civs I can think of when you can actively get that as a first pick. Other civs I’d only get Jesuit Education if Work Ethic and Choral Music are gone. The thing about Work Ethic is that it does require good adjacencies, if you don’t have a Civ that lets you get that or you can’t get a Pantheon that gives that there’s no point and Choral is often the better choice.

- Take Arabia for example, if you miss out on Desert Folklore definitely get Choral. As you’ll likely want a holy site in nearly every city for the modifiers. That’ll give every city an extra 6 culture, which means you can basically skip theatre districts entirely and focus on science/domination.
 
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