Jake’s Guide to Religion

[SammyKhalifa]

You should also talk about the four faith producing natural wonders
Mt Sinai: 8
Sri Pada: 2 4 2
Uluru: 2 6
& Mt Fuji (not sure about gold value) 3 3 2

Sinai with Spain and "One with Nature" makes 24 faith!

 

[JakeIL7]

Sinai with Spain and "One with Nature" makes 24 faith!

The Spanish lottery can get a bit insane

 

[black_kitten]

I think you should include that you can also gain faith from the 6 religious city-states Geneva, Jerusalem, La Venta, Lhasa, Vatican City, and Wittenburg: they will provide a small amount of faith when you meet them for the first time and they give faith to their friends and allies.

 

[Tachii]

This is not true. I just finished my game as Sweden with a strategy of spreading my religion with GPs and then gifting them to CSs before using their last spread ability. I built the mosque of djenne as I thought it would compliment my strategy well but it apparently did not increase the number of spreads for GPs.

Odd, did you generate it at the city the Djenne is build? Because I have seen 5 spread use on GPs.

 

[JakeIL7]

I think you should include that you can also gain faith from the 6 religious city-states Geneva, Jerusalem, La Venta, Lhasa, Vatican City, and Wittenburg: they will provide a small amount of faith when you meet them for the first time and they give faith to their friends and allies.

Added to the first section. Thanks!

 

[black_kitten]

Yes, it scales the same way culture bonuses do.

 

[Question]

I find it difficult to generate faith in the mid-late game because the max you can get is +3 per city, not counting any special religious buildings you bought via faith. That's really not a lot.

 

[Syntax Error]

I find it difficult to generate faith in the mid-late game because the max you can get is +3 per city, not counting any special religious buildings you bought via faith. That's really not a lot.

This is why I don't like playing at high difficulties. In my last game (OCC Pangaea Korea, Immortal, still managed to win though, turn 310 science), the only reason why I managed to get a religion is through the Hagia Sophia prophet. It's too much of a hassle. So I guess, the only logical conclusion here is to NOT even try for a Religion at higher difficulties, and just let the Faith generated get used on Great People purchases from Industrial onwards.

 

[black213]

Odd, did you generate it at the city the Djenne is build? Because I have seen 5 spread use on GPs.

I only had 2 cities and all GPs were generated in my capital where the mosque was built as well.

 

[JakeIL7]

I find it difficult to generate faith in the mid-late game because the max you can get is +3 per city, not counting any special religious buildings you bought via faith. That's really not a lot.

True, unless you have a faith producing pantheon belief or a allied religious CS. If your cities are not in the right place for a belief or you missed the one you could use, you may have to go without.

 

[Crafty Bison]

You should also talk about the four faith producing natural wonders
Mt Sinai: 8
Sri Pada: 2 4 2
Uluru: 2 6
& Mt Fuji (not sure about gold value) 3 3 2

Remember Mt. Kailash: 6 faith, 2 happy.

Not only will Mt Sinai turn into 24 faith with spain and one with nature, but remeber also that the great barrier reef counts as 2 wonders, so one with nature acts on both. With spain that's 16 faith on top of the normal GBR stats (doubled). Not bad if you can find it.

Seems like a great pantheon for spain in particular. I've also found other beliefs that are ranked fairly low but have a particular civ that uses it very well. E.g. Sweden and cheaper + more effective GP production, which can then be spent on a CS after 3 uses.

 

[CaptainKapow]

When you get your second great prophet, let it go out and spread religion three times. Then bring it back to the holy city enhance your religion. (Untested)

Just tested this. You cannot use a GP to enhance a religion after it has spread at all. It's the same penalty for building holy sites.

 

[Cicerosaurus]

Hovering over the faith icon will tell you what the target amount of faith is to reach the first milestone in religion, establishing a Pantheon or a sort of pre-religion. This target amount is low but it will increase as other civilizations establish their own religions. If another civilization enhances their religion (the third step in religion development), no one else may establish a new pantheon.



.

Is this true? I queried it a while back as I noticed pantheons being founded after a religion was enhanced and I recall the answer was pantheons can be founded until all six religions are founded- even if one has been enhanced.

Perhaps another poster can confirm my thought- or tell me I am wrong

 

[Tachii]

It's only true to an extent.

Assuming it's standard 8 civs, civs are still able to form pantheons if there was less than 5 pantheons formed after the first civ to enhance their religion. The point is so the game will always hae 5 religion in a standard 8civ game.

 

[curwen]

at deity getting a religion can be from nearly impossible to nearly easy (for deity) seems it depends how many religious civ you got in the world .... some always generat faith and develop religion so if you have 8 of them ypou are screwed except for lucky start (faith natural wonder, cs religious state nearby with easy quests...) sometimes it seemls almost easy ... following roughly tabernacle 4 city start i can develop religion with non religious civ about 50% of the time .... with random civ everything else standard (sometime i check rampaging barb but else i keep everything standard).

as it is only 4 autel (and doing the task of the religious civ but i do as much task as i can because of luxury so it is not a bother for my style) i think it is worth it .... ok i generaly get a late pantheon (except for lucky ruins.... 30 faith is realy nice imo and the best one) but it is always worth it just get a buildibg (whatever is left) with the 1st GP , none will be left for the 2nd one believe me

byzantine is the worst at deity because sometimes you cannot get a religion even when focusing on it (beside survival as usual in deity start are usually really rough ...)

 

[Furycrab]

Good read, not sure what I think of the whole categories.

The founder beliefs I don't think I have much to add, the problem in them is mostly that some are obviously better than others and until they patch/buff/nerf/whatever any of them, you hit that nail on the head.

The pantheons are almost all situational. I would perhaps add a small category for pantheon beliefs you get when you don't want a religion but still get a pantheon. For example this is probably one of the only reasons I would get monuments of the gods or even a few other ones like faith healer, where they are really good early on, but once you start spreading it and giving it to other civs it becomes lackluster or useless. Perhaps there's a difficulty gap here since I play Deity mostly now, but Monuments of the gods is really kinda bad.

Other than that, I think you are perhaps overestimating the value of Building beliefs, or underestimating the value of some of the other follower beliefs. Perhaps because two of the follower beliefs you rate lowest, I actually rate very high. <.< More when I get the time to do a proper write up... Still trying to figure out the timings of religion, which are dramatically affected by both choice of Civ but mostly surrounding terrain and CS (which I kinda dislike)

 

[JakeIL7]

Please feel free to expound on your thoughts in how the beliefs are rated. I generally play at king/emperor and I know things change significantly at deity. I think I am going to have to rewrite the section on pantheon beliefs given the other comments in this thread. But that's why I took a crack at this...

 

[Furycrab]

Please feel free to expound on your thoughts in how the beliefs are rated. I generally play at king/emperor and I know things change significantly at deity. I think I am going to have to rewrite the section on pantheon beliefs given the other comments in this thread. But that's why I took a crack at this...

I don't mean to discourage. Monument of the gods is probably the only one that will have a deity player scratch his head. Since a 15% bonus to perhaps 1 wonder + your national college is laughable.

Asceticism is a huge linchpin in ICS strategies. Some people are of the opinion that religion happiness perhaps need to be re-looked at, but it's easier to get 3 followers in many cities than it is to say get 5 followers and a temple, or a Pagoda in every city without delaying teching... or even gardens. It's hard to describe how the value of many beliefs shifts when you up your game and drastically reduce the amount of time you spend in each age in order to keep up.

Messiah is really nice in culture games where you can use it to drop a good 2-3 extra holy sites if not more.

Interfaith dialogue... I believe there's an entire thread on how to use it to get maximum results and thus making it a possible key part in several strategies. It's also one of those things that gains value as you go up in difficulty where spreading and even getting a religion is much more difficult.


Personally, the hard part I find with rating the various beliefs is knowing that some changes are likely in the works because of ICS craziness and that faith and religion spread doesn't seem to work as you would think it should.

 

[Silverfuturist]

Thanks for putting this all in one spot.

My playing level: when I do singleplayer, I only play deity. But when I play I most always play multiplayer.

You said:

"Sacred Path - +1 from jungle tiles. This takes far too long to be effective for a pantheon belief."

I have tried this in starts where there is a lot of jungle. It liked it a lot. I don't chop jungle unless I absolutely have to - for example bananas stay jungle (I like the +2 sci later.) So I get several extra culture per turn right away, and blow through the first policy tree faster than France. Then plowing thru rationalism ASAP is very nice.

With universities my jungle tiles are supercharged... some games I get over 20 culture per turn from this pantheon. For jungle tiles I can work without removing the jungle, trading posts go up... combined with rationalism and this pantheon, my jungle tiles have crazy yields.

 

[JakeIL7]

Thanks for putting this all in one spot.

...

With universities my jungle tiles are supercharged... some games I get over 20 culture per turn from this pantheon. For jungle tiles I can work without removing the jungle, trading posts go up... combined with rationalism and this pantheon, my jungle tiles have crazy yields.

I totally agree with you on this. EVENTUALLY, this is a useful belief (with universities and trading posts). But it takes a long time to get to that point (usually early rennesance by the time the TPs and university are built). I am looking for more immediate benefits from my pantheon belief.