Keep The Lead With Religion - How?

[JohnYoga]

RE: My Sister Plays Pacal: Usually First With Religion - Now What?


Hello Folks,

My sister, brother-in-law, friend, and I play BNW cooperatively every week. We play on Quick, Immortal, Pangaea+, 12 Civs, 35 City States, Medieval start. My sister usually pulls ahead early (in points) when she is either the first, or, at worst, the second Civ to form a religion. She'll stay on top for about, oh, I'd say 20 turns...then she starts to fade away, and usually ends up in the middle of the pack...

I think the large part of the issue is that we are not sure what having a religion, especially well before most others, actually does for any victory condition in the game. In other words, if you have religion as your strong suit, and you get it before others, what victory conditions should you be gunning for? Any Pantheon/Religious Founder & Follower beliefs to be picked? What themes should you ride in your game to take advantage of the religion strength?

Thanks for any help!


Please inform.

Regards,

Marc

 

[salocin097]

Okay, points are not that important.

Religion can really help with any victory. It can provide tourism and help with Cultural Victory if you spread it into their territories

You can get the buy units with faith (pre-industrial) there is a reformation belief that does the same for post industrial units.

If you get it as the World Religion, you get extra delegates.

It can provide happiness (Pagodas, and some others). Also GpT.

Generally for Pantheon you want Faith bonuses, but as Pacal (Maya, right?) you can get some others as well. if you have an abundance of wine then go for that. Abundance of fishing reources, do that.

Check out the War Academy sub-topic for some religion guides.

 

[Acken]

RE: My Sister Plays Pacal: Usually First With Religion - Now What?


Hello Folks,

My sister, brother-in-law, friend, and I play BNW cooperatively every week. We play on Quick, Immortal, Pangaea+, 12 Civs, 35 City States, Medieval start. My sister usually pulls ahead early (in points) when she is either the first, or, at worst, the second Civ to form a religion. She'll stay on top for about, oh, I'd say 20 turns...then she starts to fade away, and usually ends up in the middle of the pack...

I think the large part of the issue is that we are not sure what having a religion, especially well before most others, actually does for any victory condition in the game. In other words, if you have religion as your strong suit, and you get it before others, what victory conditions should you be gunning for? Any Pantheon/Religious Founder & Follower beliefs to be picked? What themes should you ride in your game to take advantage of the religion strength?

Thanks for any help!


Please inform.

Regards,

Marc

Hi Marc,

First it's crucial to understand that Religion will never be enough to make you win a game by itself. Fundamentals of a good economic development make a way bigger difference between two players. You cannot rely entirely on it and is why Piety is considered by many one of the weakest tree in the game. Religion is used as a bonus, not a strategy (there is an exception to that rule though with sacred sites combined with city spam). What I say here applies even in a religion vs no religion situation so the bonus of having only the first religion vs say the third one is even smaller.

The logical conclusion to my first paragraph is to recognize that since having a strong religion is not a strategy by itself, a player should never go out of his/her way to try having a strong religion. It should either come naturally from the civ/map or should be only minimally invested. So to answer you, religion does not fit a particular victory. Beliefs however may vary depending on how you plan to win.

Now that this is clear let's talk about your questions.

A religion is usually used by players for some of these 3 reasons:
-Increase happiness (Pagodas, mosques, Religious Centers)
-Increase food/production (Religious community, Sword into plowshares, feed the world)
-Increase faith (Divine Inspiration)

These are for the most common follower beliefs. The founder beliefs there are two main ways of going at it:
-Increase gold (Tithe, Initiation Rites, Church Property)
-Increase faith (Pilgrimage)

These are the most common founder belief.

What is the benefit of founding first: The only benefit is having the choice on which beliefs your religion will get and start spreading sooner. Or if you pick a religious building like Pagodas you'll start accumulating them sooner.


So the next question should be: what should I pick if I'm first ? The answer depends on two things. How big your empire will be and how good is your faith. Religious buildings increase happiness and are therefore ideal for larger empires BUT require a good generation of faith. Food and production are ideal for small empires with little faith output and Divine Inspiration can help the late game if you built a lot of wonders.
For founder beliefs, gold is often better because pilgrimage only applies to foreign cities, requiring a huge initial faith production to be able to spread efficiently. Tithe is the best long term, Initiation rites is short term and Church property is in between. No matter what you pick, spreading is what matter for founder beliefs and there's no special advice there: good faith production due to good terrain or good civ will allow for more missionaries and therefore a bigger founder bonus.

The Pantheon is often easy to choose. Pick one that will give you a good faith per turn, if not available pick culture if not available pick food. This is also where you should already know if religion will be easy to get. A good faith pantheon will give you your religion. If you do not have access to this you will need a natural wonder and/or a civ with inherent faith bonuses like Maya or Ethiopia. If neither of those, just pick a culture/food pantheon and ignore religion.

P.S: A few additional beliefs:
Holy warriors also allows you to make units for faith. It can be interesting if you plan on early domination with a really strong faith generation.
Papal Primacy can be a consolation prize if you are blocked by a strong religious civ, spreading to CS quickly instead of attempting to convert player cities
Sacred Water and God King are also pantheon worth mentioning if you don't plan on a religion.

 

[tschukki]

Hey Marc, there is obviously nothing wrong in Acken's post, but since you play with humans i would like to put it into perspective. For me the above reads a littlebit too much like "Having a religion is nice, you can do a lot of things with it, but having first, second or no religion does not matter much". Most beliefs in the game are in fact marginal bonuses, but there are others. And there is one that stands out.

Among humans in multiplayer games there usually is a race for first religion, and often people are willing to invest quite an amount of resources to get it. The reason for that is mainly Tithe, the by far strongest belief in the game and the only one with the potential to be game breaking. A strong tithe can make you >100gpt in the late game. Combine that with a gold based strategy (commerce, autocracy), on that foundation you can often just go and kill everyone who is left.

Acken explains nicely what you can do with a religion, but he doesnt rank the beliefs. As i already said, Tithe stands out as a founder belief. The others are circumstancial. As a follower belief you will usually pick pagodas, the strongest religious building in the game. But 15% production is a close second to pagodas. In some rare cases where my hammers are poor and i assume i will have other sources for happiness, culture and faith generation i may prefer the production belief over pagodas. In general mosques are nice as is temple happiness. Some others are circumstancial (garden happiness for example plays well with indonesia), and most others arent worth much.

I will do something very lazy now. Some days ago i have written some lines about what to do when you go for a strong religion game in multiplayer. I'll just copy/paste it, sorry for not producing unique content, but you guys may find this helpful:

"When you want to and are in a position to play a strong religious game the most important thing is to push for faith early, to get first religion and to have your religion spread before others do, build up some pressure that the others will have to deal with. The earlier you accumulate faith the more valuable it is for making your religion dominant. That will be the basis for profiting from your tithe in the middle and late game. The perfect religion would be tithe, pagodas, 15% production and another belief of your choice.

A huge factor are your neighbors, their tendency to play for religion (in single player), their pantheons, the number of cs around you can convert and so on. When circumstances look like there is potential for a strong religious game (and when there is no one coming to kill you) i usually prioritize researching theology, getting borobudur and converting at least all my cities and all the cs around, if possible also another civ next to mine, preferrably the one with the maximum number of neighbors.

Priority cities for converting are those that are bordering to a civ that will have or already has a religion as well. A city state in your backland with noone bordering it can be converted later.

Watch out for military or other implications. Borobudur should be a priority, but sometimes an aggressive neighbor or a lack of hammers forces you to go without it.

What you need to think about is if and how far you will dip into piety. Choices are usually either only open it, take three beliefs (gold from temples+planted prophets) or go all the way to pick a reformation belief. When to do what, as usual, depends on the circumstances.

I do remember from my singleplayer days that having the maya in the game is also a factor that should be considered when playing a religious game. Pacal will always rush Theology, so at least on deity borobodur/hagia are ungettable with him in there." Edit: not sure about immortal.

 

[phillipwyllie]

...Medieval start. My sister usually pulls ahead early (in points) when she is either the first, or, at worst, the second Civ to form a religion. She'll stay on top for about, oh, I'd say 20 turns...then she starts to fade away, and usually ends up in the middle of the pack...

I suspect your sister spends too much effort on religion by prolonging the Renaissance/Industrial eras, possibly opening Piety and building the religious wonders too early. As the Maya and starting in the Medieval era she would get her long count from t0 so would pick a Great Prophet. Starting in the Medieval era is probably a detriment to her as she wont have time to develop her empire.
As mentioned before getting a good religion is not a bad thing but it won't win you the game.

 

[JohnYoga]

Thank you to all that have replied, especially tschukki and Acken. I have learned and I have conveyed your comments to my sister.

Regards,

Marc

 

[beetle]

OP is asking about cooperative MP here, and, reading between the lines, I infer he is trying to encourage one of four players who seems to be in something of a rut. I am guessing that the other three players are consistently at the top of the scoreboard, and they want everyone there.

Can folks provide insight into how rolling score works? My understanding is that it is some amalgamation of units+wonders+territory, but I am strictly SP myself, so I don’t pay it much attention. Assuming relative score is important to a player, and that winning is not much of a concern, what can a player do to most easily game the score? It may not be religion that is giving Pacal the lead early, maybe it is a GE for an early Wonder?

Founding early is fun, and no reason Pacal has to pass that up since 1st GP can be used as GPr every game. That said, in SP, Pacal planting a GS is probably the strongest move for the long term, but I am not sure that helps the score. Also not mentioned yet is that Tradition and Liberty are much stronger trees for the long game than Piety.

 

[stormtrooper412]

I cooperative MP? Hmmm, sounds like a two man job, one picks Genghis, other picks Attila and the map is cleared in ~100 turns on Standard

 

[nmp0098]

There was a good post on scoring in the Venice thread, quoted from another thread. You get points for religious beliefs and reforming, but those never increase and you get the most points from cities, population, and wonders. I would suggest using that early religion and faith to enable more cities, growth, and wonder building for the score to keep climbing. Like previously mentioned, faith in and of itself doesn't effect score at all; however faith can be very efficiently turned into things that do help your score grow.

 

[JohnYoga]

I notice that if you don't get/found a religion, you might as well start the game over. For instance, in our current game, my brother in law and I didn't get a chance to found a religion, and we are deep into the last two places. There has never been a time when any of us did not have a religion where, and won, let alone was in the top rankings...

Marc

 

[beetle]

I notice that if you don't get/found a religion, you might as well start the game over.

Not at all. Do you have the 12 AI all on the same team? If it is 4 v 1 v 1 v 1 ... etc., how do you lose?

 

[ToborajniN]

I notice that if you don't get/found a religion, you might as well start the game over.

I think that you are looking at this too one-dimensionally. For example, consider the following scenario:

You are playing as a non-faith generating Civ (no UB's or UA's that can grant you faith) and you have no 'proper' faith generating tiles nearby.

One of your neighbours is Pacal. Now Mr. Pacal likes his religion a whole lot. In fact, he manages to adopt a very early religion and adopts some really nice beliefs that at first makes you a bit frustrated since you were planning on taking those beliefs. However, seeing as you have no possible way of generating faith other than shrines and temples, and you know that the chances of you actually founding a religion this game are very low, you an abandon that cause all together.

Why? well, Pacal will very likely spread his religion to you and hence give you the follower beliefs for his religion. Yes, you won't get the bonus score for founding a religion, and you also won't get the founder belief. But is it really that bad? I'd say no, it's not. It means you can focus your efforts elsewhere.

Just as Acken mentioned in his rather brilliant post: Religion is a bonus. Not a strategy. A game will not depend on wether or not you have a strong religion. The AI's have certain biases and advantages as I'm sure you are aware, and they will be able to spread their religions at an incredible rate, meaning that unless you have a really strong faith start it can ofter be very hard to maintain 100% religious unity in your empire. You will have to work quite hard for it and all that work could be spent elsewhere.

Also, please try to stop using the score table as a measurement for how well a player is doing. It really isn't all that accurate. Being last on score doesn't neccessarily mean you really are doing the worst.

Anyhow: best of luck in your future games, I hope you have a lot of fun together.

 

[mbbcam]

It's worth remembering that there is no such thing as a religious victory condition -- victories are won mainly by science, domination, or culture. Having a great religion is not going to help you much when somebody else's tanks and artillery roll through your domains pillaging all your improvements and razing your cities to the ground. Concentrate on science. It's not the whole answer, but if you lead in science you make yourself into a tough competitor. Consider that technologies come first -- you cannot build certain religious buildings unless you have the technologies that allow it. Tech beats religion.

 

[ToborajniN]

It's worth remembering that there is no such thing as a religious victory condition -- victories are won mainly by science, domination, or culture. Having a great religion is not going to help you much when somebody else's tanks and artillery roll through your domains pillaging all your improvements and razing your cities to the ground. Concentrate on science. It's not the whole answer, but if you lead in science you make yourself into a tough competitor. Consider that technologies come first -- you cannot build certain religious buildings unless you have the technologies that allow it. Tech beats religion.

Yeah, just like a lot of other people I think it's a bit sad that science is such a huge part of snowballing. Sure, there are ways to win consitently without focusing 100% on science, but being really behind on science is like trying to run a marathon with a limp, one worn out shoe and some industrial size fans blowing in your face..

Don't know how to resolve this matter though, so I just accept it for what it is and try my best to find ways around it.

 

[JohnYoga]

Not at all. Do you have the 12 AI all on the same team? If it is 4 v 1 v 1 v 1 ... etc., how do you lose?

Without religion, very, very easily.

12 Civs, no teams. Now, one of the other two humans (we play four co-op) will probably win the game, but they have religion. This always work this way. There has never been a time when a player does not have religion where they won the game. Remember that since we are playing cooperatively, none of us can go for a domination victory, so that victory condition can't happen.

In any case, it's a game mechanic that we just recognize, yet play to the end, whenever any of us do not get religion.

Marc

 

[Soffacet]

In any case, it's a game mechanic that we just recognize, yet play to the end, whenever any of us do not get religion.

It's not a game mechanic, that's what they are trying to tell you. Religion translates into some combination of extra food (Feed the World, Swords to Plowshares), production (Religious Community), gold (Tithe, Church Property) culture (World Church, Mosque, Pagoda, etc), or eventually great people (any FPT).

Whether or not those bonuses are worth pursuing depends on the level of investment necessary for a particular map. Terrain conducive to faith pantheons, religious CS, and civ-specific FPT all make the acquisition of a religion easier. Nearly automatic, in fact. You can still get a religion even if you lack any of the above, but that will come at a opportunity cost, as you will be stuck building Shrines and Temples when you should be building Workers and Water Mills (for example).

While there is generally no downside to having a religion if you did get it nearly automatically, it is still possible for a civ with a religion to fall far behind a civ without, if that civ is snowballing food, production, gold, science, etc hard enough in other ways. It might take some time to show up on the scoreboard, though. That thing is notorious for not being able to adequately compare the actual importance of relative advantages.

 

[Acken]

There's no doubt that great terrain great civ + religion will beat great terrain great civ without religion. That's the game, it's asymmetric.

But religion by itself does not win, Celts in crappy forest will never beat Poland with salts.

 

[beetle]

Without religion, very, very easily... Now, one of the other two humans (we play four co-op) will probably win the game, but they have religion. This always work this way.

I am not the best player, but I have won SP Deity games without founding. My understanding is that some Deity players who win consistently and quickly pay no attention to religion.

There has never been a time when a player does not have religion where they won the game... In any case, it's a game mechanic that we just recognize, yet play to the end, whenever any of us do not get religion.

Sorry, but it's confirmation bias, not a game mechanic. You are noticing a correlation and assuming causality. Founding is not unusual, and one of you almost always wins. If you all manage to lose, it would have to be to an AI that did very well, and yes, that means that particular AI probably founded.

FWIW, with four human players all picking civs with faith bonuses, it would not be unusual for all of you to found!

Your group could test your theory if you like. The next time one of the four has a start that is obviously much better the other three, that person gets a “no founding” handicap. If they get a GPr, they must plant or gift it. I am confident the “lucky start” person will still be the run-away!

Remember that since we are playing cooperatively, none of us can go for a domination victory, so that victory condition can't happen.

The friendly competition sounds like great fun! Do you war with each other at all? Does it always come down to SV race then, or do Diplo and CV happen as well?

I have to wonder, does MP-with-strangers ever play with similar non-aggression rules?

12 Civs, no teams.

if you are not beating up on each other, and cooperating against the AI (even without the team mechanic enabled), how are AIs are ever competitive? It just seems like that would be very unusual?

 

[mbbcam]

we are playing cooperatively

I don't understand what you mean by this. Do you mean that you have opted for peaceful play?

it's confirmation bias, not a game mechanic

I agree that you seem to have been misled by what has been happening and drawn the wrong conclusions. Expert players regularly seem to play without bothering about religion at all. You might like to have a look at these videos. They are single player, but you might learn a lot from them. Nothing like watching an expert at work!

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=533320

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvDosx_OQs0

Particlarly this with the Maya:
https://youtu.be/KmC-sCe_I4A?list=PL5IXV43xjKWRQoEaZLj8dbK2BMifXjAGC

 

[sixty4half]

I'm kind of new to Civ V (got it a month ago with all DLC, [$50 for a $150 package on Steam]) but I've played every Civ since the first. I have some uses for religion that I don't see mentioned here so I thought I'd offer my suggestions to the OP and also put this out for review to see if I'm doing it right.

I have a system that I'll use if I situation just happens that I'm able to found an early religion. These situations usually arise from a scout hitting two ruins that give Faith and my first city being in a place where a Faith Panteon are beneficial, like sitting on 3 salt tiles/mines/incense or anything else that I can generate 3 or more faith a turn by doing nothing more than I normally do. This also happens occasionally if I want an early GE and build Stonehenge (I play on Monarch so early Wonders are still possible sometimes) for the GE points.

Often, I won't go for any reformation beliefs, just anything that makes additional faith and money passively. Then I'll spend the next couple of GPs on holy sites. I don't even worry about spreading it. The reason I do this is because it will build a good amount of Faith later in the game and I just use that to buy GEs and GSs to pop later in the game. I'll usually be making about 50 Faith a turn which means in 40 turns of hitting the era where you can buy great people, I'll be able to buy two at 1000 faith a piece, one on turn 20 and the second on turn 40.

The other reason I found a religion: Tourism. This one I'll go after aggressively, even going so far as to build a shrine first. What I'm hunting for here is Cathedrals. And Cathedrals go fast, if you're the 3rd religion you probably won't get them, so I try to be first or at worst second. I'll occasionally make the decision to go for a cultural victory if I happen to luck into founding a religion quickly due to faith from Ruins and I'm playing a civ that's not purpose built for one of the other victory conditions.

For Tourism, I'll found a reformation, and I'll fill out Piety so I can make my religion stick easier. For my founder belief I'll pick the one that spreads it 25% faster (50% with Printing Press) and then I get Cathedrals. I'll also want the belief that makes your religion only get 50% removed by Great Prophets so that it's harder for the other civs to wash away. After I've spent my GPs on reformations I want to spend the rest of my Faith on Cathedrals in all my city's. Once I get Archeology all of my Cathedrals start pumping out 2 tourism a turn.