Planting your first Great Prophet

[Alzadar]

Has anyone done much experimenting with planting your first GP for big faith dividends later?

Obviously this is only a viable strategy if you are Ethiopia, Celts, etc as it is hard enough already to get a Religion with any regular civ (I play on Immortal).

With a Desert/Tundra start, you can plant your first GP and still get your 2nd GP before any religions are founded. I imagine that you could still snag a religion even with no faith generation from your pantheon.

Has anyone else played around with this strategy?

 

[Browd]

Burning faith just to generate more faith seems like a bad bargain. Over the course of 200 turns, that holy site will pay for ... your fifth Great Prophet. Unlike universities, national college, hermitage, etc., there are no city multipliers for faith, so all you get is the raw faith output (unless you take the Piety finisher or the Freedom finisher). I think the advantages of early spread of your religion are more important.

 

[budweiser]

I play on Immortal and I can get a religion, 9/10 times. Only yesterday I had 1 game where I didnt get a religion. Before that it has been months. You can surely get a religion if you really want one. There are so many ways.

 

[Novalia]

I generally use my first GP to found a religion. Then use the next bit of faith gained to buy missionaries to spread it before the AI begins. Then I feel out the landscape whether or not to enhance or to buy a pagoda or whatnot. I try to get those faith purchases out of the way when they are cheaper rather than wait til the next era where they become more expensive. GPs price don't scale with era. I find its better to use a GP on cities that have already been tainted by blasphemy which is generally later on.

If I have a ton of faith generating I will spam missionaries for a while.

The only time I plant a GP is if I don't feel my religion will spread based on the AIs in game. Then I just hope to get some religious turnover from competing civs and buy up the pagodas, monasteries etc in ea city.

 

[tommynt]

only situation where planting early prophet is good is in a teamer where a teammate is gonna be the strong and dominant religion for whole team

 

[Halcyan2]

I will usually use my GP to start a religion.

However, if you are late to the religion game, don't think you can spread it (or all the best beliefs are taken), and there is a nearby religion with better beliefs, you might actually want to consider planting the Prophet.

I just played a game where I found and enhanced my religion, but never spread it beyond my capital.

Instead, I should have just saved my faith and adopted whatever religion was spread to me. (One AI prophet came to visit me, and then another religion passively spread to one of my other cities).

 

[chmilz]

I dunno... I'd only plant it if: I was going for cultural victory and the good culture beliefs were taken. Planting them is good with Piety closer, but losing out on a viable religion for it is a waste.

 

[patsfan454]

domination victory is the only correct path religion is for the weak

 

[Browd]

Spare me.

 

[Ra's Head]

I have done this once on Emperor I think. I was very late to religion and somebody had spread something to me already. In that case, maybe it is the right call, but for the religious civs you mention, I'd think getting the religion established and picking optimal beliefs is much more valuable than the extra faith. You can plant later Prophets if you need to.

When you spread someone else's religion through your cities, they benefit through the founder's belief, so you need to be a little careful with that.

 

[apocalypse105]

I do it when ethiophia is next to me and he choosed purchased faith bonusses I just don't go for a religion and settle it for extra faith and let ethiopha spread their religion to me and I buy mosques, progpagandas

works great

 

[iconocast]

even if ur not one of the major faith producing civs planting ur first gp can still be good. especialy with piety makeing them quite a good tile improvement.
i will do it if i plan on not creating a religion myself, adopting one of my neighbours religions. the diplomatic relations improve greatly. the only downside is loseing ur pantheon

 

[Browd]

If you aren't aiming for your own religion, why would you work the entire Piety tree to get the benefits of the finisher for one Holy Site tile improvement? Culture game?

 

[ense7en]

I plant Great Prophets if i've already established my religion over all nearby lands. The reason i have that GP in the first place was probably because i forgot to buy something else with faith first

 

[adwcta]

I just had a game where I didn't get a pantheon until faith generation from notre dame kicked in... then, having no other faith generators, got a religion at some unholy late-game stage, just because no one seemed all that interested in religion in that game besides one civ.

I'd say play it by ear. If you're doing piety finisher + wide and build shrines as the first/second thing in your cities, and if you picked a good faith pantheon, have a reliable faith-CS, or are Ethiopia/celts/maya, etc... then you can plant the first GP and still get a religion. With the piety finisher, the holy site is pretty good. You can also go piety and completely forgo making your own religion if it's a culture game and the good culture beliefs get taken (especially if one of the key ones is taken by a neighbor that got religion super-early).

 

[pspboy7]

I plant Great Prophets if i've already established my religion over all nearby lands. The reason i have that GP in the first place was probably because i forgot to buy something else with faith first

Ditto, otherwise it's a waste of time. Better still, use that great prophet to convert other religions or as a super missionary.

 

[Dogmouth]

Planting your first prophet is a reasonably good strategy for the Mayans if you're about to hit theology. Plant Prophet 1 --> use first free GP for Prophet 2, which founds a religion --> build HS for Prophet 3, which enhances or spreads religion depending on your needs. After this, you should never generate another faith prophet (use the Leaning Tower if you need another prophet or wait for the GP loop to reset if you got to theology early enough). If you do this early enough, you can use missionaries for religion spreading, because populations will be low enough that prophets are overkill.

 

[RedRover57]

My feeling is that with a strong religious civ, like the Mayans, Celts, etc., you can never found and enhance a religion too soon. If you can get it spread really early (with Religious Texts or Itinerant Preachers to help) then you can put a religious choke hold on your continent such that even if the other civs found religions they will not be able to compete. If you took a belief like Tithe this will be invaluable early in the game. So for this reason I would never use the first and second GP for anything other than founding/enhancing.

 

[joncnunn]

My feeling is that with a strong religious civ, like the Mayans, Celts, etc., you can never found and enhance a religion too soon. If you can get it spread really early (with Religious Texts or Itinerant Preachers to help) then you can put a religious choke hold on your continent such that even if the other civs found religions they will not be able to compete. If you took a belief like Tithe this will be invaluable early in the game. So for this reason I would never use the first and second GP for anything other than founding/enhancing.

agreed