Rate the Beliefs - the results

[Stolen Rutters]

Religious buildings are good, but getting two religious building beliefs isn't necessary that helpful. Getting enough faith to buy all the religious buildings in your cities can take awhile. Though Cathedrals/Pagodas/Mosques do generate Faith, it will take at least 200/100/67 turns for the building to pay for itself. That is time and faith that could be used on missionaries to spread your faith instead. Even with tall empires, if you spread your religion early you can make sure the other religions don't have the chance to take root.

Wait, that makes too much sense. Scoring pagodas and cathedrals in my current King-level game hasn't seemed to help the game yet, and I'm in the middle ages/rennaisance time frame already. Now I have an idea why! Picking the two top follower beliefs, I'm really spending almost all my faith on what are essentially +3 happiness per city plus some culture...

Should I have picked something that enhances faith for faster pagodas instead of doubling down on the buildings without adding to my ability to build them?

edit - follower not founder... For reference, founder was tithe, enhancer was religious texts, pantheon was messenger of the gods.

 

[manu-fan]

Wait, that makes too much sense. Scoring pagodas and cathedrals in my current King-level game hasn't seemed to help the game yet, and I'm in the middle ages/rennaisance time frame already. Now I have an idea why! Picking the two top follower beliefs, I'm really spending almost all my faith on what are essentially +3 happiness per city plus some culture...

How is +3 happiness and some Culture (and BTW, increased Faith) not helping your game?

Cheers.

 

[Stolen Rutters]

It is helping but I am still hitting the happiness wall on growth and I am wondering if that faith has a better use (400 faith per building, or 800 for both a pagoda and cathedral in a city).

In other words, is it really the best marginal use of my faith to be sinking 800 of it into +3 happy, +5 culture per turn, and 3 more faith, which is exclusively being used to slowly roll out more buildings. I don't have a handle on the game so it may very well be the case that I did the absolutely best thing I could have done with the faith generated.

 

[Halcyan2]

How is +3 happiness and some Culture (and BTW, increased Faith) not helping your game?

Cheers.

It's not about whether or not it helps. It's the opportunity cost.

As Stolen Rutters has found, it takes a long time to set up all of your cities with Pagodas and Cathedrals, especially if you don't have an insanely high faith output.

Depending on how long the game goes on and the specifics of the particular game, it is possible that the faith could be better spent:

1. Spreading your religion with missionaries, which would net you bigger gains from your Founder belief.

2. Generating Great Prophets for Holy Sites (especially if you are going to complete Piety and Freedom).

3. Choosing a faith generating belief so that you can buy (and benefit from) Pagodas much, much sooner.

4. Using that faith for something like Holy Warriors (instead of choosing a second building belief), to conquer cities.


You run into similar issues when you decide whether or not to Rush Buy Markets or Banks, or to spend turns building Stables or a Windmill. How long will it take for the building to actually pay off? In some cases, it really isn't worth it!

 

[manu-fan]

Yeah, I guess I was just picking on his choice of words.

I do believe that getting 2 building beliefs is the wrong thing to do. Get Pagodas and use the other one for something else.

Cheers.

 

[Halcyan2]

It is helping but I am still hitting the happiness wall on growth and I am wondering if that faith has a better use (400 faith per building, or 800 for both a pagoda and cathedral in a city).

In other words, is it really the best marginal use of my faith to be sinking 800 of it into +3 happy, +5 culture per turn, and 3 more faith, which is exclusively being used to slowly roll out more buildings. I don't have a handle on the game so it may very well be the case that I did the absolutely best thing I could have done with the faith generated.

Once you hit Industrial (where stuff starts to cost 400 faith), I find that you're often better off saving for Great People.

I was recently playing a game where I chose Pagodas and Holy Warriors, though I did have insane faith generation due to Spain + One with Nature + Mt. Kailash and Mt. Sinai. After enhancing my religion (late Classical / early Medieval) I first focused on spreading my religion. Only after that did I buy Pagodas and a bunch of defensive units.

I wasn't going for Cultural and didn't need additional faith, so Great Prophets weren't that attractive to me.

Generally I find that the Renaissance is a bit of a lull while you figure out what to do with your faith (which you want to start stockpiling as you enter into Industrial but you are limited by the Prophet auto-spawn ceiling).

Fortunately for me, one of my cities got converted (via Great Prophet) by another civ, which chose Cathedrals as a belief. So through judicious use of Inquisitors and Missionaries, I was able to convert (one by one) each of my cities to get a Cathedral and then convert it back. Of course it was very expensive.

You needed 300 Faith for an Inquisitor of the new Religion, 300 Faith for an Inquisitor of your Religion, 300 Faith for the Cathedral, and an average about 100-200 Faith for Missionaries (factoring in natural spread and Great Mosque). That's about 1000 Faith just for a Cathedral in the Renaissance.

I had plenty of Faith to spare so it wasn't an issue for my first 5 cities, but I was approaching Industrial when it came time to get a Cathedral for my 6th and I should have just saved my Faith!

 

[kaspergm]

Yeah, two religious buildings generally cost you too much. Go for Pagodas if available unless you play cultural, in which case you should go for Cathedrals. Exception is Pagodas + Monasteries if you have a Wine/Incense start, which can be really powerful, because Monasteries cost less faith to put down than Pagodas and generate significant amounts of faith on those resources. On other starts, I'd go for either Religious Centers (more happiness, makes Temples very tasty, yum yum) or Religious Comunity (you never go wrong with more production).

 

[Browd]

I normally agree about only one religious building, but in my current game I was going wide-ish (8 cities as Russia) and had desert folklore, Stonehenge and a faith mountain, so I knew I was going to have faith coming out my ears. When I enhanced, decided to take take mosques as my second follower belief, to accompany church property, pagodas and itinerant preachers. My thought process was, with that level of faith generation, I was likely to be auto-spawning several Great Prophets before I got to the Industrial era. Holy Warriors was gone when I enhanced, had no need for GPrs to spread (itinerant preachers and early religion took care of that), and wasn't interested in creating a bunch of holy sites that would have to be worked to yield benefits.

Sooooooooo, by redirecting that excess faith into mosques, I would generate extra fpt, cpt and local happiness, without having to work holy site tiles, which seemed a better bargain. As I suspected, I generated so much faith that I ended up with pagodas and mosques in all of my cities before I even left the renaissance, and am now blowing out over 100 fpt in the industrial era. The return on investment of roughly 2400 faith on mosques is going to be poor, but better than 2-3 holy site tiles I wouldn't work.

Admittedly, this is an extreme case (and wouldn't have happened to me if I could have taken Holy Warriors), but illustrates that there are no "absolutes", no "always", and no "nevers" in this game.

 

[Halcyan2]

FYI: Just played a game where I chose:

Fertility Rites
Tithe
Swords to Plowshares
Pagodas
Itinerant Preachers

However, Pagodas was a complete waste. Built 3 of them (for my 5 cities) but I would have been much better with a different belief.

The thing is:

1. It was an Archipelago map (harder to spread religion)

2. I was racing for tech (happens when you go for Science or Diplomacy Victory), which means you want to unlock Renaissance Era (for Rationalism) ASAP, as well as Scientific Theory, Plastics, and then Rocketry/Satellites. As a result, you try to zoom through the eras, which results in expensive Faith purchases.

3. I was also spreading my religion aggressively, which meant after enhancing my religion, I spent a lot of Faith on Missionaries (when it was still cheap).


In this game, I should have ditched Pagodas (which was my second follower belief) and gone with Religious Community, Feed the World, or Divine Inspiration instead.

I definitely still think that Pagodas is probably the strongest Follower belief and one of the most versatile. But it's not always the best choice, as my most recent game goes to show!

 

[Big_Daddy]

It is good and well that some Beliefs are more rewarding than others. It provides a bonus to those who strive early for religion.

Remember, unlike Unique traits and units for the various Civs, that must be balanced because they are unique and only available to them, religious beliefs are open to everyone, in a race to capture them first.

 

[kaspergm]

FYI: Just played a game where I chose:

Fertility Rites
Tithe
Swords to Plowshares
Pagodas
Itinerant Preachers

However, Pagodas was a complete waste. Built 3 of them (for my 5 cities) but I would have been much better with a different belief.

The thing is:

1. It was an Archipelago map (harder to spread religion)

2. I was racing for tech (happens when you go for Science or Diplomacy Victory), which means you want to unlock Renaissance Era (for Rationalism) ASAP, as well as Scientific Theory, Plastics, and then Rocketry/Satellites. As a result, you try to zoom through the eras, which results in expensive Faith purchases.

3. I was also spreading my religion aggressively, which meant after enhancing my religion, I spent a lot of Faith on Missionaries (when it was still cheap).


In this game, I should have ditched Pagodas (which was my second follower belief) and gone with Religious Community, Feed the World, or Divine Inspiration instead.

I definitely still think that Pagodas is probably the strongest Follower belief and one of the most versatile. But it's not always the best choice, as my most recent game goes to show!

It is true that some things depend on map layout. Archipelago map is sort of contraindicating for spreding your religion wide, because cities will generally be long between which makes it hard to fascilitate passive spread. One might argue that the problem was chosing Tithe rather than Pagodas for this reason, because Tithe does require you to spread your religion as much as possible to harvest the full benefits, but either way, I do agree that supporting both under these circumstances are difficult.

Taking Fertility Rites and Swords Into Plowshares adds an indirect Happiness dependancy, because your cities will only grow when empire is happy and therefore you'll only get the benefit of these beliefs when you have sufficient happiness. I think from this perspective it's hard to say that Pagodas was worthless, it does still provide you two happiness pr. city (as long as you build it in all cities), but depending on other circumstances, that happiness might of course not have been an issue.

Pagodas obviously shines when you go wide, going fairly tall like you did you obviously should have gotten those Pagodas established very early to get the best cost:benefit ratio, and also Cathedrals tend to be the better choice for narrow civs (because these will generally not suffer happiness issues and favor cultural growth, as this is the area was narrow and tall shines).

Anyway, I trust your assesment that given your choices and the circumstances in that game, you might have been better off with another belief, but I will question your assesment of it being a complete waste. There are certainly circumstances where Pagodas may not be the #1 choice, but I still have yet to see an example of a game (other than perhaps OCC or TCC!) where I wouldn't say that it was a valuable choice.

 

[Matthew.]

The thing with Tithe is the AI never grabs it either. I will be the last one to found a religion and there it will be waiting for me. It is the only one on the list that really stands out of probably needing a nerf.

Fertility Rites isn't rated that high because it is overpowered, but because it is one of the few that will always benefit you regardless of map spawn. Under the right conditions, several on that list become equally good or better.

On a huge coastal region with two resources and four fish? God of The Sea suddenly becomes very enticing, especially since coastal towns usually lack high production.

Goddess of the Hunt I think could rival Fertility Rites depending on the map. I haven't done the math, but the logic behind pop. growth is to get high enough to support specialists with decent production. Anything beyond that typically won't make or break the game. In that sense, the early growth on deer with granary could boost city pop. with impressive results.

 

[headcase]

Some quick thoughts:

Part I - Pantheon beliefs (12 votes)
4.3 - Fertility Rites: 10% faster Growth Rate [nerf?] - only affects cities below a certain population (10 or 15)
4.0 - Messenger of the Gods: +2 Science in cities with a Trade Route [nerf?] - Tricky one. Maybe add one more pantheon that provides science in a specialized manner.
1.9 - God of War: Gain Faith if you win a battle within 4 tiles if your city [boost?] - agreed that 5 tiles sounds like a good boost. And I'm not sure how much faith you get but it could probably be more than whatever it is.
1.8 - Ancestor Worship: +1 Culture for every Shrine in your civilization [boost?] - maybe bump to every shrine and temple
1.5 - Religious Settlements: +15% faster border growth [boost] - either include purchasing of tiles or boost to +25%
1.4 - Dance of the Aurora: +1 Faith from Tundra tiles without Forest [boost] - +2 faith without forest, +1 faith with forest

Part II - Founder beliefs (16 votes)
4.8 - Tithe: +1 Gold for every 4 followers of this religion [nerf] - every 6?
4.4 - Ceremonial Burial: +1 Happiness for each City following Religion [nerf?] - with population of at least 5 (if that helps)
1.6 - Papal Primacy: +15 to Influence resting point with City-States following this religion [boost?] - reduce aesthetics to +15 instead of +20, keep protection pledge at +10.
0.4 - Pilgrimage: +1 Faith for each foreign city following this religion [boost] - +1 faith for every 3 (or so) foreign believers

Part III - Follower beliefs (12 votes)
4.4 - Pagodas: Use Faith to purchase Pagodas (+2 Faith, +2 Culture, +2 Happiness) [nerf?] - only +1 culture I guess?
1.9 - Divine Inspiration: Each World Wonder provides +2 Faith in city [boost?] - I think this one is good enough as is.
1.8 - Guruship: +2 Production if city has a Specialist [boost?] - I've used this one too (not a numbers expert though)
0.6 - Liturgical Drama: Amphitheaters provide +1 Faith in cities with 3 followers [boost] - Each cultural building adds +1 faith

Part IV - Enhancer beliefs (13 votes)
4.7 - Religious Texts: Religion spreads 34% faster (68% with Printing Press) [nerf] - this one is ridiculously powerful... kind of good to give a reward to the player that gets enhanced first, but still. I would say cut it to 25% then 50%.
4.4 - Itinerant Preachers: Religion spreads to cities 30% further away [nerf?] - I have no opinion at all for this one
1.7 - Religious Unity: Religion spreads to friendly city-states at double rate [boost?] - should also make nearby city states more resistant to other religions
1.1 - Reliquary: Gain 50 Faith each time a Great Person is expended [boost] - Should be more like 150 faith, if that's even enough.

 

[Tachii]

Goddess of the Hunt I think could rival Fertility Rites depending on the map. I haven't done the math, but the logic behind pop. growth is to get high enough to support specialists with decent production. Anything beyond that typically won't make or break the game. In that sense, the early growth on deer with granary could boost city pop. with impressive results.

+1 food/camp will beat fertilty rate in most cases if there's 2 camp. Fertility rate would require 20+ surplus food to rival the base bonus of 2 additional food. And even though you're unlikely to get a camp in every city, fertility rate is nearly irrelevant if you have less than 10 surplus food anyways.

I often ignore fertility rate now. I'd rather get any faith pantheon if possible (even if it's just +4 faith from Natural Wonders provided I have one near my borders), then goddess of the hunt since camp is usually quite common, or heck, the +1 production since it can help a lot right when I get it, whereas fertility rate have a really miniscule effect and only becomes sort of effective after Civil Service and on.

 

[kaspergm]

+1 food/camp will beat fertilty rate in most cases if there's 2 camp. Fertility rate would require 20+ surplus food to rival the base bonus of 2 additional food. And even though you're unlikely to get a camp in every city, fertility rate is nearly irrelevant if you have less than 10 surplus food anyways.

I often ignore fertility rate now. I'd rather get any faith pantheon if possible (even if it's just +4 faith from Natural Wonders provided I have one near my borders), then goddess of the hunt since camp is usually quite common, or heck, the +1 production since it can help a lot right when I get it, whereas fertility rate have a really miniscule effect and only becomes sort of effective after Civil Service and on.

Yes, this is a pretty accurate assesment. Goddess Of The Hunt is very strong if you have a Tundra start (LOTS of Deer and usually also some Fur) - which only goes to make it even more unlikely that you'd want to pick Dance Of The Aurora.

 

[kaspergm]

Some quick thoughts:

I like the idea of having Ceremonial Burial require a minimum population, that's a very good way to give this belief a small cut. For Tithe, I think changing it for each 4 followers in the same city will make it work just fine. Also like your suggestions for Ancestor Worship and Liturgical Dramas.

 

[Stolen Rutters]

I can see and agree with the average score of the picks on the first post for the most part now, but I still think the benefits of fertility rites are more for those super players that can somehow find happiness in cracks and crevices... I'm STILL hitting happiness walls long before fertility rites can convince me it's worth a pantheon pick.

It seems to be giving me .2 or .3 extra food per turn tops. Is that really accelerating pop growth by a significant number of turns. Is this really that great? Is there something I am missing?

SR

p.s.
-I am playing default installed settings, changed difficulty level to King and just hit "Play Now!" when I want to start.

 

[Rooftrellen]

It seems to be giving me .2 or .3 extra food per turn tops. Is that really accelerating pop growth by a significant number of turns. Is this really that great? Is there something I am missing?

I agree.

I don't feel like I get much faster growth out of it (I normally feel getting more culture would lead to faster growth, even, by allowing me to finish up tradition faster, if I go that direction) and once my cities are fairly big, it fizzles. Compare to extra food from camps, and if you have a few camps here and there, those cities can grow much more quickly AND get bigger in the end.

What throws me off even more is that at low pop, I can't work a lot of food tiles. As I start to get to 5 or 6 pop in my cities, I generally start to want to slow growth and work tiles for more gold or production and rarely feel the need to speed growth in older cities, only in new ones which need to get the religion before getting the bonus, forcing me to use missionaries on them or wait for the natural spread of religion...but because I'm trying to grow quickly, it won't get there naturally until I'm ready to slow the pop growth down...

It's quite the paradox of a belief for me. It adds little when I need it in some situations, is unusable in others, and when I could really start to take advantage, I don't want to anymore.

 

[Koiranputki]

I've been testing a few of the different beliefs. One that can be quite interesting in the right circumstances is the +4 Faith from natural wonders pantheon. Playing as Spain it gives you a dramatic boost.

On a saved map...knowing where things would be... I started out quite often right next to Uluru.... from turn three that was +20 Faith per turn.... two turns at +12 Faith, then 4 more when I selected the natural wonders pantheon. Kind of crazy...but it was a test.

In a proper game, still playing as Spain, I founded my second city next to one of the religious mountains...I forget at the moment which one...it was a few turns before the city had enough food to be able to use the mountain, but once it kicked in it was quite powerful.... Without anything else but the mountain and the pantheon, the faith yield was around 14.

In the same game a bit later I found...not the first to find it though.... the Great Barrier Reef.... and after a bit of a struggle I did get a city there which could take in both parts.

However with this city, the +16 Faith (8 per part...playing as Spain) didn't kick in right away even though the city used them from the start ... because of the +4 Food each ( actually one of them was +5 Food...there were some fish mixed in with the reef).

There must be some kind of pre-condition before the extra faith from the pantheon kicks in but I haven't figured it out yet. And whatever the pre-condition is, it doesn't seem to apply if the natural wonder already carries some faith with it...like Uluru and the other "faith" mountains.....

Has anyone figured this out yet?

 

[Tachii]

However with this city, the +16 Faith (8 per part...playing as Spain) didn't kick in right away even though the city used them from the start ... because of the +4 Food each ( actually one of them was +5 Food...there were some fish mixed in with the reef).

There must be some kind of pre-condition before the extra faith from the pantheon kicks in but I haven't figured it out yet. And whatever the pre-condition is, it doesn't seem to apply if the natural wonder already carries some faith with it...like Uluru and the other "faith" mountains.....

Has anyone figured this out yet?

It's probably because you've founded a religion before you settled that city. If so, pantheons does not automatically work on these cities - you need to spread your religion there for the pantheon to have an effect.