Religion...is contextual

[danaphanous]

So every game I've ever played I've founded a nice religion. I usually invest enough in FP through wonders and temples that I can defend and spread it well too. I've never played a game where I didn't successfully become the strongest religion. My winning strategy: build a missionary quickly to spread my religion in the core of my empire and triple early pressure (makes a huge difference). beeline Theology and build Borobador and Hagia Sofia. I've usually built a GE wonder and so I spend him to grab one of them and build the other otherwise on high difficulties I can only get one religious wonder. The HS gives me a free GP for enhancing immediately and the 3 free missionaries fulfill CS religious quests and start my faith in the capitals of nearby religous-less civs. Often my faith takes care of itself at this point and I only need to do routine maintenance and facilitate with a couple more GP's. And I now have loads of FP that accumulate to spread my faith further and build the upkeep-free religious buildings like mosque, cathedral, or pagoda. My favorite is pagoda. Doubles early cultural output in my new cities, gives me 2 more faith per turn and immediately grants 2 happiness. Great way to balance unhappiness early. If possible I like to get 2 buildings otherwise I have a hard time utlizing all the faith late game. And a tidy early income (often 30 GPT by mid-Medieval, way more later if I've grabbed tithes).

This latest game, I switched tactics entirely an didn't get a religion at all. The reason? I was Venice, and I realized really quickly that there were a lot of religious zealots in the world. Usually when I go religion I have one in <50 turns and the rest of the world follows suit. This game I didn't go for it past a useful early pantheon (had 5 truffle camps so took goddess of the hunt) and everyone else was slow too. I could've gotten one just with the basic 3 points from shrine/temple.

The Celts are hilarious. They were my closest neighbors and they love religion but they seem to suck at getting it quickly. This game as Venice it took them 95 turns to found Catholicism. The VERY next turn they added reformation beliefs meaning they'd been going piety the ENTIRE game without any religion. Suffice it to say, they have a strong religion now but suck at everything else. It hasn't been this funny, but I've seen them do this every game. I, on the other hand, as Venice, had already decided getting a religion was a waste of time with only the one city. I wouldn't be able to produce enough faith to really spread it much, plus I was isolated on my continent. With only one city I wouldn't need much faith to get the few religious buildings and already going patronage with a bunch of military states my military is, ironically, 3rd in the world with a single city. I have to disband my worst units every 4 turns or so because they keep gifting me so may units I get a production reductions (apparently I can't keep over 19 with one city? I never knew about this)

I called it right. Raging religious game and it's causing tensions. No way could I have spread my faith much. It's funny to see every faith warring over my city with missionaries. It's the best city in the world. So far it's switched to enough faiths that I've been able to purchase all the unique buildings anyway and purchase a great engineer! Also got Hagia Sofia weirdly enough and used the prophet to found an 8 FPT religious site. That and the religious CS's give me enough faith to by Great People and all the buildings that I can as my religion changes.

I can't agree with not going for a religion with a larger empire (too many helpful perks) but with Venice it seemed the right choice. I got about 1/2 the early wonders as opposed to 1/3 or 1/4 because I avoided the religious path and instead used my money to rush buy all the trade routes I could muster. Had so much gold going I've bought pretty much every non-wonder building in my city and it just keeps wonderspamming with the occasional 2-turn necessity in between.

Has anyone gone Religious with Venice? How did that turn out?

 

[TheMadFiddler]

Nothing to add about the actual question but here
"I have to disband my worst units every 4 turns or so because they keep gifting me so may units I get a production reductions (apparently I can't keep over 19 with one city? I never knew about this)"

why not just gift them to City States or can you not do this?

 

[GoStu]

I tried briefly in a Venice game - it didn't even come close to working out for me. With only 1 city in which to build a Shrine / Temple, it's tough. Your puppet(s) can have those buildings bought for them but ultimately, it's just way too hard to keep up.

I think they only way for Venice to really do well is befriending a bunch of religious CS's to get the Faith per Turn to keep up - they can't pull it off well enough with buildings and/or a Pantheon alone.

 

[Aenthin]

It wasn't Venice, but I had a game where I took religion despite going tall. There were other powerful religious civs in that game, most notably Ethiopia who was also my neighbor. Couldn't even care less about them converting my capital too, but I took it to my advantage. I wasn't trying to have the strongest religion in the game, but since I picked Interfaith Dialogue, I was using Ethiopia's conversions into Science to help secure a Scientific victory. It's a little unorthodox, I guess, but it helped. I always thought of Faith as another type of resource anyway, regardless of how fast or slow I obtain them.

 

[Dr. D]

I like to play domination with a wide puppet empire, and this actually plays very well to Venice's unique strength if you can get enough faith generation. You can buy religious buildings (I went pagodas and mosques) in the puppets without the need to annex them like other civs to keep the empire happy.