Religion Weighting Early Game

[Prof. Platypus]

How much weight should i put on getting a pantheon and religion early on? Right now i build shrines after monuments, granaries, workers and defenses.
Fairly new to the game, so please be nice

 

[Heretiv]

Depends how keen you are for a religion - cost of early buidlings vs potential benefit I guess.

 

[Vidszhite]

How much weight should i put on getting a pantheon and religion early on? Right now i build shrines after monuments, granaries, workers and defenses.
Fairly new to the game, so please be nice

If you want a pantheon, you'll want to build your first shrine ASAP, potentially before the monument (but even on Deity, I often build the monument first), and if you want a religion, you either need a faith-generating pantheon belief, or Stonehenge, or a high-faith natural wonder like Uluru or Sri Pada. If you have a high-faith wonder or Stonehenge, you can get a religion off of any pantheon, allowing you to take something very nice, like Sun God. Stonehenge is hard to get on high difficulty -- natural wonders are still plenty, but you need to spawn near one.

Sometimes just getting a pantheon can make those early turns go by much smoother, and you can quite safely take a pantheon without the intention of founding a religion. Some pantheons, like God-King, are good matches for this, since they are good early game, but lose luster later on. You can also safely forego a pantheon if you don't want one, since that will allow you to skip the shrine and build something else.

 

[Arilian]

Best way is to start in the desert, then found 2 religious CS by turn 10

 

[Barghaest]

Also depends on game speed and map size and other things... if you play with Ancient Ruins, you can find enough faith from them or CS usually to start a religion. On slower games with no ruins it takes more effort to get one. As for emphasis on the getting a religion, I'd say a decent amount as it is a key factor in early development and even impacts late game with the right synergies of beliefs and social policies.

 

[Arcaian]

Also depends if you're doing multiplayer or not. If you are, not point both of you rushing for religion most of the time! You can get your friend to found a religion, then you get the follower benefits as well, while you focus on getting your economy/war machine going

 

[Wodan]

If I have marble or are Egypt, I'll sometimes skip shrines and go for Stonehenge. Depends on what skill level I'm playing on. But if you do that, you don't have to devote multiple cities and their valuable early game build time to making shrines, so it's actually a very viable option.

 

[redwings1340]

Unless I'm playing as a religious civ (Mayans, Ethiopians, Celts, Byzantines, or Spaniards with natural wonders nearby), get a faith natural wonder nearby, or have a really nice capital for the desert folklore pantheon, I tend to ignore religion altogether. The early game is often about building an early infrastructure for a nice lead later, but religion just doesn't help in this regard. It tends to set me back, and infrastructure is simply more important than a pantheon and the later game benefits it brings.

 

[ixias]

For me, it depends on the Civ and surroundings. If my Civ gets any bonus towards religion or I have terrain that takes advantage of a specific pantheon, I usually make sure to build an early shrine. If I don't have a ton of resources or if I start next to a Civ that gets bonuses to religion, I usually forgo it.

Regardless of the situation, you'll still eventually want to get your faith generation up so you can buy great people in the Industrial Era.

 

[rkade8583]

I love religion because of how flexible it is. When I'm playing as Celts or Byz. I beeline for it and tailor it to the situation.

 

[Wodan]

It also depends on how wide you're going. Religion scales with # cities (the more cities, the more faith you have coming in) without the scaling costs like research and culture have.

 

[Barghaest]

The early game is often about building an early infrastructure for a nice lead later, but religion just doesn't help in this regard.

That all depends on your game speed as well as start location and chosen beliefs. Even though it might set you back a bit on early infrastructure, getting the proper pick of beliefs sets the groundwork for a powerful empire which can be just as important as the early infrastructure.

On Standard or Quick, religion is less important than it is on Epic or Marathon as the religion pace is completely unaffected by game speed (takes the same amount of Faith to get a pantheon or a prophet in all of them).