Syncretism Warmongering

Bhawb

Prince
Joined
Nov 11, 2018
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501
After andersw showed how Syncretism worked I really wanted to give it a try.
Spoiler For those who don't know what the Enhancer belief does, I've quoted andersw's findings: :
I finally figured out how syncretism works, I've seen others wondering about this so I thought I'd share my find.
From wiki
"
+1 Faith, Science, and Production in Holy City for every 2 Followers of other Religion is owned Cities.

+5 Culture when a Citizen is born in an owned City Following this Religion.
"
This contains a typo , the bold is should be "in owned cities".

The idea is I guess to go on a conquer spree and not spread this religion to other cities while growing your empire and getting a holy city with crazy faith/science/prod.
The holy city keeps this even if its not your majority religion, it also keeps the yields if you capture a holy city with syncretism, convert other citys but not this one and watch it explode in yields.

Here is a screenshot of a captured lategame holy city providing almost 200 each of the above mentioned yields from just syncretism.

View attachment 523333

Essentially, a huge boost of Faith, Science, and Production to the Holy City for citizens in your empire following a different religion. Barring niche situations where say a neighbor has a better religion or someone like India will just passively shred your religion, or capturing a Syncretism holy city, you can very easily plan on having a strong Syncretism capital by founding a religion, picking this enhancement, and then allow the AI to convert your cities and pick up whatever religion(s) are nearby to spread.

To do this, I picked Mongolia, which loves to go warmongering at right about the perfect time (late Classic/Early Medieval, just after Annexing some CSs), and planned to found my religion specifically with Syncretism in mind. Pantheon is God of the Expanse, which provides a very reliable pantheon to found when paired with Ger and Authority border growth. Not only that but it lets me cover a wider area of my starting land without having to found too many cities so I can use more early happiness to Annex CSs. I then planned to use Theocratic Rule or Hero Worship, which are the only two Founders that make sense if I'm not spreading a religion, and Discipline and Scholarship will most likely be my two Follower beliefs, since this will only apply to my capital so buildings aren't helpful (plus I don't want extra pressure).

This plan worked perfectly, and at early Medieval with 6 cities most of my cities are converted to something else and my capital already has around +15 production from Syncretism. Alongside a nice pickup of Temple of Artemis I can pump out Skirmisher-type units insanely quickly. I also started on a continent which ended up founding 4 of 5 religions, one of them is Spain's, so I couldn't have spread my own religion anyway. Overall, it is feeling really good. I'll have to see how the midgame goes once I'm able to capture someone's religion (or multiple) and end up doing Mongolia's traditional "this continent is mine thanks for settling my cities for me" strategy.

I can't believe I hadn't thought of this strategy for warmongers before. Unless you're someone like Aztecs this seems like a really solid strategy, and AIs now make pretty good religions to steal anyway.
 
I think you could have picked Pagodas, they synergize very well with this type of strategy, Diligence/Scholarship is wasted on your secondaries.

Nice strategy! I've been meaning to try a Syncretism strategy for some time (I was thinking a Progress Syncretism strategy), and this sounds fun.
 
I'm actually in a position to try this in my current game, though I'm not exactly warmongering. I founded an insular religion as Poland and Syncretism was one of the few beliefs left worth taking as there were multiple other religions on my continent. I've since conquered neighboring Brazil (and his holy city) so perhaps I will convert everything to his religion except my original Syncretism holy city and see how it works!
 
I think you could have picked Pagodas, they synergize very well with this type of strategy, Diligence/Scholarship is wasted on your secondaries.

Long term the plan is for my capital to be 100% Syncretism religion, and every other city to be 100% whatever religion I conquer to maximize my capital's yields. So Pagodas wouldn't add much, and I wouldn't have even been able to build them in my other cities since I'd have to use my faith to convert them to Syncretism religion first, then back to whatever else. That's why I picked up Diligence/Scholarship, they're only going to be useful in my capital but only my capital will follow that religion in order to maximize Syncretism yields (each follower of my religion 0.5 yield of each type missing from capital). This will be doubly true since in my specific game I have every intention of capturing all 3 other religions on my continent and eradicating whichever 2 religions are worst. So there won't even be anything left to spread. It is possible that picking up Pagodas might have been useful even for the +1 to each yield across my initial cities, but I probably don't really care since I'm mostly focusing on my capital.

I could see the Pagoda synergy working very well for a more peaceful Syncretism strategy though, where you just allow other faiths to spread at will and get the bonuses that way.
 
Please post more info on how it worked and what difficulty you played on.
 
I'm playing Emperor (my standard difficulty setting), Continents++ standard settings. I've got VPEE, 4UC and ENW for mods.

Currently on turn 174 and things are going pretty well. I'm bordered by Spain, Germany, and Rome, and currently at war with all 3 since someone bribed Germany and I think Rome to attack me. It didn't go super well for Rome considering the 3 cities I took off them, and I'll take one off Germany soon. Overall Syncretism is putting in a lot of work. It is at +39 right now, so I can build just about anything in 1.5 turns; buildings, top of the line units, you name it. This has made it super easy to sustain even a 3 front war and still be aggressively taking cities, since any dead units take just one turn to replace. On top of that, despite focusing on the bottom half of the tree I'm #1 in Goods, GNP, Land, and Literacy, and 2nd in Crop Yield, 3rd Soldiers, 4th Pop. Syncretism is definitely directly responsible for a lot of added strength, my capital has 122 Production and 78 science.

I do with the AI were slightly smarter about building religions though. It is a definite weakness to rely on being able to take over a strong 2nd religion. My guess is the ideal situation would be to take over a religion before it enhances since Pantheons and first Follower beliefs are good, its just when they enhance that they pick mediocre choices.
 
Can you enhance a religion you've captured when you already have your own? Never tried it, butI thought prophets would be tied to your religion.

I've also been wanting to try Syncretism, but in my mind it was paired with Pagodas. I do like this take on it.
Isn't your capital pressured a lot by all other religions around it? How many Inquisitors have you used to keep it pristine?
 
Can you enhance a religion you've captured when you already have your own? Never tried it, butI thought prophets would be tied to your religion.

I've also been wanting to try Syncretism, but in my mind it was paired with Pagodas. I do like this take on it.
Isn't your capital pressured a lot by all other religions around it? How many Inquisitors have you used to keep it pristine?

I think you can if that religion is your major religion.
If the surrounding religion have pressure buildings like pagoda, church etc you probably get to use more inquisitors but yes that is also a good question.
Edit: you also need to control the new holy city.
 
Can you enhance a religion you've captured when you already have your own? Never tried it, butI thought prophets would be tied to your religion.

I've also been wanting to try Syncretism, but in my mind it was paired with Pagodas. I do like this take on it.
Isn't your capital pressured a lot by all other religions around it? How many Inquisitors have you used to keep it pristine?

If you capture a holy city and that religion is already your majority religion, you become the defacto leader of that religion just as if you founded it. You will lose all currently stored faith but you will be able to enhance it once you get enough faith again. Ideally with my strategy I could capture the 2nd holy city just after enhancing my own so I can make it not suck.

Currently all of my cities are 100% Catholicism, and my capital has 59 pressure from Catholicism and 33 from its own religion. I've used 1 inquisitor so far to clear 1-2 followers of other religions for happiness reasons, but it wasn't really necessary. It will probably be a bigger deal later on as temples get built everywhere and my cities get larger, but ultimately it should be pretty reasonable upkeep considering Syncretism also gives you extra faith. Right now I have +33 faith per turn from Syncretism alone, which is more than enough to fund inquisitors.
 
I may be wrong, but I do not believe that you can enhance another religion if you already founded one...
 
I may be wrong, but I do not believe that you can enhance another religion if you already founded one...

You can as long as you capture another holy city of a religion that is your majority religion. It then becomes your religion and you lose the ability to interact with your original one. You can enhance and reform it as usual.

Edit: updated to turn 211. For some reason I ran into a constant CtD while warring Germany, but I eventually worked that out. Rome has now lost their capital to me and capitulated, Germany lost a city and the nearby CS to me, and right as I was about to destroy Portugal, Spain decided to start a war with me for some really dumb reason, so I'm now in the process of annihilating them.

When I started this strategy I was mostly thinking of the insane production boost. And while that is definitely a thing, my capital is getting more production from Syncretism+Discipline than most cities have total, the science boost has been completely ridiculous. I am top in tech in the game despite obviously focusing on the bottom half of the tree, which has resulted in some ridiculous situations like when my Cuirassiers were shooting Rome's Spearmen. This strategy would be really strong with a civ like Poland who would be able to pair the high science rate with a lot of unlocked policies to be able to grab wonders. I haven't been able to get a ton despite my science lead because of my mediocre culture generation.
 
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You can still benefit from Syncretism when it's no longer your majority religion?
 
It doesn't need to be your majority religion, no. That said, I did capture Catholicism's holy city, and it didn't swap to being my main religion, so I'm not sure how all that works exactly.
 
It doesn't need to be your majority religion, no. That said, I did capture Catholicism's holy city, and it didn't swap to being my main religion, so I'm not sure how all that works exactly.

If you found a religion yourself then you can't take on a new religion even if you capture a new holy city and convert a majority of your cities to that new religion.

If you founded a religion, lost your holy city, then captured a new holy city then maybe you would get that new religion? I'm not sure even in that case, though. And it's not like that case is very practical anyway.
 
The one you founded take higher priority you must take an inqusitior of that other religion and purge your holy city

Enginseer answered it in another thread. I had remembered founding and then conquering a religion before, but I'd have to eradicate my own religion first before I could make Catholicism my religion. Obviously that isn't worth it in this case, but something to consider. Essentially, if I want to be able to take advantage of reformation beliefs I'd have to reform the Syncretism religion.
 
Enginseer answered it in another thread. I had remembered founding and then conquering a religion before, but I'd have to eradicate my own religion first before I could make Catholicism my religion. Obviously that isn't worth it in this case, but something to consider. Essentially, if I want to be able to take advantage of reformation beliefs I'd have to reform the Syncretism religion.

There's still a way to make this work if you want a reformation belief. But you'll have to delay the holy city getting big - you'd have to reform first.

I'd also say that if you reform first before you adapt another religion, you should get building (especially pagoda) as your 2 follower beliefs. Because then you can build them in your cities before letting them get converted. You'll still get a good chunk of the benefit.

I'd go Hero worship for founder, since you'll still have that belief and it doesn't depend on number of cities you have with your religion.
 
Does Pagoda work if it's not the majority religion of the city?
 
Pagoda is definitely the way to go if you want to more or less keep your religion a thing, or if you aren't going as crazy as I am with warmongering. Like all religious buildings, once you build it you still get the benefits even if the religion it is from is no longer the majority religion. The only reason I didn't go Pagodas was because my intent with this game was to push Syncretism to its limits by fully converting all my non-Holy City cities to another religion, which in this case ended up being Catholicism. As things are now, Pagodas would have been +1 of each yield, which isn't bad but not worth it compared to +15 production or science, imo.

In the end, I did actually reform my Syncretism religion with an honestly exorbitant use of inquisitors/missionaries to convert all my cities back to Syncretism, reform, and then back to Catholicism. So I do have my Hero Worship founder building and picked up Crusader Spirit reformation. Since Catholicism already had the reformation that lets you purchase culture so that has been amazing.

Overall, the production/science/faith bonus has been really good, but I can definitely see it being niche to certain starting conditions, and it has tradeoffs. Even though I have 3 vassals, most of a continent of cities, and a ton of wonders I'm still not running away with the game (damn happiness actually working), which honestly feels like what happens every time I play Mongolia. You get an insane start and then things stall pretty hard later on, and these random nerds with a couple of cities are still keeping up with you somehow.
 
Pagoda is definitely the way to go if you want to more or less keep your religion a thing, or if you aren't going as crazy as I am with warmongering. Like all religious buildings, once you build it you still get the benefits even if the religion it is from is no longer the majority religion. The only reason I didn't go Pagodas was because my intent with this game was to push Syncretism to its limits by fully converting all my non-Holy City cities to another religion, which in this case ended up being Catholicism. As things are now, Pagodas would have been +1 of each yield, which isn't bad but not worth it compared to +15 production or science, imo.

In the end, I did actually reform my Syncretism religion with an honestly exorbitant use of inquisitors/missionaries to convert all my cities back to Syncretism, reform, and then back to Catholicism. So I do have my Hero Worship founder building and picked up Crusader Spirit reformation. Since Catholicism already had the reformation that lets you purchase culture so that has been amazing.

Overall, the production/science/faith bonus has been really good, but I can definitely see it being niche to certain starting conditions, and it has tradeoffs. Even though I have 3 vassals, most of a continent of cities, and a ton of wonders I'm still not running away with the game (damn happiness actually working), which honestly feels like what happens every time I play Mongolia. You get an insane start and then things stall pretty hard later on, and these random nerds with a couple of cities are still keeping up with you somehow.
Yeah, not being able to spread your religion means you lose out on votes (and the potential utility of a good Founder as opposed to basically being locked to Hero Worship) and any other follower beliefs you could have for your own religion. And Reformation is a pain.

With a Pagoda strat, I assume you could have spread your religion and just let another civ convert you with Missionaries/Pressure, but if you're killing everybody before they have the chance to convert you, then you have to spend the Faith to first convert your cities and then spend Faith to convert your cities to another Religion, so that's difficult/inefficient. I didn't think that you'd be killing everybody ASAP, that there would be time for another civ to convert you before you kill them, which is why I proposed Pagodas.

Syncretism is hard to use efficiently, because you give up on per-Follower beliefs in your Secondaries for both the sake of your Capital and your Founder choice is limited. There are also times when other Enhancers can just be more yield-heavy with less work. But it is interesting so thanks for sharing your game!

I find it a little odd how you say your Capital is 100% Syncretism but your cities have all been converted to Catholicism? Surely all that Pressure will create at least 1 follower?
 
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