Tales of Religion - my experiments with some in game combos.

Dtekkar

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I'm poking around at each of the religious beliefs, playing a game that features each one. I'm especially interested in war stories of religion combos, which worked, which tanked. I'll start with the past few Byzantine games I've played.

Game 1:
Just war (+20% combat bonus near enemy cities following your religion) / Messiah (Great prophet 25% stronger and earned with 25% less Faith).
Intent: Prophet leads the army, religious nukes on the leading city and any later city that will be trouble for a massive combat bonus. Win a great holy war.
Experience: Amazing in my opening war, but my religion didn't spread well other than in those 2-3 of holy wars you get to have. Religion and science don't mix, and science is crucial for domination. I ended up with lots of territory and puppets, massive happy/infrastructure problems, and behind on tech. Almost lost the game, but pulled myself together enough to build a fleet to visit the space-bound arab's capital.
Thoughts: If you can get a neighbor or two with your religion before they get a pantheon, I can see this belief having decent value. Seems Messiah would be weak on its own without the combo, but was invaluable in this game as both neighbors had religions.

Game 2:
Great mosque (Missionaries spread 3 times, up from 2), Missionary Zeal (Mission conversion strength +25%), Holy Order (Missionaries and Inquisitors cost 30% less Faith)
Intent: Super missionaries! Get your religion out quickly, exactly when and where you want it to go.
Experience: Doesn't work. You can please a lot of civs and city states, but once religions are established missionaries don't have the punch to knock other religions out of an area. Plus you spend all your faith to do it. Sounds great on paper, and in the right circumstance you can flood a civ with missionaries and convert everything, but the combo is flimsy. Paper thin. And I couldn't recommend it less. There are much better combos for a diplo win, and you want to tech hard which makes the missionaries even more costly.

Game 3:
Itinerant Preachers (13 tile religious spread) & Religious Texts (34%/68% bonus pressure) combo with an ICS/REX and a fast tech to printing press.
Intent: Your religion takes over the world.
Experience: This is borderline overpowered, especially on a pangea. My religion took over the whole Pangea with maybe a half dozen missionaries. I looked up and saw 54 happy in an ICS: 90 happiness from religion. Jeez. The pressure combo sustains itself once it hits critical mass, and costs no faith, leaving you free to buy all faith buildings and great people. So good. Give it a try, seriously.

Those are the more interesting experiments I've had with religion so far. I want to hear yours. I was blown away by the itinerant preacher/religious text combo, I hope there are more out there that you guys have found and will now share.
 
I agree with that Itinerant Preachers/Religious Texts are better than Missionary Zeal/Holy Order. once you set up, they can't really convert these cities. Even with prophet the city will convert back to my religion because of sheer amount of pressure.

Missionaries are only good when you have to speed up initial spread... after that, meh.
 
Itinerant Preachers is the bomb. It's very rare for me not to take that one. And the AI seems to always leave it for me. I pair it up with "Ceremonial Burial" for a big happiness boost, and "Feed the World" to take advantage of that extra happiness.

Then with no need for missionaries I either produce GP all game, or I take "Holy Warriors" as the other follower belief if I think I need the military boost. (And I usually do need it, now that I've moved up to King, finally).
 
It's even worse once faith costs start increasing.

However you should try your super missionary setup while picking the +science boost from using them on enemy religions thing
 
I've done same with 3 and 1.

I found 1 much more useful, and with proper SP setup (tradi/honor/piety/some autocracy) working well, the problem is tech, thus you need keep over only one sing tight - Science. The science in 1 combo is cruicial to keep up, but hapiness actually is not an issue.
You will need few RA buddies, diplomacy using denouncements which makes your tights with your RA buddies stronger.
You need honor, and honor finisher, and want to go or Tithe founder to upkeep all the army, or actually CB to fix your hapinees issues if you have ones. Oligarchy will help alittle.
Ranged units should dominate, and some powerfull upgrading melees that you must keep them alive from early game barb-trained warriors.

3. Yes, so far most dominant Byzantine strategy, REX/ICS is very sweet for Byzantine. Messenger of Gods + Shrine/temple Spam (+5 faith + 3 happiness or +2 food +2 culture) with Piety, + mentioned combo = insane. Tithe is better than CB in this case. Later Order if you have enough culture to finish it.
 
It's even worse once faith costs start increasing.

However you should try your super missionary setup while picking the +science boost from using them on enemy religions thing

I know some people swear by that, but it never seems very marginal to me. It runs at about a 5% boost to science in my experiments.
 
I know some people swear by that, but it never seems very marginal to me. It runs at about a 5% boost to science in my experiments.

I agree, missionaries are weak , esp post Reinassance.
 
Correct me if I'm wrong but Interfaith Dialogue says "Science Boost when a Missionary..."

The same concept of a "Boost" appears in the Korean UA. Does this mean that Interfaith Dialogue boost is the same or equivalent of an RA? Because if that's the case, you will want a large base BPT for it to work fantastically.
 
As for game 1, the wars didn't go smoothly at all due to a backstab double DOW forcing a retreat before I could get the meatier cities, and the loss in tempo meant that I lost tech parity and was composite bows versus siam's stompies at one point. I only eeked out a victory with a well placed citadel on a riverside hill between his capital and remaining cities. By the time I cleared out my neighbors, regained positive happiness, and starting growing the core cities, I was 2 eras behind even though I had half the map. I'm sure my opinion of the enhancer will evolve as I play more games, those were just my first impressions, but it does seem pretty decent.

I didn't think of interfaith dialog (beakers from missionaries used on cities of other religions) when i played game 2. I'll give that a try at some point then, and maybe get the piety finisher on top. I've only played with it once and I didn't really care for it, since you generally want to be turning over atheist cities. I can imagine it could be quite a few beakers.
 
Sacred waters (+1:) for each city on a river) can be insane for REX, some starts you can get 4+ cities on rivers and the immediate happiness gets you exponential quite quickly. I had an recent game where I immediately founded 11 cities, 7 of which on rivers, in the initial REX because somehow I got all of sacred waters/ceremonial burial (+1:) for each city following your religion)/Asceticism (+1:) for each of your cities that has a shrine, your religion, and at least 3 followers).

Goddess of Love is better overall than sacred waters once it kicks in, but the initial delay is substantial and it seems like there are always at least a couple new settled/conquered cities that evade the 6 pop requirement.

Ceremonial burial is just amazing. None of the other founders I've played with so far come close except maybe tithe. I have a feeling this will be 0.5:) per city soon.
 
Sacred waters (+1:) for each city on a river) can be insane for REX, some starts you can get 4+ cities on rivers and the immediate happiness gets you exponential quite quickly. I had an recent game where I immediately founded 11 cities, 7 of which on rivers, in the initial REX because somehow I got all of sacred waters/ceremonial burial (+1:) for each city following your religion)/Asceticism (+1:) for each of your cities that has a shrine, your religion, and at least 3 followers).

Goddess of Love is better overall than sacred waters once it kicks in, but the initial delay is substantial and it seems like there are always at least a couple new settled/conquered cities that evade the 6 pop requirement.

Ceremonial burial is just amazing. None of the other founders I've played with so far come close except maybe tithe. I have a feeling this will be 0.5:) per city soon.

Do it with Egypt and their Happiness Tombs. ICS LIVES!
 
combo of cheap missionaries and beakers when you convert is very good. get open borders and send your missionaries to holy cities.

as long as you don't fully convert the city, the AI doesn't seem to mind as much, though it still gives you a light red negative diplo modifier.

just repeat the process for free beakers for most of the game. take a missionary break if/when you go rationalism to buy a few scientists, then switch back to missionaries when scientist cost and gain don't compare to missionaries

afaik you get 10 beakers per foreign religion followers in the city as long as the city doesn't convert, per conversion attempt. so only target large populated cities with high amounts of followers (usually the holy city). and when the AI sends their great prophets in to eradicate your religion, more power to you!
 
I think there's still a bit of an issue with people spreading religion for its own sake (probably because it's a cool new feature).
This can actually be counterproductive in some cases. So if you load up on beliefs that make it easier to spread your religion, make very sure it's worth it (e.g. by taking Tithe).
Otherwise you're wasting a lot of effort and might be helping your enemies more than yourself.
 
I think Holy Order is not really good for spreading ur religion as the OP mentioned that once other religions are founded ur religion goes into decline. This means that it would make better combo with Initiation rites (instant gold) & Interfaith dialouge (science boosts when missionary used) because they don't need ur religion to be dominant, infact interfaith dialogue would become useless if all cities follow ur faith.

If u have founder beliefs like Tithe & World church and u want ur religion to persist then Religious texts & the preachers enhancer belief is better. Messiah is sometimes a good way to fight off & eliminate other religions when the competetion is tough, but still the massive pressure that religious texts incur is better.

BTW among Religious text & iterant preachers, which belief is suitable for tall empire & which for wide ?
 
BTW among Religious text & iterant preachers, which belief is suitable for tall empire & which for wide ?

They both better for wide:
Religious Texts create more pressure, while Preachers make it working further, that means cities for this religioin will project pressure for 13 tiles instead of 10.
Byzantine with ICS and combo of those = insane
More cities > more effect for Preachers, so it is kinda more Wide/Tall dependent, Religious Texts are powerful with more cities too, just effect is stable and being increased for each city in 10 tile (13 tile with Preachers) radius
 
10 tile radius = 330 affected tiles
13 tile radius = 546 affected tiles
It's about 65% increase in number of tiles.

yes but there is question how much cities on those tiles you will encounter, also subtract water tiles for city planting....

Texts provide constant 66% after Press.
 
I can't stop taking pagodas...

im use to taking the science for trade tech, and pagodas so i can play hybrid tall/wide. If i can not get science from trade routes, i get Pagodas with River happiness instead. Usually i like to use Korea.

I start with REX to 4 - 6, i don't build any culture buildings until medieval to reduce first age policies. That lets my early game focus on Faith + Units, once i hit medieval my game begins - declare a war, use pagodas to help the expansion pains and cultural recovery from not building culture buildings earlier.

I haven't mastered the combo's of religion yet because a lot of them are gone by the time i get to one. Perhaps a few games with celts will fix that...
 
I tried the Preachers/Text combo with Byz and it really is almost OP. Oh, I tried Tithe+Church Property as well. If you take Religious Text as enhancer then money will almost be a non-issue.

Btw, individually, is Itinerant Preacher really better than Religious Text? Itinerant Preacher only boosts the range of your religious pressure while Religious Text can convert other cities faster. I can get that it maybe good for small-ish pangaea maps where cities are placed more closely together (so it can convert more at once) but I think Religious Text is where the punch is. Converted cities will exert pressure anyways which means your religion will spread far and wide provided the AI doesn't convert them back.

Also yeah, I think Holy Order synergize better with Interfaith Dialogue since missionaries are not really an effective way to spread your religion. I think the science boost ID gives is reliant on the number of populations with other religion in a target city, and not necessarily whether the city itself is of another religion. In the early games, it can even give you more beakers than your current bpt for each missionary use (or maybe that's just because I suck at teching). Tall AI holy cities are probably the best target for Dialogue (beware attrition though) because more missionaries can be used before risking conversion and it can recover their believers faster.
 
If you really want to dominate the religious game, go wide and keep your cities low pop. The will then provide a lot of pressure the moment they get converted (as demonstrated by Maddjinn's Carthage game).
 
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