The best religion.

[Falconiano]

Religion: Taoism
Why?
It's the bad with the good inside following the good with the bad inside.
It's just the cool guy of the symbols, for those with some aestethic taste!

Desert Folklore
Even if you have just 2 grams of sand. It's the boss.
Even if sand is 15 tiles away and you will plop there your second city.
Else there is always some meh pantheons; much like when you go out with a less-pretty girl because yours is on her period. Sad, but you're still thinking of the other.
Be honest and just admit it: you look at the start ground and dream desert with folklore.
I won't tell your girlfriend, don't worry.

Tithe
If King Midas had a concubine she would be named Tithe.
This godly belief gave me 18 GPT in freaking Medieval. 100+ later.
In BNW, your cursor automatically moves there.
And the AI skips it

Religious Community
The highest Hammer return of any belief. No pesky condition/requirement, it just works.
It works if you're tall but just as good if you're wide!
No point in letting it there unless your religion is Masochism.

Asceticism
Now that Cerimonial Burial has been buried (one minute of silence) this is the obvious successor to the throne of happiness beliefs.
Shrine is probably the fastest building to get, and by the time you get Asceticism most if not all your cities have a Shrine.
If you're serious about religion that is. If you're not spamming Shrines you don't deserve Asceticism!

Religious Texts
No one expects the spanish inquisition.
Best spreader ever imho, unless in very specific situation (mostly land map, clustered cities).
Even nerfed it's still OP, which should tell you something

Recap:
- best faith per turn belief
- best gold per turn belief
- best production per turn belief
- best smiles per turn belief
- best religion spreader

Any objection?

 

[Hachrt]

Religious Center gives a better ratio than Ascetism (2/5 > 1/3) so long as you grow your cities to at least 5 population; also depending on if you want to use your precious hammers on Temples. It's, at the very least, probably better for Egypt and Songhai. I think I'd rather have the Pagoda or Mosque in either case.

Desert Folklore is probably better in a lot of games and for a lot of civs, but Messenger of the Gods, Fertility Rites, and Goddess of Love are good general choices - especially if you lack desert. Others are situational or bad.

Religious Communities is probably better in most games, but for limited pop cities with not a lot of hammers Guruship is better. As an example, a Wide/ICS empire may restrict cities to 5 pop with a University (which is something I remember MadDjinn doing in his Maya ICS) and those 5 pop/follower cities need 40 hammers (40*1.05=42) for Religious Communities to give equal hammers, which is a fairly hard number to reach with 5 pop.

Tithes is probably the best belief in the game.

 

[Deau]

Tithes is probably the best belief in the game.

I'll take pilgrimage over tithe for any peaceful tall religion oriented strategy any day.


*edit* @falcon, you should probably intro with your playstyle and what strategy you were successful with this. It is far, far from a generic belief selection and well, there is no such thing as a generic belief selection. It is too strategy dependant and also neighbor AI dependant as you can't simply penetrate and spread through, say, Byzantium and Ethiopia when you are cornered in the map and split from the rest of the world by them.

 

[budweiser]

I'm rocking this right now as Morocco. T172 +100 FPT 1120 AD.

Desert Folklore
Mosques
Pilgrimage
Divine Inspiration
Defender of the Faith
Will get - The new reformation ability that lets you purchase any GP after industrial.

 

[GKShaman]

Just curious

Is religious community better than monument to the gods?

 

[Falconiano]

I'll take pilgrimage over tithe for any peaceful tall religion oriented strategy any day.


*edit* @falcon, you should probably intro with your playstyle and what strategy you were successful with this. It is far, far from a generic belief selection and well, there is no such thing as a generic belief selection. It is too strategy dependant and also neighbor AI dependant as you can't simply penetrate and spread through, say, Byzantium and Ethiopia when you are cornered in the map and split from the rest of the world by them.

Everything is map/neighbor dependant.
These are merely the best hammer/smiles/faith/GPT returns (save for smiles, but I picked the shrine one since most times you don't built temples in all cities) you can get on a mathematical basis.

Then of course, playstyle kicks in.
Even Tithe, best belief in game, is worse than the 2gpt per city if you go ICS for instance.
If you play normally though (tall or tallwide) the above will give you the best returns.

 

[darden]

situationally, I'll take God of the Open Sky (+1 culture from pastures) or Religious Idols (+1 culture/faith from gold + silver) if the map lends itself to it.

usually go for pagodas and/or mosques too depending on the game.

 

[Resipsa]

Just curious

Is religious community better than monument to the gods?

Religious community is the best follower belief for tall empires. For example a city with 100 cities get 15

Wide empires benefit from Guruship more; 15 Cities working a University specialist will get 15

Monument to the gods is a pantheon and not a follower belief

 

[sidry]

Religious community is the best follower belief for tall empires. For example a city with 100 cities get 15

Wide empires benefit from Guruship more; 15 Cities working a University specialist will get 15

15 Cities get 30
But this specialist can work at mine and get you 4 as well.
And Pagoda lets you to take two more citizen, which can work at 2 mines and get you 8 , and +2 , +2 as a bonus.

 

[Falconiano]

RC is always better unless you go ICS or a very specialist-focused strat.
As your city grows a little you'll get more hammers with RC.

 

[lymond]

I'm not sure how Asceticism can beat out Pagodas. That doesn't make sense. Otherwise, I use all the other OP beliefs constantly, especially Tithe. Itinerant vs. Texts can be map dependent.

 

[wigwam]

Itinerant Preachers is now hands-down better than Religious Texts in almost all circumstances.

Also, less creepy sexism please.

 

[Falconiano]

I'm not sure how Asceticism can beat out Pagodas. That doesn't make sense. Otherwise, I use all the other OP beliefs constantly, especially Tithe. Itinerant vs. Texts can be map dependent.

In BNW you only really need happiness in the beginning, as from Industrial and above you get a tonload of excess smiles from tenets.
So if you pick Asceticism you get +4 smiles instantly if you built shrines in your main cities.
Pagodas on the other hand are slow to build and by the time you get one or two up you're already at the point where you don't need them anymore.

That is unless you play on scarce resource maps or something like that.

 

[lymond]

Pagodas are free with faith. I usually get them quite early in most games unless faith is just hard to come by...no CS, Pantheon or Natural Wonder bonuses. In that case, I may forgo Pagodas.

 

[Browd]

Well, Pagodas are not exactly "free with faith"; they cost faith. If you have faith coming out your ears, then pagodas are a terrific faith sink. But, as you acknowledge, they are not the best choice if faith is hard to come by. They are also not the best choice when you have earmarked whatever faith you will generate for other things (Missionaries for Interfaith Dialogue, units with Holy Warriors, science buildings with Jesuit Education, etc.).

That is the advantage of Asceticism -- +1 happiness from a building you (and your puppets) are going to build anyway, so no incremental investment.

 

[Jaaboo]

Also, less creepy sexism please.

Agreed - there was no need for the tone of those comments.

Regarding Pagodas v. Shrines, if you have desert folklore, then in most games you should have a decent fpt for pagodas to get them early enough to enable growth. I would agree that if you do not have a high fpt (you found religion via huts, policy or wonders) that Aesthetics is probably a better situational choice considering that puppets will often build shrines. (Unless you're Venice, then Pagodas might be attractive as well since you can purchase them in your puppeted cities.)

 

[Resipsa]

15 Cities get 30
But this specialist can work at mine and get you 4 as well.
And Pagoda lets you to take two more citizen, which can work at 2 mines and get you 8 , and +2 , +2 as a bonus.

Patagonian for 15 cities would be cost prohibitive.

 

[Catan_Settler]

Sorry but I gotta disagree with much of the OP's premises.

Guruship provides more hammers for the first half of the game, and also provides them more evenly across your civ. It's significantly better for empires growing past 3 cities. Remember 15% would need 10 base hammers to get 1.5 more hammers, and that's assuming you were at 15 pop in the city and they were all following the religion. Religious community is NOT the best belief for production.

Religious texts over Itinerant preachers? Alright then, you just proved you're not the expert you are pretending to be. Oh look, and here you are taking desert folklore but nothing to sink faith into? Sorry but that's an epic fail. If you are able to get a faith pantheon and the terrain to support it then there is no question Pagodas, Mosques, hell even Cathedrals and Monasteries are a better follower belief than Asceticism.

What you have done is cherry picked some of the "top tier" beliefs in a relatively haphazard fashion, without paying any attention to which beliefs have synergy with other beliefs, and to make it even more amusing you actually missed all the actual best in class follower beliefs. And had the balls the be cocky about it. LMAO! Fail fail fail, OP.

 

[Aviyor]

Religious texts isn't as good as it used to be, itinerant preachers is just about better in every way now. If you're going asceticism, you're committing to early/wide expansion. This doesn't synergize well with the production and tithe. Tithe breaks even at 8 pop averages, ignoring minority belief areas (with desert folklore, though, you shouldn't have a problem competing.) You've also got a lack of faith sink, so you'll be swimming in missionaries that you weren't planning on using (religious texts pick over holy order)

I'd personally endorse folklore/church property/pagodas/moques/itinerant for a well-rounded wide faith machine that doesn't burn you out on missionaries/prophets.

 

[Browd]

Trade route pressure adds further complication to the IP vs RT debate. Once you have Printing Press, RT exports 9 pressure along trade routes that are beyond normal religious pressure range (vs. 6 for regular and IP pressure).

To illustrate how this might affect your religious spread strategy, let's say you have a large target city with a well-entrenched religion -- a 15-pop city with 12 followers of another religion at 42 pressure (from 7 other nearby cities with that religion), and one lonely follower of your religion. Four cities with your religion are within 10 tiles of the target city and two other cities are within 13 tiles. With IP, the target city is getting 36 pressure from the 6 cities within 13 tiles, and with RT it is receiving 36 pressure from the 4 cities within 10 tiles. Since 36 is less than 42 (last time I checked), you aren't going to make any progress in the target city without a Great Prophet or ... some trade routes.

Let's say you have the opportunity to hit that target city with 3 trade routes from cities that are outside normal pressure range (say, 20+ tiles away). With IP, those 3 trade routes will supply another 18 pressure, for a total of 54 pressure, while with RT they will apply another 27 pressure, for a total of 63. The extra 9 pressure from RT may not seem all that much, but it is 16% more pressure than IP, which will make conversions in that city much quicker (63 vs. 42 is far better than 54 vs. 42).

Even better, if you are playing Arabia, land trade routes double the pressure. Arabia with RT and trade routes can be deadly.

Which is better still depends on the map, but on balance I think RT remains very competitive with, and perhaps better than, IP, even after its mild nerf.