[R&F] The state of Holy Sites and Great Prophets

[Patine]

This thread reminds me (again) of one of my biggest pet peeves about Civ6 that doesn't seem to be changing at any time - the finite, absolute, hard cap of religions that can be founded at all, PERIOD, STOP, and such a low, small cap, numerically speaking, in a game meant to span a vast, broad, virtual spread of alternate/game world history...

 

[Spudsie74]

I kinda think it;s (almost) an "all or nothing" thing...if you want to go balls to the wall for Religion, (including an early patheon), Holy Sites are a good investment (I like getting Choral Music, Gold, Food & xtra religious pressure, which I find doable on Emperor). Goddesss of the Harvest is nice it you can get it, as is Stone Circles or the other +2 Faih for mines pantheon. Production boosts or Culture are also situationally good. I like "God of the Sea" with a Navy & Trading empire. Thing is, if you do this (any Religious push), you are totally screwed if you don't get a Great Prophet, and a usable Pantheon. It's sad (as I LIKE Religion), but it is far easier to ignore religion, and push for Domination with Culture/Science backup (keep current w Culture & science, but mailly aggressive domination. Very generic, but you can start, and grow like a cancer, absorbing everything in range, gradually expanding outward. The Loyalty & Age Features allow for a (carefully orchestrated) brute force stomp, using any decent Civ (Persia, Rome, Germany, Cree, America, England, Greece (Gordo)....you get the idea.

I like a good religion game, but hate it when I miss...there are more variables to juggle with R&F, but it still (usually) comes down to naked force.

 

[MonkeyPaw]

I kind of like not founding a religion so I can use the Faith for other things, like Settlers (in a Golden Age), Great People, and later in the game, Naturalists. I love National Parks.

 

[UWHabs]

I kinda think it;s (almost) an "all or nothing" thing...if you want to go balls to the wall for Religion, (including an early patheon), Holy Sites are a good investment (I like getting Choral Music, Gold, Food & xtra religious pressure, which I find doable on Emperor). Goddesss of the Harvest is nice it you can get it, as is Stone Circles or the other +2 Faih for mines pantheon. Production boosts or Culture are also situationally good. I like "God of the Sea" with a Navy & Trading empire. Thing is, if you do this (any Religious push), you are totally screwed if you don't get a Great Prophet, and a usable Pantheon. It's sad (as I LIKE Religion), but it is far easier to ignore religion, and push for Domination with Culture/Science backup (keep current w Culture & science, but mailly aggressive domination. Very generic, but you can start, and grow like a cancer, absorbing everything in range, gradually expanding outward. The Loyalty & Age Features allow for a (carefully orchestrated) brute force stomp, using any decent Civ (Persia, Rome, Germany, Cree, America, England, Greece (Gordo)....you get the idea.

I like a good religion game, but hate it when I miss...there are more variables to juggle with R&F, but it still (usually) comes down to naked force.

My biggest flaw with religion is that if I really want to fight for a religion, you basically have to do that starting at like turn 10 of the game. You need to research to holy sites, get them built, maybe buy a prophet, etc... And all that comes at the expense of campuses or military, and if you pick to go the religion route and suddenly a neighbour comes with a couple archers at you, it can set you back far.

Although I guess lately my strategy has been more of a patient wait and then maybe strike. So I basically wait 30 or 40 turns in and check. If I see that only 1-2 prophets are gone and only 1-2 more civs are putting any points in faith, then sometimes at that point I push in hard and try to steal the last religion. But if there's a fight, I'm more than content to sit back. Like in my current game, I knew I was going to use faith because I started in the tundra and got Dance of the Aurora as my pantheon. But I also noticed that not too many civs were gunning for a religion, so I knew that if I put the effort in, I could sneak in and grab the last religion, which is what happened.

Now, whether it actually paid off to spend all that faith on apostles and missionaries, or whether I should have just used it to buy units and great people? hard to say.

 

[kaspergm]

Although I guess lately my strategy has been more of a patient wait and then maybe strike. So I basically wait 30 or 40 turns in and check. If I see that only 1-2 prophets are gone and only 1-2 more civs are putting any points in faith, then sometimes at that point I push in hard and try to steal the last religion. But if there's a fight, I'm more than content to sit back. Like in my current game, I knew I was going to use faith because I started in the tundra and got Dance of the Aurora as my pantheon. But I also noticed that not too many civs were gunning for a religion, so I knew that if I put the effort in, I could sneak in and grab the last religion, which is what happened.

Yes I have used that strategy also. And then you find out Arabia has been trolling on another continent and haven't build a single holy site ...

 

[UWHabs]

Yes I have used that strategy also. And then you find out Arabia has been trolling on another continent and haven't build a single holy site ...

It scares the hell out of me sometimes. I've definitely bought the 2nd last prophet more than once just to be sure.

 

[NukeAJS]

Only read the first two pages so sorry if it's a repost:

After having played a couple of games where I got the grand master's chapel, I seriously question the wisdom of always getting the intelligence agency. The grand master's chapel is definitely the way to go if you are war mongering and aren't drastically behind in tech. And no, you don't need to build a single holy site because the first civ that you already stomped on (probably) did that for you! So, instead of another spy, you can use faith for more war mongering. Since getting the chapel doesn't require getting reformed church (which is an inferior government for warmongering compared to monarchy and merchant republic), it enables this mechanic for the rest of the game and not just while in theocracy (which you shouldn't get anyways unless you want St. Basil's which is understandable because it can be a VERY good wonder if it straddles plains and tundra.)

But wait! There's more! Another overlooked aspect of the chapel is that it gives faith for pillaging. Meaning you can basically "build" units via pillaging and several turns of +faith. If you throw in sack and/or raid policy cards, you can easily raise a secondary army or even a new primary army almost completely from pillaging. Pillaging also has the nice side-effect of giving one time boosts to various yields (and the sack card REALLY shines here). There are two main ways to leverage this ability to the max. The first is obvious -- if you plan on razing a city, pillage as much as possible before razing it. Even if you plan to keep it, pillaged improvements can be completely repaired by two builders in 2-3 turns. If you plan on keeping the city, I'd recommend not pillaging districts because it means you'll get their yields only after having spent several turns producing repairs which is basically a "timeout" on city production. The second method is also something often overlooked -- the horseman. Sure, there is a huge gap between horsemen and their upgrade unit, but properly promoted and utilized horsemen (usually 2-3 is enough) can pillage an entire city in 2-4 turns. This strat here is to have your main force do their thing while you have your horsemen at some backwater city pillaging away. Interestingly, this works even more so for Norway because their longships and/or caravels can pillage the coasts in addition to your horsemen and main army pillaging away. You can rack up serious faith in this way which allows you to build more units which allows you to pillage for more faith with allows you to build more units ad infinitum until there's nothing left to pillage.

I recently became a true believer when I played as Alexander. Although you don't get the science bonus when buying units, who cares? He can basically gets tons of free tech, policies, and units solely from pillaging and taking cities. As a result, even with poor science, culture, and faith income Alexander can easily keep up or even lead without ever building a campus, theater, or holy site. Instead, he can focus on CDs and harbors to make money so that he can support that large army.

TL;DR -- try the grand master's chapel if you're warmongering. Don't forget that, with the GMC, you can get faith from pillaging which can be used to buy even more units.