Uses of Religions

[Pickly]

As I've been playing the mod more often, I'm of course going to be trying out most of the religions, and am curious for some strategies of how to use them.

Order:

I haven't really used this much. I'm guessing that Unyielding Order and social order help a lot for really large cities, Basilicas are good for really big empires, and Sphener seems like a very powerful unit, but other than that it's a bit iffy. (I can guess that the +1 holy spell for priests is useful as a straight buff, but haven't really used it enough to say for sure.)


Empyrean:

I've used Chalid a bit for the spells, and think I have a general idea with using the AoE damage spells, but are there any other strategies for the various spells it gives?


Runes of Killmorph:

I've built the temples and used Arete, but don't have much experience with the units. (They just seemed like more expensive versions of regular units, but I was probably missing some functions for them.)


Fellowship of Leaves:

Elf economy so far has been my favorite part of the game, and I've done a bit of "lumbermill, than convert to ancient forests", but haven't used the units much beyond this. Any advice here?


Council of Esus:

I've gotten Nox Noctis a lot for the invisibility, but never used it as a state religion. I have heard that it's the weakest (at least in the regular mod), but are there any other tricks that could be used with it?


Octopus Overlords:

This is the one I've had the toughest time figuring out. What I've gotten from reading is that the units are quite good near water, with priests using their spells and the units walking over to attack stuff, but in general I'm pretty clueless about how to use everything.


Ashen Veil:

I've set off Armegeddon in a couple of games now, quite a fun time, and think I have this religion pretty well sorted out (Ritualists to damage groups, sacrifice the weak for really fast growth/large populations, I've read about diseases corpses+cure disease though haven't used it much, have used the heroes as well), but are there many non-obvious tricks that I may have missed?

Thanks for any advice offered.

 

[DaveGold]

How long a thread do you want? The combinations of religions and nations give a lot of different options. Each religion offers different temples, mana, units, heroes, wonders, alignments, upgrades, promotions, not to mention the councils.

I'll do a quick run through of the OO. The temples give incredible amounts of culture. The drown is a weak unit you can build if you haven't much else. The stygian guards are the key units. A modest army of waterwalking cultists and stygians can rampage along a coastline terrorizing enemy cities, potential game winners, all built from OO units. Lunatics can be powerful early units if you need to rampage inland. Severous and Hemah are a good pair of complementary heroes. There are some interesting promotions, such as slaves to lunatics and stygians to eidolons. Asylums help to specialize your research cities. The tower of complacency allows you to build a super city to specialize at your leisure, probably as a wonder building national epic. If you need culture, seafaring/coastal dominance, extra research, fanatical units, or some madness then the OO may be for you.

 

[Monkeyfinger]

You've pretty much got the gist of FoL, order and AV. Yes, Order's as bad as it looks, and FoL is only a good permanent choice for the elves (though other civs can take brief stints in it to get a few ancients, before better religions open up.)

Empyrean's unique units (radiant guard and ratha) can cast blinding light, which attempts to blind all units in a stack. Blind = can't move for two turns. Very handy for stopping enemies in the field, whether they're attacking your empire or trying to stamp out your invading force. The spell resistance bonus from being in a city makes it pretty worthless against a stack marshalling in a city though.

RoK's units are pretty junky, yeah. Soldiers of Kilmorph can be sacrificed in a city to add 45 hammers to its production order, but they cost 90, so that's a pretty weak ability. Some people use them to catch a production-poor city up to speed using the power of a god king capital, but I think choosing a religion just for the ability to prop up low hammer cities a little is pretty bad. The real attraction of RoK you missed is the Mines of Gal-Dur wonder, which gives you sources of iron that work even if you haven't researched Iron Working or Smelting. Those are pretty costly techs, and champions aren't that much better than axemen, so it's a great wonder for letting you skip that research path. It combined with the little extra gold and arete make it a fine religion, despite the weak units.

CoE's pretty weak for most races, though it does have one standout perk: If you declare war on someone you have open borders with while following CoE, the units you have in your territory aren't kicked out. Because the AI tends to garrison its important cities pretty well during peacetime, it's not THAT awesome, but it can be a nice advantage. It also has great racial synergy with dwarves, since it insures they'll be neutral so they can build their dwarven druid UU, and it gives them dwarven shadows, which are pretty sick and a big upgrade over normal shadows.

OO's melee units are great period, they don't need water. Drowns are like axemen that can learn cannibalize, and are cheaper to upgrade a warrior into. Cannibalize heals 10% health after each won combat, which is great for beating down hordes of weaker units. Stygian guards are stronger than champions by a point and get march for free, and cost the same number of hammers. They lack the small bonus vs. melee units champions have, but the good outweighs the bad here. OO also offers a lot more culture than other religions, nice for winning peaceful border clashes, and a pair of good heroes. Saverous is an early meaty warrior type, while Hemah is a stronger archmage that doesn't need the terribly expensive strength of will. The OO unit that does a lot better near water is cultists, which can cast Tsunami for heavy damage. Careful, though - it friendly fires. Asylums are only good for one race, though, and while I hear lunatics have gotten pretty decent, I've never used them because they have a history of sucking ass.

 

[PekkaR]

The spell resistance bonus from being in a city...

How much is the bonus? Haven't seen this mentioned before but it might explain a situation I had recently.

 

[UncleJJ]

You don't have to stick with one religion. Most religious based troops will stick around, only the heroes and the high priests leave when you switch religions. I quite often have 4 different sorts of priests in my army in the middle game. Later I settle on one religion and build the heroes and high priests of that. But in the meantime I switched alignment and picked up a range of troops including perhaps paladins, druids or eidolons.

You asked about Fellowship of Leaves:
I find the Priest of Leaves and their free tiger summons quite useful cannon fodder particularly after the priest has gained a few levels when combat promotions add empower promotions to the tigers. Tigers are great with the Mutate spell, just delete the weak ones. The tigers cage also go well with a carnival adding another happy and more culture to a city. Then there is the Bloom spell which is great for Elves and Svarts to add new forests to nearly any tile, making the awesome late game elf cities with ancient forests on cottages, farms and mines. Other civs can add a new forest to unimproved tiles and there is less need unless you want more lumbermills and the health from the forests. I don't find the fawn and satyr very useful they seem similar to the hunter and ranger units although the free woodsman 1 is useful for elves.


Spiritual:
If your leader is Spiritual then using multiple religions is particularly rewarding. Not only can you switch the civics and religions without anarchy but the religious troops that are Disciple units get a free mobility and potency promotion. This makes priests move faster (saving a promotion) and gain promotions much quicker. These priests make great paladins, eidolons and druids that start with plenty of experience and promotions.

Several of the tier 2 religious units also have useful upgrades as well when made with a Spiritual leader. Build the tier 2 units before researching the upgrade and the Potency promotion yields free experience while they wait. Disciple of leaves can become Rangers (with exp, free mobility and medic1 promotions). The Savant (Ashen Veil) upgrades to a Mage (with free mobility, medic1 and Potency promotions). The Zealot (OO) upgrades to a Stygian Guard (with free mobility and medic1).

Edit for correction: originally I confused medic1 with heal

 

[Monkeyfinger]

How much is the bonus? Haven't seen this mentioned before but it might explain a situation I had recently.

The defensive strength bonus divided by 4

 

[Senethro]

So 80 will get you 20. It also prevents magic (except for fireballs) moving in on Siege's niche of lowering city defense. Clever.

 

[Jarrema]

i think that one of the biggest advantages of Council of Essus hadn't been mentioned yet:
Gibbon Goetia.
He is awesome. Rather early hero archmage
I love going to the CoE as a lategame religion - especially with dwarves, but also with elves (for example for druids, but not only). So with dwarves it is RoK -> CoE, and with elves FoL -> CoE

 

[Azhral]

My two cents:

Order is great for the civs that can get massive pops. Lanun, Kurios and Calabim usually do well, Unyeilding Order means you can get massive cities with no unhappiness, can be a production issue for the Calabim however.
Sphener is often overlooked, but he's a good and fairly easy source of Ressurrection.

As for Esus, Shadowriders and Nox Noctis are the key.
Gibbon is cool, but his illusionist promotion makes him slightly less effective as a Twincast Archmage Hero. He comes early however, so its a worthwhile trade.
Shadowriders have Shadow affinity, a very high base strength andhigh movement. Four Flanking-3 Shadowriders stacking Shadow mana are damn powerful, combine that with HN and one can effectively wage war without actually waging war.

Empy: Chalid + Sun Mana = Win. Rathas and RG's are very good too, but not quite as strong as more late game units. A stack of about 10 Rathas will freeze anything however. For those wanting a few Elite units to win the day, Rathas can make that happen.

OO: Tsunami. March your armies over the water and ravage the coastline. Only need 4 Cultists and a few Drowns or Stygians and you can take ANY coastal city. Just watch out for AI ships, they tend to have too many.

FoL: The main reason people run FoL is for Guardian of Nature. Very powerful for any civ, but better for Elves. Went FoL as Calabim not that long ago, Flauros started in a desert, and by the end of the game my territory was either Sawmilled Ancient Forest or Aristo-farmed Flood Plains. Massive cities, massive vamps, massive victory.
Fawns and Satyrs are pretty average. Fawns are a good Hunter replacement, but hunting is a prerequist and Satyrs are bloody hard to get and fairly easy to kill.

RoK: Very strong religion. Extra gold, extra defense and Arthendain. If you want to turtle up, RoK is the religion for you. Khazad (obviously) want to found it ASAP, even if planning to switch to something else later.

AV: Solid, but I'm not a big fan. Ritualists and Corpses are a good army, and Beasts of Argares'es' make their late game very powerful. If done right one can get alot of science for very little slider, but its hard to set up. The biggest bonus is StW which allows massive (if unhealthy) cities. Funny that the best race for AV (The Infernals) are also the worst race to run StW with...
And the Shieam do better with RoK.

 

[avalonnn]

Order gives you a Law mana, which can really help the economy. The heroes are great.

One of the oddest benefits of Order is a free unit in each new city. Early on, you get free Acolytes, which help spread the religion. Later on, you get free Crusaders, which is a free garrison with Medic.

Order is best if you get a Philosopher and can build the Code of Junil.

The +1 holy buff is powerful. Question here -- is that holy benefit more powerful against certain enemies, such as demons and the undead?

Sphener is not only powerful, but gets heal (and unyielding order), which really helps keep a stack moving.

The Order temple gives you a +10 percent build rate, which is something.

I'm currently playing a game as Elohim (Noble difficulty) and conquered the Orcs early -- the + 10 percent build rate + warrens is quite powerful.

 

[Azhral]

Yes, Holy does extra damage to Demons and Undead, and less to Angels. Check out the racial promotions in the Civilopedia for details.

As for most of the other details, they are pretty similar to other religions.
Crusaders are a free garrison, but they are pretty useless to the point of not wanting to pay for them. Acolytes are far better, as they can spread the religion much quicker than anything else.

All temples get a minor bonus. Orders is just Military Production.

Sphener is slighty better than Mardero, but he's not as good as Chalid, Gibbon or Hemah. Yvain is also better as he can stack Nature mana and has druid movement. And nobody is as good as Arthendain on defense, but then all of the major religious heroes have their strong points. Sphener's is keeping a war stack healthy and moving.

All religions Shrines are massively powerful, and one wants to run some Priests and get a prophet ASAP for any religious holy city.

And Warrens are awesome buildings, able to do all sorts of neat stuff. Such as the Soldiers of Kilmorph only making 45, but with Warrens you get 2 of them for 90, making it even.

 

[xalien]

CoE is very good for Hippus (or any other civ starting with nature mana) when starting in bad terrain. Just build Gibbon and start vitalizing.

 

[Jarrema]

Order is one of my favorite late-game religions (the other is CoE). I swich to it from RoK for example, after building up my economy, getting Mines of ... (do not remember name), and some stonewardens for buffing my army. Then Order: It spreads through my cities like a fire
And then - total war. This religion is meant for that - builder, then conquerer

 

[Luned]

I can't imagine running the Luchuirp without RoK early on, unless you were mired in flat land.

 

[Calavente]

for order :
DOn't forget Sphener, orderborn druids and High Priests can get : Command IV !
80% chance of gaining the defeated unit + heal it just the turn after with sphener..
It really helps you when the opponent is building phalanx and muskets and you don't have the tech... soften them a bit, then command them.
80% is much much better than 60% !! more than the 20% difference seems to be.
How can you "steal" almost any national heros ? Sphener !!

Yvain is quite good with his 60% command + heal, but sphener is way better !

 

[PekkaR]

for order :
DOn't forget Sphener, orderborn druids and High Priests can get : Command IV !
80% chance of gaining the defeated unit + heal it just the turn after with sphener..
It really helps you when the opponent is building phalanx and muskets and you don't have the tech... soften them a bit, then command them.
80% is much much better than 60% !! more than the 20% difference seems to be.
How can you "steal" almost any national heros ? Sphener !!

Yvain is quite good with his 60% command + heal, but sphener is way better !

Well, the move from 60% to 80% chance of converting living units could also be described as increasing your convert chances by 33%, or decreasing your chances to fail by 50%.

Try Gibbon Goetia or Hemah with (only) Mind III promotion that he retakes every time after losing it to a bad Domination cast.

 

[Calavente]

true, but I never use MindIII :/, too fearful of losing 1 promotion (plus isn't it dependant on the level of the unit versus level of archmage ? meaning dominating a heros is difficult.
(don't heroes have an innate magic resistance ?)
4orderborn druids + sphener --> means 4 "commanded" units... independant on unit level ..
I would love to convert govannon ....(the spell is linked to him only no? and not to the amurite civ?)

 

[Azhral]

Easy solution to your Mind 3 troubles, play as the Balseraphs.

Puppets have a decreased chance to succeed when casting Mind 3, but if they lose it, who cares? Also with summoner and/or twincast you can get far more casts in.

Damn, I'll have to try that myself again.