What are your favourite belief combinations?

[MarvelOfRain]

One of my favourite parts of Vox Populi are all the different religion options you get (no more Tithe+ Pagodas 100% of the time). You can essentially build your religion to complement what you are doing in the game and at least in my games good religion often helps me to run away with game against Immortal AIs.

Obviously you choose your religion based on the map, civ you are playing etc., but there are several strategies that I find really strong in general and I always get them if I have the chance. Below are my 3 favourite strategies for 3 playstyles I like. However, I am still learning and would love to see what everyone else has to say. What are your favourites?

 

[MarvelOfRain]

Dominaion victory without building a single unit
Hero Worship + Orders + Zealotry + Crusade

By far the best option for warmongers imo. Hero Worship + Orders give me so much faith that I can easily buy enough units to reach the cap - it is so strong that from medieval era onwards I don't have to build a single non-naval unit and will still crush anyone. All of my units will also be stronger because of orders + zealotry and get full xp, when build. Once I get around to using those units I will spawn 1 GG or GA per city I take, enter a permanent golden age and have more than enough gold to buy whatever I want.


Peacefull tall prophets
Divine Inheritance + Mandirs + Prophecy + Knowledge through Devotion

Great for going tall with 3-5 tradition cities. Mandirs give me more food to work more specialists and Divine Inheritence makes my capital even better. Meanwhile, the combination of Prophecy + Knowledge through Devotion: 1) gives me a bunch of prophets for insane tiles and a bunch of tourism in the lategame, 2) gives me insane faith income that can be used to buy Great People and 3) increases my culture and science to stay ahead of the AI. On standard speed, I get 1 prophet every 10-15 turns for the entire game with this combination. Also, the fact that you can buy Archeologists helps a lot since it is usually hard to find production for them in a traditional game, but with this reformation, there are super cheap.


We Love the King!
Theocratic Rule + Scholarship + Synagogues + Faith of the Masses

Lastly my strategy for a peacefull wide playthrough. Obviously with this strategy I want to make sure all of my cities stay in WLTKD forever. While there, they get a ton of extra Yields and Scholarship + Faith of the Masses should make sure their Science and Culture Output stays high (even higher because of modifiers), This strategy also nicely complements my default social policy choices for peacefull wide (progress) playthrough which are Fealty + Industry since both give bonuses for WLTKD and Industry even allows faith buying Merchants to reset WLTKD if any cities make hard to fulfill requests.


All 3 religions have 1 free slot I choose based on what is available / my civ / what I need in the short term (Thrift or Cathedrals if I am broke for example). Obviously sometimes stuff gets taken by other civs but besides the 1st religion (that one is hard to get - Hero Worship and Orders are quite contested) I ussually don't have problem with AIs picking stuff I want.

 

[tothePAIN]

I like to combo mosques with Hero Worship and Orders for the Golden Age synergy. Managed it in a Spain game right now.

 

[pineappledan]

Just GP things I guess - my go-to for games playing tradition with a GP-focused civ (Korea, Austria, Israel)
Ceremonial Burial
Mandirs
Inspiration
Iconography
Knowledge through Devotion

The Outside World is Scary - for games when I’m focused on an order science victory
Council of Elders
Scholarship
Diligence
Mendicancy
Jesuit Education

 

[andersw]

A fun Egyptian option for the agressive combo is to reform with Knowledge through devotion instead of crusader spirit.
Combined with artistry the artifacts are a bit crazy and you'll have plenty of citadels+holy sites which give really juicy yields.

Statecraft + council of elders + orthodoxy is a bit rediculous in classic/medieval with huge spikes in hammers/science and even somewhat useful as late as industrial.
While rarely as good as hero worship its also usable for wide warmonger play since you'll convert a lot of cities.

In general my favourites for wide are Cathedral+Synagogue (with cathedral sometimes swapped -> thrift) if I dont go orders, hammers, gold, distress and poverty reduction are always needed when your empire are pushing 20+ cities.

 

[CrazyG]

Inspiration + mosques with artistry. Culture wins games

 

[DeAnno]

If I get an early found with a strong faith position, I like to either go Council of Elders + Inspiration or Apolistic + Scholarship. That way you cover both Science and Culture, which are the main things you're usually missing early if you want a big snowball. The yields on the Founder beliefs are huge, and the Follower Beliefs give you a good enough taste of the other one. Of course it cools down a bit later, but the idea is to get a very strong lead and not care.

This is kind of at odds from the thing CrazyG likes to do with quick Enhancing instead, and he makes a reasonable argument. That definitely fits better with the other Founder beliefs though.

 

[CrazyG]

This is kind of at odds from the thing CrazyG likes to do with quick Enhancing instead, and he makes a reasonable argument. That definitely fits better with the other Founder beliefs though.

Council of Elders is great if you want to spread early. You can use the science and production to build Hagia Sophia and still enhance quickly. Best of both worlds!

 

[MarvelOfRain]

Inspiration

Inspiration + mosques with artistry. Culture wins games

That is interesting I personally never pick inspiration. I agree that culture is extremely important but inspiration just seems so inefficient when compared to everything else. Is it still worth it even with the max being 6 and only getting 0.33 per citizen?

If I get an early found with a strong faith position, I like to either go Council of Elders + Inspiration or Apolistic + Scholarship. That way you cover both Science and Culture, which are the main things you're usually missing early if you want a big snowball.

I tried both a couple of times and was not really impressed by it. It gives you a nice boost but was not really worth skipping late-game founders for me. The idea to skip any faith-buildings is interesting though. I guess you just span missionaries as long as you can get the instant yields somewhere? What do you use the resources for usually? (to do you rush some wonders? build up military? infastructure?)

Council of Elders is great if you want to spread early. You can use science and production to build Hagia Sophia and still enhance quickly. Best of both worlds!

I always try to spread early and get the prophet from Sophia (or just wait and pick up leftover beliefs). As peaceful Tradition or Progress, you need to sneak in the reformation belief as soon as possible or you won't get it ever.

 

[DeAnno]

I guess you just span missionaries as long as you can get the instant yields somewhere? What do you use the resources for usually? (to do you rush some wonders? build up military? infastructure?)

The idea with both, for me at least, is to spend 100% on Missionaries until there are no more cities you can reach that are empty of religion (after that I usually enhance, getting buildings as a 2nd belief, and then build them all before maybe another conversion push.) Apostolic I usually use with Tradition, because the capital is very needy of population and this can make it large very quickly even without very food heavy land (though I sometimes also use it with Progress or Authority if the capital's land is just A+ amazing.) The culture you get is pretty extreme too for the earlygame, it's like 200+c from a 200 faith missionary with decent spread targets. Basically it lets you vector your faith generation into culture while getting side benefits of spread religion and lots of food. Later in the game even a Great Prophet can be kind of like a Great Writer, getting massive amounts of culture from doing 4 spreads to big AI cities.

Also, Apolistic can turn into the ultimate in jerk spreading religions, since you're happy to fight over the same city again and again turning your Faith into Culture and Food each time, rather than losing it entirely. It's kind of like the Authority of Religious conflict. One particular jerk move is to have a GP ready for when you make peace with an AI of another religion, and then send him in during the treaty to convert four of their cities and make a thousand+ culture/food total. Or if you really want to get into a religious grudge match with the AI, build Bourbadour and also take the Enhancer that lets your missionaries erode pressure.

Council of Elders is probably more powerful, but unlike Apostolic's lazy micro (Food and Culture basically don't need micro at all) you need to micro CoE very well to get the most out of it, aiming your techs correctly and dropping hammers at the right moments for needed Wonder timings, and you also can still sometimes lose a Wonder to random stupidity. Council of Elders also has an advantage though that if you convert 50%+ of a neutral civ's cities, they may start to spread it on their own and give you huge buckets of hammers and science at random times. Unlike Apostolic it has less of a future, since it doesn't scale with followers converted, AND you can't repeat cities, so Great Prophets can't give you huge buckets of neverending rewards, and you don't get rewarded for endlessly contesting the same cities.

That being said though, Council of Elders is totally bonkers in Medieval when you combo it right and use it for wonders or timed new unit pushes (through for example a Heroic Epic capital where you slam the hammers into units.) Isabella in particular is a serious offender, being able to trigger it with both missionaries and settlers and city captures.

 

[CrazyG]

That is interesting I personally never pick inspiration. I agree that culture is extremely important but inspiration just seems so inefficient when compared to everything else. Is it still worth it even with the max being 6 and only getting 0.33 per citizen?

2 faith for a specialist is a good bonus too. It can help you enhance faster, and increases your pressure. But really the key is that you will multiply you culture with things like golden ages or mosques, so the numbers are bigger than they seem.

 

[SuperNoobCamper]

Hero worship is a game winner on it's own, it's ridiculously powerful and scales very well combined with pretty much any true faith sink it'll get you rolling the entire game.
It works extremely well with Zealotry, Prophecy + Holy lands or To the glory of god.
In my current game as the Iroquois Emperor standard speed standard size terra 8 civs 16 i had a silver luxury start with progress & fealty, chose God of commerce for my starting pantheon then founded with Hero worship but orders were already taken so i went for Mosques and Mandirs my start was very food-light mostly plains, tundra with forests.
Enhanced with prophecy and reformed with Crusaders spirit.
I had only 4 cities of my own but with how Hero worship & crusaders spirit & later Imperialism works i went from the last in the score board in medieval to Forcing 5 of the 7 opponents to capitulate and pretty much winning the game with the vast amount of gold, culture & faith that's getting converted into Great writers & artists putting me 8 social policies ahead of the closest opponent in modern era.
The base holy site yields is already amazing but adding 5 hammers to that makes it much better.

The other one is just playing Siam + Prophecy + Holy lands with whatever faith-producing machine you prefer Hero worship/Ceremonial Burial.

 

[MarvelOfRain]

Later in the game even a Great Prophet can be kind of like a Great Writer, getting massive amounts of culture from doing 4 spreads to big AI cities.

I never thought about that! That actually makes it a lot more interesting. I will try that strategy at some point.

The other one is just playing Siam + Prophecy + Holy lands with whatever faith-producing machine you prefer Hero worship/Ceremonial Burial.

I have done that with Germany - the game crashed so I cannot report the final results, but in mid renaissance I already had almost as many votes as the world combined with 4 coming from the Holy Lands and that was before I was even able to build archeologists. It is a great strategy.

 

[Stalker0]

There's an interesting synergy with Veneration and Apostolic or Elders in that since the veneration main bonus doesn't require you to spread to your own cities (its a nice bonus but the 10% faith spend is the stronger one), it gives you more freedom to spread to neighbors first, and then backfill later.

 

[MarvelOfRain]

There's an interesting synergy with Veneration and Apostolic or Elders in that since the veneration main bonus doesn't require you to spread to your own cities (its a nice bonus but the 10% faith spend is the stronger one), it gives you more freedom to spread to neighbors first, and then backfill later.

But the wouldn't have anything to buy right? Since you have veneration you have no faith buildings and the ai doesn't usually just start spreading your religion on their own.

 

[Stalker0]

But the wouldn't have anything to buy right? Since you have veneration you have no faith buildings and the ai doesn't usually just start spreading your religion on their own.

Your buying missionaries.