What's so good about religions?

[jarhead_leif]

Don't Forget. Monuments/Obelisks/totems, or whatever you call them, are also considered as religious buildings.
They're important when expanding your borders to get access to resources especially if you still got no religion early in the game.

If you're creative, you can totally forget about em'. Even now.

 

[AdamCrock]

Don't Forget. Monuments/Obelisks/totems, or whatever you call them, are also considered as religious buildings.
They're important when expanding your borders to get access to resources especially if you still got no religion early in the game.

If you're creative, you can totally forget about em'. Even now.

Alternatively one can beeline Drama fast and pour some commerce into culture Culture play is vastly dependant on cathedrals anyways (since their awesome culture bonus) making religion a "must-have" in a culture game making my statement invalid but still I liked to say it Maybe someone have invented non-religious ways to achieve cultural domination ? If so I'd love to hear about it

 

[TheMeInTeam]

There's also an espionage bonus, right? I can't remember the specifics, but I think that if you control the holy city of a religion you receive a discount on espionage missions against any civ running that religion. The holy city might need to be shrined, I'm not sure.

You don't need the holy city shrined, but the target city has to have that religion, and IIRC you must be running the religion with the holy city.

Still, it's a significant espionage bonus that stacks with others. If you can swamp a city you can really break the tech game using just jails + intelligence agencies.

Founding a religion and building a shrine is (usually) a fool's errand. However, using a religion + religious civics + diplo bonuses for choosing wisely is another matter entirely.

There are some exceptions. When you're on a continent with no religion it is suddenly quite viable to consider confucianism or taoism. That will spread like a weed and makes a shrine a worthy consideration. ANGER WHAT is a good wonder to get the prophet, unlocked by philo bulb which can be done in the 1000 BC to 500 BC range with a little planning.

 

[sydhe]

I thought you can only have three missionaries per game.

It's three at a time per religion per player, not per game. This includes ones being built. If you get below three by spreading religion or failing to spread it, for example, you can build another.

 

[faipalgugus]

I often skip religions. Either i choose the dominant one fore obvious diplomatic reasons, but sometimes, i am religionless for the entire game. I never found a religion myself.

 

[calibur]

In my current game I am so far ahead tech-wise that, nOt aiming for any tech in particular and researching every tech out of lack of backfill partners, I have founded ten of the thirteen religions yet founded. I think it's time to move to prince...

 

[Izuul]

The civics! I'm surprised it took over a full page before that was even touched on. Organized Religion, Theocracy, and Pacifism are all extremely powerful, and i use all 3 of them in almost every game.

Really the only down side to having a religion is the potential diplo backlash.

 

[UnforcedError]

Religious civics are occasionally more important than the extra happy bonus. OR when building important buildings / wonders, Pacifism when trying to get GPs in a GA, and even Theo can be useful sometimes for a war. They all require a state religion.
As for correct usage of the shrines or AP see Tachy's posts above. Conquering a shrine and profiting from it afterwards is independent from religion as is profiting from AP hammers.

 

[Apricottage]

I'm surprised that nobody's mentioned Cathedrals. They're practically a requirement for a Cultural victory, and even with other goals, they can be good for gaining control of contentious territory (although war is a better option if you can afford it).

 

[UnforcedError]

I'm surprised that nobody's mentioned Cathedrals. They're practically a requirement for a Cultural victory, and even with other goals, they can be good for gaining control of contentious territory (although war is a better option if you can afford it).

The importance of religions for cultural victories was discussed on P1 But sure, no early culture win without Cathedrals.

 

[noto2]

Does the OP mean what's the point of a religion or what's the point of founding a religion? If it's the first question - well...the reasons are so plentiful I don't care to even attempt to list them. If it's the latter question, that is a valid question. Founding a religion. If you found a later religion most civs will already have one adopted, and it will be difficult to get them to adopt yours, still, you can do it for the gold and espionage bonus. Founding an early religion can be powerful for diplomatic points. It can really help you direct the game as you want it. You can get one civ to attack another, or you can spread it to your neighbours and make them act as a buffer while you peacefully build up

 

[Ramesses-Rules]

I have said this before but it is worth repeating, if you are Spiritual it makes a huge difference if you can get religion early rather than wait til hell freezes over for it to spread to you. This is based on 1,000s of games.

 

[UnforcedError]

I have said this before but it is worth repeating, if you are Spiritual it makes a huge difference if you can get religion early rather than wait til hell freezes over for it to spread to you. This is based on 1,000s of games.

For quick switches between religious civics or to utilize AP / UoS ?

 

[noto2]

oh that's a good point too. Sometimes the AI will take its sweet time spreading the religion to you, or perhaps all the civs that founded religions are far away and none of your neighbours have one. In that case it is very late in the game until you finally get one, which is a big disadvantage because religions offer many, many benefits.

 

[crazyotto65]

I play at Prince level and use religion primarily for diplomacy.

 

[Ramesses-Rules]

For quick switches between religious civics or to utilize AP / UoS ?

I play Warlords. It does not have AP. For Ramesses, there is a great synergy between the Spiritual trait and the Organized trait. Once I get early religion, there is a priority to building Temples everywhere to raise happiness cap while getting to Monotheism ASAP. Then, often found Christianity by bulbing Theology. Once I get OR, I can build anything, including Wonders, faster than other civs. And since I can naturally build Forges faster, this advantage increases once I get MC. Here lately, I have been giving more emphasis toward getting to Music and building Cathedrals sooner in games where I have 3 religions available. None of this works for Spiritualists, unless you get on the religion track early. All the Spiritual AIs do it. In almost every game, they are my chief competition in the end, not the military dudes.

I note that many players avoid religion because they don't want the diplomacy hit. But you can also use religion as a diplomatic tool. If you are a Spiritualist player, learning how to manage religion diplomatically is critical to moving up the difficulty levels.

 

[kalandra]

If you have Spiritual trait, religion has many benefits. That is why the AI's with Spiritual trait generally beeline the religion tech track to found a religion (or two!). They are my main competitors in nearly every game.

It increases your happiness cap in all cities that have state religion. We Spiritual leaders can build Temples faster than other civs, and that adds to the happiness cap.

The Shrine is good for culture, for gold, and for spreading the religion. Depending on the situation, I will sometimes uses one of my early Great Prophets to build it.

Then, when you get Organized Religion, you can build anything 25% faster. That is a huge advantage over civs that have no religion.

If you are good at diplomacy, you can use religion to create or avoid wars, or maintain alliances. That gives you better results in tech trading.

There's more, but these are the main benefits of religion. I have noticed that most people on this forum do not value religion. My theory is that most of them are warmongers. I agree. If warmongering is your game, you have more important priorities. But then, if you want to go that route, you should not choose a Spiritual leader in the first place!

I play Warlords. It does not have AP. For Ramesses, there is a great synergy between the Spiritual trait and the Organized trait. Once I get early religion, there is a priority to building Temples everywhere to raise happiness cap while getting to Monotheism ASAP. Then, often found Christianity by bulbing Theology. Once I get OR, I can build anything, including Wonders, faster than other civs. And since I can naturally build Forges faster, this advantage increases once I get MC. Here lately, I have been giving more emphasis toward getting to Music and building Cathedrals sooner in games where I have 3 religions available. None of this works for Spiritualists, unless you get on the religion track early. All the Spiritual AIs do it. In almost every game, they are my chief competition in the end, not the military dudes.

I note that many players avoid religion because they don't want the diplomacy hit. But you can also use religion as a diplomatic tool. If you are a Spiritualist player, learning how to manage religion diplomatically is critical to moving up the difficulty levels.

Is there really any large synergy between Spiritual and founding religion? If your arguing switching between the civic bonus, you don't need to found any religion to get the bonus, just spreading it between your cities, and Spiritual doesn't help with building missionaries or monastries.

 

[noto2]

Ramses isn't even spiritual/organized in BTS.... little of what you said applies to what most people are playing

 

[UnforcedError]

I note that many players avoid religion because they don't want the diplomacy hit. But you can also use religion as a diplomatic tool. If you are a Spiritualist player, learning how to manage religion diplomatically is critical to moving up the difficulty levels.

Well I don't want to derail the thread and argue for the importance of worker techs in the early game (vs. the relatively small advantage of founding one of the early religions), as this has been discussed countless amounts of times elsewhere on this forum. Besides, to utilize the SPI trait to full extent, you really need only one religion (or none at all). To me one of the huge advantages of SPI is spending the early mid game switching back and forth between Caste and Slavery (and beelining / oracling CoL generally gets you Confu, even on the higher levels) and OR and Pacifism provided I have a state religon. Very often I wouldn't even have one for the whole game, if it'd be bad for diplo. It works just fine, although you lose OR hammers and / or Pacifism GP, so you won't have a record finish date.

 

[noto2]

^^ I agree that it is often very difficult to leverage an early religion into an advantage. Going the first 10-30 turns of the game without worker techs is an enormous disadvantage and I would never do it. The only time I go for an early religion is when I already have the worker techs I need to improve the tiles in my capital BFC, at least for as long as it takes to get to the religion tech. There are other problems with it as well. In order to really capitalize on founding a religion you need ot spread it as much as possible and this is extremely difficult to do as it's the early game and you desperately need to put your hammers towards units/workers/settlers but instead are building missionaries. This is extremely costly. I've always thought the SPI trait should reduce the cost of missionaries, they are actually very expensive for the early game. So if you spam missionaries everywhere to capitalize on your founding of a religion, then you have fewer settlers available to make cities and fewer workers to improve your tiles.