What's so good about religions?

[Manco Capac]

In fact, there is also the misplaced early religions location in tech tree. Allowing to start a religion with first tech ever for Mysticism civs is definitely hurting a lot.

Only times I feel religion is ok: starting settler before worker with IMP civ = Charlie.

 

[kalandra]

In fact, there is also the misplaced early religions location in tech tree. Allowing to start a religion with first tech ever for Mysticism civs is definitely hurting a lot.

Only times I feel religion is ok: starting settler before worker with IMP civ = Charlie.

I have to agree strongly on this. Buddhism is always almost the most common religion in most of my games.

I admit I do play on Pangaea maps, but surely the developers would have knew Pangaea is a very very commonly played map, and balanced the religions based on Pangaea.

 

[UnforcedError]

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.

Mass spamming missonaries anytime in the game is very suboptimal unless you're going for AP cheese IMO. You're much better off doing it the other way around: setting up an early shrine (SH and / or early priest specs) and establishing early TRs with other civs. The shrine will spread the religion naturally and as long as you're the first to shrine it should get you enough gold to base your early economy on. Misionaries cost 40 plus they have a travel time. Even assuming the worst conversion method (1 = 1 ) your missionary investment will have a return time of over 80 turns which is a long time (later with market + grocer + bank it's not that bad anymore and much less with WS). The shrine will delay your first GS so it's still a trade off, but not as horrible as wasting your on missionaries.

Only times I feel religion is ok: starting settler before worker with IMP civ = Charlie.

And I'd add Sera's favourite Capac starts to the list As long as the quechuas are successful an early shrine is your best bet to support a growing early empire pre currency...

 

[noto2]

What? Shrine spread is incredibly slow, so the gpt from the shrine will be low for most of the game. Not only that, but the point of spamming missionaries is to actually convert other civs to your religion. If you found a religion chances are you will be running it as your state religion (we're talking an early religion) and you'll want to convert at least a couple of civs to your religion for diplomatic reasons. If you don't spam those missionaries early in the game, everyone will convert to another religion and you'll havet o wait for that religion to spread to you or risk being the one infidel

 

[UnforcedError]

What? Shrine spread is incredibly slow, so the gpt from the shrine will be low for most of the game. Not only that, but the point of spamming missionaries is to actually convert other civs to your religion. If you found a religion chances are you will be running it as your state religion (we're talking an early religion) and you'll want to convert at least a couple of civs to your religion for diplomatic reasons. If you don't spam those missionaries early in the game, everyone will convert to another religion and you'll havet o wait for that religion to spread to you or risk being the one infidel

You have to set up early trade routes (very early Wheel, Writing, possibly Sailing) for the early shrine to spread the religion around. Whether you actually want to run your own religion is totally irrelevant. As I said a missonary investment has a poor return rate, so unless you want an AP win in the BCs it's not really worth going for. And wasting missionaries to befriend your neighbours doesn't really make any sense. Axemen or chariots cost less than missionaries after all and have a much quicker return rate
Besides, if all you want religion for is diplomacy you don't need to found it. Make sure you are connected to the holy city via trade route. It will spread to you very fast.

 

[noto2]

Okay...first of all, I don't always go for a warmonger strategy, sometimes I have a great start with good land and resources and a leader with good economic traits, so I pursue a building strategy. Secondly, when I do plan on early war I certainly don't care about founding a religion, all I care about is getting an army out ASAP.

 

[UnforcedError]

Okay...first of all, I don't always go for a warmonger strategy, sometimes I have a great start with good land and resources and a leader with good economic traits, so I pursue a building strategy.

In that case you are really hampering your empires potential by pursuing an early religion and spamming missionaries.

Secondly, when I do plan on early war I certainly don't care about founding a religion, all I care about is getting an army out ASAP.

You also have to care about financing your war efforts and this is where an early shrine can help. In most cases the shrine is suboptimal to the usual Pottery / Currency method though.

 

[noto2]

Oh I agree, it's more often than not that I wouldn't bother founding a religion, but the ONLY time I will consider going for an early religion is when playing a builder game. As for the missionaries, I will only spam them when I am developing my land as hammer heavy at first...although usually that's not really my decision, as they say, play the map! If I find myself in a builder situation with nothing but brown land I know that I can't really build cottages in significant numbers, so the only other way to generate commerce is wonders or through a religion. Of course you can use those hammers to attack but what are you going to do if you have horses but spawn next to the Mayans, or if you spawn on a peninsula and are blocked off by Gilgamesh and have no strategic resources, or blocked off by Sitting Bull? Yes...these things seem to happen to me very, very often.

 

[UnforcedError]

ˇˇIf I spawn next to the Mayans and have horse I will not worry about religions at all. Pacal will reliably found one and spread it to me so that we can be good buddies if we really want. And getting blocked off happens less often to you if you don't waste and on an early religion. If you spawn on a commerce poor, riverless brown spot it's better to either move your settler around for a few turns, see if you can find something better. Or settle an acceptable prod site and go for your neighbour's land. If you have no commerce, shrine gold won't really help you either with your builder game.

 

[Ramesses-Rules]

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

Sorry, I meant to say Industrious, not Organized. I play Warlords, not BTS, and I don't know a lot about the differences. I have been told that the happiness cap is more of a problem in the early game with Warlords (4 in capital and 3 otherwise). So, being able to build Temples fast helps a lot in the start IF you found a religion. With Organized Religion plus that extra tile working and Industrious trait, I can build wonders faster than civs that do not have this combination. That is why my chief competition comes from other Spiritualists rather than military dudes in nearly every game.

I find at Immortal level, if I try to do rapid expansion without early religion, my economy drags and they get way out ahead of me on tech. Believe me, I have tried it both ways countless times to arrive at this conclusion.

 

[Ramesses-Rules]

What? Shrine spread is incredibly slow, so the gpt from the shrine will be low for most of the game. Not only that, but the point of spamming missionaries is to actually convert other civs to your religion. If you found a religion chances are you will be running it as your state religion (we're talking an early religion) and you'll want to convert at least a couple of civs to your religion for diplomatic reasons. If you don't spam those missionaries early in the game, everyone will convert to another religion and you'll havet o wait for that religion to spread to you or risk being the one infidel

I agree. When I found a religion, my first goal is to get it spread to all my cities. Waiting for it to happen by chance, even with shrine, is a losing proposition IMO.

 

[damerell]

I agree. When I found a religion, my first goal is to get it spread to all my cities.

That is almost completely unrelated to what noto2 said.

 

[UnforcedError]

<snip>
I find at Immortal level, if I try to do rapid expansion without early religion, my economy drags and they get way out ahead of me on tech. Believe me, I have tried it both ways countless times to arrive at this conclusion.

I used to play a lot of Civ 4 vanilla in the old days but switched directly to BtS when it came out, never played Warlords. Taking advantage of my complete edition I now rolled up a Warlords game with Rams to see the differences. Eh... founding an early religion reliably on the higher levels is out anyway as you start with Agriculture / the Wheel as in BtS. Unless you handpick opponents...
As for the economy this starting tech combo is the best you can get IMO.

 

[digitalcraft]

Truly the best part of religions is the politics it brings to the game. If you end up on the same side as the stronger players on your continent you can use it as an excuse to wipe some weak people out without too much political repercussions. On the other hand, if you're religiously isolated, you're going to have a bad time. Or a good but challenging time.

The gold you get from founding it is a nice bonus mechancially, but overall it really does add a new layer of depth to the game that is just plain a lot of fun.

 

[Quasar1011]

Okay, I read through 4 pages and didn't see anybody mention this: building the Apostolic Palace has the advantage of 1) not having a whole bunch of Civs declaring war on you at once, and b) You being able to vote a bloc on nations to go to war against the infidel of your choosing!

 

[kenwyn]

I thought you can only have three missionaries per game.

U can only have 3 at a time. Alive + in production. As each 1 is used, U then can produce another.

I generally play at Emperor level, so religion is VERY important in keeping pop happy. As K.Marx said; "Religion is the opiate of the masses." Just as important in the long run is the financial income as cited above. I'll even try occasionally (depending on civ & leader characterists) to start 2 religions before i build 2nd city (thus both are in cap). I thereby have the opportunity create HUGE income later in the game. WELL worth a couple of otherwise pretty useless GP's that pop up eventually in mid-game.

Don't forget the spying benefits = unparalleled in both seeing into cities & significantly reducing costs & increasing success of spy missions. Another EXCELLENT example of how well this great game reflects realities on this planet.

Praise the Lord/Allah/Kristrina/Budda/Confucius/et al, oh & Sid too!!!

 

[elmurcis]

If only there would be +1 happiness for paganism (what would be more correct ), than I would stay in it until Free Religion comes... How can imagination make so huge sense in general... (well, if all my empire would believe in SantaKlauss, I also should get +1 happiness )

 

[Ramesses-Rules]

That is almost completely unrelated to what noto2 said.

I was agreeing with his statement that you should not depend on a shine to spread religion. I also agree with his point about using the missionaries to spread religion to other civs. I do a modified version of it. I sent one missionary to the neighbor to get him converted ASAP, then finish spreading to my own cities, and when that is done, finish spreading to the neighbor's two largest cities. From there natural spread is good enough. I often leave a minor coastal city without religion late in the game in order pick up an extra religion to assist in Cultural Victory.

 

[UnforcedError]

If only there would be +1 happiness for paganism (what would be more correct ), than I would stay in it until Free Religion comes... How can imagination make so huge sense in general... (well, if all my empire would believe in SantaKlauss, I also should get +1 happiness )

^^The +1 happy alone isn't worth it at all. HR is far superior. The main advantages of adopting a religion are civics for building or culture and maybe UoS (in addition to AP ) if you're planning for a long tech game. And also diplomacy.

 

[UnforcedError]

I often leave a minor coastal city without religion late in the game in order pick up an extra religion to assist in Cultural Victory.

Sure, if you plan for culture you must spread the religions actively, that's very true. The former comments were more about leveraging the shrine's gold potential.