What's the point of religion

[RacerX]

So I've been reading up a little and I have only played 1.5 games but I find the benefits of the constant and annoying battle to spread and keep your own religion not worth the effort. Other than to keep from losing to a religious victory, what's the point? It doesn't really make my people happy or earn tons of money - enough to matter anyway. Am I missing something? Thanks.

 

[idjit]

To irritate atheists. Oh, you mean, in the game. Religion in my experience seems to be totally map dependent. Either you roll in great starts with other civs who don't care about religion and you get a nice game-long buff, or they're all gone before you can get your first prophet.

I never go for religions unless I have a fantastic potential pantheon or I start as a civ such as Russia. Even then it can be a crap shoot.

 

[Zenstrive]

To kill off the annoying apostles and missionaries without declaring war.

 

[Amrunril]

Founding a religion will give you control over your follower and building beliefs, and if you're able to spread it to city states and players who didn't found religions, you can get a solid amount of gold, culture, faith or CS yields from founder beliefs. This isn't necessarily be worth the effort needed to found a religion against high level AIs, but it's definitely worth considering.

 

[CaiusDrewart]

Religion is in an awkward place, and has been since Civ V. They want a "race for religion" to start the game, which means not everyone can found one. But at the same time, they don't want Civs who missed out to be totally screwed. So you get these rather milquetoast religious benefits.

I think, with Civ VI's system, why not increase the power level of religion a little bit, but allow everyone except the Kongo to found one? (I.e., don't limit the supply of great prophets?) This has several benefits:

--Civs could get multiple great prophets again. This would presumably add a new dimension to religious combat, and means that great prophet points are no longer useless post-founding
--Religious victory would be more meaningful if each Civ got a religion.
--Civs like Spain would no longer have half their benefits become completely worthless if the race for religion goes wrong.

Admittedly, Arabia would need a re-design.

 

[Jewman]

No real point to religion but with russia and Japan you can get cheap holy sites and lots of faith to faith buy stuff. I just played a game as Japan and I had Valleta as my suzerain, let me faith buy all my city center buildings really early in the game. I focused entirely on building districts while settling cities that started with granaries, water wheels, monuments and walls right off the bat.

I combined that bonus later with theocracy and faith bought a bunch of troops to check my neighbors in a mid game war.

 

[dexters]

Civ6 AI is too good with religion. Every Civ that has found one will attempt to spread it, which means they tend to stalemate each other at some point. That's not to mention the missionary/apostle spam that people complain about.

I've posted on another thread that each of the AI that founds a religion needs to do a dice roll with a high probability of non spreading their religion beyond their borders.
If we can average 1-2 civs (sometimes we might have 0 civs, other times, all 5 Civs at the extremes) compete for spread of religion beyond their immediate sphere, you'll more likely see a clear leader emerge in most games as the one or one or two AI angling for that VC.

I find that AIs who spreads religion half a world away but not really angling for VC is a waste of AI's resources. Those holy sites could be something else.

The system itself isn't bad actually and I quite enjoy the concept behind religious combat; it's one of the VCs that I posit the AI can win fairly (whatever that means) on higher difficulties if only fewer AIs focus on spreading their religion.

 

[kampori]

I have absolutely no need of religion in my games. Only some of the post-temple buildings are kind of nice, but you can build them anyway if others spread theirs to you.
Only Divine Spark pantheon is amazing. Like, OP amazing. All other pantheon beliefs are a bit lame

 

[Nefelia]

The point of religion, at least for me, is the rather powerful benefits I get from my religion: +8 food in every city that has a Holy Site, along with other benefits that vary depending on how quickly I can get my Apostles up.

In order to secure a religion and get the best beliefs before they are snapped up by the AI, you have to make some sacrifices in the early game. The two ways to guarantee a religion are:

1) Build Warrior > Builder > Builder > Stonehenge, with your builders chopping (or in the case of China, using charges) to boost the Stonehenge along.
* The Pros: Guaranteed to get the first Great Prophet; Stonehenge gives faith with which to get your Pantheon - if you don't already have one; You are very likely to get your religion before the AI gets the second Great Prophet; Top choice of religious beliefs.
* The Cons: Loss of a tile (Stonehenge); Possible loss of top Pantheon choices; delayed production of military units and Settlers.

2) Warrior, Builder, Holy Site, Shrine, Prayer project.
* The Pros: Better chance of securing a good Pantheon before the AI snaps them up; Better faith production with adjacency bonuses;
* The Cons: AI will most likely build Stonehenge before you get your Great Prophet, leading to a longer race for your Great Prophet: Intense competition from the AI, whom seems to also use Prayer project; Possible loss of best Beliefs, as they may be chosen by whichever AI builds the Stonehenge.

Hopefully religion will get some more attention in future patches or expansions, including uses for Great Prophet Points past the founding of a religion. For now though, Religion primarily acts as a victory condition as well as a potential source of very strong economic and military boosts.

Only Divine Spark pantheon is amazing. Like, OP amazing. All other pantheon beliefs are a bit lame

The worth of one's Pantheon is usually dependent upon the map. In my latest game it seems that every city I have has two or more pastures within the first two rings. God of the Open Skies is basically providing the equivalent of a monument in each city.

Not mind-blowing, but far from lame.

 

[King Jason]

Just found a good one for yourself and never spread it to anyone else; Turning holy sites into 8 food tiles with feed the world + Gurdwara's is fun. Or I'll often take the pantheon that grants housing instead since I never really get to neighborhoods in my games. With Jesuit education and modest faith, you won't need to build or spend your gold on any campus or theater buildings, which is also nice.

I almost always found a religion - but I practically never spread it.

 

[HF22]

I've posted on another thread that each of the AI that founds a religion needs to do a dice roll with a high probability of non spreading their religion beyond their borders.
If we can average 1-2 civs (sometimes we might have 0 civs, other times, all 5 Civs at the extremes) compete for spread of religion beyond their immediate sphere, you'll more likely see a clear leader emerge in most games as the one or one or two AI angling for that VC.

The system itself isn't bad actually and I quite enjoy the concept behind religious combat; it's one of the VCs that I posit the AI can win fairly (whatever that means) on higher difficulties if only fewer AIs focus on spreading their religion.

I think a better way might be to agenda lock AIs to a single VC (fixed or hidden). It would address issues like this, as well as the float between VC targets which the current AI code seems to encourage.

 

[dexters]

Floating VC targets isn't a bad one. Sometimes, 2 or more VC is achievable by the same AI. But locking to a single VC might be interesting though I think having the AI do a VC check every 30-50 turns wouldn't hurt.

If the AI shooting for Religious gets killed off early, there's no reason an AI with a good amount of religious cities, and points to spend wouldn't consider it if no one else is in contention.

 

[KmDubya]

Now that you get to keep your own pantheon belief it is worthwhile to get some faith early just to get a pick at a good one. Had an Inland Sea game where I took God of the Sea for +1 cog per fishing boat. That added 3-5 cogs to most of my cities which helped all game long.

Another thing is to not ignore faith as late game it is needed for getting national parks and can rush Great People.

If everyone just kept their religion to themselves that'd be very boring. When a wave of Apostles come over the hill you need to either fight or be converted. Defense is easy as your guys will heal on a holy site and a few can hold off a horde.

 

[civplay]

Tbh i feel religion is pretty underwhelming too. Thi is something I have a problem with civ though in general. Different VCs should be able to combo better. Like science and domination have always worked well together. More science equals better units. better units equals more cities. more cities equals more science. So conquering an early civ doesn't put you super far behind (in theory).

Different approaches should be more compatible. IMHO conquering a large city should give you an automatic great work pre-medieval era. Pillaging/conquering should yield more gold. Trade routes should give you a huge boost in science. I mean historically the most advanced civs were the ones trading the most. Religion should make your armies stronger. Conquering should automatically spread faith. holysites should give you extra gold.

These should be automatic abilities not civics, or unique abilities. Making VCs more synergistic would make the game so much more interesting. Picture more combined victories.

 

[Magil]

Religion can have good benefits, but I find myself needing to do the "apostle bug zapper" strategy to keep it. Religious combat is a nice concept but functionally isn't that interesting. Parking an apostle with a religious combat bonus on a holy site will draw AI apostles to it like flies to light, and they'll all suicide onto the healing apostle. Hunting down missionaries can be done with other apostles or inquisitors, though missionaries are fairly ineffective against larger cities. Given that I find it all right to found a religion and then not bother spreading it to others.

Really, the most annoying thing about religion is those missionaries and apostles blocking me from improving tiles and using great people. One unit per tile still sucks, people.

 

[Sascha77]

Religion is in an awkward place, and has been since Civ V

Not sure about V's religion being in an awkward place. In V at least, it can stay very relevant if you invest in the piety-tree and go for reformation. Being able to faith-buy either post-industrial units or great people is pretty powerful. But even without piety I find it a huge boost and will always try and found one.

When it comes to VI's religion however, I tend to agree. While I do like the idea of adding the religious victory condition, I'm still not sure if this condition makes too much sense. For instance: If you miss out on founding a religion, can you still get a religious victory (by, say, conquering someone's holy city) or is that path to victory forever blocked for you? The AI seems pretty good at spreading their faith around (or perhaps they're just pretty bad at defending their own faith). In the game I finished last night, Cleo was one of the weaker civs, but did manage to spread her religion to nearly everyone. If it hadn't been for me killing wave after wave of her missionaries near my towns (while also keeping Victoria's cities loyal to my religion), she might actually have won a religious victory. And the other AI players didn't seem to mind. Catherine had founded her own religion, but her holy city got converted to Cleo's and for the entire late-game, Catherine was spreading Cleo's religion around - meaning instead of being pi$$ed off at Egypt for converting her holy city, she was actively helping Cleo win a religious victory.

On the whole I'm a bit torn here. On the one hand I can't help thinking that Civ IV's way of handling religion was the better option, on the other I do like the ability to customize religion to your own needs/goals and to have more of a competitive religious thing going on between civs.


S.

 

[ZHONN]

Religion can give food, housing, amenities and great people; what more can you wish for? The benefits aren't massive, but then, the costs aren't either.

For example, Feed the World can easily give you +6 food in any city without working a tile. If somebody gave you an option to build the Hanging Gardens in every city in CiV, everybody would have thought it was crazy. And now some people think religion has no benefits.