When NOT to found a religion?

[Seiryuuuu]

Hi everyone, as the title says, what are your strategies when not founding a religion and when do you usually do this. I'm not saying that pantheon is not counted.

Personally, if I play as a non-religious civ with a neighboring religious civ such as Ethiopia and India, I rarely found a religion. Having no control on the benefits (both founder and follower) is a major loss in terms of flexibility, but I don't find it as a defeat, unless you conquer them before enhancing.

Many factors affect the rate of faith you'll gain based on the map and monopoly, so I think, sometimes it is worthless to try to found a religion and focus on building monuments instead of shrines and/or just conquer another holy city.

However, since we won't benefit on the founder beliefs of a religion, is it really worth it not to found a religion?
What are the benefits for intentionally not founding one? Thanks!

 

[Cokolwiek]

What are the benefits for intentionally not founding one?

Four most important are:
you can focus on gaining other yields from your pantheon who are not rich in faith: especially renewal for its strong markets, all creation for early capital boost, and open sky for broken culture generation midgame,
you can focus on something else than shrines which speeds up development of your cities,
you are free to spend all your faith on getting either monasteries which are very good, faith buildings, or science or culture buildings from reformation earlier as you don't have to spend faith on enhancing nor getting others converted,
you don't incur diplomatic penalty for following a different religion with the civ that converted you,
you may also throw in all having more faith left for great people buying but founders are usually able to have much greater faith generation so this may or may not be the case.

Other than that, I think springtime or sea are the strongest pantheons to found with usually if going wide, so plantation resources without forests or jungles seem to be the best. With tradition you can try beauty, but its risky and you have to have good civ, great terrain with lots of production and growth to grab at least three early wonders. Nature can work. Without those and without a natural wonder I would avoid founding.

 

[ICanHasName?]

Well on diety it's pretty hard to found one without a civ bonus or a natural wonder nearby. Lately I have been playing with a couple extra civs on the map as well, so I plan on not founding one unless I have one of those advantages.

The founder beliefs dont seem that big of a deal, compared to skipping shrines and pushing out another settler or something

 

[Stalker0]

I will often skip religion past getting my pantheon if I'm going for strong early aggression. Being able to ignore shrines for a time gives you a nice bucket of hammers to put towards an army. The idea here is to conquer someone else's holy city, and so gain a religion through that method.

The other time is I'm sandwiched between two aggressive spreading civs (like say Maya and Ethiopia for example). In this case I may find it easier to just let them fight over me, I'll purchase all of the religious buildings they give me, and then save my faith for a lot of GP in the late game. In that case I can once again delay shrines in favor of other buildings. However, you can't delay shrines forever as temples + grand temple is too much culture to ignore.

 

[Melchizedek]

Suppose there were a religion with these beliefs:

Pantheon: whatever you want, no need to focus on faith.
Founder: gain production equivalent to not building early shines + 800 faith.
Enhancer: gain 1100 faith.
Reformation: can gain the pantheons and follower beliefs of other religions at their expense.

Would you ever take this? I would, sometimes.

 

[CrazyG]

A huge benefit of skipping religion is that you can take God of All Creation, which provides makes the early game a lot easier. Faster settlers, faster techs, and easier wonders.

 

[DeAnno]

I have had some success founding wide with Sun, the 3f per granary can be gotten very early in a city's life and with a shrine after you have 5f per city for 2 tier 0s. The extra gold also helps you invest those buildings in later cities.

EDIT: It is more than a little sketchy though on Deity, to be fair. I think it's usually practical-ish for immortal?

When I play Portugal I often neglect Founding and focus more on getting my trade routes going fast. Same goes for other civs with nonreligious important things to do early on.

 

[Seiryuuuu]

I see, thanks guys for the inputs, rationalizing between these things are kind of stressful for me, but thanks for the enlightenment.

The founder beliefs dont seem that big of a deal, compared to skipping shrines and pushing out another settler or something

I guess I just overvalued the benefits of founder beliefs, but thanks to this statement.