Which Beliefs do you favor ?

[bhavv]

I prefer Pagodas now to Cathedrals, the extra faith and happiness outshines the extra culture. But if someone wants to set a record for the fastest culture win, Cathedrals are going to do that for you.

I had to save my godly start Maya map onto steam cloud, and will use it for multiple playthroughs with different religious picks (as I found the first that I really didnt really need the extra faith from desert folklore, so am testing out maximum happiness atm).

 

[Lyoncet]

Has anyone had good success with Holy Warriors? It's one I haven't tried since I usually done get overzealous with my warmongerage, but it's interesting nevertheless. It could be really powerful with civs who have good medieval UUs like, coincidentally, Spain and Arabia. Spend early faith on Mosques as you build up your faith per turn (avoid getting more than two great prophets), grab some +faith beliefs, and then just go to town in that window where your FPT is through the roof but you haven't hit Renaissance and its accompanying drop in religion. Being able to carry it forward through Renaissance (albeit at a reduced rate) makes it seem pretty powerful.

 

[Buccaneer]

For those combat bonuses "near friendly/enemy city" - how near, as in how many hexes?

 

[Althiosk]

This is nice for a tall empire, if all your cities are riverside:



Hmmm, the faster spread chance would be good instead of the +50 faith per GP, but since I'm playing Pacal I get a lot of GPs.

Edit - I had to rename it to something corny like Divine Waterfall

I took this concept for my most recent game as Egypt. Kept the name, too. Will probably take faster spread. I typically get all my golden ages from great people, and I hate fighting for happiness, so there we have it. I started on the nile, to say the least-- a long river strings my first three cities, and i'm highly isolated in there by city states and two astonishing mountain ranges. My first target for violent expansion is on a river, and then i'll zip down and take his capital.

 

[blackcatatonic]

I just ran:

Ancestor Worship (+1 culture from shrines)
Tithe (+1 gold per 4 followers)
Cathedrals
Pagodas
Religious Texts

And absolutely killed in a culture victory. I'd never thought of running more than one building together, but you're going to build the faith to buy them eventually and it works so well in the mid/late game (I was adding +4 faith, +5 culture, +3 happy, and an artist slot in every city).

That's got me thinking about running that civ with the extra belief so I can hog 3 buildings.

I've got the same thing running at the moment as Austria, except I've gone for Religious Idols as my pantheon (+1 faith & culture from Gold and Silver - lots of Gold near my start). I like to go for something map-based for the pantheon, unless there's no obvious option. I'm going wide/Science but the two religious buildings especially are really helping with the Culture and Happiness issues.