Best religion?

[Dark Speaker]

What is currently the best religion right now in Eu4?

[barkingamer]

They all have their buffs

[Zornvel]

I usually stay with the religion of my starting country. All religions have good and bad things, the super overpowered religion doen't exisit.

[Peel]

I would say it's the religion that you have the DLC for.

For example: Christian with no DLC - Catholic, Christian with WoN - Reformed, Christian with AoW - Protestant. Note that there are also reasons to stay Catholic.

Ultimately though, you either want the best religion for blobbing (Coptic?), or you can use any religion.

[c00lizz]

For single religion world conquest, it's gotta be Coptic. However starting Catholic, getting hereditary HRE and THEN going Coptic is much stronger. 2nd would probably be Sunni/Shia. The only religion that's really considered "weak" is animist.

[Fantastic Fwoosh]

Islam & Orthodox are both very strong faiths, i would personally recommend them if you're obviously not coptic outside of europe (catholicism is good for making powerful western allies earlygame), islamic piety affecting events tend to be financially intensive however but rake in positive piety & prestiege for infinite morale doomstacks even if you have bad tech, and on the opposite side if you're happy to tank prestiege and play passive, negative piety lets you tech up faster.

• Orthodox on the other hand has no penalties for non increasing patriarchal authority, so you can either progress or totally ignore the periodic events with no reprecussions & middle it out at about 20/15% for buffs only at your discretion.

Orthodox & Religious ideas = probably the safest positive event harvesting combo which also lets you quicky convert your land, and orthodox (pre and post "Third Rome") also reduces your unrest after you convert and more successfully suppresses rebels on your existing provinces.

[yyyyzryrd]

Orthodoxy is pretty cool for playing large. It's also good for... actually... it's good for any country. Over 30% more manpower? Less unrest? Hell yeah! It also takes a very long time to lose a chunk of those bonuses, unlike Sunni, where it is gained and lost very quickly.
Sunni is great for military, and Orthodox too is great for military. Countries with either religion and with militaristic and administrative ideas kick ass.

[Yaldabaoth]

If you have El Dorado, nothing beats Nahuatl or Mayan. They make all other religions look weak, even coptic. Which one you like better depends on how you like to play (militarily or more peacefully).

[Peel]

Originally posted by Yaldabaoth:

If you have El Dorado, nothing beats Nahuatl or Mayan. They make all other religions look weak, even coptic.

Inti is great as well, but these all require you to start without feudalism (and you have to reform them before you can adopt any institutions). The tradeoff is severe, and makes for a difficult early/mid game if you're bordering a more advanced nation (the colonisers for example)...

[Robert Edward Lee]

i simply cant take my game seriously when playing as sunni or orthodox country

[Rabob]

Originally posted by Peel:

Originally posted by Yaldabaoth:

If you have El Dorado, nothing beats Nahuatl or Mayan. They make all other religions look weak, even coptic.

Inti is great as well, but these all require you to start without feudalism (and you have to reform them before you can adopt any institutions). The tradeoff is severe, and makes for a difficult early/mid game if you're bordering a more advanced nation (the colonisers for example)...

Yeah tried that. Then the colonizers came very late because they colonised Africa first and rekt me with much superior tech, because I had like 200-250% tech penalty.

Also why is nobody saying Hindu? The benefits are maybe less obvious at first.
You can choose what you want most with deities (so less coring, or better military or more conversion for instance).
Then they also have more tolerance and some extra decisions for that as well IIRC. So in absolutism it will help a lot.
But even better, you can get an event to train your ruler for an extra monarch power per month. I believe this can also happen multiple times.
http://www.eu4wiki.com/Religions_and_denominations#Hindu

All in all a religion you should definitely try.

[susannag]

Yeah, there can be reasons for staying Catholic - I realized about 20 years in to my current game as England that I was staying Catholic this time, because I got an early PU over Portugal.

[Dolly]

I can't say for certain because I haven't thoroughly tried them all.
Catholic is a pretty good religion, especially if you're a sizable country that can sustain several cardinals and accumulate papal influence. Everything in western Europe is catholic, so you're not going to have conversion problems until the reformation. You can really start racking up papal influence if you start expanding outside of Europe and converting heathens. The religion itself without the holy see isn't very good. Decent events

I can't comment on reformed because I haven't played as a reformed yet. I heard it is good, though. Protestant is pretty good. Bunch of small perks including morale, discipline and idea cost reduction, among other helpful things. If you're a sizable catholic country able to collect a lot of papal influence through cardinals and conversions, I'd say catholic reigns supreme over protestant.

Orthodox definitely got a facelift with third rome. It's now on par with what most people consider the strongest religions such as hindu and Coptic. Very strong bonuses, especially if you've managed to get high authority.
If you acquire all the Coptic bonuses, its a very strong religion, with a very desirable core creation cost reduction.

Sunni is good. If you conquer another country it's likely going to be of your religion. If you're at 100 either way on the slider, you get very attractive bonuses. But that's the tricky part. Shia is alright. Additional morale but if you conquer another country, it's likely going to have no provinces of your religion. Ibadi is worthless

Buddhist has decent events. The slider is difficult to manage. If you can keep it in the middle, you get nice bonuses, but it's hard to do. Everyone around you is of your religion as well. It's alright.

Confucian is pretty good if you've harmonized with many religions. The more you harmonize with the stronger they get. You're likely ming if you're this religion so the religion will only get better. It's good.

Shinto is okay, it has fun events but nothing else really going for it. The perks from Shinto are decent.
Sikh is bad. Tengri is decent but all countries with it aren't good. totemist, fetishist and animist is bad. inti, mayan and nahuatl are alright if you reform them, which is a chore

[Fantastic Fwoosh]

I guess a ibadi religion isn't so much worthless, as niche. That 10% naval morale is going to be handy if you are building a fleet in the middlegame, as to say you conquered significant parts of Tunis (or converted to Ibadi as Tunis on purpose) so that your boats become more effective.

[Dolly]

Originally posted by Fantastic Fwoosh:

I guess a ibadi religion isn't so much worthless, as niche. That 10% naval morale is going to be handy if you are building a fleet in the middlegame, as to say you conquered significant parts of Tunis (or converted to Ibadi as Tunis on purpose) so that your boats become more effective.

yes, I was a little harsh on ibadi. it has its uses in naval warfare. it'll save you some ships. but that is it. that naval morale boost won't win you any land wars, which is how battles and wars are won. on top of that, you're going to need to convert every single province you conquer. ibadi has always seemed underwhelming to me compared to other religions

[Fantastic Fwoosh]

Take vassals and force convert OPM's that can't fight back then would be a natural soution, usually good navies can make or break the game to stopping foriegn powers (or the Ottomans) getting involved with your wars and maintaining that you have fast sieges & constantly pressurise for trade wars for good piety = morale & rivalry control.

• On paper, a strong Ibadi Tunis takes island provinces from Aragon & locks them in economical/trade power deficit so they can rake in money (privateering) from Genoa to finance land warfare to the best premium and troll the AI by trapping doomstacks on straits (Tunis naturally has one)

Throw in Maghreb ideas too on naval expansion for national idea #1 and its a galley boat juggernaught.