Is it me or religion is just worthless?

[Lo Burattino]

I'm not too experienced in Civ 6 but according to my experience it seems that religion wasn't made properly.

Sure, focusing on religion can make you obtain a religious victory but it's not advantageous while focusing on science or culture allows you to also progress faster in the cultural and scientific tech trees, allowing you to get more passive perks as well as more cards and get great characters faster that help you become stronger unlike the prophets.

Did I get religion wrong in this game or is it just meh?

[Stormwinds]

Religion can be incredibly powerful, but the investment is not always worth it.
Work Ethic can generate tons of production for any civ that can get high adjacency Holy Sites. Choral Music can generate tons of culture per Holy Site. Reliquaries can sometimes help you get an early culture victory. Crusade can make your units incredibly hard to kill. Wats are free science, and Meeting Houses are free production.

[Zelph]

Feed to world alone is enough to make a religion worth it. Getting 2 food from EVERY holy site improvement is amazing.

[colostmy4]

Maybe it's you, but this is a complaint I've heard on more than one occasion. Civ 6 is a game that makes itself winable by allowing players to use varied type strategies. Using religion in the game just isn't your playing style apparently. As for myself, I find it the most useful tool in the game. You don't even need to try for a religious victory to appreciate religion in the game. Crusade doesn't make your units hard to kill, it makes them more powerful and easier to attack other cities. Some Apostles give huge benefits like the ones that can convert all barbarians around it to your units for only 1 charge. Prosiltyzing (sp?) Apostles when traveling with a Guru can destroy religious units of other religions while converting populations in nearby cities to yours and reducing it for the opposing religion. Religious relics bring large amounts of tourism that can significantly help to work toward cultural victories. When used in conjunction with complimenting policies, they can be very formidable. Just because something doesn't work for you doesn't mean it doesn't work for others. Even if you don't work much toward converting other civilizations to your religion. The faith points you gain work toward purchasing Naturalist to form Parks, and if you play with Heroes mod you can bring back Heroes using faith points. There are so many other strategies that religion can be a boon for that I can't even list them all, and I'm sure there are still some creative uses for it that I haven't even discovered yet.

[plaguepenguin]

Research and culture are core empire-wide yields, because for any victory you always need to move up the tech and civics trees quickly, ahead of the competition if possible, but at least keeping up at least close to them. You get these yields most reliably through the passives provided by campuses and theater squares and their buildings, so those are core, though of course active pillaging can provide nice supplements.

To produce districts and their buildings you need high production, and you need population growth to allow more districts, so builders to enhance tile yields and city center buildings are core. Later in the game industrial zones are needed to up city production and power the third-tier buildings in all districts, so they are core as well.

You need more cities controlling more tiles to build more of these core features, so expansion is core, either through settlers or your military.

You need gold to maintain your units and buildings as their baseline function, but it is also useful for unit upgrades and the outright purchase of all sorts of nice things, so commercial hubs or harbors are core.

Everything else can be nice-to-haves, but aren't need-to-haves. This includes religion and faith. This hardly makes them worthless, they are just not necessary to win in all games.

Before I moved up in difficulty from Prince, I never bothered producing encampments, holy sites, entertainment districts, spies, or walls, because you can win on Prince without any of these non-core elements. They aren't worthless, just not necessary on Prince. Once you move up in difficulty level, though, you reach a point at which you can't keep up with the AIs' ever-increasing yield bonuses without making use of some synergistic combination of advantages. The non-core elements of the game then become important as sources of specific advantages you can't get anywhere else, but that you need for the particular combinations you have to put together to get ahead of the heavily juiced AI. You can even less afford to go for all of these non-core elements, but I find myself building up at least one of them much more often playing at Deity than I did at Prince, where these luxuries are more attainable, but not necessities, so why bother?

The specific advantages in the faith game you might find useful to winning would lie in the beliefs you can get if you get your own religion. Some of these beliefs, like Feed the World, are generally useful, but many more can be useful, even needful if you have to beat Deity, depending on what other advantages you plan to go for. That said, going for a religion can be risky, in that in some games they all disappear pretty early in the game, and early in the game you have all sorts of core priorities. Even if you can get a religion before all the Great Prophets are used up, you need to get your religion early to have a good chance of getting the more valuable beliefs.

Well, that's religion, which is risky to try for and highly variable in value -- outside of the civs (Basil for example) whose uniques cry out for you to get a religion. Faith is much more generally useful. The final push to culture victory is helped greatly by naturalists and rock bands, both of which can only be obtained by faith purchase. National Parks help with amenities and era score as well. Great people can be purchased by faith or gold. One of the second tier govt buildings lets you purchase military units with faith. Golden age Monumentality allows purchase of settlers and builders with faith. Faith. like gold, and unlike production or food yields, is a yield that accumulates empire-wide but can be used anywhere, so it shares the power of gold, that it lets the the purchasing power of your whole empire be focused on one spot. It's not as generally useful as gold, but it is another currency you have available.

[[cK] Hesh]

The only annoyance I have with religion is AI mannerism to leave my cities allow beyond just establishing their religion. Otherwise, if you play with Zombie mode on, HOLY CRAP! RELIGION literally saved you with Mount St. Michael Wonder to select Heathen Conversion. Yes, Zombies are considered Barbarians. And you can stack them into an army to reduce their numbers and respawn rate.

[Mr. Stuffy]

I'm a simple minded player, I play games only concerned with the amount of brute force I can accomplish my goals with. I only think outside of the box if brute force just isn't a possibility.

I never invest in religion for the simple reason of me not playing religion based civs, and because the investment doesn't give me an edge when it came to the safety of my nation or our advantage over other nations.

I would much rather invest in the advancing of the tech and civic trees since they would allow me to develops technologies and select policies that would increase development options and speed, and allow me an advantage with military science. I see only my physical power over everyone, I cared very little for religion or the great people for culture because I knew if I focused on those I would get piledrived by abraham lincon and his twenty riflemen that suddenly decide they don't like me.

I needed raw power so that if any of my enemies attempted to seek a victory in any of the other categories, I could roll out my forces to take them off the map before they'd be able to.
I'd only invest in religion if it was only to prevent a potential win for a nation that had heavily invested in religion.

To a simple minded player such as me, power and wealth are everything. Religion is a waste of time and money and i'm actively crippling myself by investing resources into the holy sites and religious wonders since unless I'm playing as Byzantine empire, religion is a worthless sidegig because I live by the words "Survival of the fittest", and want to exercise my authority on all corners of the map so everyone knows the only reason they're still able to survive is because I allowed them to, and religion seldom helps me achieve such an ambition.

My people know no omnipotent deities nor divine wisdom, I will be the only voice they hear, I will lead humanity to how I see fit, I WILL BE THEIR GOD.

[Lemurian1972]

Originally posted by Mr. Stuffy:

and because the investment doesn't give me an edge when it came to the safety of my nation or our advantage over other nations.

Flat out incorrect. Most obvious are raw combat power thanks to beliefs like Crusader or Defender of the Faith, or policies like Wars of Religion. You can also get big diplomatic synergy from other beliefs, or massive added Science, Gold, or Culture based on total worshippers.

Civ VI isn't just about A-->B accumulation. Religion gives you a strong parallel track that helps you win because you're accumulating from two sources instead of just one (or three instead of two).

They all add to the snowball, and with a little practice cause no slowdown in your other progress or losses because you spent on religion instead. Even for civs without an overt religious slant, there are massively powerful synergies having a religion can bring.

[gdshore]

There is another reason for having a religion ----"PREVETION" stopping some #$%&*% coming in on your hard built ready to conquer all that is and convert your nation and thus win a Religious victory. Happened. I had smashed up all the other nations leaving their capitals free but mangled, didn't pay attention to religion Moctezoma converted the other capitals, Then as I started my world tour, he flooded my Empire with Apostles and Missionaries and just before I launch my assault on his capital, he converts half my cities.
Second thing, if your using "Hero's" you need faith to recall them. Having Mulan, the Monkey King and Beowulf is a fighting force as powerful as a couple of death robots.

[Solitus]

Has anyone else noticed that Mapuche will earn a Great Prophet, but never activate them and found the religion? This is the second game where I've had this happen which is only twice; but still two more times than I expected.