How important is a religion for non-religious victories?

[Cyrlan]

A question from a newbie like me. I just worried that my religion is being demolished by AI when I am focusing on Science victory

[Cryten]

Generally not important, unless you have a particular synergy you are going for. By the by, religion becomes extremly easy to defend once you get Apostles unlocked. Firstly because them killing any religious units bombs all surrounding cities with your religion while remove a good amount of theirs. And secondly because you can spend 1 on establishing the inquisition. And Inquisitors can remove foriegn religion from your cities. They also get good combat bonuses being near holy sites (but otherwise suck in religious combat).

BUT generally you should ignore religion unless not many AI are pushing for religions. Its a lot of resouces you have to spend to try and get the better religious traits. Meaning you need to rush 1-2 districts, their temples AND push for prayers to try and get 1st to 3rd place. That is a lot of hammer that could go into settlers, buildings or more useful districts.

That said some civ's have good bonuses that make religion better, and there are some builds that can make a strong amount of faith into a big advantage. Though its worth noting that second part does not require your own native faith. If you are doing tourist victory (culture) then you will want a good amount of faith (religion not required) for spending on Rock Bands and Nature Reserves.

Also there are disadvantages to having a religion. Cities that do not follow your religion have a small negative loyalty penalty for you and you get some tourism penalty for not having a matching religion to your opponents. Both these do not exist for a civ who never established its own religion.

[Cyrlan]

Originally posted by Cryten:

Generally not important, unless you have a particular synergy you are going for. By the by, religion becomes extremly easy to defend once you get Apostles unlocked. Firstly because them killing any religious units bombs all surrounding cities with your religion while remove a good amount of theirs. And secondly because you can spend 1 on establishing the inquisition. And Inquisitors can remove foriegn religion from your cities. They also get good combat bonuses being near holy sites (but otherwise suck in religious combat).

BUT generally you should ignore religion unless not many AI are pushing for religions. Its a lot of resouces you have to spend to try and get the better religious traits. Meaning you need to rush 1-2 districts, their temples AND push for prayers to try and get 1st to 3rd place. That is a lot of hammer that could go into settlers, buildings or more useful districts.

That said some civ's have good bonuses that make religion better, and there are some builds that can make a strong amount of faith into a big advantage. Though its worth noting that second part does not require your own native faith. If you are doing tourist victory (culture) then you will want a good amount of faith (religion not required) for spending on Rock Bands and Nature Reserves.

Also there are disadvantages to having a religion. Cities that do not follow your religion have a small negative loyalty penalty for you and you get some tourism penalty for not having a matching religion to your opponents. Both these do not exist for a civ who never established its own religion.

Ohh, that makes sense. Thanks for the detailed information.

[grognardgary]

Religion is one of those things that can benefit any victory now whether or not it is worth pursuing and to what degree is a function of the map size you are playing on the time scale you are using. Almost certainly not worth the time on a small map and 250 turn game, May well be playing marathon on a huge or larger map.

[plaguepenguin]

In the particular case you face right now, what if anything you should do about your religion being replaced by some AI's, depends on how useful the religion and its beliefs are to your current goals.

If you are locked into a science victory right now, you don't need to keep your religion in your own lands, much less spread it elsewhere, for the purposes of winning a religious victory. You have already decided against that goal.

You do need to keep any of your competitors from reaching any victory condition before your exoplanet expedition reaches its destination. If the AI that is replacing your religion in your lands has done so in many other civs' land, or threatens to do so, then you might have to defend your religion solely in order to prevent that AI getting a religious victory. This is pretty rare, but it does happen. It's easy enough to see if your game is one of those rare occurrences, by clicking on the World Rankings button in the upper right of the screen, then looking at the religious victory tab.

If victory is not at stake, then the only concern here is what benefits different beliefs confer on you. You lose the benefit of beliefs you chose as your cities and their population points convert to the other religion, so if those are still important to your victory in the game state as it is right now, then you should try to keep cities in your religion. However, even a very valuable belief like Feed the World may no longer be very important to keep, if you are in the end game, and don't need enhanced growth that much anymore, however important it was earlier.

You might actually find that converting to the other religion is a net plus for you right now, because your cities and people gain the benefit of the follower belief of this religion that is supplanting your own. Check the Religions tab in the upper left to review what beliefs this other religion possesses.

[grumble]

Some religion is really useful for a Culture victory because you can build rock bands and national parks

[Lisan al Gaib]

A religion is always beneficial, no matter what it will give you some sort of bonus--it just depends how much you're willing to defend against AI religions. In a culture victory it's valuable to build up your faith accumulation which means spending less faith on missionaries and apostles and more on rock bands and preservists. However, a religion will still benefit you if it provides even a small amount of culture, science, gold, etc.

In a religious victory you don't need much culture or science so you can go all in spending your faith on apostles and missionaries which is your win condition.

Think of faith, gold, science, and culture as currencies and you have to balance how to allocate those currencies towards your win condition.

[grognardgary]

Originally posted by .:

A religion is always beneficial, no matter what it will give you some sort of bonus--it just depends how much you're willing to defend against AI religions. In a culture victory it's valuable to build up your faith accumulation which means spending less faith on missionaries and apostles and more on rock bands and preservists. However, a religion will still benefit you if it provides even a small amount of culture, science, gold, etc.

In a religious victory you don't need much culture or science so you can go all in spending your faith on apostles and missionaries which is your win condition.

Think of faith, gold, science, and culture as currencies and you have to balance how to allocate those currencies towards your win condition.

Not to mention which monumentality golden ages let you build civilian units with faith which is a humongous bonus. Being able to buy settlers and builders and traders with faith saves so much time and effort that I simply won't use any other until I am done snowballing.

[Sstavix]

In addition to things that others have mentioned, a religion is helpful simply to provide a defense from another civilization trying to win. They can't get a religious victory if they can't take over your religion!

One thing that I find helps is sending missionaries or apostles into the opponent's land and converting one of their smaller, outlying cities. The AI will scramble to try and convert that city back... meaning that they'll be leaving you alone for a while. You can do this even if you haven't discovered a religion - just spread a faith that is different from your targeted opponent.

[Lemurian1972]

Originally posted by Sstavix:

In addition to things that others have mentioned, a religion is helpful simply to provide a defense from another civilization trying to win. They can't get a religious victory if they can't take over your religion!

It's less about stopping an AI actively winning and more about stopping an AI passively winning. In any game with enough opponents, it rapidly becomes near impossible for different AI to win a legit Religious win.

However if you as a human player go a' conquering, And knock out one or more enemy civs, and an AI that converted you and a couple other civs is still in the game, you can accidentally trigger their religious win before you win by Conquest, simply because all the remaining civs have their religion as majority. Having your own religion and maintaining it as your majority prevents this. So does careful manipulation of the AI religions in your empire, but that is more complicated and doesn't give you the benefits of picking synergistic beliefs.

Additionally, having your own religion tends to be less annoying. Once you firmly establish it, it becomes pretty simple to maintain a defense and keep your empire pure. When you don't have a religion you rapidly become Ground Zero for ALL the other civs to battle back and forth in (usually because human players have nice high population levels to convert). If you don't want to deal with intruders and noise having your own religion cuts it down a lot.

[crzyfsh123]

There are benefits. That first pantheon of course. Can purchase items with faith also. I have used the apostles as freebie healers.

[1963mustapha]

I've fooled around with allowing the religion of other Civs in the game spread their religion to my cities rather than expend the effort to found my own. You can look to see what religions have what benefits and try to allow the one with the best benefits to spread to your cities. After your cities are converted, you can then build religious buildings of that religion to help defend against other religions or just sit by passively and enjoy the benefits without contributing.

[MeniliteZ]

Originally posted by grumble:

Some religion is really useful for a Culture victory because you can build rock bands and national parks

These two have nothing to do with having a Religion. They are bought with Faith points, which anyone can have even without any religion.


To answer the main question:

On smaller maps I always go for a religion in order to block the other players from religious victory. The one time I didn't I was powerless to stop it.

It won't help if your religion is demolished by AI, though.

[gdshore]

There is a tertiary advantage to founding a religion, if forced (or not) to conquer a city of "an enemy" if you pacify it gives you a +3 towards pacifying that city.

[MeniliteZ]

Originally posted by gdshore:

There is a tertiary advantage to founding a religion, if forced (or not) to conquer a city of "an enemy" if you pacify it gives you a +3 towards pacifying that city.

I have no idea what you mean by pacify.

This did remind me of something though.

If a city of a civ joins your religion while you are at war with said civ, you get era score.

Is this what you are referring to?

[grognardgary]

Nope when you first conquer a city it is unhappy with the fact this changes over time depending on several factors one of which is religious compatability.