On the benefits of being Heathen

[Adderax]

On the higher difficulties I find a war like approach wins out, since the computer always builds faster/research faster than you. Soo I never bother with religion. It will eventually make it's way into my towns. And by 3-400AD at 'least' 1 of the computers should be dead, and if I am lucky, I usually will have 1 or 2 holy cities by then. Also the one wonder I always go for is Stonehenge. The culture is priceless when you quickly expand early on. So no, imo religion is a waste of time on the higher difficulties, since you get it eventually anyway.

[Skanky Burns]

If you own the religion(s):

You get one gold per city that has that religion, regardless of who owns the cities.
You get spy details of foreign cities with your state religion.

Regardless of who founded the religion, for each religion you can build buildings that:

Add 1 happiness
Add 3 base culture
Increases the total research the city produces by 10%
Increases the total culture the city produces by 50%

Times this by up to 7...

[krytonix]

Originally posted by Shr3dZ
Is there any point at all to build missionaries of a non-state religion and spread it to your other cities? It give the AI more money, but on the other hand you get to build some new temples and stuff... is that it?

Don't forget about the fact that with the Free Religion civic, your cities get a happy citizen for EACH religion in the city. IMO, this is a great reason to spread all religions to all cities.

As for remaining heathen, it can be nice early on to avoid negative diplomatic relations. However, after a while I think the benefits pretty much always outweigh the costs.

[Spaced Cowboy]

Cities without religion early don't pop-out to normal city size due to culture which can really mess with optimal placement.

There are way to many benefits, and you can always get the other ones (farming, etc.) later.

[Tennyson]

I find it's vital not only to have a religion, but to found it and spread it.

The penalty for being a heathen isn't bad, and the benefit of sharing a religion with a civ is huge. If you can get two or three powerful civs to convert you should have a diplomatic victory in the bag.

[ducki]

Yes, but is the hammer bonus (and it's 25% not 25 hammers) worth the almost constant hatred of the other civs?

Is it worth loosing the other techs because you are too busy chasing the dead-end Polytheism?

My problem is I'm constantly catching a beat-down because some civ doesn't like my state-religion.

It sounds more like you have an issue with diplomacy, not religion. Do you not have well-tended allies?

Try reading Sulla's Civ4 Walkthrough. The way he uses religion and allies is a really great example of what's so good about religions as well as the new diplomacy gameplay.

If you are not maintaining friendships with at least 1 other AI that can help you out when you get attacked or when you want to attack, it really sounds more like you should work on diplomacy rather than ditching the idea of having a state religion and all the goodies that come with it: Organized Religion, Theocracy, Temples, Cathedrals, Priest Specialists(need temples for this, right?), easy alliances with some civs, preferably a neighbor, income for the shrine(if you founded), Great Persons from the shrine(if you founded), Line of Sight(if you have shrine), etc, etc, etc.

Seriously, if you haven't read Sulla's walkthrough, do so. Lots of great stuff in there.

[rayw69]

There is one strategy that I use in the early game, which takes some advantage of sticking with paganism.

As you know the founding city of a religion gets a +5 culture bonus per turn. Cities get a +1 culture boost per religion in a city, if you have no state religion. If you have a state religion, cities that have your state religion get a +1 culture bonus per turn only, regardless of the number of religions present in tht city. Cities with no religion, or only religions that are not your state religion, do not receive any any religious culture boost. Most importantly, a city that founded a religion, receives only a +1 culture boost, if you have a state religion of which the city is not the founder.


Assuming you are playing on Noble:


Take any civilization that starts with mysticism as one of its two free techs. Generally speaking, you can choose Polytheism from the start and guarantee yourself Hinduism. If you time your research and build queue right, you can be the first to discover Montheism immediately after the settling of your 2nd city. So you now have 2 cities, each having founded a religion. If you are aggressive, and choose the right tech path, you can build the oracle right as Theology becomes available as a choosable free tech. So now you have 3 cities that have founded a religion.

So consider two different scenarios:
1) Switch to a state religion and switch to the organized religion civic.
2) Have no state religion, and stick with paganism.

If you go with option #1, you are losing 5 culture per turn in these 2 new cities until you spread your state religion there, at which point you are losing only 4 culture per turn. If the religion does not spread naturally (and it is much less likely to spread after the founding of a new religion), you have to use production to make missionaries. You are running a high upkeep civic, which might affect your research rate. As for the benefits, you are getting a +1 happiness rating with a 25% faster build speed when making buildings, but not military/settlers/workers/workboats etc.

If you go with option #2, you are losing out on the +1 happy and the 25% extra build speed. I would argue that in the early game, the +1 happy is not that significant at Noble level. And as for the 25% extra build speed, you give a large chunk of that back by having to build missionaries. So until you are building your 3rd building or so, you aren't ahead of the game in terms of hammers. Personally, the only early game buildings that I find important are libraries, and 1 or 2 barracks. As for the benefits. You aren't paying the high civic cost of organized religion. You aren't paying any diplomatic cost of possibly having a different religion than a neighbor. But most importantly you are getting +4 or +5 culture per turn in border cities. So even in the best case culture scenario, where you are playing a creative civ (+2c), spread the state religion into the city (+1c), and get a temple built (+1c), you are doubling your culture output for these early turns. Even if you have built Stonehenge and a library in addition to the above, for a total of +7c, that addition +4c from not having an organized religion is still a 57% increase in culture production in a city. If you are a land whore like I am, this extra culture is HUGE in the early game land grab.


Of course, the above assumes a very specfic playstyle and circumstances. But I think it illustrates one example of how not choosing a religion until the latter portions of the early game can be a real viable strategy. In fact, this sort of strategy makes the creative civ trait much less attractive IMO.


Edit: An addendum containing some cost savings #'s of that 25% extra build speed:

Assume generously, that a city has an average of 8 hammers during its early stages. That would mean a 25% increase in hammers, which is 10. Note that this is a VERY generous assumption. Most cities do not have 8 base hammers until at least size 5. The game engine also rounds DOWN when giving you that 25% bonus, which creates much more waste than the perfect utilization of the 25% of 8 in my illustrated example. If, for example, your city spend an equal amount of time at the following level of base hammers: 6,7,8,9,10 - your speed bonus is 20%, NOT 25%.

Unit:Cost - Savings

Missionary: 40 Hammers

Obelisk: 30 Hammers. Effective savings: 6 Hammers.
Granary: 60 Hammers. Effective savings: 12 Hammers.
Barracks: 60 Hammers. Effective savings: 12 Hammers.
Lighthouse: 60 Hammers. Effective savings: 12 Hammers.
Temple: 80 Hammers. Effective Savings: 16 Hammers.
Library: 90 Hammers. Effective savings: 18 Hammers.

So as you can see, an absolute 25% increase in build speed is equal to a 20% reduction in the price of a building. So you'd have to build 3 of the above early buildings before making back your Hammers that it cost to make the missionary. This 25% increase in speed is actually even LESS of an advantage if your civ gets a half price discount for making any of the above buildings from traits. Mathematically, you have to spend 200 Hammers worth of production on buildings before you break even on the building of a missionary. Remember, this is buildings only. No 25% bonus for any units you build.

Using a more realistic 20% achievable hammer increase based on rounding averages, you are actually only seeing a 16.7% reduction in the price. So that would be more like 240 hammers to break even.

Considering that Stonehenge costs 120 Hammers before the stone and/or industrious trait hammer reduction, you'd have to be insane to build a missionary over Stonehenge in the early game.


Now obviously, there are some ancillary benefits as well. Namely, that the savings in hammers results in buildings being built one (or more) turn(s) faster, which means one more turn of culture, one extra turn of extra food, etc. But those benefits strike me as being minimal.


Unless that +1 happiness is absolutely essential in your game strategy, I am having a really hard time finding a benefit to switching to the organized religion civic in the very early game, regardless of what type of game materializes.

In my opinion, the only good reason to switch to organized religion in the early game is if you think you will only be able to found 1 religion, and you are lucky enough, or can build roads fast enough, for your state religion to spread into new cities before competing religions from other civs spread there.

Or, if you are looking to build multiple early game wonders in a single city that is NOT your capital, and has so many base hammers being produced from tiles that it approaches the true 25% benefit. In which case, the cost of that missionary is worth it.


Otherwise, you are treading water at best making missionaries.

My advice: Switch to a state religion and the organized religion civic only when unhappiness and slightly more expensive wonders/buildings really begin to come into play. Then the 25% building speed becomes a factor. If you just need the happiness, Monarchy is a compelling alternative. Ironically, the main benefit of choosing a state religion and switching to a the organized religion civic seems to be the ability to build non-state religion missionaries without monastaries.

[padillah]

Originally posted by ducki
Seriously, if you haven't read Sulla's walkthrough, do so. Lots of great stuff in there.

Where'd it go?

I saw it topped a few days ago. Now I can't find it.

Tom P.

[dschur]

I was quite tempted to stay heathen for a while in my last game. That diplomacy minus for religion is HUGE. I think at -4 it is the worst modifier out there. You can declare war on their friend, and refuse to hand over gunpowder, and refuse to trade Iron with them before you come up with a -4 yourself. Thanks for the posting Ray, it has given me the courage to try a heathen game.

[ducki]

Here ya go

Edited to add the extra L.

[rayw69]

Originally posted by dschur
I was quite tempted to stay heathen for a while in my last game. That diplomacy minus for religion is HUGE. I think at -4 it is the worst modifier out there. You can declare war on their friend, and refuse to hand over gunpowder, and refuse to trade Iron with them before you come up with a -4 yourself. Thanks for the posting Ray, it has given me the courage to try a heathen game.

I think the majority of games that are played do benefit from picking a state religion at some point. I'm just an advocate of doing it later than most people.

[padillah]

Originally posted by rayw69
I think the majority of games that are played do benefit from picking a state religion at some point. I'm just an advocate of doing it later than most people.

I think I'm with you there. Found them, sure. There's definate benefits to founding them.

State rligion right off the bat? I'm still looking into it. (Like duki said, maybe I suck at diplomacy).

Tom P.

[Blake]

Wow great post rayw69, very insightful! I can definitely appreciate the merits of a heathen civ. I DIDN'T know about using Organized Religion to build missionaries of any religion, I also didn't know about the 5 culture/turn for each founding city. That came in extremely hand with my last terra game when I founded Islam in a new city in the new world, a switch to Heathenism created quite a nice culture boost that helped to flip some barb cities.

Looking at it this way Paganism and Heathenism is really like an early game version of free religion, it actually has bonuses that the other religion civics don't!

[slimeddy]

Has anyone determined what causes the variation in heathen/brethren bonuses? I was keeping an eye on them in my last game, and it seems that the penalty either varies by a) how widespread their religion is in my cities, or b) how widespread my religion is in their cities. I'm assuming something similar determines how much of a brethren bonus you get.
If it's true, there's another reason to spread religion one way or the other.

Religion was a big part of diplomacy for me in my last game. I had Washington and Saladin getting snarky with me, and I was working on Mao as an ally. Once I got OB and planted a few missionaries in his territory, he converted and was buddy-buddy enough to trade some resources and really cement the friendship. That let me focus on bulking up on Saladin and Washington's borders, which seemed to deter them enough and let me build up fast enough to not worry about their threat while I race to the endgame.

[Blake]

I'm becoming more and more impressed by staying Heathen/Pagan but whoring religions, like "Early game Free Religion", the effect of founding multiple religions is rather huge. And a new city can immediately be spammed by 3 missionaries for an instant 3 culture, which is pretty good for non-creative! (or no free artists), and you can build the shrines for the religions you focus on whoring and rake in cash too. Paganism is really quite powerful!