Is Religion really useful?

[Remulak]

I have completed several games of CIV IV and wonder about the effect of religion. At best, it seems like a minor effect. I purposefully played a game without building any religious buildings, not founding any religions or adopting a state religion and found little difference in other games that I have played.

Also, if your city has more than one religion, is that a benefit or a problem?

[vee4473]

one big benefit can be that you get +1 gold from every city that has a religion that you founded. You just have to build the holy shrine of that religion with a great prophet.

multiple religions mean mo' money.
edit: FOUNDING and building the shrine of multiple religions means mo' money

also, if you have a state religion and adopt one of the civics (i forget which one), that's 2 extra experience points for all units built in your empire.

another civic give a 25% production bonus to your civ with a state religion.

i'm sure there are others

you don't need any of this, as you say, but there are some goodies lurking if you use religion.

[pauli]

"human behavior is economic behavior."

and religion is human behavior.

it's all about the money (and the culture).

[MasterDave]

If you want to achieve a culture victory, the surest way is to have four or five religions in your empire, Even beter if you found them yourself from a culture generation standpoint. Also, religion has a profound effect on diplomacy, where nations that share your religion are far more likely to be friendly than nations that reagard you as heathens.

And yes, having religion in your towns leads to lots of opportunities to raise cash money, either through holy city buildings, priest specialists, or great prophets becoming super specialists.

[Enigma_Nova]

Each religion raises the Happycap in a city by 1 (temple), and your state religion gives +1 culture to each of your cities that have it.
Every city with a religion you found gets you 1 gold, if you build the shrine.
Also, you can get gold for every building of your state religion if you construct the Spiral Minaret.
Monasteries are cheap, and have +10% Science and +2 Culture. Easy Culture Bombing or Teching up is there.
Later in the game, Cathedrals really bump up your Culture.
Religion is the basis of many relations with the AI, and if you send your missionaries right then you should have no problems warding off major attacks - and even co-ordinating major attacks with your brothers and sisters of faith!

[Urban Ranger]

Re: Is Religion really useful?

Originally posted by Remulak
I have completed several games of CIV IV and wonder about the effect of religion. At best, it seems like a minor effect. I purposefully played a game without building any religious buildings, not founding any religions or adopting a state religion and found little difference in other games that I have played.

Either you are god-like, in which case you don't need it I suppose, or totally bad, in which case it doesn't make a difference.

[HavenDuuk]

Religion is the greatest addition to any civ game ever. And I generally like the effects of it in-game.

There is nothing, and I mean NOTHING, better than having a religion you founded be the one that spreads over the whole world, causing everyone to love you.

Especially when Isabella of Spain is the only religious enemy... soooooo much fun.

[Blake]

Religion seems to be superbly balanced to me. It's neither essential nor overpowered.

The main benefit from a state religion is the +2 happy in most cities (state bonus+temple), and +4 happy in some select cities (Cathedral), this can really help when starved for happy resources. The income from shrines isn't THAT huge (never really much more than 10% of the income of a large empire), but it does help out with expenses quite a bit.

On Monarch I usually try to found Buddhism or Hinduism if spiritual and my start is ideal for it (that is, some nice commerce tiles), because the free happy really does help, a spiritual leader without a religion is only half a leader, most the good civics to actually swap around are the religion ones (and well, nationhood).

If non-spiritual I often found conf.

If I am playing an org leader (and I usually do) then organized religion is too good to pass up (with the 50% discout), so I'll definitely make sure to spread a religion around, even if it's a neighbours and not my own. After all, +2 happy and civic benefits per city is worth much more than +1 coin per city, the shrine income is just a perk and I can always just steal the holy city later.

Non-spiritual, non-organized civs can do well without any attention paid to religion, using Free Religion when it becomes available.

[Datajack Franit]

don't forget the "spy" in every converted city

[Bluefusion]

What difficulty are you playing?? Seriously, religion becomes necessary to me to function as an empire. I depend on the extra gold from spreading my religion abroad (once you build the holy site).

The organized religion civic becomes essential in the early game to not only spread your religion, but to help build buildings. Especially many wonders.

Also, whenever I don't have religions in my city, I always run into happiness problems. This is altogether missing if I have nurture religions in my empire. Especially early game, if you don't found a religion, and it takes time for someone else's to spread to you, it sucks. One or two cities with unhappiness early on can hurt in the long run.

Plus religion is important if you can convert all the warmongering AIs so they'll hopefully leave you alone. Definately my plan to deal with Alexander.

[Remulak]

Either you are god-like, in which case you don't need it I suppose, or totally bad, in which case it doesn't make a difference.

Hardly godlike. Perhaps the effects of religion are more subtle than I thought that they should be. I know that having the same religion as a neighbor can be beneficial for diplomacy. Does it make it worse if you declare war on that neighbor? Does it affect your relations with other nations that have that same religion.

[Crossfire]

The only negative I have seen is if you burn the holy city that a religion was founded in. Then all civs of that religion add a new negative to the diplomatic calculation.

[Provost Harrison]

One word, and one word only: Pacifism

[Provost Harrison]

Burning a holy city is really silly - especially considering the cash it generates

[Finarfin]

Someone should do a mod that replaces religions with different narcotics.