Civilization 5 Religion Guide
Founder Beliefs in G&K and BNW
| Converting & Religious Pressure | Pantheons | Founder Beliefs | Follower Beliefs | Enhancers | Reformation |
Your Founder Belief is a unique bonus you'll get for being the owner of the Religion. Most of these scale very well and give you increasing bonuses over time, rewarding you with resources for spreading your Religion to other Civilizations.
| Belief Name | Game Description | Tips and Strategies |
| Ceremonial Burial | +1 Happiness for every 2 Cities following this Religion | It may be very good for you if there are a lot of Cities in the game - particularly if you're playing with several wide Civs. You may need the Happiness to trigger more Golden Ages or allow more population Growth. |
| Church Property | +2 Gold for each City following this Religion | This competes a bit with Tithe. This will be better early in a game, but Tithe will later pass it significantly when Cities are all in the teens or twenties in size and you've effectively spread your Religion. |
| Initiation Rites | +100 Gold when each City first converts to this Religion | Quick cash, but not really worth it unless you're going to be playing a really short game. In the end, Tithe or Church Property will pass it up within 50-100 turns and every bit of gameplay past that is your loss. |
| Interfaith Dialogue | Gain Science when a Missionary spreads religion to Cities with another Religion. | It's not particularly powerful in the late-game, but can help a lot with early-game Science generation. The amounts generated will become less impressive the further along you are, while other options here scale better with time. If this were to appeal to me, which it really doesn't because I'm good at spreading Faith without Missionaries, I'd just go with Gold generation from a Founder belief to give me more Research Agreements later in the game. |
| Papal Primacy | +15 to Influence Resting Point with City-States that follow this Religion | Pledge to Protect + this + increase in resting point from Patronage Social Policies gives you a guaranteed Friendship with all City-States that you can get to follow your Religion, and bumping it up to Alliance is quite easy from there. An interesting choice if you're going for a Diplomatic Victory! |
| Peace Loving | +1 Happiness for every 8 Follwers in non-enemy Foreign Cities. | City-States count for this, and that will likely result in more happiness than Ceremonial Burial in the long-run, particularly with more Tall Cities in the game. |
| Pilgrimage | +2 Faith for each Foreign City following this Religion | The only faith-generating Founder Belief is actually kind of lackluster compared to other options here. |
| Tithe | +1 Gold for evfery 4 Followers of this Religion | Like the next, a very sturdy pick. If you can spread it early, you'll be getting heaps of Gold and that will grow quickly over the years when you have cemented your place in a large number of Cities. |
| World Church | +1 Culture for every 5 followers of this Religion in other Civilizations | Another good pick that will scale well with time and give you more Social Policies than you'd get otherwise. World Church DOES give you +culture from followers in City-States. The Culture won't help with Border Growth, but definitely helps if you can establish a Religious presence in a number of Foreign cities. |
| Converting & Religious Pressure | Pantheons | Founder Beliefs | Follower Beliefs | Enhancers | Reformation |
Share Tips and FAQs (3)
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J-dite says...
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"Initiation Rites" is actually pretty good, if you plan to destroy most cities. It works pretty good with "Just War" enhancer belief. Just convert city before placing a siege, and gain 100 gold and +20% combat strength modifier. Holy wars.
ReplyFlag417th June 2014 4:28am
King Gillip says...
I just wanted to note that Pilgrimage is actually pretty solid. Granted, I don't often play beyond the industrial era, where I'm sure it ceases to be as useful, but until then, you are effectively building a maintenance free temple in every city with your religion. It is probably not very good, though, if you don't intend on focusing heavily on religion. If you plan to complete piety, it will definitely make you the religion superpower through the entire game, because it allows you to pump out missionaries early to mid game, so you can use all of your Prophets ( minus religion founding and enhancing) to make holy sites. Dat money. Dat culture. Dem faiths. Also, I use carlsguides constantly. You have provided the Civ community with an excellent resource for quick easy reference. Thank you.
18th September 2014 12:54pm
Dvd Avins says...
Carl, in your description of Initiation Rites, you ignore the inherent inflation rate (or effective interest rate, if you want to think about it that way) in a game. I'm sure you're aware it exists and take it into account somewhat, but I think you must feel it's a lot lower than I do, or you wouldn't slough off the consideration without a mention.
And of course, the inflation is not just in money, but in almost every other countable resource in the game. (Fatih, culture, food, science 'beakers', hammers, military strength even though it's not countable, etc.)
Suppose you were frequently given an opportunity to invest a largish amount of one of those to be repaid with interest 100 turns later. How much interest would it take for you to strive to have the excess available to invest? It depends on the kind of resource, I think.
Admin:
I know that the value of 1 gold, 1 science, etc. do go down later in a game so get what you mean when talking about inflation. A really wide empire might benefit from Initiation Rites, but I see that bonus disappearing later on as it often grows more difficult to spread religion. I rarely see the AI choose tithe, so personally prefer and recommend it over IR as far as gold generation. Tithe grows with the Population of Cities and will greatly help offset unit/building maintenance if you spread your religion enough - so it grows with inflation while the 100 Gold you get from IR is fixed. I suppose my economics are rusty or I'd give a more thoughtful response, but the purchase value of most buildings in the game only doubles - the highest are 1200G or so. I have had 100 GPT from Tithe, so chose to recommend that over IR.
3rd August 2014 12:40pm
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