What are your go-to Religion Beliefs?

I’ve been playing around with different attribute (Beliefs) and seeing how they play out. Pantheon choices are largely dependent on where my capital is, but after that gravitate towards the same handful of Beliefs.

I almost always choose Religious Community (+1 Housing for each Shrine and Temple) for my Follower Belief, sometimes Zen Meditation (+1 Amenity for cities with 2+ districts.)

I sort of vacillate between Stupas (+1 Amenity) and Meeting Houses (+2 Production) for the Worship Beliefs.

Founder Belief is usually Stewardship (+1 Science and +1 Faith in cities) if I’m going for a Science Victory or Tithe (+1 Gold for every 4 followers). Sometimes Religious Unity (+1 Envoy when city-state is first converted) if there are any nearby.

I’m sort of digging Burial Grounds (culture bomb adjacent tiles when Holy Site is completed) but I’m also a fan of Religious Colonization (cities start out with dominant religion of where Settler came from) and Scripture (religious pressure from adjacent cities bonus). For some reason the AI always goes for Missionary Zeal (no movement restriction for missionaries/apostles) but the one time I managed to win the religious arms race and found one first, I was underwhelmed with the bonus.

What are your go-to choices? Any particular combinations that work well together?

My Religion

I actually quite like to go for Work Ethic a my religion’s Follower Belief; yes, I know it’s not initially that great, but as someone who likes to build up their cities, it’s a nice little bonus. Otherwise, I may go for Zen Meditation instead.

For worship buildings, I usually go for either the Wat, Meeting House, or Stupa, depending of my civ’s needs.

For Founder Beliefs, if I’m out to spread my civ’s religion amongst other civs I usually go for Cross Cultural Dialogue, otherwise I tend to choose the Stewardship belief.

As for the rest, I usually pick Monastic Isolation- it’s an insurance policy, though I could probably make better use of other Enhancer Beliefs.

With regards to my civ’s pantheon, I like to use the Religion Expanded mod on the Steam Workshop, and one of the pantheons it adds (amongst other things) is called “God of Diplomacy”, which allows you to accumulate an extra 2 points of influence per turn towards city-state envoys, just to give me a slight edge in the city-state influence game. If I can’t get that one though, then Divine Spark is usually as good as anything.

At the end of the day, the specifics usually depend on what I’m aiming for. For example, if I was playing as Saladin, he and Arabia have great synergy towards generating faith and science, but they have no bonuses towards production- here I would gear up my civ’s religion towards boosting its production capacity, beliefs being thus:

• Follower: Work Ethic
• Founder: Cross Cultural Dialogue
• Worship: Meeting House
• Enhancer: Pretty much anything can go here

That of course, is just one possibility…

Original Link – Continuation of discussion