Civilization 5 Religion Guide
Enhancer Beliefs in G&K and BNW
| Converting & Religious Pressure | Pantheons | Founder Beliefs | Follower Beliefs | Enhancers | Reformation |
When you Enhance a Religion with the second or later Great Prophet, you get to choose your second Follower Belief and one of the below Enhancer Beliefs. Many of these are geared toward help you spread your Religion faster or further, and almost all have their merits.
| Belief Name | Game Description | Tips and Strategies |
| Defender of the Faith | +20% Combat Strength near Friendly Cities that follow this Religion | Not a bad pick if you are playing Peaceful and anticipate you'll need to fight off invaders at one time or another. Other options here will give you much more flexibility and may ultimately lead you to have a better military etc. so it's not that great a bonus. |
| Holy Order | Missionaries and Inquisitors cost 30% less Faith | I would only select this Enhancer if playing on a very large map, knowing I would need many Missionaries to effectively make mine the dominant Religion. It may help speed up the process, significantly while the other passive options give you a faster spreading Religion and more freedom in what you'll spend your Faith on. |
| Itinerant Preachers | Religion spreads to Cities 30% further away. | I think I like this best, as more Cities can exert pressure sometimes and it'll outdo the Religious Texts early on, when I want my Pressure to begin building faster. It kind of depends on the lay of the land. With many Cities clumped together I may prefer Religious Texts. |
| Just War | +20% Combat Strength near enemy Cities that follow this Religion | Spread your religion to the enemy, expect them to get hostile anyway, and capitalize on them following your Religion by pounding their Cities with a faith-purchased Army. It's a very fun Enhancer to select for a Domination Win. |
| Messiah | Prophets 25% Stronger and earned with 25% less Faith | While it can save you hundreds of Faith on Great Prophets, it'll probably fall short compared to others here when you are generating them far less frequently in the later-game. You'll also not be spending Faith and saving up for them - the choice is up to you how useful this is. The Conversion Strength barely interests me. I would choose this if I wanted more Great Prophets to make many Holy Sites, which is situational to an extreme, relying on me maxing Piety Social Policies. |
| Missionary Zeal | Missionary Conversion Strength +25% | Helps Missionaries get around a little better without Open Borders, but their Conversion strength is already quite bad in Cities with another Religion already entrenched. It's better go with a passive boost and be strategic about spreading your religion than rely so heavily on Missionaries. |
| Religious Texts | Religion Spreads 25% Faster, 50% with Printing Press | It is on par with Itinerant Preachers when you research Printing Press and get +25% more out of it, bringing it to 50% faster or 9 pressure per City. Pick this or Itinerant Preachers and you're unlikely to be dissatisfied. |
| Religious Unity | Religion spreads to friendly City-States at double rate | This will help you complete quests to spread your religion there, and help guarnatee you can have Majority Religion in all City-States, which can help a lot depending on your Founder Belief. When many City-States are near to each other, they can cement your Religion by exerting pressure back and forth together, and ultimately converting other Cities nearby - so, you can use City-States to help you spread your Religion to other Civilizations peacefully. |
| Reliquary | Gain 50 Faith each time a Great Person is expended. | This is a pretty awful pick, honestly. By mid-game I'm getting 50 faith per turn, anyway and that's hardly going to help me buy more. Messiah would be better than this, giving you more Holy Sites and consistent faith per turn. |
| Converting & Religious Pressure | Pantheons | Founder Beliefs | Follower Beliefs | Enhancers | Reformation |
Share Tips and FAQs (4)
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Graham842 says...
I just find religious texts much more overwhelming... gives the upper hand in an even pressure battle although granted an extra cities weight that is further away can also help I have the options of using trade routes/missionaries to help there while I do not have that flexibility with pressure
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022nd January 2016 7:14am
ShinigamiKenji says...
Depends on the map and Civ. I prefer Itinerant Preachers if my religion is likely to spread, and there is a city-spammer or I'm going wide myself. The combined pressure can easily surpass 100 per turn in my core cities, rendering even Great Prophets almost useless near my capital. I've even de-converted Holy Cities without a single missionary, though this is an extreme case.Religious Texts are nice if I'm planning to use my Trade Routes for money (Arabia gets particularly stronger with this belief), there are strong rival religions (particularly Celts or Ethiopia around) or many tall-builders such as India.I've rarely used the others, though. I once tried Religious Unity, but I think I'd rather get one of those two, anyway.
27th August 2016 9:02pm
EricS says...
I have a scenario where I don't want to spread my religion like crazy. My immediate neighbors have 3 pantheons that bleed into my lands (sun god, desert folklore, religious idols) and I have open sky with Piety policy tree. My lands are half desert, half jungle/plains and the cities closest to the civ with religious idols has 4 gold mines. My religion is (Byzantium extra belief: founder) Initiation Rites, Interfaith Dialogue, Cathedrals, Holy Warriors, Heathen Conversion. I think that Holy Orders is perfect in this scenario because every time I convert a city with the missionary I get 100 gold and 10 science per foreign follower until it is converted. If I find some barbarians along the way (including settlers and workers) I can setup a distant force with my missionary( especially in arctic regions) or give the units to city-state or weak civs to form alliances in world congress. Basically with Holy Orders and this setup I explode in the Middle Ages with Byzantine Cataphracts/Dromon and a hoard of barbarian allies as well as enormous amounts of immediate gold to upgrade the barbarians and science at the expense of established religions. P.S. I dare you to start with religious text... Thanks for the science by the way I am about to conquer you ;)
11th February 2016 4:19pm
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Most people are going to go with Religious Texts or Itinerant preachers, but given it's first come first serve, some might get forced to pick from some less-useful enhancers and hopefully this commentary will help them see the pros/cons of this one.