For players wanting the biggest, best, and hopefully fastest religions, this is it. Though able to secure a strong religion, piety has never been able to do much else, and for this reason is fairly under powered compared with tradition. A few small changes has been aimed at improving food and culture growth in the early game to be competitive with liberty and tradition, as was done with Honor. Not only that, but piety policies now reward players for developing a strong religion and building religious buildings. Buildings such as the previously useless Temple (mainly due to its gold maintenance) and other religious buildings get big bonuses by completing the social policy tree, and other policies will allow players to dominate not only with their religion, but also culturally. Cultural players will now be able to complete Piety, Aesthetics and Rationalism combined before choosing ideologies if they play their culture game well, which would not be possible with other opening policies.

Piety will also still be a strong second tree to fill after Tradition, Liberty or Honor thanks to its various bonuses to each city and to one’s empire as a whole.

The opener is the same as before, but as a bonus will generate extra Culture in your Holy City once a Religion is founded, helping to fill the tree. As previously mentioned, Piety is now a strong contended for a cultural game, and so Organized Religion now grants +1 Culture on Temples on top of its existing bonus. A Food bonus has been placed on Mandate of Heaven. This helps make the policy be with picking up, such as in an early game city with low/no food or later to help grow an entire empire. Theocracy remains the same, but Religious Tolerance has been completely reworked. I have never played a game where this policy even did anything, so it has been given new use. Religious Tolerance now grants rewards with culture for each city following your religion, and grants not only culture but also some faith for other religions inside your borders. Be careful though, as the culture benefits will be lost if your religion stops being the majority religion! The Reformation belief remains the same and the finisher does too. Holy sites now grant 3 Food also though.