Civ 5

[FatAndFaithless]

What are the pros of going down the path of Faith? How do I implement a religion?

I'm playing on the second easiest difficulty. I'm still a beginner after all.

Faith and establishing a religion helps you do pretty much anything you want much easier. You can tailor your faith to bring in insane amounts of gold, give you science boosts, free great people, or loads of happiness. It won't win you the game by itself, but the benefits you can get from it are pretty huge. You don't need to take the Piety tree to go religious, but its super helpful. You can start a religion once a great prophet is born. Once you hit a certain number of Faith (gained from making shrines or from working certain tiles depending on your pantheon), you have a chance at the beginning of each turn to spawn a Great Prophet. Once the Prophet spawns, your Faith goes back down to 0. YOu can expend the Great Prophet to create a religion, which grants you some bonuses that you get to choose. You can 'enhance' your religion one time, by using up another Great Prophet which adds even more bonuses. And if you complete the Piety policy tree, you get a choice of one last very powerful "Reformation" belief, which can really impact the game.

In short - Religion won't win you the game on its own, but can be SUPER helpful for just about anything you want.