I'm not that sure on the differences between the .exe's I've only played on BI.exe for a long while now. There are some differences though, I know someone (Monkwarrior?) posted that running the same mod under the different exes produced quite different AI expansion for example.

Quote Originally Posted by Red Spot
As the title says, Religion in Rome running it with the BI.exe, is it worth it??

I havent really played BI much, simply dont like it compared to like vanilla Rome, though I am really interested in BI's features, I've added hording to all non-superfaction factions and made 3 roman-rebels that will keep popping up if a Roman settlement revolts

Am however in a bit of doubt about religion, on one side I think its a pretty nice addon, than again I cant help feel its only 1/2 of what should be in there ..

Simply said with some basic testing I cant get a clear impression of religion meaning I have the feeling there is more to it that I havent noticed so I'd like to ask you people if you could possibly try to give a good explanation about the impacts of religion in Rome(in the game in general)

Currently I'm just seeing it as a sort of additional hurdle to take before being in full control of a new settlement.
To try and answer the 'is it worth it' point... the only direct effect religion has is to add to unrest within a settlement if you've got population converted to 'wrong' religion, so in that you're right its only really a hurdle towards achieving control of new regions. I quite like the feature though and tend to think of it as another way to show the struggle to get cultural assimilation for your new territories.

The way vanilla BI uses religion has a flaw in that the religion of a settlement is fixed by the buildings, and the AI doesn't destroy buildings so their religion does not spread as they expand. You can change the EDB though so that the religion set by the building varies with the faction occupying the settlement, that effectively fixes each faction as having to stay with its own religion and can make trying to hold territories surrounded by regions of different religions quite interesting

If you do add religion you can also add new traits and ancillaries that give religious bonuses to characters, that can add a bit more depth to the game, if you have problem with region being converted due to neighbours for instance, you can use the characters with high bonuses to convert it back, or possibly use them to cause unrest by converting enemy settlements.