Where does religion pop?

[binTravkin]

I've noticed religion have a tendency to be founded in the youngest city by the time it's researched, but I think I've seen other cases too.

What factors make up the possibility for religion to appear in a certain city?

[Addled Platypus]

now that you mention that, yes I have seen that too

and sometimes your own religon wont automatically spread to all of your own cities

[binTravkin]

Your own religion does not have to spread to all your cities, as there's only some choice 0<p<1 it will spread in a certain city, which means the choice to spread in all cities is something like p1*p2*...*pN which is a very small choice indeed.

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Originally posted by binTravkin
What factors make up the possibility for religion to appear in a certain city?

City is controlled by the player that wins the holy city. First the team is chosen from all the civs which have discovered the tech at the beginning of the turn. Next, the player is chosen from the team. In both cases, there is a selection bias which favors the human players. Then the city is chosen from that player's cities, taking the following factors into account:

Presence of the palace (big negative modifier here)

Presence of other religions (unconverted cities get the best odds)

Population (bigger is better)

Die roll

Edit: tie goes to the older (approx) city

If you understand how it works, you can game the system a bit to found a hydra outside your capital - not a sure thing, but you can stack the deck.

[binTravkin]

Interesting, so it's rather about an uncoverted and big non-capital city.
If I have no religion prior to that, makes quite a broad set of options..

[ColdPhoenix]

I'm pretty sure it's guaranteed to go to any city (if one exists) that doesn't already have a religion. It always has done in the games I've played.

[binTravkin]

I'm pretty sure it's guaranteed to go to any city (if one exists) that doesn't already have a religion. It always has done in the games I've played.

While Im pretty sure you're wrong

I've had a couple of games, where I even had a double founder city while having a handful of others without any religion.

[Alternator]

In my current game, I have three cities beyond my capital, and both of the religions I've founded since expanding to extra cities have gone to the same one. It's my intended tech city, so I'm quite pleased.

[ColdPhoenix]

Originally posted by binTravkin

While Im pretty sure you're wrong

I've had a couple of games, where I even had a double founder city while having a handful of others without any religion.

Fair enough, disregard my previous post then. I've probably not noticed when it's happened to me. It does strongly prefer cities without religions though.

[binTravkin]

Yeah, that was VOU said - more chance for those without religion, but's only a chance..

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Heads up - I edited my initial reply after reviewing the code. The original was misleading, as it suggested that Ancient starts have different rules for landing the holy city. In the current code base, it is exactly the same.

(My error was in thinking that the Holy City is set when the tech is discovered. I had assumed this from the pattern that the solo player, in slot one, seems to win ties based on position in the order of play. Instead, the solo player wins ties because the game loads the dice.)