Founding multiple religions?

[Skanky Burns]

You also gain strategic advantages that not founding a religion would deny you. If you have two religions and a different one spreads to each of your neighbours, you can switch to one and gain an open-border agreement with them. You can then convert them to the other religion (that your other neighbour adopted) and switch to that religion so all people around you share your state religion. Without similar religions, open border agreements are much harder to get.

[joncnunn]

The Holy City Shrine is so much better than the other choices that this amounts to saying that the downside of choosing a use a painting for 4K culture is it costs you your great artist.

Originally posted by khumak

Building these shrines costs you a great prophet though.

[Cort Haus]

Originally posted by Skanky Burns


Duh.

Might I then point out to you that if 1 gold for every city in existance is good, then 7 gold for every city in existance is even better? Perhaps I need to spell it out to you also that if you founded all religions you can switch to any at will for diplomatic purposes.

No, you don't need point that out, either.

[Skanky Burns]

You are weird.

[khumak]

Originally posted by joncnunn
The Holy City Shrine is so much better than the other choices that this amounts to saying that the downside of choosing a use a painting for 4K culture is it costs you your great artist.

You're missing my point. Obviously for any religion you happen to found you're going to want to build a shrine. My point is that if you let the AI found a few of those religions then THEY will build the shrine for you and you can conquer the city later. You wind up with the shrine for free in addition to being able to use the prophet for other purposes.

And when it comes to Great Artists I almost never use them for culture bombs. I get more culture out of them by adding them to my border cities as specialists. I tend to do my best to minimize the number of Great Artists I get anyway though because I haven't found them to be much use. My cities generate plenty of culture to hold my borders and gradually expand. I find it annoying if I get more than 2 or 3 Great Artists throughout the entire course of a game. I shoot for as many engineers as I can get with a few prophets and scientists thrown in for academies and shrines.

[khearn]

Originally posted by Skanky Burns


Duh.

Might I then point out to you that if 1 gold for every city in existance is good, then 7 gold for every city in existance is even better? Perhaps I need to spell it out to you also that if you founded all religions you can switch to any at will for diplomatic purposes.

How much production are you going to have to spend on missionaries to get all 7 religions in every city in existance? Especially considering that it gets more and more dificult to add a new religion as a city gets multiple religions.

Lets assume that the first religion in each city is free, and you have to produce missionaries for the others. That's an absolute minimum of 6 missionaries for each city, and probably more like at least twice that. Lets assume 10 missionaries per city (but I expect it would really take considerably more), that would be 400 production points you have to spend for every city in existance. For that you could have produced 10 swordsmen for every city, which would probably be enough to conquer then all.

Which would you rather have, 7 gold for every city in existance, or 10 swordsmen for every city in existance?

[Cort Haus]

edit : yeah, I'll drop it

[Drachasor]

Originally posted by Cort Haus

Originally posted by Skanky Burns
You are weird.

I'd rather be wierd than obnoxious.

Wow guys, stop bickering.

[Drachasor]

Originally posted by khumak


You're missing my point. Obviously for any religion you happen to found you're going to want to build a shrine. My point is that if you let the AI found a few of those religions then THEY will build the shrine for you and you can conquer the city later. You wind up with the shrine for free in addition to being able to use the prophet for other purposes.

I tend to find my finances are trickier in the earlier parts of the game as opposed to the later parts. As such founding a religion is useful as it gives you that extra income at the beginning of the game, and it is pretty easy to make sure that's more than 5 gold a turn (that the specialist would give you).

Also sometimes you can manage to found 2 religions in the same city (I have done this on prince difficulty, I know it gets harder as level goes up). That with some specialists, such as from your extra prophets, means that you can more easily support a 100% science rate, since that money comes in and is affected by markets and the like. Even with only one religion founded this can be quite nice. Of course you'll want to put Wall Street in said city for an added bonus. For this reason I usually try to have my second city in a place that is good for commerce, since I will very often have a religion founded there.

-Drachasor

[Drachasor]

Correct me if I am wrong...doesn't Freedom of Religion give you extra happiness and not extra cash? Someone said it gave you money, but I am pretty sure that isn't the case.

-Drachasor

[khumak]

Originally posted by Drachasor
Correct me if I am wrong...doesn't Freedom of Religion give you extra happiness and not extra cash? Someone said it gave you money, but I am pretty sure that isn't the case.

-Drachasor

It gives you extra happiness and research. 1 happy person per city per religion and 10% science bonus. Personally I like Pacifism better and wind up using that from the time I get it until the end of the game. I've never seen a need for the happiness boost from Free Religion even for cities larger than size 30.

I run out of food long before I run out of happiness unless I have my culture bar set at 0%. That's doable in the early part of the game but somewhere in the middle of the game I bump it up to 20% and leave it there for most of the game. When I go to war I bump it up further when I need to counteract war weariness and then go back to 20% when I'm at peace again.

[Skanky Burns]

The only cash religion gets you is from owning the particular shrine for that religion. None of the religious choices offer you extra money.

With my test religious game, I founded all 7 religions and proceeded to attempt spreading them to all cities in the world. Difficulty was warlord so I could be assured of founding all 7 religions. By 1925 I had managed to spread all religions to all of my own cities (plus all my newly acquired cities due to culture flipping) but the failure rate getting the 7th religion in was quite costly. 10 missionaries per city for that final religion would not be too far off. Getting up to 3 religions per city was fairly safe though, and I would say is the maximum optimal amount to spread.

The culture generated from this many religions is massive. My top three cities produce 1744, 502 and 285 culture per turn without any culture spending, my empire runs at a profit with 100% science spending and due to the other civilizations sharing my state religion (and the low difficulty level) I have never had a war, despite my capital being guarded by a lone warrior.

Using multiple religions could be a powerful way to get a cultural victory combined with earlier culture pumping and avoiding the tech that obsoletes cathedrals monasteries for as long as possible (scientific method?), while obviously not taking it to the extreme like I did.

[Kassiopeia]

Are Cathedrals obsoleted too? I thought only Monasteries were obsoleted by Scientific Method.

[Skanky Burns]

My mistake, monasteries. At least I guessed the tech correctly.

Here is the savegame, incase anyone is interested.

[Cort Haus]

Originally posted by Skanky Burns
By 1925 I had managed to spread all religions to all of my own cities (plus all my newly acquired cities due to culture flipping) but the failure rate getting the 7th religion in was quite costly. 10 missionaries per city for that final religion would not be too far off. Getting up to 3 religions per city was fairly safe though, and I would say is the maximum optimal amount to spread.

Good test.

Attempting to put a fourth religion into a city is often a cue for disappointment, and these tests seem to confirm that 3 is probably the optimum.

The best results I've had as a Multi-Faith-Spammer was when I had a small, dedicated Missionary Pump, squeezed in between two major cities and doing nothing but monasteries, missionaries (and occasional units) all game. When I'd filled up my own cities I'd start on the neighbours. Without that dedicated bit of 'bible-belt' territory I never get round to building enough of the little zealots to go round.