Free Religion

[platypotamus]

So, in my current game, I am going for a cultural victory. My three cities are getting pretty nice cultural output, but I'd really like to add some extra "cathedrals" of other religions to them. I've got Paris, Timbuktu (poor Mali), and Lyons: All three have Christian Cathedrals.

Now, I'm using free religion, and within my borders you can find Buddhism, Confusionism, and Islam. Oh, and recently Hindu.

Now, Lyons, has Islam, so I should be able to build the Islamic version of the cathedral there ... can we have more than one cathedral in a city?

If so, using the free religions civic, is there a super easy way to spread religions? Paris has Confusionism, but I only have two cities with it, so no Confusion cathedral. None of my big three have Hindu or Buddhism, though I could build a Hindu Cathedral at this point (3 cities have temples).

I can't use missionaries, as monastaries are obsolete and I don't have them for these religions-by-conquest. If I switch to organized religion, I'd have to switch state religions to spread the stuff around, and without spiritual, that's a LOT of anarchy.

Any thing I can do, or is it kinda the luck of the spread?

[xxFlukexx]

Yes you can build more than one cathedral in a city, that's the main trick to getting a cultural victory(that and great Artists)

Well you can also go back to Organized religion and build missionaries without monasteries. It's the only way to do it if you have Scientific method and have not built monasteries yet. You don't have to switch your religion, with Organized religion on, you can build any missionary type you want as long as it is being practiced at that city.

[snoopy369]

Indeed, using organized religion as a quick religion-booster is key to using free religion properly. Organized religion does NOT require you to only build your own religion's missionaries; you can build ANY as long as that city has it.

Often, I find that I think I have enough temples for a cathedral, but don't actually; either I build a cathedral somewhere that I don't recall building it, or I miscount. That may be your issue?

[Konquest02]

You need 3 temples per cathedral of the same religion. That's probably why you can't build more than one right one.

If you lack religions in some of your cities, go organized, build missionaries like a madman for a couple of turns then switch back to Free Religion. You will then be able to build a lot more things...

[platypotamus]

Oh nice, I thought you could only do missionaries for your state religion. That will help quite a bit I think. I was afraid of massive amounts of anarchy. Thanks guys.

[cal_01]

I think you can build more cathedrals in your country if you have more temples too. Can someone verify this for me?

[Hauptman]

For every 3 temples of a religion you build you may build 1 cathedral.

[platypotamus]

As an update for you all, I continued that game last night:

I'm in love! <3 <3 <3

Organized religion is rocking the house. I've now got at least 3 cathedrals in each of my culture-cities, working on a fourth and fifth (christian, islam, confucian, hindu, buddhism). I if judaism or taoism spread to one of my cities I'd probably try for them too.

It's looking like I'll hit that cultural victory after all, which is good, because no one will vote for me in those diplomatic victories (occasionally peter will, but I need AT least one other person (Gandhi would be enough, but he hates me, Saladin who's next most likely to vote for me wouldn't get me to the total I need).

So, thank you for the help, and I now join those who assert that organized religion (which you can even do with no-state religion, btw, I hadn't known that) is really nice for cultural victory attempts.