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**Blake** · December 24, 2005, 03:04

The alignment of the moons of jupiter has a large effect.

**snafuc4** · December 24, 2005, 08:59

Re: Spreading religion

Originally posted by Monsto
so the question is: what besides missionaries and the shrine affect spreading religion?

If you have any other religion in a city, whether by founding it yourself or spread from another civ, missionary is the only way to get your chosen religion in that city

**joncnunn** · December 24, 2005, 12:28

There's another thread somewhere, but it amounts to the religion of the holy city spreads to cities that it's trading with that don't have any religion.

The Holy Shrine for the religion increases the per turn probability of this happening. [It's real power is the gold you get for every city in the world having that religion, not the spreading]

Once there's one religion in a city, you'll have to add any others you want yourself using Missonaries.

The probability of a Missonary success mostly depends upon the number of religions already present in the target city, but there is also reduced odds for foreign missonaries.

**Monsto** · December 24, 2005, 18:11

yeah i noticed also that founding cities rarely get successful missionaries attempts. i've never seen a successful missionary in a founding city with the holy shrine.

thanks. . . helps a lot.

**MadDjinn** · December 24, 2005, 18:17

I think the odds get better with more religions in a city...

I've had a city with more than 1 founding religion that took a missionary np.

It may also depend on how many religion specific buildings you have already... if there isn't a temple of any religion, then it *should* (no data) be easier to spread the religion there.

**Blake** · December 24, 2005, 18:31

Now I'll try to justify my "Moons of Jupiter" comment - basically natural religion spreading can be very eratic. Having a trade link DOES seem to have a big effect, it seems bigger than actually having open borders. Open borders might not do anything if you don't have a trade link.

I've seen religions spread like wildfire down rivers.

Generally speaking holy cities tend to spread religion to cities nearest to them. With large, expanding empires I've ended up with a big "Islam Pocket" around the islam holy city.

Once all holy cities are in play and everyone has trade links, religion-less cities pretty much become free-for-alls, I have no idea how it decides which religion wins and gets to spread to it.

A super-early religion like Buddhism doesn't seem to spread much at the start, then it might suddenly start spreading like mad, once spreading kicks in I've had it spread twice in one turn.

Some religions seem to be "stillborn", they just wont spread. Conf and Tao seem to be often guilty of this (even if you get them very early with Oracle/Prophet etc).

I had one game where over half the civs adopted Christainity, with only the founders running other religions (hindu and conf), I had no idea how that spread happened, but a quick prophet lightbulb had something to do it starting early enough.
There may be a factor where (holyless) AI's tend to want to run whichever religion will give them the biggest diplomatic benefit, hence creating a snowball effect. If it's your own religion, and you miss out on creating a snowball, getting others to adopt it can be like shovelling you-know-what uphill with a pitchfork. On the other hand start a snowball and you can have half the world as your lackeys with minimal missionary work.

So I think there's a LOT of randomness, a bit of snowball effect, and early trade-links (coastal, rivers) can have large effects too.

Got Jesus?

**Blake** · December 24, 2005, 22:23

Yes, I'm definitely right about the trade links being critical.

I started a game on huge oasis map, as Spanish on a lake (TM), in the southern greenbelt. Founded Hindusim. I wasn't on a river but I found one nearby, my scouting units followed it and eventually found Hatty in the northern greenbelt.

A couple turns later I hooked up a road from Madrid to the river.
The next turn the "trade link" icon showed up on Hatty.
The next turn Hindusm spread to Thebes, right across a huge map =).
And definitely no open borders in play, neither of us having writing.

So if you want your religion to spread, get to work setting up some viable trade links for the monkies to travel down! Roads, rivers, coasts!

**Monsto** · December 25, 2005, 00:19

i have trade links to everyone. )=

for whatever reason, Caesar, Monte and Mao hadn't gone down the religion path... maybe it was because they hadn't founded any. Ifound monte with a jewsionary (= and eventually had the 3 of them in my ranks . . .

but on my home continent, with like 6 civs, i got berlin way early in the game, and it spread ONCE from there. and NEVER from the egypt city i sent a jewsionary to.

i have trade links . . . the only thing missing is hard roads to said civs linking them to my holy city.

/me runs off to do that.

**djpsychonaut** · December 26, 2005, 18:44

Originally posted by Blake
I had one game where over half the civs adopted Christainity, with only the founders running other religions (hindu and conf), I had no idea how that spread happened, but a quick prophet lightbulb had something to do it starting early enough.
There may be a factor where (holyless) AI's tend to want to run whichever religion will give them the biggest diplomatic benefit, hence creating a snowball effect. If it's your own religion, and you miss out on creating a snowball, getting others to adopt it can be like shovelling you-know-what uphill with a pitchfork. On the other hand start a snowball and you can have half the world as your lackeys with minimal missionary work.

The AI usually switches to the first religion that one of its cities picks up. I've noticed that the civs try to form political blocs, so it is possible that the AI is trying to switch to a politically-advantageous religion.

**MadDjinn** · December 26, 2005, 18:49

Originally posted by djpsychonaut

The AI usually switches to the first religion that one of its cities picks up. I've noticed that the civs try to form political blocs, so it is possible that the AI is trying to switch to a politically-advantageous religion.

I've seen that...

some civs start out picking up any religion that they can get, and then switch to something else when they want to form a common block.

**joncnunn** · December 26, 2005, 19:09

Comments, yes, I was amazed when I bought a world map that told me that one city on the far south of the map down trade routes (mostly rivers) had adopted Christanity, when I founded it and only used internal Christian missonaries.

(I had previously discovered Judism, adopted it as my own religion, and rapidlly spread it to all but one of my immedate neighbors who in turn adopted Judism as their own. I'm still busy spreading Judism to those cities lacking it. Send me the money!)