Shrines worth the trouble?

[tsathougga]

I tried something a little bit different last game and I basicaly had one of my cities go all religion all the time. I ended up making about 38 missonaries and spreading my religion to at least four different Civ's this way. I always have trouble with generating gold with a large Civ and I thought this might help.

I am almost at the end of the game now and I am wondering now if I should have bothered. The bonus for the shrines just doesn't seem like it makes that big a difference no matter how far you spread your religion. I know I would have made more if I just would have been producing "Wealth" instead of missionaries. Anyone have any thoughts on this?

[Solver]

Shrines can give a big bonus, I have had over 100 gold per turn from shrine income.

But basically, it depends on what you want to do. If you want to spread your religion, shrines are a must. Spreading your religion is probably a good idea anyway as it will improve your relations and give you some intel. But if your style is just to conquer everything you can, you'd probably be better off doing something else.

Moved to Strategy, BTW.

[Quillan]

There are tricks to it, Tsat. First, build all the financial improvements in the holy city of the religion you're pushing. Second, build Wall Street there. The gold generated by the shrine is direct gold (not commerce), but it is affected by markets/banks/grocers and Wall Street. All those together will triple the gold output of the shrine. You have all that there, spread the religion to 30 total cities, and the shrine will generate 90 gold per turn. Settle a few great prophets and merchants there as super specialists (5/6 gold per turn modified to 15/18 respectively) and the money flow increases even more. I've done that in games, and have been able to sustain a 100% science rate even while supporting the #2 military in the world while bringing in 100 gold per turn in profit.

[Velociryx]

In a word, yes. Shrines are worth it, and here's why:

The benefit you mentioned (the gold) is the most "obvious to the eye" benefit, but it is not the only benefit, and to properly evaluate the Shrine's effectiveness, all its factors must be considered, so....

* The Shrine itself generates culture, which means faster border bumps and a higher defense bonus in the city. This alone can be a compelling enough reason to build the thing.

* Organized Religion. If you use this civic, then you already know it's powerful. A 25% discount on every building you build. Sweet. And that means that you have a vested interest in spreading your religion, at the very least to every city YOU control (so that they'll reap the benefits of the civic). And given that you're doing that anyway, why not pay yourself for it too?

* Multiplicative factors (market/bank/grocer/wall street)...they ALL serve to magnify the gains you make by spreading your religion around.

* Dispersion effect - The thing you compare the shrine to is putting the city on building wealth, and while that seems a fair comparison on the surface of it, consider the following: Wealth building in a city takes THAT CITY"S hammers, and converts them into gold per turn. The shrine takes hammers from ANY city you own (any city that you order to build a missionary), and turns it into a permanant gpt bonus. Furthermore, you get that bonus WHILE building other stuff at the city with the shrine (as opposed to wealth building, wherein you ONLY get the bonus when you're not building anything else).

* Diplomacy - Once you've spread the one, true faith to all of YOUR cities, start spreading the good word to other folks. If they didn't FOUND a religion, odds are good that when you spread it to enough of their cities, they'll convert, and you'll have a new friend.

* Intel - Even if they don't, having your religion in their cities is as good as having a spy there....you can see exactly what's going on, all the time.....very handy...

So yep....well worth it.

-=Vel=-

[LordShiva]

They give even more bang for the buck if you let someone else found a religion and build the shrive, and then conquer their city

[Velociryx]

You let your neighbors live that long?

-=Vel=-

[Arrian]

Either go for the religion and build the shrine and invest in spreading the religion... or don't. I think the thing is to not half-ass it. If you decide against religion/shrine, focus on taking someone else's. It works just as well

-Arrian

[gus_smedstad]

Originally posted by Velociryx
* Diplomacy - Once you've spread the one, true faith to all of YOUR cities, start spreading the good word to other folks. If they didn't FOUND a religion, odds are good that when you spread it to enough of their cities, they'll convert, and you'll have a new friend.

In some games I've founded a religion, but adopting it as a state religion was too risky because I had powerful neighbors who had founded religions. By and large religion founders get very irritated if you are of another religion. You can work this to your advantage. Spread the religion you founded to a neighbor of the religious fanatic. When they switch, they'll irritate the fanatics, and the two nations won't trade and may even go to war.

For this reason I often use the free missionary from Confucianism on a neighbor's capitol. The religion will spread on its own to my cities, but it won't spread by itself to a neighbor unless we're connected. Plus, the neighbor may start building missionaries for me.

Staying neutral has cultural advantages, too. If you have no state religion, ALL the religions in your cities generate culture. If you have a state religion, only the state religion generates culture. This can be important if you found a second religion in some small city with little culture, because it'll get +5 culture / turn even without the shrine.

- Gus

[Axxaer]

Shrines

[Yosho]

It's usually worthwhile to build one shrine to your main state religion. A second shrine is more situational, though.

[Urban Ranger]

Only tangentally related, but...

In my current game one of my cities founded two religions, which happens to be Judaism and Islam. Kinda cute. In this case it is worthwhile to build the holy shrines for both and to spread both feverishly (the second one to all your cities and part of foreign cities).

[Solomwi]

Originally posted by Arrian
Either go for the religion and build the shrine and invest in spreading the religion... or don't. I think the thing is to not half-ass it. If you decide against religion/shrine, focus on taking someone else's. It works just as well

-Arrian

Take it?!? What a novel concept! I've razed as many shrines/holy cities as I've kept, though admittedly most of that has been due to my own inattention. It is fun to pick a religion for eradication sometimes, though. The basic premise is to find a smaller religion (usually Christianity or Islam, in my experience), raze its holy city, then set to work razing every city to which it's spread. Watching the last one go up in flames gives my heart an opportunity to revel in its blackness. I call it my Roy Moore for governor campaign.

[xxFlukexx]

One shrine is great. Although I like my first Great Prophet to be a super specialist until my religion has spread to over 6 cities, then go for the shrine. Shrines also give +1 GPP towards a prophet so a fast shrine via stonehenge is great too(especially when PHI)

I don't think two shrines are really worth it, UR. I mean sure an extra 15 base gold or whatever would be sweet, but there is no mega money victory condition and you are probably close to 90% or 100% science with one shrine with decent religion spread. And spreading a second religion is just painful, lots of hammers spent on missionaries instead of military/buildings and then missionary failures just rip your heart out.

To the original poster: Technically, you are right in that building wealth will probably net your more cash than missionaries+shrine in the early game. However once you get a good religious following, the cash from the shrine is un-matched. Since shrines get you other benefits like Vel stated, they are worth it.

[CerberusIV]

In my current game I have spread the religion I founded to most cities on the map. Having recently created the appropriate shrine it basically makes the difference between researching at 100% and researching at 70-80%.

So I still have a positive cash flow but am researching techs more quickly and my cities are all free to build buildings or military (larger cities only take 3 or 4 turns to produce a missionary).

[couerdelion]

For state religion yes

But I've been pondering whether or not to establish a shrine for a non-state religion.

I guess the pay-off is between the super specialist v potential gold income and it is the latter that I find hard to quantify. While I noticed that Confucianism seemed to spread like wildfire round my continent, Taoism has only spread to my capital (deliberately through the use of my free missionary).

Compare then the +2 prod/+5 gold in a developed city to +2 gold in a less developed one. Obviously the +2 gold can increase although I don’t know if it will do so without some help from me. But I will need 6 more converted cities just to break even with a super priest. And that would need a significant investment.

N.B. These figures are based on a city with Angkor Wat so perhaps a super-priest is +1 prod/+5 gold.