How do Shrines spread religion?

[gn0rt0n]

I understand the income generating benefits fo shrines, but I don't fully understand how they spread religion.

Does religion spread along trade-route connected cities even when a shrine doesn't exist? I belive that it does. I know it does within my own borders, and I think I have seen it spread to other nations as well.

I belive that open borders are required for religion spread to other nations. Is this correct?

If OB are requred for non-shrine spread, are ob still required after you have a shrine?

If religion can spread on its own without a shrine, I assume that a shrine increases the chance for it to spread. Does anyone have an math/formulas on religion spreading chances.

For example:
1. What is the chance a missionary can convert the town? (I know that it depends on how many religions are already in the town, but I don't know anything about %'s)

2. What is the chance religion will spread on its own within a foreign city? I realize it is hard to tell the cause of religion spread in a foreign culture, because they can create their own missionaries.

3. How much % does a shrine increase this base chance?

I am curious because this could affect the use of my early Great Prophets. Usually I use early GP's to discover technologies since I only have a few cities anyway, I don't plan on missionaries soon since I am doing infrastructure, and the foreign civs have already adopted another religion.

TIA for your help.

[joncnunn]

Re: How do Shrines spread religion?

Yes, a religion spreads along trade-route connected without a shrine, but the per turn chance is higher with a shrine.

No need to have open borders for "natural speading" just a trade route and no religion present in the target city.

What the open border is needed for is missonaries.

If there's no other religion present, odds of success via missonary is 100%.

Otherwise, each religion decreases the chance of success and there's also an additional decreased chance for spreading to foreign.

Sorry, I don't know the exact maths,

Myself, I primarily use GPs for shrines, but will also use a GP to be the first to a religous tech.

Originally posted by gn0rt0n
I understand the income generating benefits fo shrines, but I don't fully understand how they spread religion.

Does religion spread along trade-route connected cities even when a shrine doesn't exist? I belive that it does. I know it does within my own borders, and I think I have seen it spread to other nations as well.

I belive that open borders are required for religion spread to other nations. Is this correct?

If OB are requred for non-shrine spread, are ob still required after you have a shrine?

If religion can spread on its own without a shrine, I assume that a shrine increases the chance for it to spread. Does anyone have an math/formulas on religion spreading chances.

For example:
1. What is the chance a missionary can convert the town? (I know that it depends on how many religions are already in the town, but I don't know anything about %'s)

2. What is the chance religion will spread on its own within a foreign city? I realize it is hard to tell the cause of religion spread in a foreign culture, because they can create their own missionaries.

3. How much % does a shrine increase this base chance?

I am curious because this could affect the use of my early Great Prophets. Usually I use early GP's to discover technologies since I only have a few cities anyway, I don't plan on missionaries soon since I am doing infrastructure, and the foreign civs have already adopted another religion.

TIA for your help.

[Willem]

Re: How do Shrines spread religion?

Originally posted by gn0rt0n
I belive that open borders are required for religion spread to other nations. Is this correct?

Not necessarily. I've had religion spread even with my borders closed. It just reduces the probablity, it doesn't make it impossible.

If religion can spread on its own without a shrine, I assume that a shrine increases the chance for it to spread. Does anyone have an math/formulas on religion spreading chances.

There's a line in the XML for Shrines about Religion Change and it has a number of 1. What that means specifically though I haven't a clue.

I am curious because this could affect the use of my early Great Prophets. Usually I use early GP's to discover technologies since I only have a few cities anyway, I don't plan on missionaries soon since I am doing infrastructure, and the foreign civs have already adopted another religion.

You're better off in the long run to build the Shrine first. It might not seem like a lot of money at the time, but it might be awhile before another GP comes up, especially if you're running other types of specialists. So you'll have lost out on quite a bit of gold in the meantime. Plus you get a bunch of culture points with a Shrine, and it allows you to run several Priests, which will help you get future Great Prophets.

[Yosho]

Shrines do seem to make a religion spread a lot faster then without it, which means that if you start one of the early religions (Buddism, hinduism, or sometimes jewdism), and you build a shrine very quickly, your religion will tend to spread farther and faster then the other religions.

[gn0rt0n]

Thanks for the feedback everyone. It looks like I might need to reevaluate my early GP use.

[Martin the Dane]

In the games I have played so far, I have had to "mannually" spread my state religion throughout my empire, whyle my secondarry religions spreads more or less by them selves. Even when I only have a shrine for my state religion. I might be to impatient though, but I do get religious spread every few turn, but seldom my state religion.

Comming to think of it, it seems to be he newest that spreads the most. Wonder if this is intentional.

[joncnunn]

Martin, I think it's something like the religion least represented has a higher chance of natural spreading than others. Which is usually the newest one, but not always.

It also seems to me that there is a somewhat higher chance of natural spread of the religion that is your state religion.

If you really don't want non-state religions to spread though, adopt Theology.

[snafuc4]

Originally posted by Yosho
Shrines do seem to make a religion spread a lot faster then without it, which means that if you start one of the early religions (Buddism, hinduism, or sometimes jewdism), and you build a shrine very quickly, your religion will tend to spread farther and faster then the other religions.

This is true as far as it goes, but don't forget that most early Civs won't be founded on coastline (unless playing Small Islands or similar, natch), which to my mind give the best chance of religion-spread (coasts extend to rivers which extend to roads touching/crossing rivers)

You may as well go the whole hog & say that potential trade routes are equivalent to religion spread - with the minor caveats that trade routes shut down with closed borders (religion spread doesn't), and.. damn! There was a downside, but it's gone out of my mind whilst writing this message..

[edit] Ah yes - you have to wait until you get a city (pref. a shrine city) on the coast. I'm not sure if harbours or the GL wonder makes a difference here, but I would suspect it does, esp. harbours. By this time (having a religious coastline city) of course, other civs have taken some religion on board (AI civs don't like to be irreligious for some reason) & it's spreading like wildfire within their own cities, reducing the chance of your own religion spreading (unless you're lucky & the AI has (been) converted to your cause) [/edit]

[Hermann the Lombard]

In my current game (from Vel's Devel's Workshop I start) I spread Confucianism to every city in the world...but AFAIK I had to manually spread it to each city of Tokugawa, Napoleon, and Montezuma. I don't think it spread "naturally" to any of their cities even when most of their cities were already--er--infested. It did spread by itself to at least one Indian city on the island off the south coast of the main continent, and I think it spread to at least one other AI city...out of 60 cities! Not a very good rate of diffusion!

[Yosho]

Originally posted by Hermann the Lombard
In my current game (from Vel's Devel's Workshop I start) I spread Confucianism to every city in the world...but AFAIK I had to manually spread it to each city of Tokugawa, Napoleon, and Montezuma. I don't think it spread "naturally" to any of their cities even when most of their cities were already--er--infested. It did spread by itself to at least one Indian city on the island off the south coast of the main continent, and I think it spread to at least one other AI city...out of 60 cities! Not a very good rate of diffusion!

Yeah, by confucianism, it's probably too late for a religion to spread very far naturally. On the other hand, in the start of the game, it's quite possible for you get to buddhism to spread very quickly on it's own. One game, on the Monarch setting, I had 6 out of 8 AI's convert to buddhism before I built a single missonary.

The big things I did was to found both buddhism and hinduism (so there wasn't an AI on the other end of Pangea spreading hinduism back in the other direction), built a shrine to buddhism right away (using GP points from Stonehenge), and built a large road network very quickly (even at the expense of some economic development). Also, pick up Sailing as soon as possible, because coastal trade routes help a religion spread farther in the early game.

[Hermann the Lombard]

An interesting thing in that game was that *all* religions were founded on "my" continent. My first Confucian missionaries brought the first religion that Toku, Nappy or Monty had ever seen, and all three converted. I've never had all three of THEM pleased with me at the same time and at least into Industrialism only Monty has even reached Annoyed.

[Saurus]

Originally posted by Yosho
Shrines do seem to make a religion spread a lot faster then without it, which means that if you start one of the early religions (Buddism, hinduism, or sometimes jewdism), and you build a shrine very quickly, your religion will tend to spread farther and faster then the other religions.

This sounds very intresting but is only speculation.
Is there any cold facts about shrines helping spreading religion?

[fed1943]

The manual(page 72)says so.
Best regards,

[Yosho]

Originally posted by fed1943
The manual(page 72)says so.

Yeah, it's very clear in both the manual and in the civopedia discription of shrines.

I'm not sure exactally what the mathmatical effect shrines have on the spread of religion, but from my own personal experence, it does appear to be fairly significant.

[Urban Ranger]

I usually shoot for monotheism. This means I don't have to tangle early with the religious "techs" so I can go for the more practical ones. I can get discounts on these techs when others researched them before me. Since Monotheism also gives me Organized Religion this kills two birds with one stone.