how to get the most out of religion

[Dis]

The game has been out for a while, and I'm looking to you experts for advice. I'm still undecided on how best to use religion. Do I go for an early religion or adopt the religion of the majority of my neighbors? Is it better to have multiple religions in my cities? I know about the extra gold, and that definately comes in handy. And of course research if you have Sankore. But sometimes I wonder if it's all worth the trouble. I rarely seem to have time to build lots of missionaries. Because if I don't build military units, I will get stomped.

I'd rather have a larger military/more cities than have a dominant religion. Of course, one can attempt to have both. And I do attempt this, but I usually don't get much success as mentioned before. Personally, I'd rather run free religion.

But this is a weaker part of my game, so I'm willing to learn.

[Quillan]

I like to get a religion. Whether I adopt that religion varies. On several games, I've found that I founded the only religion on my continent. In that case, I adopt it and spread it to all my neighbors. Wars still do break out, but the relations are much higher when we're all sharing one religion.

[Dis]

I still go for early religion. I mainly do it for the happiness boost. But I was wondering, can't one also get happiness (at least from temples) by adopting someone else's religion? I have yet to adopt someone else's religion. So I was wondering.

But the happiness boost can't be discounted, as I hit that limit before I hit my health cap limit.

[Virdrago]

I'm playing a game where I founded Hinduism and Ashoka next to me founded Buddhism. These were the only religions founded on our continent. Buddhism spread to the rest of the continent (including a couple of my cities) faster than Hinduism. So I converted. Being the only Hindu civ while 6 opponents around you are Buddhist is recipe for disaster. Later, as my religion grew and a couple other civs changed to Hinduism, I converted back. Sometimes its a good decision to convert away for a while.

I've also won a game without founding a religion. I had eight cities, and four various religions within them. No more than four cities had any one religion; I concentrated on temples for happiness and worked on other ways to make money and science. Of course I converted a couple times just to stay on certain civ's good sides.

I try to found one usually, but at the higher levels, sometimes its better to convert. Each game has its own strategy. Excuse the rambling.

[Thedrin]

I rarely try for the early religions these days and when I do I don't adopt it as my state religion until I know how my neighbours will react.

Most religions don't spread very far by themselves and I, like you, don't build many missionaries - only enough for the happiness of my citizens at the most but usually only enough to build cathedrals. This is a conscious decision. I build one shrine only but this will be primarily to get access to the priest specialists it provides. If I'm playing a peaceful game my maintenance costs don't require support from a large shrine income so I settle it in my intended Wall St. city. If I'm playing a warring game I will usually have a merchant or priest specialist city into which I can settle the prophet that will one day produce more base gold than a shrine would with considerably less micromanagement and without diverting any hammers towards missionary production.

That I'm aware of there is no negative effect of having multiple religions in your cities.

Yes, you don't need to adopt your own religion to obtain a happiness boost.

[couerdelion]

First thing to remember is that you do not found a religion simply for the sake of doing it. There are several reasons you would though

1) If you choose the religion as state religion, you benefit from happiness in those cities in which it has spread.
2) You also get a small culture boost in cities with the state religion
3) With Meditation and Priesthood you can build temples and monasteries in those cities
4) With Monotheism, Theology and Philosophy, you have access to religious civics which affect those cities with your state religion
5) If you own the holy city for your state religion, you can see into cities that share that religion
6) Further into the game, you get gold income from any shrine you own
7) Diplomatic bonus with civs who share your religion

There are a few disadvantages also but the main one is that you will suffer diplo penalties with civs that do not have the same state religion

The benefits from founding a religion take a long time to emerge. Probably the most important one you will see is the happiness which can be very useful at the higher levels – although religions are generally harder to acquire here. The most tempting of the benefits – the shrine gold – is by far the most inaccessible.

The Organised Religion civic boost can be quite useful for getting new cities up and running quickly but you first have to make sure that the religion spreads to those cities. Theocracy and Pacifism are religious civics that do not need the religion to be widespread – just in those cities building units (for Theocracy) or GP (Pacifism)

The one key problem with early religion is that you are likely to have far more pressing problems than building missionaries so the religion will only spread passively. For this reason I tend to research elsewhere in the tech tree at the start since I can’t really do a lot with religion. Once I have a little spare capacity or am running into happiness limits, the religion can come in useful. For this reason I tend to target Confucianism.

In general you won’t want more than two religions. There are big returns in having one strong religion but these reduce for second or third religions in a civ. Since you need a GP and missionaries to earn the shrine gold, it costs a fair deal to look after these things so you don’t want too many of them. Better to let the AI found some and then spread the religion/build shrine while you build the units that will capture it.

[Arrian]

Leaving aside the money...

I tend to found a later religion (Confucism, given my addiction to the CS slingshot). These come with 1 missionary. I will often group him up with a chariot or something and march him over to one of my AI neighbors who lacks religion and spread Confucism. That 1 missionary can have a huge impact, because the AI civ will immediately convert to Confucism. All you need to do is send the occasional additional missionary over there and make sure that most of his cities are Confucian, not some other religion (so he doesn't go and switch on you). The way I do it is if I see, say, a Hindu city in his empire, I send my missionary there and try to add Confucism. There is a risk of failure, but I figure it's worth it... a religionless city, you see, might go Confucian without needing my missionary. Note: I will only use my first free missionary on a civ that has no religion - because the missionary is guaranteed to succeed and the civ *will* immediately convert.

Missionaries generally become worthwhile builds in the mid-game. Early on they represent a pretty big investment. It can be worth it (as above, converting a neighbor early on), but spamming them isn't an option. Later on, when you have larger, more productive cities, you can build more.

I tend to run Organized Religion for long stretches, so I want all my cities to have my religion, and I'll invest some hammers in missionaries to make sure of it. Org Rel gives you a +25% hammer boost in cities with your state religion, so investment in a few missionaries is worthwhile. Plus, with Org Rel you don't need to have monasteries to build missionaries, which makes things easier.

I will often delay converting to my religion to avoid diplomatic penalties if AI neighbors founded other religions.

As courdelion says, the payoff for one religion is high (with shrine), but isn't as high for having more religions. If you have two religions, you can only get the happiness/culture benifit of one - the second religion's only benifit, until Free Religion, is if you have the shrine: money. If you can manage a double holy city, that can be great, after a lot of work (both shrines, market/grocer/bank/wall street, lotsa missionaries to spread both religions). I have such a city in my current game. It's about 1100 AD. My empire is Confucian, as is one of my two surviving neighbors (Monty). I also founded Christianity (same city) and Taoism. I have not yet invested anything in Christianity or Taoism. My main priority has been spreading Confucism. All of my cities are Confucian, and about half of Monty's are. Relatively soon, I will begin seriously spreading Christianity and I will use a (yet to be born) prophet on the Church of the Nativity. I may never bother much with Taoism.

-Arrian

[couerdelion]

Well I would add to Arrian’s comments that there are benefits from temples, monasteries and cathedrals (or whatever) with secondary religions. These bring happiness, science, culture and ability to appoint priests.

[Diadem]

Well, having *a* religion gives so many bonusses (happiness, culture, but also science and the priest specialists) that it's more or less essentional.

So the comparion should be between founding a religion and getting one from a neighbour, not between having a religion and not having a religion.

[Arrian]

Agreed, couerdelion. Obviously having extra religions is nice and somewhat useful, but it's nowhere near the difference between 0 religion and 1 religion.

-Arrian

[Addled Platypus]

in general the games I play with religon, end up better in the long run

2 religons for me is a good balance, too many becomes MMM

micro managing missionaries

[trev]

2) You also get a small culture boost in cities with the state religion

This is misleading because without a state religion you get a culture boost for ALL religions in your cities, having a state religiion reduces the culture benefits of religion back to 1 religion only, not all.

[Quillan]

I think it's the happiness bonus you don't get without a state religion. Normally, just having the state religion gives you 1 happy face, in addition to any temples there. It takes Free Religion to give you a happy face for every religion present.

[Blake]

Religions are great, really great.

I'm always most unhappy to suffer without any religion at all.

I find that the optimal religion count is either 1 or 3, 1 religion is enough to benefit from religious civics and it gives the full state-religion happy boost and allows the cathedral happy boost.

3 Religions, under Free Religion, gives as much happiness as having cathedrals would. It's also relatively easy to spread 3 religions (the fail chance isn't too high).

Generally I go with 3 religions if I'm spiritual, because the cheap temples are great value.

I'm not too fussed on whether I found the religion(s) myself or use my allies religions, either way it helps my research (propping up an allies research is good for tech trading), if it's an enemies religion that probably means I intend to take the shrine, altough often the AI wont build the shrine so they don't actually profit.

[popejubal]

One other thing to consider is what kind of map you are using.

On Pangea, I would either make a great effort to found every religion or none. With Every religion founded, I could send missionaries to other civs and get one great world religion that everyone shares.

...except for the one civ that I choose as my target for conquest. That civ gets a different missionary so that everyone else is happy that I attacked him. Obviously, this is going to work only on the lower difficulty levels.

Alternately, I would not even bother to found one religion unless I happened to get it by accident (Code of Laws/Confucianism on the way to early Civil Service or early courthouses). If you found one religion and the AI founds several others, you will end up converting to the AI religion anyway (at least if you don't want to get attacked that early in the game).


On Continents, I will often try to found either Buddhism or (more likely) Hinduism and then try to grab Monotheism and Code of Laws if I think that my empire is going to be strong enough to pull it off without wrecking my ability to get the other techs I need. I can often do this on Monarch. The nice thing about this strategy is that there are often 2 continents that have no religion at all. That keeps their city sizes a bit lower on average and keeps them a little further behind in the race. Additionally, once I discover Caravels, I can send my missionary of choice to the religion-empty continents and drop just one missionary per civ on that continent to reap enormous diplomatic bonuses. If I see one civ that is relatively weak but which has a nice city placement or two (on a hill), I might send an alternate religion to that civ so that I can attack them without offending the neighbors once I discover Astronomy (and become filthy rich and filthy smart with the enormous Trade jump that I get).

Additionally, if I happen to miss Monotheism, I may not mind anyway. Whichever civ founds the first religion often is the one that puts a very large emphasis on discovering religions and will probably be the first to discover Monotheism anyway. That means those two religions will be bottled up on that continent and I won't have to worry about seeing them spread to the other continents before I have a chance to work my Caravel magic. Please note that this gambit only works if you can found one of the first two religions (i.e. you start with Mysticism) and you can grab Code of Laws and/or Theology before anyone else. If you go off to discover new continents and find that they each already have their own religion, then you have only made things worse since they'll dislike you for having an alternate religion from the start.

Finally, if you do want to found a religion and you don't start with Mysticism, why not consider stealing one? Just conquor the founding city of the religion of your choice (and chances are that city will be well worth the taking since Holy Cities tend to be very good locations). If you are in luck, that city already has its holy building and you don't even have to pop out the Great Priest on your own.