I finally bought Civ4

[Diadem]

Every city with that religion in the world. Even if you don't know the city exists.

It's 1 gold per city. But with a market, grocer, bank and wallstreet you can boost that to 3 gold per city. A well spread religion can be enough to pay for a large part of your empire's upkeep. A dual-shrine city can generate so much cash you have money flowing out of your ears even at 100% science.

[MasterDave]

An additional bonus of having your holy shrine is that you can see into other cities that share your state religion (as if you had a unit in the city). This is very helpful in locating distant empires and guaging how advanced their techs are (by seeing what units are defending or moving near those cities).

Religion, if it spreads well can become a huge income generator. In some of my games on large maps, I had 40 gold coming in per turn from my holy shrine (before marketplace modifiers).

[Geronimo]

Do most people accomplish this by establishing just one or two shrines or is it worthwhile to go for multiple shrines? Maybe it's just too hard to invest that heavily in founding so many religions and promoting the creation of so many great prophets?

[Geronimo]

So far the AI civs seem to be sticking to Hinduism even though all but two of the religions have been founded. Does the AI tend to stick with the first religion it adopts throughout the game?

I built my first shrine and it says that it promotes the spread of it's religion. Will it do this passively in all cities both my own and AI cities?

[MasterDave]

Originally posted by Geronimo
So far the AI civs seem to be sticking to Hinduism even though all but two of the religions have been founded. Does the AI tend to stick with the first religion it adopts throughout the game?

I built my first shrine and it says that it promotes the spread of it's religion. Will it do this passively in all cities both my own and AI cities?

Shrines promote the passive spread of religion in all cities. From my experieince it is quite rare for religion to passively spread to a city that already has a religion, so generally the first religion that spreads the fastest early stays the most popular in single player games (most AI's rarely use missonaries, although Izzy and Ghandi tend to do so). What really spreads religions fast is having a holy city with a lot of early trade routes (like a huge river that snakes through several empires and connects to the ocean).

Building a holy shrine for additional religions generally makes sense when either there are lots of cities with no religion yet (or lots of empty land where future cities will go up), or for a religion that is in at least three cities already. Otherwise, I would probably rather use the Great Prophet as a suer specialist, or for tech.

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by MasterDave


Shrines promote the passive spread of religion in all cities. From my experieince it is quite rare for religion to passively spread to a city that already has a religion, so generally the first religion that spreads the fastest early stays the most popular in single player games (most AI's rarely use missonaries, although Izzy and Ghandi tend to do so). What really spreads religions fast is having a holy city with a lot of early trade routes (like a huge river that snakes through several empires and connects to the ocean).

Building a holy shrine for additional religions generally makes sense when either there are lots of cities with no religion yet (or lots of empty land where future cities will go up), or for a religion that is in at least three cities already. Otherwise, I would probably rather use the Great Prophet as a suer specialist, or for tech.

The shrine only collects from cities in which that religion is the predominant religion?

Otherwise, I've been wondering if even a marginal shrine can pay for itself easily simply by sending out missionaries. I wonder how many turns of income from the city a missionary converts are required to recoup the original cost of the missionary.

What is the civ4 conversion rate between hammers required to produce a unit and the gold units that the unit will be returning?

[JackRudd]

The shrine collects from any city that has the religion. There is no such thing as the "predominant religion" for a city.

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by JackRudd
The shrine collects from any city that has the religion. There is no such thing as the "predominant religion" for a city.

So if you have a founder city in your empire for a religion which is almost totally non existant outside of a couple of cities in your empire could a shrine still be more profitable than a super specialist by sending out enough missionaries?

Or is the hammer cost of the missionaries so high relative to the per turn gold return at the shrine city that it would never be profitable to 'bootstrap' a religion from obscurity to global status with missionaries to make the shrine more lucrative?

In my first game I have just gotten a great prophet. my capitol is the founder for budhism, hinduism, and judiasm. I've already constructed the hinduism and judaism shrines and both have dozens of cities paying back to them but there somehow seems to only be 3 buddhist cities in the entire world in this game. I can't decide if I could make a buddhist shrine profitable through a massive missionary campaign or not.

[JackRudd]

I think the answer to that one is: you should be spreading Buddhism throughout your empire anyway - the benefits of extra temples and monasteries really add up. That being the case, the Buddhist shrine is likely to pay off.

[Diadem]

A shrine in a city that already has one (or two!) shrines is almost always useful. That is because you will built wallstreet in that city, making your shrine that much more effective.

So I'd say: Build that buddhist shrine, and spread it. Just make sure it always stays slightly less spread than your state religion, to avoid people switching to it.

[Geronimo]

thanks!

In Blakes AI modding thread it seems clear that whipping (staying in slavery and using slavery rushes?) is regarded as easily the most efficient and effective way to get infrastructure. I haven't used whipping much because the game warns me that it will not only reduce the population but it will make one of the remaining workers angry for 10 turns. That seemed like quite a hefty price.

However I am only playing cheiftain difficulty on this first game. Is it possible that whipping is so well regarded simply because keeping population down is so important at higher difficulties but that at levels like chieftain whipping is less useful?

I conquered the french empire and switched to slavery thinking I could whip culture expanding improvments and not worry about the anger since the frogs all hated me anyway. However, I was only able to whip in Paris and Orleans. All of their other cities were apparently too small to let me whip. It really didn't seem like much bennefit in exchange for sacrificing 50% of my worker productivity I had enjoyed under Serfdom. Was I doing whipping wrong?

[snafuc4]

Originally posted by Arrian
Note: you cannot spread your religion to other empires unless you have "open borders" with them *and* they are not a different religion + running Theocracy
-Arrian

Cannot actively spread your religion; if other states have closed borders they can still pick up passive 'contamination' - however Theocracy still prevents this (or any other attempt at conversion).

[snafuc4]

Originally posted by Arrian
Usually the best plan is to spread your religion to all their cities
-Arrian

Certainly lots of conversions will help (the more cities the better), but I've found in the early instance the best results seem to come from converting the capital ASAP, preferably first

[JackRudd]

Originally posted by Geronimo
thanks!

In Blakes AI modding thread it seems clear that whipping (staying in slavery and using slavery rushes?) is regarded as easily the most efficient and effective way to get infrastructure. I haven't used whipping much because the game warns me that it will not only reduce the population but it will make one of the remaining workers angry for 10 turns. That seemed like quite a hefty price.

The trick is to realize that the anger is mostly an irrelevance; it is absorbed by the loss of population, so you don't actually lose any happiness by whipping. The unhappiness should subside by the time your city gets back to its previous size.

However I am only playing cheiftain difficulty on this first game. Is it possible that whipping is so well regarded simply because keeping population down is so important at higher difficulties but that at levels like chieftain whipping is less useful?

There's no benefit to keeping population down in and of itself. However, there is also no benefit for a city's being over its happy cap, because the extra citizens do nothing except eat at you. In practice, if you're nearing your happy cap, you're best off switching from high-food tiles to high-production or high-commerce ones, or running specialists, or whipping.

I conquered the french empire and switched to slavery thinking I could whip culture expanding improvments and not worry about the anger since the frogs all hated me anyway. However, I was only able to whip in Paris and Orleans. All of their other cities were apparently too small to let me whip. It really didn't seem like much bennefit in exchange for sacrificing 50% of my worker productivity I had enjoyed under Serfdom. Was I doing whipping wrong?

Doesn't look like it, although I can't say more without seeing the savegame. You can't normally do much whipping in small cities.

[Geronimo]

Given the role inflation plays in the game how much more useful is a great merchant trade caravan than simply settling them down as a super specialist or burning the GM on a tech?

I imagine the smaller but permanent food and cash contributions by a GM specialist might be competative with a large sum of money from a trade caravan by the end of the game but not having any experience with with to crunch the numbers I can't even guess how to use my great merchant atm.