Religion Approach

[AshenPlanet]

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I don't have warlords, so I can't run those saves, but on vanilla 1.61, I can reproduce guaranteed foundings 100% of the time.

If you go out of your way to push the numbers to one side (like having 4x pop in your capitol), you might be able to skew the results, but why would you want to?
If you had mulitple cities with the fewest religions, it might not swing your way, but again, why?
Having the fewest religions in your economic city, and having a comparable pop to your other cities in it (it doesn't have to be highest), you can force your foundings to go there all the time.

My point is that you can insure 1 city gets all the foundings if you want it to, and in an economic religion strategy, that's a good thing.

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[VoiceOfUnreason]

Originally posted by AshenPlanet
I don't have warlords, so I can't run those saves, but on vanilla 1.61, I can reproduce guaranteed foundings 100% of the time.

The algorithm used to pick the holy city is the same in 1.61 as in 2.08; my objection to your absolutes stands.

Originally posted by AshenPlanet
If you go out of your way to push the numbers to one side (like having 4x pop in your capitol), you might be able to skew the results, but why would you want to?

Because if you understand how the contrived cases skew the probabilities, you can then recognize what additional steps you might need to take in a non contrived situation.

Claim: City is chosen from cities with the lowest number of current religions.

Refutation: Vanilla experiment. We imagine a setting where are second and third city are both at size 6. We already founded one religion in Third City, and would prefer to pair the religions (so that WallStreet can multiply the income of two shrines).

Following your guidelines, we make sure that our existing religion, and another we happened to find along the way, are both spread to Second City. So Second City has two religions, and Third City has only the one. So will the next religion always be founded in Third City?

Alas, no - as I initially stated, your claims are only approximate. The actual odds are 24:1 in favor - it works about 96% of the time.

For those trying this at home: when you run the test, pop the goodie hut first - goodie huts have more variance than religion founding, and validate that "generate new random seed is working.

4% isn't much. If everybody tried the experiment 17 times, only half of you would see the religion founded in Second City at least once. If everybody tried the experiment 40 times, there would still be one in five of you who had never seen the surprise.

So my objections are two fold:

1. I consider 96% is only approximately always.
2. The absolute rules fail to admit the additional steps that can be taken to improve that 96%.

In short, with regards to my hypothesis and my ability to test it, your confidence is sadly misplaced.

Originally posted by AshenPlanet
My point is that you can insure 1 city gets all the foundings if you want it to, and in an economic religion strategy, that's a good thing.

It is a good thing, and it is important to know some of the steps that you can take to place the religion where you want it to go. But it's better to know all of them, and the margins involved so that you can properly compare the gains with the opportunity costs.

[popejubal]

Originally posted by couerdelion
Which really states that monasteries are things that are built selectively where needed rather than generally across the empire.

True for every building.

I started actually winning Monarch games as soon as I started actually building only the buildings that were necessary and helpful for the city.

In fact, I had to go farther than that and build only those buildings that were helpful for the city in the role I wanted it to play in my empire. That took a very long time to learn.

[couerdelion]

Granary/Forges are not built selectively.

[popejubal]

Originally posted by couerdelion
Granary/Forges are not built selectively.

Sure they are. I only build granaries in cities where I want the city to grow after the granary is complete. Forges are only built in cities where I want to complete buildings and/or units after the forge is complete.

That may sound like every city, but there are some times (especially with a granary on a city planted just to grab a resource or three) when I don't really care if the city grows as long as its fat cross is covering the resources I want to control. There are also some times when I have a city whose location is important, but whose production is so poor that it really isn't worthwhile to build a forge. If it's late game, I'm going to be using universal sufferage to get all of my buildings and as far as I know, forges don't boost universal sufferage purchased hammers.

Again, I'm a big fan of Monastaries. Like you, though, I agree that they should only be built in cities where they make sense (at least 1-2 per religion in your empire before Scientific Method if possible).

[couerdelion]

Forges improve all production (including whips) so if the city is going to be building more than 600 hammers worth of output, the forge will ultimately pay off. That’s almost nothing and I can’t quite picture what this city will be like that doesn’t do this.

The same goes for granary, although relates to food. I can’t really picture a city that will not benefit in the long term from the (almost) +100% food.

Both of those examples illustrate more a city that I don’t want to build anyway because it will never do anything for me.

[rah]

As stated previously, except for those artic cities that cover the coveted oil or other critical resource.

[Rancidlunchmeat]

Good job, Voice.

Can I ask you to expand on the impact of population and its role in the founding of religion?

[Blake]

Monasteries are better value for money than Universities, the Monastery is +10% for 60h - that's 1% per 6h. The University is +25% for 200h, that's 1% per 8h - the Monastery is in fact 33% more efficient.

Yes, the Monastery DOES go obsolete but Uni's also go "obsolete" at the end of the game, you can build the monasteries SO much earlier and in an early high commerce city (BigB capital) it's definitely worth building all the monasteries you can - pushing in religions and such.

So don't discount that +10% because it's only +10%. It's on a cheap building.

Something to think about.

More generally, I nearly always try to have a unified state religion (spread everywhere) unless my civ is a real melting pot of different religions. It's definitely very beneficial for every city to have religion.
And as I said above, it's worth pushing extra religions into the highest yielding cities in order to build monasteries or temples.

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Originally posted by Rancidlunchmeat
Can I ask you to expand on the impact of population and its role in the founding of religion?

Basic drill: The iValue of a city is...

( 10 + pop + X ) / ( R+1)

Where R is the number of religions in that city, and X is uniformly distributed random number between 0 and 9.
The division is integer division, which means all of the fractions get thrown away.

As a conseqence, it may help to realize that you can influence the odds by adjusting the populations in the two (or more) competing cities. A bit of math will tell you how much of a difference it will make, and then you can decide if you care.

Taking the earlier case study, where both cities are size 6: the math in 2nd city is (16 + X) / 3, and in third city (16+Y)/2. If Y is 0 or 1, then the iValue for the third city will be 8. For the iValue of the second city to equal 8, X must be 8 or 9. So theres a 4% chance that the religion will end up in the second city (because the tie goes to the earlier city on your domestic advisor screen).

However, if you whip away two pop in the second city, then the iValue is (14+X)/3, and no die roll can hurt you.

Because of the division, the actual percentages can get flaky: try the exercise of size 5 cities, instead of size 6 cities, and you will see what I mean.

[joncnunn]

Re: Religion Approach

Originally posted by cybrgamr
Last night I started a game with the Spanish. I tried cornering the market on religion, and I quickly was able to get four religions founded in my cities - Hindu, Buddism, Judaism and Christianity. By 0 BC, I had six cities in place (and had also founded Taoism). A couple of questions:

1. Once I found these, should I make it a priority to get a temple and monastery built for each?
2. Should I also be producing a steady stream of Missionaries to convert all of my cities to each religion?
3. To take advantage of the GP benefit will i need to set the research slider to less that 100%, or should I still see gold income with research set to 100%?
4. Is there a good order of builds to support this approach?

Is there a good article/post/guide available for this type of strategy? Thanks in advance for your comments...

1. Temples; most definately. As Spain you build temples extremely quick thanks to being Spiritual. As to Monsateries, depends upon how much commerce each city is making. But definately build enough monstaries to be able to spread your religions. Oh, and if you have a wonder that causes all your state religious buildings gold or science you'll want a temple & monstary of that religion in all your cities.

2. For your state religion, yes. And I'd spread that one to your neighbors too once the borders are open and they are close enough to do so. As to the others, only when have (or are about to have) the holy shrines. I also generally do not use a missonary on a zero religion city I own, prefering to get one of the religions for free.

3. You get the gold benifit even at 100% and is multiped by market places, banks, etc.

4. Highly situational.

You might want to look at old threads in the AU.

[joncnunn]

Re: Re: Religion Approach

And only cities with your state religion benifit from Organized Religion, Theology, and Pacifism.

Originally posted by rjmatsleepers

2. Converting cities to your state religion gives a hapiness benefit.
RJM

[joncnunn]

Prince is no longer a lowly difficulty level in Civ 4, particuarly with Warlords and Blake's mod.

Noble is the closest to even. Prince is one difficulty level higher.


[QUOTE] Originally posted by AshenPlanet

You can really do some whacky stuff with religions, especially on lower difficulties like prince.