Shrine or settled prophet

[Entropic]

Originally posted by Blake
Again that's something which does depend on game speed, especially skewed on Marathon where Settlers are cheaper (meaning you can expand to larger faster). And it depends greatly on map size, while things are fairly balanced for smaller maps, the largest maps greatly disfavor settling.

Settlers are not cheaper on marathon (like other units). They are 300 hammers instead of 200 (all the rest of the units have the x2 unit cost modifier).

[couerdelion]

Originally posted by Yosho


Oh, absolutly.

In my current game, I've actually built 3 shrines; 2 in my main holy city, and a third after I took the islamic holy city in a war. Figured it was worth it since there were 12 islamic cities already.

I tend to think that about the only use of great people then building a shrine, even a secondary shrine, is an acadamy in your 2 or 3 best science cities.

Even with all the gold modifiers, this will only get you 24 gold per turn. Later in the game, a Golden Age will probably be a better use of a Prophet.

Note also that if you have Wall Street and a Factory and Power in your "double shrine" city, the settled Prophet will give you 15 gold + 4 hammers so you're not too far off here. With Representation and the beakers modifiers, settling is likely to give you more than the shrine in the secondary gold city.

OK, it's still not a huge difference.

[wodan11]

Getting multiple shrines can let you run at a pure shrine economy, which means you don't have to build banks at all. That is huge and is worth much more than a golden age, even late game. Frankly, late game the value of beakers dramatically declines. I would much rather have 24 gpt turn early game (and increasing for the rest of the game) than 2-3 golden ages late game.

Wodan

[couerdelion]

The 24gpt was for the Islamic shrine -> not early game. It also needed a bank, grocer, marketplace to get that so.

Pure shrine economies are often not hugely efficient when they are spread about. It can work with a couple of shrines in a single city but after that it takes a lot of hammers to get a relatively poor return.

Fair enough, a missionary costing 60 hammer who generates 2gpt per turn + benefits of religion does make a fairly decent investment so I would not totally write the idea off. However, the whole equation has to factor in the cost of the gold multipliers and the value of the Prophet.

In a post Divine-Right world, the Golden Age benefits would typically be way in excess of the shrine benefits. I've once skipped a 30 gpt shrine in favour of a Golden Age simply because the GA benefits were vastly superior.

[wodan11]

Well, sure, I'm not saying it's a "no-brainer". The nice thing about Civ is that there are pros/cons to just about any choice. That makes it interesting and enjoyable.

Anyway we both have good points, and we've both stated pretty clearly I think when and how each case is better.

Wodan

ps It's not difficult to get multiple shrines in the same city

[Yosho]

Originally posted by couerdelion


Even with all the gold modifiers, this will only get you 24 gold per turn. Later in the game, a Golden Age will probably be a better use of a Prophet.

Note also that if you have Wall Street and a Factory and Power in your "double shrine" city, the settled Prophet will give you 15 gold + 4 hammers so you're not too far off here. With Representation and the beakers modifiers, settling is likely to give you more than the shrine in the secondary gold city.

OK, it's still not a huge difference.

Well, also note that that was 12 islamic cities before I spread islam to my own main cities. A secondary religion like that probably isn't worth spreading outside my empire, but it's worth spreading at least to my own larger cities and/or border cities I need culture in. Even if the shrine's not in a wall street city, missionaries spreading that shrine's religion into other cities of yours are a good investment.

[couerdelion]

Originally posted by Yosho


Well, also note that that was 12 islamic cities before I spread islam to my own main cities. A secondary religion like that probably isn't worth spreading outside my empire, but it's worth spreading at least to my own larger cities and/or border cities I need culture in. Even if the shrine's not in a wall street city, missionaries spreading that shrine's religion into other cities of yours are a good investment.

But you said it was a third religion, i.e. not secondary. Often, all you do by spreading this type of religion in your empire is give yourself a few more second rate buildings to put in the queue. Unless you are going for a cultural win and need the mosques in your cultural giants. The effect of the extra religion really only becomes more important if you are running free religion whereas a simple State Religion strategy with Spiral Minaret and/or Sankore will probably give you a better return for your hammers.

It's just my experience that an aggressive strategy of spreading multiple religions widely is expensive and quite unprofitable.