Is founding multiple religions an advantage?

[Lancer]

I don't like it since it seems I'm competeing with my own state religion. Am I right? What are the pros & cons?

[Theben]

The pros are you get active control over which religions you want in your cities. Also allows for more temples, which means more happiness. If you build the religious wonder, you get more $$. Also your enemies don't get the same bonuses.

The cons, AFAIK, are that you are probably targeting religious techs at the expense of other techs. Only a problem in the early part of the game, IMO.

The best way to deal with it is to expand your state religion 1st, in your own cities and the AIs (so that they switch to your religion), and then expand the others later. If you don't have the special wonder for that religion, don't expand it out of your territory UNLESS it's your state religion.

[Unimatrix11]

Another pro: It can help alot to have a lot religions in your citites for the cultural victory, by building the temples needed for the cathedrals - for that it doesnt matter if you founded them, but founding them makes it more likely you got most of them in most of your cities. And the monastaries of course give you +10% science each.

Another con: If you found say 6 religions and far on the other continent, someone founds the 7th and spreads it to the others, you are likely to end up to meet a solid block of religious enemies later on. Building all the relgious buildings can also be a tempting but, depending on the situation, fatal decision, when you oughta build military instead of example.

Personally, when i first started playing civ4 i was very fond of the religions, probably because they were new. But today, i dont care too much about founding any - if i get one, fine, but most of the time i take them as a bonus and dont put any priority on founding them. Let a neighbor do it, spread it to me and later on i still have the option (hopefully) to capture the shrine...

Antoher con: When i do aim for a religion, its mostly monotheism and every so often someone grabs it right before me - with no state religion, organized religion is useless and i had a game or two when i forgot about that and wasted like 20 turns (epic) researching it anyways. In MP that makes for a blood-red-forehead because of self-punishment...

[CerberusIV]

Founding one religion is useful (obviously). If you get a second one that's OK for when you switch to Free Religion later in the game but is not a biggy. I will try and spread my state religion far and wide but usually don't bother spreading the second one beyond my own cities.

One possible benefit of multiple religions in your cities is that it may decrease war weariness AFAIK. The theory is that if there are 2 religions in a city half of the population follow each one so if you are at war with someone of the same religion only half your population are upset at a conflict with their co-religionists. At least that's how it should be in the game but maybe someone can confirm this or not.

If you are seriously trying for a cultural win you will need three religions in your cities.

It is worth the effort to try and get a great prophet to build the shrine for each of the religions you found, both for the culture and the income but you won't earn much for the second and third religions.

[Lancer]

Great info, thank you all. Another question, Christianity comes too late doesn't it?

[Chemical Ollie]

I try to found as many as I can, for the culture and $. I always rush to the first one and then take it easier on the second and third.

[Theben]

Originally posted by Lancer
Great info, thank you all. Another question, Christianity comes too late doesn't it?

Too late historically, or too late to be useful? I usually wind up with 2 GProph as my 1st specialists, so the 1st gives me my state religions wonder and the 2nd auto-researches Theology.

[Supr49er]

I don't even try to get an early religion. Let the AIs fight over them. I go along another research path, but can usually get one of the late religions - Taoism or Islam. Having one state religion suits the way I play - I don't mind fighting the dogpiles.

[Brizey]

Another advantage is that you take the founding away from the other civs.

[mkorin]

I almost always shoot for conquest or dom wins, it's my nature and I get too bored doing anything else. This being the case, money is always in short supply unless I found at least two religions, make the shrines and spread my religions to everyone. My success is generally dependent upon having at least one religion and goes up greatly with 2 or more religions.

Mike

[johnmcd]

If your spiritual, I like to found as many as I can. I'll switch religion at will to suit the prevailing politics and build missionaries to convert the world powers against one another. You can engineer some extra wars that way.

On an islands map, leaving whole continents without a faith till the late game is very useful too, it really holds them back.

[joncnunn]

Founding multiple religions is a minor plus. Founding two or more in the same city is a major plus.

Actually in my current game as Liz even if I had only founded one religion instead of four (all the late ones), it would have been competing with my state one, I had Isabell as my neighbor in my land mass and so had to run her religion as my state one to keep the peace.

Basically what I did was decide to let Isabel handle spreading my state religion (hers) to my cities and first actively spread one of the religions in future Wall Street, then the second there. It took a long time to get around to actively spreading the third and I might never get around to spreading the fourth.

This was an interesting map.
I shared a landmass with Isabell. The next island over was the Aztecs & China close enough for early contact. Isabell founded Budism.
Over on the other side of the world, Japan had a landmass to itself close enough to a landmass shared by Arabia & the Incas for early contact. One of those civs founded Hinduism and another founded Judism.

[Fleme]

I actually randomed Gandhi earlier today and got 2 religions early, from Polytheism and Monotheism. I also got two more later on from Philosophy and Divine Right, making the number of religions under my control 4.

Since I felt like playing a peaceful game, being Gandhi and all, I started sending out Hindu Missionaries as soon as I had the option and soon 8 of the 10 AI's had Hinduism as their State Religion. Not only did I get a relations bonus from everyone important I also made a ton of cash enabling me to run science at 100% very early in the game. This isn't something you get to do on Emperor unless you have a widespread religion.

I popped more prophets and built the shrines of all 4 and spread all of the religions I had to all my cities and then sent 1 Islamic Missionary to each of the AI nations to have it influence them. Then I built the Apostolic Palace and a turn before it finished I switched to Islam, making the AP Islamic. Instead of having it Hindu, which would have made all the strong AI's my superiors I now had a huge majority of vote over all the AI's since their crappy remote towns size 1-5 now had Islam in them. After this I switched to Free Religion (I have Shwedagon Paya) and got the bonuses from AP, the majority of vote and didn't lose any relations with the AI.

For a pacifistic building style this works out awesomely well. You get to build your stuff and you have power over all the AI's in case there is a war against you and it also enables you to make the AI's focus on each other rather than you. The arrangement worked so well that until 1400 AD on Marathon I've had only one foreign army invade my borders and even they promptly turned back as the AP (=me) voted to declare war on them.

So, the benefits of founding several religions are numerous. First of all; You get a huge boost to your culture when you get to build cathedrals of several religions. Second of all you get a huge wad of cash when you build the shrines. Third; You can use the religions like I did to gain leverage diplomatically by either using the AP or by changing to whatever religions block suits you best at that time. This isn't necessarily bound to founding the religions but since the monetary bonus is, I feel like it falls under the category as well.

[Velociryx]

If you're going to go down the path of getting multiple religions, my preference (and I want to specify that this is simply my preference, so take it with that grain of salt in mind) is to arrange to have them concentrated (the idea being that you want more than one of the "Great Temples" in the same city....this way, you get double the multiplicative effects of the income (1g per city that has said religion * banks, etc)...cost effective way to dramatically increase the overall size of the economy.

Doing this requires a certain amount of practice to get it right, but is quite possible.

Having said that, my *usual* style of play is to simply adopt whatever religion I get from neighbors (makes diplomacy a snap), and then conquer the holy city at my leisure...

-=Vel=-

[Willem]

Originally posted by Velociryx
Doing this requires a certain amount of practice to get it right, but is quite possible.

Although I've had multiple religions in the same city, I don't see how you can control this. It seems like a pretty random situation to me, with the exception that a religion will never found in my capital if another city exists as well. Care to elaborate?