I was just wondering if it is a good thing or a bad thing to found more then 1 religion and why?

It is a good thing to found more than one religion because each holy city gives culture and founding a religion means you can control a religion's growth better. In addition each holy city can get a shrine which gives income for each city with a religion.

To elaborate, let's say you have 6 cities...
1 religion with shrine = 6 gold
3 religions with shrines = 18 gold
That is assuming you have spread the religion in those cities.

In a game I played today I used multiple religions to balance out the high costs of my over zealous expansion.

I just thought it would be confusing trying to convert other ciilizations to your religion if you have more then 1?

How do you build more than 1 shrine in your empire? Do you have to go for no state religion or can you just switch to the other and build the shrine?

you can build the shrine of a religion, without it being your state religion.

I think you can only ask another country to convert to your state religion. Or, one of your religions may spread to another country on its own and they may adopt it on their own.

The best part of founding more than one religion is not the income, because it consumes a lot of effort to propagate more than one religion (imho). The best part is denying those religions to your neighbours. Unless you want to fend off pointless attacks the whole game that prove ultimate fruitless (for your neighbour) but consume time and resources, it's best to have them on your religion. If they found a religion, they will generally convert to it, particularly on higher difficulties. That's just bad until late game when religion ceases to be a diplomatic concern (ie Free Religion).

Generally speaking you don't want to spread your non-state religions outside your empire. You're just giving the enemy free bonuses when they switch to Free Religion. In one game I founded only 1 religion and spread it to 4 empires, who all adopted it. By the medieval era I was making 60+ income a turn on 100% research. Sure spreading more religions would help more but how much do you need?

I just thought it would be confusing trying to convert other ciilizations to your religion if you have more then 1?
The best way to handle this is to spread all your religions internally (to get maximum benefit of temples and monastaries) and only 1 of your religions externally. Your other religions will seep out by natural spread to individual cities, but you can easily overcome this with missionary waves from your state religion.

You lose the extra income potential from shrines if you only spread one religion externally, but you gain better diplomatic relations.

How do you prevent the spread of one of your religions?

How do you prevent the spread of one of your religions?

You pretty much can't.
You can slow the spread, however, by converting as fast as you can other cities to the religion you want ; once a city has a religion, I don't think another religion can spread there without a missionary.
But newly founded cities with no religion are very vulnerable to spreading, and it is pretty much random.
I remember a game where my three neighbours on the continent were buddhists, yet in one of my cities judaism spread, from another continent !

I didn't think you could stop it. There seems to be some misinformation going around.

Another religion can spread into your city even if it has one already.

I don't think you can use a missionary to spread a religion to a forgien city. The only way to spread it is to either ask them to convert, or hope your religion spreads to their city and they convert to it on their own.

I guess that's the benefit of founding a religion: you can have an influence in which religion your neighbors choose.

Going back to the question of if it's a good thing or a bad thing to found more than one: it's a good thing. Personally, I wouldn't go out of my way to get one or more unless you're playing with six or less civs.

I didn't think you could stop it. There seems to be some misinformation going around.

Another religion can spread into your city even if it has one already.

This happened to me only once in (far too many) games, so while possible, it seems to be rare.

I don't think you can use a missionary to spread a religion to a forgien city. The only way to spread it is to either ask them to convert, or hope your religion spreads to their city and they convert to it on their own.

You can use missionaries if you have open borders, and the other civ isn't theocratic.

Does anyone know if being theocrat prevents the spread of non-state religions FROM your cities to foreign cities?

[QUOTE=madmaven... I don't think you can use a missionary to spread a religion to a forgien city. The only way to spread it is to either ask them to convert, or hope your religion spreads to their city and they convert to it on their own.
[/QUOTE]

Yes you can. All you need is an open borders agreement with your neighbour and a missionary. The success rate of spreading the religion is actually quite good -- more than 1/2 the time.

One important thing to remember though: if your targeted civ has theocracy, there is no point in sending a missionary. You can tell what religious civ your neighbours are using by talking to them in the diplomacy window. Above their portrait on the right side are five small icons that will tell you their current civ.

Thanks for clearing that up about spreading religion to a civ with open borders, I didn't know that. There's definitely an incentive there.

I would assume if your nation was a theocracy other religions wouldn't spread to yours. If that's the case I'm not sure if being theocractic is worth not gaining extra religions.

Thanks for clearing that up about spreading religion to a civ with open borders, I didn't know that. There's definitely an incentive there.

I would assume if your nation was a theocracy other religions wouldn't spread to yours. If that's the case I'm not sure if being theocractic is worth not gaining extra religions.
Under a Theocracy, other religions will spread to a city that does not have any religions yet*. For example, if I build a brand-new city under a Taoist theocracy, it may still wind up with Christianity if it spreads there before I can send a Missionary that way.

Theocracy is more or less a "War" civic. You get +2 XP on each unit, at the cost of giving up stuff that's more useful during peacetime (like Organized Religion's bonus to making buildings). So you switch to it when you're pumping out troops, then switch back once the enemy's land is a smoking ruin :ar15: :D


*Note: non-state religions might also be able to spread to cities with religions, but not your state religion (i.e. Judaism spreading to a non-Taoist city under a Taoist Theocracy), though this is speculation on my part.

It is a very good thing to found multiple religions. Spreading domestic religions through missionaries to maximize multiple shrines is the easiest way to completely break the economic model for empire size. With shrine money, you can leave science at 100% and still generate more money per city than your civics can take away, making it never disadvantageous to found another city.

Just dont found 6 religions. It will take you a bit of time to get your God-Infrastructure in place, and by that time, the one religion you didnt found will be the AI's most available religion, and as they use open borders without the bugs we face, the entire world will be of that religion....except you. So they'll all have negative diplomatic factors for you. Odd seeing a world where EVERYONE is Buddhist....

3 to 5 religions seems to be a happy number range, as you're still getting 3 to 5 gold per city per turn from your 3 to 5 shrines, but the AI's have more than one religion to choose from, so there isnt a clear plurality and they'll mix and match long enough for you to get Liberalism and for diplomatic effects to no longer matter.

Just dont found 6 religions. It will take you a bit of time to get your God-Infrastructure in place, and by that time, the one religion you didnt found will be the AI's most available religion, and as they use open borders without the bugs we face, the entire world will be of that religion....except you. So they'll all have negative diplomatic factors for you. Odd seeing a world where EVERYONE is Buddhist....


I typically go for one religion, three religions, or all seven. If I can pull of BudHinJewism, I can easily pull off BudHinJewChriConTaoIslam. Yes, it makes the arms race for you slower, but once the arms race is in motion for your religious superpower, you'll rule the world. More income than you know what to do with.

In my current game, I pulled off BudHinJewism and promptly made myself and 3/4's of the world Jewish. I was trying for a warmonger game. :blush: I'm now playing catch up. Ignored religious techs until someone else, anyone else, got them so I could build my army of doom. The Germans had nothing good to offer me, so they died horribly. :hammer: I then demolished the Americans and took Taoism (and promptly culture bombed that holy city to get it moving faster) and Confucianism. :hammer: Two rivals down, four to go, Mansa Musa is next on The List. :hammer: He'll be handing me Christianity with his demise. I'm not sure who founded Islam, but I'm sure they'll be dust soon too.

Actually beelining at the start to found as many religions as possible has many benefits:

1) Multiple temples in a city at +1 happiness each (OK I know you don't have to FOUND the religion for that, but it's still an advantage)
2) Multiple monasteries in a city at +10% research each
3) If you found it then you can prevent enemies switching religions, which they always do if they found a new one. This means that you can have almost everyone following your religion (provided you spread it) and make a huge amount of gold with a shrine

Of course, you can always just capture holy cities instead. This makes you the "owner" of that particular religion as if you had founded it....

I've found religious monopoly to be a very interesting strat. The problem is getting both buddhism and hinduism (in my test game I selected my opponents, which means noone else started with mysticism). But if you pull it off (or if buddhism is founded by a remote civ) then you're very close to a diplomatic victory. Just spread your state religion to every civ except the largest one, where you spread a different religion. This means that every civ but one loves you and everyone hates the other guy. Build the UN and you've got yourself a diplomatic victory.

In my test game I founded every religion but one, Islam. That spread to two civs. I spread my religion to the others, but one civ hated my largest friend so I had the bully him for my friend to like me. It worked like a charm, except for one small detail. Even with my friends I was a few votes short of a victory (d'oh!). I was too lazy to invade another nation to get those extra votes (the whole game took 1h30min).