Is there a way to choose a holy city?

I have two cities and I've done the Oracle slingshot to Code of Laws, however Confucianism keeps founding in my other non-capital city but I'd like to found it in my capital city to prevent GPP pollution. I do have "New Random Seed on Reload" option turned on, but it seems I can't get my capital to be a holy city. Even screwing with the seed by moving units I can't get it to be my capitol.

I disabled World Editor, can I somehow still "cheat" and manually move the holy city?

Thanks!

No. And I call you a cheater for trying to use World builder.

And I don't see how the shrine pollutes the GP pool, as far as I can remember...

;7203864']No. And I call you a cheater for trying to use World builder.
Yeah...
First of all, I said I disabled the World Builder when I began the game.
Secondly, I already admitted and called myself the cheater.

;7203864']And I don't see how the shrine pollutes the GP pool, as far as I can remember...

Civilopedia says that the holy city generates more Great Prophets. I'm not sure if it being holy pollutes or the shrine pollutes, but hey! If Civilopedia says it, it must be true... :rolleyes:
I'm experimenting and I'm trying to build separate GP farms for prophets, engineers and scientists. Not sure, will it work or not though.

So... Can I somehow enable the World builder? I promise I'll use it only this time, I promise! :p

For me, every religion I have ever founded will always start in my smallest city (pop wise) so you could probably whip your capital to the point where it is the smallest city and your religion should start there but that seems really impractical, especially if you're going for a late religion like Islam.

fuddha,

Please try to ignore Genv [FP] rude remarks. He offers some good advice but is quick to snap at people.

There is a formulia to determine which city will receive the holy city on a newly founded religion, and you can influence it, but you cannot choose it.

Some of the factors:

1. Number of religions currently present
2. Size of the city
3. Date the city was founded ***
4. If it is a capital


The explination of each is as follows:

1. If you have fewer religions present in the city, it will increase the likelyhood of the new city becomming a holy city.

2. Greater populated cities are more likely to receive a holy city than lesser populated cities.

3. The earlier the city was founded, the more likely the city will be a holy city. ***

4. Capitals are less likely to receive a holy city (by a LOT)

I don't know the exact weights of everything, but I think it goes in this order:

# of Religions
Is Capital?
Size
Date founded

I believe there is also a random factor thrown into it, too, as I've seen newly founded cities with very small populations receive holy cities while there were many other larger and older cities with an equal number of religions.


Edit:

*** This is actually untrue. See Dresden's post below (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=7205756&postcount=19) for more information.

Yeah...
First of all, I said I disabled the World Builder when I began the game.
Secondly, I already admitted and called myself the cheater.



Civilopedia says that the holy city generates more Great Prophets. I'm not sure if it being holy pollutes or the shrine pollutes, but hey! If Civilopedia says it, it must be true... :rolleyes:
I'm experimenting and I'm trying to build separate GP farms for prophets, engineers and scientists. Not sure, will it work or not though.

So... Can I somehow enable the World builder? I promise I'll use it only this time, I promise! :p

Why would you do that? It sounds good, but I'd imagine that because the amount of GP required to produce a great person goes up each time a GP is spawned, it could be problematic. Good luck anyways

If a city has no religion, that seems to be a magnet for it. Spread religion to all cities but the one you want the new religion in? Doesn't help if you want all your Shrines in one location, though.

The best way to ensure the holy city is where you want it is to have only 1 city.

Shrines give 1 GPP, towards Prophets.

And a religion-related post from me wouldn't be complete if I didn't plug "my religious experience", linked to in my signature. Feel free to plug it yourself when these kinds of questions come up. ;)

;7204442']Why would you do that? It sounds good, but I'd imagine that because the amount of GP required to produce a great person goes up each time a GP is spawned, it could be problematic. Good luck anyways

Genv [FP],

This is what I do while making large empires. I try to build all +GPP generating buildings in one city, an all +GSP gerenating buildings in another. That way I'm sure I'm going to get at least one of each, instead of having a 25% chance of a Great Prophet, a 6% chance of a Great Spy, a 31% chance of a Great Scientist, a 15% chance of a Great Merchant, or an 18% chance of a Great Engineer.

I don't like to base things on random chance when there are other options.

Bah, Conquering everybody is much funner for me anyways.

Yeah...
First of all, I said I disabled the World Builder when I began the game.
Secondly, I already admitted and called myself the cheater.



Civilopedia says that the holy city generates more Great Prophets. I'm not sure if it being holy pollutes or the shrine pollutes, but hey! If Civilopedia says it, it must be true... :rolleyes:
I'm experimenting and I'm trying to build separate GP farms for prophets, engineers and scientists. Not sure, will it work or not though.

So... Can I somehow enable the World builder? I promise I'll use it only this time, I promise! :p

Running Three wonder farms? Those sound like some slow farms and there's no guarantee that you'll complete the necessary wonders. IMO That is a waste of cities. Philosophical, Caste, and Pacifism is where it's at. GP farms require lots of farms and usually have terrible production and commerce from tiles (exception = wonder farm). Use those 2 other experimental cities to build buildings or units and be normal. Alternate your GP farm's focus by switching the specialists after popping each GP depending on who you want next (GS, GA, GP, GE). One or Two GP farms is all you need. I've had 3 farms early on before (situational), but the Third farm would only spawn 1-2 GS and then I switched it to being a normal city. On average though, I only set up 2 farms. I will make a poll for "How many GP farms do you set up?" I'm curious now what the majority is.

EDIT: here's a link to the poll I just created. LINK (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=289665)

Genv [FP],

Absolutely. I agree. However it is useful to know how game mechanics work so in the chance you aren't on the offensive and need to found a religion, you can persuade it to a possible future Wall Street city, or a Great Prophet farm.

I know this is pretty cheesy, but you could build a palace in your holy city and Violla! capital holy city (Doesn't help you with your GPP pollution problem though)

A holy city gives one prophet GP point and has little impact on GP production. If you are concerned about this, run the caste system and dilute out the prophet GP points with scientist specialists (or artists or merchants).

I used to believe great prophets were a very weak specialist. Try the one city challenge and see how great prophets can be production horses! There is a reason that the cpu will automatically assign specialists to great prophets if given the opportunity.

Why would you want to avoid GP's? They may be the strongest GP. That's not pollution, that's manna from heaven. Two hammers is remarkable, and that comes with 5 gold. Hammers are so much more valuable than anything else.

For all practical purposes, if you have more than one city, your capital will not be a Holy City. At least in all my games, I never saw such case. The only sure way to get Holy city in your original capital is to found religion while you still have only one city, which is only practical for Buddhism, Hinduism and for some extent Judaism.

Why would you want to avoid GP's? They may be the strongest GP. That's not pollution, that's manna from heaven. Two hammers is remarkable, and that comes with 5 gold. Hammers are so much more valuable than anything else.

sirsnuggles,

GP and GS are the only great persons which cannot found corporations. Given how many things yield GPP vs GSP, you can see why someone would want to avoid GPP near the end.

Also, I would rather have 1 GS and 1 GM than 2 GPs. After I get one GP, I don't need any more, but they're useful enough that I'll find something to do with them.

If I recall, it will NEVER be the capital if there's a chance another city can get it (ie: any city not the capital without a religion).

You could reload it a 1,000 times, it ain't going to pop up in your capital... I think the only way to reliably get it in your capital is found a religion before you build your 2nd city.

Well, there's the possibility (depending on your neighbors) to get close to the sling, build massive units, gift all but your cap city to someone else, get the religion in your cap and then go back and reclaim your cities.

Risky but not entirely out of line with history - though with different reasons for backing off and resurging,, I'm sure.

No clue if it would work in Civ though, honestly.

The capital can get it after you have more than one city, but it's extremely rare and needs special circumstances. The actual code which picks the Holy City is in the CvPlayer::foundReligion() function and the algorithm is listed below. Note that Kesshi listed most of the modifiers, but the founding date of the cities is meaningless.
Loop over cities; determine Value for each
Value = 10
Value += City Population
Value += 0-9 (Random Factor from Global Define FOUND_RELIGION_CITY_RAND)
Value /= (Num Religions present in city + 1) (Integer Division)
If city is capital, Value /= 8 (Integer Division)
If Value < 1, then Value = 1

City with highest Value wins
bStarting = ((GC.getReligionInfo(eSlotReligion).getTechPrereq( ) == NO_TECH) || (GC.getTechInfo((TechTypes) GC.getReligionInfo(eSlotReligion).getTechPrereq()) .getEra() < GC.getGameINLINE().getStartEra()));

iBestValue = 0;
pBestCity = NULL;

for (pLoopCity = firstCity(&iLoop); pLoopCity != NULL; pLoopCity = nextCity(&iLoop))
{
if (!bStarting || !(pLoopCity->isHolyCity()))
{
iValue = 10;
iValue += pLoopCity->getPopulation();
iValue += GC.getGameINLINE().getSorenRandNum(GC.getDefineINT ("FOUND_RELIGION_CITY_RAND"), "Found Religion");

iValue /= (pLoopCity->getReligionCount() + 1);

if (pLoopCity->isCapital())
{
iValue /= 8;
}

iValue = std::max(1, iValue);

if (iValue > iBestValue)
{
iBestValue = iValue;
pBestCity = pLoopCity;
}
}
}
As you can see, that division by 8 is pretty massive and so the only way it's likely to happen is if the capital has vastly more population than your other cities and the other cities have multiple religions but the capital has none. For example, I ran a fairly ridiculous WB test where my capital was size 20 and had no religions, and my second city was size 1 with 2 religions; upon learning the next religion tech, the capital did get picked as the Holy City for religion #3.

Regarding the original poster's question about "cheating" it, you could actually force it into your capital at the time of founding by using the Python callbacks for doHolyCity() and doHolyCityTech() but it's probably far more trouble than it's worth. :p You could also probably change it after the fact using CyGame.clearHolyCity() and CyGame.setHolyCity().

Thanks for all the replies!

As I said it is an experimental game. I restarted a known map and I know that there is at least one great location for a GP farm - in it's BFC it has 9 or so floodplains, 3 spices, some forested grasslands, one rice grassland and two desert hills. :D That will be my GSP farm obviously. Southwest of that is Monty in the jungle with a river (and with 4 gems :eek: ) so I could build at least two more GP farms if I wanted and go to war early enough.
Since I managed to get both Stonehenge and Oracle in my capital (which has plenty of food and commerce but few hammers), I decided to make it a GPP farm. My second city is a somewhat of a filler city (for bronze) but not too shabby and in it I'm currently chopping for Pyramids. I'll see if I can turn it into a GEP farm by focusing on GE wonders and on engineer specialists.
Also there is a nice big area with 5 desert hill gold mines clustered together surrounded from two sides with flood plains allowing for two big cities with minimal or no overlap. I have yet to decide whether I'll go for cottages or specialists there.
I'll post some screenshots when I get home.

And to get back on topic, as Wolfshanze "suggested" and Dresden defined I already reloaded a gazzillion times :( and no holy capital for me. Guess I'll have to stick with a badly placed holy city and GPP pollution. There aren't many GEP wonders - Pyramids, Hanging Gardens and Haiga Sophia, and that's what bothers me.

It is a shame that a beautiful game like Civ4 in which you have great control over your empire, you can't decide which city is to be a holy city.

sirsnuggles,

GP and GS are the only great persons which cannot found corporations. Given how many things yield GPP vs GSP, you can see why someone would want to avoid GPP near the end.

Also, I would rather have 1 GS and 1 GM than 2 GPs. After I get one GP, I don't need any more, but they're useful enough that I'll find something to do with them.

If you're gunning for Corp founders, by that stage of the game the NP city (with the NE) should become the new GPP. In which case, Prophets shouldn't be an issue.

It is a shame that a beautiful game like Civ4 in which you have great control over your empire, you can't decide which city is to be a holy city.

Of course it shouldn't be controlled by the player; this is something to best be determined by God and His prophet. ;)

If both the capital and your second city are without a religion, then the chance that the capital will be the holy city jumps from 0% to 1% if your second city has a population of 1 (can be accomplished by whipping) and your capital has a population of 69 (can probably not be accomplished :lol:). I'd recommend stop reloading. BTW iiuc with "New Random Seed on Reload" you don't need to move units around to force new seeds.

@Dresden: is it possible to do stuff with python in a game that has "locked modified assets"?

Want your Capital to be your Holy City? don'b build anymore cities, til your capital gets it's religion, simple as that, lol.

Note that Kesshi listed most of the modifiers, but the founding date of the cities is meaningless.

Dresden,

Ooh, it is? Thanks for bringing that up. I guess what I saw that I thought was found date, was actually population (as newer cities tend to usually be smaller sized.)

Thanks for the information, by the way!

A holy city gives one prophet GP point and has little impact on GP production.

shulec,

A holy shrine generates 1 Great Prophet point as well. This makes for a grand total of +2 Great Prophet Points, which is just as much as a Wonder.

If I recall, it will NEVER be the capital if there's a chance another city can get it (ie: any city not the capital without a religion).

You could reload it a 1,000 times, it ain't going to pop up in your capital... I think the only way to reliably get it in your capital is found a religion before you build your 2nd city.


Agreed. Everytime I found a religion, the only time it appears in the capital is if it's the only city I have. Otherwise, it goes to another city.

@Dresden: is it possible to do stuff with python in a game that has "locked modified assets"?
I highly doubt it since you can't open the consoles, but don't actually know since I've never turned that option on. Plus I didn't pay real close attention to that "disabled Wordbuilder" note and I figured I'd post the relevant Python functions for completeness anyway. ;)