Any advice/tips/complete walk-through?

So far I have this initial tech path:

Polytheism
Fishing
Sailing (to allow religion to spread along rivers/coast)
Archery (defensive units to protect cities)
Priesthood - build oracle get theology
Monotheism
Monarchy

..

On noble, go for all 7 religions. Meditation/polytheism straight to monotheism. Worker-henge, then tech a couple worker techs followed by priesthood. Oracle theology. self-tech COL. Use the prophets from the two wonders for shrines, spread religions and enjoy making gold at 100% research.

Someone posted a forum game on noble that I shadowed for fun awhile back where I founded all 7 religions. The only possible miss is one of the first two if an AI happens to tech poly first.

For example - not even a rigged map (although it looks like I got lucky with my opponents). I swear it wasn't rigged - I won't play it out because it's noble, but wait until you see the luck of the capital placement here in the last screen in spoiler.

http://i550.photobucket.com/albums/ii402/michmbk/Saladin%20religion/Civ4ScreenShot0000.jpg


Tech path beelined meditation/poly/mono, then snuck in agriculture before priesthood/writing. In between, mehmed was way too close...since I was building warriors (no need for a worker)...

http://i550.photobucket.com/albums/ii402/michmbk/Saladin%20religion/Civ4ScreenShot0002.jpg

The tech path & builds led to this:

http://i550.photobucket.com/albums/ii402/michmbk/Saladin%20religion/Civ4ScreenShot0001.jpg

http://i550.photobucket.com/albums/ii402/michmbk/Saladin%20religion/Civ4ScreenShot0003.jpg

http://i550.photobucket.com/albums/ii402/michmbk/Saladin%20religion/Civ4ScreenShot0004.jpg

http://i550.photobucket.com/albums/ii402/michmbk/Saladin%20religion/Civ4ScreenShot0005.jpg

Then filled in a couple worker/economic techs and followed by self teching COL & philo:

http://i550.photobucket.com/albums/ii402/michmbk/Saladin%20religion/Civ4ScreenShot0006.jpg

http://i550.photobucket.com/albums/ii402/michmbk/Saladin%20religion/Civ4ScreenShot0007.jpg

Yay - all religions (would tech divine right after calendar, probably):

http://i550.photobucket.com/albums/ii402/michmbk/Saladin%20religion/Civ4ScreenShot0008.jpg

Two are shrined, and another likely prophet coming in 20 turns for a third shrine.

Got some nice land, and at war with Hanny because he's the only non-buddhist - have plenty of defense, so a non-issue, but it was my fault - I sent the christian missionary to him instead of waiting and sending a missionary to all three at once:

http://i550.photobucket.com/albums/ii402/michmbk/Saladin%20religion/Civ4ScreenShot0009.jpg

By the luck of how Mecca was placed, it automatically blocked that entire landmass for us to settle at our leisure. Kind of want to play it out just to settle all that land, but it'd be too easy at noble to bother. It looks like it'd be a great coastal landmass. Lots of missionaries would probably be built from here to make a powerful late game religious economy.

The thing is, too much religion is probably a bad thing - I sacrificed early growth and was late settling cities, so I'm not as far ahead in tech as I would be if I had played for early rexing. Not to mention having a bunch of warmongers nearby - religion isn't necessarily a good thing with all of them. Playing this straight up with a few cities well placed would mean 4-5 cities easily settled, and then settle the entire back part of the peninsula at my leisure.



That's taking religion to the extreme, but the general gist is if you're going religion, go for 1-2 early ones, try for henge/oracle (for prophets) and then look for the key religion enhancers later on, like sankore, spiral minaret, Angkor wat. Build the temples/monasteries/cathedrals and the economy will be humming.

The issue is you still have to manage diplomacy, unless you can get a religion lovefest going.

On noble, go for all 7 religions. Meditation/polytheism straight to monotheism. Worker-henge, then tech a couple worker techs followed by priesthood. Oracle theology. self-tech COL. Use the prophets from the two wonders for shrines, spread religions and enjoy making gold at 100% research.

Someone posted a forum game on noble that I shadowed for fun awhile back where I founded all 7 religions. The only possible miss is one of the first two if an AI happens to tech poly first.

What do you mean by worker-henge, if I may ask?

If you want a religious economy, you only want one religion so it auto-spreads as much as possible. Shrines are a commodity, and remember only a city without a religion will be spread upon without a missionary.

worker-henge= build worker then build stonehendge

I think the best way to get a 'religious economy', especially at higher levels, is to wait to see what the closest dominating religion is, then get the shrined holy city from them. Your capital can stay a OU-cottaged-buro capital, and the holy city (which is probably their capital) can become a great merchant farm with wall street and HQs.

Especially at higher levels you can't (really) beat the AI to the early religions and you can't beat the pace at which they build missionaries. Exception is continents if the early religions happen to be founded on a different landmass and you can get theology or confucianism and monopolize the religion on your continent...