Religion Development

[TheKingOfBigOz]

Originally Posted by Samuriman

In duel there's basically no such thing as religion missionaries are useless.

Not neccesairly, it could be very useful use missionaries to spread your own religion among your own cities, since remember that the pressure could mean it takes more than 10 turns for a city to fully convert.

[Louis XXIV]

Let's also not forget City-States.

[Seek]

Nor Just War.

[Wolfbeckett]

So the one question I have about religion, and feel free to point out if this has been answered elsewhere, how does the pressure for religious spreading work? Does a city spread every religion that is represented in it or only the dominant religion in that city? If the latter, it seems like it will be a full time job working on spreading religion if you want to maximize it's benefits. If the former, it seems like densely populated maps would a cluster-f of religious pressure all over the place. Anyone know which it is?

[Thorburne]

10 Tiles may be the standard distance. I would assume that with larger maps, the distance will increase a bit and decrease a bit with smaller maps.

[AriochIV]

Originally Posted by Wolfbeckett

So the one question I have about religion, and feel free to point out if this has been answered elsewhere, how does the pressure for religious spreading work? Does a city spread every religion that is represented in it or only the dominant religion in that city? If the latter, it seems like it will be a full time job working on spreading religion if you want to maximize it's benefits. If the former, it seems like densely populated maps would a cluster-f of religious pressure all over the place. Anyone know which it is?

We don't know for certain the details of how it works. What we do know is:

• A city exerts religious Pressure out to 10 hexes
• Religious Pressure crosses civilization borders
• Pressure is listed next to the number of citizens following each religion within a city, which implies that Pressure can come from more than one religion in a city. Also, if Pressure only came from the majority religion in the city, then it would be very difficult to convert a city with an existing religion to a different religion.
• In this example from the PAX demo, Sidism has just been founded and has 2 Followers in Carthage, which generates +25 Pressure per turn. The Pantheon that Sidism was created from still has 2 Followers.
  
• Missionaries exert a one-time Pressure when they perform a Spread Religion action, presumably with a Pressure according to the Faith Strength of the unit (1000). Great Prophets can also Spread Religion and have a Faith Strength of 2000, and remove all competing religions from a city when they perform this action.
  
• Pressure from a Missionary can probably be mitigated in some way, because in the Herpes example from the GameSpy article, the applied pressure was 750, rather than 1000.
• Missionaries can enter foreign territory without Open Borders permission.
• Missionaries have at least 2 Spread Religion Uses. Great Prophets have at least 4.
• Inquistors work in the opposite way; when performing a Remove Heresy action, they exert a negative Pressure against all opposing religions in a city. However, Inquisitors don't have a listed Faith Strength, so it's not clear what strength this negative Pressure has. It may be that this negative pressure is "absolute" and it simply removes all opposing religions like a Great Prophet.
• Inquisitors become available when you enhance your religion with a second Great Prophet.
• Note that the followers of the Pantheon in Carthage do NOT generate religious Pressure (neither before Sidism was founded nor after), so it's not clear how Pantheons spread (if they do at all). Note that in the video Both Carthage and Utique (populations 9 and 5, respectively) have only 2 Pantheon followers each.
• Pantheons do not spread beyound your borders.

[Lyoncet]

Thank you for the overview Arioch! I'm interested in the Great Prophet's religion spread also eliminating all other religious pressure in said city. Do you suppose that could be used offensively, by bringing them to a peacetime rival's city, entirely resetting their own dominant/native religion while bolstering your own? Perhaps doable, but with a diplo penalty akin to culture bombing a rival's squares?

[edit]Based on the picture you just added, it looks like you can. Since the text for Spread Religion covers both Great Prophets and missionaries, and it doesn't say anything about only eliminating the other religions in your own cities, it seems very unlikely that you couldn't use it to wipe another civ's religion from their city.

[Montov]

Originally Posted by AriochIV

We don't know for certain the details of how it works. What we do know is:

• In this example, Sidism has 2 Followers in Carthage, which generates +25 Pressure per turn:
  
  

Does the city generate that pressure, or is that the pressure on the city for more followers? The second options would make the concept more transparent. That way it is easier to see which religion has the most pressure in a city surrounded by cities with multiple religions.

[AriochIV]

Originally Posted by Lyoncet

I'm interested in the Great Prophet's religion spread also eliminating all other religious pressure in said city. Do you suppose that could be used offensively, by bringing them to a peacetime rival's city, entirely resetting their own dominant/native religion while bolstering your own? Perhaps doable, but with a diplo penalty akin to culture bombing a rival's squares?

That's anyone's guess at this point, but if so, then I certainly hope Great Prophets and Inquisitors can't enter foreign territory without Open Borders the way Missionaries can. And seeing either a Great Prophet or Inquisitor coming toward you would be cause for war.

Originally Posted by Montov

Does the city generate that pressure, or is that the pressure on the city for more followers? The second options would make the concept more transparent. That way it is easier to see which religion has the most pressure in a city surrounded by cities with multiple religions.

In that video, Sidism had just been founded, and Carthage is the only city following it, so that Pressure could only be coming from within the city.

[Wolfbeckett]

Thanks Arioch, that's the first time I've ever seen all of the info presented in one post in an easy to follow list, makes it all a lot more clear. Based on what you've said then I am going to assume that every religion that has followers within 10 hexes of a city will put pressure on that city based on the number of nearby followers. As you said, spreading religion would be VERY difficult if it was only spread by the dominant religion. I didn't even consider that but it makes a lot of sense and heavily points away from that model. Civs that want to focus heavily on religion are certainly going to have interesting games I reckon.

[JWAT44]

Originally Posted by AriochIV

We don't know for certain the details of how it works. What we do know is:

• A city exerts religious Pressure out to 10 hexes
• Religious Pressure crosses civilization borders
• Pressure is listed next to the number of citizens following each religion within a city, which implies that Pressure can come from more than one religion in a city. Also, if Pressure only came from the majority religion in the city, then it would be very difficult to convert a city with an existing religion to a different religion.
• In this example from the PAX demo, Sidism has just been founded and has 2 Followers in Carthage, which generates +25 Pressure per turn. The Pantheon that Sidism was created from still has 2 Followers.
  
• Missionaries exert a one-time Pressure when they perform a Spread Religion action, presumably with a Pressure according to the Faith Strength of the unit (1000). Great Prophets can also Spread Religion and have a Faith Strength of 2000, and remove all competing religions from a city when they perform this action.
  
• Pressure from a Missionary can probably be mitigated in some way, because in the Herpes example from the GameSpy article, the applied pressure was 750, rather than 1000.
• Missionaries can enter foreign territory without Open Borders permission.
• Missionaries have at least 2 Spread Religion Uses. Great Prophets have at least 4.
• Inquistors work in the opposite way; when performing a Remove Heresy action, they exert a negative Pressure against all opposing religions in a city. However, Inquisitors don't have a listed Faith Strength, so it's not clear what strength this negative Pressure has. It may be that this negative pressure is "absolute" and it simply removes all opposing religions like a Great Prophet.
• Inquisitors become available when you enhance your religion with a second Great Prophet.
• Note that the followers of the Pantheon in Carthage do NOT generate religious Pressure (neither before Sidism was founded nor after), so it's not clear how Pantheons spread (if they do at all). Note that in the video Both Carthage and Utique (populations 9 and 5, respectively) have only 2 Pantheon followers each.
• Pantheons do not spread beyound your borders.

thanks a ton for the info. what i'm wondering now is, what does all this religion spreading do to help the player? does it help diplomatically if you founded a widespread religion?