Is it OK to have just ONE ?
Certainly! Extra religions give you a choice in case the one you wanted - for whatever reason - doesn't do what you wanted. It's also additional shrines that AIs are spreading for, especially in the early game. And late in the game, it's awesome for Free Religion - tons of culture and happiness.
I'll have to study the map for this to be clear for me !
I presume you mean the tech tree... yes, you definitely need to carefully consider.
A piece of advice: don't be afraid to save and reload a few turns back if something goes wonky, because you're trying to figure out what's going on. Later, you can tell yourself "this is for the real marbles" or whatever and use your usual restrictions.
About great prophets : do you (beside the first one building the shrine (assuming you concentrate on ONE religion)) use them as super-specialists, and if yes, in which city (science, production, shrine, wealth...), or do you use them for science bulbing, golden age...
When I have a Prophet who can't be used for a Shrine (thanks - I forgot the word in my previous post!) I look and see what his tech is. If it's one I haven't worked on, I usually lightbulb him. I'm doing this a lot more than I used to. A free tech can save 20 turns or so of research. Early in the game, a little jump like this yields huge dividends later.
But if he's not worthy of lightbulbing, and can't be used effectively for a Golden Age, then I am left with settling him. I hate hanging onto GPs - to me that's wasted use. Infrequently will I save them for more than a turn unless I need them for something specific.
Where to settle him? He's worth 2 hammers and 5 gold, so there's one obvious place: your Wall Street city (which should also be where your biggest Shrine(s) are). Wall Street means he becomes worth 15 gold - more if you're Mali, England, or America.
I agree with you, and this is the reason of this post : religion IS a way of winning the game, but there is no mention of it in ANY of the great articles I'm so fond of ! Maybe it's time for one of the great writers to start one
You inspired me to try a proof-of-concept game. After careful consideration, I selected Wang Kon of Korea. He is Financial and Korea starts with Meditation and Mining. There are two other Civs with these starting techs (India and Maya) and several Financial leaders. Mansa Musa would be good, pairing with Spiritual for cheaper Temples and the ability to take advantage of newly discovered Civics and Religions as needed - plus he can agree to Civics changes more readily, making him friendlier. However, these other options require allowing Unrestricted Leaders.
I started on Prince difficulty (because I'm trying to graduate from Noble) and after numerous false starts (I tried other leaders and civs before I realized Wang and Korea were the only ones that would work) I found that you need an extraordinarily lucky start to get all the religions. I also set up Standard game length and map size, which is 7 total players. I settled on Custom Continents with low sea level.
I needed 2 Golds (or Silvers or Gems) and I had to settle on one of them. It had to be on a Plains Hill, and the other on a Grassland Hill, and both had to be on a river, and both in the initial square of the city, which must be founded on the first turn.
Even with all this, just being able to get Meditation first wasn't enough - invariably one of the AIs would go for Polytheism and get it before I could. I discovered that I could trick them, since they know everything, and do my first turn of research on Poly, then grab Med and go back for Poly, then still had to be quick about getting Masonry and Monotheism or someone would get that. I suppose if I had ensured that none of my opponents had the proper starting techs, it would've been a lot easier and not needed so many reloads.
Just as an interesting note: It's possible to skip the Classical Age and go straight to Medieval! I did this accidentally - first, I was given a Quest that would expire if I got into the Classical Age (WTH?!), then I built the Oracle and noticed I could get Theology as the most expensive tech (I didn't set that up, either). Poof! Medieval Age, and the Quest didn't even expire! It did expire later once I got Bronze Working.
So far - and this is more a product of my Gold and being Financial than trying to grab all the religions - I'm way out in front. I'm going to see if I can get them all. I got 5 in my capital, and just got the sixth now that I have more cities, but after numerous reloads, it seems to only want to establish the new religion in one of 2 cities (and suddenly Monty insists on declaring war, when 3 reloads saw him doing nothing of the sort!) so I'm not going to get all 7 into one city.
I briefly saw the other two on my continent taking up a religion besides my State Religion, but they both switched to mine. And I'm researching techs too fast to build everything that's becoming available! But I'm making enough money off my State Religion to allow two bumps on my research slider, so I'm happy enough and I'll get this bullseye off my forehead in a few turns when I start cranking out Maces to stop his Archer and Chariot he wants to attack with.
I'm thinking of doing a writeup on it.
BUT THE POINT IS (sorry for the sidetrack): Religions are quite handy. If you have one, and you can get it to all your cities (or at least the best ones) you have access to +25% building production, +2 XP per new unit, or +100% Great People Production for Civics, AND if you build the handy dandy religious Wonders, you can get +2 hammers, +2 beakers, +2 gold, and +5 culture PER RELIGIOUS BUILDING. That's a lot, really. I find it VERY handy in new cities to build a Monastery as my first building because of the boost in production and culture. The gold is nice, and beakers are okay, I won't snub them. And the one that lets you have 2 hammers per Priest... THAT is what you need a ton of religions for, so you can have 7+ priests, all as powerful as an Engineer, AND they give you an extra gold! I've managed to get my maximum Priests up to like 14 with just a few religions in some games - that's a lot of hammers and gold!
Okay, I hope I haven't bored you to tears here.
)
TheMeInTeam has a series based on it that you could check out.
It's not quite as complete as I would dream of, but it's a good basis, and there was certainly, in my opinion, a lack of articles on this important subject.
