Skip religion on Deity?

i only play deity for science vics or culture vics. diplo is too ridiculous to me and im not good at dom strategy. for culture i think religion is obvious and necessary. but for science, i thought for a while it was nigh impossible to get one but now i've been getting them with korea, babylon, and general non-science based civs by going a typical opening strategy and getting Hagia Sophia. It isn't beelined by the AIs and can usually be gotten pre-90 turns. If you didnt build a shrine and never got a pantheon the prophet from HS still gives you a pantheon. even though the most valuable ones are gone there are still some serviceable ones with general bonuses worth getting.

the real strength for me like Sidor said, is in buying the great people late game. 1 GE and 2 GS are really necessary for bulbing the final techs and rushing Hubble.

yeah, ive preached this before but im still generally surprised that HS isnt brought up more for getting a deity religion.

In my deity games all the religions are founded by turn 70 or so. Shrines alone won't cut it. Even building stonehenge after getting calendar from a hut, I was still too late to get one. If you have a faith natural wonder nearby and take the +4 faith for natural wonder pantheon, then you can get a religion if you're fast enough getting a settler over there. Rarely, only 4 religions will get founded and there won't even be a 5th pantheon founded. In this case, I built HS and founded the 5th religion on turn 125(!) on deity!

slapshot2119 said:

On a similar note, if I'm going to build/have built Great Mosque, which increases the amount of spread actions a missionary can make, I'll move the Great Prophet from the capital to that city, often delaying the founding for 3-4 turns. Seems to make sense, but is there any point in doing this?

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I don't see any great need for you to move your first prophet from your capital to a city where you intend to build the Great Mosque, just to make that city your holy city. The one downside from having your GMD city different from your holy city is that will need to convert the GMD city to your religion before you can generate missionaries in that city. So, you either need to burn a "regular" 2-shot missionary to do the converting or wait for natural pressure to do the conversion (which I don't recommend). You are right that holy city status confers no particular advantage other than auto-religion on founding and resilience in recovering from conversion (if your holy city gets prophet bombed and converted to another religion, its holy city status will gradually reassert itself and convert your city back - an inquisitor or one of your own GPs will obviously hasten that process).

Lastly, I've noticed that the AI tends to use Great Prophets to convert my holy city first. Is there any additional disadvantage to having a holy city that has been converted as opposed to a non-holy city?

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No particular disdvantage, assuming you have other cities in which you can purchase an inquisitor or GP. I suspect the AI wants to use GPs to convert large cities, since natural pressure will have little to no dent in them. The converted holy city will start exerting stnadard pressure on surrounding cities (just like other cities), so depending on how close it is to other cities of that religion to create cumulative poressure, it may hasten the pressure-based conversion of some of your other, presumably smaller cities.

One advantage of a converted holy city is that the city will temporarily (until it converts back) be able to use the follower beliefs of the new religion. So, if that religion has holy orders, you can buy land units with faith, or if they have cathedrals, you can buy a cathedral.

@ Browd - I think he means about the 5 uses Great Prophets (If you buy a great prophet in industrial in a city with GMOD, it will have 5 uses rather than 4). I am not sure if it works for pre-Industrial (I can't remember the last time I have tried it - but I think I have, and I think it doesn't work for naturally spawned great prophets rather than bought great prophets)

Well, the extra Great Prophet use will be there for any GPrs generated in the GMD city, whether or not it is also the holy city. If the GMD is not in the holy city, then the concern may be that naturally spawning GPrs will continue to appear in the holy city, without the extra use. You can arrange to avoid generating any natural GPrs -- and buy them instead in the GMD city. But, if that's too much of a hassle, and you really do want the GMD in another city, then burning 3-4 turns of GPr transit time may be worth it.

I personally, skip religion completely. Getting a decent pantheon is usually good enough for most of the game - like +10% growth, +2 BPT for connected cities (awesome if you manage to go kinda wide - kinda, cause the AI expands much faster), or + Hammers from Work boats (awesome in the early game if you have like 3 sea resources nearby). It all boils down to what do you want to do with the faith. I usually need it to buy a GS or a GE - and even on OCC, if saved properly, one should have enough faith to buy a GE to finish Hubble in a turn, without founding a religion.

On World Church when going cultural - definitely a way to go, I've done it plenty of times.
However there are a couple of things You need to take into account:
1. What opponents there are. If You playing against opponents, that like to spread their religion into foreign civs (Ethiopia, England, Maya etc.) it will be much more difficult and I would consider a different option.
2. When You are able to found the religion - if it's early, then the religion will spread on itself.
3. Additionally take faith giving pantheon (unless culture giving would be better - depends from the starting situation), Religious Art and Cathedrals as Follower Beliefs (in this order) and Itinerate Preachers or Messiah or Religious Texts as Enhancer Belief (in this order)
4. Spread the religion to CS and then only to Civs that were not able to found their own religion (as the other ones will get angry at You and will remove Your religion anyway)
Depending on the map size You'll be able to generate from 25 - 75 culture per turn additionally thanks to religion. On higher difficulties it can be the difference between winning and losing the game.

Sidor1982 said:

On World Church when going cultural - definitely a way to go, I've done it plenty of times.
However there are a couple of things You need to take into account:
1. What opponents there are. If You playing against opponents, that like to spread their religion into foreign civs (Ethiopia, England, Maya etc.) it will be much more difficult and I would consider a different option.
2. When You are able to found the religion - if it's early, then the religion will spread on itself.
3. Additionally take faith giving pantheon (unless culture giving would be better - depends from the starting situation), Religious Art and Cathedrals as Follower Beliefs (in this order) and Itinerate Preachers or Messiah or Religious Texts as Enhancer Belief (in this order)
4. Spread the religion to CS and then only to Civs that were not able to found their own religion (as the other ones will get angry at You and will remove Your religion anyway)
Depending on the map size You'll be able to generate from 25 - 75 culture per turn additionally thanks to religion. On higher difficulties it can be the difference between winning and losing the game.

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Yes...World Church is a good one...I've used it quite effectively on occasion...

But one problem I find is a lack of knowledge about what the other religions have as their belief systems. I don't know if there is a way of finding this out...other than gradually deducing it from what you see going on...???

In my current game my religion has spread dramatically... [I have Titheing as a belief, which has helped...even with it, GPT has been a problem in this game]...I have the Itinerant Preacher belief....but I would not have expected this rapid spread when I made my religious choices. The pressure in some of the other civ's cities is even more intense than in my Holy City....some of the other cities have pressures of 115 and numbers like that...I think my Holy City currently is around 70....

My religion is even competing effectively on the other big continent in this game....I've sent over a couple of GPs to help things along.... Though one was immediately captured with about three uses left after a DOW...

[Edit: Oh yes...the civ who captured my GP was that religious spammer...Ethiopia, whose religion is, as one would expect, strong, but nowhere near as strong as mine...Go figure!!....???...]

Koiranputki said:

But one problem I find is a lack of knowledge about what the other religions have as their belief systems. I don't know if there is a way of finding this out...other than gradually deducing it from what you see going on...???

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If you click on the faith icon on the toolbar, you will open the religions screen, which has three tabs at the top. By default, it opens to your religion tab, but tab 2 is world religions (shows who has what religion -- if you haven't met the civ yet, it says unknown civilization -- and their number of majority-religion cities), and the third tab is beliefs, and it shows what beliefs each religion has. You can sort the information presented in that tab by the major headings (e.g., by type of belief, by religion, etc.).