Where the Holy City goes?

Long time out, returned now.

The title says all. If there is more than one non-capital city, where the Holy City goes to?

My thanks in advance.

The first one is whether there's a current religion in the city. Preference goes to no religion.

First the algorithm looks for non capital cities, then for cities that don't already have a religion present, then it looks for the highest population size, but keep in mind that there still is a bit randomness thrown in so you can't 100% guarantee that a certain city will be the one.

To maximize the chances of a certain city becoming a holy city you can try to keep it religionfree and maximize its population, that means in practice spreading religions everywhere else and whipping all other cities but the capital (which already has an extremely small chance of becoming a holy city) a few turns before you found the religion.

The holy city is placed in your highest population city with bonuses for not being the capital and having fewer religions, as well as a small random factor. The actual code the game uses to decide is in this thread.

I once founded six religions in the same city by making sure that city didn't have the seventh religion and making sure all of my other cities had every available religion.

Thank you.