Best way to manipulate Religion??

What are some ways to manipulate religion in G and K??

I noticed the other day in my small 6-city empire that several of my outlying cities had converted to another religion. When I went to the drop down menu to select what I wanted to spend my faith on there were all kinds of units and buildings I could buy that were not part of my religion.

It seems that one could manipulate this quite well. I could imagine a several super religious cities that kept getting converted simply to have all religious buildings or perhaps keep one to buy units with faith...

You can buy the buildings of whatever is the main religion in the city. So hypothetically if you picked 2 of the buildings for your religion and then another religion had another 2, you may be able to get them all. I think there is 4.

Is there a way to know what the other civ has picked without conversion?? Say for instance I see a an AI prophet hovering around. I may want to declare war on that AI to take the prophet if it benefits from certain beliefs that I don't possess, such as holy warriors or the buildings... from what I understand, u don't lose the buildings... I would then convert lesser cities for the holy warriors, buildings, etc. then convert back to my religion when finished...

On the religious overview, you can see what everyone has picked under beliefs.

It is possible to use this a bit, but it's hard to abuse because you'd need a ton of faith just to cycle though religions, let alone get the buildings, and you'd need to be very careful not to wipe out a religon from yourcities totally until everyone got the buildings. You also can't use an inquisitor on your holy city to get rid of it's religion without losing holy city status.

In that case then, probably Theodora...

it is true that you could possibly build all 3-4 religious buildings, but theres more to it.

Say Christianity has mosques and cathedrals
and Jewish has pagodas

lets pretend your city starts as Christianity, and you build a mosque, then it gets converted to Jewish, you can now build pagodas, but can no longer build the cathedral that you never built, the mosque though will just stay and wont leave because of different religion.

A captured prophet/missionary will carry the religion of the original player.

thats good... I think then it is good to keep that prophet around just in case you want to convert back to that religion so you could build the missing building. I was thinking maybe focus on a couple cities instead of all of your cities (just as long as you leave one foreign religion you could still choose the building if it is not already built). Other thoughts... leave power beliefs to your best cities, i.e. capital and top two other cities such as guruship and divine inspiration. And perhaps keep a prophet around to convert your cities later to your religion when happiness is not such a big deal, like end-game

It is also worth noting that some wonders provide free buildings. The Great Mosque (available at Theology) for example provides a free Mosque. I often choose Cathedrals of Pagodas (sometimes both), and then build the Great Mosque in one of my cities. This is a really nice wonder because the Mosque building benefits are in addition to the benefits of the wonder.

I think some of the earlier wonders (Temple of Artemis, Sistine Chapel) should have been reworked in G&K to provide some type of free religious building too. It seems kind of odd that Hagia Sophia should provide a free Temple but Notre Dame doesn't provide a Cathedral.