I took over a holy city.

Any benefits?

I do not have a religion (only 40 faith total right now), but do have a Pantheon.

When I auto-spawn my first great prophet at 200 faith or whatever it is, will I be forced to found my own religion? Can I found it in the same city as Islam (the religion I took over) for fun?

Can I just totally steal Islam? All my cities are already Islam anyway and Islamic Egypt had done a huge religious focus and spread it across half the map before they foolishly attacked me and lost their capital (7 wonders!). I don't even care about the Founder's bonus... I just want the city-state bonus, which, you apparently don't get even if you take over the religion's holy city...

Any way to really adopt Islam?

This is the first game I played with absolutely no thought to religion, so I'm a bit lost as to what this all means.

The one benefit I've found if you do want your own religion and cap a Holy City is that you can just write your religion over theirs and essentially wipe their religion out. It takes a ton of religious pressure you'd compete with out of the equation and Aggressively Religious AI doesn't bother spamming when it's HC is taken.

If you don't want to found your own religion, you don't have to. You can always toss the prophet, although iirc, without your own religion your GP will spawn with the religion already present in the city- the same way missionaries do- so you should still be able to use him like normal as far as Spread Religion and Holy Sites are concerned. (I'd have to double check this, as it's a very fringe case though) So in effect, you did "take over" Islam already.

Well, not really. Just because you captured the Islamic Holy City, you get neither the founder belief nor the enhancer belief (if it has already enhanced -- sounds like it has). The pantheon and follower beliefs may be substantial enough to justify accepting the Islamic religion, but that's all you get. You can produce missionaries in cities with the Islamic religion, and use them to spread to your other cities, but there is no particular benefit in spreading to other civilizations (other than to deny them their own founder and enhancer beliefs or to create enough Islamic pressure to resist their conversion effects/efforts).

Whether you can found a new religion in the Islamic Holy City is a great question. I've never had the opportunity and would be interested to hear whether it works. Any Great Prophet you auto-spawn from accumulation of faith will appear in your capital city, so you would have to move the GP to the Islamic Holy City before founding your religion.

You can't found another religion in a city that already is home to another religion sadly. Well you could - but it wouldn't convert a single follower to your religion so you would have 0 cities following your religion. Its buggy if you try and found a religion in an existing holy city you captured.

adwcta said:

Any benefits?

I do not have a religion (only 40 faith total right now), but do have a Pantheon.

When I auto-spawn my first great prophet at 200 faith or whatever it is, will I be forced to found my own religion? Can I found it in the same city as Islam (the religion I took over) for fun?

Can I just totally steal Islam? All my cities are already Islam anyway and Islamic Egypt had done a huge religious focus and spread it across half the map before they foolishly attacked me and lost their capital (7 wonders!). I don't even care about the Founder's bonus... I just want the city-state bonus, which, you apparently don't get even if you take over the religion's holy city...

Any way to really adopt Islam?

This is the first game I played with absolutely no thought to religion, so I'm a bit lost as to what this all means.

Click to expand...

Unless you really like the basic features of Islam compared to other religions in your game there really isn't much of a bonus in taking/keeping it's holy city. And as previous posters mentioned, there is no way to 'steal' the bonuses beyond what is already provided to followers as supposed to founders or enhancers.

My suggestion would be, if your able to, is to found your own religion and slowly build it up. It might take a while but in the long run having access to more bonuses, as mediocre as they might be this late in the religious race, will probably be better than one or two so so bonuses. If your going domination or see the game ending in the near future for your I wouldn't bother then.

So, the time has passed and all the religions have been taken (didn't know there were only 4 religions in a standard game).

I guess I'm stuck with Islam. It's not all that bad. The founder bonus is faith, the enhancer bonus is more spreading, the pantheon is more faith and even one of the follower bonuses is faith. Egypt is left with his one city, doing nothing but pumping out missionaries and sending them across the world to spread this religion for me (not costing me upkeep). I've used the faith to buy catherdrals in all my cities, now using them on GPs... all with literally zero cost on my part.

It is annoying that I don't get any diplomatic bonuses w/ civs or city states who follow the same religion I do, just because I didn't found it. I've adopted the entire religion, and am taking good care of the holy city! Come on, Civ5, if the whole world follows Catholicism, it should be easier to get along, not just each nation getting along with the Vatican.