Religions

First, I applaud you guys for making the religions different from each other and interesting. I was a little disappointed back when I discovered all vanilla religions were identical.

This makes it a bit harder to understand them, though, so I've got a few questions.

I tried out Ix, today, primarily beelining for the Technocracy religion, as I figure that tech synergizes well with tech. Before I'd even researched Great Houses, 2 of the other civs were Shai-Hulud, and the other 6 were all Imperial. This is... pretty similar to every other game I've played. If I don't choose Imperial, I have to butter up the AI players or else the -4 reaction will quickly become a problem.

Is this common for most people?

On the way to founding Technocracy, I happened to found CHOAM as well. By the time I researched Technocracy, all of my cities were already either CHOAM or Imperial - primarily CHOAM since I frequently didn't have anything useful to build in my cities, so I built a number of CHOAM emissaries just to drive out the Imperial scum.

Now that I've got Technocracy founded, I've got about 18 to 20 cities that are, for the most part, happily CHOAM, and I'm wondering whether it's worth the effort to make the switch and churn out a bunch of missionaries again.

So:

1 - Is it normal for the map to get plastered in S-H and Imperial before any other religions have been founded?

2 - While I understand the importance of converting to a religion which was founded in your own city (for the holy city money), is there ever a good reason to switch your entire nation from something it has founded and spread, to something else that you've just founded?

3 - Why is technocracy so deep in the tree, and following directly from CHOAM? It seems that CHOAM and Techno are often going to be researched by the same person, because it takes some dedication to ensure that you arrive there before other players. If you rush CHOAM, it seems you might as well grab Techno just to deny it to others. If you rush Techno, you'll pick up CHOAM on the way.

First, check this thread: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=349617 and this thread: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=330907

Comments:

1. Yes, this is intended. Shai-Hulad is the first non-Tleilaxu religion to get founded, but its fairly weak. Its strength comes from early foundation and thus wide spread.
Similarly imperial, it has a very high natural spread and will spread widely by itself, BUT it is easily displaced.

2. I've been tempted for a while to change some of the requirements to require State Religion, not just religious presence, otherwise there isn't sufficient incentive.
There is already good incentive to adopt Qizarate though; its possibly the best religion for winning a religious victory, because it automatically displaces all other religions when you spread it by missionary.
There's a tradeoff here though, between incentives for the human player and implications for the AI. The human player can see benefits from changing state religion, and be encouraged to do it. The AI tends to not see those benefits, and so just won't change religion and won't achieve any of the benefits of the new religion.

Also been considering whether Temple (not cathedral) buildings should be auto-destroyed if you lose that religion in your city. This would prevent exploits where you can say build the Shai-Hulad and CHOAM temples, then wipe the religions away with a Qizarate missionary.
The only real issue with this is that it would be too easy to blow up Imperial temples using missionaries of any religion (which auto-displace Imperial religion).

3. I am very surprised by your experience that people incidentally get CHOAM while going for Technocracy.
Getting Imperial while going for CHOAM? Sure. I've been thinking about a way to avoid this, but no good ideas yet.
But Technocracy is a late-game tech. You can't beeline it in the early game at all. All the early game religions including CHOAM will have been founded long before technocracy.
Technocracy is late-game because it is a highly technological "religion" using Thinking Machines. It wouldnt' make sense to be ab

There is also a deliberate attempt to follow some of the themes of the books and create a "Flux". Technocracy is one possible future. Qizarate is another. The "old ways" of Shai-Hulad and the Imperium are widely held, but risk being over-thrown.