Anyone found a good way to leverage religions spread?

[Lyoncet]

I'm doing some short games of G&K to try to get a handle of different facets of gameplay. Figured out the Quinquereme/Elephant/Catapult rush pretty quickly, and got used to leveraging Pantheons, and now I'm doing some games with a heavy religious focus.

So, um, how do you do it?

I've been spreading my religion to my own cities and neighboring city states, which seem to give me "spread your religion" quests often, which is a great bonus. But what about to the AI? On a 9-player map, you'll have 4 AI not found a religion, so do you just spam missionaries at them? Is it worthwhile to use missionaries/inquisitors on AI that have founded religions? Is there really much reason to suicide missionaries into a rival religion's holy city? If it makes a difference, I've been playing on Immortal and snagging Stonehenge to make sure I get a religion and a decent Pantheon.

(As an aside, anyone fill me in on this "local happiness" thing? How's it different than just normal happiness?)

 

[ggmoyang]

Local happniess can't exceed the city's population:
If you build coliseum in 1pop city, coliseum gives only 1 happiness instead of 2.

 

[Legal_My_Deagle]

I was about to make a similar topic post.

As far as religious civs go, I have been trying Byzantium. I am not sure about them yet. Their UUs are amazing. Their UA *can* be really good, but am finding it very situational where I can run a game and actually build up faith fast enough to really feel justified in my choice of a religious-oriented civ. So many other civs have ways to beat you in the faith race that if you actually do get to found a religion you almost need the extra belief slot to somewhat justify the effort. You really need to nab Stonehenge, but unless Constantinople starts near some Marble or otherwise is getting a lot of hammers you are screwed. I really hope I am wrong and I could be because I've only started a few games so far, but this civ feels like it *needs* this wonder.

 

[Kabloosh]

I sent a great prophet to another holy state where it did convert the city but the population doesn't get any "pressure". I managed to easily spread my religion to Germany and the Incas and over time nearby cities would convert anyways.

 

[Lyoncet]

I sent a great prophet to another holy state where it did convert the city but the population doesn't get any "pressure". I managed to easily spread my religion to Germany and the Incas and over time nearby cities would convert anyways.

What was the result of that? I assume they never warmed up to your religion even after you got dominance.

 

[fromar]

As Byzantium, I managed to get near total religious domination around the Renascence. Of course, at that point, it seemed to matter less. My beliefs were all terrain and local city beliefs - not ones that generated points from foreign cities.

I think I was doing it wrong anyway - no point in spreading your religion if you aren't going to take the correct beliefs. And I never got a notification that another civ had converted to my religion.

One thing I wonder - the game says the importance of religion will fade away. But my god of the sea belief is giving me extra production on fishing boats. That's pretty significant, even in later game with production bonuses. But the AI is still trying to convert my cities into the Renascence. Will the AI ever give up trying to spread their religion over mine? I don't want to be building missionaries and inquisitors in 1956 so i can keep my nuclear sub production going.

 

[Cymsdale]

The beliefs play a big factor in to how important it is to spread your religion. With some setups, you are better off just making your own cities hold the religion with no real incentive to spread it to foreign neighbors. If you are not going to get any worthwhile founder benefit from giving it to them, then you don't really want to share the follower benefits if you don't have to (unless you plan to take over the city soon). It's an interesting dynamic I think.

 

[kgoodrid]

I have had great success in my current game as Byzantium. Managed to get Stonehenge which helped. I wasn't the first to found a Pantheon, but I was the first to found a Religion. My Pantheon choice as Scared Paths since I started with lots of jungles. The extra faith from that was really helpful early on, and keeps all that jungle fairly useful, especially now that I am adding trading posts.

My Religion was a little slow to spread at first, but once I got a few cities converted, it really took off and started spreading around my cities and to the AI. I have been using Missionaries (purchased cheap thanks to my Enhancer Belief) to spread it to city states and AI cities that didn't get it on their own. My largest neighbor, Russia, is following my religion, along with some other smaller Civs, which helps diplomacy. I have managed to push it to some key city states, and that has helped me maintain alliances with them.

I love the Byzantine UA - really helps make for a strong religion. I'll miss that bonus belief next game! Being able to pick ANY ability to add to your religion? Huge! I have two founder beliefs, Ceremonial Burial for +1 happiness / city, and Tithe for +1 gold / 4 people. I picked Holy Warriors, since I was about to attack the Mayans, but I haven't used it since I have been using Faith to buy Missionaries, and since I was able to produce enough units to be very strong anyways. I wish you could use a Great Prophet to change a belief. That would be really helpful.

I captured several Great Prophets from the Maya (they stupidly were sending them near our front line for some reason...worst AI mistake I have seen so far) and produced several of my own. I finished the Liberty tree quickly and build the Hagia Sophia as well. This let me Enhance my religion very soon after founding it. I used the other Prophets to build 3 holy sites near my capital, which is making around 50 faith by itself. I used a Prophet to wipe out the Mayan's religion in their capital after I conquered them, since their Capital / Holy City was the only place that was holding out against my Missionaries. My last Prophet is traveling to Carthage to wipe out Islam's Holy City, the only other Religion on my continent.

 

[RealHuhn]

Overall, missionaries seem to be pretty useless when you want to spread your religion to an AI that has its own religion.

Great prophets do a much better job but somehow, they don't generate any pressure and the original religion slowly grows back again.

It's pretty confusing.

 

[bonafide11]

I'm playing as Byzantine, and I used my additional belief to increase the amount of pressure my religion exerts, and I used my enhancer belief for my religion to reach 30% further. Besides the two other holy cities in my game, I've dominated the entire continent with my religion and I've only built one missionary. Once I spread it to a couple cities, it spread like wildfire. It was pretty nice.

There's another yet to be discovered continent though and I'm curious to see if I'll have any success spreading my religion there.

 

[kgoodrid]

One suggestion: You probably don't want to get multiple abilities like Holy Warriors / Cheap Missionaries / Special Buildings. Early on, you probably won't have enough Faith to spend on all three of those. Probably better to pick 1 or 2 instead of trying to spread your Faith too thin. Later on it may not be an issue, and you may end up with a Faith surplus instead.

 

[Hambil]

Try this for some OP action. Choose all food and growth related beliefs. Your cities grow like weeds. Add in one belief for +gold per x followers.

 

[wetroofwoof]

for a tall empire use holy sites. I have two cities and ~60 faith per turn. not founded a religion just use prophets for holy sites. I'm playing for cultural victory.

faith in itself is meaningless so you have to get a balance between choosing more faith-per-turn vs the bonuses religion gives to other aspects of the game.

 

[Hambil]

You can choose to allow the purchase of pre-industrial units with faith - it's hardly meaningless it depends on how you use it.

 

[Luciela]

Here's my strategy I do as the Byzantines. It favors passive and innate growth so that you won't have to spend any time spreading your religion manually; and so you can snag holy warriors or something similar:

- God of craftsman: +1 hammers in city with pop of three. (Pantheon)
I sometimes switch to the wonder based pantheon. The idea is to choose whichever helps you get the Stonehenge first. If the difference is negligible go God of craftsman for a bonus that carries through the whole game.

- Tithe: +1 gold for every 4 followers. (Founder)
Super effective at gold per turn benefits. helps you maintain large sized armies and huge maintenance costs.

- Feed the World: Shrine and Temples provide +1 food for each city. (Follower)
My second follower varies (as some religions are founded and take other beliefs) but its usually one that allows you to buy religious buildings with faith. Feed the World helps growth which is self explanatory. Holy Warriors (build pre-industrial land units with faith) is also very good with this strategy, as this strategy favors growth without the need for missionaries or GP's; thereby allowing you to spend future faith purely on military troops. though I use it in many games Followers are a really circumstantial entity I find.

- Itinherent preachers: religion spreads to cities 30% away. (Bonus Belief)
I've found through a small trial that this is probably the best innately way to spread your religion. It's more effective at creating pressure than Religious texts (religion spreads 34% faster) because it affects a greater number of cities at once and the increase to expansion allows it to travel the continent (and possibly more) like wildfire. If someone founds a religion first and snags this, get Religious texts imo.

- Religious texts: Religions spreads 34% faster (64% with printing press)
If you can get this with Itinherent preachers, no religion will be able to compete. You will exert more pressure per city and will have more cities than others to reinforce that pressure more. Simply use 1 or 2 great prophets to speed up the process or set up holy sites. You won't always get this one, and there are other flexible enhancers.

This has worked very well for me. I've had about 3-4 full playthroughs mixing things up and I've found this to be very effective.

 

[Zaimejs]

Is there a religious victory option?

 

[tenera]

There are two main benefits I've taken advantage of in my current game as the Celts.

One is that converting a city state seems to increase your resting point. I don't recall the exact numbers, but I believe it is 10 or 15 points. Meanwhile offering protection also increases it by 10. This leaves you at a minor investment (or quest bonus) away from being friends. Should one choose o also go patronage, you actually start out and default to a friendly status by combining the two bonuses!

The other, was taking the Tithe founder belief (1gft per 4 followers). This made an amazing difference. Being the celts I was able to found my religion really quite early compared to the others, so I started receiving this bonus during the early classical era, really. Once it started to spread among my cities it very quickly took care of my early game monetary struggles. As I gained new technologies, and really developed a strong economy in it's own right, it became a very nice profit machine. I don't recall ever making ~80gpt surplus (with a sizable army, mind) in the medieval era before.

I remained the richest civ well into the late renaissance (on Emperor), wherein my main rival began to match me. We both consistently had 5-6k in the bank at any point, and we were spending heavily on a fierce naval war. To give an idea of how helpful the belief was. (as an aside, the naval battles were a looot of fun. Using privateers to steal England's Ships of the Line , in particular).

That said, I did focus fairly strongly on gold throughout my empire, and I went as wide as land/opportunity would allow to further leverage this gold angle. And through that gold angle, support an army larger than I have ever played with before (about double in pointy sticks to my nearest competitor).

For the rest of my beliefs, I focused on happiness bonuses for two reasons. I intended to go wide to maximize the number of followers and gpt, and in the event that I converted AIs, they saw little benefit from the follower bonuses, seeing as how they have ridiculous happiness bonuses anyway. Stacking the happiness bonuses is in itself actually quite strong. I expanded very quickly and continue to do so still now in the industrial era, and I've conquered a number of puppets as well, and I've yet to go below 10 happiness (though it is usually much higher). That said, I am Liberty/Honour, and I am building defensive buildings, and taking advantage of the Ceiledh, circus, and stoneworks and so on. I've not built any of the Colosseum line, however.

One nice side benefit of the situation, however, was a lot of natural golden ages, and since they now give culture, this helped make up for my sheer number of cities, as well as further ridiculous-ifying my economy.

 

[kgoodrid]

Is there a religious victory option?

No. Religion can help you to achieve any of the other victory conditions, depending on how you set yours up.

 

[Gali]

If you want to spread get religious texts and use missionaries/prophets to create hubs. Beeline for areas without religion but the main thing early on is to have a city converted in any given area. That will spread it enoough on its own unless its being combated.

If you are facing another religion ingore holy city at least early too hard to combat and sorround it with cities. Key point is to avoid stengths and create religious crossfire using city states which are easy to convert, and religious less civs.