Multi religion has huge benefits- no penalties?

[vorius]

After playing Civ 4 for a while I am realizing just how incredibly powerful it is to have multiple religions in your cities well before the free religion civic.

For every religion in your city you may build one temple and one monestary. Each temple increases happiness (as well as culture) and each monestary increasing scientific output by 10% from that city (as well as more culture). And these bonuses stack! So if you have Buddhism and Taoism in one city, you can build two temples and two monestaries. Double the happiness,double the culture, double the scientific output!

Then of course if you actually found multiple religions in your cities you can build multiple shrines, spread multiple religions and thus collect alot more gold! The gold you collect through shrines is almost on the level of ridicule. I usually spend a little time building missionaries in every city to spread my religion throughout the world. I end up making so much money I could care less about how many cities I build and how many units I build. And this is with just ONE religion. If I found more than one religion I can multiply this bonus even more.

There seems to be no penatlies to having multiple religions to force you to make a decision. The only drawback to spreading multiple religions to other lands is that the foreign nation may convert to something other than your state religion and thus start to dislike you

I think one thing that could be changed is the gold collection form shrines.. it's just too much! And every city no matter how big or small gives you the same amount. Maybe make it so the larger cities give you more gold than smaller ones?

 

[Dida]

I agree, if multiple religions give multiple benefits, there should be drawbacks to balance it.
I still don't understand why some Buddhism population can be made happy by buiding a christian temple. This doesn't even make sense.

 

[Al Fredo]

I'm still struggling with the multi-religion concept. In the game I have now, I have a dual-holy city. Note this - I think that certain religous civics apply only to the 'state' relgion...or sometimes offer no bonus (Free Religion.). Also, it's a lot of work sending missionaries out. Additionally, the bonus from the monastary expires with some tech (can't remember).

I think it's not a bad thing...but you have to be serious and invest in religion, where you could be doing something else. I have a city with 3 relgions...and on the way to #4?!?

Also, how can you tell want gold you're gaining from one relgion or another. Shouldn't the Rel. Advisor tell you this?

 

[vorius]

IT would make more sense that the bonuses from temples/monestaries DO NOT stack, instead- you must build a temple or monestary for EVERY religion in your city in order to get the bonus. This would balance it out quite well and make you think twice about having multiple religions in each city. So if you have Buddhism and Judaism in one city, you need to build BOTH temples before getting just one +1 happiness (you have to make everyone happy). Because otherwise it just makes no sense... Why would a size 24 city with one religion and one temple get only +1 happiness from a temple that serves the entire population, whereas you can have a size 4 city with 4 religions and 4 temples for a total of +4 happiness? Each temple only serves a quarter of the population....

 

[Tre976]

its working wonders for Israel!

 

[vorius]

I'm still struggling with the multi-religion concept. In the game I have now, I have a dual-holy city. Note this - I think that certain religous civics apply only to the 'state' relgion...or sometimes offer no bonus (Free Religion.). Also, it's a lot of work sending missionaries out. Additionally, the bonus from the monastary expires with some tech (can't remember).

I think it's not a bad thing...but you have to be serious and invest in religion, where you could be doing something else. I have a city with 3 relgions...and on the way to #4?!?

Also, how can you tell want gold you're gaining from one relgion or another. Shouldn't the Rel. Advisor tell you this?

You gain gold from your religion after you build a shrine. Once the shrine is done you can enter the city overview screen where that shrine is built (the holy city) and next to it will be a +x gold telling you how much thats shrine is producing

 

[Mercade]

Of course having a religion in your city that is someone elses state religion is a drawback, but if you founded the religions yourself, that point is no longer valid. Sounds like a powerful ability indeed if there are no apparent drawbacks. I don't have enough experience with the game yet to comment on that.

 

[Dida]

If you have all the holy city, and spread your religions all over the place, you will be making so much gold, it is crazy.

 

[Anima Croatorum]

once you eliminate a dozen a$$holes, there is nothing to keep different religions from living in peace and tolerance.

 

[narmox]

Well maybe that works at the easy difficulty levels, but so far at Noble all I manage to do is found Judaism - every other religion I never get there first.

What level are you playing at, vorius?

 

[Seanirl]

Seems like maybe it needs to be a little harder to found more than one religion.

 

[Novaya Havoc]

I noticed this, too, but remember... it takes a LOT OF TIME to build missionaries, spread religion, and build all the temples/shrines/monestaries. It can take the whole game, and then you have little time for military production.

 

[vorius]

I noticed this, too, but remember... it takes a LOT OF TIME to build missionaries, spread religion, and build all the temples/shrines/monestaries. It can take the whole game, and then you have little time for military production.

Not for me... I had 3 cities cranking out a missionary every 2 turns. I spread my religion early in the game and by the time I had gunpowder units I was making enough money to spread and build a huge military.
It allowed me to conquer Egypt, India and England to let me totally control the largest conintent. All these new cities with maintenance, huge army and I'm still making plenty of money thanks to shrines. Still not enough money to use a spy though! But more than enough to continue towards my goal of domination victory.

 

[dreiche2]

in my current game on noble I found several relogions (at least three I think), and at least until now it doesn't help me so much.

First of all I had trouble creating Great Phrophets to build the shrines in the first place. Then the religions don't seem to spread very fast (and as I have founded them they are all in my empire), so mostly I have to do it by myself by building missionaries, and as long as there are are enough cities in range it makes no difference for the money I get if I send a second missionary in a city that already has a religion or send him to a new city...

So maybe the ammount of money you get from one holy shrine is unbalanced, but at least as I can tell so far having several religions doesn't seem to make it worse.

What actually might be a good idea is to conquer an enemy holy city so that he has already done the work for you...

On the happiness issue I also don't see a problem. I mean you can collect ressources to get more and more happiness points, so what's wrong about "collecting" religions to do the same?

 

[Daze]

Like Narmox says, you're playing on too low a level, there are going to be loads of ways of thrashing the AI on the easy levels, religion being just one, go onto a higher level and you'll find it much harder to get more than one religion, build loads of missionaries in the earlier game and build more than one temple per city (you'll be too busy making military units to stay alive)

 

[weimingshi]

I play on emperor difficulty. but have to admite i cheated on ressources. I air dropped wheat,rich, silk, copper, stone, marble, iron, sheep, cow, fur around my capital city before the game start.

anyway, the first hut my bard checked in gave me mysticism, so I could beat the AI to buddism. The key of religion is to get a great prophet early, before everyone else. I cranked up GP points in capital and was the first 1 to build a religious shrine. And buddism just keeps spreading automatically to every nation i get into contact with. I play on huge map with 18 civs. of the 17 AI civ, 10 adopted buddism, and I never build 1 missionary, buddism spread automatically to 3 other continent. by middle ages, I was swiming in gold, budda brings me about 40g per turn, i used those gold to beat ai to christian and islam. also if u build another special religieuse building, for each temple related to that building gives you a gold too.At late middle age, with 3 shrines and loads of temples, i was running 100% research and still had around 80 gold per turn. at industrial age, with 100% research rate my gold return is about 150per turn. Multi-religion is super powerful, with 3+ religion in all my cities, free religion civic really pays off, makes your city happy.

 

[jpowers]

How do you figure out what your state religion is? All through my last game I thought I was Confucian, but in the game wrap-up, it claimed I had never had a state religion. I never found any screen that let me set it, and none of the other Civs ever told me what religion were there state religions, even though they all claimed to not like me because they were different.

 

[Zhahz]

On a normal map you only have 6 or so AIs, so it's pretty easy to found more than one religion. I would imagine that on a larger map with more AIs this would be tougher to pull off. It also take effort to spread religion and I've had the AIs send missionaries at me so it can work both ways.

 

[xguild]

I really don't think this aspect is ubalanced if all the other civilizations in the game take advantage of the same relgious=power, Power=Money design formual.

It's true that if you play on Warlord, you are likely to found 2-3 religions, giving you a financial edge, however it gets tougher and tougher at the higher levels with more Civs as it should. On Prince you'll likely only found 1-2 religions and anything after that you are lucky to found any religions at all, at least that has been my experiance at my level of play.

There is a lot of historical truth to the way Civ 4 is setup in regards to religions. After all, religion was the foundation of power well into the 19th century and it was the primary source of money in the world well into the 16th century. As you progress into the Industrial era's however the effects of religion are replaced and out done by economics in Civ 4 as it was in real history. In essence religion is the economics of the early eras and historically that is accurate.

I do think there needs to be some programing in place that ensures that just as you can use religion to make money, the AI should be trying to do the same thing.

 

[Fieryphoenix]

You can see your state religion on the Religion Screen, of course! F7. Yours will be outlined in gold.

Note that if you have the Free Religion civic, you will not have a state religion.