I'm amazed it took till we got to page 5 before someone mentioned this:
SlothMD is outrageously exagerating the benefits of Holy Cities in CivIV. In fact his religion strats are so full of holes it boggles the mind, and I'm angry that he's misrepresenting the whole system just because he feels like he need to prove a point.
For example:
SlothMD said:
4) Religion broke the cultural system, allowing you to form a new city up next to the opponent's borders, spam 6 religions into it right away, and rush-build all the temples and monasteries to immediately start drowning out the native culture
Are you nuts? First, "rush-build" - there's only two ways to rush-build in CIV4, Slavery and Universal Sufferage. If you can rush that many temples in a border city with slavery in a reasonable time-frame, then well you're a better man than I, and why not whip that many hammers worth of units instead and just attack and bugger culture? Or you can run Universal Sufferage (instead of godlike Representation) with the Pyramids and spend a ton of cash on
6 bloody culture and 6 happiness? As far as Monastaries go, either you are rush-building them at a time where the gold/hammer costs are going to be obscene for the little benefit that they give you, or they'll soon go obsolete to SciMeth.
Why did it take till page 5 to call SlothMD out on this?
Here are the facts about religion in CivIV:
1. Going early religion (Buddhism, Hinduism, Judiasm) incurs a HUGE economic cost on you. Delaying early worker techs is often a crippling economic blow, that steamrolls into you falling further and further behind. Less improved terrain specials worked translates into smaller cities, less cities, lower productive capacity, ******ed tech pace, ect. ect. ect. Going early religion is a very rarely an ideal strategy and should only be attempted when the stars align. It's a function of starting techs and terrain - like Spain, who starts with Mysticism and Fishing, if she grabs a seafood start then early religion might be a good idea - but outside of starts like that early religion is often a very bad idea. Players who play lower difficulty levels don't really see this because you aren't punished enough for it there. Trust me though, your addiction to religion is holding you back from the next difficulty level.
2. Later Religions don't have as much value since by the time that things like Confusionism, Taoism, and Chrisitianty are founded the earlier religions have already taken root. You can convert a neighbor away from a competeing religion, but it requires a
signifigant hammer investment. Sure, you can share a dominant religion for diplomacy then have a different founded religion for shrine income, but this presented you with the problem that you basically have to spread two religions, the foreign one to your own cities so you can get state religion benefits, and your founded one abroad for shrine income. Also doing this denies you one of the primary benefits of founding a holy city - reduced espionage costs.
3. On Temples. Compared to other sources of gaining happy, Temples are very expensive hammer-wise. Temples are only worth building in most cases if A. you have no other option for happiness; B. you build one of the wonders that give temples more bang for thier buck; C. you are spirtual. +1 culture is small potatoes.
Wander into the "Strategy & Tips" for Civ IV section sometime, notice how many top-level players recommed Religion founding (and
multiple religion foundings at that, which is the reason that a lot of posters seem to think that it was somehow OP in CivIV). The answer? Next to none.
("Appeal to authority, blah, blah, blah" --- SlothMD. )
I'm normally not this abrasive, but the dismissive and arogant way that SlothMD is adressing his fellow posters is very much getting on my nerves.