7 religions

[ChienFou]

I've been lurking for a while, watching sisiutil's ALC games and hopefully learning a bit. I'd moved up from noble to Prince as a result and am making progress there, but decided to drop back a level to practice some strategy. I started a standard, fractal noble game (Civ 1.61) and got the Romans, popped a couple of huts and my scouts discovered I was on an island with mansa musa and asuko. So I tried a praetorian rush on mm and that worked like a dream. I reduced him to one city; threatened to beat the bejasus out of him, collected about 6 techs when I sued for peace and then finished him off when our peace treaty expired.

Having not bothered with any religions I made a bee-line for Confucianism and got that, which solved the growth problems for my small cities. Since there was nothing else much to do as I'd built just about everything in all my cities I went on bee-lining religions and had a shot at asuko. Four of the praetorians had got to CR3, so I did the same to asuko (having pillaged him to pieces), sued for peace when he was down to Delhi, collected some more cheap techs and then checked the Religion page. Delhi had the last two religions, so I took out Delhi when the treaty expired so I could claim the complete set.

I haven't met anyone else yet, just made it to Liberalism and took gunpowder as it cost the most flasks. Obviously I should go for optics and see if I can do a Magellan for the extra sea moves, but I have a question.

If I've got the lot and I don't open my borders will anyone else get any religion at all? I reckon I ought to be able to win the tech race even on my own, as I'm whipping Universities; have Versailles and Forbidden Palace, so I've got some pretty l33t output.

Oh! what to do next?

 

[Mercenary82]

You should post Screenshots or upload a save. Without that I still suggest getting optics so you can meet all the other AI's before you fall to far behind in tech. You've wiped out your only trading partners you have, so you need more asap. Since you have all your holy cities on an island away from other civs, the religions won't spread until you get astronomy.

 

[KMadCandy]

first of all, howdy and welcome to CFC

open borders don't actually affect religion spread at all, even if you did have other civs left on your continent. trade routes are what matters. trades routes exist via roads/rivers/coast/ocean regardless of open borders to an extent. closed borders can stop them between some civs at places along the way. for example if the barbs build a city along a river that's connecting you and england, then your route closes for trading resources. i do not know if that counts for religion spread, it does count for the trade route icon. having the shrine built in the holy city increases the chance of that religion spreading. a religion won't ever naturally spread to a city that has a religion in it already. so if you're trying for one big happy religious family, spreading your religion of choice to friends via missionaries prevents any other from spreading to cities you catch which can be quite useful, and is the only way to get your preferred religion to cities that did have another spread there first.

i've had some weird situations tho. the other day i had a religion spread from my holy city to a nearby city i'd just founded that didn't have a trade route yet. there was no little triangle icon, resources weren't hooked up between the cities, i doublechecked it since i was shocked. they were both coastal cities but i didn't know sailing yet. so i dunno what's up with that. maybe any civ knowing sailing turns the switch?

as i understand the code, your religions won't spread overseas until you know astronomy. maybe just anybody knowing astronomy works? but i do know that closed borders won't stop the spread once spread is possible, if a trade route does exist (meaning is possible, even if you don't know about it). i actually met a civ i'd not known existed when my state religion spread to cathy once. archi map and i thought i'd met everyone; it actually scared me! obviously i didn't have open borders with her prior to that or know any potential trade route. i bought her world map and that showed that she didn't know where i was either.

 

[Mercenary82]

I think religions can spread without trade routes if the city is close by. I'm not completley sure about this, but I've seen it happen also and thats the only explanation I have for when that happens.

 

[Greeneyedzombie]

you need astronomy for your religions to spread overseas. openborders are not nescasary.

 

[JIM G]

I had religion spread to a seperate continant long before anyone even had caravels, let alone astromony.
But that was in one of my first games a couple of years back so it may have been a bug.

 

[ChienFou]

Thanks guys. One error, it was ghandi not asuko, but in the grand scheme of things it's not important. So i should get optics, spread all my religions around my island (I've got nothing else to do), decide on one religion and spread that as far and fast as possible once i've met the other AI's. thanks a lot; and thanks for the answers.

 

[OTAKUjbski]

BTW, I play Noble / Prince solo games. I've won a couple Monarch games, but I still need to hone my city specialization skills.

As far as I've seen so far, religion is more likely to spread through a trade route but otherwise does not require one.

The only requirement I know of for automatic religion spread is for the "target" city to have no religion present.

As far as the original question, I'd go for Optics without a doubt. If not for any other reason than to figure out where you stand in the arms / tech / religion / whatever race.

If I see I'm on a continent / fractal / archipelago, I focus heavy on navy techs trying skip as many pre-Industrial land-military techs as is possible. (I just use my wall of Ironclads to keep Frigates and Galleys off my coast in case of war.)

 

[cabert]

I'd go cultural, but that's just me.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

trade routes are what matters.

Not quite precise. Being TradeNetworkConnected is what matters. This is not quite the same thing (among other bits, TradeNetworkConnected doesn't require open boarders).

i've had some weird situations tho. the other day i had a religion spread from my holy city to a nearby city i'd just founded that didn't have a trade route yet. there was no little triangle icon, resources weren't hooked up between the cities, i doublechecked it since i was shocked. they were both coastal cities but i didn't know sailing yet. so i dunno what's up with that. maybe any civ knowing sailing turns the switch?

Not any civ - Sailing won't connect cities in the fog, on other continents, and so on.

There's also the possibility of the cities being connected via some other civ (my capital is connected to your capital by river, and to your second city by coast, creating a connection between your cities).

But I'm not 100% certain of either of these - it would be nice to see some examples to work out what happened. But it's difficult to arrange - you essentially need a save of the game just before you hit end turn immediately prior to the religion spreading to your cities to ensure that you didn't screw up the RNG.

 

[Welnic]

I'd go cultural, but that's just me.

Sounds like the way to go to me, also.

 

[oyzar]

you dont actually need to tech trade much on prince so shouldnt be a problem winning on your own... Depending on your land mass domination might be a good option.

 

[KMadCandy]

Not quite precise. Being TradeNetworkConnected is what matters. This is not quite the same thing (among other bits, TradeNetworkConnected doesn't require open boarders).

oh cool! i was struggling to figure out how to phrase the rivers making it happen thing without saying trade routes, that would indeed work as a phrase! thanks

 

[NeoHitler]

Yea it is actually being connected through trade routes. Now if you get the civic with no foreign trade routes they might not spread.

I had something weird happen once. There was a city halfway across the continent-started by an AI I traded a lot with and shared a border with-but the city wasn't connected to my empire-and my state religion (which I had the shrine to) just jumped to that city.

 

[KMadCandy]

i think it's also different from trade routes in that you officially get a trade route with a civ when your capital is connected with their capital. but for religion spread, a city just needs a network connection with the holy city, capitals don't matter at all. VOU can probably confirm/deny that.

i'm still befuddled how it spread from my capital/holy city to my 2nd city before they were connected, but i'm not complaining *giggle*.

 

[ChienFou]

Once more thanks all. I'd never tried culture before, but took cabert's advice. It seemed you should hear the outcome after all your help. I didn't win the RTW race but I spammed missionaries like crazy for a while. NB getting the 6th and 7th religions into a city takes a forklift truck full of missionaries. I decided on 3 culture cities, built 7 temples and as many shrines (cathedrals, what do we call them here?) as possible (I couldn't figure out why you can't build all 7 shrines). I used the priests to produce Great priests and built all 7 religious buildings. By then I'd got the research slider set on the end stop and was on 100% for the rest of the game.

I traded a bit with the AI, but it was clear I was winning the tech race. Once I was clear in the tech race I set a couple of cities to producing GP which I used to build the culture in my 3rd city. To pass the time I took out another island to get my pop over 50% so i wouldn't get screwed in the UN. (I tried the diplo win, but they wouldn't have it) Nobody seemed to have much religion by the end except me. I ended up running 90% culture, 10% research, got to FutTech 3, and the first great artist produced the 4000 I needed to finish the game when I produced the great work in my 3rd city (which I'd got producing 660 culture per turn). Not a great score, but it's the first time I've specialised my cities at all so I learnt quite a bit.

Cheers guys, I hope the story of 7 religions wasn't a waste of your time, and thanks for all your kind words. (like I'm a 60 yr old nerd who was brought up on Civ1 !) ChienFou

 

[cabert]

congrats on a win, even a late one is still a good one
I didn't give too much detail in my previous post, but in my mind, going cultural meant 100% culture asap.
The final research certainly didn't do you much good.

 

[Stolen Rutters]

I had religion spread to a seperate continent long before anyone even had caravels, let alone astromony.
But that was in one of my first games a couple of years back so it may have been a bug.

Sometimes if the continent is separated from another one by a single ocean tile (more common on archipelago), a culture square on the ocean tile will extend your ability to sail, helping you reach other continents (maybe helping not so far away continents connect to your trade network). Your galleys can move through an ocean tile inside your cultural borders so it makes sense that you can trade through the tile before astronomy as well.

Now if it were a faraway continent with no helpful coast linking them near the poles or something, then you got me there.

 

[Jerrymander]

There's also the possibility of the cities being connected via some other civ (my capital is connected to your capital by river, and to your second city by coast, creating a connection between your cities).

This happened to me. I was playing as Augustus in Warlords, and I founded Pisae on the northern tip of the continent. I hadn't yet connected it to my trade network, and it wasn't on the coast. But a road ran through to Russia'a capital (Open Borders), which was on the same river as Pisae. Yay. It was in my trade network.