Benefiting from multiple religions

[ABigCivFan]

This had probably been observed/discussed many times, but I just learned yesterday playing China-Qin/Immortal/Standard size/Pangeea.

The 10% science boost by monesteries from different religions stack!

This is not much for your super science which might already have 250% science boost, but for all other major science cities, +50% boosts from 5 monesteries rocks!

The missionaries and monesteries are cheap so this is easy to achieve. Since I only had 6 cities on that map before boxed in, it wasn't much of a micro-manage issue to convert my cities to multi-religion. It is really funny to see these armies of different missionaries within your border and converting your own cities

Also with your top cities, you could also mass culture by producing multiple religion specific buildings.

Aside from the topic, I also learned the power of Free Market. It gives such a powerful boost to your gold coins. In my game, I maintained good relations with my furthest neighbors, gifted them Economics, Corporation, and bribed then into switching into Free Market, within a few turns, my science DOUBLED! (i was running 90% science).

If you play a non-rushing civ or no early resource for rushing on Immortal+ levels, and limited to a few cities, you can try to tech/res-whoring and play nice guy until Assembly line. I found that is a good window of oppotunity for your to strike because by then, all your cities have infrustructures built, and can produce units quickly. Just mass rifleman/Calvary/Canons. Save some $ and upgrade all rifles to Infantry, I tried this with Qin (protective), those lvl5 infantries kicked ass. I tried to expand before that point but was consistantly weaker without an early rush.

I thought i was an expert, but still learn something new every game.

 

[svv]

Well, I guess it depends on what you regard as "cheap." I think monestaries are pretty expensive if you're just building them for the 10 percent science boost, given that that will go away when you hit Scientific Method. However, they never lose their ability to crank out missionaries, and they can be useful if you have well placed shrines.

One thing I find more useful about multiple religions in a city is that each temple will give you a happy face. Also, if you're in free religion (which I'm usually not, being in Pacifism instead), each religion gives you a happiness boost.

Finally, if you're going for a cultural victory, multiple religions in each city should be considered nearly essential, so that you can build temples for all of them in at least eight (on huge maps) cities, thus allowing you to build two cathedral-type buildings for each religion in your second and third culture cities (I'm assuming that you won't need cathedrals in one city, probably your original capital, because it'll probably already be well ahead of the other two).