Can't capture shrines?

[svv]

I've got serious builders' disease, so this time when I drew Caeser I decided to try some serious warmongering. I went after iron working early, founded my third city next to an iron deposit, and started cranking out Praetorians (and later, catapults).

It's working pretty well, though the upkeep on all the cities I've kept has my tech slider down to 20 percent and I think I'm permanently way behind in tech. Of course, doing it this way, I didn't found any religions. I figured I'd steal some others' holy cities.

Well, I've captured two of them (including the one with the dominant religion of the continent). But, even though they still show that they're the holy cities (with the little sun over the religious symbol by the city name), when I look at it, I see no sign of a shrine, and no indication that I'm getting any money.

Can you just not capture shrines? Or, do I need to build a temple or something to turn them back on? I could really use the cash!

 

[bovinespy]

You need to generate a Great Prophet and have him construct the shrine. If you want to capture an intact shrine, check the Wonders list in the Game Info.

 

[Murky]

Yes, you can capture a shrine but the AI has to have generated a Great Prophet and built the shrine for it to be captured. When they do this messages about the GP popping and the shring being built should appear.

 

[svv]

Ahhh, I guess that's it - they must have never used a GP to build the shrines. Lazy gits.

 

[UncleJJ]

In one game I played I was planning to rush Izzy with an axe stack but the barbarians delayed me. She had founded Buddhism in Madrid and the culture defence quickly hit 60% so I had to wait to research construction and build some catapults.

I was frustrated. So was she and she declared war on me! I beat up her silly attacks and then just as I was about to take Madrid I got the message she had built the Holy shrine there. How I laughed and realised that rushing things is not always the best option, and I had got myself a free great prophet thanks to the delay.

 

[Crighton]

Almost universally the AI pops that shrine right quick. I personally haven't had the experience of taking a holy city without one (course, I'm always waging a war of religious unification rather than conversion so the AI tends to get more time to build the opposite religions).

 

[bassist2119]

Though this is a game where you're almost always better off attacking now and building later, Religious shrines are certainly an exception. Would you rather the GP that creates the shrine come out of your limited pool of great people or theirs?

 

[CivDude86]

Not that anyone cares but captured shrines don't generate

 

[cabert]

Not that anyone cares but captured shrines don't generate

but holy cities do (no state religion or the right state religion)

 

[svv]

Though this is a game where you're almost always better off attacking now and building later, Religious shrines are certainly an exception. Would you rather the GP that creates the shrine come out of your limited pool of great people or theirs?

The problem is they may never get around to it. I've now won this game with a domination victory in 1385, and apparently nobody ever built a shrine. I never got a Great Prophet to use. The AI held the holy city of Christianity until very recently, but never built the danged shrine.