cornering the market on religon

[oawiefga]

How feasible or realistic is it to corner the market on religon? For a single player to found all the world's religons?

It would seem that the player that can pull this off can gain a big edge in diplomacy early on and hopefully prevent the AI civs from benefiting from the free religon civ later on.

Is it worth the opportunity cost of having to prioritize the religous techs when researching?

 

[bestbrian]

It's definitely doable on lower levels, but it's not really an optimal strategy. It's pretty much something you do to see if you can, and what you do about it then.

And playing on the lower levels where this is feasible, I wouldn't worry too much about opportunity cost. Judicious trades and tech advantages should carry you along quite nicely.

 

[Joshua368]

I've done it before on low levels. It doesn't really give you an edge in diplomacy though, your religions will randomly autospread to other civs and unless you actively spam missionaries everyone will adopt random religions.

 

[Willem]

You'll also have to create so many Great Priests in order to build all the shrines that you'll pretty much not be able to create anything else.

 

[Refar]

The real problem are only the very early 2 - hard to get both Meditation & Poly in time. Once you manage this (being the only Civ starting with Mysticism does help) the rest should be easy.

Overall a heavy religious strategy comes at very high cost, while the spoils hardly offset it. It's not only the 'odd' techpath you need to go in the beginning. To really leverage religions you also need Great Prophets and lots of hammers in missionaires.

On Noble i once even managed to get my Capital to a 7x Holy City. Needles to say this is even less optimal strategy...

 

[Willem]

On Noble i once even managed to get my Capital to a 7x Holy City. Needles to say this is even less optimal strategy...

Frankly I find that hard to believe, unless you were playing an OCC game. A religion will not be founded in your capital if there any other cities in place.

 

[Refar]

Frankly I find that hard to believe, unless you were playing an OCC game. A religion will not be founded in your capital if there any other cities in place.

Then obviously i did not settle any cities, before reaching divine right. This is why it is "even less optimal strategy".

 

[mechaerik]

I've done it once. Some of the religions are a bit out of the way of my normal path (i usually trade for meditation) like Divine Right, which i only get if i have a big religion (spiral minet). I usually try for Monotheism and Theology (for theocracy).

 

[bestbrian]

If you do this you're doing it just for the heck of it, not because it's a smart thing to do. Shrine your first religion and spread it like mad. Don't spread the others to your neighbors and don't shrine them; even if they autospread it shouldn't be enough to change any other civ's state religion. Spread the other 6 religions in your three culture cities (yes, you're going for a culture win). If you build the Great Prophet wonders and run priests in your GP farm, you can actually bulb most of the techs for the religions without having to really deviate from what you might consider a more ideal tech path.

If you spread that first religion well enough, an AP win might be possible.

 

[Cashew]

I wouldn't want to on any difficulty, but the only difficulties you can do it on are not worth mentioning.

 

[Spartan117]

I cut down the giant earth map to include just the eurasian and african continents. Since the map is like 140 by something, having one shrine on a popular religion can be immensely rewarding. There are so many cities that the amount of money returned is a huge plus. But on like a standard map the total amount of cities on a map are minimal and simply put there is not likely not enough cities to generate much revenue to concentrate on using religion as the backbone of an economy. It can be viable under the right conditions but for the most part should not really be attempted especially on smaller maps and higher difficulties.

Edit: My post applies to having really one religion not actually having 7 religions. To even have that many great prophets for all the shrines is borderline infeasible let alone starting all 7 religions. To even attempt to research all the religious techs with the goal of starting every religions is a general bad strategy.

 

[btgwynn]

Getting all the religions is a novice player's version of building every wonder: Amusing to try, but not a great strategy.

 

[Iranon]

You might actually help the AI if you do this.

Because of a human's edge in warfare, the biggest long-term threat is rarely on my home continent. There aren't many ways to slow down the far-away AIs but I can try by...

- winning races for freebies
- hogging high-impact wonders
- not hogging religions (to prevent a love-fest abroad)

 

[Skallagrimson]

I've conquered all the shrines.

 

[bestbrian]

I've conquered all the shrines.

I've razed all the shrines.

(My "Isabella: The Religion Hating Atheist Game". Good times.)

 

[Tatran]

On Noble i once even managed to get my Capital to a 7x Holy City. Needles to say this is even less optimal strategy...

As Isabella I've managed to do it at Monarch, but at the end my neighbor
Brennus became a problem. He went to Free Religion, so I wasn't safe anymore.

 

[Turquoiside]

Ever read "The Cuban Isolationists"? Check it in Succession games, Stories and Tales. Though, this was Vanilla. Spain is probably the only civ this is viable with. Fishing plus religion makes it possible.

 

[Samy]

I did this in my current game. I echo some of the points mentioned:

1) The toughest trick is getting the first two. Usually when you go for one, *somebody* else is going for the other. Having Mysticism to start helps. Low difficulty level helps by letting you tech so fast you can do two before any others can do one. Once you've got Meditation and Polytheism you're almost assured to get the rest if you keep your focus on beelining them and don't get distracted.

2) Getting seven prophets to build all the religion headquarters is going to take a while.

3) Running No State Religion will give you kickass bonuses. +5 culture for every single holy city. That's a real big help with pushing your boundaries especially in early and even midgame. I run Creative + Stonehenge, and receiving a holy city into a newly founded frontier city has been a godsend -- +8/turn before even building any buildings. +16/turn before buildings once I hit free speech!! If you don't settle any cities until Divine Right, you'd get a whopping +35 culture per turn into your capital just from the seven holy cities.