Exactly monetary advantage of early religons

[Pius Hermit]

Hi folks,
first i have to say sorry for my bad english - please correct me, when i make
mistakes - i want to improve.
Now: I often read about a possibility to earn much money with discovering
a new religion... But i can not calculate the advantage exactly.
When i invest researching time in religions i miss important city-building-up possibilities with my workers.
So my question: how many gold (esp. keeping research on 100%) gives on an average a religion?

 

[vodkamattvt]

Ive switched from an early religion type, to wood chop+wonders+late religion. I usually chop out my first settler, get my second city. By now I have bronze working and whatever resource tech is in my city borders. Go for Mysticism and chop out stonehenge. Then go directly for Oracle and chop/build it (one chop is fine) and research writing in between, by the time you get oracle I get code of laws and get confucianism. Right after I get confucianism I get my great prophet and hammer out the religous building and start building up settlers to expand.

Im sure this is not the optimal strategy, but I like it because I play the chinese as Ind/Financial and find that confucianism makes the logical choice

The money advantage of religions is nothing unless you get a great prophet. So unless you build a couple great prophet wonders early, you arent going to get much except culture. Later there is a wonder, the Spiral something, that you can build to further get money from religion. With an early prophet and some lucky spreading, you can fund a couple cities you wouldnt have been able to afford.

 

[Pius Hermit]

hi vodkamattvt,
thank you for your response.
I think you mean the special buildings like (in german) Spiralminarett, Geburtskirche...
But they give you just 1 Gold for every city with this religion.
With early scientific-research in research buildings you will get more
research points i think.
But an other question: If a (foreign) city has two religions, an you have both special buildings: will you get 2 Gold for this city?
this could be a very big advantage for you, if you research for nearby every religion and build every relion-special-building...

 

[Ryozo]

Yup! In one of my games I was able to get 2 religions fairly quickly and my captical got both holy cities. I was generating money from both and it was quite a nice economy boost.

 

[yoshi74]

Its mostly a question how much you spread this religion around. You get one coin for any city with this relegion, with bank/marked/grocery this are alrealy two coins. If you even build the wall street in a holy city this adds up to three coins per city. So if you have 10 cities all with this relgion this alone could add to 30 gpt. Nothing to dismiss even in the late game. Now imagine to spread this religion around the globe. Missionaries are produced in in the industriel age in 1-2 turns, so putting one in any city on the globe can be a lot of money... Easily pays the maintain cost of your whole empire alone, lets you run 100% science.
Now add some more relgions to it and you can even upgrade like mad or rush city production. The possibilities are really great

 

[cleverhandle]

Religion is really a long-term advantage more than anything else. Even if you can manage to snag a Great Prophet reasonably early, you're probably not going to get much more than 20gpt out of your shrine for a while. That's nice, but hardly earth-shattering. The real monetary value comes in later on, as you can build up the Holy City with multipliers and spread your religion further. Particularly important is the fact that the +1gpt comes in as pure revenue *before multipliers* and is not allocated to research. With a market, grocer, and bank in the Holy City, every city with that religion gets you 2gpt. With Wall Street, that's 3gpt. In a recent game, I was fortunate enough to get both of my two religions' Holy Cities in the same place - towards the end of the game, having spread both religions to roughly 40-50 cities around the world that comes out to 250-300 gpt. That's impressive. But like most other things in the game, it takes long-term development to get the most out of it - not just building missionaries, but also ensuring you get Open Borders agreements with the right civs at the right times.

 

[teoks]

wow i didnt know the gold bonuses from wall street/bank/market/grocer could work with holy cities...thats a nice tip, gotta try that next game

i wonder what a city with 5 shrines and all the above buildings would be capable of...

 

[Sir Toma]

What i do is get 1 religion (usually Hinduism) to be my state religion and spread it among the AI cities as well as all of my own.
Any religions i get after that i only spread around my own cities for theculture bonus of temples and cathedrals as its almost impossible to spread a second non-state religion in the AI cities while it's quite easy in you own.
Even though you get less money it saves you alot of missionaries and can still net you around 16-20 gold at about the start of the Medieval era.

Edit: In the cities that you build the shrines make sure you fill it with banks markets etc. because it sends that shrine income through the roof

 

[teoks]

on a sidenote, how are science and gold related? i would have thought setting 100% science would divert all my income into beakers, but apparently i can still get a gold profit with full science output. how does the game mechanics work for this anyone?

 

[Dairuka]

Early Religions have one significant boost over most other strategies.

+10% bonuses from building monestaries. Which if you get the three early religions is a larger bonus than the library from Writing. The downside is the production cost is about twice as much as building a library.

Just remember that these building bonuses stack with libraries. So if you keep to yourself up to the Renessaince Era, you'll have a significant advantage over people without multiple religions. Especially in games with lots of civilizations.

This makes religion-rushes a viable strategy.

Just something to think about.

 

[spiceant]

playing as the japanese (organized/agressive - fishing/wheel) on monarch, i dont go for any religions, i usually let rivals donate a religion to my area while i build up in my food and hammer heavy areas so i can build up a military to compensate for the early settler/archer rush. if i would go for a religion i would have to divert a lot of hammers to monastarys, i would also divert more productivity into growing my citys to make use of their size potential which leaves me open to offenses from other people and also slows down my expansion phase.

Getting a religion:

• You must research religion quickly or suffer from researching religions after someone else does.
• You get a diplomatic handicap toward any heathen civs unless you decide to drop the advantage of having a religion
• Congrats, you got a religion. now the wanna be barbarians next door can zerg rush you with swords/axeman as you were to busy with superstition.

not getting a religion

• you will be researching techs which you probably cant use for a lil while
• no angry civs with heathen religions
• other civs will divert production into monastarys and missionarys making them potential targets for attack
• build up something... else (barracks/army perhaps?). Early domination is great.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

on a sidenote, how are science and gold related? i would have thought setting 100% science would divert all my income into beakers, but apparently i can still get a gold profit with full science output. how does the game mechanics work for this anyone?

The problem is there are two types of things that use the same 'gold' icon

1-Commerce (made from your Palace, Trade routes, and Terrain, Cottages, etc.)
Your commerce for a city is generated, has bonuses added to it to increase the total amount of commerce (Harbors), and then it is 'split' into amounts that are base Gold, base Science, base Culture.

2-Gold, (comes from Commerce, Shrines, Wealth production, possible other sources*) this is collected from its various sources and bonuses from banks+ Marketplaces, etc. are used on it to generate the Gold that goes into your Treasury.

*I believe Specialists and the Spiral Minaret generate Gold and not Commerce, but I'm not completely sure.

Science and culture are two other things that commerce can turn into and also have their own sources (definitely specialists, as well as the sliders and production)

 

[teoks]

ah thx for the info krikkitone. but i guess that to a certain extent, gold does equal commerce since you could now increase your science output without getting a deficit. unless you are already at 100% science

 

[yoshi74]

@spiceant

Of cource the religios way isn't the only valid. Going for the secular techs gives more worker actions, therefore more production and more units to you.

But its not a way without drawbacks. Unless you play with raging barbs or next to a agressvi leader a too fast strong military isn't really usefull. Not even for conquest, because without the additional income its harder to expand. Also your cities will grow faster to the unhappiness limit, and the secular war to fight this (exept some luck with happiness resources nearby) is hereditary rule, which unfortunatly is a follow tech of the early religion techs.

You note the diplo-drawback. But unless your neighbor just discovered another religion you have a good chance that he adopts your religion. Even when i decide not to make a state religion i still can build temples and monastaries. Infrastructure isn't wrong in this game.

Its good that there are several possible ways, and depending on the situation one may be better than the other. But in general both are pretty strong (but imo the religios way is easier to start with )