Founding religion

[DrakeD]

Hey all. Been lurking here for years, so I guess its time to start contributing.

Seems like general opinion here is that its a bad idea to found religion on emperor and above. I think thats as useful as the 1,5 workers per city advice. More precise advice would be: Dont work unimproved tiles, usually means more than 1 worker per city.

So here goes on religion. If you build stonehenge or oracle, then its very likely that 1 of your first 3 GPs is gonna be a priest.
If you have ppl close by without religion by the time you finish oracle, CoL might be a good idea. Send your free missonary to your neighbour and you can potentially have lots of cities with your religion without spending hammers on missonaries. Then it might be worth using your priest on a shrine. Conclusion is that a shrine is only worth it if you can get lots cities with autospread.

But thats very circumstantial. On to more general advice. More often than not, your neighbours will have a religion so its not worth a shrine. Then consider bulbing theology or divine right. If you rely a lot on bueracrasy capital, then another monestry can make a big difference, and you get a tech for trading. And chanse at the AP.

This tread is inspired by my latest game. I had good production cities and a nice GP farm, but no good commerce city. So another monastry in bureaucracy capital made a big difference. I also got 3-4 techs and some gold by trading divine right around. Thats better yield than I get from the average GP.

 

[Benginal]

All good points. I think in general the position of most of the people on this forum, myself included, is that founding one of the first three religions -- meditation, polytheism, and monotheism -- is not a good idea. The rest are very fair game and often, as you say, even good ideas.

 

[Zechnophobe]

I think the real issue at stake is that a lot of the techs and buildings for religion based things are simply unnecessary. Early game, you only need one of meditation or polytheism to unlock code of laws and hereditary rule. You don't need monotheism, divine right, theology (or even drama in many cases). Heck, even Philosophy can be put off fairly easily until far into the game.

If you don't waste time building and researching any of this stuff, you save lots of resources.

Of course, considering that code of laws is so important, it is no9 wonder that most pictures show a human player in Confucianism .

 

[AutomatedTeller]

yeah - I think the advice is mainly to mean "go for worker techs early, not religious ones"

 

[DrakeD]

I think the real issue at stake is that a lot of the techs and buildings for religion based things are simply unnecessary. Early game, you only need one of meditation or polytheism to unlock code of laws and hereditary rule. You don't need monotheism, divine right, theology (or even drama in many cases). Heck, even Philosophy can be put off fairly easily until far into the game.

If you don't waste time building and researching any of this stuff, you save lots of resources.

Of course, considering that code of laws is so important, it is no9 wonder that most pictures show a human player in Confucianism .

I was assuming that you built either stonehenge or Oracle early game. More often than not, 1 of of your first 3 GP is gonna be a priest. Even if you try to avoid it. My point was that since you have a great priest anyway, how do you get the most from him? Another monastry and a tech to trade around seems better than settling him. Even if you have to selfresearch a little to get theology or divine right.

Im just saying that getting CoL from Oracle (using priest for shrine) or bulbing theology or divine right might be better than settling the great priest you got, even if chanse at scientist was 95 %. (Like my last game)

 

[lymond]

Well, I rarely build Stonehenge and I usually have a library and 2 scientists running by the time I build Oracle, if I do build it. If I found a religion later like Conf or conquer a holy city without a shrine, it's usually easy to get a GP later for the shrine. I'm not going to wait to pop a GP from say Oracle before trying to get my first GS out.

 

[AbsoluteZero]

You should do everything in your power and then some to assure you do not get a great priest, ever.

So building a shrine should be a non-issue because you do not have a GP, right?

However if I did get a GP I would consider bulbing theology, or maybe saving for a golden age.

Building a shrine is an afterthought. Maybe if I captured a holy city where the religion had been spread everywhere and it didn't have a shrine.


But the real reason you don't want to found early religions is because you want the AI's to be in as many different religions as possible. This keeps them from liking each other. If you take the early religions you have a higher chance of some religious nut ( Izzy, Justin ) converting everyone to 1 religion.

 

[Windsor]

You should do everything in your power and then some to assure you do not get a great priest, ever.

Don't agree at all. A shrine on a monopoly-religion is certainly worth it. Both for the gold and the increased spread.

 

[DrakeD]

You should do everything in your power and then some to assure you do not get a great priest, ever.

So building a shrine should be a non-issue because you do not have a GP, right?

However if I did get a GP I would consider bulbing theology, or maybe saving for a golden age.

Building a shrine is an afterthought. Maybe if I captured a holy city where the religion had been spread everywhere and it didn't have a shrine.


But the real reason you don't want to found early religions is because you want the AI's to be in as many different religions as possible. This keeps them from liking each other. If you take the early religions you have a higher chance of some religious nut ( Izzy, Justin ) converting everyone to 1 religion.

Yes correct. Im talking about using that great priest you didnt want.
You should consider a shrine if you oracle CoL AND your closest neighbour does not have a religion yet. Autospread is fast when there is no other religion close by. But like I said, that doesnt happen often.

This tread is inspired by my last game where I got priest at 5 % odds. Was hoping for scientist. I think that bulbing divine right and trading it around was better than settling him. In this particular game, I had no good commerce city, so that extra monastry was very nice in beuracrasy capital. You could also consider golden age like you said.

@windsor But its not worth using hammers on missonary's. Even if there is no other religion around. In the case of no other religion around, send 1 missonary to each neighbour and rely on AI and autospread. My only reason to spend hammers on missonary is to get another monastry in capital / commerce city.

 

[z0wb13]

i just played on emperor game (fractal/normal) as justinian. for funsies, i decided to go for buddhism as i started with mysticism. found out that my only neighbor was pacal, who happened to go for hinduism.

long story short, pacal and myself ended up founding everything except christianity. he got hindu and judaism (which he spread judiciously), and i got buddhism, confuscism, taoism (scientist bulb) and picked up islam as well. so even though i only had six cities, i was able to amass some serious culture, and won around 1890.

the caveat is that this game was a weird fluke, and that 99% of the time this would have been a dumb move. even going this route, i didn't build any of the shrines. because they would only have given me 6 /turn anyway. in this case, settling the great prophets was a better return as it gave me a couple of .

the other reason this strategy actually worked, though, was that i had really crummy land to start with, so instead of going worker first, i went with a settler to take advantage of the imperialistic trait and attempted to break out into better land. there wasn't much land, being on a small continent, but it blocked enough off for six cities.

but i figured that settler first gave me enough time for meditation plus agriculture and most or all of pottery before a worker had been built.

 

[FlyingSwan]

You should do everything in your power and then some to assure you do not get a great priest, ever.

Like changing the Preist into a Great merchant in worldbuilder for exampleonly joking,love your lets plays.I think you proved that religious economy isnt that great in one of your LPs with all that effort with founding religions and building missionarys.

So I agree,unwanted Gprophets should bulb Theo before they build a shrine in an obscure religion.The gold and techs you get from trading it are worth more than the GPT from a shrine.

 

[Benginal]

So I agree, unwanted Gprophets should bulb Theo before they build a shrine in an obscure religion.The gold and techs you get from trading it are worth more than the GPT from a shrine.

Bulbing isn't the best option if there's a chance of capturing a shrineless holy city of a well spread religion in the next ~50 turns. So before doing anything hasty check and see if Izzy has built the Buddhist Shrine and if she hasn't, well you were going to go kill her anyway.

 

[Um the Muse]

Grrr. In my latest game, I got a GP from SH (coupled with pyramids, I think). I decided a theo bulb would be great, fantastic, wonderful. It's a big one, surely I could trade it around and get lots of brownie points and gooder techs. The problem was, I didn't want anybody building the AP, since everybody is a different religion (except me, of course). So even though I'm surrounded by techers, I still didn't want to lose my monopoly on Theo and yet I didn't want the tech for myself, either. Using a GP even for Theo is a waste.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

no, it's not, not really, but you have to use it correctly.

You could either pick a civ to give the missionary too, thus creating further religious tension, or you could send it to your biggest research facility and make a monastery.

Also, you could build AP yourself, thus not having to worry about it. Nice thing about spending hammers on the AP is that you get them back with religious buildings. Once you build AP, you can trade theo around.

You could build Hagia Sophia, which isn't completely useless, as it gives you faster workers and engineer points, neither one of which is game breaking, but can be useful.

if you aren't in any religion at all, the holy city gets good culture and wherever you send it get some, too. Plus you can build temples.

It ain't useless - suboptimal, perhaps, but not useless.

 

[Um the Muse]

Yeah, guess I was just venting to some degree. Worthless is going too far, even if I could've used any other GP much better in that one game, that doesn't mean it's not worthwhile in any game.

I could probably actually use the Hagia Sofia, as I'm short on both workers and gold at 100% gold (over extended myself trying out a strategy I'd heard about). Plus I have the resource you need (stone?). I really should get it. I just feel like it'd be like throwing good money after bad.

 

[sydhe]

I don't go for the early religions. I try for Theology if I get a great prophet or I'm Sumeria, otherwise I go for Confucianism. If a religion spreads to me before then, I'll change to it but keep going for the one I'm going for. There's no law saying you have to convert to a religion if you found it.

 

[QuixotesGhost]

Many players are underwhelmed by religion because they ignore one of religion's primary benefits.

I'll give you a hint: It begins and ends with "E" and involves James Bond.

 

[Noogai]

Many players are underwhelmed by religion because they ignore one of religion's primary benefits.

I'll give you a hint: It begins and ends with "E" and involves James Bond.

I have actually missed that benefit, what is it actually? Cheaper missions? How much cheaper? How do you get them? Do you need a self-built shrine?

 

[coanda]

I have actually missed that benefit, what is it actually? Cheaper missions? How much cheaper? How do you get them? Do you need a self-built shrine?

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=252496

You get a 15% discount if the target city has your state religion, but the target civ does not have your state religion (costs multiplied by 0.85).

You get a 25% discount if the target city has your state religion and you have the holy city (costs multiplied by 0.75).

The two bonuses can stack - if the target civ doesn't have your state religion, the target city does, and you have the holy city, you get a 40% discount (costs multiplied by 0.6).

That last option, in particular, can make or break espionage economies - getting almost twice as many beakers for every point of espionage spent is... significant.

 

[Noogai]

I see, so GP combined with Gspy is quote nice with 0.1 cost multiplier (after waiting a while). But I dont think you can put up economy like that very easily in most of the games.