The limit is kind of forced simply bc there are only X number of founder and enchance beliefs. If your religion number exceeds X, then you've denied at least one religion a founder belief and pretty much defeated the purpose of it. Also, you need to have some religiously neutral civilizaitons for religious civilizations to convert, otherwise there's no real way to spread your religion without angering someone. This is big for Founder beliefs like World Church which only provide benefits for followers in OTHER civilizations. That belief is totally nerfed if missionaries don't have neutral lands to convert followers from.
Plus anyone who adopted Religious Texts would just be even more unstoppable in that scenario.
So, yet again we're given a completely arbitrary limit because the devs could not craft a resilient system?
- If there are more founder beliefs than religions, then you need more founder beliefs OR allow over-lapping beliefs (might be tricky with certain individual beliefs...but they can be tweaked)
- spreading religion should not anger an opponent (unless they happen to be theocratic.....an aspect that could perhaps be tied to chosen religious beliefs, or to governmental systems, if Civ ever lets us have a 'government' again).
- religion needs to spread more easily, especially as the game progresses. You should not have 'unshakeable' cores of religion (if that were the case the world would never have known Christianity or Islam, because Judaism was founded in the region first).
- Civs should be able to choose to be secular after a certain point in the game. This will preserve religiosity in the late game should certain civs choose to remain religious, while also allowing civs to 'early adopt' secularism should they choose (with certain benefits and drawbacks, of course)
I still hold that Civ 5 is rife with excellent little micro additions (like having religion spawning tied to faith, rather than science; having culture build up over time to provide benefits; etc.), but these are ruined by a series of gross failures in the macro systems (like global happiness and limits on religions) which burst the immersion bubble and remind the player 'it's just a game, with game-rules to be played by).
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