How to spread your religion

[xonixs]

Why to spread religion in the first place?
This can help you to gain friends and allies. Together you can rally and wipe out your religous foes, or force them to believe in your religion.

Or just having a good reason for going to war
Finally you can build UN and win a diplomatic victory.

Always seek peace. This will ensure open borders and your converters can do their job.

Starting your civ:
So you pick a good spot for your first city, the capital. It should be a place with trees. But dont chop all trees as soon as possible.

Let your capital reach 3000 inhabitants before building a worker, discover bronze working so u can get production from trees.
Build a settler with your capital. When you have builded the settler build the oracle.
after that aim to discover priesthood, i think it is, so you can build the Oracle. The Oracle gives you one free tech.
If your timing is right you can choose a tech that will give you a religion when you have finished the oracle.

When you have builded the Oracle you should have 2 cities. In the smaller city you will found the religion and it will become a holy city, and it will generate a converter. Now you can convert your capital.
The oracle will give you a prophet after a while, meanwhile spread your religion to other civs that doesnt have a religion. this can give you strong friends.
When you get the prophet take it to your smaller city and use the prophet to make the shrine.
-shrine: for example if it was christianity then the shrine would be church of nativity.

Christianity is strong because you also get theocrazy.. this means only your religion can spread in your cities. change to theocrazy when you can.

You cant win anything by converting all your enemies cities to your religion other than getting a diplomatic victory. But its cool
One thing though: you can get a lot of money when you have builded the shrine.

 

[Smirk]

Wow, the original post is filled with bad ideas and poor strategy.

On Noble and around its far better to build the Oracle and grab Civil Service, Feudalism or even Code of Laws. Using it for Poly or even Theology is a considerable waste (That is, you missed the advantage of getting one of the ones I've mentioned much earlier in the game). Also I've yet to play a game where multiple religions were not a good thing so using Theocracy is not a thing I would consider for any other reason that the +2 unit exp, and even that would be a temporary civic while I pumped out some units.


Also as a general builder religious strategy getting Monotheism and then going with Organized Religion and spreading your state religion is the *best* opening. Getting a 25% bonus for buildings by way of missionaries allows you to easily create them in a production city and move them anywhere, this is way better than the Forge which also adds a unhealthy face (and costs a lot more and comes a bit later in the tech tree).

 

[xonixs]

have you ever builded the shrine?
The power of the shrine increases with as many cities that believe in its faith.

If you want the shrine without wonders you have to spend a worker to be a priest.
Can you afford that in an early game?

 

[petey]

If you found a religion, it should always be spread as widely as possible. Not only do you get the gold, but you also get to see the line of sight for every city with that religion. That makes planning invasions much easier, since you know what's defending where and where units are moving to.

 

[AKtionFich]

espacially if u have a city with mass of food,
it allows u to let it grow further than without religion.

But religion has the disadvantage that have to focuss ur researching on it.

The oracle way may lower that diasadvantage but it also need most of ur production in the starting era of the game.

But the idea of getting the oracle to gain its religion is very well.

 

[Smirk]

Why would I bother with a priest specialist that early in the game when I will be building the Oracle (as I do in pretty much ever game for the free tech) early and Stonehenge is a mere 120 hammers.

You're proposing running with a priest for 50 turns to get 150 GPP and a Prophet, Oracle/Stonehenge is far superior, have their own effects and don't hamper growth (ie specialists just eat, don't generate food).


Anyway, yes I am very familar with the power of the shrines, in a builder game I try to position them in a good gold generating city and build two at least. Although in a OCC game I get maybe three built. Beyond that the missionaries begin to fail too much to be useful, but in actual fact the only reason to two or three is because missonaries are limited to three at a time active, so its more effective to have two religions spread and thus six total allowed. Also the failure is pretty low so two religions is pretty easy to handle.

 

[Andizza]

So, it is a good idea to use the Oracle to get the Code of Law, also the religion of Confucianism.

 

[Stilgar08]

good point! Oracle - CoL is my favored choice as well...

But I have to agree with smirk: This is not really a great strategy...
The shrine is important for Gold and LoS from the religion is as well...
You can furthermore get neighbours angry towards each other by missionizing one and leave the other one alone...

Theocracy is only useful for the extra exp. of units!

If you have closed borders with a neighbour and open ones with another one you can try to missionize the closed-borders guy by sending missionaries near the border in the other civ's area where you can send them. If your friendly neighbour is on better terms with your close-border-neighbour than you are (almost always the case ) and HE has open borders with him, religion might get spread and you can improve relations, if you want... This is not a strategy just something I'm doing occasionally...