Itinerant Preachers increases Religion spread to cities 30% further away (13 hexes I believe)? Religious Texts increases Religion pressure by 34%, up to 68% when Printing Press is researched. Which of these are better for spreading your religion far and wide?
I like texts as long as cities are close enough together because converting faster usually means the further cities will eventually have multiple cities exerting pressure. Throw in a great prophet or missionary to convert strategic cities and it goes even faster.
I think someone would need hard data on that to give a real answer. My knee-jerk reaction would be itinerant because they increase propensity "farther", combined with missionaries, say "second cities out" to create a "Go" like capture in the surrounded cities...
... but no one has reverse engineered the real numbers yet and all we have is a bunch of seemingly disassociated +16s, +22s and +34s. So the answer is, I don't know, but this is how you find out.
edit: I've been too busy lately solving everything with dozens of logistics, air repair, evasion bombers lately to worry about critical thinking.
They should be fairly balanced once the Printing Press bonus kicks in. The 30% radius boost from Itinerant Preachers gives you a 69% larger area of effect (1.3^2), which is pretty darn close to the 68% you get from Religious Texts.
I personally prefer Itinerant Preachers since it can bridge gaps between cities that you otherwise couldn't (particularly useful on water maps). It can also let you pressure other cities without being pressured back, and is about twice as strong as Religious Texts before Printing Press.
... but no one has reverse engineered the real numbers yet and all we have is a bunch of seemingly disassociated +16s, +22s and +34s. So the answer is, I don't know, but this is how you find out.
I'm not exactly sure how the pressure numbers cause conversions, but the numbers themselves are pretty easy to figure out:
By default, any city with a religion will exert +6 pressure (of that religion) on all other cities within a 10 tile radius.
Religious Texts increases this to +8 (+10 with Printing Press).
Itinerant Preachers increases the radius to 13 tiles.
Holy cities exert a static +30 on themselves (and only themselves).
These rules should explain any pressure number you see in-game.
When a city doesn't have a follower yet (but is in range of other cities with religion) it is still being pressured as stated above, it just won't display the pressure value until it has at least one citizen. You can always use the rules above to calculate its pressure, though.
My guess at this point is that those pressure points accumulate per turn and convert citizens after a certain amount has been accumulated. My guess is that Missionaries and Prophets are simply contributing to this "pressure" pool as well when you see the "+1000" popup (or whatever number based on beliefs) when you expend them to spread your religion. Inquisitors (and prophets) likely reset all other religion's pools to zero. Further testing and/or data mining is needed to work out the details of this system.
Like Knut said, the map has a rather significant bearing on which is better; Religious Texts will do you little good without massive missionary/GP support on an archipelago map, while Itinerant Preachers is overkill on a tiny pangea. In a game where either would work well, it's just up to your preference--Religious Texts will get your religion up & running faster in nearby cities, creating a domino effect, while Itinerant Preachers takes longer to get going, but exerts pressure on more cities once it does.
For me, personally, and given that I don't like to spend faith on lots of missionaries or great prophets, Religious Texts usually works better. With a single missionary or great prophet to set up a second start point of your religion somewhere across the map (city states or easily accessible AI cities without a domestic religion), you can generally dominate the map religiously by the end game (or at least force the AI to spend a lot of faith points on missionaries of their own).
One thing that does seem to be true on first glance is that RT will likely do a better job of converting majority populations in cities to your religion, while IP will probably create religious minorities in more cities. If Tithe is your founding belief & you're counting on that to finance your armies, then having a minority of 4+ in lots of cities will probably work better than having the majority in fewer cities, especially in the early- to mid-game where populations are generally pretty low.
Or yeah, you can always play as Byzantium and pick both.
Just a note as I've seen it other places too, but Religious bonuses like Tithe, World Church, and Peace Loving are simply totals. You don't need 4 or 5 in each city to gain the benefit.
As such the right method of spread only depends on whichever one gets you the most followers in foreign lands, not certain amounts in particular cities like other bonuses specify.
Good question OP, I've often wondered the same myself. I usually go for Religious Texts, but I'm not sure which one is better. Probably depends a lot on the map and city layout. But yeah, in my first game with Byzantium, I got both and my religion dominated the world on a Continents map. I thought spreading religion was always going to be that easy, but nope.
Aside from the obvious distance issues with islands, the main difference is, as others have noted, speed.
When you consider that only Byzantium can get an Enhancer belief with their Founding, whether or not you buy a Missionary before your 2nd Great Prophet may be a critical factor in whether you choose Texts or Preachers.
I might try some simulations to look at this.
I'll also note that Messiah is an excellent choice if you are looking to complete Piety and/or Freedom.
Religious Texts is better if you can only pick one, and yes, I only pick one. I much rather use the other slot for a happiness boost or a culture/faith/happiness building. It helps a lot in some games.
The reason is regardless of it your neighbours found a religion or not, if you go with a strong faith focus as the Byzantines, you should easily convert their cities and beelining to printing press means those converted cities will do the converting for you and it tends to snowball. You can help it along by sending missionaries early to a civ with no religion to covert their cities and to city states to fill in the gaps and build up pressure.
If you're playing properly your cities should be packed well enough to generate outward pressure anyways. So itenerant preacher is less useful because you want stronger pressure to convert and generate more pressure on nearby cities rather than lots of cities with 1 or 2 people converted to your religion but the city itself is under another religion.
Pair Religious texts with Tithe bonus instead and you can earn a big chunk of your income in the late game from religion. It will certainly pay for an army, no faith required
Byzantium is powerful with this because of the extra religion slot, I think their only weakness is no faith specific starting bonus, which means if you are unlucky getting your faith up early, you could lose out on all the choice upgrades.
I'm ambivalent whether their UA needs a slight boost or not, but it's something where you either get it or you don't kind of deal, especially in immortal and higher and the AI will beat you to pantheons and religions just from the bonuses they get. It's less of a problem below those levels.
When a city doesn't have a follower yet (but is in range of other cities with religion) it is still being pressured as stated above, it just won't display the pressure value until it has at least one citizen. You can always use the rules above to calculate its pressure, though.
There's a lot of divided opinion about which one is better. To me it seems that Itinerant Preachers is the better choice, provided that it allows an extra city to apply more religious pressure. That's double pressure at least, depending on how many extra cities you can add to your "pressure sphere". Religious Texts is only +34% before researching Printing Press, and even then it's only +68%.
Without doing math or lots of experiments, I imagine which one is better comes down a lot to the map and where all the cities are placed. More spread out cities and Itinerant Preachers seems better, where if everything is tightly packed then Religious Texts is the likely winner. A tall empire may do better with Itinerant Preachers where an ICS style would like Religious Texts instead. At least this is my assumption.
Yes, only the Byzantines can have both. Which makes for some amazing natural spread!
I have always gone with religious texts if I could only pick one, due to it being a good later game help and my personal preference of playing on islands.
Part of it depends on game speed, due to the way the game calculates pressure and the bonus from religious texts.
On normal speed, a city gives 6 pressure (8 with texts, 10 with printing press) ... 33% and 66% bonus, as promised.
On epic speed, a city gives 4 pressure (5 with texts, 6 with printing press) ... 25% and 50% bonus.
On marathon speed, a city gives 2 pressure (2 with texts, 3 with printing press) ... 0% and 50% bonus.
Note that the % bonus is calculated per city, rounded down, so on epic, having say 3 cities applying pressure (12 base) then adding 33% should give you 16, but it gives you 5 per city instead for 15.
Short: Preachers is almost always the better choice if you play on slower than standard speeds.
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