New Player Religion Question

[Blues]

It's a bit late for me to get the game, really. But I got it. Finally -_-.

I learned most of the basics but I'm wondering, when is a good time to start training missionaries to spread the state religion to other civs? Often I'm finding it difficult to get other people to be the same religion as me leading to unwanted wars.

Also, how many cities of a civ does it take to persuade the AI to convert its religion, anyway? I play at like... Noble.

 

[vra379971]

The right time is when you don't need more swords. Seriously, you should get on that a.s.a.p.

 

[RIcs]

Join others religions save you heaps of effort....
convert back after your neighbour converted to yours.
No war from day one, getting money from shine at the meantime.

They will converted to most popular religion in their own cities, plus they had a bit bias on the strongest nations religion. And of course their own founded religion.

 

[Uncle E]

Popping a Great Prophet and using him to build a shrine in a holy city of yours is a nice way to start urging yourself to start sending out missionaries as each city that has that religion earns you a little gold (1 or 2gp not sure myself) and that helps keep your research high or pay for unit upgrades etc.

You have to build a monastary first to train missionaries ... a 10% research boost and +2 culture from it never hurts too

 

[gdgrimm]

It's a bit late for me to get the game, really. But I got it. Finally -_-.

I learned most of the basics but I'm wondering, when is a good time to start training missionaries to spread the state religion to other civs? Often I'm finding it difficult to get other people to be the same religion as me leading to unwanted wars.

Also, how many cities of a civ does it take to persuade the AI to convert its religion, anyway? I play at like... Noble.

Spread it ASAP. And usually try to start by getting it into the civs big cities (i.e. capital) first. That will often help it spread naturally through their civ (meaning fewer missionaries that you'll be building).

Spread it to every city you can. Remember, your Holy City with Shrine will probably become your commerce city (i.e. will have all commerce buildings and Wall Street). So each missionary you build, will generate 1 GPT to start with, and eventually, 3 GPT. That's tough to match.

The AI will convert to whatever religion is most prevalent in his cities. They also have a preference of staying with a religion they founded, rather than converting to a religion somebody else founded. That can be a bit of a negative issue if you're trying to do diplomacy via religion.