No religion...need some advice

[Royal]

I've seen it happen, but it doesn't happen much. I play on Prince, so that may be the explination.

 

[Garand]

I thought open borders makes religion spread faster than without OB. I also thought that religion can spread through closed borders, but very slowly.

I suppose that is true, but I still would like to know how a level 1 city half the world away that I do not trade with will become Islamic, but a level 8 city right across the border from me does not, or a large foreign city that I trade with, and with whom I also have open borders, does not. Just doesn't make much sense.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

To be fair, I only use a missionary once in a blue moon myself-and then usually just to spread it to my own cities. Normally, though, I simply rely on the power of my trade routes-boosted by my temples, monastaries and the like.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[Steve2000]

One thing which has been mentioned-that I heartily agree with-is the disappointing lack of missionaries being used by the AI to spread their own religions. Is this merely a flaw in the AI, or am I just playing at too low a level?

I am not so sure that the AI isn't using missionaries. I have "friend moves" turned off so I am not sure if I would even know if a missionary had come into one of my cities, but I have my cities converted to the AIs' religions all the time. Is there a different message when a missionary converts a city from when the religion is simply spread randomly? If the message is the same, I would say that we may just not be noticing that the missionaries are moving around. Also - are missionaries "invisible" units - or can you attack the missionaries of rival civs?

If they aren't using missionaries I would agree that this is a problem - I would just like some more evidence.

 

[screwtype]

Religion is important, but you don't have to found one. There are advantages to not having a state religion and having a lot of religions spread to each of your cities. These advantages include: diplomatic (no "heathen religion" anger), cultural (if there is no state religion you get culture from each religion in your cities, and you can build temples and catherdrals for each religion), and even scientific (getting four or five monastaries in a science city can reallllly boost your scientific efforts).

Hey, I didn't realize you could do that. Hmmm...