Question: Do I get the religious bonuses from other player's religion?

[Delar]

This may be a odd question but do I get all of the bonuses from the computer's/other player's religions when they spread their religion to my cities?

For example if I am Egypt focusing on wonder building and my neighbor Spain starts Christianity and then spreads that religion to my city will I get all of the bonuses that Spain has selected for Christianity?

Could I then create a missionary in that Christian city to spread that religion to all of my cities and gain all of the bonuses for that religion? Will I get all of the bonuses towards relations with city-states and other major civ leaders if we share the same religion even if I did not found the religion?

Other than not being able to choose which religious bonuses is there any reason I should focus on rushing religion and shire building, etc at the start of the game? I almost feel like I'm doing the computer players a favor by spreading my enhanced religion to them if that is the case...

Sort of confusing on why I would ever want to focus on religion in the beginning of the game when compared to wonder building, military, etc.

I must be missing something...

 

[Ulthwithian]

Delar: You do not get the Founder belief. You get all the others. Generally, Founder beliefs are the ones that scale with the number of cities that believe it.

 

[Unthinking Pain]

There's a Founder benefit that only the founder gets. Things like +1 gold per 4 followers, worldwide.

 

[compwiz1202]

You get everything from a foreign religion except the founder belief. Yes, missionaries are of the current religion of the city so you could spread a foreign religion to your other cities. If you found a religion first you can get the beliefs you want since each one can only be selected once amongst all civs. Spreading your religion gives them the follower beliefs, but it benefits your founder belief, which are pretty much all +something/# of citizens following your religion. On some difficulties/map sizes, there are less religions available than civs in the game, so you could miss founding a religion. Even for domination, you can pull stuff like taking enhancer belief Just War which gives your units +20% strength near enemy cities with your religion, so you get your army in position, convert the city, then attack

 

[Adjuvant]

Only founder gets founder and enhancer benefits, or in the case of Byz another such founder benefit. "Follower and pantheon" benefits are what you get if "their" religion is in your city as the dominant one.

You can, however, purposely switch a city to "their religion" and build "their choice pagoda" for example, convert back to "your religion" and the pagoda will still be there, if that makes sense. Also, you could endeavor to "leave" their religion in a city if the pantheon benefits are preferable, like leaving "desert folklore" pantheon of another's religion in your city with Petra.

 

[Ulthwithian]

Adjuvant: I am not certain, but I do believe Enhancer beliefs affect everyone. I know for a fact that Religious Texts affect non-native cities of a religion.

Isn't Messiah Enhancer? I'll have to look into that...

 

[compwiz1202]

Adjuvant: I am not certain, but I do believe Enhancer beliefs affect everyone. I know for a fact that Religious Texts affect non-native cities of a religion.

Isn't Messiah Enhancer? I'll have to look into that...

Yes Messiah is enhancer: Great Prophets spawn with 25% less Faith and are 25 % more powerful.

 

[Peacemongerer]

Enhancer beliefs affect your religion on the whole and don't really work at the city level. Ones which give discounts to things like prophets would theoretically work at the city level in all cities, but those prophets would be of the religion present in the city, so there's no negative for the founder.

Things like Just War and Defender of the Faith only benefit the founder. I know bc I adopted both as Byzantium. When I attacked a Germany city of my faith, I had a 20% attack buff and he had no defensive buff, which he would have gotten had Defender of the Faith been working for him.

 

[Delar]

You get everything from a foreign religion except the founder belief. Yes, missionaries are of the current religion of the city so you could spread a foreign religion to your other cities. If you found a religion first you can get the beliefs you want since each one can only be selected once amongst all civs. Spreading your religion gives them the follower beliefs, but it benefits your founder belief, which are pretty much all +something/# of citizens following your religion. On some difficulties/map sizes, there are less religions available than civs in the game, so you could miss founding a religion. Even for domination, you can pull stuff like taking enhancer belief Just War which gives your units +20% strength near enemy cities with your religion, so you get your army in position, convert the city, then attack

JUST WAR - +20% combat score near enemy cities that follow this religion.

Wow now that is slick... Convert them with a missionary and bomb the crap out of them! I have to try that! What is the range of the 20% bonus? 2 or 3 tiles away?

 

[Peacemongerer]

JUST WAR - +20% combat score near enemy cities that follow this religion.

Wow now that is slick... Convert them with a missionary and bomb the crap out of them! I have to try that! What is the range of the 20% bonus? 2 or 3 tiles away?

Defender of the Faith appears to be 3 or 4 tiles (I've had times where I was 5 away and it didn't work) so I'm assuming Just War is the same.

 

[Greizer85]

The million dollar question (literally enough) is: do you get the Founder benefit if you capture a Holy City?

 

[JtW]

You get the Follower Belief and the Pantheon Belief for sure. In one of my games, I deliberately let one of the cities remain Christian (which was a foreign religion) because they had the pantheon that gave faith from deserts, and that particular city had a lot of desert around it.

 

[Barghaest]

The million dollar question (literally enough) is: do you get the Founder benefit if you capture a Holy City?

No. Not even if you conquer the civilization. Founder belief is granted by the act of founding the religion and is never transferred.

 

[Ulthwithian]

Peacemongerer: Are you sure that you don't? By the definition give later, Just Waronly works near enemy cities. That could explain why you are getting the bonus around his cities, and he is not.

 

[megabearsfan]

Sorry to res an old post.

In a recent game as Indonesia, I founded the Budhism religion with the Ceremonial Burial founder belief (+1 Happy per 2 cities), and the nearby Ottomans founded Islam with the Interfaith Dialogue founder belief (+ science when you convert cities of other religions).

I captured Istanbul (the Islamic Holy City) and began buying Islamic Missionaries so that I could spread Islam to my cities and gain additional faith from my Candi buildings. I noticed that whenever I spread the religion into my Budhist cities with the Islamic missionaries that I bought in Istanbul that I would gain science (80 beakers, I think). An important point is that this only worked when I used a missionary purchased in Istanbul to spread Islam into another city; it did not work when I used Budhist misisonaries or Prophets. So I think you might gain the founder belief if you capture the holy city! Perhaps this should be tested a little bit more? There aren't any other religious beliefs that grant science when a missionary spreads the religion is there?

 

[peterka]

I tried to get the faith bonuses from pilgrim's after capturing the holy city but it failed. I guess it just work for 1 shot bonuses like interfaith dialogue...

 

[kb27787]

Sorry to res an old post.

In a recent game as Indonesia, I founded the Budhism religion with the Ceremonial Burial founder belief (+1 Happy per 2 cities), and the nearby Ottomans founded Islam with the Interfaith Dialogue founder belief (+ science when you convert cities of other religions).

I captured Istanbul (the Islamic Holy City) and began buying Islamic Missionaries so that I could spread Islam to my cities and gain additional faith from my Candi buildings. I noticed that whenever I spread the religion into my Budhist cities with the Islamic missionaries that I bought in Istanbul that I would gain science (80 beakers, I think). An important point is that this only worked when I used a missionary purchased in Istanbul to spread Islam into another city; it did not work when I used Budhist misisonaries or Prophets. So I think you might gain the founder belief if you capture the holy city! Perhaps this should be tested a little bit more? There aren't any other religious beliefs that grant science when a missionary spreads the religion is there?

IFD works for any missionary (or prophet) of that religion, no matter who purchased it. You could've captured a missionary of that religion from someone else and used it to gain the beakers. Capturing the holy city is irrelevant. The beakers gained is 10x number of followers of different religion.

I don't think initiation rites work the same way though, despite being a one-shot bonus; simply for the fact that passive religion spread also grants gold to the founder.

 

[Barghaest]

IFD works for any missionary (or prophet) of that religion, no matter who purchased it. You could've captured a missionary of that religion from someone else and used it to gain the beakers. Capturing the holy city is irrelevant. The beakers gained is 10x number of followers of different religion.

Does IFD grant the Science to the owner of the missionary/prophet? I was under the impression the boost always went to the founder of the religion regardless of who owned the unit that did the conversion... at least it seemed that way to me that my current research values remained the same - so Siam was getting the boost - when I spread Buddhism for them (failed to get my own founded).

 

[megabearsfan]

Does IFD grant the Science to the owner of the missionary/prophet? I was under the impression the boost always went to the founder of the religion regardless of who owned the unit that did the conversion... at least it seemed that way to me that my current research values remained the same - so Siam was getting the boost - when I spread Buddhism for them (failed to get my own founded).

I'm not 100% sure, but I think I actually popped a tech after using a Missionary that I had purchased in a captured Holy City, so I'm fairly confident that <em>I</em> was receiving the beakers. Not sure if it matters, but I did completely eliminate that religion's founder from the game, so maybe it went to me because it had nowhere else to go?

 

[LoneRebel]

Very confusing. I would welcome additional input on these questions.

But at least I now know that pantheon beliefs, and not only follower beliefs, are also granted to the cities of other civs that convert to that religion. I wasn't sure if that was the case (except for the Religious Tolerance policy).