"[Religion] has been founded in city X!" NO! NOT THAT CITY!

[TheJediMaster]

See it gets even better when you are playing multiplayer and on a team. You could have been the only civ working on that religion, but your team mate will get the holy city. Usually it is the farthest from your capital city or other city of significant production importance (usually the unhappy ones...) and your team mate is too busy to build a missionary...

That just makes me upset

 

[lord_graywolfe]

i dont know how it chooses and honestly it doesnt really matter to me i adjust to where ever it pops up. this game the first second and 4th religons i founded all started in my capital and the other overseas in a new colony. so i have 4 cities around my capital with none, go figure.

 

[R3dKnight]

well try playing archipelago and have it start a religion in a reallly remote island with only one tile of land. FFS , seriously.

 

[vyapti]

is it random? its funny you mention the bad city cause the one time i founded islam it was on the edge of the empire at my worst city. Maybe for each religion it matches a criteria on the list of your cities. For example the hypothesis is islam gets founded on the city most distant from your capital. I guess a world builder could be used to test it hmmm. Ill go see if i can figure it out. Could be something weighted like the palace jump script from civ3.

I had a game where I founded several religions. When I founded Islam, I had 8 cities and the Holy City was a mature city 6-7 squares from my capital that also had the shrine for Christianity.

 

[lysander]

It only makes sense being random. If you got to pick, then every time you would try to found as many as possible, put them all in one city, then build the shrines, a bank, and wall street and you would have nearly unlimited money for the rest of the game.

 

[bky1701]

You should be able to pick, and it should have been that way in the unmodded game.

It’s a major problem if you have a big civ that it is always in a place you didn’t want it.

 

[Agraza]

My solution would be to mod the game so that upon founding a religion, you get a founder unit, who can then travel to wherever you want to found the religion. He would be just like the missionary unit, but would generate the holy city rather than the followers of the holy city. This could be perceived a few ways. You might be the governor sending the latest popular cult leader to the place of your choice, you might perceive yourself to be the holy man and have been sent from your home on a holy mission to ______, where you eventually found the religion. You get the picture.

I don't see it as any greater a detachment from reality within civ4, as there is already plenty of that. Yes, as the country's ruler, you can send the cops to transport someone's person to the destination of your choice, holy man or not. That did, in fact, happen to Jesus Christ. Whether you believe he could have turned his captors into wine or not, that isn't what happened.

Whether or not you can actually mod that at this point, I don't know. I'm having enough trouble adding new buildings that aren't considered world wonders.

 

[al_thor]

It also seems to like to found it in The Most Recently Founded City. I don't mind this, as it is usually on my boarders and the cultural kick-start can be a boon to creating some much-needed breathing room when you are close to another rival city.

I don't know that I have ever had a religion get founded in my actual capitol. Maybe it did once, but that would be one time out of like 50.

 

[The Last Conformist]

If you go for Meditation or Polytheism as your first tech, and no AI beats you to it, you're pretty much guaranteed to get the Holy City in your capital, since it will be your only city.

 

[warpus]

You should be able to pick, and it should have been that way in the unmodded game.

It’s a major problem if you have a big civ that it is always in a place you didn’t want it.

that's the point - you're not supposed to be able to pick where you want your holy cities to be.

not founding religions in "nice" cities is what makes the game a lot more interesting, imo.

 

[al_thor]

Oh, yeah, maybe that's when it happened. I have since been playing non-spiritual civs and the like (no Mysticism to start) and so have been founding the later religions.
I'd almost rather that the religion WASN'T in my capitol - it has enough culture/science/etc. I'll have to remember that and try to get a 2nd city before getting those early religions. Doesn't sound all that easy to do, really.

 

[Firebird]

I think getting the holy-city in a new, remote bordercity is fine, because it helps building up culture. And I like randomness. It's more interesting if you must react to many things comming from both the outside and inside, instead (sp?) of just decide everything youself. So is reallife too.

If everything was decided by you or your opponents it would be kind of 2-dimensional with only map and battles random. Getting other things in the game thats random improves the imersionfactor (to me at least). It adds another dimension to the game.

Thats why I like random events like not knowing where the holy city will be (if its not random I hope I never see the formula). I would like to see a return of the plague and the volcanos (although I would like them implementet in a little different way than C3C). Later I will try to mod in some random events like those mentioned, iceages and "hot" ages, meteorimpacts, dark ages, civilwars, upheavel (wrong word?) of new landmasses etc. I know many wouldn't like all this, but I would, and I'm mostly playing SP anyway.

Best regards

Firebird

 

[hyn]

I don't like the factor of luck playing in in strategy games. It's like you're playing chess and, rule says that at the beginning of the game you roll dice for a free queen.

In civ4, say I have 3 cities by the time I found Christianity. Capital is my GPP/wonder producer, second city is military and third is wealth/commerce hybrid. my third city needs to be coastal for the huge trade bonus.

I want my Shrine built in my third. If the religion is founded in my military city, then I would be forced to specialize that city for wealth/commerce. This means I'm left with a military city with a bunch of grasslands/ocean tiles/little production tiles, and a commerce/wealth city with no trade/hilly tiles--which aren't great for building cottages.

This IMO may well be the difference of winning or losing a game, especially on higher difficulties.

Now, luck does play a factor in civ4, in battles and such. Your veteran spearman could lose to a horse archer, etc. But this is something you can overcome easily.

 

[vsipinen]

It only makes sense being random. If you got to pick, then every time you would try to found as many as possible, put them all in one city, then build the shrines, a bank, and wall street and you would have nearly unlimited money for the rest of the game.

Perhaps it is not good idea to be able to pick the holy city, but I think it should be possible to at least affect the probability of any city to be chosen as a holy city. Maybe assigning priest specialists could increase the probability of a city to become a holy city and assigning other specialists could decrease it.

I think it is little annoyning that if you are trying to specialize a city to something else than religion (to create for example Great Scientists, Artists or Engineers etc.) and then because it becomes a holy city, you need to build the shrine there and you start to get Great Prophet points from that.

 

[kingjoshi]

I also thought it went by adding beakers. And to the person who said it doesn't make sense because the lion's share is added in the main city, one has to remember that they go in order until completion. I assume that's true for ALL techs.

I don't have any proof for this, but you can see they go city by city on a new turn for production. And I assume when they add points for Tech, they do the same thing.

I assume most people do not waste points for science. I mean, why keep it at 100% for research when 10% will do for the next turn? You're losing 90% gold/culture for no reason!

If you try to minimize waste, then that means that the latter cities (CIV tends to sort cities by founding date) will finish off the research for the tech. If your first or second city founds the tech/religion, then that means you're wasting a lot of gold for that turn (which may be well worth it if you want to make sure the religion is founded in a particular city). If this is the case, then it's not random at all and it's COMPLETELY within your control!

EDIT: but this is just my guess...

 

[TheNiceOne]

I also thought it went by adding beakers. And to the person who said it doesn't make sense because the lion's share is added in the main city, one has to remember that they go in order until completion. I assume that's true for ALL techs.

But if the cirty that happened to complete the tech is the one that gets the holy city, then the main cities will have a much higher probability of getting the holy city. I don't think there's any observation that supports this.

I don't have any proof for this, but you can see they go city by city on a new turn for production. And I assume when they add points for Tech, they do the same thing.

That's true, so the tech will be discovered somewhere in this city loop, but it's not problem to then randomly place the holy city in any of the cities.

I assume most people do not waste points for science. I mean, why keep it at 100% for research when 10% will do for the next turn? You're losing 90% gold/culture for no reason!

This used to be correct, but is not correct with cIV. In cIV, the remaining 90% will go towards the next research project instead of being wasted. I reduced my research this way in CIV3, but doing so in ciV is a waste of time.

 

[TheNiceOne]

I don't like the factor of luck playing in in strategy games. It's like you're playing chess and, rule says that at the beginning of the game you roll dice for a free queen.

That's your opinion (and it's just as good as mine, since this is highly subjective), but I disagree. I think chess is boring because it lacks any form of random factor (I'm not counting me or my opponent's movement choises as a random factor).

I think games are much more fun when there is a certain amount of randomness, so that the player must use his skills not only to account for the random factor after it happened, but also when he plans his actions.

 

[Stormfalcon1970]

I founded Islam last night in a brand new, boarder town. Next turn a Barbarian attacks and raises the city! Not good!

That happened to me with Christianity. Two times in a row! I just built Calcutta (sp?) and pow! The chorus sings, the clouds open and Christianity is bestowed upon it. I have a couple of warriors and an archer available to guard it until reenforcements arrive. Along comes a horde of barbarians and....next time I'll postpone building the damned city until Theology is done!

 

[ChrTh]

My two cents:

If the strategy of my game is to found as many religions as possible (and spread them around for income), I wouldn't settle more than 4 or 5 cities in the first place: the capital and some ring cities. That way I can concentrate on building religious buildings and missionaries and not worrying about settlers so much.

It also sounds like y'all are doing a little ICS-ing. Why are there little undefended cities on the fringe of your empire anyway? If you're building it to secure a resource, well, you'll want to defend it in the first place. If you're building it just to grab space ... well, at least now you have a resource to defend. In any case, this is no longer Civ III. Adjust.

 

[Stormfalcon1970]

I don't know about 'ICSing' but....I took a shine to the stone, pigs and extra cows that were nearby Calcutta. Which is ironic....considerin my state religion was Hinduism and I also founded Judaism!