Religion spreading automatically question

[Pojman]

I have played many games on Diety and I have never seen something like this happen - So, I am curious if anyone can offer input on why or under what circumstances this happens.

I love to use the Oracle for a code of laws slingshot/founding of confusion. I then chop out 3 missionaries quickly to spread the religion.

On my last game, I noticed that Buddhism was spreading so rapidly that 40% of the world had already converted to the religion around the time when all civs had approximately 4 cities.

I have never seen a religion spread so quickly.. On top of that, I was so confused that I opened world builder to see what the deal was. The founder of Buddhism had no missionaries, and was building no missionaries.. To make it even weirder, the founder did not have monotheism or the holy city wonder.

The bottom line was - the religion had spread to all civilizations except mine in the first 45 minutes of the game.

The game settings were as follows. It was a 100% land mass game, (full of resources mod), marathon, diety, huge land mass, and 18 civs.

99% of the games that I play, I have been able to create a "half/half" scenario where I get out enough missionaries to convert about half of the civs. But on this game, Buddhism was just spreading all over the place with no missionaries.

Does anyone have any idea why this would happen? The civ that founded the religion was based in the "jungle region" in the center of the map. So - my only guess was that it was proximity based and it just cascaded as it was spreading.

 

[rah]

Probably just a victim of RNG. It happens occasionally. Did he have monasteries in any of his cities?

 

[Pojman]

Probably just a victim of RNG. It happens occasionally. Did he have monasteries in any of his cities?

I should have mentioned that. No monasteries... That was currently being built in the 3 cities that he owned.

 

[Ghpstage]

Religion only autospreads from the holy city but does depend on proximity, there also has to be the potential for a trade route between them (not sure if direction matters here though). What probably happened if the holy city was central was that it was closer than normal to more cities, and to more AIs for exploration purposes.

 

[Pojman]

A religion will only autospread to cities that share a touching border with another city with the religion correct?

 

[rah]

No. Not correct. See post #4 (potential for trade route between them)

 

[Pojman]

No. Not correct. See post #4 (potential for trade route between them)

ok... So, if there is an existing river trade route between the civs, it creates the possibility of religion spreading automaticly?

Is it reasonable to assume that 40% of the map converted to a religion this early due to automatic spreading?

 

[rah]

My favorite was founding Conf. one game and building a missionary to spread it to my cities. The religion spread to my cities as I moved the missionary to the cities. It spread to all my cities while my missionary wandered. So I targeted a neighbor's city and it too converted before. It wasn't until the 6th city that I selected before I actually used the missionary.

And then there are games where it doesn't ever seem to spread.

 

[rah]

ok... So, if there is an existing river trade route between the civs, it creates the possibility of religion spreading automaticly?

Is it reasonable to assume that 40% of the map converted to a religion this early due to automatic spreading?

Possible. Lower odds but it does happen. But remember that the religion can only auto spread to cities that have no religion.

 

[Pojman]

Haha yea... I guess I have seen that before also. Not quite to this extent, but I have seen it spread rapidly.

When I saw 16 civs as buddhist, and myself being the single confusion civilization - along with all of the blue frownie faces - I just threw in the towel early before I spent too much time on the game.

 

[vincentz]

I h... have a strong dislike for autospreading. And in general that even with 15-18 civs there are rarely more than 2 or 3 religions that gets selected as main religion, which often results in holy cities for christianity and islam often are unimportant (not to mention the completely unrealistic aspect of a "world" religion BC.)
In my mod I turned off autospread, moved "free missionaries" from Organized Religion to a later civic, reduced the number of missionaries to 1/civ (instead of 3) and changed the monastaries missionary build option to cathedrals and holy cities (the monastaries give a religious promotion instead)

 

[rah]

When I saw 16 civs as buddhist, and myself being the single confusion civilization - along with all of the blue frownie faces - I just threw in the towel early before I spent too much time on the game.

I think that's God hint that you should convert.

 

[Pojman]

I think that's God hint that you should convert.

haha yea, I considered that option. But, the strategy that I was dependent on was to use my holy city as my wealth center. Without it, I would have dragged bigtime due to not being able to support my army. In a diety, 100% landmass, aggressive AI setting - You need all the military you can get.

 

[digitalcraft]

Yeah religion spread seems to only follow one law- whatever is least convenient for the player. I've seen that many times, you found a religion, yay! AS SOON AS YOU DO: oh look every play on the continent converts magically to the other. Except you, who it will not spread to until the industrial age.

 

[Pojman]

I wonder if this is also worth mentioning.

I was Sitting Bull, so i chopped a whole bunch of dog soldiers and razed the hindu holy city that was about 25 squares from my capitol.

I was also the founder of Judism, but I was just going to ignore this religion. My only purpose of founding this was to monopolize the religions and to get organized religion.

My strategy was to monopolize on the spreading of religion to get a massive yield of gold from my Confusion holy city.

The only religions left were Buddhist and Confusion. At this point, Buddhism started auto spreading like crazy until there was 40% Buddhist, and 8% Confusion.

 

[rah]

Remember it doesn't matter if your religion is the same as your holy city. You can still spread that religion. If all your cities also have the other religion you can convert and accept the diplo adv of sharing the global religion with no negative impact to you. And still get money from your shrine. It just costs more hammers to get started.