Religious Oligarchy/Monopoly possible?

[Kitherion]

I started playing Civ1 when I was Junior in college and turns taking 20 minutes on my antiquated system (Then I got a 486 dx2!! and it took seconds). I have enjoyed the way that civ has evolved (excepting that whole city corruption thing, but I digress). With CivIV Vanilla, Warlords and BTS I have been extremely happy with playing the game. I am a lazy Min/Maxer reading forums for most strategies and then implementing them.

One thing I have wanted to do with CivIV I have not been able to do as of yet, is create what I would call a religious oligarchy/monopoly. I try to found all major religions, preventing the AI's from having any religion. It seems though that keeping closed borders and founding all the religious traditions, some AI's cities spontaneously gain a religion. This does not seem to be due to a quest, as I didn't receive one, and if I recall, I think the religious quests end up with a minimum of 2 cities receiving the religion and you have to have a religion to begin with.

I am playing on Warlord Level, Unrestricted leaders, I usually end up with 3 shrines in my capital, 4 if I push expansion back far enough. I am attempting to cripple culures by removing the + , + , for temples and prevent any monestaries from adding the +10% for the AI's.

Essentially I have read the forums and seen that religion spreads by trade routes and by missionaries. With closed borders, I thought that meant no trade with foreign cultures. I am not sending out missionaries, yet I get messages saying "XXXX has spread to <CityXXXX>". For you folks who get to the coding and XML; do you see where this is programmed into the game? If not, any clue as to how the relgious spread? Does founding the shrine bypass the block by Closed borders?

Thank you for your response in advance.

Side note: Once I find that the religions have spread, I generally then become less isolationist, and then those 3/4 Shrines (with Wall Street and the gold line of improvements really make the early investment pay off)

 

[oldsaxon]

A couple of points.

(i): I think religions can move along trade routes even if your borders are closed. So, don't settle on the coast*, or on long rivers, and don't allow other civs to build roads to you.

(ii): Some random events can spread religion. You might want to turn them off.

(iii): Each shrine helps its religion to spread. I don't know exactly how, but... it could be that building the shrines is what's making you fail.

So - don't settle on the coast, don't allow roads to foreign civs, don't share rivers with foreign civs, turn off random events, and don't build shrines.

And, if the worst comes to the worst, conquer any foreign cities that gain your religion... that's how I get a monopoly.

*You could always settle an 'isolated' city, not connected to your trade network, on the coast and avoid spreading your religion to it

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Passive spread of Religion works like this

Every city that
1. has a possible connection with the holy city (closed borders/mercantilism don't matter)

2. has no religion inside of it

Has a chance of getting the religion
The chance is *2 if there is a shrine
the chance is reduced by distance between the target city and the Holy city

 

[KMadCandy]

Passive spread of Religion works like this

Every city that
1. has a possible connection with the holy city (closed borders/mercantilism don't matter)

2. has no religion inside of it

Has a chance of getting the religion

that's the thing that confuses people, because it is really weird and different from trade routes. all that has to be there is the potential for a trade route. mercantilism / closed borders / fog of war on the map / etc don't matter. so for example, if you know the techs, astronomy lets religion spread across the ocean on its own regardless of whether you've explored the water on a boat or not. i actually met cathy that way in warlords thru holy city line-of-sight when my religion spread to her. ishe called me up on the holy hotline and scared me; i'd forgotten there was another civ out there.

it's only the possible connection with the holy city that matters. if the holy city is truly isolated, you can spread your religion to cities that are connected to other civs safely. just remember to not use any missionaries on the other guys . and there are those quests / random events. i think for quest rewards you can pick other options as your reward, or you can of course choose not to complete the quest. for the random events, i'm not sure.

i've seen a game posted where the player did successfully found six religions in one isolated city, then finally settle a second city and found the final religion there, which spread like wildfire. it's interesting to read. i can't find that thread atm tho.

ps welcome to CFC Kitherion

 

[GoodGame]

deleted 10 chars

 

[Mesix]

I'm not really sure that preventing religion spread to the AI is as beneficial as spreading it as wide as possible. You get a bounus +1 gold for you shrine for every city that has the religion (yours and the AIs). If you have four shrines in your capitol with Wall St. built, having all four religions in as many AI cities as possible would net the most gold to you. This would far outweigh any bonus that you would get by preventing the AI from getting happiness from temples or +10% research from monistaries.

 

[Kitherion]

Ah thanks for the responses.

The explination between potential and realized trade routes helped. Didn't make me happy but helped.

Yes I tend to spread religions after 1AD or so, hoping that forcing the AI's to spend additional resources on happiness instead of other productivity will give an additional advantage. The additional moolah with Wall Street and the other gold production locations is quite nice.

1st City has Wall Street, 2nd city has Oxford university and National Wonder for those oh-so-good science GP and my primary city has produced the required Great Prophets for the shrines and then merchants once those are filled out.

I'll have to modify my strategy. Thank you again!

 

[ilovesimgolf]

Ah thanks for the responses.

The explination between potential and realized trade routes helped. Didn't make me happy but helped.

Yes I tend to spread religions after 1AD or so, hoping that forcing the AI's to spend additional resources on happiness instead of other productivity will give an additional advantage. The additional moolah with Wall Street and the other gold production locations is quite nice.

1st City has Wall Street, 2nd city has Oxford university and National Wonder for those oh-so-good science GP and my primary city has produced the required Great Prophets for the shrines and then merchants once those are filled out.

I'll have to modify my strategy. Thank you again!

Don't worry about religion spread too much.

I really like shrine income, and I definitely go crazy with it with a financial civ like Huyana or Mansa. Both make me very indeed.

I like my religion spreading to the AIs.

Am I missing something?

--ilovesimgolf