Sure, the human player could have the late religion -- but the human player could have the early religion too.
And yes, there is an anarchy cost to switching religions. But those who refuse to change end up being punished (through diplomatic hits).
Once everyone wants to change religions to the 'new hotness', anyone who doesn't take the anarchy hit ends up being worse off (as their diplomatic ties fall).
Religion happens to be part of the roleplaying parts of the game. A huge chunk of it's impact is in diplomatic modifiers. And having the AIs roleplay "new world religions tend to spread over old ones" forces everyone (including the player) to change religions in order to keep diplomatic penalties from being applied.
The states that should refuse to change -- those with a shrine to their own religion -- can end up being diplomatically isolated. This isn't a bad thing either -- states with old shrines are getting a ridiculous economic benefit out of it (as each missionary produced generates 1 gold per turn forever). Undercutting them doesn't seem that silly of an idea...
Although that does bring up another idea. Have a bias towards changing to a religion that is founded by a weak civilization, in order to prevent the benefits from flowing to a civilization that is too strong, if you don't have one yourself.
Yes but if you own the shrine you still get the gpt when you are under another religion.
I don't know much about the way religion switches happen at the moment, but they often seem sensible at least. My point about the human religion, I think, is that normally at the higher difficulties the human player never gets the first one or two (or even third) religion. They need to get CoL or Theo etc. for the religion - one of the later religions.
You might want more religious dynamics, but civs more likely to adopt the newest religion, more games will end up with Christianity or Islaam dominatoring, and you'd have the same problem. Apart from lack of uptake of the last maybe 3 religions, I've seen the earlier 4 become dominant in different games.
And I still think you can have this idea of changing religions without the need for choosing the newer one. The newer ones are less likely to spread further because for most cities it's hard to get more than two religions. I don't think AIs even try to spread religions to cities that have two religions already, because of the lower odds.
As much as religion is part of the roleplaying in the game, I kind of thought the extent religion already played in the game was sufficient.
It's just that having the world want to adopt the newest religion, even though it is the religion most likely to spread the least, seems odd. I say they keep their old religion (you can call it their tradition). If anything, I'd be inclined to say civs should have a tendency to keep old religions, because they have a richer history in that religion than the newer one, and we all know how stubborn populations are to change.
