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What's the advantage of funding a religion?
- Thread starter akillias
- Start date
manu-fan
Emperor
- Joined
- Sep 20, 2006
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I don't know if FUNDING one is a good idea. That might cost a lot 
However, FOUNDING one is a different matter. And, I assume you're talking about founding one of your own, rather than have it spread from another Civ.
So, the only real advantage is that you can build a Shrine in your holy city to really boost income. The disadvantage is that you might earn de-merits with other Civs because you go for a different religion than them. Nothing that can't be fixed with appropriate Pointed Stick diplomacy though
Cheers.
However, FOUNDING one is a different matter. And, I assume you're talking about founding one of your own, rather than have it spread from another Civ.
So, the only real advantage is that you can build a Shrine in your holy city to really boost income. The disadvantage is that you might earn de-merits with other Civs because you go for a different religion than them. Nothing that can't be fixed with appropriate Pointed Stick diplomacy though
Cheers.
JTMacc99
That's a paddlin'
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In some cases, it can also be useful to make your neighbors your bestest buddies. If you find yourself on a continent with civs that tend not to found any religions and somebody on another continent has founded the two or three early ones, you can move Code of Laws up in your research order (or lightbulb Theology if you get an early prophet from building Stonehenge). At that point, you can spread your religion wildly on your own continent. You will then have neighbors who are less likely to attack you while you prepare for attacking them. Also, and to the number one region it's nice to found a religion, you will have an entire continent of cities with your religion, all of them generating gold in your shrine city.
You need a Great Prophet to build the shrine in the holy city, and no... other civs don't need to adopt the religion for you to get the gold from them although if they do they will spread your religion and increase your funds for you.
Then you should've spread your religion to them quickly so they loved you instead.
Build Prophet-generating Wonders. Stonehenge is way early, and usually generates a prophet shortly after you'll need one.
Take the number of cities currently built. Multiply by one. That is the maximum possible raw gold input you can get if your religion goes worldwide. Add multipliers for markets, grocers, banks, and Wall Street, and you can very conceivably make three gold per turn per city in the world.
Anomander Rake
Warlord
There is no rule that says you have to take the religion you found as your state religion. You can wait until you've spread it about a bit
Bleys
Deity
In general, founding a religion becomes a worse idea the higher you go up the difficulty ladder. The reason is mostly because of diplomacy, many AIs have a strong dislike of those who follow a different religion. Another reason is time. Founding an early religion takes beakers that would be better spent on a Worker, Military, or Economic tech instead.
I suggest you experiment. Try founding a religion and building Stonehenge. Make sure you tech Meditation so you can build a Monestary (or use the Organized Religion civic) and spread your religion to as many cities as you can. Then, when you do generate a Great Prophet, build your shrine and see how its working.
Speaking for myself, I like to allow the AIs to spread their religion to me, and build the shrine for me, then I go take it myself. Kind of like using the AIs own Great Prophet for yourself.
I suggest you experiment. Try founding a religion and building Stonehenge. Make sure you tech Meditation so you can build a Monestary (or use the Organized Religion civic) and spread your religion to as many cities as you can. Then, when you do generate a Great Prophet, build your shrine and see how its working.
Speaking for myself, I like to allow the AIs to spread their religion to me, and build the shrine for me, then I go take it myself. Kind of like using the AIs own Great Prophet for yourself.
Bleys
Deity
The answer, like so many "answers" in Civ, is . . . it depends.
For example, lets say you have a Continents map, start with Myst, and none of your landmass-mates is particularly religious.
Yes, VERY worth it, since its likely you can leverage that religion to keep peace, and the AIs will likely spread it among their own cities themselves.
Lets say you are on a Pangaea, and Monty and Izzy are your neighbors.
Probably NO, as you will likely piss one of them off quite a bit. However, in this particular case, you can often use the religions as a method to get them to fight among themselves. Take the religion of the one you want to befriend, and bribe him into war with the other, since you will likely be "Pleased" and they will likely hate each other (I used those 2 as examples because they often found early religions themselves).
Also, you should try to qualify your question a bit. Is it worth it to found Buddhism, Hinduism or Judaism?
Probably not. Letting the AIs found the early religions tends to increase their chances of hating each other (something you actually WANT). If you found Buddhism, and there is another continent with 4 AIs that gets ONLY Hinduism, they are likely to be all friendly and buddy-buddy to each other, and they will out-tech you, hate you, and probably dogpile you.
Should you try to found Confucism? How about Taoism?
Sure, but be careful about switching to it right away. You can spread it among your own cities without actually accepting it as a State Religion. If you can spread it to a neighbor, and make it more popular in his land than any other religion, you can make a friend. Founding these religions means you were first to CoL and Philosophy, which are very strong trading techs.
At some point, you SHOULD accept a religion, either one you found, or one you got spread by a neighbor. OR, Pacifism and Theocracy are powerful civics. If you can manage to build or capture a Shrine, it will certainly be "worth it" if you can spread it around enough. There are many benefits to religions, if you happen to be in the religion of the AP you can get hammers from Temples and Monestaries. If you want to pursue Divine Right and try to build the Spiral Minaret you can get gold from your buildings. Paper is on the way to Lib, so if you have Stone you can shoot for the University of Sankore for a nice tech boost.
So now that I have totally confused you, let me try to simplify it a bit. What level do you play? What leaders do you prefer? What kind of map do you like? All these things factor into the "it depends" answer. But the bottom line is that Religion is a very very powerful tool in this game, and learning how to deal with the variety of situations that occur are important to raising your level of skill.
If you are on a low level I'd say yes. You can spread an early religion to get money and diplo points but you can also just found a later one and still make some money from it without even adopting it yourself. I play on Prince and I always try to found one religion if not more, the shrine city makes a good Wall Street city.
Bleys
Deity
Remembering my jump from Prince to Monarch, one of the first things I did was STOP founding early religions, and STOP building Stonehenge and the Mids every game. Never looked back. Let the AIs have the religions, and therefor the religion wars, I say. In fact, I now go out of my way to let AIs found em, and build my future shrines for me, heh.
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