your first Great Prophet - shrine or super specialist?

[Vizzini]

This is a no brainer. If you have a holy city, or expect to found a religion later, shrine... followed by an aggressive missionary program. Do all of this early enough and if circumstances permit you could end up with 1 or more AI Civs converting their entire civilization to your religion. +5 Culture, +1gp per city with your religion, and of course the intelligence gathering.

You get one Great Prophet odds are good you'll get another one later on down the road that you can use as a super specialist. Shrine first, shrine always, no way am I even going to consider giving up that much potential cash.

What the hell are you talking about? If I play a duel map I have 3 citeis, 4 MAX.

Before being so hostile you might want to remember that your religion can be easily spread to other Civ cities.

 

[Hypnotoad]

If you are playing a culture game, I would definitely use the free tech to found a new religion. You want as many religions as possible so you can build as many cathedrals as possible.

-- david

 

[Xerol]

So does the +1 coin per city apply to ANY city with that religion, or only yours?

 

[Vizzini]

Any city with your religion generates +1 gp, whether it's one of yours or the AI's city - if it has your religion you get +1 gp. (Plus line-of-sight intelligence)

Edit: It gets better tho. Get one of the early religions and if you meet up with an AI that has no religion, get Open Borders and get a missionary to them ASAP. If you drop a Religion Bomb in any of their cities and the AI has no religion yet the AI will flip their entire civilization to your religion almost immediately. If they found their own later they'll switch to it - but in the meantime the AI is now aggressively converting their own cities with their own missionaries.

 

[Arkanin]

Every beaker counts in the Ancient Era, and shrines produce only surplus gold, not technology beakers.

This is only a problem if you are able to consistently set your research / culture bars to 100% total without savings.

If you're able to do that, it's time to expand.