Hola amigos
im playing map 3 of the campaign and im taking my time with it. im at the year 1982 and almost 700 citizens. I took on 2 optional challenges, both having to do with religious satisfaction. one is to reach 50 in satisfaction and the other to reach 60. At the time of accepting i had a rating of 46, and i proceeded to build a cathedral, adding to an already built church with max priests. The rating only went up to 48 after building the cathedral and soon after that it just started dropping! i since build 2 churches and ANOTHER cathedral yet the rating keeps dropping and is at an all time low of 41!

my question is WHY?????????? doesnt it go up?

Cheers
El Chefe Gringo

That's a pretty big population, for that many citizens you probably need 3-4 cathedrals and at least half a dozen churches (probably more) to get the rating that high. It takes a lot of labor (priests and bishops) to keep them that happy, especially because there tends to be a lot of people in the religious faction.

You can also try the Papal Visit edict, they love that, as well as other religious-friendly edicts like Contraception Ban and Book Burning. You can also try media set to things like Word of God. Be sure you put churches close to your military base too, religion and entertainment are two things they can't get on base.

Challenges like these are easier early on, when the population is low.

Well I had in a mission about 830 people and had 2 cathedrals and 6-7 churches and the religion about 75%. Although 550 of those people were detractors to tell the truth. For me it worked nicely to put buildings in squares with churches, hospitals, schools and entertainments in the middle of those squares even fi they were not connected on the road. It was probably the first time that religious would not nag at me about inadequate religious coverage or something even if i had so many churches all around. The most annoying faction.

I only build 1 cathedral in my maps and a second only if its a side quest. Churches are cheaper to upkeep, pay for the wages since the priests are high school educated and they can hold 12 people which is just 4 less than a cathedral. Do yourself a favor and choose to build 3 churches instead of 1 cathedral next time.

I'm apparently in the minority here, but I only build 1 church to appease the religious faction. Not only do churches take up high school workers, whom I prize for being able to work factories, but churches have lower satisfaction than cathedrals. I usually just build one church, set it to no workers, then go with cathedrals. I usually keep my population below 500 (especially in campaign missions), but I don't find it too hard to have a religious satisfaction above 60% with only 2 or 3 cathedrals.

In normal mission I always have 1 Cathedral and about 3-4 churches. I do not care much about religious satisfaction. As long as its over 30% I am happy. If its at 50% i think its perfect. Also there is no such thing for me as prized high school graduates. I always have 2 high schools and 1 college which after the college gets half empty or totally i just leave in there 3 teachers.

Also you have to admit that the different approaches everyone takes makes the game more fun.

Thanks for the replies guys
everything you pointed out helped alot.
I tore down an apartment building in a center square in my densest populated area and built a cathedral there and my rating jumped from 40 to 53 in 2 months. also built a tv station with religious propaganda that covered everything and the rating is rising.

Thanks again guys

(12-09-2011 11:00 PM)weltall Wrote:  The most annoying faction.

Ain't that the truth. They just take up labor and space, their demands don't even help the island like the Capitalists or Environmentalists. Usually I just build 1 cathedral even on large islands, maybe throw down an extra church or two in a close election.

My Presidente Pedro Borracho is also a drunk womanizing gambler, so the religious faction already dislikes me.

"A warm embrace to all ... especially the ladies!"

(12-09-2011 11:11 PM)balki Wrote:  Not only do churches take up high school workers, whom I prize for being able to work factories,

A useful thing to know: You probably already know that you can fire an employee of any structure by right-clicking on his head on the building's display. But then, he usually just gets replaced by somebody else almost immediately. But if you right-click again while that head space is empty, it locks that employee slot to stay empty, not allowing anyone else to start working there. This allows you to have just ONE priest for a Church, allowing you to keep the active benefit going, but doesn't allow that building to keep "stealing" your high-school citizens from other more productive jobs.

When you decide having more employees at that structure is okay, just left-click on the locked empty slot and citizens will be allowed to apply for the job again.

Another thing worth noting: MARTIAL LAW. In combination with a constant spam of "SILENCE THE REBELS" (yes, only once, otherwise lure to the Mausoleum) negates the irritation of a faction. Get decent ministers, and a sat. dish to clear the airwaves on it.

You can also decrease the number of members in a faction fairly easily. Religion is a communist grouping in the game, and follows the (incredibly overcited) Matthew 6:24 (read: "No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.").

As a result, if you want them in factories, go about it. Suppress the faction and roll with it. It's not cheap, it's not particularly easy, but it's possible to win a 50 year sandbox game (or most of the campaign levels that don't have explicit goals) without building a church.

EDIT: Clarification was needed on this.

The other thing to keep in mind is that the service quality of a building (any service building.. including churches and cathedrals) is going to be based on the skill of the people staffing it. And if you have a brand new building, chances are that your new employees have lower skill than the ones in perhaps a well established church or cathedral. You can see this by looking at the service quality of the very first church you built, and then build a brand new one... the service quality of each will be drastically different.

So if you are trying to solve the problem by continually plopping down churches and cathedrals, you're actually lowering the average service quality with each brand new building... thus lowering your religious satisfaction rating. Over time, it should improve as the priests/bishops gain skill.

Personally, I prefer to wait until Father Estaban demands that either a Church or Cathedral be built before building either. The reward is that the Religious faction respect increases by 15%. If you voluntarily build without being prompted, the faction respect hardly twitches.

In my opinion, building more than 1 church is waste of money. You need the first church to get rid of the complaint "no church built", after that, go only cathedrals because they have higher service quality. For population of 700, 7 cathedrals should give you 100% with the faction and around 75% of religion happiness.

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Oh and 1 thing, if u play for a long time, build grade schools to get rid of kids blocking the cathedrals. They cant use vehicles, so they walk from 1 side of a map to another just to visit cathedral, and block a slot from there for a year or two. With grade schools, they do not have time for that, and you can use spelling bee's to get their intelligence higher.