Religious Leader takeover

[OWADG]

I'm currently playing some multiplayer with some friends. One of them founded a named religion, and long story short, at some point, one of the AIs became the religious leader. How does this happen? Is this a bug?

[sauluxville]

Take some time to read the tooltips on the Religion screen.
To maintain or to take over religious leadership you must have the most Holy Sites related to that religion. Likely, the AI got converted to your friends religion and then built more Holy Sites than your friend.

[NoWayi]

yes thats it, maybe its worth to mention that it is kinda hard to get it back if it was lost early on, i just had a game where i was doing very well with early religion maybe the ai didnt even had the chance to found his, anyways it built the first holy site with my religion and boom become the leader and choose tenets i didnt wanted to, and in order to take it back you have to have more, but i couldnt build one as he did it and the next one unlocks with a lot more believers, so my only option was to build the 2 holysite wonders which i couldnt grab both or i guess i could have wared to raze or take over but i was cooperative in that play through, anyways it was useful experience

[Dorok]

That's an aspect that took me a lot of time to realize, why bother that much build your religion, let some AIs do it properly then pick the religion with the best bonuses.

That said to compare them I haven't found yet the best UI if it does exist. i only find a way through a city with many religion influences so I can check their bonuses.

There's even a bonus for not having people following your religion, so you can pick this bonus and the bonus of the other religion. Ok that stops here, from that it' probably rather hard to take over the religion or you had already many sites.

I just noticed, didn't tried yet.

[OWADG]

Thank you so much, I was having trouble finding the tooltips and I didn't see anything on the wiki lol