Missionaries Made Me a Warmonger

The AI likes to ignore the "dont convert my cities" demand.

I resurrected Korea so I didn't have to keep a bunch of useless Tundra cities and they spammed me with great prophets even when I demanded they stop they didn't. So I steamrolled them. You would think they would try not to offend the guy with a bunch of nukes but alas.

Volcanon said:

The AI likes to ignore the "dont convert my cities" demand.

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Did they say they would stop? Usually the AI refuses my request, but if they do agree, and after any missionaries/GPr in play are done, I don't experience more cities being converted.

krc said:

On the very turn that Arabia promised to stop spreading their religion, they used their prophet a second time on my city.

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I think Arabia really did intended to stop spreading, but that GPr was already programmed with instructions and the AI is not nimble enough to revoke them. My guess is that this particular behavior is something of a bug, probably related to how the AI do not recover well from having the movement of units blocked.

shaglio said:

How can you tell that they haven't spent any of their uses before you capture them?

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keep a scout around and check what the AI is doing on their turns, this would only help if you don't have quick movement checked. Also I don't think the AI likes to use prophets on their own cities, they often just beeline to your cap if it was close

beetle said:

Did they say they would stop? Usually the AI refuses my request, but if they do agree, and after any missionaries/GPr in play are done, I don't experience more cities being converted.

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In my games I've seen every permutation of this take place:
Sometimes they say they'll stop and they do.
Sometimes they say they'll stop and they don't.
Sometimes they say they won't stop and they don't.
Sometimes they say they won't stop and they do.

But, whenever I try going for a peaceful victory, Missionary/Prophet spamming is the #1 cause for me to inevitably start a war anyway. Sometimes I even wake my wife out of bed because she can hear my downstairs swearing my head off at the computer. "I told you NOT to spread your useless religion to me! That's it, you're dead now! Big mistake! YOU'RE JUST DEAD!!!" (with colorful profanity intertwined).

This is unbelievable. I'm playing as Casimir, still on King, Small Continents map. William spams Missionaries and sends them my way, one of them converts one of my cities. I ask William to stop and he does so - temporarily.This time he sends two GP's and one of them converts the city that I'd just used an Inquisitor to convert back. I capture both GPs and we're at war. After a few turns of trickling units (Including Missionaries!) my way and having them killed/captured WIlliam sues for peace and gives me a city which I puppet. Less than ten turns later here's another GP and, you guessed it, he converts the same city. The city that William gave up the first time around was next to his capitol. My Artillery is softening iut up now.

While all of that was going on, Gajah Mada did the same thing and he lost a city as well.

In both cases, my military was significantly stronger than the spammers.

This AI behavior strikes me as badly coded and I would love it if Firaxis would tweak it so that when an AI promised to stop sending Missionaries/GPs for at least 30 turns.

The larger issue that the above two posts point out is that the AI views religious spread as a hostile act. In other words, the AI is not competing with you on a religious level - it is using diplomacy numbers to decide when and if to spread to you (if you have founded. If you haven't founded, the AI just spams you regardless of diplo numbers).

Soooo... When you ask Isabella to please for the love of god stop sending prophets at me, she will stop if she likes you and continue if she doesn't, regardless of what she says when you ask her to stop, which you must do to initiate the cease-spamming-me behavior. If you make her mad down the road, she will try to convert you again, because she views this as a hostile act. In other words, the AI isn't using spread for religion proper, it's using it as a reflection of diplomacy and aggression. Knowing this lets you read the AIs actions and decide if war is really necessary or if a couple of good diplo modifiers will stop the spam.

Unless ethernopia is in the game. You just have to kill him.

By the way, I don't think the mechanic that religious spread makes you go to war is broken at all. I think that's exactly what it's supposed to do.

And I think it's really fun to Dow cause you're just fed up with Byzantine shaolin monks converting your Egyptian tengriism cities.

beetle said:

Did they say they would stop? Usually the AI refuses my request, but if they do agree, and after any missionaries/GPr in play are done, I don't experience more cities being converted.



I think Arabia really did intended to stop spreading, but that GPr was already programmed with instructions and the AI is not nimble enough to revoke them. My guess is that this particular behavior is something of a bug, probably related to how the AI do not recover well from having the movement of units blocked.

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They did say they would stop. I didn't give them back their holy city (I'd already inquisitored it anyway). A while after I made the demand they converted another one of my cities. And their religion was terrible. I think it only had monasteries (the one that gets more culture for having incense) and then a bunch of bottom-of-the-barrel bonuses.

Edit: It's not unrealistic for civs to lie about this sort of thing - it happened all the time in real life. That said, when the guy with nukes conquers the entire continent (which is not the continent I started on) and gives you some worthless cities that would otherwise end up razed, and is pissed about the conversions, you'd think they would stop out of self-preservation. Then again the AI has never been smart enough not to attack somebody they have no hope of defeating.

I'm not so sure but I think, when you denounce them, they stop spreading their religion in your cities.

FaohKi said:

I'm not so sure but I think, when you denounce them, they stop spreading their religion in your cities.

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I don't think that works in every case. William resumed spamming me with his religion a few turns after that had cost him his second city. I think that Prmiacide has the best explanation of this AI behavior.