How does the Pressure system work?

does anybody know what preassure means? Does it mean that's how much pressure is being exerted on the city from the outside or how much that city is exerting outward?

If you look in the Civilopedia it does explain it fairly well there (under Game Concepts -> Religion). I can't remember how it works off the top of my head though.

It doesn't really answer the question I posed. What do the numbers mean? Is that outgoing or incoming?

Despite what the Civlopedia says it doesn't appear to give you outgoing/incoming breakdown but since the pressure number gets higher the more followers in that city, I'd have to assume it's outgoing pressure. Haven't had enemy religions close enough to my cities to see any incoming pressure (since I developed religion first and spread it to neighboring civs/CS asap I have a good buffer between enemy holy cities and my own cities currently).

Not seeing a significant breakdown on enemy cities, just see what also appears to be outgoing pressure (although perhaps the second religions would be the incoming...)

Iirc (i read the civilopedia aswell) Pressure means the amount of religious influence that religion has from that city up to 10 tiles away in all directions. Idk how much pressure you need to convert someone but im sure it's a good amount.

I'd assume, that to prevent weaker religions from spreading you would subtract lower pressures from highest pressure to get a net pressure of what you're really putting out

When you hover over the city, the amount of +pressure you see is the amount of pressure the city is receiving from surrounding cities. The amount it puts out is (I think) proportionate to the number of followers you have there, but this number is not shown. Also keep in mind, you'll only see how much pressure a city is under if you have a follower there, but it can still receive pressure nonetheless.

Cel.erity said:

When you hover over the city, the amount of +pressure you see is the amount of pressure the city is receiving from surrounding cities. The amount it puts out is (I think) proportionate to the number of followers you have there, but this number is not shown.

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My capital city with 20 people and 19 followers reported the highest pressure of any of my cities. I'm still confused.

Cel.erity said:

When you hover over the city, the amount of +pressure you see is the amount of pressure the city is receiving from surrounding cities. The amount it puts out is (I think) proportionate to the number of followers you have there, but this number is not shown. Also keep in mind, you'll only see how much pressure a city is under if you have a follower there, but it can still receive pressure nonetheless.

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I don't think this is right, I believe that the pressure number the game shows you is the pressure exerted by the city on the surrounding cities. The reason why I say this is that in a game last night Ethiopia used a Great Prophet to convert my capital/holy city of 20 people to their religion. Only one was left Jewish(my religion) and the pressure dropped from ~60 to 4.

If the pressure number represented outside pressure then that number would have stayed the same and not dropped.

Here is what I have been able to figure out:

Playing at the Byzantines on Epic without any religious traits that increase the spread of religion, it seems that your holy city gives off 20 (maybe 12?) pressure. From what I can tell there is a point limit, much like a great person limit, before a citizen is converted to the religion. It took a while for my capital/holy city to become 100% Christian but it did happen. I assume you would have to have a ridiculously fast growing capital/holy city for your entire population to not be eventually reach 100% conversion. Mind you this is with no other religions competing against it.

As for spreading, my second city which is less than 10 tiles away started with a pressure of 4 for my religion and it took a LONG time for it to become the majority religion (it still isn't 100%). Interestingly enough, I made a 3rd city <10 tiles away from this one and until a city has a majority of religion, it won't spread to other cities so I was in this situation:: 20 (12? can't remember) pressure on the capital, 4 on the 2nd, 0 on the 3rd. Luckily I had a lot of extra faith (Mt. Sinai ftw!) and bought a missionary. I had the wonder that gives missionaries 3 uses so I used this missionary (either 1 or 2 times... I can't remember, then I sent him to convert a CS) on my 3rd city. This is where it got interesting for me. The city was a majority Christian, but it has no pressure on it. However it SEEMS like once you reach a majority and there is no pressure from another religion, the population scales. If you population is 5 Christian out of 9, it seems to go to 7 Christian out of 12 (for example) as the city grows, even without pressure.

I say that because after doing this, my 2nd city now had 8 pressure and it finally became a majority of Christian. This in turn also gave my 3rd city 4 pressure and so on.

As for foreign religions:

I then used another missionary to go into my neighbor Rome and to convert one of his cities (city 2). If you made a line of cities it would look like my capital ---- 2nd city ---- 3rd city ---- roman city1 ---- roman city2. Therefore I had my 3rd city and his 2nd city giving pressure to his 1st city and some others. I did this for a while, no need for details but eventually he founded his own religion and things got intense.

In Rome, his holy city, he also has a 20 (12?) influence and it began to wipe out my religion in his cities (12>4 or 8 obviously). I still had some followers in his cities, but they were no longer the majority and eventually I think 1 city had all of my followers wiped out. To counter this I decided I needed a great prophet (one of my religious traits was that prophets were cheaper and more effective). I sent the prophet to Rome to counter his religion.

I'm hoping someone can clear this next part up because I still don't understand it.

I used the prophet and it was so effective it converted Rome to a majority of my religion. Unfortunately, the next turn, it was like it never happened. Christianity was back to 0 with no pressure and his religion was back in full swing. Is this intended, is it a bug? After trying a couple of more times, I reloaded and tried a different strategy. I went to other cities in his empire and converted them. Long story short, he had multiple cities (including my 3rd city) putting pressure on his empire so some of his cities had 12 pressure for my religion but the max he had for his religion was 4 (only 1 city, the holy city). I'm slowly taking over his empire and gaining all sorts of benefits but I still don't know what is up with the holy city deal.

On a random note, civs do NOT like when you counter their religions! Rome and I were best buds until I started to spread my religion and counter his. He hasn't declared war on me, but he denounced me and doesn't trade with me nearly as much now.

Long post, but hopefully that helps some of you and maybe someone else can come along and explain it even better

The pressure listed in the tooltip is Outgoing Pressure, not incoming pressure. You can tell this by looking at your capital the very turn that you found a religion. It's the only city with that religion so it's the only one exerting pressure. Pantheons don't exert pressure at all.

I'm quite confused by the pressure number as well, and I was under the impression that the pressure meant the amount of pressure that the city is spreading, not the amount of pressure the city is under.

IN my game it seemed meaningless anyway as great prophets would run through converting 4 or 5 cities at a pop every 20 turns. So the pressure system was laughably slow/irrelevant compared to that.

mystiqblackcat said:

I don't think this is right, I believe that the pressure number the game shows you is the pressure exerted by the city on the surrounding cities. The reason why I say this is that in a game last night Ethiopia used a Great Prophet to convert my capital/holy city of 20 people to their religion. Only one was left Jewish(my religion) and the pressure dropped from ~60 to 4.

If the pressure number represented outside pressure then that number would have stayed the same and not dropped.

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I saw the opposite of this. My pop was almost all converted to the other religion. But pressure remained high for mine (+55) and low for the other (+5 I think). There were 6 or 7 surrounding cities of my religion and no nearby cities of the other religion. My assumption is that pressure represents current influence on the city. This influence may be from surrounding cities or from the city's own population.

I thought it was peer pressure within the city being listed. The higher the pressure the more likely your citizens are to convert. 19 followers at 9 pressure vs. 1 at 25 pressure means the city will eventually change back on it's own.

What all factors go into making that peer pressure number - you got me.

I'm sure it made sense to the developers. I can just see them hashing this out over late night pizza... 3 a.m. "So the cities exert pressure?" "Dude, no, they are UNDER pressure." "So pressure... I think I get it..." Then they start singing "Under Pressure" by Bowie and Queen. This breaks into a Vanilla Ice party. Then they write the code.

The tooltip number you see is outgoing Pressure generated by the various populations of followers within the city. If external Pressure is being applied from nearby cities, you won't see any evidence of it in that city until a new follower of the external religion appears in the city. So, to find out what the external pressure is, you'll have to look at all cities within 10 hexes and add it up yourself.

Not the best UI... but that's Civ V for you.

Not sure if this is a bug or not but does anybody else get an AI leader's defeat message screen when you use a missionary on one of their cities?

kiwimaster said:

Not sure if this is a bug or not but does anybody else get an AI leader's defeat message screen when you use a missionary on one of their cities?

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No, but I got an insta-DoW. It wasn't even his turn.

Zerrigan said:

I used the prophet and it was so effective it converted Rome to a majority of my religion. Unfortunately, the next turn, it was like it never happened. Christianity was back to 0 with no pressure and his religion was back in full swing. Is this intended, is it a bug?

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Several ways of doing this come to mind. The most obvious is that he used an Inquisitor unit. That completely purges all competing religions from a city. It is also possible that he threw his own Great Prophet or Missionary into the mix on his own turn, converting your converts.

Also, you can't wipe out a religion by converting all its followers. The city where the religion was founded will still exert severe pressure on its own population to convert to the religion founded in the city - even if that population has 0 followers.

On top of that you can't raze capitals, so in general there is no way to exterminate a Holy City. It'll keep reconverting followers over and over and over again. I think you'll need to conquer it and continuously repress the cultists that keep cropping up indefinitely. You can also do what you did on your reload and just convert all the other cities around in such a way that his Holy City can't flip them with its own pressure.

One part I'm confused about is what religion your missionaries, inquisitors, and great profits will enforce if your Empire is a majority foreign religion but you have your own Holy City.

- Marty Lund

Do not use an Inquisetor this way - it will purge the minority religion (yours).