Religion

Just wondering what others think, because personally i really would like to see a religion victory condition (dont know what exactly it would be, but then the fight over religion would be more intense) Having 50% or more cities following your religion or/and having 50% of all the people following your religion and having your religion as the world religion. i was thinking along these lines.

Maybe add the option so the owner of the holy cities can call crusades/jihhads against other holy city (this would give a diplo penalty against the civ you called it but it would give you + with those who joined your crusade) Ofc you could join other crusades as well, maybe joinin a crusade helps you adopt the religion you are helping (when you have non)

Also units joining the crusade could generate +faith/culture and ofc they would have no maintanance and they could have religious pressure (same as cities just weaker)(ofc if they attacked anything other than their target nation there would be diplo penalty). Late game add a resolution to the wc that prevents crusades.
So what do you think?

Hey, I personally love religion and invest a lot of time in being the dominant one. Your idea sounds cool but I'm wondering if it would be too easy to achieve religious victory:

1. Only about half of civs can even have a religion so the ones that lose out can't even compete
2. Since faith happens early it would be quite possible to win extremely quickly before the game progresses into the industrial era or anything.
3. This type of victory would be easier than conquest as well as all you have to do is conquer the other holy cities to deactivate the other religion spreading and then missionary the rest. I usually achieve 70-90% religious dominance simply because I emphasize it and always make the rapid-spreading benefit a priority and get it first. I'm not even trying terribly hard and don't conquer other holy cities either. So I think your idea is cool but at least how religion works now I think victory would be pretty easy. Just make sure you get the rapid-spreading and effectiveness perks first and everyone else has a severe disadvantage.

I like your idea of crusades though. At least in civ 4 you could request that an ally adopt your relgion as state and it could definately be an easy factor to include in diplomacy. right now it only has one positive/negative modifier in international relations and that's it.

Ye well vitory condition could be altered i just said something there really, (i thouht that you needed the wc world religion vote as well so it might not be as fast as you thought)
It could always be altered for balance purposes (i just said 50%)

Thats true not all the civs could go for this but thats not a big problem in my opinion, because getting a religion is pretty much doable on deity if you want it, and then the religon race might be even more pressuring than right now for founding a religion. On deity i dont think it would be so easy i mean the Ai is spreading his religion like crazy, and its pretty hard to get the wonder where you spawn 3 missioneries so it could be rather challanging to get the world to follow your religion.

As for crusades it could be a diplomatic tool as well and it could give some nice benefits for those who join/make one.

I agree it'd be fun to add some more diplomatic factors around it at least. I'm not playing deity...just King right now so it's possible they get better later on. Still, I've found if I'm the first to get rapid-spreading and am purposeful with my great prophets on border cities and city states that I won't take a diplo hit for...I usually end up putting them on the defensive and they stay out of my territory. They get really mad if you spread in their territory which is stupid since they always do the same thing. Not a big issue though unless they send prophets.

I also don't have BNW, so I didn't know about the religion vote...haven't gotten to check out the world congress or any of that yet...

Still, even on King I've not had a problem with religion--it seems the easiest part of the game to maintain control. I've only had civ 5 for a few weeks or so though I've played the predecessors extensively and am pretty experienced in general. Granted I see the crazy-religion-spreading coming and head it off usually.

On this latest King game they started everyone but me on the coast and I was surrounded by players and city states. I missed being the first religion by a few turns but was the second. Whaddaya know, the first guy's capital was right next to me. I decided this was unacceptable as this would cause me a ton of religion maintenance problems later and since he was the Egyptians he already had a good handful of wonders--just a few less than me. So I conquered his holy city and ended it with a great prophet. There was another religion that sprang up on my continent later...but being late and my religion being rapid-spreading he's barely had time to get out of his own territory. Most of the continent is my religion now. This is my typical pattern. I try to keep the other religions either far from me or on a severe defensive. If someone gets the first religion and is near it is almost always a cause for war as I know it'll nerf my religion. This is because you can't spread through them without a diplo hit and yet they ignore you and do it to you anyway...kinda one-sided. To prevent this crap I usually end the closest religion.