Captured Missionaries

Can you convert captured missionaries from another religion to your own ?

The Netherlands declared war on me and I captured 3 missionaries, but obviously they are from a different religion. Or do I just delete them ?

Steve

Delete or use as scouts until they die of attrition.

Nope. Missionaries, Inquisitors and Prophets are not ones to be swayed by intimidation, nor even by a daring rescue from hostile barbarians. A heathen is a heathen, and they stick to their religion no matter Hell or high water.

So yeah, go ahead and delete them. Unless by some fluke luck you capture a Prophet who hasn't been used to spread religion yet. In that case, you can still build a Holy Site with them.

My favorite use is as an expendable scout. Missionaries will eventually expire from attrition, but a GPr that has already been used (and therefore can't be turned into a holy site) is a decent, long-term scout. They suffer from terrain movement penalties and can't pass through other units, but they can go places a regular scout can't go without an open borders treaty (and during a war they can be an expendable "spotter" to provide city visibility for artillery, saving a melee unit from damage--the AI doesn't seem to like targeting GPrs). When it's done its job, I delete.

I use them as Scouts. The AI either ignores them or kills them. I've never had one "liberated" or recaptured from me.

That's about it....using them as scouts or spotters is actually a super benefit sometimes particularly when you have some AI who's difficult to deal with....

But I try to keep these "scouts" away from uninhabited areas....they have no defensive capability at all....unless you're almost done with them and want to save a few key strokes deleting them...

Sometime I will use them to spread their religion to some other AI I don't like, disrupting their holy capital.
I don't think I get the penalty for proselythism doing that, it would actually be fun if the one AI I captured them from got it instead, never been able to figure that out!

loki75 said:

Sometime I will use them to spread their religion to some other AI I don't like, disrupting their holy capital.
I don't think I get the penalty for proselythism doing that, it would actually be fun if the one AI I captured them from got it instead, never been able to figure that out!

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I've tried. You gets the diplomatic penalty for spreading foreign religion as well.

I sometimes use them on my own cities if they give me a bonus religious building. They don't do much harm if your religion is already fairly established, because religious pressure will force them back to your religion. In the meantime, grab a cathedral and enjoy. Otherwise, use them as scouts (as others have said).

Dogmouth said:

I sometimes use them on my own cities if they give me a bonus religious building. They don't do much harm if your religion is already fairly established, because religious pressure will force them back to your religion. In the meantime, grab a cathedral and enjoy. Otherwise, use them as scouts (as others have said).

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Ahhhh...this is interesting...if I'm understanding this correctly, if one of your cities is converted and the other religion has Cathedrals, Mosques, Pagodas, Monasteries, etc., in its belief system....you can build those too, as long as your city remains converted..???

Human Shields.

Of course as Sweden you can give the prophets away.

Koiranputki said:

Ahhhh...this is interesting...if I'm understanding this correctly, if one of your cities is converted and the other religion has Cathedrals, Mosques, Pagodas, Monasteries, etc., in its belief system....you can build those too, as long as your city remains converted..???

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Yep. It does mean though you don't get advantage of the founder beliefs in your cities. What it means its possible to have an India situation where all of your cities follow a different religion and your religion has spread elsewhere across the globe for something like World Church + negative/not useful follower beliefs to stunt your enemies.

Gucumatz said:

Yep. It does mean though you don't get advantage of the founder beliefs in your cities. What it means its possible to have an India situation where all of your cities follow a different religion and your religion has spread elsewhere across the globe for something like World Church + negative/not useful follower beliefs to stunt your enemies.

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Thanks...I assume, though, you would continue to get the benefits from the Cathedral etc...+3 culture, +1 happiness, +1, or whatever, faith even after your city converts back...??? I'll do a bit of testing, I think, when I get home tonight...

It looks like the use of religion is much more nuanced than I had thought. Using captured missionaries and prophets from some other religion,...maybe even on your own cities ....could have some long term beneficial effects..... Is there a way to find out the belief systems for these other religions, or do you just have to remember from the various pop-up notifications..???

Anyway, something to think through and see what strategies can be developed....

[Aside: In my current game as William...I have, for me, an unusually high number of faith points per turn....I'm not quite sure how it came about, though I did try to emphasis faith points when I set up my religion...I think a lot of it must be flowing in from the foreign cities that I have either converted, or who readily adopted my religion..... In fact the points are accumulating almost faster than I can spend them ...already two Scientists on faith points and no overly long delays getting Great Prophets.... and there have been a somewhat higher than typical number of Great Prophets and Missionaries from other religions....well, that was until I reduced Harald to a marginal player....maybe I should have let him remain a little stronger than he is now.... ]

I only do this when I anticipate a quick and natural switch back to my religion. For instance, let's say that you have a convertable city that's wedged between five cities with your home religion. You can use a captured prophet or missionary to spread a religion that gives you Cathedrals or allows you to buy units with faith, buy the Cathedral or units, and allow the city to switch back naturally in 5 or so turns. You get to keep the Cathedral and units that you bought.

In one game I had Pagodas, Cathedrals, and Mosques in three cities (i.e., 9 religious buildings) despite only having Pagodas in my religion. I also bought two trebs with the faith despite not having that ability in my religion. I had absurdly high faith in that game, which is why I was able to purchase these buildings willy-nilly.

Strange. I was capturing missionaries and they simply turned around and worked for me. I`ve never seen any that were uncapturable.

I guess that must be because they were the same religion?

Socratatus said:

Strange. I was capturing missionaries and they simply turned around and worked for me. I`ve never seen any that were uncapturable.

I guess that must be because they were the same religion?

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From what I can tell they always retain their original religion, but they are yours to deploy as you want.... And you can capture them, but if you use a ranged unit I think you just have to "run over" them...shooting at them with a ranged unit will kill them...

I'm not sure if it works exactly the same if they are embarked... Probably the same...you have to "run them down" not fire on them...

I send them to mess up a different religion with the goal of screwing with thier pressure and getting them to waste Faith on Inquisitors...

As everyone here says, use them as scouts. Prophets can be used either for holy sites (if havent started converting yet), or as the worst scouts possible. Their vision is bad, so I usually just delete them, considering they take up what, is it, 3 GPT? Missionaries and inquisitors can't convert religion, but they can be used as not bad scouts, and sometimes, very rarely, they can be used strategically, manipulating other religions.

How does something die of attrition?

If a missionary spends a turn inside the culture borders of either a non-friendly/non-ally CS or a civ where you don't have open borders, it loses 250 of its strength through "attrition". This happens when you hit "next turn" while inside the borders; passing entirely through during a turn doesn't do it, and I've found through trial and error that it doesn't happen on the turn you use the missionary to spread, so you can avoid attrition if you get out of town on the next turn.

Losing missionary strength has two consequences. You get fewer followers when you expend the missionary and the missionary will die if it happens too often. A missionary with 1000 strength can get through 3 turns of attrition (and will die on the 4th) and one with an extra 25% strength (I forget what that enhancer belief is called) should survive 4 rounds of attrition.

All of this is different from garden-variety health/hit points. Missionaries don't have combat strength to speak of but can occasionally survive (barely) range attacks from barb archers, and IIRC they will "heal" in the regular way. But attrition is not healable; if you are inattentive to your missionary's stopping point on a given turn, and attrition happens, there's no way to "heal" the missionary back to full strength.