AI won't stop spreading religion

The one thing that infuriates me about religion is that the AI will never honor agreements to not spread religion to your cities. At least, while I don't see missionaries anymore the AI still force converts my cities with their great prophets. And of course you can't tell them to stop spreading religion a second time. Yet, the game gives us no options for punishing the AI short of denunciations and declarations of war.

You've summed up the frustration quite well. All I can advise is that you prepare for war, or just buy an Inquisitor or two and shuttle them between your vulnerable cities.

The specific problem I had here was that I already had an Inquisitor protecting my capital; however, he went after my 2nd city instead, even converting it again after I used a 2nd inquisitor and missionary.

If you have a good road network, and frequently scan your territory for interloping GPs, you can shuttle your Inquisitor from city to city. I usually won't bother when the interlopers are Missionaries, since they are much less effective. Irritating micromanagement, but it works. (Also irritating that you don't get notifications about the interlopers, so you have to be scan regularly.)

You can also trap invading GPs and Missionaries with military and civilian units. Trapping a GP is easier (fewer movement points), but trapping a Missionary is ultimately less time consuming and more satisfying (since they will expire from attrition in 4 turns or so, assuming you didn't give open borders).

See, it's the open borders that I hate. You want them for the tourism modifier you get. But I also don't care to deal with their fanaticism about their own religion when I'm quite happy with my own. I do the "surround your cities with units" trick when I'm too busy elsewhere to scan my borders for unwanted missionaries every single turn.

While it's normally the capital the AI tries to convert, sometimes it is some other city.
But the AI is not subtle about approaching their target; they beeline directly to their target (as interfered with by current position of units), so if you have your inquisitor on a road network it should be easy to have him relocate in time. (Or in event that their target has a lot of your own passive influence on it & their own religion has a follower belief that allows a faith building, you can choose to let them convert it just long enough for you to buy that faith building before your own religion naturally gets it back.)

completely surround your cities with cities with some sort of unit. The missionaries can't get in - that's what I did when harun tried to convert my holy city.

By the way, why does the AI feel like it absolutely HAS to convert your holy city instead of anything else?

homegrown said:

See, it's the open borders that I hate. You want them for the tourism modifier you get. But I also don't care to deal with their fanaticism about their own religion when I'm quite happy with my own. I do the "surround your cities with units" trick when I'm too busy elsewhere to scan my borders for unwanted missionaries every single turn.

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To get the tourism benefits, you only need the other guy's open borders; you don't have to give open borders (in fact, you probably shouldn't).

Pay 1 strategic resource or 1 gpt for open borders with friendly AI, rising to 2 gpt when they are neutral/mildly negative, 3+ gpt when they are grumpy, etc.

The BNW AI appears more willing to change their target away from your holy city if it sees you have an inquisitor there than G&K.

As to the +25% bonus for open boarders, unless you really want a cultural victory, you don't need it early on (especally when its worth all of one or two points per turn.)