Peacefully dealing with AI civilians

I'm talking about games where it's your plan to keep the peace, promote open borders, trade, all that kind of stuff. But you don't want an AI Civilization running Missionaries and Prophets up to your cities and allied City States. Or you don't want a Settler setting up a new city adjacent to you.

I find myself in a ridiculous dance using my land and sea units turn after turn to fence them off, surround them trying to redirect them elsewhere. And as for CSes it's a lost cause mostly because I don't want to permanently station units outside my borders in the numbers necessary.

Where the Missionaries and Prophets are concerned at least I know to buy and keep Inquisitors on hand but I still want to clear them from my borders.

You can "warn" the AI after the fact (Do not spread your religion; Do not settle near me...) but even then it seems to me, particularly with sending Missionaries or Prophets, that they get right back to it pretty quickly.

Must I be resigned to micro-managing them in the way I have been doing or is there a better way - what do some of you do?

I just let them be, try to claim settler spots quickly before they do and reconvert cities when necessary. The diplomacy options for these are broken, from what I've heard.

Several things have had huge success for me:

• Get your religion out there fast and early, then fight the battle out away from your own cities. I've barely seen any missionaries/prophets near me in my peaceful games in which I've done this and I picked either the rapid-spreading or the increased distance beliefs. Your own pressure will be more than enough to fight off outside evangelism. I typically rush for non-religious civs and try to convert all nearby ones as the AI targets them first and they act as a buffer.
• Also, if you want to fight on even footing, I suggest building a big faith output, reducing purchase costs, or increasing missionary/prophet strength (which all do the same thing effectively). It's generally underrated, but if you care a lot, taking the first 3 points of the piety tree is an excellent way to increase faith output, quickly build new shrines/temples, and reduce all faith purchases, all very useful stuff for maintenance. If you care to fill it completely taking the reformation belief evangelism turns your missionaries into unstoppable mini-prophets. Also scoring Mosque of Jenne gives your missionaries a free extra use which is very economical if you are struggling to produce good faith.
• Also, be on good terms with other religious civs as it makes them less likely to spam you. If you aren't on best-bud terms never give them open borders. all missionaries will die of attrition quickly with just a few turns of dancing in-borders (let them in before you do this so they die)
• If you have a lot of religious civs nearby you may want to bribe them into hating each other. They will spam each other instead of you if they aren't on good terms, though this reduces the peaceful atmosphere at least it isn't directed at you.

These four things and you may not even need inquisitors in my experience.

Example of results doing all 4 of these:

I had a game where I was able to keep two other piety civs spamming each other all game while I converted the rest of the huge world for a total of 73/100 cities under my religion (this was immortal level-AI with 3 other full piety religions). By this point my pressure was doing the work for me even when they wised up and started fighting over other neutral civs with me my numbers only dropped to 71. The only thing that could flip at this point was their Prophets which were getting expensive for them. I reduced 4 other religions to 0 or 1 cities just by aggressive missionary production, mosque of Jenne, and taking evangelism, and in fact was able to stay friends with one of these civs. The trick is to converge on their cities and convert all at once. Then agree to stop. They never recover and you only get one relations hit. Not the most peaceful way, but the same tactic used on nearby neutral civs will easily accomplish what you want and keep those other civs on the defensive most of the game.

As for the settler spots; I typically play "tall" and after 3 or 4 good spots I'm done. But I hate it when the AI settles some tiny sliver near me; irksome.

Yeah, I know, just grin and bare it. I probably ought to just give up on Religion and let whoever come in and convert but mostly out of pride I refuse. I did amuse myself in the current game I'm playing. Two very religious civs were very near my outpost city and in probably the span of 10 turns each hit it with their Prophets and Missionaries multiple times, often on the same turn, until they had exhausted themselves. That earned me a bit of respite. And when the smoke cleared I sent my own Prophet in and took it back.

danaphanous -

Great advice; things I hadn't really considered. I suppose I should play a few games more 'fighting fire with fire' as it were rather than just trying to walk the middle road.

At higher difficulty though I feel like I'm working really hard trying to excel at one thing so to try and be the dominant religion too would be overkill. But I do see your point. Thanks.

Mr_PeaCH said:

danaphanous -

Great advice; things I hadn't really considered. I suppose I should play a few games more 'fighting fire with fire' as it were rather than just trying to walk the middle road.

At higher difficulty though I feel like I'm working really hard trying to excel at one thing so to try and be the dominant religion too would be overkill. But I do see your point. Thanks.

Click to expand...

Thanks! I'm still experimenting a bit too. Fighting fire with fire doesn't always anger them either, depends on how you do it.

As for walking the middle road on a high-level game: doesn't work well. If you are percieved as a weak religion they can get aggressive, so either settle for just keeping your own cities converted and park a couple inquisitors around for permanent protection, giving up on the rest of the world, or get out there and fight hard. I've had a lot of trouble with the middle ground too, and finally swung to offense on any game I really care about keeping neighbors my religion.

If you do end up taking Piety it will help you a lot, and you can offset the investment by picking complementary beliefs like tithes, or faith-purchase options so that extra faith never goes to waste. The above example my huge religious effort ended up more than paying off as I scored tithes and a religious building, increasing my culture, faith, and GP buying, and raking in upwards of an extra 250 GPT from the renaissance onward.

I edited my original post a little and cleaned it up now.

If you find yourself fighting a lot you can transform the effort into hard science with Interfaith Dialogue. It can be really powerful if you are fighting a lot. It transforms that effort into science points. If you are frequently attacking high-pop other religion cities you will rake in a max of 100 extra science per use even on missionaries. The figure is 10 science for every citizen another religion per use maxing at 100. Every time they prophet-bomb you converting the city back can rake in 100-500 science which can be a whole tech early game depending on if you use several missionaries or just prophet-bomb it back (lowest yield).

My last attempt on a warring religious, immortal game caught me up very rapidly by even mid-renaissance and started putting me ahead. The effect wears off later once 100 science is not as significant but it is huge early-game if you can get a steady stream of missionaries. However, late-game all your faith will go to GP-buying so this is fine.

Easiest solution is to... well... not give them open borders, obviously. The (tiny) bonus-rep you get from opening borders is killed by demanding to stop settling/spreading religion anyway - I basically never ever give open borders to the AI and I think there's really no reason to do so, except for an AI that is friendly and has chosen the same Ideology, but if that's the case, then they won't send missionaries/prophets into your lands anyway. Settlers... well, again. No open borders = no settlers, and at the point that I give open borders, I usually don't really care about founding cities anymore.

AI Missionaries: You can generally ignore them if you've already established your religion even if your borders are open.

Great Prophets: Even closing your borders is completely ineffective against them. Build Inquisitors while they are still cheap is the primary religious defense. A secondary one is unit wall.

AI civilian units inferring with your own civilian movement in your territory: The only solution is having military units stationed on your roads / if your Inquisitors aren't needed at the moment they can also be used to block AI civilians.

Lower th the difficulty. Ais will be a lot more peaceful in the easier levels...

Put Inquisitors in your cities, that will lat least prevent prophet bombing.

You should never be peaceful with your immediate neighbor, especially if you haven't met anyone yet(or can get allies) and they found a religion. The quicker you capture that holy city the better. I find bee-lining civil service, then Education, then Machinery, then Guilds most useful for this. Since you will most likely be more advanced in military than your neighbor they will capitulate very easily and you can get some nice tribute early on. If you can build Machu Pichu then gold won't be a problem. If happiness is problem then you can always beeline Astronomy and explore the world.

To prevent missionary/prophet/settler spam peacefully may I suggest scouts(with the sight promotion). They are cheap, can move 2 tiles over any terrain, and can successfully herd any unwanted civilians. Missionaries you want in your lands so they die from attrition, settlers and prophets need to be herded towards barbarian camps.

If you're not in an island map, then use scouts to explore the land. They're easy to make and move twice so you could steal missionaries that try to spread religion in your lands. If you don't have a religion, then missionaries and great prophets spamming in your civilization shouldn't be a problem.