Resource icon

[G&K] Religion: Spreading and Defending Your Religion (G&K)

Arguably not a bug, but a "feature." If you truly eliminate a civ (i.e., no more cities -- none at all), then this should not be a concern unless another civ liberates one of his cities and revives him. If, however, you have conquered his capital and all but one of his cities, leaving him with one lonely backwater city (perhaps in an effort to avoid warmonger penalties for eliminating a civ), then, yes, he can eventually spawn a GP and respread his religion.

This is particularly bothersome when your religion has some great faith-giving beliefs and he uses your religion's beliefs to generate enough faith to spawn a GP or two.

On the 3 spreads with a GP point, you can't create a holy site if the GP has fewer than 4 spreads left. So, if you manually buy (post-Industrial) a GP in your Great Mosque city, it will have 5 spreads; you can use one spread and still plant a holy site. Also, if you are playing Sweden, you can gift a GP with only one remaining spread to a CS to get 90 influence -- which may be more valuable than using that last spread mission on another random city.

Yeah but...His faith is non existent anymore and it should work the same way purchasing works i.e. if you buy a prophet from an Islamic city it will be an Islamic prophet, even if your religion in the rest of the empire is Shinto.

And since they are so much concerned about having lost their won faith why dont they convert their own cities first? :lol:

I honestly think its a bug/programming oversight. I can see the benefits of capturing 'rogue' prophets but sometimes you just see notification because you didn't look at that particular place and you facepalm when you realize what happened!
 
If Firaxis thinks it's a bug, we'll see if they fix it in connection with the BNW release.
 
I honestly think its a bug/programming oversight. I can see the benefits of capturing 'rogue' prophets but sometimes you just see notification because you didn't look at that particular place and you facepalm when you realize what happened!

I think it is a feature. Early in my most recent game, my capital was getting hit hard by ancient era GP even after I enhanced. Closed borders and my own Grand Temple were not enough to stop them. If it were not for my GP spawning with my religion, which was an unexpected but pleasant surprise, my religion would have been wiped out. I had problems with this until the AI hit the industrial age.

On the plus side, my capital ended up with a Mosque, Cathedral, and Pagoda!
 
Yeah, I learned that the hard way in a recent game where I conquered a capital and soon after, it spawned a Great Prophet. I thought 'cool', now I can use it to convert. And then I realized it was the wrong religion. :lol:

I just captured a great prophet from a rival religion-- one with little presence in the game. Right now I can't seem to get it to create a holy site, and as far as I can tell, I can't use it for anything beyond scouting. Does anyone have a suggestion on what it can be used for?
 
It probably has 3 or fewer spread missions left, which is why it can't form a holy site. Apart from slow, slow, slow scouting, the GPr is useless (and costs you gold maintenance each turn). Unless I want them to scout right next door, I delete them.

You can use them to spread the other civ's religion (making mischief), but you will get the negative diplo penalties for proselytizing, not the owner of the religion you are spreading.
 
It probably has 3 or fewer spread missions left, which is why it can't form a holy site. Apart from slow, slow, slow scouting, the GPr is useless (and costs you gold maintenance each turn). Unless I want them to scout right next door, I delete them.

You can use them to spread the other civ's religion (making mischief), but you will get the negative diplo penalties for proselytizing, not the owner of the religion you are spreading.

Thanks! I too was thinking of using it to wipe out an opponent's favorite religion and replacing it with the minor one.

Is there some way to tell what benefit each religion supplies?

I could use it in my capital to temporarily switch religions, build the holy building (If the religion includes one) and then let the internal pressure and pressure of my surrounding cities to switch me back.
 
If you go to the Religion Overview screen, there are 3 tabs. The middle tab is World Religions and the right-hand tab is Beliefs. Sort that tab by religion and you can see what beliefs they have.
 
I think it is a feature. Early in my most recent game, my capital was getting hit hard by ancient era GP even after I enhanced. Closed borders and my own Grand Temple were not enough to stop them. If it were not for my GP spawning with my religion, which was an unexpected but pleasant surprise, my religion would have been wiped out. I had problems with this until the AI hit the industrial age.

On the plus side, my capital ended up with a Mosque, Cathedral, and Pagoda!

Perhaps, an awkward feature to say the least though. I havent thought of that, but even so...I don't agree with the mechanic :D
 
So - clearly this isn't true. I was playing around late-game a couple weeks ago and found that I could do a conversion then holy site; then I tested it at the beginning of the next game but I was clearly drunk at the time, I don't know why I thought it worked.

The whole thing about "missionaries or Great Prophets?" is pretty silly... the answer is always Great Prophets. When you spawn a Great Prophet you can do 3 conversions then bring it back to home and pop a 'holy site' with it, allowing you to gain tons of faith and a new Great Prophet a few turns later. A missionary can't do that.
 
@avava The reason you were able to do one conversion then build a holy site was because you had built the Great Mosque in the city that spawned the prophet, thus it started with one extra conversion. Without the Great Mosque, if you use any conversions on a prophet it won't be able to be the holy site.

The only civ that can get bonus use out of a prophet that's used all but one conversion is Sweden, because they can still give the prophet to a CS for the 90 influence.
 
...When you spawn a Great Prophet you can do 3 conversions then bring it back to home and pop a 'holy site' with it, allowing you to gain tons of faith and a new Great Prophet a few turns later.

That is not correct. A GPr needs 4 conversions left in order to be planted.
 
I could use it in my capital to temporarily switch religions, build the holy building (If the religion includes one) and then let the internal pressure and pressure of my surrounding cities to switch me back.

My own experience is that waiting for your city to flip back can take much longer than you expect! I recommend that you have an inquistor on deck before doing this. You probably also want to have faith saved up for the foreign religious bulding before using the foreign GPr. This means paying maitenance on the GPr for longer, so I guess it’s a balance of how much you favor your religion’s traits over that of the other.
 
Is there a resource somewhere detailing how religious pressure affects believers in cities?

I've worked out that the conversion of non-religious to believers is x*50, where x is the number of existing believers plus 1 (ie: the first takes 50, the second 100, third 150, etc) but I've yet to work out how it works for believers in another religion. Might have to test this with some single religion cities in my next game (note that this was on Marathon)
 
Sometimes I wonder if it is really worth it to expend all the faith you have into missionaries and great prophets to spread your religion. In fact if you have ceremonial burying you spend 'thousands' of faith just for a few happiness while you could also have saved that faith for religious building or the purchase of great people with in my eyes more sure and often bigger benefits.
Besides this if the AI converts one of your cities it is often nice that you can build the religious building of his religion.

So, I am sometimes wondering how worthy it really is to spred your religion just for some happiness and gold, not always even certain if you win 'the religious war' and get what you aimed for..
 
One funny thing I discovered when testing all kinds of things with religion was that an inquisitor can wipe out your own pantheon :lol:

Also, I agree I wish there was more known about conversion.

1. Why give a missionary and great prophet both 1000 when they obviously arent equal?
2. Is it always a certain % of the population converted by a Great Prophet when he wipes out the opposing religion? Is it based on the total population, or the population that wasn't previously the Great Prophet's religion?
3. A missionary converts opposing religion citizens first? How much religious strength does it take to convert each of these types of citizens?
a. A citizen with no pantheon or religion.
b. A citizen of your pantheon.
c. A citizen of an opposing pantheon.
d. A citizen of an opposing religion.
4. Which of the above citizens does passive pressure convert first, and how much passive pressure does it take to convert each?
5. Does the belief for converting city states affect both active and passive conversion?

I also think a trade route between the holy city and a city should increase pressure, and maybe for opponents, open borders or a DoF should increase it. And possibly have another increase from 66% to 100% for Religious Texts once you hit some information age tech.

GP's wipe out not just existing opposing followers, but also any history of being pressured (clearing the cache, so to speak) while delivering the effects of a missionary.
Missionaries deliver a burst amount of religious pressure. I'm not sure about the exact math but I do know that religious pressure can pile up (when the city is not growing) to the extent that say a 5 citizen city might not convert even if you use spread religion from a missionary several times (because the pressure that it felt that could not be translated into a new follower, because the city did not grow, was saved and counted)
Hence it is hard to wipe out a holy city (because the innate +30 is always counted, not to mention the pressure it has been receiving from neighboring cities) say even if you use 100 missionaries (100,000 bulk religious pressure) to completely convert it, a single inquisitor can restore the city to its original majority religion, completely wasting your efforts. On the other hand, using a great prophet wipes out the cache completely and even if he uses an inquisitor right away, the city will simply have no religion.
As far as I know 1000 bulk religious pressure from a missionary will convert 5-6 citizens on a completely empty city (as the number of followers goes up it takes more and more pressure to gain one new follower). And the number of followers in a city is also calculated from the difference in the bulk religious pressure the city has felt in its lifetime if there are multiple religions. Great prophets are great at making sure a that city converted stays that way.

As an avid player of "itinerant + texts + tithe" Byzantium I know that "hit confirming" is important in undermining other religions. Once you convert a big (say size 25) city by your IMBA religious pressure (+200 or so, so now the count is 13-12 in favor for your religion), immediately confirm the conversion with your GP (to wipe the slate clean, this will result in maybe 16-17 followers in the city) before he gets his GP or inquisitor there otherwise an inquisitor will restore the city back to its original religion (back to even 20 followers, depending on how much religious pressure that city has stored up);

Hit confirming will not incur a diplomatic penalty (as technically you didn't manually "convert" the city), even if done on holy cities, and if you manage to do so, even if he marches his inquisitor and purges your religion (resulting in maybe 0-1 follower for his religion), it'll convert again in several turns, which results in his AI wasting faith and spending another inquisitor there, again and again and again. Even if he uses a GP it'll just be like inquisitor + 1000 bulk pressure = only several followers. A GP does the same thing as a missionary, delivering 1000 bulk pressure while erasing other religions; he does not convert a fraction of the population, but a base amount.

By the way, if you exert 200 pressure on all cities in an empire (doable if you are Byzantium and completely surround the empire with your religion), it's equal to having a missionary there for each city spreading religion every 5 turns! (and costs you no faith!)
 
Top Bottom