Resource icon

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

Browd

Dilettante
Administrator
Joined
Aug 5, 2012
Messages
12,106
Location
Rural Vermont
Last edited:
Very nice article. Still, there are some important details about the mechanics of religion spreading that might need to be clarified.

After one has founded (and probably enhanced) a religion, it's time to start spreading it. So we buy a missionary with accumulated faith, and need to decide where to send him. At this point, more often than not, someone of our neighbors already has a religion of his own pressuring on our cities, and might even have one or more of our smaller cities converted.

In this situation, it is not exactly obvious what would be the best usage for our so valuable missionary. (And the decision might be quite important, especially on higher difficulties.) We could either send him to convert our larger cities or nearby city-states, which would otherwise take a long time to be converted passively, and hope that the smaller ones (possibly already converted to a neighbor's religion) will somehow manage themselves soon. Or, we could spend a missionary on our smaller cities first. Or, in some situations, we might prefer to use our faith on pagodas/great people/whatever, relying more on passive spreading.

Obviously, the best decision will very much depend on the actual situation, but I believe it would be easier to decide if we better understand how spreading works.

Firstly, let us suppose we have a city with no followers and some pressure on it. How many turns will it need to be converted passively? If it grows (shrinks) along the way? The same with some foreign pressure/followers as well?

How many followers will it have after using a missionary or prophet (strength 1000 or different) on it? Using it twice? The same for a city with some foreign followers? I noticed that the number of foreign followers would decrease somewhat after using a missionary, but what is the exact formula/rules?

We know that a city is considered converted when it has a majority of followers in it. However, if the population is an even number, it is not obvious at all, at which moment it will be converted. We often see, say, a city of population 2, with 1 + 1 followers of different religions. Apparently, this internally involves some decimal numbers, but how exactly does that work?

And lastly, in one of my recent games i had a puppet city of population 1 following an opponent's religion. I had to use a missionary twice or thrice (don't remember exactly) on it to convert. Could I determine in advance how many usages I need, or maybe going for an inquisitor/prophet would be a better choice?
 
What I think as most important strategy in spreading your religion is finding non-religious empires among your neighbors. As soon as you found a religion and all possible religions were found; look for other capitals and send your missionary/g.prophet whatever necessary for spreading your religion to your surrounding nations. Also selecting tithe at the first hand is utmost important if you believe that you can spread your religion.
 
This is all, of course, dependent upon choosing beliefs that benefit from the spread of your religion, if you accept the premise that the benefits you get from spreading outweighs other choices you could've made. In my current game, I only chose beliefs that were internal and sent missionaries/prophets that requested my religion (solely for influence points).
 
Beyond the design choices you already have in G&K? How would you structure it, and what limits would you place on it, and how would you enforce those limits? Could I design a religion that gives the ability to research a new tech every turn?
 
The Itinerant Preachers enhancer belief extends the effect of each city's pressure to 13 tiles, from the default 10 tiles. This 30% increase in pressure radius results in city pressure covering 69% more of the map, dramatically increasing the number of cities in range of each city's pressure.
How do you get that 69%? I get 65%. The regular 10 tile radius totals 330 tiles for each city. (6 + 12 + 18 + 24 + 30 + 36 + 42 + 48 + 54 + 60). The additional three range totals 216 tiles (66 + 72 + 78). 216/330 is 65.45%.
 
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.
 
Browd, this is a bravura performance. Not even just in how incredibly informative it is, but also that it's got a very professional, flowing presentation that makes it a fast read. Everyone should be giving you an ovation, says SteveG.

Of course, some of us are probably like "why didn't he post this back when I was trying to figure all this stuff out", but never mind that. Great work.

Some suggestions:

1) Might try to slip in that there are two strategies for religion. One is the one that people naturally assume, that you want to spread your religion in a viral fashion, rapidly and indiscriminantly. The other is spreading your religion in a selective manner. The guy with Tithe may want those Itinerant Preachers spamming, but then again if he has Holy Warriors, he's putting a nasty weapon in the hands of his enemies. Selective conversion is where an underdog enhancer like Religious Unity comes in.

2) Another consideration is that in the section about defending against other religions, you might want to mention the tactic of using Interfaith Dialogue and welcoming the conversion of your cities, allowing you opportunities to rack up easy beakers as you flip your own cities back with a GP that you keep stashed away.

3) Didn't see where it was mentioned, but it seems that the fewer followers a religion has in a city, the better the conversion rate. This means that exerting strong religious pressure on a city is not a slam-dunk method of shutting out all other religions with weaker pressure. Any amount of pressure will usually convert at least one unit of a city's population to that religion. OTOH, using a missionary on a city where you already have 10 followers is nigh-total a waste because it the conversion rate is so meager.
 
It should be noted that another way to defend against AI missionaries, particularly early in the game or soon after Astronomy, is to not swap embassies. If the AI cannot see your capital, your capital will not be a target for conversion. These targets are predetermined, so the AI is only going to set out to convert your capital, and won't bother with your other cities on the way. If they can't see any of your cities, not only will they not be targeting your capital, they also won't be targeting any of your other cities that they stumble across once they've already set out on their predetermined mission.

Moreover, if you ensure that your holy city is not your capital, then swapping embassies will not make your holy city a target for conversion.

Great Prophets act a bit differently, in that they do recalculate every turn, their target being some function of distance from their holy city and the number of followers available for conversion (so if they could convert 18 followers, they'll prefer that over targeting a city where they could convert 5 followers). But this invariably means your holy city is going to be higher on the list of targets. So if they can see your holy city, due to swapping embassies, you'll be a target from the outset. But if your holy city is not your capital, and they can't see it, they may head in a different direction instead. Unlike missionaries, once they head in your direction, they'll adapt to what they come across (given the recalculation each turn), but if one particular city is a better target than the rest, they'll be pretty myopic nonetheless, which limits the number of inquisitors/other blocking units that you are going to need.
 
How do you get that 69%? I get 65%. The regular 10 tile radius totals 330 tiles for each city. (6 + 12 + 18 + 24 + 30 + 36 + 42 + 48 + 54 + 60). The additional three range totals 216 tiles (66 + 72 + 78). 216/330 is 65.45%.

It would be more accurate to ignore the 36 tiles around a city in which no other city can be built. Then it's actually a 74% increase (216/294).

On the other hand, if everyone builds their cities 5 hexes apart, it will make no difference at all.
 
I have been playing G&K for a couple of months now. In my last game I was trying to spread my religion to my rivals' cities. At some point I used a Great Prophet to convert the enemy's Holy City. It was a great success and I was surprised to see that the "Holy City" phrase disappeared along with all their followers.

Does this means that the city lost its HC status or is it just because there is no follower of their religin in that city? I wonder if there will be any internal pressure in the holy cities which I converted with a GP and that does not contain any follower or external pressuse of their former religin?

Note that these cities I do not own and I have an open borders with them and good diplomatic relations.
 
A Great Prophet will not extinguish holy city internal pressure, but that pressure is only exhibited in the tooltip when there is at least one follower in that city. Give it more turns; you will see followers re-emerge and holy city status displayed again.

The only way to truly extinguish holy city pressure is to conquer the holy city and then use an inquisitor. Note that, even if no surrounding cities have that religion as majority, this won't necessarily permanently eradicate the religion; if the religion's founder has any other cities he could still spawn a Great Prophet and re-establish (and re-spread) his religion. This is particularly likely if he has access to any religious beliefs (either your religion or another) that allows him to generate good amounts of faith.
 
Yes you are right. After a couple of turns a follower of the former religion appeared in the city tooltip and the Holy City Status too. The internal pressure 30 while the external pressure of my religion is 70. IMHO this means that even if it is a Holy City, the former religion will not get more than 30% of the population of the city... Interesting :)
 
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:
 
Yes you are right. After a couple of turns a follower of the former religion appeared in the city tooltip and the Holy City Status too. The internal pressure 30 while the external pressure of my religion is 70. IMHO this means that even if it is a Holy City, the former religion will not get more than 30% of the population of the city... Interesting :)

I am not sure if it translates into hard percentages though. In a recent game Halie had surrounded Athens, with cities following Christianity (Athens was Hindu holy city) and he managed to effectively convert it completely. As far as I know Athens never got a citizen back to Hindu.
 
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.
 
Only problem is that once he made one conversion you cant plant him :D.

Just a word of warning to all, This happened to me today:

If you eliminate a civ and inquisitor his holy city and even convert him to your own religion, if he can generate faith still (temples etc) their counter for prophet is still counting and the prophet generated will be from HIS religion. I had the Iroquois do this twice to me and I am sure
they didn't have another city (satellites on). Must be a bug or something. They didnt even try to flip back their own cities just my own.
 
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.
 
Top Bottom