Boxed in by my own religion?

I’m playing a marathon world map game as Carthage with civs and city-states maxed out, and early in the game I lucked out with some goodie huts and founded a religion. It was the first time I’d managed to found a religion so I focused on spreading it throughout the region to my neighbours, thanking my lucky stars I managed to pull off this upset with over 20 opponents. I was well set up for a strong economy and took Tithe to increase my treasury as I spread my religion and Swords into Plowshares to help increase the population of the region, meaning more eventual converts to add to my exponentially growing purse.

I’ve now just entered the Industrial Era with a tech lead and I’m ready to start redrawing my borders, but since I’ve been so effective at spreading my religion to my neighbours, my religion is providing over 25% of my substantial income, and attacking my neighbours will only serve to decrease populations as I capture cities.

Anyone else ever been boxed in by religion in this way? I found it kind of entertaining when I came across my dilemma.

I presume you are rich by this point, so I doubt that kind of drop in income is going to hurt you much. Plus, if you puppet and work them as gold farms, you'll end up with a lot more income from that, anyway. And their population will come back up quickly. Not much of a quandary, really. Just have to stop thinking like a nearsighted accountant and go grab the world by the balls!

You could always turtle to a science victory! If you can stand the boredom!

However, realistically, other religions will be building similarly, and are likely to be competing soon, also any civ that has begun to feast on other civs, that's where you'll begin to get trouble . I suggest you look further afield for where the trouble will come from. You'll need to keep up the tech and army.

Taking the cities near you will be only a temporary setback in gold. They will soon grow, making you stronger. Puppetted ones you want to go for gold by surrounding with Trading Posts, and the annexed capitals (or any other high production/science city), build up until you have an unstoppable steam roller.

Welcome to the forums Byrsa Suffet!