Holy War

Last weeks game was a real trial up until about the half way point. I haven't played against England since civ3. I just decided out of the blue well lets see how old Lizzy is in BNW. I didn't find her to bad off..Well maybe the old menopause was kicking in every now and then but otherwise ok. So anyway I'm going about getting my slice of civ heaven built and Lizzy sends a missionary over the border. Well you have to expect that on occasion. so a city gets converted to Protestantism. Ok made one of my own and reclaimed the city. Well that was just the beginning. she must of gotten that wonder that spawns three missionaries at once because here they and a great prophet come running over the border. So I loose half a dozen cities to her religion and end up spending turns and faith cleaning the mess up. after that initial blitz she would send over a missionary every few turns.
Finally Catherine at the other end of the continent started messing with her and it gave me a chance to get my religious house in order.
Of course it took awhile to save up enough faith for a great prophet but I got it and sent it straight off to London.
London and two other cities where on the shore of a large lake not to far from our border so I figured I could whack all three one after the other.
So my great prophet pulls up outside of London and wham we have a Catholic London.
That was the end of my turn so when the puter is cycling through I see a English missionary dash over the border heading for one of my cities. I was so mad when I saw that I woke a Longswords Man on over watch and sent him to take the missionary's head. Of course that started a war My great prophet converted the second city Canterbury I think it was but he ended up getting sabered by English Cavalry before he got to the third city. All in all the war went well for me I pillaged well over half of Londons land and annexed four English cities and promptly converted them to Catholicism.
After the Peace treaty was signed Lizzy was worn down from battling Cat and I converting the rest of her cities was fast and easy.

Were you playing as Spain? Because that would have been... you know.. .historic!

We need a Vatican or Holy Roman Empire.

No I was playing America. Your right though that would of been cool.

Prior to G&K, I was a relatively passive player - almost never instigated wars (either by annoying AI or Declaring).

Once the religion mechanic was introduced, I found myself doing quite a few "crusades" for this very reason.... trying combat spread of AI religions with the massive missionary zergs. As frustrating as it could be, I found it quite fun since it got me out of my usual "peacemongering" doldrum and created action to spice up my games.

Unfortunately, I rarely see that now since the AI seems reluctant to use missionaries/GPs on my cities and instead we get in "missionary wars" over City-States (which feels more tedious - one of the areas I wish I could automate would be having it auto-buy missionaries nearest to a specific target and sending them out to convert that target).

I'm surprised that there is no UA or religious tenet that enables you to convert cities to your religion upon capturing them. I reckon it should belong to just war.

sendos said:

I'm surprised that there is no UA or religious tenet that enables you to convert cities to your religion upon capturing them. I reckon it should belong to just war.

Click to expand...

No, that should probably be another Reformation option.

On a related note, does anyone know how to use enemy missionaries after capturing them? I don't want to spread the enemy religion, and you get nothing for selling them. I usually just sell them anyway so I don't have to pay maintenance on them.

Barghaest said:

No, that should probably be another Reformation option.

Click to expand...

Good idea.

Sid Simelia said:

On a related note, does anyone know how to use enemy missionaries after capturing them? I don't want to spread the enemy religion, and you get nothing for selling them. I usually just sell them anyway so I don't have to pay maintenance on them.

Click to expand...

Depends on enemy religion and/or whether you got religious tolerance or not. for the latter, If the enemy religion has a decent pantheon belief, e.g. fertility rites or goddess of the hunt if your best cities have several camps nearby (some specific example like that), spread their religion to your cities. If their religion offers religious buildings, spread their religion to get a majority of their religion at that city, buy the religious building and send an inquisitor to remove the religion afterwards.

Sid Simelia said:

On a related note, does anyone know how to use enemy missionaries after capturing them? I don't want to spread the enemy religion, and you get nothing for selling them. I usually just sell them anyway so I don't have to pay maintenance on them.

Click to expand...

Generally I don't capture enemy missionaries... you still earn XP for attacking them with ranged units so they make good target practice for leveling archers/siege and they don't capture while embarked. Another failing of the AI is not seeing anything beyond Civilian Capture Priority for units which are useless to their Civilization (namely GPs/Missionaries of opposing religions).

If I MUST capture one (meaning he's holed up in a city I'm about to take or I don't have time to whittle him down with ranged units), they are only four uses (beyond outright deletion) I see for them:

• Bait - AI units are suckers for capturing civilians (even moreso for rescuing their own) so I will park a captured missionary where I can lure an AI unit into a trap or out of a city. When they go for the bait, I demolish them. Also works well to get fortified Barbarians to leave a camp.
• Blockades/Distractions - Embark a captured Missionary near a city you are sieging to either aid in blockading tiles, get in the way of enemy naval units who must then attack the Missionary to get past, or draw fire from the city/ranged units since embarked units are weaker and easier to kill they are more likely to be targeted saving some of your other units from a round of fire.
• Harassing another AI - I'll sometimes send captured Missionaries to distant CS that other AI are spamming with their religion to cause them to waste more resources or I will send them into territory of civilizations with whom I have neither Open Borders nor War status just to get in the way of their units or scout terrain, since I could care less if they die from attrition.
• Placeholders - I can park them on Antiquity Sites until I get an Archaeologist closer to avoid being ninja'd.

This weeks game I have Ethiopia on the continent with me. I didn't realize they are a faith spreading civ. and a general pain in the butt. Two in a row I guess I blew my chance at the Powerball.
Anyway pretty much the same happened as with Liz although I know he had a ton of faith because I got the missionary spawning wonder But at the same time he showed a very bad lack of common sense. He put a city right next to my capitol!!! I mean the governor of the city could see me making hand gestures at him from his balcony. The war that followed didn't add up to much I annexed said city and made him give me a nice fat city on the border for my troubles. I got the idea to instead of killing captured prophets and missionaries like I usually do. After the peace treaty I sent them into his lands to recon before deleting them.
The game goes on and not a peep from The Lion other than him picking on a CS in his realm. All of a sudden five missionaries are running around my border area. Not converting my cities but just darting around then just disappeared back over the border. I wondered if he was doing recon or trying to goad me into a war?
By that time I had a bunch of faith and two generals standing by and decided to see if I could make him blink. I converted four of his cities and took a nice fat aluminum mine a coal mine and a silk farm from him and nope he didn't pull the trigger. The game is still in progress so I'll see how things shake out.
Almost forgot the Shoshone showed up and tried a conversion. his missionary died quickly but that civ was so far away that after the regulation turns we made peace and are back to trading.

Zaimejs said:

Were you playing as Spain? Because that would have been... you know.. .historic!

We need a Vatican or Holy Roman Empire.

Click to expand...

That could be neat! Instead of Venice, imagine if they'd created a single city civ with utterly overpowered religious uniques who could somehow indirectly influence everyone following their religion. Now that would be neat.

To add one more to Barghaest's excellent summary:

Scouting for artillery units when attacking a city with hills around it. I had a string of them and would send them one at a time. AI reclaimed them and sent them back out! Rinse and repeat...


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk