Religion: Are you getting spammed with GPPs and Missionaries?

I can answer this like i'll answer everything else.

In a game of averages, someone is always better.

You likely aren't focussing on religion to the maximum because you're intent on winning the game with an actual victory condition. The AI often ignores victory conditions and pursues whatever the hell it likes. If you want to have a budding religion focus on it, there's nothing stopping you! You can easily compete with the AI on religious terms if you try Doesn't mean it won't be hard still of course.

But in this game you cannot have your cake and eat it too. Every decision you make improves your empire in one way. But by choosing one element over another, even for a few turns, your putting yourself behind in that other respect. That's the way the game works, and as more and more features have been added in G&K and BNW, you have less and less ability to control all aspects of the game. I personally like it, it means there is actually an element of uncertainty and competition. But i can understand how it is frustrating. You've just gotta go into a game with the attitude that you can't win them all, so you might as well just enjoy playing the game

kekekeke said:

My solution is initerant preachers - I try get it every time even if I don't plan to play "piety" game.

Make your religion dominant early and AIs will waste their missionaries and prophets in vain (mostly). Save your prophets for later when AIs have used their cheaper ones and send 3 or so prophets simultaneously to destroy other religions and make yours dominant. If you also got tithe, enjoy your free cash flow from everywhere and ignore missionaries since your religion cannot be killed by AI, ever.

This works pretty well but is pretty boring since every game becomes pretty similar. I just can't be bothered to micromanage missionaries for the whole game :/

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This used to work in g&k but in bnw they do successfully push itinerant back. In my current game I got djenne and borobour, itinerant, and made my religion the world religion, converted everybody early, and I spammed missionaries as fast as I could with their three conversions. Two of the AI still rolled back my religion from their territories after I had mostly converted them, and they are now pushing theirs out into non religious civs that had been entirely my religion.

Now it is late game and I am using faith for great ppl instead, and have other sources of gold now so I am not too worried and am no longer spamming missionaries. But still!

in my experience there is almost always at least 1 super annoying religious civ on my landmass. Indonesia is particularly bad along with the other religious civs from G&K. I've been playing emperor/immortal and definitely noticed that Missionary & GPP spam is increased overall, perhaps due to the piety tree which a lot of the AI seem to love. Even itinerant preachers or religious texts are not enough to ensure dominance...you really have to work at it. Keeping inquisitors in cities is more important too.

If you found a religion that is good for you, but did you build this grand temple?
Since grand tempe (and tiny temples) with religious textes, and ocasional inquesitor helps a little since your presure is probably strong enought.

Of course there is this annoying situacion, when on the other continent is single religion adopted by 3 civs, and some of them decided it is good idea to spam misionaries, and religion perks all support that... That is annoying, but to achieve it other civs sacrifize something when you pick the other. Piety tree, or religion beliefs for better spread.

I ve had missionaries and great prophets from other civilizations and other religions come to my cities and try to get rid of my religion from my cities and my shrine, so what I did is ask the rival civilization to stop sending me the great prophets and missionaries as a warning. If they don't stop I have them emd up with a DoW from me and armies to take their cities. I once had my religion reduced to 0 cities once but was able to get the 0 city religion as the world religion. However as soon as I took off the 0 city religion off world religion, the religion revived and the shrine city re converted to its religion and the 0 religion became a 1 city religion.

There should be an ability to expel missionaries and gpp's just like you could do with diplomats in earlier Civs.

Xiao Xiong said:

Desert folklore + henge + faith wonder + petra + djenne = religious victory.

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Desert Folklore + Petra is normally enough for a win.

I just had a bad religious game, and I now can understand some of the complaints.

Immortal. Pang, standard everything else. Byzantium Got first pick of religion in everything because I settled near Mt Sinai and had desert folklore with plenty of desert. I had four cities in total.

Beliefs: Desert folklore, Tithe, Ceremonial Burial, Mosques, Religious texts
Reform belief: Jesuit Education

As you can see, this is one sexy religion. However I was in the middle of three Civs who all went religious. They spammed missionaries like mad. I couldn't keep up, though I did try. They went ICS too so they had crazy pressure.

I never really had more than 5 cities under my religion, so Tithe was gimped, and ceremonial burial only gave me 2 happiness the entire game!

Funny thing is that only one of them went into piety. I went full Piety. They had no faith wonders.

Bah! I think religion is now best played in isolation in such cases. I still got a SV, thanks to Jesuit Ed.

Moral of the story: Even a huge faith advantage used well is no guarantee your religion will spread. But is this normal in BNW?

danieladler said:

I have played a dozen games with BNW and i have never experienced what you have experienced. Sometimes i have seen a pack of missionairies going a across my lands probably in order to do their dirty job in another civ, though. So i guess its again proof of how much civ-players experiences differ.

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This has been my experience as well- far less conversion than G & K. I always go for a religion early- normally through Stonehenge- and have cathedrals and pagodas generating faith and I have never been bothered. Every now and then someone will convert a city but I don't need inquisitors sitting drinking the altar wine in every city.

it's annoying having a pantheon belief you really like and seeing it wiped out forever.

Of course, if you don't found a religion, you don't get inquisitors. Worse still, you don't get the option to tell the AI to stop proselytizing. It's war or bust.

JustinianIV said:

I just had a bad religious game, and I now can understand some of the complaints.

Immortal. Pang, standard everything else. Byzantium Got first pick of religion in everything because I settled near Mt Sinai and had desert folklore with plenty of desert. I had four cities in total.

Beliefs: Desert folklore, Tithe, Ceremonial Burial, Mosques, Religious texts
Reform belief: Jesuit Education

As you can see, this is one sexy religion. However I was in the middle of three Civs who all went religious. They spammed missionaries like mad. I couldn't keep up, though I did try. They went ICS too so they had crazy pressure.

I never really had more than 5 cities under my religion, so Tithe was gimped, and ceremonial burial only gave me 2 happiness the entire game!

Funny thing is that only one of them went into piety. I went full Piety. They had no faith wonders.

Bah! I think religion is now best played in isolation in such cases. I still got a SV, thanks to Jesuit Ed.

Moral of the story: Even a huge faith advantage used well is no guarantee your religion will spread. But is this normal in BNW?

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Religious Texts is oversold. People like to say that it's the bee's knees, but it folds to pressure from a rival religion, even in G&K. It's just that the AI never really fought back before. It's really just useful for spreading to neutral areas, or holding pressure. If you really wanted to push, Orders + Evangelism is necessary. It nicely balances out the Founder benefits, IMO. You really need to work and take up religious arms to get Tithe to maximum benefit, now.

Roxlimn said:

Religious Texts is oversold. People like to say that it's the bee's knees, but it folds to pressure from a rival religion, even in G&K. It's just that the AI never really fought back before. It's really just useful for spreading to neutral areas, or holding pressure. If you really wanted to push, Orders + Evangelism is necessary. It nicely balances out the Founder benefits, IMO. You really need to work and take up religious arms to get Tithe to maximum benefit, now.

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I hear that. RIP, RT.

Oh, and it wasn't even effective in neutral areas.

Great prophets and missionaries are used only to increase culture points for the AI. They have nothing to do with religion. That aspect of the game should be removed.

The key to spreading religion is to pop a missionary, or even two, before enhancing. Send them out to convert a few strategically central cities while populations are low and neutral. Then when you enhance it should already be spreading out and itinerant or whatever just flips the turbo switch.

The other trick is to save up missionaries and GP's ahead of astronomy. Send them out as explorers when you get the tech. There is usually a couple of civs that have no religion or a weak one and you can wholesale convert all their cities out of the gate. Goal is to convert a sustainable base of four or six neutral cities as early as possible.

It is a lot harder to convert an aggressive religious civ, even on your own continent.It is not a very efficient use of faith so I tend to just focus on neutral cities and on my own.

Also avoid converting capital cities with a pantheon because they will pop a religion and you will have wasted a spread.

NukeAJS said:

The mandate of heaven SP and the -% for purchasing missionaries/inquisitors enhancer can send the AI into a frenzy of missionaries. It is annoying, but it's a completely legit strategy. I wish the AI would abuse other strats as much as they do this strat.

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This.

If an AI goes with the quote's strategy, and also manages to finish Borobudur, then that AI is going to pump out a carpet o' doom of missionaries in a very short span of turns, usually at a point where those missionaries will be quite effective (since your own religion will not have spread quickly enough to block some of their effectiveness).

I hate to zombie this, but it was either that or start a new topic that has been discussed before.

I read through this thread hoping to find out HOW Austria was sending 5-6 missionaries PER TURN at me. I finally just conquered her because I was sick of it. When I conquered her cities, I found missionaries, like rats, just sitting in the ocean next to her cities. They were all over her subcontinent. So many. It doesn't seem possible that she could make that many missionaries... ever... no matter what. It has to be a bug. Even if she had enough faith to make one per turn... there were several together... like locusts.

Help me understand where all those missionaries come from? Is there a way I can watch what the computer players are doing to see how they get those bonuses?

Difficulty level?

Emperor.

games like that i tend to DoW the AI and either take them out of the game, or if cannot, i will stay at war with that AI indefinitely. this is because as soon as i sign a peace treaty they will crank out the missionaries again.