World Religeon Strategy

Recently in a game with Brazil I had the stupendous fortune of having proposed and won a world religion vote on the second congress. This had me lamenting that I had a lame religion and that I was not Byzantium. As I had never gotten this before, it lead me to consider how I could consistently achieve this. I play emperor, huge map, usually 12 civs, with maximum civ states, so this feat is not easy.

A few things I noted. First, having just one or two spies and a limited amount of gold this early meant that I had to pick who I bought off. The ones that were obviously going to vote against it, those who had religions of their own, should have been my primary targets (I only won this vote because apparently there was a heated debate over porcelain). Second, it helped that one of the three civs eliminated by this point also had one of the religions. Less competition. However, I think the one thing that bought me more votes than any other effort was the fact that I had spread my religion to Washington, who then proceeded to squash his only other neighbor and take over half a continent. Of course he voted for it.

So I have been scheming:

1. Establish your religion. Figure out your goal with said religion. My personal favorite is a wide culture strat as Byzantium with Liberty and piety, with world church, mosques and pagodas, religious texts and itinerant preachers.
2. Build all three religious wonders. Yeah right, I can dream though
3. Get missionaries out early to civs that have no religion. This I think will be key to getting votes.
4. Make two scouts at the start, and find everyone. Be the first to get printing press. This gets you extra votes as host.
5. Grab the Forbidden Palace. 2 votes are a lot when everyone just has one.
6. As soon as you are able, get your spy or spies into opposing religion capitals, and buy off votes. I think you only have a 29-30 turn time frame for this for each vote, and spies take 6 turns between diplomat posts. Plan accordingly.

So, two questions.

First, how would you improve this with the goal of getting world religion on the first or second vote?

Second, which reform belief would you grab if your goal is to infect the entire map? I always go for the one that nerfs opposing prophets.

Thanks!

Unity of the Prophets for religion spreading is probably the best Reformation belief since it really helps when dealing with the missionary, Great Prophet spam of the AIs.

Personally I don't bother with World Religion.
I rather do other things with my faith points that having to constantly reconvert neighboring AIs back to my religion.

Plus everyone that has founded a religion by the time the vote takes place will hate the proposal; on standard map size that is making 4 enemies and if that's not a problem I'd suggest moving up a difficulty level.

In fact, in most cases where some random AI proposes one I don't even need to vote it down since I know the other AIs will anyway.

My focus on religion is entirely on my own civ with Tradition.
Whatever pantheon benefits me most (extremely local terrain specific)
Tithe: For the pop based gold from my own cities
Religious Texts: Passive spread for my own empire
My most common selected follower beliefs are: Feed the World (effectively +2 food per city) and the one that gives +2 happiness for every city with the boring Temple. But I also very these up somewhat.

When I have gone for it in game, I use FP plus 1 or 2 other civs that I converted to my religion on the first vote.

Jon I could go up a difficulty. And yes occasionally I screw up and get dog-piled. But here's the deal: I like doing things differently. I like sub-par civs such as the Byzantines. I like building wonders. I hate spamming great scientists. I like using liberty and piety and occasionally honor instead of tradition. I hate having to take all of rationalism. I don't like being restricted to a strict build order or tech series. I don't like focusing every aspect of the game on science and growth. I think science victories are cheesy.
If I want added difficulty, I use a lamer civilization or add more opponents, or come up with a harder strategy. Things are somewhat more difficult on a huge map anyway compared to a standard. Stuff doesn't scale well.

Hence this idea. No this would never work on a higher difficulty. Heck I don't know if I can successfully pull it off on Emperor. But I like trying crazy stunts.

EDIT: Now you have me thinking ambitious role play. Has anyone ever taken 100 cities of an opponent with religeon? Has anyone ever wiped out all 7 other religions on a huge map without conquest? MUHAHAHA I have a new goal. The entire world will worship the ground of Constantinople!

World Religion's real value is to boost your tourism. It makes no sense relying on the proposal to spread the religion, and if you're spread widely already you don't need the help. I was playing as Venice with all the Tall beliefs and not really trying to spread them and I can still pass it through because of Freedom's bonuses to City States.

Yup it's more of a focus if I'm going for a culture win to boost tourism with say France. If it's jus for world church / tithe then I rarely find the spread makes all the difference, and it's only inexpensive to get when you have already done most of the passive religion spread and got a dominant religion anyway.

Having said that, I generally find there are more important things to focus on when doing a cultural vc, so for me it's rarely that big in my games.

It is quite fun though; it can be useful if you're Maya/Ethiopia and get it first vote, and can work well in interesting ways if you're Byzantium.

So i rolled up a decent start with byzantium/huge/pangia with 12 civs. Long story short, i got it on the first vote, and used 3 or 4 prophets and 5 missionaries total to spread it around. I made a few mistakes. I soured relations with my huge expansionist german nieghbor by taking the wrong ideology, and had to finally resign in the midst of a huge war around turn 250. At that point though, i had around 120 cities under my religeon, and was gaining something like 270 culture per turn from it.
Three other religeons were completely wiped out, and the next one down city wise had 9 cities left.

I've gotten to the point where I don't even try to get a religion, although I do work on getting a pantheon. I much rather let the AI come and convert my cities - hopefully multiple times - so I can build Pagodas, Mosques et al. In my Venice game, I had no religions and did not need one.

Buccaneer said:

I've gotten to the point where I don't even try to get a religion, although I do work on getting a pantheon. I much rather let the AI come and convert my cities - hopefully multiple times - so I can build Pagodas, Mosques et al. In my Venice game, I had no religions and did not need one.

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Me too. I cant be bothered to spread it and keep it in my cities. And the AI waste so much time and energy on it.

budweiser said:

Me too. I cant be bothered to spread it and keep it in my cities. And the AI waste so much time and energy on it.

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Yeah, on my Venetian island, I had countless missionaries and prophets come over and try to convert. Problem was my pop was well into the 30s and none of them could convert - at best they could get remove what's there. But they kept coming anyways. Meanwhile, I was using my faith to win the game (i.e., buying great persons).

On huge maps, one of the biggest drawbacks is figuring out who is going to found religions and who is going to spam cities. I often run into the issue of spreading my religion to a civ, and then they stop with three cities, while the missionary spammer on the other side of the map has a full run at two civs worth of tiny cities all over a quarter of the map. The unpredictability can be a serious issue. My current game had two religions waiting to found until nearly turn 150.

I am currently trying to find a balance between founding enough cities to reliably spread the religion, and keeping enough science to keep up.

IMHO, to have word religion, you only need cash.
If you have enough gpt, you can ally all CS. So you can have all resolution in WC or UN. I had World religion on Deity in the third WC. Only with CS.

It's only useful for tourism and can hurt your diplomatic relationship.

As Bucanner and Budweiseir, I'm not still looking for a religion. Because it's Civ V, I have a religion when I don't care and don't have it if I plan to have one. So I gave up with this.

It's not just for tourism. You get an extra 2 votes for having world religion and another 2 for world ideology.