how do you deal with Religious Zealots?

IMO for a small empire is keeping Inquisitors in your cities to prevent Missionaries and Prophets to convert them the best way to stop them.

GoStu said:

EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!

The real zealots will never, ever stop, even if it'd be to their benefit to give up and find something else to do with all the Faith.

Click to expand...

Yes, guys like Haile or Isabella just need to be wiped out. They're just too dumb for their own good

Denkt said:

If you want to really play with religion, go piety.

Get reformation belif evanglism, and holy orders.
Build alot of missionaries.
Convert them all and they can't convert you.
Get rediculus bonues and win.

However one easy way is just to keep inqusitors in each of your cities so they can't be converted however I like the missionary route more because it will help you more.

Click to expand...

or you can build few military units. AI ignores you when you have less military then him. He'll either refuse or say "Yes" then convert you anyway. If you have bigger military, he will probably stop (or if you're friends). If not, go and conquer his Holy City.

btw, I found that you can't reason with Ethiopia, Siam and Mayans on religion. They will still convert you regardless if you're friends, you have bigger military and so on. You can either get inquisitors, nuke their own cities with your prophets or conquer them.

but what I found is that if you don't convert AI's cities first, they probably won't nuke your own. However, if they found religion and you convert one of their cities (even if they found religion, but their cities are still not flipped), this opens up for AI spamming your own empire with their Great Prophets.

if Celts are in game, you'll have a long religious game tho. It's crazy how much missionaries she can spam even in late games (Modern\Atomic\Info era)

If you complete the piety social policy track, you will most likely have the majority of cities converted. With mandate of heaven, one can buy missionaries cheap along with the great mosque of djenne that allows all missionaries to convert 3 times. So if you get the great mosque of djenne early with missionaries purchased with mandate of heaven early, you will have more cities converted than the AI. The AI would spend faith on its cities first.

I found a way how to shove my religion down Boudica's and Rastafari king's throat their holy cities where forever converted and they couldnt do crap to keep their religion. No wars required.

Reformation belief: unity of prophets makes your religion incredibly resistant. Ive seen AI wasting their prophets repeatedly just to cut my religion in half. After that its only a matter of pressure to quicly bring your religion back in his holy city.

I solved this problem with Arabia, trade routes, religion pressure enhancer belief, and the grand temple (it applies to trade routes as well, so with with arabia it is very powerful). First i sent my GP to ethiopean capital. Boom converted his capital. Then send 2 trade routes to him for 145 pressure. His own religion had 30 pressure. He was never able to erase my religion, and even when he flipped his city back i still had almost half of his holy city population with my religion.

A few more turns and it was all back to my religion in his holy city. I never enjoyed myself so much in civ before seeing hoe haile and boudicca holy cities were believing in my religion

This way i won the continent over two religionmongers with my super pressure + unity of prophets strategy.

Alternatively you can take the reformation that makes your missionary mini prophets, but it requires more proactive work. With unity of prophets you force him to waste valuable great prophets charges on erasing only half of your religion pop per use.

Evangelism and Underground sect are also great. Evangelism is great for CS.

Never tried it before, but I am tempted to pick Heathen conversion with Germany and just place one missionary next to a barb camp.

If you want to protect your religion without going into Piety you should consider Holy Order or Messiah. This enhancers works very well if your cities under a big pressure or already converted to foreign religion.

As if regular Zealots weren't bad enough. So much health, so much shields, and hits like a truck. Now we gotta deal with Religious Zealots too?

More seriously, religion isn't a must for winning the game, as the wiki informs us. If it's costing too much to fight his religion, just let your cities convert, you still get a benefit anyway. This is not to say that Faith production should be neglected, since even a civ with no religion of its own can still buy Great People.

Of course, this is easier if your civ had no religion to begin with. If you do have a religion, it's difficult to just watch as another civ converts your entire country.