Religious Victory NOT as easy as I thought

Morgawr

Morgawr

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I had been wondering for a while about how easy it'd be to pull-off an early diplomatic victory with the AP, so I finally got to try it on my 2nd BTS game. (Someone else built it on my 1st) I followed the "spread religion to only 1 city per civ and vote yourself to religious victory" strategy to test the easy AP win. This is on Monarch, Hemispheres, High Sea Level, 12 civs, No Tech Brokering.

1. Beelined to Theology with a GP and built the AP with Hinduism. (which had spread passively to 2 other civs on my continent and both had it as their state religion.)

2. Discovered Optics, immediately built caravels & missionaries, and sent them off to the other continents to spread my religion.

3. Adopted Free Religion so everyone would have open borders. (Thanks to Shwedagon Paya)

4. Spread religion to all other civs successfuly at first attempt, except 2:
i. Tokugawa - Didn't open borders (as usual) but got lucky as it spread passively :)
ii. Isabella - She was running Theocracy (of course..), so sent a couple spies and missionaries to her city and focused all my espionage points on her for about 5-10 turns. Influenced her civics to free religion and spread my religion to one city.

5. Diplomatic victory vote came up faster than I expected. I was the only candidate. Voted yes for myself.

6. A few turns later, the results come up and it FAILS!! I look to see what went wrong and realize that Huayna Capac had spread my religion to ALL of his 15+ cities as fast as he could while my caravels were transporting missionaries to the other continents. And he did this although he had his own state religion. He had tons of votes since he was #2 in population after me, whereas most other civs had a negligable number of votes each. The two friendly civs on my continent didn't have many votes and one voted for me and the other didn't, but this did not make a major impact in comparison. Consequently I only got around 50% of total votes and fell short of the 2/3 majority.

Conclusion: I don't have any more hope for religious victory in this game because even if I expand more and increase my population/votes, other civs will spread my religion in their cities over time and this will balance out the votes. The only realistic way to get the 2/3 votes would be to either get Huayna to vote for my diplomatic victory (which is impossible) or to eliminate him (which will take time). Not sure why it was only Huayna Capac who spread the religion and not any of the others. Perhaps he's going for cultural victory or something. In any case, early religious victory is not as easy as I had originally thought. This actually makes me happy from a game balance perspective because early victory shouldn't be that easy.
 
I was once playing as Abe Lincoln and I had just recently conquered the Byzantine Empire who had great undefended cities..and the largest religion in the world, Buddhism, so I spread that religion to all my cities and built the Apostolic Palace for experimenting and to my surprise I won a diplomatic victory I wasn't even going for.
It remains on the top of my hall of fame with a normalized 61000 points, which is 5 times more than the points I got from an Ethiopian cultural victory.
 
In my current game, Ethiopia won a Diplo victory in roughly 1200 AD. It was an accident. I got a pop-up and voted for Ethopia (as I always did) and it was actually a Diplo victory pop-up (not a Palace resident vote, like I assumed it was). Since it was a mistake (pop-ups sure do make mistakes easy in BtS!!), I loaded a save and then didn't vote for Ethiopia, so they didn't win. But they were damn close! As for me, I was never even in the running :(
 
oedali said:
Not sure why it was only Huayna Capac who spread the religion and not any of the others. Perhaps he's going for cultural victory or something.
Click to expand...

That's exactly it, he's going for a Culture victory, so he's spreading any religion he comes in contact with. That's certainly bad luck for you in trying for a Religious victory, but it's not something you can count on to stand in your way every game.

Bh
 
oedali said:
I had been wondering for a while about how easy it'd be to pull-off an early diplomatic victory with the AP, so I finally got to try it on my 2nd BTS game. (Someone else built it on my 1st) I followed the "spread religion to only 1 city per civ and vote yourself to religious victory" strategy to test the easy AP win. This is on Monarch, Hemispheres, High Sea Level, 12 civs, No Tech Brokering.

1. Beelined to Theology with a GP and built the AP with Hinduism. (which had spread passively to 2 other civs on my continent and both had it as their state religion.)

2. Discovered Optics, immediately built caravels & missionaries, and sent them off to the other continents to spread my religion.

3. Adopted Free Religion so everyone would have open borders. (Thanks to Shwedagon Paya)

4. Spread religion to all other civs successfuly at first attempt, except 2:
i. Tokugawa - Didn't open borders (as usual) but got lucky as it spread passively :)
ii. Isabella - She was running Theocracy (of course..), so sent a couple spies and missionaries to her city and focused all my espionage points on her for about 5-10 turns. Influenced her civics to free religion and spread my religion to one city.

5. Diplomatic victory vote came up faster than I expected. I was the only candidate. Voted yes for myself.

6. A few turns later, the results come up and it FAILS!! I look to see what went wrong and realize that Huayna Capac had spread my religion to ALL of his 15+ cities as fast as he could while my caravels were transporting missionaries to the other continents. And he did this although he had his own state religion. He had tons of votes since he was #2 in population after me, whereas most other civs had a negligable number of votes each. The two friendly civs on my continent didn't have many votes and one voted for me and the other didn't, but this did not make a major impact in comparison. Consequently I only got around 50% of total votes and fell short of the 2/3 majority.

Conclusion: I don't have any more hope for religious victory in this game because even if I expand more and increase my population/votes, other civs will spread my religion in their cities over time and this will balance out the votes. The only realistic way to get the 2/3 votes would be to either get Huayna to vote for my diplomatic victory (which is impossible) or to eliminate him (which will take time). Not sure why it was only Huayna Capac who spread the religion and not any of the others. Perhaps he's going for cultural victory or something. In any case, early religious victory is not as easy as I had originally thought. This actually makes me happy from a game balance perspective because early victory shouldn't be that easy.
Click to expand...

Awesome, I was thwarted by the AI making colonies and stuff, but he hadnt spread my religion to give himself more votes. That is great, way to go Firaxis.
 
Why don't you just put missionaries in all the cities and then simultaneously spread it? This way only a short time (until the voting pops up) passes in which the AI can spread your religion.
 
This is good, it means you need to have some substantial coreligionist allies to win the vote.
 
oedali said:
Conclusion: I don't have any more hope for religious victory in this game because even if I expand more and increase my population/votes, other civs will spread my religion in their cities over time and this will balance out the votes. The only realistic way to get the 2/3 votes would be to either get Huayna to vote for my diplomatic victory (which is impossible) or to eliminate him (which will take time).
Click to expand...

The same sort of thing happened to me in my most recent game. One Civ spread the AP religion (Buddhism) throughout their cities, and I missed a 700AD diplo win by 25 measley votes. Since this other Civ was the only other Civ in the game to be a full member, I figured I didn't have a chance to win unless I declared war and started taking Buddhist cities (more AP votes).

I finished off another neighbor, built some infrastructure, massed my army, and then, wonder of all wonders, the other Buddhist Civ voted me in for an AP diplo win. They were Pleased with me, +8, but I'm still scratching my head over that one. I wasn't paying that much attention to the AP vote, and clicked through it pretty quickly, voting for myself as usual - but I think there were only two options on the ballot - Me or Abstain. I thought the other Buddhist Civ should have been on the ballot, since Buddhism was their state religion, and they were a full member.

Anyway, I agree that the AP diplo win isn't quite as easy as I had imagined before. Obviously, smaller maps, less Civs, and maps like pangaea would make it much easier to win AP diplo.
 
The boot's on the other front in one of my currents games: I'm spamming myself Hindu to stop the AP resident standing any chance of getting the win. Can't trust these flaky AI not to do anything rash...
 
My game now has Cathy with my state religion only.
She did spread it to all her cities as soon as I built AP.
Pericles did that as well, all of sudden. I looked at his cities, and oh my god, each city with at least 3 religions, normally with 4. Nice advance he is getting in his cultural bar now. And the ** is trying(more likely building almost all before me heh) all the cultural wonders he can. Which is a pain because I am also trying a cultural victory. I could make Cathy, his neighbor, attack him, but I am waiting because I am sure the Jewish block in my continent, Gilgamesh(damn, he is annoying), Mansa Musa and Lincoln, will attack and dogpile me. So Cathy can help me when the time comes
Now all of sudden Mansa Musa(tech . .. .. .. .. .. Can't believe how fast he researches)
is doing it too..Ehm..I think I will lose this game. But IT IS fun!
 
Cool, that definitely confirms that a couple of civs going for cultural victory makes it very difficult to win a religious victory.
 
I am sure the Jewish block in my continent, Gilgamesh(damn, he is annoying), Mansa Musa and Lincoln, will attack and dogpile me.
Click to expand...

Lincoln's one of the most peaceful leaders in the game, and the other two aren't overly aggressive themselves. You don't have a whole lot to worry about there.
 
Monkeyfinger said:
Lincoln's one of the most peaceful leaders in the game, and the other two aren't overly aggressive themselves. You don't have a whole lot to worry about there.
Click to expand...

Which Gilmash are you talking about? T.T
They(mansa+Gil) declared war on me on THE SAME TURN after I did replay this :rolleyes:
And I am in 5th from 11 CIVs(England got pwned by the Dutch already) in the game. It is Noble, and I used to win noble almost always in Warlords, and be between the 3 first in prince...
 
I suspect the AP victory is much harder with more civs, since you can only bring a fixed number of missionaries regardless of map size or # of civs. If there are only 3 other civs, you can build 3 missionaries, send them out to do their duty, and do it all on the same turn.

I suspect the easy fix to this is not to change the AP at all, but instead to do one of the following three:

1) Make map size and max # of missionaries scale appropriately based on map size, or total # of civs at the start, with max # of missionaries < total # of rival civs at start a strict requirement (although you can always build at least 1 of course).

and/or

2) Make it much more likely for the AP's religion to spread naturally. Also, make it so there is a wait of, say, 10 turns (on Normal) for any vote to be proposed to the AP after a missionary of the AP's religion spreads it.

I like the AP, but I tend to play in larger games with more AIs, so it is not easy to pull off the "quick victory". I could see this being a problem on small maps, though.

Sam
 
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