AI & Great Prophets

So with tithe in place I care for the entire game which city is following my religion. The AI however is pretty crafty.

Not only do I have to deal with the usual Prophet showing up at my doorstep, captured prophets by the AI can also be used against you.

Mongolia recently captured Songhai's Islamic prophet. The next thing I know he marched it up to one of the biggest cities near his border and converted the city to Islam.

Seeing unwanted Great prophets while running tithe is pretty much a causus belli for me as a fresh prophet can do insane amount of damage and screw up the pressures of cities around an area.

Should this be fixed? ie: Attrition rules apply?

Should there be diplomatic conversations around this when a GP is in your territory but before they reach a city?

My own take is it should work like missionaries requiring open borders. However uninvited GP's wont attrition, it will only cause escalating warnings from the AI until they DoW. Naturally humans should also be able to do the same and warn the AI off. Right now, there is ZERO interactions for the human players to use around religious conversions outside of AI prompts when you convert their holy city. There needs to be a little bit more nuance.

Very interesting topic. Also a few ppl chose yes and explain option but did not reply...

I think GP is very powerful and annoying. Enemy GP seems to come w/o warning and I never notice it until after it converts my holy city. I think there should be a warning when a foreign missionary or GP trespass my land. When it arrives near my holy city (5 hex radius), I have the option to expel it before conversion. The holy city is supposed to be sacred and not so easily converted. Of course, expulsion should net a diplomatic penalty.

My thoughts on this is that A warning + diplo conversation saying "get out of my lawn" would be ideal.

If AI chooses to continue then the die is cast. If they pull back then it means they respect your wishes. It will be another interaction that flavours the diplomacy. Righht now the only real option is to DoW and pre-emptively capture their GP. I highly doubt the game understands why you did it. Infact, they probably think you're warmongering. It's a blindspot for them.

The inability really to interact with the 'game' on this is what's more frustrating than the GP bombing a city or three.

It really invalidates your point when you don't know how things work.

The AI can't convert your cities if you don't want them to, so it seems pretty pointless to change the system.

Infantry#14 said:

Very interesting topic. Also a few ppl chose yes and explain option but did not reply...

I think GP is very powerful and annoying. Enemy GP seems to come w/o warning and I never notice it until after it converts my holy city. I think there should be a warning when a foreign missionary or GP trespass my land. When it arrives near my holy city (5 hex radius), I have the option to expel it before conversion. The holy city is supposed to be sacred and not so easily converted. Of course, expulsion should net a diplomatic penalty.

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Put a Inquisitor in your Holy City and it wont be possible to convert the city. This goes for all your cities, so if you got a AI that is pushing religion and converting your cities at the borders, a Inquisitor in each city will stop that from happening as well. =)

The only change I'd like to see is the option in the "Discuss" screen to tell them to stop converting your cities. I think it's rather stupid that the AI can demand we stop converting their cities, but we can't tell them the same thing.

you don't even need an inquisitor in each city, although having one in each will work

all you need is send an inquisitor near an incoming GP and the AI will start moving it away. either the path is blocked or (i prefer to think this one) the AI GP behavior includes intentional avoidance of inquisitors. as for path blocking, you can stop great prophets with your own units. the GP will have to rework its pathfinding since it can't step through your units

so, there's a lot of ways to handle other civ's prophets, it all depends on how active you want to be about it

I really dislike the mechanic as currently the only successful way to stop GP's from bugging you is to declare war and kill them. There's also not a diplomatic screen in which you can tell/demand the AI to stop doing that, so the only good way is to decimate your enemy.
In my current game, the Incas were placed alone on an island that mainly contained desert. so they picked Desert Folkore (the +1 faith for desert tiles), and by time they were getting a huge amount of faith production. Because of his jealousy at some of the wonders that I constructed, diplomatic relations were broken and he decided to make them worse by sending GP's to my cities.
Believe me, there's nothing more irritating than a city with a population of 18 being converted to another religion, while your own has properties like 1% production for each follower in a city (meaning that in one turn my city lost 15% of its production). My faith production went slow and so it was time consuming to get his religion out. Giving him a denouncement didn't seem to work, as he decided to also convert my capital. I had enough and DoWed him and killed his GP. I had no intention in conquering him, so I left him alone and was taking the profit of the peace deal as my army was considerably larger. But only moments after the treaty was signed, he popped up with another GP and decided to convert my capital again. When I could I DoWed him again and this time to make things serious I send my army to his island, conquered two of his cities and started a new settlement at the ocean (he didn't have an ocean connection by himself).
Then the fun started: I got my own GP and send it to his island. His religion proved to be really beneficial for me and I decided to convert his cities that were concentrated on desert tiles. It wouldn't stop him from getting his religion back, but would significantly slowed him down. Its been a while ago now and I haven't seen any missionaries and GP's again

I rather see an option that, after a city is converted that (as usual) a message pops up that your city has been converted. But the message allows you get in touch with the leader of that religion (or the one that has send the GP/missionary) in which you can ask them to stop spreading it to your cities. Something similar like when you've caught a spy or found out that a spy from a certain civilization has been stealing technology from you. If they decide to ignore you and continue the spreading of their religion you've got imo a good reason to wage war.

Monthar said:

The only change I'd like to see is the option in the "Discuss" screen to tell them to stop converting your cities. I think it's rather stupid that the AI can demand we stop converting their cities, but we can't tell them the same thing.

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+1 - this.

Monthar said:

The only change I'd like to see is the option in the "Discuss" screen to tell them to stop converting your cities. I think it's rather stupid that the AI can demand we stop converting their cities, but we can't tell them the same thing.

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Yea I have never raged so much as when I saw two different ai's great profit heading towards different cities in my empire and having no way to stop them with out declaring war.

Playing OCC it is usually TERRIBLE for me if the AI manages to bring a prophet next to my city. I found the only safe way to deal with them is either a DOW (which seems kind of like an overreaction) or by blocking access to the city with units.

Neither is a good solution, so I guess the best idea would be to make holy cities much more resistent to prophets, maybe even immune...

wtf is wrong with you people.

Read the thread, INQUSITORS BLOCKS GREATER PEOPLE

I'm not 100% sold yet on how religious spreading works in Civ 5 (after several games I still feel like I'm just getting used to it), but I think there needs to be MORE freedom for missionaries and GPs to move around and convert. They should not come with any significant diplomatic penalties as it makes spreading religion too costly (and besides, it's not like state's frequently sponsor "great prophets" to go convert others...regular missionaries sure, but not people like Abraham).

One way to improve balance, though, would be to allow inquisitors to 'capture' and/or 'kill' missionaries and GPs. Maybe tie an inquisitor's chances of doing so to the 'pressure' of the missionary's/GP's religion in the area. So, if there are lots of Jews around it should be harder to capture and kill a Jewish missionary or GP (with the thought being that the local faithful would hide and protect them). On the flip-side, a "lone nut" should find it difficult to get all the way to Rome without someone pulling him/her aside and asking some thought questions (which probably end in crucifixion).

That's how I would to it, at least.

Miravlix said:

wtf is wrong with you people.

Read the thread, INQUSITORS BLOCKS GREATER PEOPLE

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Is that a coding quirk, or do GPs really avoid inquisitors? Can inquisitors capture GPs?

[Excuse my ignorance]

Miravlix said:

wtf is wrong with you people.
Read the thread, INQUSITORS BLOCKS GREATER PEOPLE

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From what I read, it prevents the AI from wanting to convert your city. Can you support your claim?

I wouldn't mind GPs suffering attrition. I tend to keep Inqs stationed in my cities, so GPs aren't a threat, but they tend to clog up my roads since the AI moves them into the area looking for cities they can convert and then just sits there when they realize they can't. Attrition would serve to clear my roads better than going to war and deleting the heathen bastich.

It's in the Pedia in two place, it's in the tooltip of the inquisitor in the town menu.

jjkrause84 said:

Is that a coding quirk, or do GPs really avoid inquisitors? Can inquisitors capture GPs?

[Excuse my ignorance]

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You can't convert a city with an inquisitor in it. I went to one of the AI's cities with an inquisitor and the convert choice wasn't even listed. I don't think they can, but it would be cool if inquisitors could either capture missionaries/GP and convert them to your religion, or they could battle without causing a DoW. An inquisitor and missionary would probably fight pretty equally, but a GP would take a few inquisitors to defeat.

compwiz1202 said:

You can't convert a city with an inquisitor in it. I went to one of the AI's cities with an inquisitor and the convert choice wasn't even listed. I don't think they can, but it would be cool if inquisitors could either capture missionaries/GP and convert them to your religion, or they could battle without causing a DoW. An inquisitor and missionary would probably fight pretty equally, but a GP would take a few inquisitors to defeat.

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Interesting, I didn't think the AI knew how to use Inq's defensively, or maybe it was just an accident and it was planning on taking it somewhere.

Miravlix said:

Interesting, I didn't think the AI knew how to use Inq's defensively, or maybe it was just an accident and it was planning on taking it somewhere.

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Not sure, I have noticed a build-up of Inq with some of my bordering AI after I was aggressively converting them and they asked me to stop and I gave them the finger (side note: really wish "Give him the finger" was a diplo option when they pop up to insult you)... whether they had just bought them to purge the religion and weren't able to use them yet or whether they were garrisoned I haven't studied long enough to determine.