Conversion

[kkapalk]

I am playing as Egypt and one adversary is Ethiopia. A couple of turns ago one of my cities converted to the Ethiopean religion. I duly bought a missionary and converted it back. A couple of questions. The city that converted was near Ethiopean borders, is this why it converted to their religion? Or was it possible a missionary did the change? Are the missionaries easy to spot? And which is the best tactic: Spending faith on missionaries to convert my cities back, or spending it on inquisitors to prevent conversion?
Thanks for any replies,
Kev.

 

[joncnunn]

The best bang for the buck is building large passive influence.

Inquisitor: best use is keep near whichever city the AI is targeting which Great Prophets (normally, but not always the capital)

Getting them back: If there's another religion present, Great Prophet is better since it removes the other religions at the same time. By contrast for a city with no religious followers its better to use missionaries.

 

[Ajuga]

It helps to convert nearby city states, more cities with your religion ensures that your religion stays around.
I often find my religion taking over the entire map. At some points even a holy city isn't strong enough to make a comeback. (Though I do play wide most of the times.)

 

[shaglio]

In my current game, I decided to do an experiment with the Byzantines where I took Itinerant Preachers as my Enhancement Belief and Religious Texts as my Bonus Belief. My religion has spread like a plague to the point that I have 190 pressure in my Holy City. There are 4 religions in the world, mine is the majority in 49 cities, 2 are the majority in 3 cities (I have to work on that), and the last one is a majority in 0 cities.

 

[JanghanHong]

In my current game, I decided to do an experiment with the Byzantines where I took Itinerant Preachers as my Enhancement Belief and Religious Texts as my Bonus Belief. My religion has spread like a plague to the point that I have 190 pressure in my Holy City. There are 4 religions in the world, mine is the majority in 49 cities, 2 are the majority in 3 cities (I have to work on that), and the last one is a majority in 0 cities.

If you think of what real-world implications this would entail, this would be preachers travelling far and wide around the globe with printed religious pamphlets and other materials and knocking on doors of all nations, sort of like the Jejovah's Withness today.