Keeping and spreading your religion on deity

[Phenril]

Hello,

came back to the game a bit and decided to try hard on deity, i'm starting to handle the AI attacks and won 1 game by science and 1 by culture, the problem is that i really dont get how to handle the religion.

AI's are spamming prophets like units and the carpet of cities makes the spread impossible without spamming missionaries before the enhancment.

So if someone got advises on how to keep your religion up and spread it i'd love it, cause even on inca CDG i got the first religion with a pretty high faith output thanks to DF, but around T150-200 the wave of prophets finally came and destroyed my religion.

I bet i had to spamm more missionaries early on, but is it worth it to delay the enhancment?

 

[Kriogen]

Defence: city with an Inquisitor can not be converted with prophet/missionary.

Efficient spreading: with pointy sticks! No idea how to do it peacefuly.

 

[consentient]

Becoming the dominant religion and keeping it is very rare on Deity. It's easiest on a continents map where ALL of the AIs on your continent do not found. For example, 4 civs per continent, and the other 4 founders are all on the other continent. You can then convert everyone to your religion before Astronomy, and then make World Religion a priority in WC, knowing that it's going to be much harder for the religious AIs on the other continent to invade you even if you pee them off severely.

An even better scenario is where an aggressive, unfounding civ on your continent conquers 1 or 2 founders, so that there are 1 or 2 unfounders on the other continent for you to convert. I did this on the IAG Gandhi game, and ended up with 25 cities following my religion, having only founded 3 myself.

TLDR: It's hard, and very situational. Having an allied neighbour who adopts your religion and ICSes all over is a BIG help.

Delaying enhancement is usually not worth it, since 2nd follower beliefs can be great if you get an early pick.

Have a look at the Small Piety strategy guide on this forum.