Apostolic Palace -- destroy destroy destroy?

[Xiao Xiong]

So I knocked off a couple of AI's on my continent and sailed across the ocean to take out my only real competitor. My invasion force faced stiff resistance on the beaches, but clawed their way inland and captured the AI capital.

A nice beautiful city with loads of resources, a great population, lots of useful buildings, lots of great land improvements, tons of production, and, HEY WTH? ICK!

APOSTOLIC PALACE.

For a religion that is not mine, this is my first Buddhist city. The AI has nother 10-15 Buddhist cities, now everyone, including me, has one.

Do I destroy the city?

The AI was running free religion so I took a chance... kept it.. and the AI, being a complete ******, never switched back to snatch the easy AP victory, so I got lucky, and used this wonderful city as a nice beach head from which to pulverize the rest of the AI cities.

However I'm conscious that if the AI were a little smarter I'd have lost that game.

Do you ALWAYS destroy the AP?

 

[Fleme]

I personally always embrace the AP religion as soon as I can. I might not adopt it but diligently spread it to most, if not all, of my cities. Why? I love the extra hammers and that way I'm most often safe from most of the harm people consider the AP to impose.

I don't think I've burned a captured AP even once.

 

[Sisiutil]

It depends. To me, the question is whether the AP will interfere with my plans or compliment them.

On the plus side (keep the AP):

• As JFleme noted, the AP gives you +2 for every AP religious building; pre-Scientific Method, that's +4 for a city with a temple and a monastery, and then that gets multiplied by OR and a forge... pretty nice.
• If you spread the AP religion and have a big enough empire, you should be able to control the voting.Not only will this help you avoid enduring troublesome resolutions, you can potentially use it to your advantage--isolating and damaging a rival by forcing everyone to stop trading with him, for example.
• There's a very good chance that the AP was built in a city with several other useful wonders and infrastructure as well. In fact, the AI usually builds the AI in its capital, which is, as a rule, an excellent city site. It may also be the religion's holy city and have a shrine. By razing the AP city, you're potentially losing more than just the AP.

On the other hand (burn it!):

• As mentioned above, the AP resolutions can be troublesome, especially if you're playing a warmongering game. You have a choice between having to stop the war for frequent 10-turn delays of forced peace (along with increasing diplomatic penalties for declaring war again) and potentially giving back cities you conquered, OR enduring massive in several of your best cities for defying resolutions.
• You run the risk of the AI winning a diplomatic victory--one of the earliest and easiest victories for the AI to win.
• Any other wonders in the AP city may be obsolete, and the AI may have neglected to build a shrine; do you really want to burn late game GPP trying to generate a Great Prophet?
• The AI also receives the AP production bonus, remember.
• Speaking of which, if you're in the post-Scientific Method era of the game when you can't build monasteries, and you're not running Organized Religion and can't switch back to it easily (i.e. you're not Spiritual and the Cristo Redentor is a long way off), and the AP religion doesn't exist in your cities (or in very few, and with none of its monasteries built), then spreading the AP religion to take advantage of the hammer bonus and control the voting will be next to impossible, or at least massively inconvenient. This is not an unusual situation if the AP was built on another continent.

In the situation you describe, I probably would have razed the AP city just to avoid the risk and inconvenience. I'm glad it worked out for you, but you took a chance there.

 

[bestsss]

>>the AP religion doesn't exist in your cities (or in very few, and with none of its monasteries built)
In that case defying is an option since it doesn't cost much.
Religion victory might be an issue but manipulating AIs late game is not so big deal.

 

[Kallikrates]

So what are the common options/strategies with regard to the AP? I didn't know anything about the mechanics and just lost a game building space ship parts and being about 2000 points ahead of everybody else, because Justinian all of a sudden won by AP. There had been some elections since the middle ages, but he never got more than one AI to vote for him (for victory, he became "pope" easily). I had only a few cities with the AP religion, being on a different continent. Should have made war and captured the palace?
After I had secured my continent I played rather peaceful and in the end only Togu was annoyed, Justinian and Hannibal pleased, Lincoln friendly. I could probably have won by domination ages ago, but I wanted to try for space after many domination games.
(I actually think it would make a lot of sense to make the religious victory impossible/obsolete as soon as the UN are built and the normal diplomatic victory becomes an option. To win in the 1820ties in the modern/future age with most of the world having "free religion" by religious victory seems truly idiotic)

 

[GKey]

...I had only a few cities with the AP religion...

If you were dominant possible solution could be spread AP religion to enough of your cities to block the vote.

Another solution can be found a city on far island spread non AP religion to it and grand it independence. Ups! There is civilization without AP religion! Even if AP leader will go and spread reli there (and AI is not smart enough to do that), it will buy you some time.

I posted 1 funny example of AP loss.

 

[Kallikrates]

Are the mechanics explained somewhere? I had only a few cities with the AP religion. I probably had lots of time as Justinian built the palace around 900 AD and there were several votings where he didn't stand a chance. So I basically thought he would never get enough (and later on I was not sure whether after UN had been built the AP victory would still be possible, I really think it shouldn't be).
The point is that after I had conquered my continent and settled a neighbouring one in the 1500s I had about 40-42% of population/landmass, everything was peaceful and I wanted to try for space. I certainly could have wiped out Justinian in time.

As far as I understand it AP is really cheesy. Does it matter at all how large a percentage of the world shares the AP religion? Or are all votes relative to the AP religion?

 

[Smilingrogue]

@ Kallikrates

Does this help?
http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy/apostolicpalace.php

As far as my understanding goes, the AP needs only one city of every Civilization to have the religion to start throwing its weight around. This opens up the possibility of being blindsided by an AP win if you suddenly contract the religion in multi-continental affairs and every one else also has the religion already, with one continent dominant in that religion. That's frankly a ridiculous mechanic.

The world at large's attitude to the religion doesn't matter. All votes are relative to the AP religion.

 

[Kallikrates]

Thanks for the link, that is very informative. I only had a very vague notion of the AP workings. Actually I re-loaded said game about 10 turns earlier and could achieve a Diplo win via UN. I had always thought (was it like this in vanilla?) that one could not try for diplo win as the first UN resolution (after being elected secretary general). And I would not have it expected to work, but friendly Lincoln and pleased Justin voted for me, so I won in 1834. 1838 would have been Justinian's religious victory.

 

[Iranon]

Razing the Apostolic Palace or the UN are the high points of most games in which I can't control them.

 

[Ataxerxes]

The real point of the AP is deciding what to do about it. You can't ignore this wonder. There are three ways of dealing with it.

The first is Iranon's method - destroying it. This does get rid of the problem but there might be nice wonders in that city you just captured. Still, it does prevent an AP loss.

Second is to have the AP religion in only one or two cities. This keeps the AI from declaring holy war on you and defying isn't too bad for your empire overall. However, as your game first showed, this can lose the game. On larger maps this may be an option because the AI doesn't understand how to pursue an AP victory, it just lucks into it. Izzy, with her missionary spam, is the biggest danger here.

Third is to work with it. I disagree with Fleme's old post, however. You want to adopt the AP religion and spread it diligently so you get double AP votes. If you can get some of the other religious wonders (Sankore, Spiral M and Sistine) those temples and monastaries become very powerful. If you are large enough (you had 40-42% of the land) you then control the AP. Also, if you have the AP religion spread and don't adopt it, defying becomes painful. Especially when the "turn over a city to your nieghbor" comes up.

Having the AP in none of your cities isn't an option, by the way. That can cost you the game when half the world declares on you or an economy problem when they declare a trade embargo on you. Definitely read the AP guide. That and the guide to vassals are the two articles that should be close at hand.

 

[Sisiutil]

To summarize Ataxerxes' astute post, deciding what to do about the AP is extremely circumstantial.

I myself am fond of its +2 , especially since you get those even if you don't adopt the AP religion. However, the diplomatic downside can be heavy indeed. What I usually try to do is adopt the AP religion and spread it to every city while conquering as much territory as possible. Most of the time I'm eventually able to wield enough votes to oppose or approve any AP resolution on my own, and if my empire's big enough I can pretty much guarantee I'll become the AP resident, with control over the resolutions.

But in games where that's not possible, I'll often just send out a military expedition whose sole purpose is to take the AP city and raze it.

 

[1889]

The AP becomes obsolete with Mass Media. Can I gift that tech to the civ that owns the AP and stop it that way?

 

[nfw]

You can use spies to force the AP resident to free religion/some other state religion thus making him ineligible for AP victory.

Or you can beeline Mass media...

 

[Lennier]

The AP becomes obsolete with Mass Media. Can I gift that tech to the civ that owns the AP and stop it that way?

Yes, that will work

You can use spies to force the AP resident to free religion/some other state religion thus making him ineligible for AP victory.

You don't need to be running the AP religion to win an AP victory (but it helps a lot--gives you the 2x votes.) That's an essential element of the "AP Cheese" victory.

Spoiler :

Adopt a minor religion just before completing the AP. After completing the AP, switch back to a "popular" religion (and hope that a fanatic hasn't started to plot while you were a heathen.) Spread the AP religion to all your cities, enough of two rivals civs so you can't win the AP buy your self (one to run against you, one to vote you in), and one city of every other religion.

Or you can beeline Mass media...

Doing this will work if you are willing to either give/trade it to the civ that owns the AP or you can conquer the AP city (and then you don't have to raze it, unless you're afraid of loosing it.)

 

[traius]

I lost a game like this recently, and it was entirely avoidable. If you have no/next-to-no cities with the religion, focus on AP city immediately and just burn it. Other wonders you'd like in the city? What does it matter, you're invading the other continent, and are close to dom victory. Just burn it. No wonder could be a deciding factor anymore... EXCEPT the AP, AGAINST YOU.

If there is/are (an) amazing magical wonder(s) you cannot ignore (the MoM is the only one that could have any impact on me personally; I would burn down a city with the Statue of Liberty AND the three gorges damn. I will probably trip dom before more than a couple of my new cities even come out of revolt!), then spin off a 3-city colony on your own continent that does NOT contain the AP religion, and pray they aren't stupid enough to give away techs to the members of the other continent.

 

[Ironlungs76]

Never thought to burn the AP city before now, probably because I rarely raze cities unless they are settled in a really daft position.

However, I just finished a game where I was cataphract rushing Sitting Bull and Julius Caesar repeatedly voted to stop the war. Once SB was finally gone I realised JC had built the AP in a border city right next to me. Took and razed it in the same turn before he could use it against me (again). Thankfully nothing else wonder-wise in that city.

I suppose it's quite rare for the AI to build the AP in a city other than their capitol (which I really would be loathe to raze), but I'll keep this strategy in mind for future AP problems.

 

[nfw]

You don't need to be running the AP religion to win an AP victory (but it helps a lot--gives you the 2x votes.) That's an essential element of the "AP Cheese" victory.

Spoiler :

Adopt a minor religion just before completing the AP. After completing the AP, switch back to a "popular" religion (and hope that a fanatic hasn't started to plot while you were a heathen.) Spread the AP religion to all your cities, enough of two rivals civs so you can't win the AP buy your self (one to run against you, one to vote you in), and one city of every other religion.

You either need to be running AP religion or own the AP city, since the OP captured the AP city it will definitely work for him.

 

[Lennier]

Thanks for the clarification, although I suspect that the OP's game is either over or abandoned.

 

[6K Man]

You left out one "destroy".

Destroy destroy destroy destroy.