Best way to convert others to your religion?

[Legal_My_Deagle]

OK, I just played two games where part of my master plan was to try and convert as many people as possible to my religion.

Not only did I fail, but I didnt manage to convert ONE.

I built a bunch of missionaries, even though it is kind of hard when you consider you can only have two at once, and then you have to ship them overseas once you have spread your religion to every town on your continent, (if you play continents)

So even then, I couldnt manage to convert anybody on the trade screen. The option would always be red, or wouldnt show up at all.

And not only THAT, but I only had two of the 7 other Civs adopt one of my religions in the early game, and it wasnt even the one I was trying to spread.

More and more I think a "Holy War" style game is not feasible, and I only play on Noble. I founded every religion except for Buddihsm and Christianity, and I had good relations with every Civ but Isabella, because she saw me as a heathan from the begining.

So should I take up more of a crusading approach? Maybe you can get people to convert as terms for a peace treaty?


I have grown to like the religion system, except that I cant get it to work FOR me rather than AGAINST me =/

Anybody else have better luck? Any tips? Any feedback would make you awesome.

 

[ArbitraryGuy]

If the option button is red or cannot be selected, that civ has the "Theocracy," which doesn't allow the spred of non-state religions. I think that a message comes up on the tool tip telling you why you cannot perform this action.

 

[Legal_My_Deagle]

If the option button is red or cannot be selected, that civ has the "Theocracy," which doesn't allow the spred of non-state religions. I think that a message comes up on the tool tip telling you why you cannot perform this action.

Good thinking, but unfortunetly I checked that a few times and it wasnt the case. I cant remember what it said though... =/

I am pretty sure mostly everybody had the Organized Religion Civic though

 

[ArbitraryGuy]

Have they converted on their own already?

 

[Khaim]

You might have to convert their capital. However, the best way to convert someone is to make sure your religion is the only one they have.

If they found a religon of their own, you don't stand a chance- they'll definately prioritize their own religion over yours.

 

[ArbitraryGuy]

You might have to convert their capital. However, the best way to convert someone is to make sure your religion is the only one they have.

If they found a religon of their own, you don't stand a chance- they'll definately prioritize their own religion over yours.

No... you have it wrong. You have to convert enough of their cities to make it adventageous for the AI to then change state religion. It takes a while to get them to switch. Lots of missionaries and lots of luck.

 

[Legal_My_Deagle]

Have they converted on their own already?

Nope, I saw you could see what religion they had on the bottom right of the screen at least, so I am sure of that

 

[Mujadaddy]

I built a bunch of missionaries...

So even then, I couldnt manage to convert anybody on the trade screen. The option would always be red, or wouldnt show up at all.

Anybody else have better luck? Any tips? Any feedback would make you awesome.

OK, are you sure you're doing it in the right order?

You need to have the missionaries ADD your state religion to your rivals' cities FIRST.... then let THEM build the temples .... then let the culture sloooooowwwly convince them that your religion is "cool."

Converting a civ FROM their own religion (especially if they founded one) TO yours is a long-term prospect, as it should be.

 

[Stevenpfo]

I just played a a game where I dominated through religion. It seemed that after awhile another civ would switch religions right away to mine because it was the religion 80% of the other people were using and all I had to do at that point was put my religion in their smallest city. Even if they were a found for another religion.

Although I found that if I pissed em off it didn't matter how many cities I put my religion in, they wouldn't budge.

 

[Pinstar]

I've seen some very odd patterns in the natural, non-missionary spread of my religions. I founded confusionism, taoism and islam in my lands. Islam came last and only spread to one other of my cities through the free missionary. About 20 turns later, i get the message "Alexander has converted to islam". Alexander's turf was on the other continent, still under the fog of war, yet aparently it had spread to enough of his cities to make him convert. I have no clue how that happened... how it spreads across the ocean on it's own...but wont spread to my own cities (I was running Freel Religion too)

 

[Rameau's Nephew]

I've seen some very odd patterns in the natural, non-missionary spread of my religions. I founded confusionism, taoism and islam in my lands. Islam came last and only spread to one other of my cities through the free missionary. About 20 turns later, i get the message "Alexander has converted to islam". Alexander's turf was on the other continent, still under the fog of war, yet aparently it had spread to enough of his cities to make him convert. I have no clue how that happened... how it spreads across the ocean on it's own...but wont spread to my own cities (I was running Freel Religion too)

I was wondering about that, too. My best guess is that is has something to do with trade routes (which would be completely logical). From my observations, trade routes can form with cities under the fog of war.

 

[Dracleath]

As long as they're not a founder I find if I convert all their cities and am friendly with them they'll switch when I ask. Depends on their ai though, Peter seemed to switch easilly while monty is holding out in my current game. If a civ hasn't been exposed to religion at all it's really easy to convert them as well.

 

[Vael]

It's important to get your religion spread early. If you don't then other religions will start to spread and AI's will start to favor those more - more cities of that religion and alliances with civs of that religion make it MUCH MUCH harder to convert them to your own religion. Going for one of the three early religions makes things easiest, though it's also possible to do it with later ones... it's just harder.

 

[CrackedCrystal]

I've seen some very odd patterns in the natural, non-missionary spread of my religions. I founded confusionism, taoism and islam in my lands. Islam came last and only spread to one other of my cities through the free missionary. About 20 turns later, i get the message "Alexander has converted to islam". Alexander's turf was on the other continent, still under the fog of war, yet aparently it had spread to enough of his cities to make him convert. I have no clue how that happened... how it spreads across the ocean on it's own...but wont spread to my own cities (I was running Freel Religion too)

Maybe he had no religion in the first place. Your islam moved to one of his. Then seeing that he now had a religion to convert to, he did.

And yep, one of my cities converted to Christianity when I had not even met the person that founded it. Fog of War is irrelevent

 

[Defenestrator]

I founded Hinduism and sent my first missionary over to Mali. He adopted Hinduism as his state religion shortly thereafter. Church-blitzing payed off too, because the city that I converted at first soon joined me after a couple years.

 

[Lord Chambers]

When you have a missionary, and want to spread your religion to a neighbor, where should you send him? Big cities? Border cities? Far away cities? The capital?

Why?

 

[LouLong]

When you have a missionary, and want to spread your religion to a neighbor, where should you send him? Big cities? Border cities? Far away cities? The capital?

Why?

If the AI civ has no religion yet, best is to send a missionary to his capital. He will soon convert to take advantage of having a religion and it will spread easily from his capital to his other cities.


BTW to correct the first post of this thread I definitely think you can have 3 missionaries of one given religion at the same time, not 2.

 

[contraa]

I played a similar game trying to force my religious zeal upon the poor AI. I managed to convince one civ with a very small bribe. Spain however refused to even consider switching. A few turns and 3 Spanish cities later, Isabella was singing a different tune at the peace talks. Maybe not the prettiest way to do it, but effective as can be.

 

[elderotter]

I converted 3 other civs to my religion in my first game...I didnt try to do it. Since then I have tried and failed. Think it is best when you are spiritual have a state religion and open borders with a country you actually have close borders with - they kinda spread on their own, didnt even use missionaries in that first game.

 

[Noldodan]

In my latest game I converted two of the other civs to my state religion, and I founded two others and built all three shrines. Through a very agressive missionary campaign many of the cities in all of our cities are at least two of the three, and every one is my state religion. This is allowing me to be the largest civ in the game, with 100% research and 47 gpt, and growing. Founding religions and spreading them is the best way to expand your economy that I've ever seen.