Can you eradicate a religion?

[TallNSturdy]

Started a random size map on a random world and ended up with a 4 player 2 continent game. Of course I got stuck on my island with Monte so war started early and has been going on for like 2000 years. He had a city in a nice choke point 2 tiles wide so it took me a little longer then I would want to push through it and by the time I did he had founded a religion. I was able to push him back and with some trebs I took his capital. I didn’t want his religion to spread to my towns so I built an inquisitor and used it on his old capital. The “Holy City” was erased and my religion took over the city with no other religions left. I still see his religion in other cities with higher pressure then mine and it is pressuring back to his capital.

My questions are :

a) If you get rid of a holy city will it come back?
b) What’s the easiest way to eradicate religion you don’t want to spread to your towns?

P.S. I picked Islam and Monte went Christianity, Help me crush the infidels!

 

[mike678]

You need to remove Christianity as the major religion from every city they own so they cant build gp or inquisitors. Once you do that your pressure will slowly convert the rest. Also the holy city will slowly come back but your pressure should be so high compared to it that the game would be over before they get the major religion again.

 

[regeneration64]

a. Holy Cities (HC) are usually the AI capital. In fact, I'm pretty sure that the AI always has their capital as their HC. As I'm sure you are aware, a capital city cannot be razed so it will always remain - the religion will also come back if the city is left after using a GP or Inquisitor. HCs produce +30 pressure even with just one follower (however, it take's a few turns for the single follower to re-emerge).

b. The easiest way to eradicate religion is to use those GPs and Missionaries! GPs are more effective as they get rid of any present religions, however they take longer for you to produce. If you don't want other religions to spread to your cities then place Inquisitors in your high population cities to prevent them being converted. If at war, simply kill the GPs/Missionaries. Also remember that the more cities (with a certain religion) there are surrounding a particular city; the faster that city will be converted.

This thread may also be of interest to you.

 

[MaxellSnow]

AI did this to me, but the answer is no, you cannot.

Even if you eliminate all followers of the religion via missionaries and inquisitors, the religion can still come back via a GP. Apparently, even if you capture the holy city, if a civ generates a GP, they can still act as a missionary and convert cities BACK to their original religion even though they no longer hold their holy city.

1. civ A has two cities: holy city and another
2. civ B captures civ a's capital
3. civ B declares peace but eliminates all of civ A's religion in the remaining city.
4. civ A generates a GP
5. civ A trucks prophet into civ B city and converts it to former religion of civ A

 

[Miravlix]

You need to remove Christianity as the major religion from every city they own so they cant build gp or inquisitors. Once you do that your pressure will slowly convert the rest. Also the holy city will slowly come back but your pressure should be so high compared to it that the game would be over before they get the major religion again.

Greater Prophets isn't city religion specific, so there is no way to leave a civ alive and kill the religion for good.

 

[shirleyrocks]

The only way to truly eradicate a religion from a Holy City (assuming the Holy City is also a Capital) is to capture that city and then use an Inquisitor to remove the heathen belief from your civ. Once you do this, the Holy City will no longer be a source of pressure for that religion.

 

[bonafide11]

The only way to truly eradicate a religion from a Holy City (assuming the Holy City is also a Capital) is to capture that city and then use an Inquisitor to remove the heathen belief from your civ. Once you do this, the Holy City will no longer be a source of pressure for that religion.

It'll eventually come back though.

 

[Peacemongerer]

If you don't want to go conquering, you need to convert cities in and around him. For non-Holy cities, you need to simply exert more pressure than his religion exerts (+6 per city) on them and they'll eventually come to you. His holy city will exert 30 pressure on itself and 6 on all nearby cities, so you'll need at least 6 more of your religion's cities around him to convert his holy city.

Or you could just hit all his cities with great prophets and then make sure you have at least 5 around his holy city so it doesn't convert itself back.

 

[Halcyan2]

a. Holy Cities (HC) are usually the AI capital. In fact, I'm pretty sure that the AI always has their capital as their HC. As I'm sure you are aware, a capital city cannot be razed so it will always remain - the religion will also come back if the city is left after using a GP or Inquisitor. HCs produce +30 pressure even with just one follower (however, it take's a few turns for the single follower to re-emerge).

Capitals can be razed in OCC.

In fact, this side effect makes Ethiopia's UA really fun since you can play Domination/Conquest and still retain your combat bonus against larger civs!

 

[Peacemongerer]

The only way to truly eradicate a religion from a Holy City (assuming the Holy City is also a Capital) is to capture that city and then use an Inquisitor to remove the heathen belief from your civ. Once you do this, the Holy City will no longer be a source of pressure for that religion.

Not quite... it will just not exert OUTWARD pressure. It will still exert an inherant +30 pressure on itself and itself alone until it is converted back.

 

[Miravlix]

A captured Holy City does not gain the Holy City +pressure.

I see two people saying otherwise here for some reason.

Capture and Inq a Holy City and it's sleeping, until the original founder retakes it.

 

[TallNSturdy]

This thread may also be of interest to you.

Thanks for the link, I did a search but somehow I missed that thread. Giving it a good read over now.

 

[MaxellSnow]

Not quite... it will just not exert OUTWARD pressure. It will still exert an inherant +30 pressure on itself and itself alone until it is converted back.

This is incorrect. Upon capturing a holy city and converting all of the native religion out of it, there is no pressure value displayed for the native religion.

Apparently the religion still remains tied to the founding civ and may be brought back via great prophets, the only religious-type unit not spawning from faith...think wonders and/or social policies.

 

[Barghaest]

Capitals can be razed in OCC.

Whodewhat?

 

[Halcyan2]

Whodewhat?

In One City Challenge (OCC) you are only allowed to have one city. (Other civs can have multiple cities).

If you capture another city (including a capital) it is automatically razed. Unfortunately, this also means you cannot liberate city states since they become razed automatically as well.

I normally don't play OCC so learning all this was a surprise when I played a GOTM with OCC. Don't know if anything has changed in G&K though.

 

[Barghaest]

Ah, gotcha.

Didn't grasp the acronym.

I've done that challenge once... when I was playing Gandhi because I went for 8 achievements - Baby Steps (Settler difficulty), Give Peace a Chance (win as Gandhi), I Need More Elbow Room (Tiny Map), Island Hopping (Archipelago), City of Lights (100+ Culture per turn in one city), One to Rule Them All (One City Challenge), The Best State of a Republic (Culture Victory) and Bollywood (Win Culture Victory as Gandhi with 3 or fewer cities). Also got some of the achievements for policy trees during that one. Was fairly quick (don't think it took more than half an hour) and I never actually captured/auto-razed any cities - didn't really need to on Archipelago/Settler back then heh... was one of my earliest games.

Now I like sprawling empires too much to ever do One City again...

 

[Villager720]

It'll eventually come back though.

It wont come back if you hit their captured HC with an Inq. And yes, those agreeing with me understand that if you GP a HC it'll show no pressure from the faith for a few turns, but will eventually return. We're saying if you capture the HC and hit it with an Inquisitor it wont exert pressure, even after a few turns. If you wipe out the Civ and destroy all their followers via GPs and Inqs the faith is dead dead. And without the founding Civ around, no great prophets to spawn/spread it back into existence.

 

[fuzzatron717]

Started a random size map on a random world and ended up with a 4 player 2 continent game. Of course I got stuck on my island with Monte so war started early and has been going on for like 2000 years. He had a city in a nice choke point 2 tiles wide so it took me a little longer then I would want to push through it and by the time I did he had founded a religion. I was able to push him back and with some trebs I took his capital. I didn’t want his religion to spread to my towns so I built an inquisitor and used it on his old capital. The “Holy City” was erased and my religion took over the city with no other religions left. I still see his religion in other cities with higher pressure then mine and it is pressuring back to his capital.

My questions are :

a) If you get rid of a holy city will it come back?
b) What’s the easiest way to eradicate religion you don’t want to spread to your towns?

P.S. I picked Islam and Monte went Christianity, Help me crush the infidels!

I have completely eradicted a religion before I was Byzantium/Christianity facing my long time enemy The Maya/Judaism what you have to do is this.

1.Completely conquer the civilization.
2.Use Inquistors/Great Prophets on any city with even 1 follower of the enemy religion until there is no followers left and that is practically it.
Now most say in the enemy holy city followers of this religion will slowly come back. Using this two step plan which I have no enemy followers will rise up. Hope this helps and good night as it's 1:00 in the morning here. Oh and I almost forgot always keep an inquistor in the enemy holy city. Just in case.

 

[regeneration64]

Thanks for the link, I did a search but somehow I missed that thread. Giving it a good read over now.

Not a problem. Some threads aren't easy to search for!

Capitals can be razed in OCC.

In fact, this side effect makes Ethiopia's UA really fun since you can play Domination/Conquest and still retain your combat bonus against larger civs!

That's interesting. OCC may be the only way to eliminate a religion 100%!

This is incorrect. Upon capturing a holy city and converting all of the native religion out of it, there is no pressure value displayed for the native religion.

Apparently the religion still remains tied to the founding civ and may be brought back via great prophets, the only religious-type unit not spawning from faith...think wonders and/or social policies.

Indeed there will be no pressure value displayed as zero followers will exert zero pressure. However, that single follower will come back in the Holy City over time even if you take out every city the AI civ has and convert them all to your religion.

The only thing I'm not sure about is if you can stop the Holy City generating followers if you exert more than +30 pressure on it after it has been converted to your religion via a GP/Inq.

Looking at this from a practical viewpoint, once you have used a GP/Inq; taken over most of the AI cities and converted them; and spread your religion far and wide even if the AI still has a few followers in its Holy City the game won't last long enough for the Holy City to convert back to its own religion and start exerting pressure on the surrounding cities.

 

[jjkrause84]

Not quite... it will just not exert OUTWARD pressure. It will still exert an inherant +30 pressure on itself and itself alone until it is converted back.

This is sort of the problem. Holy Cities will ALWAYS have their own religion back, eventually. There needs to be a way to allow 'new', introduced religions to spread and dominate.