Do you manipulate AI religion?

gavenkoa

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What are the cases when you want to convert AI religion?

I have a case when all civs have own religion (4 opponents on small map) + shrines. The most remote civ has Theology and building AP. I want to convert that AI to another religion that covered my land by the neighbor:

* want me, my neighbor and remote AI to share religion for diplo bonuses for traiding and war against 2 others AI between us
* want +1H from religion building
* want greater voting rights in AP

I'm going to send 2-3 missionaries and pay AI to convert so AP will use religion with higher coverage in my land. Is it make sense?

I have never built strategy around AI religion before.
 
When you have a vassal and you don't want its foreign religion to decrease your standings with your allied block.

Otherwise, in a peaceful scenario, I dunno. You could do it to unlock trades.
AP situation, yes. This is still a matter of diplo. It only makes sense to convert the AI if they will vote for you. They will always vote at Friendly. They will sometimes vote at Pleased. I do not know what the treshold is. I know Friendly is not a hard requirement.
 
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I wouldn't sacrifice your game for this strategy. AI love spreading religions anyway. They will generally switch back unless the spread religion is the main one in their cities. Overall on a small map I would be rolling over neighbours. Religion unless you go AP won't win you the game.Cost of missionaries is probably not worth it hammer wise.

Even then you want plenty of cities so you can control the AP.
 
outside of the AP victory I generally ignore religions other besides monitoring what AIs are aligned with what, as it's occasionally useful to convert to help suck up to a neighbor to avoid being eviscerated for simply being a land-target or to know who to get a treaty with before DoWing his buddy. They pursue religion too fanatically and haphazardly (ever try to put Buddhism in all an AI's cities only for them to spread and convert to their favorite religion anyway like 20 turns later? feelsbadman) to really ever bother to put a hand directly in it for me.

I also largely ignore the AP hammers because it takes a long time for those buildings to pay back their hammer cost passively (140h at 4h/t = 35 turns..and it takes TURNS to do that, as they are passive hammers and not a modifier). Compare a forge, where you whip 480 hammers through it and you're flush already, really easy to do when whipping infra and units for a war. 230H of buildings, a couple cuirs, BAM forge pays for itself.

* want me, my neighbor and remote AI to share religion for diplo bonuses for traiding and war against 2 others AI between us
much easier to convert to his religion instead. You only need one city with his religion if you want to be his religious friend If you want the two AIs to also be buddy-buddy with each other AS WELL as you, well, that's more up to either of them than you. And bribing conversions is more often than not temporary, AIs often just switch back or to something else as frustrating as it is.

* want greater voting rights in AP
also much easier to just convert to the AP religion and spam it in your cities if you want to do this. AIs are fickle, but you can always get more votes by spreading the AP religion more and adding/growing your own cities.
 
What about the bonus gold from shrines? Having a shrine combined with a well spread religion is like having a corporation several ages early.
 
What about the bonus gold from shrines?
Here it is expected you don't found religion nor build a shrine: instead you conquer it. Because missionaries are to costly, 40T to repay...

Also settling a Great Prophet provides +2H+5G - like 7 missionaries. One you have for free, that leaves 6 to build. Only after that first 7 missionaries you will profit more than from a settled prophet...

I would build a shrine only if role-play, not when power-play. Or if conquered AI spread religion to more than 7 cities )))

I haven't studied the bulbing path of Great Prophet: https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Great_Prophet_(Civ4) There are useful techs, like Civil service & Code of Low, Monarchy. The only problem that in order to open techs you have to waist points on religious techs: everybody warns against it ))
 
If I get a great prophet and I’m not going to get music first I put him to sleep until later, then use him for a golden age once I’ve got two double food high pop cities which I can starve down under caste system and pacifism to pop out great scientists / great merchants.
 
I’m not going to get music first
Why? Music could give you nice trades... As you wrote you wait for caste system and pacifism and it is a long path to those civics...

Unless you consider Aesthetics as a detour / weak path...
 
Well, not every game takes aesth-music -line. Without marble that line loses quite a lot of it's value. Maybe you have something more important to do, like bashing your neighbors skull. Also, winning music is not guaranteed on deity even if you go for it.
 
Why? Music could give you nice trades... As you wrote you wait for caste system and pacifism and it is a long path to those civics...

Unless you consider Aesthetics as a detour / weak path...
Not a weak path at all. I go Aesthetics straight after Writing in probably 99% of all my non iso / semi-iso games for the trade bait. But as @sampsa says sometimes you just have other priorities so I won’t follow all the way through to Music a lot of the time.

The caste and pacifism route is sped up by bulbing philosophy usually with my first great scientist. Unless I’ve got a fantastic bureau cottage capital I’ll pretty much always bulb philosophy rather than build an academy. Plus you don’t want your golden age too early before you’re ready to take advantage of it so usually I’m in position to start it but delay it until my two high food cities are high enough pop with full enough food bars so they can be starved down. The extra commerce from a golden age is nice obviously but the main purpose of them is producing great scientists / great merchants.
 
are high enough pop with full enough food bars so they can be starved down
I have never sought for full food bar but I remember when if goes to zero you lose population. Do you starve till zero or goes beyond?

What is the starvation formula? 1 citizen per turn regardless food deficit? Is it efficient?

I always fix negative food blanse to positive near the starvation point...
 
The idea here is that by having full food bars you can run a food deficit for longer without starving. Once starving, a city loses one pop per turn and indeed normally this is best to avoid. If you are going to starve however, you may as well work no food, you always lose one pop per turn no matter the deficit.
 
Do you starve till zero or goes beyond?
Whether I’ll actually starve and lose a size or two depends on how long is left in the golden age and type of great person. It’s pretty much always a last great merchant when I’d do this.

Say there are 3 turns of the golden age left and by starving I can pop the great merchant on the last turn or I can avoid starving and pop him in 4 turns then I’d starve to get him one turn earlier. The reason being that I want to switch back to slavery (and theocracy if I’ve got a religion) before the golden age ends without incurring anarchy to typically whip out more elephants or whatever which get upgraded with his trade route money, and switching to slavery obviously means no more merchant specialists.

If for any reason it was a great scientist I was trying to pop last then I’d probably bank as many GPP as possible and go food neutral at the last moment and get it a few turns later.
 
When you do get music first, how many of you culture bomb the artist for border pressure/to claim land if at the second pop in a city (so potential isn't wasted in squares you already control), or do you usually just save it for golden age?
 
Golden age 100%.
Only time I use culture bomb generally is when Severus describes, that final push for a merchant if it happened to roll an artist because of NE or something. And even then I'd try to use the culture bomb to end the city revolt in a conquered major city or as the finishing move for a domination victory. Ever since the culture bomb got nerfed in a patch long ago, I don't think it's been worth using it to win culture battles over a few tiles or to try to flip cities.
That said, I've moved away from automatically racing towards Music. I lose that race too often, and to prevent losing it I have to significantly limit tech trading, which kinda defeats the point of going aesthetics. Racing towards the GLib isn't as threatened by tech trading because I can pre-chop it.
 
Golden age 100%.
Only time I use culture bomb generally is when Severus describes, that final push for a merchant if it happened to roll an artist because of NE or something. And even then I'd try to use the culture bomb to end the city revolt in a conquered major city or as the finishing move for a domination victory. Ever since the culture bomb got nerfed in a patch long ago, I don't think it's been worth using it to win culture battles over a few tiles or to try to flip cities.
That said, I've moved away from automatically racing towards Music. I lose that race too often, and to prevent losing it I have to significantly limit tech trading, which kinda defeats the point of going aesthetics. Racing towards the GLib isn't as threatened by tech trading because I can pre-chop it.

Was there even a patch since 3.19, or are you referring to one beforehand? I thought it was just a flat 4,000 that automatically got installed into the city you choose?

I was always fascinated with the idea of depriving neighbors of tile yield from bonuses for the great majority of the game, but maybe that's not a worthwhile tradeoff.
 
No patch since 3.19, but I think the GA bomb mechanics changed between Warlords and BtS so that it doesn't help much with culture wars or culture-flipping cities.
 
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