Effectively spreading religion

[tezster]

Last night, I thought of an indirect way of spreading my religion to AI civs I'm not on friendly terms with -and thus don't have open borders with- by gifting my missionaries to a friendly 3rd party AI. I was happy to see that the AI will in fact send them off to their neighbours and and spread my religion!

This is also especially useful if you consider the 3-missionary limit. Once I give away my missionaries, I can create more and repeat the process.

It works great in large land masses, but also works for continents across the ocean if you can live with the travel time involved shipping missionaries off by sea.

A nice side-effect is reduced micromanagement of having to send off your missionaries to specific cities - just give them away and forget about them.

Has anyone else tried this?

 

[Toshiro126]

I haven't tried it but I plan too. Great idea!

 

[Boppo]

Now that is an intriguing idea. I shall have to give it a try in my next game.

 

[punchandpie]

That is a good way of doing it, I will have to try that tonight.

 

[ruff_hi]

... gifting my missionaries to a friendly 3rd party AI. I was happy to see that the AI will in fact send them off to their neighbours and and spread my religion!

I've done this a little bit. However, you will sometimes find that a) they will not accept the give or b) they will not use it - I captured a city 100s of years after gifting a missionary only to find the missionary still there!

 

[Toshiro126]

Originally posted by Ruff Hi:
I captured a city 100s of years after gifting a missionary only to find the missionary still there!

Maybe the town had good beer and he didn't feel like leaving?

 

[_alphaBeta_]

I've done this a little bit. However, you will sometimes find that a) they will not accept the give or b) they will not use it - I captured a city 100s of years after gifting a missionary only to find the missionary still there!

Perhaps there wasn't anywhere for this civ to use it, if they didn't have open borders with anyone else.

I like this idea a lot. Assuming it works consistently, it will make it that much easier to infect my neighbors. I haven't seen it with missionaries, but how come you sometimes cannot gift a unit? Do you have to be on better terms?

 

[BrutalusMaximus]

I would assume that to be most effective the civ you gave it to would need to be of the state religion of the missionaries you gave them.

 

[azzkicar]

That's a good tip. I have something else of interest.

At my current Prince difficulty game (epic speed, large size), I was unable to send in missionaries to the Americans because they won't open borders. However, they adopted my state religion so I bribed them into adopting Organized Religion. Within 10 turns 5 cities got my religion and BOOM! Instant line of sight and cash , not to mention the turn and hammer savings hehe.

 

[ruff_hi]

... how come you sometimes cannot gift a unit?

I didn't look at it too closely - just assumed that they were using the civ that doesn't allow spread of non state religion.

 

[tezster]

I haven't tried this with non-state religions yet (I guess I should have before I posted for the sake of being thorough)... I also didn't realize that there are instances where I couldn't gift a unit - I really don't use that option too often.

Ruff_hi is correct in his observation that the will not always use the missionaries - I'm not too sure what exactly affects the AI's behaviour. There are times when I've seen the AI send off all 3 missionaries to neighbouring cities the very next turn, and sometimes they will just send 1 or 2, even though there are accessible cities without that religion left. So I still believe this strategy is useful, but it's not 100% effective.

 

[jar2574]

Good idea. I'm going to try it. I'll convert the nation first, so that they'll be more inclined to use the missionary.

 

[Wodan]

It also depends on the leader. Remember, people like Tokugawa are isolationist. I gifted him a missionary one time, yes I converted him first, and he had good relations with my target civ. But, he let the missionary sit there.

Wodan

 

[balthamael]

can i just add a little thing onto here?

i had teh civic that stops none-state-religion spread (theocracy i think) and i founded another religion (Islam). i sucessfully used the free islamic missionary to make one of my citites muslim....is this a bug?

 

[JoshuaOst]

can i just add a little thing onto here?

i had teh civic that stops none-state-religion spread (theocracy i think) and i founded another religion (Islam). i sucessfully used the free islamic missionary to make one of my citites muslim....is this a bug?

No, you can use missionaries to convert your own cities.

 

[ElJojo]

No, you can use missionaries to convert your own cities.

But if he's running theocracy with another state religion it should not be possible. Or does the free missionnary have a special ability ? (would surprise me)