Fixing Religious Units -

[Peacemongerer]

So one huge problem I've seen in the last month or so of playing Civ 6 is that religious units are incredibly tedious, even if you don't want to pursue a religion. They often clutter-up the map and make it harder to move combat units through your own territory, religious combat often feels like spamming doomstacks at the other side and the sheer volume of missionaries some civilizations can produce at once just makes the whole experience awful for a lot of people

With this in mind, I'm proposing we make standard religious units behave more like trade units / espionage units, where pay some amount of faith upfront to send them on a mission and have all conversion be done in the background. Holy sites increase the number of units you can support at once, and faith generated is use to purchase new units and maintain missions the existing ones are sent on.

Some ideas:

Missionary:
Proselytize (5 turns) - High-risk, high-reward. Exerts high level of continuous religious pressure on the city for mission's duration, converting unbelievers to your faith. Costs a lot of faith to maintain. Random chance missionary is killed by an angry mob.

Perform Charity (10 turns) - Low-risk, low-reward. Exerts lower level of religious pressure on the city than proselytize, but missionary is less likely to be killed while pursuing this mission. Costs a little faith to maintain. City receives buffs to growth and amenities while mission is active.

Inquisitor:
Uproot Heretics (5 turns) - High-risk, high-reward. Exerts high level of negative pressure for other religions throughout mission's duration and an increased chance to kill enemy missionaries. City receives maluses to growth and amenities while mission is active. Chance of starting an armed rebellion (killing the inquisitor and spawning rebel units). Costs a lot of faith to maintain.

Theological Debate (10 turns) - Low-risk, low-reward. Exerts lower level of negative religious pressure for all other religions, but does nothing to stop active missionaries. Costs a little faith to maintain.

Apostle:
Perform Miracles (5 turns) - Exerts absurd levels of pressure for your religion in the target city; can easily convert all citizens in target city to your faith if done unchallenged. Random chance apostle is martyred, killing the unit but creating a relic in your capital. Costs an absurd amount of faith to execute.

Support Evangelism (10 turns) - Makes all missionaries coming from your empire more effective for X number of turns, but costs extra faith to maintain.

Support Inquisition (10 turns) - Makes all inquisitors within your empire more effective for X number of turns, but costs extra faith to maintain.

 

[RealAntithesis]

So, in this respect, they would be more like spies, which also don't move around the map but are instead assigned 'missions'. I like it. I would also like to remove them entirely as actual units. Also remove spies since they have no reasons for being units since they don't move (I'm not even sure other civilian units can go on top of them either...). There are too many various units and icons cluttering up the map anyway (just compare the clean look of previous civs pre-Civ5 and compare to Civ6 - big difference), and the icons have become the main way (for me) to distinguish what is on a tile. I was moving an AT Crew the other day and had difficulty seeing the AT Crew themselves, just the icon moving from one location to the other...

 

[TomKQT]

Now that they expanded the features of religious units moving on the map (by adding religious combat), they most probably won't just throw it away and make religion work like espionage. So this discussion can be just theoretical...

I'm not sure I like it too much. I would rather vote for improving (fixing) the current system. Religious combat can be a lot of fun IMHO, if implemented properly. I would like to see apostoles getting XP points from combat. And of course I would like to see religious units being able to move on the same tile as an enemy military unit (if open borders are active). Plus disable automatic religious lens, make city pressure stronger and make religious units even more expensive and stronger (to get rid of the carpets of apostoles). And I'm happy.

What I probably dislike the most are the random chances of dying everywhere in your idea. I'm not a fan of random events in strategic games.

 

[RealAntithesis]

The very concept of religious units (and a religious victory) doesn't really make much sense to me in the first place. Religion, historically, was and is a means to an end - to exert the power of a particular group of people over other people. The real power was what you could do with religious influence - for example, a religious state could better control their own citizens using the religion (or influence the people in other nations following that same religion). Religion historically was probably spread more by the sword and actual warfare than all these missionaries and apostles going all over the place. Besides which, I don't see too many 'apostles' these days that would be the real-life equivalents of the carpets of apostle doom that Civ 6 tends to generate (I do realise there are real-life missionaries spreading the word in various countries around the world, but they don't work for any particular nation).

 

[Victoria]

. Yes on immortal and deity the AI has such huge bonuses that it becomes silly. This is really only fixable by

• Making the AI better and reducing the bonus
  
• Changing the mechanic.

On lower levels it works better with less carpets (the AI just does not have the resource). The concept is fairly much the same as CIV5 apart from they reduced the pressure and added apostles and more units so you can "battle" amd if playing religion you can enjoy this aspect. I therefore suspect theu will keep what they have. The way I resolve it in Deity is just let the swam come for a few turns convert everything and then they are gone. A few turns of pain. And then I just hope one religion will not get too strong and often does not. I am not religious so why should I fight against this swarm. If I see one Civ winning the fight maybe attack them just to stop the victory

I agree its a little broken but they did try and TBH I feel it is playable. The main issue seems to be people want a challenge, a Deity level that is hard to beat... Fair play and respect... I really wish they had one. For me personally it is the journey not the end and when I get a "you lost" screen IDC, its a game and a computer and I did not loose really, I enjoyed.

 

[TomKQT]

The very concept of religious units (and a religious victory) doesn't really make much sense to me in the first place. Religion, historically, was and is a means to an end - to exert the power of a particular group of people over other people. The real power was what you could do with religious influence - for example, a religious state could better control their own citizens using the religion (or influence the people in other nations following that same religion). Religion historically was probably spread more by the sword and actual warfare than all these missionaries and apostles going all over the place. Besides which, I don't see too many 'apostles' these days that would be the real-life equivalents of the carpets of apostle doom that Civ 6 tends to generate (I do realise there are real-life missionaries spreading the word in various countries around the world, but they don't work for any particular nation).

I quite expected that religion would develop over time (over eras). Apostles and missionaries at the starting eras make sense, but in later eras religion should spread mainly by city pressure, culture (tourism), maybe trade routes etc. The religious battles with thunderbolts fit the starting ages where people believed in all sorts of supernatural things, but in information era it seems out of place. When I saw the religious battle in dev videos, I was quite happy because it seemed like a good idea. And I really expected that it would be "valid" only in the beginning and that later there will be other ways how to spread religion. I was mistaken

 

[PeteBDawg]

Religion historically was probably spread more by the sword and actual warfare than all these missionaries and apostles going all over the place.

This isn't really true. The wars we think of as "bringing religion by the sword" if they actually ended up converting large populations were usually accompanied by huge missionary drives. And this is true whether it's east or west - like there was a ton of missionary work that went into converting the indigenous peoples of Mexico to Catholicism by a couple of monastic orders, for example - and the Buddhist rulers of India prior to the Hindu revival were very aggressive with sending missionaries as far east and west as they could.

A lot of the time the war comes after the missionary work and ends up shaping the battle lines, or it becomes before the missionary work because the country previously didn't allow missionaries. A lot of the time what we think historically of as the "conversion" of an area is the allegiance of its ruler and doesn't necessarily reflect what the people living there under the ruler experienced in terms of change - but when a ruler changes them maybe the clerics the people encounter also change - it's not like the ruler actually changes all that many people's minds just by threatening them.

Although one thing that is definitely true is that places converting to one religion or another depends upon the movement of people - either religion spreading through settlement, migration or colonization, or allowing or barring missionaries from various countries.

And those I think are the main interactions between religion and war - which religious civilians, missionaries and clerics are allowed to openly practice and which aren't, and who is allowed to move and who isn't.

The actual effectiveness of things like the Spanish Inquisition - or various pogroms or purges or Holocausts - in actually changing people's beliefs over time is hugely debatable. I tend to think people and traditions are pretty resilient and the effectiveness of conversion by force is overrated.

What I'm mainly saying though, in terms of the game, all that aside, is that a lot of this is not quite under as much of the control of the State as a lot of people think (or a lot of states would claim), and that it doesn't really make sense to have a "religious victory" for a civilization - what does that even mean?

Like if I'm Japan and I'm next to England, and I invade England, and they're Shinto and I'm "Wow, A Turtle!" and I convert them, in real life, the "Wow, a Turtle!"s of former England and the "Wow, A Turtle!"s of historical Japan are not going to really believe the same things or share the same practices. And maybe if "Wow, A Turtle!" spreads from there - who's to say it's my version of it rather than England's version of it?

Anything that cuts such a fine line in this game to me doesn't feel grounded or authentic. Religion only makes sense in civ if it is painted with very broad strokes, and is mostly seen through its extrinsic effects rather than intrinsic ones.

I guess I just mean that I always prefer religion in this game when it is orthogonal to the goals of the civilization as represented by its political and military leadership - and not a way to win. As in, your civilization can benefit from founding its own religion, or it can benefit from adopting somebody else's beliefs, depending on the situation, or it can benefit from keeping out a religion and you can benefit from spreading your religion in ways like spreading your culture along with it, or making money off of it, or affecting the outcome or battle lines of future wars.

Civ seems to think that either you have a state religion or your civilization is not religious, and that the religiosity of your society maps onto the religiosity of the state, and this just isn't the case.

And it is really stupid that religious units are able to pass through closed national borders without permission and can't be removed without declaring war - really closing your borders should be enough to keep out missionaries almost all the time. These missionary groups that actually convert entire cities don't do it by knocking on doors or walking around on the streets - they set up schools and churches, they are proxies for institutional resources and support - and that kind of thing should be assumed can be prevented if the civilization doesn't want it to happen.

So yeah, with all that in mind, I'd like to see a lot of changes to how religious units work - a huge de-emphasis in the power and historical scope of Inquisitors, and I would prefer to see either an end to religious victory or a religious victory that comes from something other than just mass conversion. Like I'm bummed that in Civ VI relative to some previous Civs how little things like cathedrals matter.

 

[Browd]

And it is really stupid that religious units are able to pass through closed national borders without permission and can't be removed without declaring war - really closing your borders should be enough to keep out missionaries almost all the time. These missionary groups that actually convert entire cities don't do it by knocking on doors or walking around on the streets - they set up schools and churches, they are proxies for institutional resources and support - and that kind of thing should be assumed can be prevented if the civilization doesn't want it to happen.

Keep in mind the balance issues inherent in how open borders are treated. A human player often will (and, in my case, always will) refuse to give the AI open borders, if possible, while always buying open borders from the AI. Certainly the AI could be programmed to behave like a human player, and simply refuse to grant open borders on any terms (or only grant open borders on a reciprocal basis), but that would engender howls of protest from the player community ("Open borders are broken. Why have a feature like open borders if the AI will never give open borders?" or "It's so stupid that the only way I can get open borders is to give open borders"). So, the developers have given the human players the ability to have what they want -- open borders from the AI, while keeping their own borders closed. And that seems OK for most purposes in the game.

But if religious unit movement was changed to always require open borders, the human player could exploit the AI -- routinely buying open borders from the AI, so your religious units can swarm all over the AI, while keeping your borders closed, excluding the AI's religious units and allowing you to neglect your religious defenses (no need to spend faith on inquisitors). Not a good outcome from a balance standpoint.

 

[PeteBDawg]

Keep in mind the balance issues inherent in how open borders are treated. A human player often will (and, in my case, always will) refuse to give the AI open borders, if possible, while always buying open borders from the AI. Certainly the AI could be programmed to behave like a human player, and simply refuse to grant open borders on any terms (or only grant open borders on a reciprocal basis), but that would engender howls of protest from the player community ("Open borders are broken. Why have a feature like open borders if the AI will never give open borders?" or "It's so stupid that the only way I can get open borders is to give open borders"). So, the developers have given the human players the ability to have what they want -- open borders from the AI, while keeping their own borders closed. And that seems OK for most purposes in the game.

But if religious unit movement was changed to always require open borders, the human player could exploit the AI -- routinely buying open borders from the AI, so your religious units can swarm all over the AI, while keeping your borders closed, excluding the AI's religious units and allowing you to neglect your religious defenses (no need to spend faith on inquisitors). Not a good outcome from a balance standpoint.

Very good points. Yeah, it would take more than a simple fix to do any of the things I was suggesting. And also it seems unlikely they would take "religions victory = convert majority of cities in all civs" out of the game.

And also historically, political and religious partnership has often centered on a relatively small number of converts, rather than converting like an entire country - like all the politics in the "Holy Land" around pilgrimage and the money to be made off pilgrimage. Yeah there were crusades, but a lot happened that achieved religious goals other than just converting everybody. Or like how there's a reasonably large population of Taiwanese Christians because of complex politics that in the game would be replicated by "Open Borders," but how it's not more than 5% of the population. I kinda feel like that happens a lot - where you have small chunks of countries shift from one religion to another - and the game has a few mechanics that reward that (like India's bonus), but in general religion seems to be all or nothing at a number of points in the game, and that doesn't feel authentic to me.

 

[RealAntithesis]

I feel that religion should have been a more nebulous concept that affects the civ as a whole rather than mimicking the military part of the game with religious units fighting it out with each other more or less separately from the military units doing the same thing except only to each other. It makes it feel like we are doing the same thing multiple times.

Kind of like progressing through the tech tree in parallel to doing the same thing in the civics tree.

Doing the same but separate things doesn't really result in something that feels like a cohesive whole, and just feels like more of the same giving an impression of micromanagement leading to boredom.