How do you stop declared friends from converting your cities?

[AlazkanAssassin]

But you told them you were their friend. They just want to be nice to their friend. What is the nicest thing they can do? Why, telling them about the One True God, and saving them from Eternal Punishment is, of course!

 

[agonistes]

I have found that if you simply denounce Arabia or India, and have troops guarding your border cities, they will be much more hesitant to send their missionaries in. If I forget to re-denounce them, they will try to sneak some missionaries back in.

Now I just use the religious borders mod. Before that, I decided to convert all of their cities so I wouldn't have to deal with them, and it turned out it was pretty easy to do.

 

[Cymsdale]

I find the whole "promise" feature of diplomacy kind of silly. If the AI breaks the promise, they are dumb. If the follow the promise, they are even more dumb. Most promises break down to essentially asking the other civ nicely to stop trying to win the game.

 

[AriochIV]

I find the whole "promise" feature of diplomacy kind of silly. If the AI breaks the promise, they are dumb. If the follow the promise, they are even more dumb. Most promises break down to essentially asking the other civ nicely to stop trying to win the game.

If you take this Civ V vanilla view of AI civs as "artificial human players trying to win the game", then there is no point in even having a diplomacy system. There is no value in negotiating with other factions if you know they won't abide by the agreements they make, and are only waiting for the right moment to attack you.

To be worth having in the game, the diplomacy system needs to have benefits and consequences. When a faction makes a demand, there needs to be a benefit of agreeing to the demand, and a consequence of refusing the demand; weighing the benefit vs. consequence is what potentially makes for interesting decisions. However, in Civ VI currently there is no real benefit for good behavior and no real penalty for ignoring demands or breaking promises; you get shafted either way. The diplomacy system currently is a bit like the religious system; it's a pain to manage and gives very little benefit for the effort, and can be almost completely ignored with little or no penalty.

 

[joncnunn]

Basically all "promises" from the AI in Civ VI follow the Civ V model : It's like a human who always lies if it's to his immediate advantage to do so. (This is not only religion, but settling cities too close; and it's a fairly good thing there's not a human option to complain to the AI about the AIs units being too close to his borders as the AI would just promise it and immediately break that as well.)

Meanwhile, there doesn't actually appear to be diplomatic penalties for using your Inquisitors or Apostles to kill their Missionaries. (Other than Spain's agenda of not liking you if you are following a different religion)

 

[Nathaniel VII]

Has anything about this changed? I'm currently in a game, and Japan has already converted 3 of my cities. Now I can't even ask them to stop anymore.

Is that Firaxis' solution to the uselessness of promises? You simply can't ask them anymore?

 

[dac050]

Has anything about this changed? I'm currently in a game, and Japan has already converted 3 of my cities. Now I can't even ask them to stop anymore.

Is that Firaxis' solution to the uselessness of promises? You simply can't ask them anymore?

Apostles and inquisitors. I have one Apostle with the debater promotion, and 4 inquistors. I can kill any enemy Apostle in one turn (might take all of them ganging up, but I can do it). Missionaries can usually be killed with just 2 inquistors. This has the added benefit of reinforcing your faith in your nearby cities, and degrading the opponents faith in those same cities. You can't just hope they won't try to convert you, you have to actively resist.

 

[Nathaniel VII]

Apostles and inquisitors. I have one Apostle with the debater promotion, and 4 inquistors. I can kill any enemy Apostle in one turn (might take all of them ganging up, but I can do it). Missionaries can usually be killed with just 2 inquistors. This has the added benefit of reinforcing your faith in your nearby cities, and degrading the opponents faith in those same cities. You can't just hope they won't try to convert you, you have to actively resist.

That wasn't my question. There used to be an option in the "Discuss" menu, "Please promise not to convert my cities", which you could select after they had converted one. And despite me having the Holy War casus belli, that Discuss option is no longer showing up.

 

[dac050]

That wasn't my question. There used to be an option in the "Discuss" menu, "Please promise not to convert my cities", which you could select after they had converted one. And despite me having the Holy War casus belli, that Discuss option is no longer showing up.

Once you've asked them to stop converting your cities, you can't ask them again for a fixed amount of time, I think it's 30 turns. They know you don't want them converting your cities, they simply don't care.

 

[Nathaniel VII]

Once you've asked them to stop converting your cities, you can't ask them again for a fixed amount of time, I think it's 30 turns. They know you don't want them converting your cities, they simply don't care.

Again, the option never showed up once.

 

[diamond geezer]

I find declaring war and killing all their religious units tends to slow things down a tad.

 

[Nathaniel VII]

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I find declaring war and killing all their religious units tends to slow things down a tad.

Which then makes you a warmonger and gets you denounced by most other civilizations in the game.

The combination of agendas, the religion mechanic and the warmongering penalties feels entirely incompatible to me.

 

[diamond geezer]

Which then makes you a warmonger and gets you denounced by most other civilizations in the game.

The combination of agendas, the religion mechanic and the warmongering penalties feels entirely incompatible to me.

I've talked about warmongering elsewhere - the penalties can be covered off. It's not the only solution, but it is a simple one.

 

[Jonathan]

I agree that the religious system in Civ 6 is misconceived. I think it should be redesigned from scratch. I now don't bother to get a religion myself, and ignore religious units as much as possible. I'd turn off religious victory if there were any danger of it happening in my games.

 

[Nathaniel VII]

I agree that the religious system in Civ 6 is misconceived. I think it should be redesigned from scratch. I now don't bother to get a religion myself, and ignore religious units as much as possible. I'd turn off religious victory if there were any danger of it happening in my games.

I normally turn it off. Just left it on after the winter patch to see what a standard game looks like.

I just steamrolled Japan in a holy war, pillaging every single holy site in his empire, buildings and district. I graciously return his cities afterwards to avoid warmonger penalties and what happens?

10 turns later his apostles are back at my doorstep. The AI is absolutely useless. It can't even understand that it lost a holy war and probably shouldn't go start converting my cities again. Jesus....