How to get everybody on your religion

[The Lardossen]

I usually start off researching for Hinduism and maybe the Jewish religion (if I don't get Hinduism I always get that). So right in the start I've founded one or two religions, and one of them is my state religion. But it almost never will happen my neighbours turn to it early on, and when I've finally freed the resources to try to get my religion in their cities, most of the time I'm too late, and an other religion is their religion of favor.

Rarely I'm lucky to have one of my religious cities on a long river that happens to spread right into enemy territory, but most of the time everybody hates me because I'm a heathen. I even consider to stop research the techs that give you the religion if you're first, and just bandwagon along with whatever the AI comes up with.

Any ideas how to overcome this problem?

 

[warpstorm]

Are you sending missionaries out? When I want to push a religion, I dedicate one city to making missionaries.

 

[Gufnork]

First of all you need to get a shrine ASAP. In my experience it's the easiest way to spread your religion. Then you need Open Borders with any civs you want to give the religion and I think linking your trade networks also helps. If you're ambitious you could train missionaries, but it's generally not worth doing that early in the game. It's for this reason that Stonehenge and Oracle is extra important, they allow you to get a Great Prophet early to get a shrine for your religion.

Also try and avoid spreading your religion to the neighbours you want to wage war with. All your cities with the same religion as your enemies state religion (or is it only if he has the holy city?) gets extra war weariness. An aggressive leader is always a good choice to be enemies with, because they will be enemies with you whether you want to or not. Never trust an Aggressive leader especially not Napoleon or Montezuma.

I've always preferred taking my neighbours holy cities and let them worry about the spreading. If you're next door to Isabella you can almost be sure she'll get atleast one religion and she's not particularily good at defending herself early.

I'll stop rambling now.

 

[Cosmic_Fist]

You need to get at least one of the cities of a rival civ to your state religion. If it doesn't spread through open borders, use a missionairy. Then you need to be in good standing with that civ, i.e. never refuse when they ask you for a favor. At this point you will be able to ask that civ to convert to your religion. If I already have given free techs or resources to them, they usually do it for free. Otherwise, trading a tech against them switching works. In the last game I played, I managed to get 4 of the 6 rival civs to convert to judaism on the same turn!

 

[LeSphinx]

When you spread your religion and you have the shrine correspondant it's a huge commerce boost if you use a lot of missionnary in the distand land!!!
LeSphinx

 

[Harry Haller]

I would say that you want to get a couple of missionaries out as early as possible, especially to any civs that do not already have their own religions. Often, if you spread your religion to one of their cities and they do not already have a religion, they will convert to yours and then it will spread on its own through their empire.

 

[1889]

I've got nations to convert to my religion before, usually costs about 900 gold, but they convert back to their old ways within 5 turns. Same deal when I get them to change civics.

 

[Padmewan]

You will never get every civ to convert to your religion unless you've essentially won the game anyway. However, in one game I started but never finished, both of my neighbors were non-spiritual civs who never discovered their own religions, and my religion spread very easily to them via trade. Maybe I was doing too much role-playing, but I found it hard to get myself to attack my "brothers of the faith." We would have been one continent united under a single religion vs. the rest of the world... to bad the game got buggy and I never got back into that scenario.

 

[picus]

You don't need open borders for a religion to spread to nearby cities, but it helps. I personally dislike open borders, so I try to agree to it as little as possible - however if my religion hasn't spread to an enemy citiy within a couple turns of my speading it to my border cities, I will open the borders and go missionary crazy.

 

[GreenMonkey]

Best game I had when everyone in the are was my religion...

I had a few cities that I moved out in a land grab that ended up with my #2 city squeezed inbetween a bunch of enemy civs.

At that city with stone (my 2nd city) I built the Oracle and Stonehenge ASAP. I had huge borders very quickly. I grabbed hinduism early. It spread to my satellite city. I built roads to enemy borders. With all the roads connecting my civ to theirs, and my hugely expanding borders from 2 wonders, during open borders phase, almost everyone ended up my religion. (I also ended up with 3 cities flipping to me).

 

[OzzyKP]

How about some instances when its NOT a good idea to spread your religion? Like there are bonuses attached to having a religion. A city gets extra culture, can make use of religion civics, etc. Like if I'm sharing a border with someone, I'll definitely not send my missionary to that city so it doesn't get a bit of culture from it (unless of course it already has a state religion in it, then it doesn't matter), but like early in the game.

Also, I've noticed that a civ with another religion won't flip to your religion until your religion is established in more cities than its current one. Whichever religion has the most cities in that civ seems to be the AI's pick. You can make a deal with them to get them to switch, but they'll just switch back.

 

[Methos]

It's actually pretty easy converting another civ. The only bad thing is it takes a while. What I do is start producing missionaries as much as possible and send them to the cities of one specific AI. Once I have at least 75% of that civs cities with my religions influence I'll start checking to see how much it'll cost for him/her to convert. If you can get your religions influence into all his cities it makes things a lot easier.

The thing is for every city that civ has with your religious influence the more unlikely the AI will switch back out. If 90% of its cities have your religion he/she tends to stick with that religion for the rest of the game.

Once I have one AI converted I than do the same tactic on another AI. The biggest problem I've found is if you try and send missionaries out to multiple AI's rather than focusing on a single one.

Definitely have a shrine though. Since you are mass spreading your religion you might as well make some money off of it.

 

[anton_z1]

You must RUSH. At the beginning of the game, 1 Missionary converts the ennemy !!!!!.

 

[KAuss]

ONLY convert the biggest pop cities!!! Then try to convert cities that are at the ends of a river... (this makes a monopoly of trade route spreading)

The AI will rarely if ever spread their religion in the early game with missionary... Unless they're Ghandi and Egypt...

What you should do is open border with everyone that you want to convert... Don't open to buddah founders and hindu founders if you aren't one of them... Cause they will generally have that religion spread among itself as soon as they found it...

Once you get organized religion, just start pumping out missionaries like crazy and head for the capital of each civ you opened with... Then head for a 2nd city that is the biggest you can find...

Once you do that, start gifting them missionaries... If you're trapped between two AIs and can't spread your own missionaries, the AI will spread them if you gift them yours...

I posted a game recently that had about 9/17 civs under confusionism... (including me)

In my current game, I got 5 / 16 under chritianity...

With Qin also... So no mysticism start...

Noble Epic... (epic should make spreading religion easier since you get more steps between build sequences...) On normal, build times and the game is faster, so you generally lose steps overall... Having more civs and less map space helps too... This means you'll have many more civs that will have no religion to start... Also they're closer together... If they're far apart, a single missionary will spread a lot of religion since it'll take forever for someone else to influence them...

Having the AI convert don't mean they'll stay... To ensure they stay that way (the only good part about religion) is to keep their whole population under your religion... To do that you MUST make missionary to convert the other cities... So with that said, just because the AI is under a religion don't mean they'll stay that way either... Just make them happy and keep sending missionaries out to their biggest cities... They'll switch out once their population majority (and political if you're asking) values are great enough...

One last tip... It's a HELL of a lot easier to spread your religion to another civ if you don't have a conflicting state religion... So if you're nuetral spreading the religion you found, more civs will likely open their borders to you... Since they won't think you're a heathen... Once you spread the religion as much as you like, then switch yourself...

This sets up one HELL of a diplo win... Just beeline to UN wonder and watch your win come closer with each tech you gift to the AI...

 

[OvidiusZA]

I've only had the game four days and am still on the lower levels, but thought I'd mention my experience in my current game. I started on a continent sandwiched between Isabella in the north, Qin Shi Huang to the west and Asoka to the south. My starting position was great, with cows and horses right next to me. Anyway, I was first to Judaism and only had a couple of cities, using closed borders to keep everyone away and apart. Once I was able to build missionaries, I started sending them out and converted two Spanish cities and two Indian cities... then sat back and watched how it spread through their civilizations, while I used the civic that stops the spread of non-state religions. I didn't bother with the Chinese... they were in my way and soon got eliminated . I am generally not much of a warmongerer in the early game, so the time it took for the religion to spread was not much of an issue for me. I am not sure, but the money I was making from the converted cities seemed to have buoyed my shaky finances and converting capitals is probably first prize. It also seems to be a good idea to actively convert your own non-believing cities.

 

[LeSphinx]

Good tips to give as a gift your missionnary.
He will spread your relegion and the leader will be more happy with you

LeSphinx

 

[The Lardossen]

Right, I'm gonna start off a new game, try if the tips here help.

 

[slothman]

It also seems to be a good idea to actively convert your own non-believing cities.

I am currently sending out missionaries to my own cities since I have many religions.
As I founded all but Budhism I got a plethora.

EDIT:
Welcome to CFC.
And be careful of the addiction Civilization can cause.

 

[FriendlyFire]

Is there a way to locate "founding cities" in order to build shrines ?

I have conquered two civilisations and am trying to build some shrines.
Or with the extermination of the founding civlisation mean i cannot build shrines in conquered cities ?

 

[kuldiin]

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