How to make religious warfare less tedious and more meaningful

[OranHarken]

Am I the only person on here who has outright stopped playing maps because of how tedious religious warfare becomes by the middle ages? It just slows down my turn to minutes ratio past the point I feel like I am making any meaningful progress, it basically pulls me out of the immersion and it feels like I am filing taxes.

I feel like this is going to be difficult to mod around for now given the new prominence given to religions for victory but theological combat but I want to have a discussion about it non the less because I have had some thoughts on how it could be improved.

1. Bring back build queues. This would be the easiest and most direct way of reducing the tedious nature of purchasing missionaries. It wont make the bland combat any more fun but it will make it less of a chore.

2. Make theological combat not just reskinned regular combat. Creating a logical matrix between beliefs that beat or lose to other specific beliefs that add another layer of differentiation? Well I dont think that will work for two reasons though because A) it will just make the meta of belief choice even more of a forgone conclusion and B) it could been seen as not being "PC" enough to pass judgment on issues of beliefs and practices (IE: an ability like arranged marriages providing bonuses to population growth compared to non-arranged marriages and concentrating more wealth at the top of society, I can see people getting angry about something like that or similar). I don't know how to mod this game so I am not certain how feasible changing this mechanic is given it's tied to a victory condition and thus how the AI has been configured.

I am not really sure what else to say though. I feel like this is an insurmountable issue right now. It's bad enough I lose interest on most maps by mid game.

 

[Kingreaper]

Things I think would help:

1. Stopping the spam, either
1a. More powerful religious units, whether by grouping them into sects and orders (like Corps and Armies) or by advancing tech.
or
1b. Cost increase per unit being exponential rather than linear, so that they're a meaningful limit to the spam.

2. Bring back the UI information from Civ 5 (pressure, citizens of each even when none is dominant, etc.) Things are less tedious if you can actually see the effects properly.

3. Firmer ties into the rest of the game (everyone needs a founder belief, so everyone cares - and conquering a holy city should give some religious benefit [I'm thinking that, if you haven't founded a religion, you can "schism" the existing one from that city, and create your own version that will replace it in friendly cities])

4. There could be amenity penalties in the midgame from having cities of different religions - make it so even the non-founders care about what religion each city is. Might go away with Enlightenment.

4b. At the same time, War Weariness could easily be reduced with a civic for fighting followers of other religions, and/or increased against followers of the same one, so warring nations would want to avoid sharing a religion.

 

[smartcanuck1988]

I think religion should be in the background, much like the spy system.

You still build apostles and such, but you move them just like you do spies. "Religious Combat" (ugh) can occur if two units of different faith arrive in the same city. Multiple units can move to the same city to increase their side's pressure/chance of winning the "combat."

Not only will this remove the tedium of having to physically move the units (and have them block other real units in the way), it will also make slightly more sense. So we accepted that theological "combat" is a form of debate. OK whatever. Why would apostles debate each other on an empty hill? or at a farm? Surely they want to meet at a city or holy site? So why not give us a simple system just like the Spy movement system where you move them directly from one city to another (with variable travel time depending on distance of course).

 

[Knasp]

At the very least they should make religious units stack with military units.

Also I think religion should offer greater diplomatic bonuses/penalties. At least make it give more friendship between civs of the same religion.

The most interesting feature I can think of is having the civ choose it's "state" religion. If you dont pick the same as your majority religion you lose amenities.

Also you could incur warmonger penalties to declare war on a civ that shares your religion.

Basically make religious differences increase tensions between civs and increase harmony within same religion civs.