How to stop AI from winning religious victory

[SupremacyKing2]

I usually play on continents map which provide a nice barrier to the AI. But I've decided to try my hand at fractal maps and a couple games now, the AI is able to just spam missionaries to the entire landmass and win a religious victory before I get even close to winning a science or culture victory.

I know I can DoW and kick out the missionaries but what do you do when your cities are already converted and you've not founded a religion? Can I try to encourage a rival civ to spread their religion to me? If so, how? I know I could probably just try to conquer the offending civ before they win a religious victory but that is not always easy if they are far away from me on the map.

Any thoughts?

Thanks.

 

[MarigoldRan]

Kill him.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

Kill him.

But he's kinda far and there is cute little Poland civ between us.

 

[Wit]

Ultimately, there are just two paths: 1) counter at the religious level (spread your own, religious combat, etc); or 2) counter at the military level (kill missionaries, capture cities, etc).

I've found that the diplomatic approach is basically useless; a complaint results in a response to the tune of "no, no, it is all for the best, you will see..." or something like that.

 

[MarigoldRan]

Crud. Isn't Poland doing anything about his religious spam? Poland is a religious civ, too.

Ally with Poland and attack him together.