I hate religion

@Josephias ... how about we joint war against the the 6th version of Brendan (the organ grinder).... we can merge our religions as "the victorious Elysium"

Don't worry Vicky, ill just turn your old lands into a giant national park, because I like you.

Like it, I'll start a council to confirm beliefs. Breindan's quick gaining of Warmongering points eases things a lot too.
and for you Josephine, i'll just scorch and destroy every tile and district you think you own, so I can watch the barbs have their way with you.

after dinner entertainment, Lord St.Brendan style
 
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BTW, on topic, save and specially your debater Apostles for home defense

I do not bother, my debater is better in Brendans lands
I do however keep my inquisitors at home and it will take and entire expensive apostle (they all have to carry accordians) to convert one of my cities and one charge of inquisitor to remove.

That's an efficiency gain of at least 6:1
 
I do not bother, my debater is better in Brendans lands

I agree they are good on the offense too! Just it seemed the OP wasn't going for Religious Victory.

I've to admit I do not use inquisitors much, I'm hesitant to burn my own citizens, and when I tried them in a more active role, they were no match if confronting Theology Debaters (damn confucian Rome!)

Proselitisers+Pilgrims or Evangelsts (paired) are also strong on attack (keep the last charge and keep them paired to hold gained ground)
 
An inquisitor works really well in your home ground and rubbish even 1 tile outside it.
I often leave them in the street as they will damage an apostle which then is weaker for converting while the damage my inquisitor has makes no difference to her abilities. She can also heal pretty fast while the "visiting" apostle cannot.
Inquistors are great when you take another city though.... poof goes their religion and you can then hand the city back and get no warmonger points for it.
Have you seen how much an inquisitor costs?... very little.
 
I agree they are good on the offense too! Just it seemed the OP wasn't going for Religious Victory.

I've to admit I do not use inquisitors much, I'm hesitant to burn my own citizens, and when I tried them in a more active role, they were no match if confronting Theology Debaters (damn confucian Rome!)

Proselitisers+Pilgrims or Evangelsts (paired) are also strong on attack (keep the last charge and keep them paired to hold gained ground)
Don't be shy, I burn them all the time. Nothing but appreciation after.
 
I've to admit I do not use inquisitors much, I'm hesitant to burn my own citizens, and when I tried them in a more active role, they were no match if confronting Theology Debaters (damn confucian Rome!)

Proselitisers+Pilgrims or Evangelsts (paired) are also strong on attack (keep the last charge and keep them paired to hold gained ground)

Pair the inquisitors with a defensive apostle to get the best out of them when dealing with any incoming religious units.
But yeah, Vicki is right - use all the charges of the best offensive apostles. They're wasted in D.
 
I don't think you can [bring it back].
 
To start inquisition, you need to sacrifice an apostel with at least 3 charges left. Inquisitors are cheap and useful inside your empire. If you expand your empire by conquest, you can easily convert the conquered cities. If some of them have Holy Sites, your Faith income increases, too, while your opponent's Faith income is reduced.

Apostels may have special traits (random promotions) (maybe caused by a religious wonder) which make some of them quite useful against foreign holy cities.
- additional charges
- triple religious strength against foreign cities (ca. 600 instead of 200 in conversion)
- remove other religions from city when converting a city.

@Tony.Uk
If you lost your Holy City and still have another city with your religion left, I suppose you should be able to build Holy Site + buildings in that city, buy an inquisitor there and get your Holy City back ...
 
Once my cities were converted by a foreign religion, then every time I built a religious unit it was a foreign religion. Other than DOW I could not figure out how to get back my own religion?

I don't think you can [bring it back].

If you lost your Holy City and still have another city with your religion left, I suppose you should be able to build Holy Site + buildings in that city, buy an inquisitor there and get your Holy City back ...

If you have lost your religion in all of your cities and have no religious units of your religion that you can use to restore your religion, your only real hope is to build the Mahabodhi Temple, which gives you two free apostles of your religion. In addition to using the Apostles to kill enemy religious units (creating positive pressure for your religion and negative pressure for enemy religions), you can use charges from one apostle to re-establish your religion in one of your cities and then use the other apostle to start an inquisition, after which you can buy inquisitors (in cities of your religion) to extinguish heretical religions in your cities and to defend against further heretical incursions.

Note, though, that the siting requirements for Mahabodhi Temple are moderately finicky -- it must be built on a Woods tile adjacent to a Holy Site that has a Temple (and you must have founded a Religion). (This is Reason #432 why indiscriminate early chopping of Woods can come back to bite you in the backside.)
 
Perhaps a more violent option (I did not test it) is killing religious units of other civs near your holy city to reduce the influence of their religion and maybe gain back your religion or if there are cities or sity-states that still follow your religion conquer them (especially if they have a holy site already).

Another strange idea could be suicide-inquisitors (using inquisitors in a way that will get them lose to reduce influence of religions or if some cities follow one religion and other follow another trying to use missionaries to get cities nonreligious cancelling religious pressure on the holy city so maybe it can recover. I did not test any of those method, never needed to. I wonder if it can work.
 
I think its nearly impossible to get a religion on immortal/deity, no? I don't even bother with religion anymore because I don't play on low difficulty.
 
I think its nearly impossible to get a religion on immortal/deity, no? I don't even bother with religion anymore because I don't play on low difficulty.
I think it's way easier than in civ V. If it's worth it is another question. It certainly is fun to play religious games, if you go for an RV or not. I've won a religious victory on immortal, but haven't tried on diety. Getting a religion works if really want it in 90%+ of all games. To me, a relic powered early CV is also a fun strategy, and it needs a religion too.
 
I think its nearly impossible to get a religion on immortal/deity, no? I don't even bother with religion anymore because I don't play on low difficulty.
As England with no religious bonus, if I build a holy site and spam projects with divine spark then sure I can get a religion most of the time. How long I survive afterward depends on gameplay
 
My friend, religion is very, very simple.
I will tell you a secret: most people make the mistake of founding their religions too early.
Do you know that there's no time limit to found your religion after you have earned your great prophet?
Just park him somewhere or explore the map with him (he can't die anyway) early on, you waste hammers on early temples and you don't have enough faith going to get apostles to enhance twice AND to launch an inquisition... in the meantime spread it and defend it from multiple AI... no you can't do that, not on higher difficulties. Wonders like Mahabodhi temple are so hard to get and not worth their hammers anyway. Use your prophet as a scout, to harass AI movement, or to block choke points such as a narrow pass between mountains (if an army is coming to surprise DoW you, they will not DoW until they make it to your borders, if they don't have sight on the other side of the mountain pass, they cannot move through).
Get your empire up and running, build your important districts and play normally, get holy sites in all the cities you care about at your leisure. If AI comes to spread their religion with an army of apostles and missionaries, let them do that all they want. If you're lucky the AI's religious units will fight each other, exhausting their own faith income.
Then, when you've noticed the AI has stopped sending their apostles (or if they do it is no longer as a horde but only one at a time), get your great prophet to the city you want to be the holy city, and found your religion. This is now midgame and you should have a nice stack of faith now to purchase all the religious buildings and apostles you need. This is very important when playing as Arabia, being last to be founded, your religion has a very poor chance of surviving without huge investment. Hence, delay founding it may be a wise decision. (if you don't have enough faith to enhance twice, and/or do not have temples in all the holy sites you care about to get the +10% science/culture from their building, then don't found just yet!). As long as your religion remains mere a divine epiphany in the mind of your prophet, it is invulnerable. The quirk is that, when a religion is founded, ALL of the founding player's cities with a holy site will automatically convert to that religion (not just the holy city as was the case in Civ V); in other words, you've just flushed ALL the efforts of the carpet of religious units the AI sent at you down the drain (would probably be a particularly nasty thing to do to block a religious victory by the deity AI, which appears as a threat every now and then... once they get close to winning, found your religion, and poof! The AI needs to convert your entire empire again). Conversely, do NOT spread religion to another player if they have any holy sites and the last religion has not been taken. You may find all your efforts similarly wasted. If you do this late enough (by that time you've had plenty of time to focus on Yerevan, which is the BEST CS for religious victory), you may be looking at a super-easy religious victory as the AI has spent all its faith already and the cost to buy a single apostle is in the thousands whereas you haven't bought any religious units at all prior. Waltz in with a bunch of proselyters and translators and take over their whole empire. This is the easiest deity victory for Arabia under the right conditions.
 
There are a few ways to do it with vanilla civs up to immortal. I don't bother with religion on Deity though. One is on a single city the other on two (if you can steal a settler though that's great). There is also a very important threshold where the required points jumps from 60 to 120. If you want to hit the 60 you need to compete with the civs with abilities for getting the early religion which while possible is a very big investment. Check the great person's menu to see if it's worth the gamble. 120 is the safer mark to try to hit.

Anyways, the most reliable and safe method is two cities to get the 120 prophet. Start with policies for barbarians and +1 production (unless you have a good spot for Lady of the Reeds and Marshes, then go with the faith+gold[unless you're first to encounter a faith city state]). Research foreign trade to access the trader. Start researching astrology as well. Start the game constructing a slinger and work your highest food tile. Once you hit two pop, halt slinger and produce settler with your highest two production tiles. Plant settler as close to capital as you can where you have access to good natural production tiles. Keep warrior close for protection. If danger seems likely, finish your slinger, if danger seems critical, just abandon the whole thing or you will die. If danger is only moderate keep going and save your money for more slingers/warriors. If danger does not happen, and won't, buy a trader and run it between the cities for extra production on the satellite. Once the settler is complete build holy site in capital. As soon as second city is planted, build holy site there. Once these are complete, build shrines. Take a look at the great person menu to get an idea for the competition. Sometimes you can get away with just one shrine at the capital for +3, sometimes you may need a project to bump you up ahead of the fore-runner. Usually you can just wait for the 120 prophet at this point and focus on the other things you need to do. The odds of any civs competing over the 120 prophet having more than +2 per turn are low, but do keep an eye on the meters. If nearing the 120 someone is on your heals, faith purchase the prophet asap. They will certainly be trying to do the same.

The single city method is much more dangerous, it's a much higher production commitment, a lower chance of success, and if it fails you're basically screwed. But if successful, and it can be successful, it will get the earlier 60 prophet with a better choice of abilities. It's also very simple, just build your holy site in the capital asap and spam prayers with as much production as possible. I don't like to do this as it is very production inefficient, the cogs you throw into prayers do nothing else for you all game, while shrines stick around and continue to contribute. Of course you have to weigh that that against the potential benefits of an early and better religion. You have to be careful though because it leaves you in an awful spot to recover from if you do fail.

Get in the habit of keeping track of others' progress in the great person menu, watch out for the trends and eventually you learn who is in the game before you ever find them, as well as what their intentions are. Eventually you can use this information to adjust your own strategy accordingly and lower the chance of making the wrong choice or under/over committing.
 
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Agree that religion mechanisms are very poorly designed in Civ6. Hope a full revamp will happen in a future patch.
 
Agree that religion mechanisms are very poorly designed in Civ6. Hope a full revamp will happen in a future patch.

That's the whole game for you isn't it Zuizgond? :p
 
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