Is there anyone who have never (and prob will seldom) play religions?

[isau]

I don't find spreading the religion fun because of the extremely strict 1 unit tile per rules where to get anywhere you have to navigate a carpet of units. This was fixed in the Community Balance Patch. I am very disappointed Firaxis didn't follow that lead. Alongside the stricter movement rules and shoddy roads, the missionary game is a task for the AI.

Also: how annoying is it when the AI shows up with 8 missionaries and walks into your cities, preventing you from moving troops or improving resources because they occupy all the tiles.

 

[S Dole Melipone]

I err towards spreading religion, in Civ V and now in Civ VI. Because of its spam nature, and religious pressure it is somewhat a case of offense being the best defense... If you can afford to annoy other civs of course. It can pay to convert city states to create more religious pressure.

 

[steveg700]

I started another post a day or two ago about founding a religion only to have a missionary show up shortly afterwards and snuff it out of the one city. It never came back, so unlike Civ V, there's no internal religious pressure that will restore it.

So, if I have a religion, I have no passive means of defense against other civ's. So, it's like defending cities in old-school Civilization games. The only recourse is to aggressively pump out a host of religious units to keep up with the AI's unrelenting siege. And it's a siege that requires no declaration of war, no diplomatic hit, and no means to deter.

They needed to fix this, but they didn't. Many faiths are passive in nature and contained in scope.. They aren't all sending out evangelical stormtroopers to convert every heathen.

 

[esoba]

I actually haven't actively tried to play religious in the few games I've played, but in 3-4 of the games I have founded a religion. As a matter of fact, I actually got a Great Prophet without even having a holy district, so I had to park him in my capital until I finished the district in order to even found the religion. Although, I go heavily for relics in the game and am willing to trade ridiculous amounts to get them away from the AI because of how powerful they are. Heck, I got the Holy Grail on the second turn of a marathon game and that was game, set, match for a religious victory right off the bat.

 

[criZp]

I wish they had give us passive inquisitors back, and remove the restriction on number of religions that can be founded and on beliefs that can be picked. Would probably have to remove religious victory but who cares.

Anyway, it is possible to just go to war against missionary spamming AIs and kill their missionaries before they reach your cities, no?

 

[kingchris20]

Park 6 of your units around each of your cities....they cannot convert any city at that point. Also, planting apostles with military units prevents an enemy apostle from engaging in combat with your apostle, but you can still hit them.

If I'm spreading against an apostle-heavy Civ, I escort my apostles with military and request open borders to my target civ to keep them protected.....unless I get the promotion that gives you a relic When the apostle dies, then I let them die

 

[Uberfrog]

Evangelical AIs seem to favour Missionaries over Apostles. So you can counter a carpet of Missionaries with some upgraded Apostles and Inquisitors quite well. In a recent game I lucked out and got the Proselytiser (I think) promotion, that removes other Religions upon conversion, just like the Prophet did in Civ V. Destroyed Gandhi's religion from underneath him.

I quite like the religion game, especially the pressure mechanics from religious combat. The AI spam is a little tedious, but so is military spam. It makes sense that you should have to put effort into avoiding conversion from a particularly evangelical neighbour.

 

[ExemplarVoss]

Don't like the spam from the AIs.

For my own civ... often I don't bother, it's a pain, and a bit of mess. Some of the specific beliefs and buildings are nice, but so hard to keep in the face of relentless spam (which are often apostles, and not missionaries, and I have no idea how they're generating so much faith). I'd rather bank my early faith generation for buying people or naturalists later, so it is easier to give up and ignore it.

I get my pantheon (usually divine spark at the moment), and call it done, because the mechanics are so miserable and ridiculous. I wish they had come up with something besides blindly importing the spam from 5.
I just wish their was some way to counter or stem the tide without gearing up for round #5421 of Marvel's Thor clone mirror battle.

For smaller than standard maps, religious victory is so easy it is better to turn it off.

 

[Sagax]

Count me in. It's just a more tedious and ever-lasting war against every other civ. If you find Zerg rush strats in Starcraft interesting, you will feel at home.

The only time when I am fine with investing into religion is if Kongo is in vicinity. Convert them and let Alfonso do the rest of the dirty work, while you spend faith on Great People that are actually meaningful.

 

[PhilBowles]

I haven't got past a pantheon save on a brief Arabia playthrough - I quite liked religion in Civ V and it seems the system has been imported wholesale.

However, either I'm not correctly valuing pantheon beliefs or the AI isn't, but why is it that when I'm late to a religion Divine Spark is always available? To me it looks far and away the best pantheon belief, as this game appears to be heavier on the "he who spams Great People, wins" approach even than Civ IV, which at least had the excuse that it introduced the concept and so had a motive for overselling it.

 

[Biz_]

I haven't got past a pantheon save on a brief Arabia playthrough - I quite liked religion in Civ V and it seems the system has been imported wholesale.

However, either I'm not correctly valuing pantheon beliefs or the AI isn't, but why is it that when I'm late to a religion Divine Spark is always available? To me it looks far and away the best pantheon belief, as this game appears to be heavier on the "he who spams Great People, wins" approach even than Civ IV, which at least had the excuse that it introduced the concept and so had a motive for overselling it.

great people don't seem as good in civ6

 

[PhilBowles]

great people don't seem as good in civ6

That's not my sense - Great Scientists specifically aren't as good, but they were widely recognised as being overpowered in Civ V. GPs more generally seem more central to winning, at least when aiming for culture victory. But whatever the relative power of GPs between the two games, GP points as a resource seem more potent than an individual point of food or faith for each luxury of a given type, of which you'll rarely have many. Divine Spark gives you a GPP per district, which is not only within the player's direct control but likely means far greater boosts. Given that GP points are otherwise awkward to get in quantity, but every tile produces some level of food etc., that seems huge.

I may however be undervaluing faith.

 

[zagosya]

i want to play religion but now in 1800 i ahve lotterally gathered 100ths and thouzends of reli point but no f'[[,ng great prophet will probably my lack of understanding the game lol

just to clarify - you don't get great prophets from faith points, you get them from great prophet points which are accumulated from holy sites, shrines and temples each giving 1 point per turn and some civics like revelation (2 points per turn). Faith itself doesn't matter.

 

[malekithau]

I really dislike playing the religion game and the missionary/apostle spam is annoying as hell. I am avoiding it which means that about 1/3 of the civs are not going to be played by me.

 

[UnknownHuman]

Outside the fact that theological combats are tedious, something that cannot be fixed by patches since it needs a revamp, there are some improvements to make for religion in general.

To begin with fallowers shouldn’t be wiped out by Missionaries and Apostles, those units should decrease the number of fallowers from another religion, but at least one fallower from each religion should remain in the city no matter how many charges you used, also the proselytism promotion needs to go since it wipes out everything therefore is overpowered, particularly if you’re suzerain to Yerevan.

The reason behind the fact that at least one follower from each religion should remain evolves around three points. First because Missionaries/Apostles historically never wiped out entire religion but rather decreased its popularity, so this way the fallowers from another religion would go from being the majority to being the minority, which makes more sense to me, secondly because it would make India’s unique ability more useful, since right now most followers from other religions get wiped out meaning no bonus for India, and last but not the least because if a city as even one follower of a religion this follower may still create some pressure for his religion meaning this religion may still influence other cities, which again makes sense gameplay-wise and historically-wise. Nevertheless Inquisitors could still be able to wipe out all fallowers from other religions in cities within your territory, and in order to balance Inquisitors a little bit, a city which gets a religion wiped out should have a level of negative amenities for few turns in a way to have a possible uprising.

Another issue with religion is the fact that the concept of holy city from CiV is gone, meaning the city where you founded your religion doesn’t get more pressure/defence against other religion. So right now this city is very easy to convert, at this point if all of your cities are also converted it’s religious game over. However if the holy city was harder to convert it might be used as a platform for the religious defender to spam Inquisitors and other religious units.

Moreover I think passive spreading should also be more important, but I don’t have enough experience with the passive spread mechanic to really know how to improve it, even if spreading through trade routes would be nice.

 

[S Dole Melipone]

Other annoying effects include having your main religious city converted by missionary spam -- a lot easier than a siege -- one or two turns before completing a wonder that grants apostles. Will then be enemy city apostles. Seems to me, apostles should be based on the founder religion when granted by wonders.

Rather than the clunky limit of one great prophet, couldn't subsequent great prophets act like apostles of your founder religion or at least give you an ability to restore your holy city's faith?

 

[lamaros]

It feels slightly better in this game, however I still think there is more to go before it's fun and I'll bother with it.

 

[Underseer]

What frustrates me about religion is that even if you play at Settler level difficulty, it's hard to found a religion at all, and nearly impossible to be the first one. Meh.

 

[ExemplarVoss]

What frustrates me about religion is that even if you play at Settler level difficulty, it's hard to found a religion at all, and nearly impossible to be the first one. Meh.

Really? I got first religion in my first game (Prince). It didn't seem particularly hard.

After spending the game dealing with the constant stream of nonsense wandering through my lands to convert my cities (though they'd walk past the first to convert some city deeper in), I didn't want to deal with the religious game ever again.

 

[Disgustipated]

Current game is on Warlord, I did found a religion, but I wasn't first despite beelining for it. But then Germany converted my holy city. Luckily they didn't convert all my cities, and I was able to build a holy site in another one of my cities, and restore my "holy city". I eventually conquered their capital and presumably holy city and converted it.

It wasn't terribly important to me, but since I went through the effort of founding a religion, I wanted to keep it. In the future, I may not bother. I'm not sure if the bonuses are worth it.