Military victory becomes impossible without your own religion

[CoconutTank]

Fair enough, to all that responded to me My main point was that I felt this seemed like an unsalvageable game, or at least it would take a lot of work to turn around and starting a new game might be more fun.

 

[lindsay40k]

I don't get why people are talking about burning enemy cities? I thought religious victory is from every city in the world having >50% your religion? I don't see how the Redcoats burning down Nagasaki and Tokushima changes the fact that York is the only city in the world not following Shinto, and is being influenced to convert by the Kami-worshipping people of Nottingham and Leeds, whereupon Tokimune will celebrate victory in the Holy City he still controls? Am I mistaken?

 

[agonistes]

I see no good reason to ever raze a city in Civ 6, unless for some odd reason you believed you would have trouble holding it.

It has been my experience that if you conquer a city, and even if it is ceded to you, you will get a huge permanent negative factor to your diplomacy with the civ that owned the city. If you raze the city, you take a global reputation hit, but eventually it goes away. So the reason to raze would be if you cared about ever being on friendly terms with the civ that owned the city.

For example, I currently possess cities formerly owned by Norway and Scythia. Both are perma-denouncing me, and the negative factor is something like -16. I have razed a Greek city, and when I did I took a warmongering hit, but that hit is no longer being applied to my relationships. Not even with Greece. Or, if it is, its not too great a factor, as I've since been friendly with Greece.

 

[lindsay40k]

^ I'd expect that to get changed in an update so don't get too attached to it as a strategy. Bulldozing in Civ IV rightly made the enemy despise you for life

 

[agonistes]

^ I'd expect that to get changed in an update so don't get too attached to it as a strategy. Bulldozing in Civ IV rightly made the enemy despise you for life

Well, like I told Pericles, don't hate the playa, hate the game.

 

[Siptah]

I'm a big friend of the fact that you can't ignore religion when you are doing a domination victory. I wish for an AI that can go for a nice cultural victory, too, that might be very threatening to your science victory.
What is missing in the UI is a notification 'only 2 civs left to convert' and 'only 1 civ left to convert'. Civ 5 had those with the cultural victory and it was very helpful. I know the rumors tell you when a civ is converted, but not how many are left - you have to check the victory panel regularly to keep up to date there.
And it's really not that you can't win without a religion or anything, if you loose because of the religious victory through conquering, then it is an oversight and poor planning of the player. This can/might happen once or twice, but after that I'm sure it'll never happen. Once the holy city is in your hand, the threat of losing is gone.
On a related note: I'm not in favor of the idea that you can win a religious victory by conquering a holy city shortly before this civ would win and then win yourself easily. In my opinion that would make religious victory a mess, since as soon as one player gains the upper hand, everyone will be chasing his holy city... And there is a difference between a spy targeting your high production city or spaceport or stealing great works and losing your capital...

 

[Ryoga]

This isn't much different from how cultural victory worked in BNW Civ V. You could technically lose a game by eliminating the wrong civilization if you let the cultural major power influence you and not wiping it from the planet first.

The only difference is that in Civ VI the AI is good at religious spreading, in fact it's probably the only thing that the AI is good at (due to sheer spamming, granted, but that's still pretty effective) and the only real threat it can pose to you.
However the likelihood of being beaten by a religious AI greatly varies with the number of civs in the game. A religious AI on a duel map (it can literally defeat you in less than 50 turns if you don't declare war) is far more dangerous than the same AI on a huge map. But if you cull the competing AI yourself, you're in for trouble.

There aren't really many problems when you're pursuing scientific or cultural victory. In the worst case you can still declare war to the horde of missionaries and apostles coming your way. When you are dominating, however, you might seriously consider razing cities if you start piling up too many of them of the wrong religion.

 

[Resipsa]

I've done this as well, you have to plan for it and raze cities with religion that will push you over the tipping point

 

[smartcanuck1988]

So just to clarify as I'm still trying to make sense of all the mechanics put together, not all civs can found a religion in a given game (and Kongo cannot ever). Those civs, if they get converted into another religion, will not only be able to win religious victory but it becomes also very tricky to win domination?

 

[KrikkitTwo]

I don't get why people are talking about burning enemy cities? I thought religious victory is from every city in the world having >50% your religion? I don't see how the Redcoats burning down Nagasaki and Tokushima changes the fact that York is the only city in the world not following Shinto, and is being influenced to convert by the Kami-worshipping people of Nottingham and Leeds, whereupon Tokimune will celebrate victory in the Holy City he still controls? Am I mistaken?

You are mistaken.
Its >50% of the cities in all civs must have the religion at >50%
Not >50% of the religion in 100% of cities

 

[Ryoga]

I don't get why people are talking about burning enemy cities? I thought religious victory is from every city in the world having >50% your religion? I don't see how the Redcoats burning down Nagasaki and Tokushima changes the fact that York is the only city in the world not following Shinto, and is being influenced to convert by the Kami-worshipping people of Nottingham and Leeds, whereupon Tokimune will celebrate victory in the Holy City he still controls? Am I mistaken?

It matters because you don't want to become, yourself, a Civilization whose majority of cities follow an enemy's religion. If you have founded five cities and all of your founded cities follow your religion all is well, but if you then conquer 6 cities of your enemy who all follow his religion, you suddenly count as "being converted" even if your starting five cities haven't been touched.

So you'd rather want to raze those cities instead or convert them before they outnumber the cities with a different religion in your empire.

Come to think of it, this could be exploited in reverse. If you only miss one civ to convert, you might as well gift them all of your cities (with your own religion) to them... I'll have to try this...

 

[Takfloyd]

Being so inattentive to what's happening in the game that you lose to a religious victory is not the game's fault.

The other victory types exist precisely so that you can't simply cruise to victory once you've taken over one or two other civs. What else could possibly stop you? Did you want to just spend 500 turns repetitively taking city after city with no opposition or challenge?

 

[Magil]

I honestly don't have a problem with this mechanic. I even find it a little odd that so many seem to be wandering into this. Maybe it's because I typically don't play the conqueror, but even when I did, this wasn't really a danger of happening (because I generally found a religion and keep it dominant, and when I don't, I keep tabs on the religious victory section of the victory progress screen to make sure nobody is pulling ahead). Hell, it seems to me that it's a fairly rare occurrence to begin with that one AI manages to become dominant enough religion-wise to come close to a religious victory. I am given to understand it does happen, but it hasn't happened yet in any of the games I've played. But I do check the victory progress tab and am ready to take action if any rival ever managed to convert half of the other Civs to their religion.

Generally, though, I just avoid the problem to begin with by founding my own religion and keeping it dominant in my own cities. Religion is pretty strong.

 

[lindsay40k]

Aaah, thanks for clearing that up. Yeah, that really is a very low bar to clear. I'd sometimes walk into a Mussolini win (culture through conquest) in V, but with a large conquered empire generating lots of faith I can see apostle spam to crush the last heathen being way OP.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Aaah, thanks for clearing that up. Yeah, that really is a very low bar to clear. I'd sometimes walk into a Mussolini win (culture through conquest) in V, but with a large conquered empire generating lots of faith I can see apostle spam to crush the last heathen being way OP.

Except if they are at war with you they will kill your apostles with military units.(which hurts your religion everywhere)

In any case it needs a better warning (only civX and Y stand in the way of civAs Hindu religious hegemony)

 

[GhostSalsa]

Hello uh what

How can so many be happy with a mechanic and an example scenario where "Norway sat back and did nothing and I did a lot of work so,
they won."

Yes it's great to be threatened by an AI victory while closing on your own domination win: but this is just a piece of garbage being grabbed onto like a life preserver.

A better mechanic would put Norway in a threatening position after you conquered everyone else, but still require some other action on their part besides sitting back.

Religious victory is weird but it could be cool if it was more integrated with diplomacy and warfare

 

[nzcamel]

It has been my experience that if you conquer a city, and even if it is ceded to you, you will get a huge permanent negative factor to your diplomacy with the civ that owned the city. If you raze the city, you take a global reputation hit, but eventually it goes away. So the reason to raze would be if you cared about ever being on friendly terms with the civ that owned the city.

For example, I currently possess cities formerly owned by Norway and Scythia. Both are perma-denouncing me, and the negative factor is something like -16. I have razed a Greek city, and when I did I took a warmongering hit, but that hit is no longer being applied to my relationships. Not even with Greece. Or, if it is, its not too great a factor, as I've since been friendly with Greece.

^ I'd expect that to get changed in an update so don't get too attached to it as a strategy. Bulldozing in Civ IV rightly made the enemy despise you for life

Game first, real life sim second...but having said that; there's no way in hell that razing a city (mostly associated with genocide) should get you on better terms with its founder than incorporating it into your empire.

 

[Draco84]

Am I missing something here, couldn't you just take any of your cities that are not Noway's religion and and build missionaries for whatever religion they have and just keep spamming those to keep yourself under the 50% number?

 

[ggmoyang]

Am I missing something here, couldn't you just take any of your cities that are not Noway's religion and and build missionaries for whatever religion they have and just keep spamming those to keep yourself under the 50% number?

This. And apostle with proselytizer works like a charm. (the promotion is random, though)
/Thread

 

[Ryoga]

Hello uh what

How can so many be happy with a mechanic and an example scenario where "Norway sat back and did nothing and I did a lot of work so,
they won."

They didn't do "nothing", they spread their religion far and wide thus preventing any wise conqueror from taking and keeping too many cities that they converted. If they truly didn't do anything, they wouldn't be able to take advantage of a mindless conquest.