Missionaries fail to spread religion

[Pentium]

I notested several time that my missionaries fail to spread my religion in a foreign city. It's not because of Theocracy (I think it's the one that doesn't allow non-state rel spread), since in that case the button doesn't show up.

I believe it has something to do with number of religions in that city, or maybe culture, because they were consistently failing in culturally strong cities.

Do you know what are the factors for this?

 

[Greencardman]

I believe the manual says that the more religions a city has the higher the chance a missionary has to fail. I'm sorry, but I don't know the exact math. But I've noticed generally its true, although it seems going from one to two, or from three to four is harder than from four five

 

[petey]

For each religion you have a shrine for, you get one gold for each city it's in, regardless of how big the city is. So, if you're spreading your faith to other civs, it's best to target their smaller cities instead of their larger ones, since you're going to have less failure from the missionaries and still get the same results.

However, if you're more interested in using the spying aspect of the religion to be able to see what their large cities are doing, then it's going to cost you a few more missionaries to be able to get it done.

 

[Grogs]

I've definitely noticed it gets harder as you add more religions. I've been playing for cultural victories a lot lately, so typically I'm trying to get all 7 religions in at least 6 of my cities (the 3 50k cities + 3 others) to have enough temples to build cathedrals. It gets maddening at the end. I think I've had ~8 failures in a row at times. Typically I'm spamming out the missionaries I need 1/turn (cash rushing) because I know they'll fail a lot. The first time it happened I thought it was because I was using 'Organized Religion' and the religion I was spreading wasn't my state religion. Switching over to 'Free Religion' didn't seem to change anything though. It tends to be streaky, as most computer-generated random numbers are. A lot of times I'll fail 5 times in a row and then succeed the next 5.

As for theocracy, you are correct. If you go to a city in theocracy with a missionary from another religion, the button will be greyed out. If you mouse-over it it will tell you 'no spread of non-state religion allowed.'

 

[petey]

Also, in the diplomacy screen, you can see what civics the guy is using, so you can figure out who has Theocracy before you send out your missionaries, so you know where they should go.

 

[Grogs]

Also, in the diplomacy screen, you can see what civics the guy is using, so you can figure out who has Theocracy before you send out your missionaries, so you know where they should go.

I learned that the hard way one game after I sent a boat full of missionaries to another continent to spread my religion around.

Also, I've been kicked out of a country for spreading my religion around. I sent a boat with 3 jewish missionaries over to Egypt to spread the 'good news.' I converted 3 cities and sent the boat back to get the next load, but between turns Egypt cancelled our open borders. I can't say for certain that was the reason, but it was the obvious one.

 

[Pentium]

So it's best to do it early, when cities have only one or two religions.

In one of my games, I founded Hinduism, while all the rest were founded by either Hatchepsut or Ceasar on another continent. So Hatchy's cities had quite a few religions, and my missionaries just didn't work.