Need some guidance w/religious units

[gunnergoz]

I've avoided the religious side of VI so far. Can someone kindly explain to me how to properly use the religious units? I get that you spread with missionaries, but the finer points of how to best use the other two units, apostles & inquisitors, seems to escape me. A few words of guidance & experience would be appreciated, thanks.

 

[smartcanuck1988]

I don't know if this is the best strategy but here is what I do and seems to work ok for me (mind you I haven't gone seriously about a religion victory in any of my games)..

After a religion is founded, I purchase a couple of missionaries to spread my religion to at least 2 of my cities. This is to ensure I don't lose my only city and get locked out of the religion game forever.

After that I save my faith for an Apostle. If the apostle gets one of the good promotions (Proselytizer or the triple strength one for example), I use him to spread religion at another civ's holy city (or at least some other populous cities). If the promotion choices aren't great (the medic one or the relic one are not that useful to me early on --honestly the healing one I find is very useless), then I spend him to upgrading my religion. If no more evangelizing is possible, I launch the inquisition.

If I see the AI the sending a bunch of units over my civ, I start creating inquisitors and placing them on holy sites and inside cities. I find that the AI love to attack inquisitors in holy sites even though they heal most/all of the damage, making the AI unit commit suicide essentially. I think this is a bug and will be sorted in later patches, but for now that's a helpful trick in my experience.

When sending apostles to foreign civs, and knowing the AI is producing a bunch of religious units itself, I usually send a group of at 3 Apostles. Sending just one will mean the AI will team up on it and kill it very quickly. Ideally the group would include one Debater (+20 combat). I had a group with a Debater a Martyr and the one that gives triple strength (I forgot its name, Translator?).. I found it rather powerful with the Martyr being thrown into the front lines to absorb the damage (and if dies, yay you get a relic!) then the Debater finishes people off, and when the area is clear the triple strength guy goes to work.

Final note that I try to make use of but usually I find it hard to remember is that strength of conversion relies on health of the unit, but I don't think it's the other way around. So technically if you're planning to do combat with a unit, it's better to use it to spread religion first and when it's on its last spread you just use it for the combat. I could be wrong on this though.

I hope this helps! And happy to hear how others play the religion game

 

[joncnunn]

Apostles:
Can be used to unlock up to two additional religious beliefs (one per apostle)
Start an Inquisition (which unlocks the ability to faith buy Inquisitors for the rest of the game)
Convert cities
Can effectively be used for religious combat both inside and outside your territory.

Note that Apostles can be promoted; some of the promotions are eliminate all other religions from the target city when spreading, extra charges to faith spread, extra religious combat strength, convert adjacent barbarian units

Inquisitors:
Can be used to eliminate all other religions from a target city you owned.
Can effectively be used within your own territory for religious combat. (But are extremely weak outside your own territory)

Note that in both cases, they get the religion that is the majority one in the city that they were faith bought with.

 

[gunnergoz]

Thank you both for your helpful comments, they are appreciated. I welcome anyone else who would like to contribute.

 

[Yzman]

Remember that losing a religious fight hurts that religion in all cities 10 tiles away. I had numerous cities flip over to me in my last game because I was sending my apostles and for whatever reason India was attacking me in foreign land with their inquistitors. Needless to say, their inquisitors were getting murdered and each time they were damaging their religion. I converted the whole region without doing a single spread myself. It was hilarious.

 

[adcarrymaokai]

I noticed that after a certain point apostles stop getting promotions, so I think they should be used carefully. Perhaps, missionaries can be used as the front lines to absorb damage. I was trying for a religious victory on one map and generated lots of faith, converting half the map, but then all Scythia did was spam missionaries and inquisitors, and I simply could not get through that wall, and then apostles stopped getting promoted, so I just ditched the game.

 

[gunnergoz]

Valuable comments, appreciate them. Religious side still seems like the least interesting part of Civ VI TTTT, IMO. Probably has more to do with my personal views than anything to go with the game...

 

[valamas]

I noticed that after a certain point apostles stop getting promotions

Yea. What is up with that?

 

[Helmling]

smartcanuck's advice is all sound, in my experience. I wouldn't want to shoot for a religious victory on an advanced skill level simply because the AI can spam so many apostles.

But, you can turn that to your advantage. If you rush to get apostles of your own

Yea. What is up with that?

I haven't had that happen. What level/size/player count are you running? When do they seem to run out?

 

[mike1117112]

What I do is set a defensive line with Apostles and Inquisitors on my borders when I'm getting spammed with opponents religious units. In my current game, Cleo is sending a lot of missionaries at me, they can't get past my defensive line, and each time one of her missionaries die, her religion dies a little bit with it. I usually don't play an aggressive religious game, but I don't want Cleo's brand of Buddhism infecting my cities either. In my games, religion becomes another item to defend against, like military. The advantage to that, is when I'm attacked militarily, I have a line of Apostles and Inquisitors to march in with my army for a quick conversion of the heathens that dared attack me. I play every game with the goal of a peaceful Science victory. To achieve that goal, I need a powerful military so the heathens will leave me alone. Religious defense just becomes a part of that. I also find that Medic Apostles work well to march in with my armies should the need arise. I tend to put Holy sites everywhere as a defensive structure also. An apostle or two sitting around a site will defend against heathen conversions quite well, and defend against AI religious unit spam. AI units will attack your apostles before trying to convert your cities, so it also works as an alert action. I've played about a dozen games and I no longer lose a single city to another religion.
I set my religious defense by using the first two apostles to get the bonus beliefs quickly to get the better beliefs ( Cash, Cash, Cash), then an Inquisition to get Inquisitors. All units after that go for religious defense. They stay at my borders until it's time to march on the heathens who dare disturb my peaceful Space Race. I play mostly at King, so I'm not sure how well this would work at higher levels. Or if it would even work at all.
It seems that once you hit Modern Era you no longer get to promote Apostles. I usually can snag Mont St. Michel to get the Martyr promotion, they still get that. Every game I always run out of places to put religious relics, but they help in the tourism/culture game as well.

 

[legalizefreedom]

Which actions use up the Apostle unit?

I'm guessing you can use all your spreads and then either gain beliefs or start inquisition before the unit disappears.

 

[Browd]

Each spread religion action uses one Apostle charge. You need 3 remaining Apostle charges to evangelize a belief or to launch an inquisition, both of which consume/delete the Apostle. So, if you want to evangelize a belief or start an inquisition but find that you have generated an Apostle that has more than 3 charges (e.g., you generate the Apostle in a city with a Mosque (+1 charge) or you have build Hagia Sophia (+1 charge)), it is in your interest to spend any excess Apostle charges (charges in excess of 3) on spread actions before burning the Apostle on evangelizing a belief or launching an inquisition.

 

[FaerunPlayer]

the tool tips for the "evangelize belief" and "launch inquisition" buttons say "must still have 2 spread charges." which apparently is untrue .. to use these it seems you need at least 3 charges.

 

[Browd]

That is a result of the recent patch. To cut down a bit on religious unit spam, the faith cost of all religious units was increased by about 50% and, to compensate, the base number of charges (and the associated minimum number of charges to evangelize a belief or launch an inquisition) was increased from 2 to 3, but the tooltip was not updated. Hopefully Firaxis will fix that in the next patch.

 

[Heikki Mustonen]

Few more points.
- Religious units only heal inside or next to your holy sites.
- Remember to use the government and the policy card that gives you bonuses to religious combat
- Religious units can't be attacked if they are inside a city but they can attack out of the city like normal units.
- There is a city state bonus that lets you pick your apostles promotions from all available promotions. Sadly I can't remember which city state has this bonus.

 

[valamas]

I noticed that after a certain point apostles stop getting promotions, so I think they should be used carefully. Perhaps, missionaries can be used as the front lines to absorb damage. I was trying for a religious victory on one map and generated lots of faith, converting half the map, but then all Scythia did was spam missionaries and inquisitors, and I simply could not get through that wall, and then apostles stopped getting promoted, so I just ditched the game.

Yea. What is up with that?

What I noticed happening before the apostle promotions completely "ran out" was that I was starting to get the same promotion, Heathen conversion and Medic. I felt like that each promotion there was a total number. Like theological combat could be 5 with the ones I mentioned being 10. In a random way you would get them. But as I felt the pool drying up, I got those less desirable and useless ones. Then felt they ran out and so got nothing.

 

[paulmr1968]

Get Suzeran with Yerevan. That's the CS that lets your Apostles pick their promotion. It's OP.