Poll: How do you feel about the Religious Victory?

[CaiusDrewart]

I've seen very diverse opinions on this expressed throughout this forum, so I thought it would be interesting to gauge the overall opinion on the matter.

For myself, this is the one big design decision of Civ VI that I don't think I like. I love districts, I love policy cards, I think agendas are fun... but I don't enjoy spamming religious units and trying to move them through traffic jams.

How do you feel about it?

 

[Ozisl]

The balance of spread kinda needs to be adjusted, particularly the AI spam. It can be avoided with proper use of Inquisitors, but the AI is just so bad with them.

 

[bbbt]

Well the AI loved the packs of religious units in Civ 5 without the religious victory!

I'm not super fond of the victory as implemented - I did it once (on a tiny map!) to do it, but I don't think I'd do it again. It's probably the most tedious of the victory types by far. Because every unit only has a few 'charges' - and can be defeated by other charges pretty easily - it requires pretty much constantly buying and moving units, often from your capital. I.e. to capture 8 cities in domination, you could use the same pack of units, letting them heal, moving them as they got experience. To convert 8 cities requires a constant flow of new units from your cities.

I felt similarly about religion in Civ 5 tbh - I love it as something for my own civ, and maybe some neighbors, but I found aggressively spreading it super tedious.

 

[ToothedBomb]

It's tedious and uninteresting. It's like they took the military victory and stripped it of everything that was fun about it: the different types of units, upgrades, promotions, positioning etc.
You're just pooping out these missionaries and throwing them against cities hoping they'll convert quickly and don't flip to another religion. Apostles are a sort of defense against rival religions' missionaries, but the damage they do and receive seems totally random to me. The promotions they get are totally random as well, for whatever reason.

 

[jbxx]

I find they are menace and (in their present form) just clutter the map. It's even worse when at war!!

 

[TruthfulCake]

I haven't won religious victory yet (there always seems to be that one religion that I can't wipe off the map), but having played around a bit with apostles, I think that the best use for apostles is actually to fight combats in enemy lands instead of just spreading the religion. Offensive apostles can convert nearby cities just by winning a theological combat, and I believe that if you pick the "debater" promotion, as well as send an actual horde of them, you can destroy the enemies' defensive religious units and spread your influence without using any charge. Once the defensive apostles are wiped out, you can spread the religion the normal way.

Of course, if you lose the theological combat, it will backfire and their religion will get stronger in surrounding cities. Having a horde is important because enemy apostles can heal at their holy site, while your apostles won't be able to recover any damage. You'll have to kill them in one turn. Still, this is much better than using up your apostles' charges immediately on cities.

The bad thing about religious victory is how easy it is to defend against it right now. You don't actually need defensive apostles, just a meat wall around your cities. Actually, having defensive apostles is worse, because then enemy apostles can spread influence through killing your apostle.

Basically Firaxis needs to tweak 1UPT by allowing civilian units to stack infinitely, and to stack with foreign units during peace. Then we will have an actual religious game instead of the farce it is right now.

 

[redwings1340]

Its a decent idea, but frustrating to play. I had to do it once, so I did it my first game when I had an amazing religious setup, but I don't know if I'll do it again.

Actually, I'm planning on playing my next game with victory conditions off, to see what it feels like. I feel like a lot of the time, my enjoyment in the game starts to decrease when I either see a victory condition in site and start organizing to achieve it, or when the turn times take too long to keep the game interesting. Maybe turning vcs off will make the game last a bit longer before I reach the point of relative boredom.

 

[Securion]

We need less number of units and make them stronger instead. Too many units on the map, they block everything... Other than that i like the religious game in the game.

 

[Menzies]

They need to lower the unit spam for them and give religious units their own layer in the game.

Personally I think they add some way of increasing the individual power of each unit for greater cost, just to reduce the spam needed. At this point it just gets annoying.

 

[Lucius_]

I think the victory condition is ok in principle, but really needs fleshed out more. Like others have said, the unit spam does get tedious, especially as you are making a final push. For me, the last 30 or more turns was spent sending waves of apostles and missionaries across the ocean to just spam the other continent. I was sending 8 at a time, every turn for probably a dozen turns straight. Theological combat is great, and helps to spread religion faster, but again that simply requires spamming apostles and brute forcing the combat wins. For my religion game, the first half was pretty great, spreading my religion asap to become dominant on my continent, then ending up tied up in holy wars. It was very busy. But once my entire continent was locked down as my religion, it got boring fast.

If they find a way to reduce the unit spam and give the entire system more depth, I think it could be really great. I'll probably try one more game as Spain, using their abilities turning domination into religion conversion and see if it is more interesting. Right now, the victory just seems really shallow.

 

[Underseer]

On the one hand, I appreciate having another victory option, although in practice, the religion game is extremely tedious.

It's kind of nice in that aggressive empire expansion makes it easier, so people who really like to go wide instead of tall have a legitimate reason to do so. There is even a bit of strategy to hire closely you space your cities on which part of these map to generate "pressure" against other faiths.

It's just so very tedious with having to constantly buy all those units and having to deal with constant Zerg rushes from other civilizations. Blah.

One you step back and stop thinking about it in terms of game mechanics and consider history or current events, it's pretty horrifying. So many of history's worst atrocities came from religions trying to do exactly what you are trying to drop when you go for a religious victory.

There is even an Inquisitor unit. Yeesh. The military units don't include torturers, do they? Gah.

 

[Krajzen]

PLEASE MUCH SMALLER RELIGIOUS UNITS SPAM

also, enable stacking religious and military units

also, more ways to win RV other than "spam send religious units everywhere" - some indirect means of propagating religion, diplomatically forcing, some modern methods of conversion it etc

also, more ways to counter RV - for example countries with very high science or certain ideology being able to declare themselves secular, without state religion, gg (and RV candidate would need to invent some special method to convert such country)

 

[Japper007]

I don't like the way a friendly AI will park your entire country full of religious units on higher difficulties. You can't get any improvements done, and signing OB starts becoming a detriment, rather then a strengthening of the bond between two civs.

It's also pretty frustrating how early missionary/apostle spam can almost completely shut down your religion, if the AI decides to nuke your holy city with just one apostle charge, in Civ 5 your religion would always keep large pressure in your Holy City but here it can just get wiped out in the first few turns it exists.

 

[TwistedMinds]

I haven't played a full religious game yet, so maybe my opinion isn't well informed. With that said, I've seen hordes of units messing with the 1upt a little bit too much. Without being able to talk about the gameplay involved, I think it would be a good idea to allow "corps and armies" for religious units. That might reduce the late game clutter. Putting religious (and traders!) on their own "plan" of tiles would be a good idea too, so we have 4 layers of units being able to stand on a tile. Religious, trade, civilians, military.
It would be great if multiple civilizations could stand on the same tile if units aren't on the same "layer", as in, my military units can stand on an AI civilian. But that might require core changes to the game; I have no idea how complex these changes would be.

 

[EpicWestern]

One thing I don't like about religious or cultural victory is that the AI can win without constructing any sort of wonder. What this means if you're behind in the cultural or religion race and are going for a domination victory you basically have to destroy the lead civ's entire civilization. Also, if you're pretty far ahead yourself, but decide you want to win a different type of victory you actually end up racing against yourself.

 

[CaiusDrewart]

The lack of stacking of civilian and military units is a real killer. In my last game as Saladin, I was trying to convert the Catholic city of Madrid. Every single tile around the city was filled by a Crossbowman or Horseman. My apostles couldn't get next to the city. I kept a couple apostles around the city, waiting for a unit to move, but they never did. The only way I could convert Madrid was by waiting for Philip to build an apostles and send it out. Once he would, my pack of apostles would pounce and instantly kill his apostle. After this happened 4 times, Catholicism disappeared. I won a religious victory about 20 turns later and Philip's units still hadn't moved.

I know some human players deliberately block off AI units like this, but it really is a brutal flaw in the game . I hope they loosen up the stacking rules.

Here's a screenshot:

 

[LDiCesare]

As others say,stacking military and religious units is a must.
Currently, even if we fixed that, it's still pretty tedious,and, worse imo, not everyone can compete. Not everyone can found a religion due to the limited number, so this means on higher difficulty in particular, you're almost guaranteed not to be able to try for a religious victory unless you really dedicate to it from the start at the expense of something else. I don't like that.
There's also no possibility to defend from it through diplomacy, which is bad (closing borders to missionaries should be possible without declaring war).

 

[Siptah]

I hope we get corps and armies of religious units, by a different name of course. And that your units should be able to heal in all holy sites of cities that follow your religion. It's strange that you have to go home to your own city's holy sites to heal your apostles.