Preventing Other Civs From Spreading Their Religion

[rover6695]

This has been a problem in my current game.
I'm playing wide (7 cities) going for culture at T160 or so.

I was friends with Ethopia, until he sent in a missionary and converted my people.
I asked him not to do it again, he agreed, only to send another missionary to my city, at which point I denounced him. Now, the other civs won't be friends with me since I denounced a "friend".

Right now in the game, Songhai is causing issues. He has a great prophet also coming to one of my cities. After he converts, I ask him not to spread his religion, he says no.
Now my military is ranked 1 or 2 (I forget). I've already been to war with Songhai way way at the beginning, and beat him, taking one of his settlers.

So how can I:
1) Prevent other civs from sending their crappy missionaries over to me (without going to war if possible).
-What I do not like in Civ is that other civs GPs and Missionaries can always come into your territory...so if not war...then what can you do to get them out?

2) Related...will any civ ever be friends with me again or am I screwed since I denounced a friend? I was under the impression if you denounced somebody they would be more cautious about sending in missionaries.

 

[Browd]

Denunciations don't appear to have any effect on GP/missionary spam, but I haven't checked the code to verify.

On countering the spam, absent war, all you can do is (1) post inquisitors near threatened cities (they need to be adjacent to a city center to deter GPs/missionaries from trying to convert that city, so I post them on roads to help get them quickly from one threatened city to another threatened city) or (2) try to passively trap the invading GPs/missionaries with military and civilian units (trapping them against mountain ranges helps make good use of a limited number of units -- if I'm hoarding Great Scientists and Great Writers for later bulbing, I'll put them to temporary use trapping enemy GPs and missionaries). The missionaries will suffer attrition every turn they spend inside your borders, so they will die within 4 turns of being trapped -- GPs don't suffer attrition, but have such crappy movement that they are easy to trap forever.

 

[phillipwyllie]

1) Prevent other civs from sending their crappy missionaries over to me (without going to war if possible).
-What I do not like in Civ is that other civs GPs and Missionaries can always come into your territory...so if not war...then what can you do to get them out?

Never give open borders. On a side note it was probably the only reason Haille asked for the DoF in the first place. When asked check their gold and if they are rich say yes, if not say no. Always decline a very early DoF request.

2) Related...will any civ ever be friends with me again or am I screwed since I denounced a friend? I was under the impression if you denounced somebody they would be more cautious about sending in missionaries.

You're screwed diplomatically. DOWing or denouncing a DoF will give you a major diplo modifier with every civ, even if you haven't met them yet. Want to break a DoF without the consequences? Do something than makes them ask you to stop and say "No, I will continue". Examples are converting a city, buying land, forward settling, digging up an artifact. The AI will most likely denounce you.

 

[rover6695]

Thanks...damn...so denoucning did nothing. This happened around T145 or so...is there enough time to heal?

 

[beetle]

I asked him not to do it again, he agreed, only to send another missionary to my city...

I think missionaries get sent on missions and then are on auto pilot. If I am correct about that, then Ethiopia intended to back off -- but that one missionary already had its instructions.

...then what can you do to get them out?

As Browd described, inquisitors are you best bet. If you have a few spare units, you can also steer missionaries and GPr out of your territory. They will give up after a bit, but it is tedious. Browd suggests trapping, which at least does not require your attention every single turn.

This happened around T145 or so...is there enough time to heal?

Nope, you have that harsh diplo hit for the rest of the game.

 

[danaphanous]

tbh, it's been ages since I've seen this even happen, I'm not sure if it's random if they are that aggressive with conversion or not. I've had my own religion on a few games near religious civs.

I'm actually Celts near Haille, Aztecs, and India on my current game and they all have their own religions. I'm friends with India and Ethiopia but none has dared to send any missionaries or prophets even though I have like 12 cities. This may be because I tend to put the AI on defense early-game. I have about 33 nearby cities my religion because it spread through my wide empire pretty fast. Now it's all India and Ethiopia can do to keep their own cities their religion just from the pressure. I've seen them both use prophets twice on their own border cities and the cities eventually converted back to my religion anyway so they've been busy. I have not needed to produce a missionary or inquisitor all game because the default pressure has done all the work. A wide-empire religious approach tends to do that.

Best defense against it is to make sure they have other targets that aren't your cities. They always seem to prioritize converting CS and their own cities before they think to target your cities.

That said, I've had some games where my religion was purely local and my friends still wouldn't send any missionaries. Even with open borders they'd walk through my territory with them but never use them against me so I don't know what to say other than that Haille probably didn't intend to be your friend for real. His behavior says that. I know that they will start spamming you if you use a missionary on them first, but in my experience friends have been pretty cautious to convert my cities if I had my own religion and had never tried to send missionaries to their lands. They seem to respect it.

 

[rover6695]

Thanks...for some reason I thought denouncing helped...I think I confused denouncing for religion with denouncing for spying...which I know would kick out their embassy and make it harder to steal a technology.

How much is that diplo penalty going to hurt? Wondering if it makes sense to go back the 20-30 turns on autosave and re-do.

 

[docbud]

I hate it when Ethiopia is my games. In one game, I made the mistake of making a DOF with him, and a few turns later he sent a swarm of missionaries and great prophets into my lands and started converting all my cities. It was early game and I didn't have an Inquisitor yet.

To say I wasn't fuming and swearing at the top of my lungs is an understatement. I'm sure the neighbors down the street heard me!

The other AIs do sneaky stuff like that, so it's not just Ethiopia. But they do seem to like doing stuff like that right after a DOF.

 

[Volcanon]

Declare against him before the prophets convert anybody. Plant the prophets for crazy faith. Behead the missionaries. Burn down his cities.

If you do this in the earlyish game you're fine. Late game everybody hates each other anyway thanks to ideologies.

 

[Illianor123]

Declare against him before the prophets convert anybody. Plant the prophets for crazy faith. Behead the missionaries. Burn down his cities.

If you do this in the earlyish game you're fine. Late game everybody hates each other anyway thanks to ideologies.

Ideologies actually are one of the smallest diplo modifiers in the game, at 5 points


OP
Generally is just block them with military units, then get an inquisitor to prevent them from converting me. Also if there is some narrow pass I will block it with military units to stop them even if it means sacrificing a city to their religion.

 

[Volcanon]

If it's such a small modifier why am I always universally hated for going freedom or autocracy when the world always goes communist? BFFs for 4000 years denounce me even on a game where I never fight anybody.

 

[danaphanous]

You know how I said 2 days ago that it's been a while since anyone has dared to purposefully prophet and missionary spam me?

Well someone just did. On my latest Ethiopia game I and Songhai have the only other sizeable religions. Celts have taken over their continent. They just landed 3 prophets on the continent and have started converting it. They are purposefully ignoring all the islamic cities and only targeting cities of my religion despite me blocking them right next to islamic territory. It's very strange. Asked them to stop and they refused flat-out. Their prophets have like 8 conversions left and continue constantly to try and route around my troops to reach my pop-20 cities of my religion. I played an interesting swords into plowshares + religious community game so I am really wanting to keep the foreign religion out. I take a huge growth and production hit when a city is converted. Considering DOWing her just to end this annoyance as this is clearly just short of war aggressive. She's constantly trying to maneuver to a city without inquisitors, and wants my holy city bad. I thought 3 inquisitors would be enough but apparently not. Usually I can pawn the prophets off on nearby CS or another empire but no luck. She refuses to convert songhai and only goes after cities of my religion.

Should I DOW? what do you guys think?

Due to my tradition+religious community+swords I steal most of the useful wonders and I've never gotten so many midgame. I'm pulling ahead on tech rapidly so I could probably just conquer the world. Who needs friends eh? World war is clearly inevitable. I have a feeling even though every empire except mine is size 2-3 they will probably all pick order or autocracy and hate me for being the freedom guy. Sounds about right haha. My original intention was to stay size 4 and peaceful as I've played string of 10 liberty games but I now own 6 cities and have burned 7th just to shut down the ottoman threat. He DOWed with Songhai every 30 turns like clockwork. Never did much damage but it was annoying and his city sites were nice enough to keep. The other continent only knows about the fall of the capital as it was a truly isolated continent map with deep oceans dividing us. So they could still conceivably be friends which is why I haven't attacked Celts prophets yet. I may hold off till she gets an ideology. If it's not mine then maybe I'll wipe out the prophets. However being friends may be impossible given her attitude. I'm guessing she secretly dislikes me for doing so well like the rest of the world. Downsides of getting waaay ahead in the Renaissance on immortal.

 

[docbud]

^^I hate games like that (i.e., the GPs determined to convert your cities). I also hate it when they convert the city states following my religion. And I've had games where those GPs are so insistent and I'm jockying my inquisitors non-stop. In one case, a GP sneaked through and converted my capital. Talk about being ticked off!!!!

That game it was Ethiopia doing the spamming. And I swear he must have sent a swarm of a half dozen great prophets and another half dozen missionaries.

I definitely declared war.

EDIT TO ADD: Have you ever done a video? I'd love to see one of your games.

 

[danaphanous]

Yeah it is a pain. Forgot how it was since it's been a while since I've seen an AI so aggressive. I'm really surprised she has this many prophets on hand this late after converting her own continent and being isolated so long, maybe she gets them cheaper or something, or saved them? The CS say I have the highest faith output at a measly 50 fpt (I barely invested beyond enhancement given my religious choices). Did not realize but religious community easily nets you 2-3 more wonders in the medieval and renaissance. It's a great pick to synergize with tradition.

If I could go back in time I would DOW those prophets when they first landed and plant them back when they had full usage as Celts are clearly bent on being annoying. They are clearly targeting my religion in particular, almost as if they know my beliefs are what is making my empire so powerful. And have already converted every CS of my religion and slipped in to get a couple of my cities when I was fighting a war and distracted.

In answer to your question: I've recorded a few practice videos last year, but haven't tried Civ V yet. I often play a longer game due to larger map sizes and empires I go for, and I'm not sure of a way to do it that doesn't result in a very long, possibly boring, footage. But I've been practicing commentary on my other videos so it might be ok. I have the software installed to record my games so I may try it on my next attempt. I'm glad you think my stories are interesting!

Are you hoping for a full video or are highlights ok? I guess I kinda have an aversion to posting super-long videos--attention span of most viewers is not that long but maybe I underestimate the Civ V community and the length of videos they like.

here's some ideas I had:

Spoiler :

I may record one of my hotseat multi-human games or a barbarian germany game as those are very unique and I've not seen any videos like them online. I also would love to showcase some of my wide-religion games with super-empires.

For the Hotseat multi-human it's especially fun. I control multiple players in the game to get more of a challenge playing myself and it lets me test one experimental strategy against another. I played for two players carefully playing each without knowledge of the other. One was going full-out science victory on an isolated island and the other world domination. Unfortunately, the Zulu player destroyed the world just around the turn of the modern era despite being an age behind in tech of my other player. He captured ironclads with privateers and turned them against the science player, pillaging all oil so he couldn't even build planes or the other great tech he'd researched. I've always wanted to see the AI do that strategy against me when I got oil tech so I tried it against myself. Devastatingly effective. That plus the impi promotions on riflemen swung the day. They were going toe-to-toe with full infantry. That plus just pillaging the heck out of the capital and surrounding it to starve it and nerf production swung the battle. It was fun to use optimal warfare against myself. I couldn't handle it despite the tech lead. Wish the AI could play like that!

 

[docbud]

^^I've never played hotseat. But--that barbarian Germany video would be great!

So far as full-length videos--I enjoy watching those, so long as each as they are broken up hourly or something. There were some players who were doing videos that I really enjoyed and they no longer do them. I really loved watching Dashku's videos--he had me hooked. But he quit doing them. And someone else here was taking special requests and he quit doing them.

And I do enjoy your stories and the way you describe things. I can almost see the game playing out in my mind. In fact, I replied (and so did someone else) about your Aztec thread in the Let's Play section (or whatever it's called).

And I always look forward to your advice to others (and to myself).

One of those days I will figure out how to use liberty without a early rage quit because of lack of gold and happiness.

 

[docbud]

Double Post: So far as the DOW--I'd DOW. But that's me. I'm surprised you didn't when the GPs didn't first invade you.

 

[danaphanous]

Yeah, I still had in my mind that the other continent was gonna be friends--I'd not had a friend all game you see--but she clearly doesn't have the same idea lol. I hadn't noticed this, but apparently in the response refusing to stop converting your cities the AI can use a curse word! Haha, was surprised to see "damn" used in a family friendly game. .

Maybe Aztecs will be friends and turn on the Celts. They seem to have an odd fondness for players that do conquest and fight with them. I may try to get them to turn on the Celts then destroy her prophets.

I'd been considering doing videos for a while since I already have the setup and had done a bit of practice. Thanks for the encouragement! I won't do anything for at least another 2-3 weeks as I've got a busy month here, but I think I'll try my hand recording a game after that and post in the LP section. I'll check out your 2 favorite authors and see how they organized things. I'm guessing commentary makes all the difference.

I will not argue with you that liberty games can feel slow and tight early game. Sometimes I'm barely staying positive on gold from selling off all my resources. They are also longer as you have more to manage, but I usually end up enjoying them more as the settling/infrastructure part of the game is probably my favorite time. A religion helps a lot giving Ethiopia, Celts, Egypt, and a few other civs a distinct advantage with this playstyle. Celts are my personal favorite as you know.

 

[SoonerJBD]

One thing I enjoy doing is keeping a nearby barbarian camp up and then using units to funnel missionaries and GPs straight into the barb camp. Please waste some more faith feeding your proslethizers to the heathens. You can eventually liberate the prophets and use them to build shrines. Liberated missionaries are worthless, though.

 

[danaphanous]

fresh out of barb camps unfortunately

On the bright side I did find a peaceful solution which was good as it allowed me to bulb my way into an 1800s science victory! It took literally hundreds of years of unit dancing to maneuver them into this perfect spot so I could use minimal guards on them. But there wasn't anything else to do. I learned a lot about pathfinding as prophets only move in order if they percieve an open path to the city they want with NO units currently in it and they kept interfering with each other. I pinned the 3rd farther north using my scientists and inquisitors.

I then proceeded to convert the entire content back with 2 of my own prophets. There was no good reason to do this and it probably took time off my victory buying prophets when I had glory of god, but y'know, revenge and that stuff

On another note this was the fastest I've launched the spaceship after researching rockety with apollo. I beelined apollo program, timed with rationalism finisher to get satellites for free. Yes, I waited a long time to take the last policy, because I had no friends so RA buffs were worthless. Finished apollo and hubble the same turn 6 turns later and was launching the spaceship 8 turns after apollo. I bulbed all my scientists, cash-bought 3 pieces, and built 3 pieces. Was my first time trying the saving scientists thing. It felt a little cheap but I will admit it was fun finishing an age and a half in a dozen turns. I skipped over modern and atomic so fast I did not have time to build any plants or oil military at all. Atomic and Info was over in literally a blink.

 

[rover6695]

Last game, Sweden had a GP in my territory, I immediately purchased an Inquisitor, and boom, it left.

So I guess that is the key?