Question about Religious Victory

LedStone

Chieftain
Joined
Aug 2, 2017
Messages
24
Hey there,


I've recently started playing Civ 6 and have been trying out the new features. I did a random standard game on king and ended up getting Cleopatra so I figured I'd try a religious victory out with the sphinx. I'm on turn 280 at this point and have converted 4 civilizations but it has honestly been quite a not too enjoyable grind, so question is: Am I doing it right?

  1. I've got the policies of 100% bonus for religious buildings bonus and the holy site adjacency bonus or +5 theological combat bonus
  2. I've got holy sites in just about all my cities (8+ of them) and 3 religious buildings in like 5.
  3. I've got a fully upgraded religion with the bonuses of 2 faith from quarries (have a ton of those), 25-50% religious spread and one of the +3 faith religious buildings.
  4. Being egypt I have some sphinxes though I have missed out on many wonders trying to build holy sites which provide just faith and great prophet points (which appear useless after turn 60 basically)
My main complaint is the combat though. It feels like I have to basically do a domination victory but with basically 3 units (mainly 2) that all just do the same thing. I used inquisitors to solidify my religion in my civilization and took over my neighbor with apostles which was alright. But now I have to send primarily apostles which cost 600-1000 faith (increasingly going up) all over the map to convert 6 other civilizations one city at a time in a giant grind fest. I feel like maybe with a 2-4 player map this would be fine but anything bigger just takes forever. At least with domination victories you have a navy, an airforce, artillery, infantry, tanks, anti air, anti tank, etc etc. There's much more variability and depth to a domination. So, am I missing something here?

Thanks,
Ledstone
 
I think most people would consider religion to be the least enjoyable victory type, so you aren't really missing anything in that regard. It is mainly just about maximizing holy site districts and just spamming apostles with the occasional missionary here and there. The beliefs you pick are extremely important though, and though its perfectly natural to pick the pressure bonus, in practice its actually quite weak. The pantheon belief doesn't matter too much as its very situational (though I have seen at least one claim that god of the harvest is overpowered), and the first follower belief doesn't matter too much (I prefer the housing bonus). The next three are all extremely important:

30% missionary/apostle cost reduction
Mosques (+1 spread for apostles)
+2 faith for each foreign city following this religion

IMO those three are just far better than the other options. By not picking them you make your apostle spreading ability about 40-50% weaker, which will drastically increase your win time. Its also possible you may have overproduced sphinxes early on. Even though its perfectly natural to think you should build faith improvements for a faith victory, early on food and production are still better. So Egypt is actually one of the weaker civs for religious victory.

Also remember you don't need every opposing city to be converted, just more than half. In the time between turns you should be counting enemy cities and developing a plan for which cities need to be converted. For some civs you should just be going for the bare minimum, for others you need to ensure that every holy site city is converted so the civs can't inquisition themselves out from your religion.

But a lot of it is just luck, mainly by what kind of city state help you can get. A solid religious victory time is probably around 225 turns (if you aren't cheating), but if you can't find any city state help and are sidetracked by war (enemy civs are hard to convert if war wasn't planned) I think a turn 300 time would still be normal.
 
Wow, you'd think the 25-50% pressure bonus would be the best one lol. After trying for the religious victory I agree that the 30% apostle reduction and +1 spread mosque would be huge. So I guess that rushing to upgrade the religion (stonehenge?) is even more important that way because you'd really want those bonuses.

I'd agree I spammed sphinxes a bit too much initially, they really need that wonder to be effective I think (+3 faith when next to a wonder, just +1 without). The religious city state bonus is pretty good cause per city state you're suzerain of you get +4 faith per holy site (with the 100% district bonus maybe 8?).

Still, all these points are making me think that a Religious victory in a semi-competitive multiplayer setting is pretty much not possible. If you don't get those bonuses, you are in trouble. But rushing those bonuses puts your production and especially your tech (I was so far behind lol) in a weaker position. Aka somebody will likely just invade you. Yes, you only need to convert 50% of a civilization's cities but inquisitors are soooo much cheaper than apostles (1/3 the price), can relatively hold their own against apostles and entirely wipe cities clean of other religions. So if any of your semi competitive opponents still has a unconverted holy site in one of his cities or has stored an inquisitor away somewhere you lose that civilization's conversion pretty fast lol. So I found myself even against the AI converting every city so they couldnt just undo it. Basically I would need triple the faith of my opponents just to go even with the 1/3 cost inquisitors. Also as in every semi competitive multiplayer setting the civ im trying to convert could just go to war with me and capture all of my apostles lol.

So yeah, I agree it seems to just be about luck.
 
Sadly, the best way seems to be "PVINO" (Peaceful Victory in Name Only). Otherwise it involves so many ....

The best way to convert half of someone's cities, is well, to make sure they have as few cities as possible. So the more civs you reduce down to 2-4 cities, the easier it will be as long as you can prevent other religions (also by killing them). Conquered cities can just use your inquisitors to make it more handy. Especially applies to civs with strong religious presence. You can also abuse this to slowdown a religious victory as well, since that limits the area where you have to focus your religion battles. Only as an anti-AI tactic though-- had a game where the AI could have won a religous victory (they had converted me as well) but they couldn't make it to the last 2 1 city empires and I had enough religious power still to stall them over my own cities until I won.

Conversely, you wiping an empire out runs the risk of you losing a religious victory to someone else, either by wiping out a religious force that could have kept the others in check or just because they were not converted yet so watch out for that.
 
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Russia is designed for a religious victory (either peaceful or not), so I'd recommend taking a look at them. In short, half-priced holy sites + dance of the aurora + extra production & faith on tundra = crazy faith yields without sacrificing too much elsewhere. Similar strategies can be used for desert folklore or sacred path, but are less effective due to different civ bonuses.

Definitely agree with the strategy to get religious beliefs that strengthen/discount apostles since that's the only way to actively win a peaceful religious victory. "Holy Order" is a must to make sure apostles and missionaries stay cheap even into the late game, and get the Mosques to further improve apostles/missionaries. Good backup beliefs might be "Church Property" (+2 gold per city) followed closely by "Tithe" (+1 gold per 4 followers) because it allows some diversification and can help mitigate not building commercial hubs in your tiny expos right away (essentially each of your own cities pays for its temple). I'm really not a fan of "Pilgrimage" (+2 faith per city) unless your pantheon is rather weak because it doesn't seem to add as much value as extra gold early in the game (or late in the game if it comes to war).

Russia may be the only civ that actually benefits from "Feed the World" (food from shrines and temples). Due to its starting bias towards tundra, you probably won't be able to build farms in your expos. Since you're going to be building Lavras in all your expos anyway (especially in desolate tundra regions to get that sweet DoA adjacency bonuses), this help shrines and temples support cities without having to waste production on granaries, etc. An extra +6 food (+12 with the right policy card) hits the sweet growth spot for maintenance. I'm pretty sure that the 100% faith building policy card will also double food from the shrine and temple - can support larger cities to help get the 2nd or 3rd district online (I'd probably go commerce/harbor to maintain trade routes, campus if you're really behind in techs, theater if you're behind in culture).

To get the most out of tundra expos, its better to keep them small ~ 4 pop to minimize drain on amenities but allow for 2 districts. I'd recommend placing your expo cities in close groups of 3 in or near tundra and place the Lavras in a triangle in the middle of the cities. If surrounded by barren tundra, each will produce 7 faith from adjacency bonuses alone (+6 from tundra tiles, +1 from being next to 2 districts). If there's tundra forest nearby, even better! After building a shrine, temple, and the holy building (mosques are a fantastic choice), each of these expos will produce at least +16 faith, +6 food, +2 gold without working a single tile. This allows workers to focus on tundra hills with mines/mills/pastures/camps for production and more faith. In all, a cluster of expos at pop 4 with working tundra tiles can produce somewhere the range of 60 fpt. Not too shabby for expos cities in nearly worthless land!

In terms of wonders, I'd encourage beelining Education to get the Hagia Sophia (+1 apostle/missionary spread in that city). All of the other wonders are kinda meh in terms of religion, and the production is better suited to pumping settlers for tundra expos anyway.

Last attempt was a turn 190 RV on standard pangaea immortal difficulty, but that was before the Summer patch kinda nerfed some of the apostle promotions.
 
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Alright well cool to see that it is possible. Still, it seems like you got to be a Civ 6 einstein just to pull off one of 4 ways to win the game. Even though Civ 5's diplomatic victory could be "cheap," I'm still missing the variability of another victory condition. I really hope their first big dlc for this game includes some sort of politics/world congress mechanic, that was great in civ 5.
 
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