Religion as a weapon?

[Mathew952]

I'm looking to invade a neighboring country. We've been on decent terms long enough, however, they have things I want,so it's off to war. I want to try some more sophisticated tactics first.

I've done the obvious stuff, like border defenses and roads into their country. But I have a state religion of Judaism, and they are Buddhists. My plan is to build up 15 or so missionaries, and start converting their civ to be jewish. Then, I can leverage a couple of non military techs I have to get them to convert state religion. Now, Not only do I have an easier time getting peace ( plus 4 to my relations) when I'm done, I can culture the new cities much easier. They already share a religion, meaning their temples and monastaries are still useful for both and culture, plus they get a 25% production bonus,which I can use to get even more culture.

Also, does anyone know if sharing a religion makes cities less "revoltish"?

 

[Valivator]

When you capture a city, beware that all culture producing building are destroyed, as well as some other buildings. another thing is that you can only build three missionaries at a time. I (think) that if that city has the same religion as you, they spend less time in revolt. The culture war you are likely to lose if you don't wipe them out or vassalize them.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

It's almost never worth the hammers...using more military and taking any cities that could press culture will do the job .

Caste system, whipping a culture building, or spreading your religion later will get you the culture. If you have music you can just build it to the border pop and that's usually a 1-2 turn thing.

 

[§L¥ Gµ¥]

I've used religion as a weapon, but no in this way. As with what TheMeInTeam stated, it's better to have more units. There's no need to worry about the cultural loss if by the time a newly captured city is coming out of disorder, you've already captured the next one deeper into enemy territory.

The use of religion as a weapon to me makes the most sense in breaking up a love-fest. I've often used taoism of confucianism as a means of generating religious hate toward my next AI target. Then using that as an excuse to declare war.

 

[dirtyparrot]

Build instead 1 missionary and 1 spy (I'm assuming you're playing BTS), check the espionage screen and look for the city with the lowest cost for performing espionage missions that is nearby and send that missionary to spread judaism. Use your spy (you get a 50% bonus for being stationary for 5 turns) and get him to switch religion. If you feel like it, bribe one of his former friends to DOW him, wait a few turns and then stab him in the back. You can bribe the guy that you plan to attack to DOW a former ally too. It's all the same (minus a little negative diplo). So, now you can use all those hammers you were going to commit to missionaries to troops instead.

 

[Birdman6]

I'm playing a game where I've done something similar...ship loads of missionaries to my best ally (who is also in 2nd place behind me) and do some proselytizing. He hasn't converted due to his free religion civic but I've hit all his cities.

On the one hand, it's been very tedious training all those missionaries and I kind of wonder if it's worth the hammers.

On the other hand:
- I have a perfect geographical set up where my 8-move transport operates in a polar ocean free of warships. I'm waging war on the other side of the world so there's not much threat.
- I eventually plan to attack my ally and it's nice being able to constantly spy on him without spies! I have permanent knowledge on exactly how advanced his military is and how big each city is, and no micro-management required.
- Most of all, my shrine picks up 3-5 gold per turn with each new city. I'm raking in gold galore with modest effort, which translates into fast research and an easily updated military.