Religious battle and diplomacy

[beorn]

For a very long time I avoided the religious game in Civ 6. I tried it early on, found it tedious, and ended up playing thousands of hours ignoring religion in-game.

However, in preparation for Civ 7, I listened to a few Ursa Ryan videos while driving in the car, and he got me interested in religion again, and to some extent, I am finding it much improved. However, there is something I do not get.

What is the deal with the "Your proselytizers are not welcome among my people"? I am getting this message when I attack missionaries with my apostles, BUT NOT IN THEIR TERRITORY. Often in neutral territory, but near the edge of my territory, such that my killing their missionary affects religion in their territory.

Is this really working as intended? I guess it's meant to promote war over religious differences? But somehow, this just doesn't seem right.

 

[Nigel_Tufnel2]

You would need to kill their units far enough away from their cities to not drop their religion's percentage. It can be very frustrating because they are the ones trying to spread to me! I often set up an Encampment near a Holy Site at a border I suspect will be a hot zone. My units can hide safely in the City Center and Encampment, and if a HS is adjacent they can heal. Of course, the simplest approach is just to DOW them and kill their Religious units with my Army lol. I do this a lot because Religious skirmishes can become quite tedious.

Another thing to consider is that often the AI will send Religious units through your lands simply to convert a CS for a Quest. You could perhaps let them through and see if they stop after a conversion? (These become just massive killing floors if you don't let them pass as they will just keep sending Missionaries. Also, it's a good way to keep your Religion strong when up against a stronger neighboring Religion.)

 

[beorn]

Thanks.

Yeah, no doubt the direct path is to just DOW them, but I avoid that in Civ 6 because the AI cannot fight a war -- it very quickly becomes not a competitive game at all, and I lose interest. But apparently the religious game, although improved since way back, really funnels you into war. (Which is historically correct, so I guess I shouldn't complain.)

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

Religious war is easy for the same reason that domination is - the ai completely lacks any tactical sense.
Its also easier than straight up domination, because you can ignore the hassle of sieging cities, capturing cities and the issues of loyalty, and there is also no way for the AI to out tech you, since apostles are the same combat strength whether you are two eras behind in tech or not.

 

[vorlon_mi]

What is the deal with the "Your proselytizers are not welcome among my people"? I am getting this message when I attack missionaries with my apostles, BUT NOT IN THEIR TERRITORY. Often in neutral territory, but near the edge of my territory, such that my killing their missionary affects religion in their territory.

Is this really working as intended? I guess it's meant to promote war over religious differences? But somehow, this just doesn't seem right.

I've also received that message, when I was sending in apostles to kill a neighbor's religious units. Each victory was slowly reducing the pressure of that AI's own religion. It was having the effect I hoped, of slowly, incrementally, converting their cities to my religion. I was not using my religious units to spread religion with their charges, because each was down to 1 charge and would have vanished if I did.
In my head, I explained it by saying that the AI player would use that same messasge if I was spreading my religiion using the units' charges. They only have one complaint message, so that they use it for any case where their religion is diminished. Yes, I think that it's working as intended.
I got the idea from one of Potato McWhiskey's videos, where he took over a "desperate, about to lose" save from a fan. He used pairs of apostles to slowly push back on a civ about to win a religious victory by winning lots of theological combats.

As others have written, the AI seem to use only two tactics: sending lots of missionaries to use their spread charges; using an apostle to attack a religious unit that I left solo, unprotected. Similar to the way they would gang up on a ship that I sent out alone. Theological combat is basically melee combat, without range units.