Religious Game is Too Much.

[SirWill90]

While the game can be a lot of fun, it doesn't
take long for it to become primarily a grind of
producing religious units to fight off the
constant invasion of missionaries and
apostles. Everything else becomes
subordinate to the production, deployment,
and healing of inquisitors and apostles.
The overwhelming majority of screen time
is presented in the annoying, blinding white
overlay of the religious units' view.

This isn't why I play Civ. I want to build
my Civ up, conduct trade and diplomacy and
warfare, not spend hours fiddling with
missionaries and such, not spend endless turns
blockaded in my own territory by other Civs'
religious units that I can only clear out by
essentially turning the game into some kind of
Inquisition video sim or by
declaring war, resulting in the utterly absurd
diplomatic/warmongering penalties (another
whole discussion.)

I have never disabled religious victory but I am
at least gonna have to try it I think.

I hope Firaxis does something to tone down the
annoyance of the religious aspect of the game.
At least remove the ability of missionaries and
apostles to freely enter foreign territory without
Open Borders. Or maybe restrict that ability to Apostles? That alone would go a long way
toward making the game seem less like
one of endless religious whack-a-mole. It really
is ridiculous.

 

[gimper42]

Spam Holy Sites in most of your cities. Have A LOT of cities. Fill up your holy sites with all the buildings you can. Run a Theocracy. Spam Apostles. Watch for the Apostles that get the +religious combat strength promotions, those will absolutely destroy other religious units. Revel in the Glory.

Also, don't just sit and wait for them to send their missionaries to you. After you repulse a wave or two of their religious units, take the fight to them. When you're knocking off their religious units near their cities, those cities will soon flip to your religion. It's really quite beautiful the way it all works.

 

[Atwork]

Definitely needs improvement. Agree with your general assessment. The blinding white overlay is very jarring.

That said, I find that 5 to 6 apostles are usually enough to keep your lands free, except for the occasional mass-incursion, but even those are mopped up within two to three turns.

 

[gimper42]

The blinding white overlay is very jarring.

That part definitely needs some work. As it is I cannot tell very easily just by looking which cities are under which religion. Some, at least, seem to have the exact same colors.

 

[SirWill90]

You are correct about how to run what becomes in essence a game of theological war. I have tried much of what you recommend, and it works. The trouble, for me, is that I don't want to play this much of a religious game, nor I suspect do the majority of players. I don't want to have to devote the majority of my attention in playing this game to religious conversion and the prevention of it. And that is what I have to do if I want to simply develop my own religion and maintain it in my lands.

There is definitely a balance problem when I have to have religious sites in every city and more religious than military units just to maintain my own religion in my own cities during peacetime without open borders. Yes there should be religious conflict in the game, but when it overwhelms all other aspects of the game, that is not fun anymore, and it's not really Civ anymore.

 

[gimper42]

You are correct about how to run what becomes in essence a game of theological war. I have tried much of what you recommend, and it works. The trouble, for me, is that I don't want to play this much of a religious game, nor I suspect do the majority of players. I don't want to have to devote the majority of my attention in playing this game to religious conversion and the prevention of it. And that is what I have to do if I want to simply develop my own religion and maintain it in my lands.

There is definitely a balance problem when I have to have religious sites in every city and more religious than military units just to maintain my own religion in my own cities during peacetime without open borders. Yes there should be religious conflict in the game, but when it overwhelms all other aspects of the game, that is not fun anymore, and it's not really Civ anymore.

The simplest solution from where I am standing is military conquest. Eliminate your neighbors and the will not try to convert your cities. You can get the Holy War Casus Belli when your theological units are attacked, at least that is how it seems to happen. Use that to your advantage if possible. If you're on a continents map, eliminate your neighbors completely and it becomes a breeze to convert the entire land mass and also very easy to defend your theology.

 

[Funababbitt]

Completely agree - to the point that it feels to me as if the devs inadvertently turned Civ 6 into a different game from Civilization. I tried to match the AI on the religious game but found it impossible - to the point I suspect the AI Civs were building a holy site in every city. My cities were quickly converted by an invasion of more than a dozen Scythian religious types. I simply had no interest to compete on that level building up religious units.

On top of that - there are religious bonuses to Science - which means it's very easy to fall behind even in Science progress.

The religious game (among other things) has thrown the game completely out of balance. I've actually quit playing - anyway because of the completely incompetent AI - I can't get any other civ even to attack me. So, the game just gets really boring and taking down an enemy civ's city is absurdly easy.

I hope K2/Firaxis is paying attention at least to the Steam charts. Civ 6 lost 53 percent of it's peak and average players in November and another 40% in December. I just checked and Civ 5 still has marginally more players - despite 6's apparent record launch sale.

 

[Disgustipated]

I have to agree somewhat. The religious game just doesn't interest me that much. I turn off religious victory, but I still spend far more time than I'd like in religious warfare trying to defend my cities from conversion. I know I could do quick combat, but I'd rather not have quick combat for my military units. And it's still time to move my apostles around to heal them up. It's annoying to say the least.

Anyone know how to disable religious units in the XML files? I tried fiddling around in the XML files once, but it didn't have the intended effect. I was trying to lower warmonger penalties, but for some reason they increased. I've since reverted back to the game as intended with the recent patch.

 

[Nathaniel VII]

Spam Holy Sites in most of your cities. Have A LOT of cities. Fill up your holy sites with all the buildings you can. Run a Theocracy. Spam Apostles. Watch for the Apostles that get the +religious combat strength promotions, those will absolutely destroy other religious units. Revel in the Glory.

Also, don't just sit and wait for them to send their missionaries to you. After you repulse a wave or two of their religious units, take the fight to them. When you're knocking off their religious units near their cities, those cities will soon flip to your religion. It's really quite beautiful the way it all works.

OP said he doesn't enjoy having to manage the religious game. To which you basically answered "just manage the religious game, dude".

Is it really that hard to understand that some people don't enjoy that aspect of the game? It's not that they are too dumb to deal with, they just don't want to.

 

[greygamer]

OP said he doesn't enjoy having to manage the religious game. To which you basically answered "just manage the religious game, dude".

Is it really that hard to understand that some people don't enjoy that aspect of the game? It's not that they are too dumb to deal with, they just don't want to.

The title is Religious Game is Too Much
I think it should be I hate the religious game in that case, so if someone has problems with combat in the game should they start a post called Domination Game is Too Much

It is quite possible to ignore religion in the game you know

 

[Futumch]

While it is possible to ignore religion in the game, there's tangible benefits to having a religion.
I agree that the unit spam is appallingly bad, and can be very irritating when you are trying to move builders or military units about. Unfortunately the way things are at present, the AI concentrates on religious unit spam even with Religious victory switched off. The only way I've found to reliably prevent this is to have your religion supplant theirs. You beat them at their own game.

Ideally switching off religious victory would disable all the units and district + buildings, but it's probably too deeply integrated into the game to be practical.

 

[gimper42]

Religion was not added to this game as a side show like it was in Civ 5. It is deeply integral to the processes of growing your civilization in Civ 6.

Personally, I was excited when I discovered all of the new ways to gain faith, especially early faith. Religion is, and should be, a very powerful tool for empire building. Military conquest is like the hand that fits in the glove of religion. Try to mix both into your builds in large quantities, early. Put the infidels to the sword, as it were.

 

[gimper42]

OP said he doesn't enjoy having to manage the religious game. To which you basically answered "just manage the religious game, dude".

Is it really that hard to understand that some people don't enjoy that aspect of the game? It's not that they are too dumb to deal with, they just don't want to.

Well, not wanting to and not bothering to are definitely options in the game. In the OP's post it seemed to me that he was having trouble dealing with what seems to me to be a rather simple situation. If he really didn't want to deal with it all he needed to do is just not deal with it in the first place. Coming here with that post is a plea for help. Which I attempted to provide in a simple and concise manner.

I fail to see the point of your comment. Other than to just be a whiner.

 

[chazzycat]

If you ignore religion the AI could win a religious victory, so "just ignore it" is not very practical advice if you care about not losing.

It's more like "ignore it until you can determine who is leading in religious victory, then hope all your cities aren't converted to that religion already and it's too late to do anything about it"

or

"try really hard to get a religion putting you way behind the AI in other stuff and not even guaranteeing you actually get one, and if you do get one, be prepared to spend your game in the (very ugly) religious combat mode"

Honestly, I like the religious system in the game, I think it's well designed. The fatal flaw is just the balance - the AI is prioritizing it too highly. The AI should be building more settlers, builders, and other districts beyond holy sites in the early game. If all the AI are spending their resources on battling each other with religion, they get nowhere while the human player who ignores religion catches up and overtakes them in the real metrics that matter like production, science and gold.

 

[gimper42]

If you ignore religion the AI could win a religious victory, so "just ignore it" is not very practical advice if you care about not losing.

It's more like "ignore it until you can determine who is leading in religious victory, then hope all your cities aren't converted to that religion already and it's too late to do anything about it"

or

"try really hard to get a religion putting you way behind the AI in other stuff and not even guaranteeing you actually get one, and if you do get one, be prepared to spend your game in the (very ugly) religious combat mode"

Honestly, I like the religious system in the game, I think it's well designed. The fatal flaw is just the balance - the AI is prioritizing it too highly. The AI should be building more settlers, builders, and other districts beyond holy sites in the early game. If all the AI are spending their resources on battling each other with religion, they get nowhere while the human player who ignores religion catches up and overtakes them in the real metrics that matter like production, science and gold.

The AI definitely needs help when it comes to building districts other than Holy Sites. Sometimes they just build zero districts in their capitals. That is unbelievably broken.

 

[greygamer]

If you ignore religion the AI could win a religious victory,

This is only likely on the smallest maps, the AI tend to cancel each other out in my experience often only converting around half of the civs.