religious units: carpet of death

[madm]

Neighboring Spain, I faced a carpet of death with religious units invading my empire. At some point half of my empire was covered with missionaries so I couldn't move my own units anymore. Just an example of frustratingly poorly implemented 1UPT or is there something I can do about it (except for declaring war)?

 

[teks]

This is a great implementation of 1upt...It's just that 1upt is a bad mechanic in the first place. I'm afraid your best bet is to kill them all.

 

[liv]

the other things to do is to ask Spain to stop spreading their religion. They may agree but often they will be back if they are going for a religious victory and Spain often do that.
The third thing is to use religious units like inquisitors and apostles to kill them off. I often do this if I have a religion other than the Spanish one.

 

[MaximusPlatypus]

In the future, if you have any holy sites whatsoever, place inquisitors on them. the first wave of (other) religious units will be attracted to them, and often suicide themselves attacking while your inquisitors/apostles standing within 1 tile of a Holy Site heal every turn. This is often enough to stem the initial tide of a carpet.

 

[neilkaz]

Annoying garbage like this is why I stopped playing this game.

 

[Futumch]

I found out earlier today that Gandhi's Missionaries and Apostles (and builders and spearmen and catapaults and warriors) are vulnerable to my Scythian thermonuclear weapons. Nuclear curry.

 

[Zuizgond]

Because Firaxis thinks Carpets of Doom are so much better than Stacks of Doom.

 

[FurballRocker]

So it seems you have three choices:-
1) Let them spam you which means you don't have to become a warmonger or have to invest in religious units and infrastructure yourself.
2) DoW them which will make you a warmonger and possibly have to deal with some of their military units but means you can easily eliminate their religious units.
3) Build religious units to fight a religious war which will get rid of their spam without making you a warmonger or having to go to war but does mean you need to invest in religious infrastructure and spend your faith on religious units.

All 3 options have positive and negative aspects so this sounds like a great implementation of 1Upt to me and it puts you in a situation where you need to make a strategic decision and i thought this was a strategy game...

 

[Bechhold]

the other things to do is to ask Spain to stop spreading their religion. They may agree but often they will be back if they are going for a religious victory and Spain often do that.
The third thing is to use religious units like inquisitors and apostles to kill them off. I often do this if I have a religion other than the Spanish one.

As you said they may or may not agree to stop but the exception is that there is no negative modifier if they simply ignore the agreement from other civilizations.

 

[bladex]

your lucky they are only religious units would you rather them be this?

Spoiler :

this is why i like playing kongo go ahead and convert me i couldn't give 2s

Moderator Action: Large image wrapped in spoiler tags.

 

[Larsenex]

I have reduced warmongering to near zero, this makes relations with all the ai FAR better. As others have said, either Kill them all just run a unit over them or get some inquisitors/apostles and park them in the city center or on/adjacent to holy sites.

 

[liv]

What do you mean it makes relations far better. Does it not just make it easier for you to have your cake and eat it too?

 

[Futumch]

@liv, if you look at your "diplomacy" screen, hit the button that tells you about your relationship with the opponent. Down the bottom of that sidebar there's a list of reasons why the AI likes or dislikes you. Same religion is one of the positive multipliers - with some conditions though. If you have converted their Holy City then you cop a penalty for that, even if you are both following the same religion. The best way obviously is to convert them before they gain a religion, but that takes a fair bit of planning.
This is another case of different rules for the AI and human. AI takes no penalty for converting your holy cities on that diplomatic screen.

 

[liv]

@liv, if you look at your "diplomacy" screen, hit the button that tells you about your relationship with the opponent. Down the bottom of that sidebar there's a list of reasons why the AI likes or dislikes you. Same religion is one of the positive multipliers - with some conditions though. If you have converted their Holy City then you cop a penalty for that, even if you are both following the same religion. The best way obviously is to convert them before they gain a religion, but that takes a fair bit of planning.
This is another case of different rules for the AI and human. AI takes no penalty for converting your holy cities on that diplomatic screen.

I was asking Larsenex who modded out warmongering penalty. I should have quoted but I guess that is kind of off topic anyway. Thanks for answering Futumch

 

[bladex]

you can mod it out yourself edit eras.xml

edit all the WarmongerPoints="ENTER VALUE HERE

set it to 0 to abolish WM completely. : WarmongerPoints="0

 

[AtlantisAuthor]

Religion frankly isn't a fun or interesting mechanic in Civ VI, and yes, the "carpets" of invading Apostles/Missionaries are indeed a ridiculous problem that make things tedious and frustrating. Sure you can kill them all off as earlier posters have suggested, but the fact the AI tends to spam that many units into your territory to begin with demonstrates that the entire mechanic is broken. You really can't handle it (or much of anything else in the game) diplomatically, either, because the AI is so intractably hostile and one-note. I haven't touched Civ VI in months now (though I come here occasionally to check if there's been a new patch or improvement) because (for me at least) it's guilty of the most cardinal sin in game design that is in part a culmination of all its current mechanical flaws which users have already addressed here ad nauseam: it simply isn't fun or entertaining.

 

[TruthfulCake]

Really, a simple fix for this is to allow separate layers for religious/civilian units regardless of affiliation. It should not be too hard to fix. This complaint has been around since day 1 though (and even back during Civ V days), and I must admit I am a little disheartened by the lack of response from the developers on this issue. I suppose I can wait for mods to make this intuitive change, though.

OTOH, a carpet of religious units really is the best way to win religious victory, so as long as the religious units do not prevent other units from functioning/moving, spamming religious units is a legit strategy by the AI.

 

[MaximusPlatypus]

I feel kind of exploit-y giving away crap cities to win a RV

 

[Victoria]

I rarely have the carpet... I just do not take a religion.
Maybe I get one carpet for a few turns and typically thats it

 

[liv]

I have not really been too bothered by this. If I have a religion I kill them with apostles and maybe make some relics. If I am a warmongerer I kill them with units. If I do not have religion or I am done working the advantages of my religion then I am not really caring much one way or the other. They move through.

I am not sure I would want the different "level" that some are talking about. There has been times when I have saved my own religion by planting units around my holy city and I would like to be able to continue doing that