Religious victory against warring human opponent

[Mango201]

I'm playing a multiplayer game against several human opponents on vanilla Civ 6. I've decided to try and pursue a RV but i'm not quite sure how to deal with war. What am I supposed to do if one of my opponents just declares war, executes any missionary that enters his territory, and stays in a state of war forever? That seems like an absolute obstacle against RV. How do you penetrate that?

When you're playing the AI there is a disincentive for them to be at war forever, because other AIs don't like warmongers, but as far my human opponents are concerned, my enemy's enemy is my friend. I know I would personally love it if one of my opponents declared war on the other.

Are there any significant downsides to being in a protracted state of war?

Thoughts?

 

[Basajaun]

Build military and kill their units, or take them down. Otherwise you will never convert them. If they dont want peace, bring them PEACE.
Military units are not spent when they launch an inquisition, so you are constantly losing religious pressure by allowing him to kill your guys.

 

[Mango201]

So basically your answer to "how to achieve a religious victory?" is "achieve a domination victory"

 

[Basajaun]

Its not "my answer". Its the only option you have at that point. You can negotiate with AIs, but a human will never sign for peace if it knows your next step is going to be to convert them, and make them lose. Im not a fan of warmongering in this game, I rarely build armies for any other thing than defense, and even then, I feel like Civ 6 demands too much military action for what I feel comfortable with.

As much as it sucks, the moment you play against a human, if there is a more efficient way to counter your advance than killing your missionaries and apostles, they will use it. But alas, there isnt. So for a warmonger player, diplomacy is completely ignored, unless it gives a benefit to his progress, to the extent of maintaining a permanent war with a religious faction, even if hes not planning on invading you for 150 turns.

I mean, you have the option of colonizing around him, and build loyalty and religious pressure. But I suspect he will not be happily accepting closer neighbors peacefully

Oh and answering to the consecuences on his side to a longing war, theres war weariness, but as far as I know, if he is just denying your religion and nothing else, you are gaining more war weariness than him https://civ6.gamepedia.com/War_weariness

 

[Mango201]

Yeah, I agree with all of that. It just seems silly that there is such an absolute defense against RV. If the only option is to switch to domination, why not star with domination to begin with?

The consequences of 'being at war', without fighting, are negligible for someone defending against an RV, and as you point out, they may even harm me more.

Here are some ideas/thoughts I've had. Maybe this will help someone else with the same problem:

• Convert neighboring city states and players and hope to convert the warring player via pressure - thus forcing the player to go to war with his neighbors or accept the spread of religion. This isn't a great approach because pressure is so weak.
• Use the high movement of religious units to your advantage. Surround his civ, drawing out units in one direction while moving in with religious units from the other direction. Can religious units move after spreading religion? Does it take up a movement action like builders? There may be some kind of hit and run strategy that I'm not thinking of (possibly boosted by terrain movement bonuses from Missionary Zeal).
• At some point the player will probably wise up, and start keeping a unit in each city. This will actually have consequences as these will not be available for war if the player is playing a domination game, and their maintenance will hurt a little too. Once this phase has been reached, there are two ways forward.
  • Suicide missionaries against the city. Use their high speed to get to the city, 'spread religion', then delete the unit so that it can't be condemned.
  • Bring your army. You're not actually trying to achieve domination. If the player draws units out of the cities to fight your army then retreat while moving in with religious units. If the player does not, you should have a military size advantage and you might be able to take a city on the periphery - this probably won't work against a player who has been trying to achieve a DV all along, as they might have enough units to both garrison their cities and fight your army.

Thoughts?

 

[Nigel_Tufnel2]

Sadly he can just keep a Scout in cities to kill your religious units, keeping other ground units near your border or wherever...

 

[Tabarnak]

Hardest way to win besides diplo. Like in sp games, it's usually easier to win with a lot of warmongering. In fact it's litterally impossible to peacefully do a RV with humans for reasons already described.

 

[Basajaun]

You cant do hit and run with apostles and missionaries, and adjacent pressure from city states will be to slow to convert them in time. You could overwhelm him with numbers, if you are making enough faith per turn, build a small army and asume some are going to die, but some will fulfill their mission, and if they have the relic on death promotion, theres something you win there at least.
You are going to need a fair amount of them however, each unit killed removes quite a bit of pressure.
Target the most religious cities and flood them with your inquisition armada. If you are not in position to achieve that... War, war never changes.

 

[Midgardsormr]

An enemy unit must step on your missionary to condemn it. They cannot do that if you have a military unit standing on the same space. You need not bring your army to conquer, but you can bring it to safeguard your missionaries. Of course, if you're concentrating on the RV, you may be (likely are) behind in tech and production, which still gives the advantage to the warmonger. Get Crusade as one of your beliefs, and you can blunt the tech advantage to some degree. You can also get some benefit from being mostly defensive in your invasion—if you're not on the attack, you can more effectively choose the terrain.

I don't know exactly how effective a real crusade of this kind would be; I only play single-player, so it's not something I've had to do much thinking about.

 

[Basajaun]

Thats the other option I was thinking about. I guess being the other guy focused on military, an attack like that one wouldnt do much of a difference (thinking here as if I were the warmonger). I would just choose the counters to the troops he brought, and eliminate anything that comes 1-2 tiles close to my city. I assume he has strong walls and a garrisoned unit¿?

But in the end, this too is almost too similar to bringing more troops and just taking the city, which would be easier, cheaper, and probably faster too.

 

[Socrates99]

I think you'd have a better shot at a CV with a religious focused civ in mp. Funnel that faith into GWAMs until you get rock bands and national parks. Rock bands get their bonus immediately when used and you won't lose tourism when they're killed. On top of that you dont necessarily have to spam them at the permawar guy to get benefit.

 

[BK*]

Mutiplayer in this game is just pvp in other games and why 99.9% of it's player base plays single player. There was even some big fallout with the top players over a religious game where promises were broken.

 

[Basajaun]

I think you'd have a better shot at a CV with a religious focused civ in mp. Funnel that faith into GWAMs until you get rock bands and national parks. Rock bands get their bonus immediately when used and you won't lose tourism when they're killed. On top of that you dont necessarily have to spam them at the permawar guy to get benefit.

And now that you said this, there is a promotion for rock bands enabling them to convert to your religion. Maybe that could be a possibility. Can rock bands be eliminated as easily as religious units? I was just doing a Kupe game yesterday and I ended with such a high amount of faith per turn that I could buy a rock band every 2 turns and my culture and tourism started to skyrocket from that moment. Tried one of these "Religious" bands for giggles (I dont usually pursue religion, but having a dozen Maraes spread through the map is quite the faith income.

Faith

• Basajaun
• Apr 6, 2019

Culture

• Basajaun
• Apr 6, 2019

 

[BK*]

Rock bands cannot be eliminated at all and is the only viable way to get a religious victory vs players BUT this promotion is not so simple to get as rock bands cost a lot and die often too, you could also send in Normal units with your religious ones to kill his?

 

[Socrates99]

You'd need the card that allows you to choose promotions before you could even begin the rock band religious vc idea. That's so late it's hard to imagine another player going slow enough to pull it off. It might be a good closer to a long drawn out RV game after apostles start getting expensive.

Bad part is that promotion doesn't help your band succeed at performing. You might wind up with a lot of one hit wonders before reaching second level. Your best bet would be cover art, glam rock, etc first then take the religious conversion promo at level 2. That sounds like more work than its worth though. You'd be chewing away at turns in an already late game.

 

[Mango201]

As I mentioned I'm playing vanilla Civ 6, so no rock bands or me

Good to know that they addressed some of the kinks with RV in the expansions.

You could overwhelm him with numbers, if you are making enough faith per turn, build a small army and asume some are going to die, but some will fulfill their mission, and if they have the relic on death promotion, theres something you win there at least.

I doubt this will work. It takes one turn to move onto a religious unit and condemn it, and this reverses as much pressure as a 'spread religion charge', so i'd need to get off two charges for every condemnation. Unlikely. I think the relic on death is only granted for units that died in religious combat, I don't think condemnation counts.

An enemy unit must step on your missionary to condemn it. They cannot do that if you have a military unit standing on the same space. You need not bring your army to conquer, but you can bring it to safeguard your missionaries. Of course, if you're concentrating on the RV, you may be (likely are) behind in tech and production, which still gives the advantage to the warmonger. Get Crusade as one of your beliefs, and you can blunt the tech advantage to some degree. You can also get some benefit from being mostly defensive in your invasion—if you're not on the attack, you can more effectively choose the terrain.

Thanks for thinking creatively with me. I think it would work for someone going for a victory other than DV, who just happens to be at war so that they can condemn heretics defensively (I suspect my opponents are not going for DV). Also, building a defensive army is a distraction from whatever VC they are going for - especially CV, because I think being at war does actually affect your tourism (not sure how significantly thought).

What would be the ideal bodyguard? Back that up with a medic and maybe you've got something.

Against an actual DV player you'd have to wait for the bulk of their forces to be on a foreign campaign. This should leave a window where you could come in and fight off condemn heretics attempt, which as you've pointed out, is much easier than conquest. If they keep their army at home, they can ward off your RV, but they can't get their DV either. I like this approach!

I think you'd have a better shot at a CV with a religious focused civ in mp.

Yeah, it's early game so I'm kind of gearing up for that as plan B. Playing as Russia so thankfully the religious game also happens to provide more GWAM points than I know what to do with.

 

[Midgardsormr]

What would be the ideal bodyguard?

Horsemen/Cavalry most likely, for the mobility. Do religious units obey Zone of Control from hostile military forces? I don't recall. Plus you'd get more benefit from pillaging. Trouble is that there's a biiig tech gap between the two, so for a large portion of the mid-game your escorts would be underpowered and vulnerable. You don't want to take Horse against Crossbows!

It depends largely on what your opponent is fielding, of course. If they're Zulu or Greek, you don't want to take cavalry into their territory—you'll get shredded by the spears. But swordsmen would be comparatively stronger (though slow). You can also take advantage of a feint. Make as if to assault a city at one end of the front (bring along a ram to sell it), then move your missionaries to the other end with a few horse escorts and convert a couple of towns. Use a couple of high-mobility units to peek out of the fog in different spots to make your forces look larger than they are, and make it look like you're fumbling around trying to get your formation in place to give the enemy plenty of time to react. ... Read some Sun Tzu, I think I'm lifting these ideas directly from Art of War.

Edit: Just noticed above that you're playing Russia. Makes the unit advice even better—Cossacks are a great unit for forcing your enemy to react to you.

 

[Socrates99]

Horsemen/Cavalry most likely, for the mobility. Do religious units obey Zone of Control from hostile military forces? I don't recall. Plus you'd get more benefit from pillaging. Trouble is that there's a biiig tech gap between the two, so for a large portion of the mid-game your escorts would be underpowered and vulnerable. You don't want to take Horse against Crossbows!

It depends largely on what your opponent is fielding, of course. If they're Zulu or Greek, you don't want to take cavalry into their territory—you'll get shredded by the spears. But swordsmen would be comparatively stronger (though slow). You can also take advantage of a feint. Make as if to assault a city at one end of the front (bring along a ram to sell it), then move your missionaries to the other end with a few horse escorts and convert a couple of towns. Use a couple of high-mobility units to peek out of the fog in different spots to make your forces look larger than they are, and make it look like you're fumbling around trying to get your formation in place to give the enemy plenty of time to react. ... Read some Sun Tzu, I think I'm lifting these ideas directly from Art of War.

Edit: Just noticed above that you're playing Russia. Makes the unit advice even better—Cossacks are a great unit for forcing your enemy to react to you.

Coursers bro! The tech gap isn't that bad anymore. It's made no iron starts much more palatable.

 

[Midgardsormr]

Check the OP. It's a Vanilla game.

 

[Socrates99]

Ah you're right. I missed that.