Religious Victory - Am I Just Too Slow?

[jsurpless]

Was playing with the Mali and generating a good deal of faith (150/turn or so)

No issues keeping religion out of my empire as I choose 'Scriptures' but spreading to other cities all over the world just seems tedious as I believe that the best way is through Apostle combat... this strikes me as really slow because they can only heal in your territory (aside from tons of gurus) and getting the +20 combat bonus seems quite rare if Yerevan isn't in the game.

Am I doing something wrong? Just too slow? Thoughts? Thanks!

 

[Victoria]

If you are at T80 then you are not slow, if you are at T150 you are.
What turn? What difficulty?

 

[jsurpless]

If you are at T80 then you are not slow, if you are at T150 you are.
What turn? What difficulty?

Yeah, just shy of Turn 150... nevertheless, it just seems to me that doing a religious victory is going to be slow-going... or am I mistaken that religious combat is the most effective way to spread your religion?

 

[Midgardsormr]

That's the most efficient way, but you can't always rely on the AI to throw its own religious units at you, so supplement with normal spread techniques. Remember that you only have to convert 51% of a civ's cities, so don't spend time stamping out other religions in every little town. Prioritize civs with their own religion first (and Kongo—you want all of those free Apostles working for you).

Send your Apostle out in groups—not only does that help to spread the damage around, but they benefit from flanking and support, just like military units. They also get that Heal on kill benefit from the War Department, but if you're shooting for a sub-150 victory, that's a building you'll probably never see.

 

[Victoria]

Yeah, just shy of Turn 150... nevertheless, it just seems to me that doing a religious victory is going to be slow-going... or am I mistaken that religious combat is the most effective way to spread your religion?

Combat itself is not the best way. Spreading via missionaries and apostles is.
Some general things about RV
The AI does not know how to fight so you typically win combats but if you damage an apostle is does not spread at full strength. So it is best with a combat group for them to spread down to 1 charge and then combat.
Missionaries are cheaper than apostles but if you just bought missionaries they would be more expensive... buying both is more efficient than just buying 1 type.
Missionaries are better spreading religion to non religious cities and apostles are better at spreading to cities following a religion. So use them that way.
Missionaries cannot fight but do count for flanking.
A common option is not founding your religion with your prophet until you have a lot of cities with holy sites as founding your religion will convert all of them at once. On deity, get a prophet and wait until all other religions have spent most of their charges fighting each other, then convert to your religion.
Another OP option is just have inquisitors, capture a city and remove its religion... maybe then use a missionary after... but combat is an easy conversion method.
Rock bands are an op way to convert a city currently
Yerevan is a fast win. Double promotion Moksha

TBH RV is very fast if you concentrate on it, they are the fastest victories normally.

 

[jsurpless]

Playing on Standard speed, Immortal difficulty - if that makes any difference...

Thanks for the advice, much appreciated...

 

[Victoria]

Playing on Standard speed, Immortal difficulty - if that makes any difference...

The AI gets a lot of early but even then it is a while before they do well. And they do not use promotions well.
I find getting your faith output high with 3 in a CS and the adjacency card and pushing fast to temples is just obvious.
Holy orders just makes perfect sense as it in essence ramps up your faith more. Goddess of the harvest is another huge pumper of faith.
Get your missionaries out to convert anything that is already not religious, plan and group your apostle attacks to quickly convert a religious civ.
a non religious civ will not mind you converting them but you are better off converting a religious civ early than a non religious.
It is the same on all levels, If you do not have good luck on immortal or deity then hold off on activating the prophet, just let the other religious AI's fight it out for a while and happily convert your cities. Then when you activate you have loads of missionaries and apostles and theirs are getting expensive.
Lots of way of cooking the goose but T150 is where you should be finished.
Wait for a GOTM RV and play along with others and you will see how they did it. Have a look at the last one here - https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/6otm54-aar.640358/