Religious Victory seems to be the hardest victory

[DrJones87]

I've only had one successful religious victory game with Arabia and it was basically a domination victory where I stopped and converted the last civilization to my religion. I don't know if it's possible to win Religion with current AI settings peacefully. The AI prioritizes religion in early game above all else it seems, and just spams apostles and military units. You can't match the AI, because they get production boosts to other stuff so they're able to neglect actually making well-rounded cities and just continuously build apostles and military units.

Anyone been able to pull off a peaceful religious victory?

 

[Frank327]

Yeah it has to do with the AI more than anything else. They have a really big focus on religion and tend to completely neglect culture. So it's amazingly easy to win cultural victories (sometimes by accident) and amazingly difficult to win religious victories. Just one of the side effects of having terrible AI.

 

[Paramecium]

In my current game as Japan on Emperor, I was the last one to found a religion and had a hard time to defend mine, but luckily I got the +20 tcs to an apostle and could park him on a HS. The AI tried to kill him anyways, even when healed after attack.(The HS is located between 3 single mountains with one free tile between those and on entrance with the city center, the others hill and the last one just grassland, so the AI couldnt attack with masses anyways). I found it challenging, but at turn 250 or so, I could kick out one of the "Religion mongers", but the other one, who was leading, stopped at some point to produce more apostles/missionaires. It looks like, you just have to survive long enough with your religion and then fight back. But I got lucky too, 2 times the promotion, which kills any other religion when spreading, that is just op I would nearly say ...

 

[AmtrakQuebec]

I had a bizarre game with Gandhi on the Continents Map (Small). None of the other Civs on my continent started a Religion for some reason and the Japs wiped out the other Civs on the other continent so even on Immortal it was dead easy to get a Religious victory. I was actually going for space when I suddenly noticed that no one else had a Religion, so I probably could have won it MUCH earlier than I did.

 

[Datian]

I tried it once and succeeded quite easily because of these major helps :
- be suzerain of Yerevan (lets you choose your apostle's promotion)
- fight an incredibly dumb dumb AI, which keeps on sending tons of apostles and missionaries AFTER its holy city has been converted

With these in place, I just had to send a "gets rid of other religions" apostle, escorted by two "+20 in theological debate" ones. Once the holy city - and btw the neighbouring ones, thanks to the theological warfare - have been converted, I let the AI do the job.

 

[MadDjinn]

yeah, the religious nuke apostle pretty much makes the religious victory easy.

Else, keep spamming apostles til you can get 2 debaters and then slow march through every apostle spammer.

 

[LDiCesare]

Religious warfare is much much easier for the ai than regular warfare.
There are 2 units, 1 of them which can't attack.
There is a singletarget, cities.
Apostles also move very fast, so the clutter to movement, zonesof controland what not doesn't apply.
So, yes, the ai manages religious combat better than non religious where cities defend, ranged combat exists and lots of positionning/flanking/fortifications make the tactical situation more complex.
But it's still got no idea that some units can heal. Keep 3 or 4 apostles at home. Kill 2 incoming apostles. Hide, let the rest go to your cities, heal. When next apostles come, kill them. Your cities revert to your religion thanks to the fight.
So the ai still has no idea about concentration of forces, but it does have an easier time than with regular combat.

 

[CaiusDrewart]

Yeah, the relative simplicity of religious combat and a strong AI preference for holy sites (they spam those things like crazy) adds up to a more difficult time for the human. Not to mention an early focus on religion is 100% necessary for any Civ but Arabia if they want to achieve Religious Victory, which usually means a slow and vulnerable start. Arabia is really great because they can totally ignore the religious game to focus on conquest or infrastructure early on, and then smoothly transition to religion later. No one else can pull that off, obviously.

Another thing about religious victory is that it's probably more map-dependent than any other type. Having Yerevan nearby probably lowers the difficulty by the equivalent of two or three levels.

But just wait until the next expansion introduces Televangelists, a religious combat unit with a 2-tile attack range. Then religious combat will become super easy, too

 

[chespi]

I would say that it's just as easy if not easier to win religious victories then other victory types at least if on a standard sized game. The trick is a tiny bit of patience. If you try to spread your religion at early stages then the AI is giving you a lot of opposition. However, at some point the AI states have given up fighting each other for religious victory, and their apostles are getting extremely expensive -- this is the time for you to get your apostles going.

Use the points you have accumulated and get as many apostles and missionaries as you can and get them marching around the world. By this time some countries will be really small, almost eliminated, so converting half of their cities is really easy. The larger countries will take a bit longer, but as they have spent all their apostles already they can't really put up any real fight. Boring but efficient.

 

[Onii-chan]

I think it's about staying on the defensive with your apostles and inquisitors for a long time in order to be able to easily kill off your opponents' ones by getting the massive theological combat strength + healing bonuses from holy sites in your own territory. That way you can eliminate their units whilst keeping your own alive. Then wait for Theocracy + Religious Orders before launching the counterattack. You're going to need many apostles with different types of promotions to effectively convert people

Granted I've only gone for a religious victory once thus far but that's what I did at least and it worked fairly well (on Immortal). Though dealing with Spain was a bit annoying since they just get flat theological combat strength bonuses but it's doable