Religious Victory: What's the Intended Way to Deal With Inquisitors?

steveg700

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I'm attempting the long slog to a religious victory, and maybe some of you guys help demystify some elements of the process I'm running into.

Even with being able to crank 600 faith per turn, I doubt I'd bother without Yerevan's bonus allowing me to crank out debaters, proselytizers, and translators ad infinitum. Civ's with much smaller territory and fewer holy sites are nonetheless able to pump out inquisitors every turn.

So, expend apostles to amass followers, and then one hit from an inquisitor and away they go. And inquisitors can sit inside a city, immune to direct attack. Also, sometimes I'll run into an inquisitor that's got bonuses like "friendly territory" and "holy ground", which make them tougher than any apostle other than a debater. Not sure what those bonuses are about. Don't seem to be policy card effects.

Now, the AI being what it is, the inquisitors don't play any defense or dogpile on one unit at a time. Instead, they obligingly come out of their cities and attack whoever's closest. so my debaters can just position themselves to intercept and guru's are at the ready to heal them. So, thatnks to that and Yerevan, my victory seems inevitable, but I'm wondering how religious victories are usually supposed to work when a civ is dedicated to pumping out inquisitors.
 
I believe the friendly territory and holy ground bonuses are religious beliefs you can select after using an Apostle to add beliefs to your religion.

There are a couple options for dealing with Inquisitor spam:

1) Save at least 1 charge on all Apostles with the +20 Theological combat upgrade so they don't disappear. Run around with them in a group with Gurus supporting them and crush any Inquisitors that dare come out of a city. The +5 Theological combat policy card helps too. Eventually the AI will run out of Faith to buy more Inquisitors. At that point you can convert their cities.
2) Convert all cities that aren't a part of the civ that is pumping out Inquisitors. Then build up an army of Apostles/Missionaries and send them in to convert all the AI's cities in one turn.
3) Build up an army and conquer the civ the old fashioned way.

I used a mix of #1 & #2 in a recent immortal game I played and it seemed to be quite effective
 
The huge bonuses Inquisitors get are related to their usefulness : they are to be feared in their home territory, and worthless outside of it.
Holy ground means they are within the borders of a city with the matching religion ; friendly territory means they're within their home borders (or those of a vassal city state)

Inquisitors are quite situationnal, but they are great at their job, protecting their religion. They make religious victories more interesting and rewarding.
...and if you can't have enough apostles with the right promotions, there's always conquest ^^
 
I got my first religious victory by accident, conqured the pious neighbours while the atheist powerhouse was left for last. While i planned the final war i saw that he had no religion, 4 missionaries later and i had won :)
The other way around works as well, kill the inquisitors with your military.
 
You just have to overpower them. The +4 war of religion and the +5 theological combat bonuses help. It also helps if you have the "don't lose pressure when you lose a theological combat" bonus, as long as you have the faith, you can basically trade apostle for inquisitor and you'll net out ahead.
 
My preferred method is losing my temper and invading them with military units and taking over their biggest cities and purging their religious units with military. You can leave a few crappy cities without holy sites and convert those so it feels better. ;)

Saving up and never spending the last charge so you have a tidal wave of apostles can also work. Especially a big pile of debaters.
 
A religious unit will have the religion of the city so a good way to make sure that your religion is the dominante one is to quickly rush in and convert all their holy site cities Before they can react. While inqusistors can camp inside a city they only have limited charges and when they are gone. Because apostels are so expensive it is a good idea to keep them with one charge, in most cases they are not really any better than missionaries at converting while being around three times as expensive.

Send your religious units in bulks, like an army. Several missionaries can convert a city instantly if they all can use conversion at the same time. Convert one civilization at a time so they can not recover to their old religion.
 
Let's say you want to deal with this without going to (military) war. The AI tends to cluster their inquisitors in one part of their empire, so you start from another place with an army of apostles and start converting the cities one by one. If they start sending religious defenders you can convert the city before fighting to avoid the holy ground bonus. Always have Theocracy and War of Religion active for the +9 of course. And keep a few apostles with 1 charge around after converting over half the cities to make sure they don't reverse it with inquisitors.
 
Instead, they obligingly come out of their cities and attack whoever's closest. so my debaters can just position themselves to intercept and guru's are at the ready to heal them.
Peaceful religious victory, or OCC RV in the current version, is taking huge advantage of this. If enemy inquisitors are numerous, you can even let your apostles garrison close to the enemy border (still outside) then wait them to die.
Another trick is how to get as many debaters as you can. Exact apostle promotions can be chosen twice (or 3? can't remember exactly) then no longer appears, which means you cannot get same promotion options after you get 2 or more. But if you keep this promotion available (don't promote immediately, and keep apostles with that promotion less than 2), you can get infinite number of this promotion by purchase new apostles. You can store enough of apostles with exact promotions (i.e. debater), then promote them together to break the limit.

Of course, if you play based on conquest, it's much easier, and it's the fastest, most mindless way in the current version. You should eliminate them all, leave 1 capital, then found religion and sell several cities to them.
 
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Conquer cities with the intent of killing as many religous units as possible, use an inquisitor, and then give it back to them.
 
Of course, if you play based on conquest, it's much easier, and it's the fastest, most mindless way in the current version. You should eliminate them all, leave 1 capital, then found religion and sell several cities to them.
But do not activate your religion until near the end. You get all the faith and the moment you activate all cities you own revert to your religion
 
But do not activate your religion until near the end. You get all the faith and the moment you activate all cities you own revert to your religion
Pretty sure only cities with a holy site convert to your religion. So you must make sure all cities have a holy site to maximize the free conversion.
 
Never forget you have the option of declaring a "real" war and just stepping on the enemy religious units with combat units.

Religion, culture, and even science victories all IMO fall in the category of "less war," not total avoidance of it.
 
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