So How Badly Does the AI Cheat on Missionaries & Apostles?

steveg700

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So, I play on the largest maps, where the game is clogged with too many civ's competing in religion. There's a point reached around the classical era where missionaries are flying around like junebugs and then in the next couple eras it can be non-stop apostles. Even when they're not actively converting my cities, some civ will still have an army of religious units just hovering around my cities.

Now, the AI civ's do not generate hundreds of faith per turn in the classical era to churn out missionaries at 150+ faith a pop, and most certainly don't spit out what it takes to buy apostles by the bunch.

I recall in years past reading something about a baked-in 30% discount for the AI, but even that seems insufficient to account for what I see these days.
 
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I've wondered that myself. The +32 % faith (on Immortal, according to this source: https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Difficulty_level_(Civ6)) and +40 % faith (on Diety) seems insufficient to explain the AI swarms of appostles, but I've never seen any exact math done to prove or disprove it. Obviously some civs like Russia and Ethiopia will be more prone to doing this, I have had games against Ethiopia where I simply had to DoW them and mass-kill their religious units.
 
I've wondered that myself. The +32 % faith (on Immortal, according to this source: https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Difficulty_level_(Civ6)) and +40 % faith (on Diety) seems insufficient to explain the AI swarms of appostles, but I've never seen any exact math done to prove or disprove it. Obviously some civs like Russia and Ethiopia will be more prone to doing this, I have had games against Ethiopia where I simply had to DoW them and mass-kill their religious units.
Oh yeah, there's no befriending Ethiopia if you have founded a religion. Well, you can try to befriend them after you have gone into their territory and wiped their holy cities out. Best defense is offense and all that.

I don't think Religious Victory ever should have been a thing in Civ 6. It was a good tool for accomplishing other victories in 5, and should have been left there. As a victory condition, having to eliminate all other religions is so heavy-handed so as to basically guarantee all-out war. And unlike Domination, there is no distinction between friend and foe. Those alliances get abused.

And then in the late game, the AI usually just flat-out gives up on RV anyway.
 
I don't think Religious Victory ever should have been a thing in Civ 6.
It's a shame that even when you toggle it off in the game setup, the Civs you're playing against still spam religious units.
 
Well, for all the things we can blame the developers about Civ 6, I don't really think that is one of them. There was a pretty strong public voice calling for a religious victory back in the days of Civ 5, so ... :dunno:
A lot of fans have bad ideas, though, including this one. There might have been a less horrible way to implement a religious victory (though I certainly can't think of one), but the devs didn't find it. I certainly hope religious victory goes away in Civ7; let religion support other victory types, especially culture victory.
 
A lot of fans have bad ideas, though, including this one. There might have been a less horrible way to implement a religious victory (though I certainly can't think of one), but the devs didn't find it. I certainly hope religious victory goes away in Civ7; let religion support other victory types, especially culture victory.
I agree, I'm just saying, we sort of got what was asked for, even if the implementation was poor.
 
I agree, I'm just saying, we sort of got what was asked for, even if the implementation was poor.
Both statements are correct. Fans asked for it. It wasn't implemented well. In fact, I think it's safe to say it was half-baked. We had the Guru unit added later in the game's design. Not certain why, however it is clear the AI doesn't know what they are as it never employs them. Maybe that's the player's offset for not being able to spam the board with them.

The game needed some additional mechanisms for passive defense (recall in V that it was necessary to have Open Borders to avoid losing health in foreign territory). Really not a lot of reason the early religions or high-faith generators can't simply kill any johnny-come-latelies in their crib by flipping their holy city before they can get up and running

For one thing, missionaries should not be able to flip a civy's holy city That should require an apostle. Another idea I have is that religious units should be able to earn promotions by converting pop and by winning theo combat. Then only apostles that earn their way to the final promotion get the ability to flip a holy city.
 
I agree, I'm just saying, we sort of got what was asked for, even if the implementation was poor.
I'll agree that it doesn't feel quite right, but they did get a lot of concepts right.
  • There's a passive component - you spread your religion naturally from your cities, which makes sense. It's a bit like the loyalty mechanic. It's slow pressure, but it holds the borders and gives a baseline level of influence. You need that.
  • There's an active component - it takes two forms: 1) using traders to target slow pressure on a civ you're trading with, 2) the religious "combat" system.
  • The VC is to convert all of the world's holy sites, effectively a peaceful parallel of the domination victory. That's fine.
  • There are a bunch of ways to customize your religion to boost your civ, and they're designed with broad appeal so if you don't found one, you still benefit from having someone spread theirs to you, and you invest in additional beliefs as the game goes, so the active strategic part of designing your religion goes on after the classical era as well.
  • There are a good set of religious wonders which you'd want to compete for.
There are a few things I'd nit-pick.
  • I'd like to see an additional 1-2 wonders to help close out a religious victory in the late game. The continual rise in price of apostles puts a soft cap on the RV actually discouraging it as the game goes by. I know there's a historical analogue to that idea, but it's VC in a game. You need the tools to secure victory.
  • I'd like to see a bit more parity in the specific choices offered for pantheons and beliefs. The 3rd tier buildings are good, but there are plenty of options I'd just flat out never choose because the pay-off is so bad. I don't like having options in the game that aren't compelling enough to want to choose them.
  • I'd like to see the trade routes be a more active part of spreading your religion. The amount of pressure they generate is simply too small to even consider it in the decision-making of where to send that trader. Generally, it's: 1) satisfy CS quests, 2) get 1 trade route to every civ if you're pushing CV, 3) maximize gold income, 4) avoid territory of civs you're at war with.
But the biggest issue is the religious combat. This is the active mini-game of the RV and it's lackluster. You get 1 unit that can attack and defend and the numbers are so wonky that often you just one-shot anything else on the battlefield. Debater (+20 strength) is way too strong. There's no leveling up process for experienced religious units. Only 1 of the units can actually attack. I think the system needs to be reimagined.
  • Missionaries should be a primary attacking unit. They get a base combat number and maybe +10 on offense outside of your territory, -10 inside your territory. They can both attack and defend but are specifically geared to being outside of your lands spreading the faith. Wins result in a spread of pressure based on damage done. It's not limited to getting a full kill. Do 20 damage, and you get a little pressure from the attack. Keep the 3 charges concept that they can use specifically on cities of their choice.
  • Inquisitors should be a primary defensive unit. They're a mirror of missionaries, but they work best on defense: +10 in your lands, -10 outside. Again, they can attack and defend and wins give local pressure like the missionaries. The charges conduct an inquisition and reduce the pressure of foreign religions in your city to 0.
  • Priests would be a new unit specifically for managing your passive religious pressure. They're the preachers in your churches. You could customize their names too, to be religion-appropriate so Islam would have imams, Protestants might have pastors, Buddhists might have monks. You make these to augment the passive pressure that your holy sites produce. When they're present, they are defensive only, but can be eliminated through priestly debate (combat). These would provide customizable benefits a bit like the 3rd tier buildings do now, so there's some strategy regarding their placement.
  • I'd combine great prophets and apostles into one unit. You'd get a limited number of prophets, 1 per belief in your religion and you'd earn these through the GP system so that it doesn't go stale for 90% of the game like it does now. These would be hero units with a lifetime of a limited number of turns. I'd give them some interesting abilities so that they'd feel fun to go converting with for a while. At the end of their life, or if they're martyred in priestly combat, they leave a relic and allow you to codify a new belief for your religion.
  • Ultimately, I'd design the active component of the RV to be much more engaging than it currently is. It's a mini-game so I'd keep it simple, so as not to overshadow the primary military combat system, and so the AI could be taught to use it properly.
How would you improve it?
 
How would you improve it?
I generally agree with your thoughts and ideas.

Something I think is missing in both Civ5 and Civ6 is the concept of a State Religion, which is something that I would really like to see implemented in Civ7. Declaring State Religion should have implications both towards internal matters (like improving passive spread, generating unhappiness from cities without this religion, etc.) and external matters (like diplomatic penalties towards other civs having a different state religion). I would also like to see the option for transitioning into secularism instead of a state religion.

Another thing I would like to see addressed in future games is the concept of Reforming a religion. Civ5 had this in a kind of silly way, but what I think it should be is the ability to reform another civ's religion, thus making your own religion from it if you didn't get to found a religion for yourself. Reforming a religion should only be possible if the religion is dominant in your civilization and you haven't founded your own religion. This obviously should have a major diplomatic impact.
 
How would you improve it?
1. Get rid of religious combat, reduce the importance of missionaries, and strongly buff passive spread.
2. Make religions founded dynamically and give players the option to adopt it as state religion, tolerate it, or suppress it. Make religion have stronger influence on diplomacy and encourage the formation of religious blocs.
3. Don't like your religion? Give players the option to reform or schism their religion or develop heresies. This is a great opportunity to bring in ecumenical councils.
4. Civ7 could take a lot of cues from CK3's religion, which does a lot of things well (albeit...not everything glares at celibate Orthodox clergy and polygamous Insular Christians).
5. Make individual pops have religious identities--and ethnic identities--but this is a topic for another thread.

These were answers to how I'd improve religion. If the question is how I'd improve Religious Victory, that's very simple: I'd scrap it and never look back. :p
 
Agreed. I feel like religion should ideally be like gold in these games - a flexible engine for pushing for other victories, but not a victory in and of itself.

And, in addition to the makes-no-mathematical-sense amount of missionaries and apostles the AI can spit out, my biggest issue with the Civ6 implementation is how it plays with the Diplomatic mechanics, though that's probably more an issue of the latter. The fact that the turn after you DOF or Ally with an AI civ they will immediately send their missionaries/apostles in to flip your holy city (or, somewhat off-topic, go raze any nearby CS you happen to be Suzerain of) and there's effectively nothing you can do about it, is currently my biggest bugaboo with the Civ6 design.
 
The “active” component of spreading religion - using units and religious “combat” - is absurd tedium. I truly hope that next time they can think of a better way for the player to manage religion than relying on units.
This is my own opinion of course, but I think victory conditions shouldn't be entirely passive. I like an active component. With science, you have passive tech progression and then the active component in building the space race projects. With culture, it used to be overwhelmingly passive except for the race for GP and artifacts. It was ok, but you could easily find yourself in the doldrums, just hitting next turn waiting for the numbers to add up. It was painfully boring. When they added in a bunch of tile improvements that gave tourism, the national parks, and the rock bands, CV became much more enjoyable to play. An active component is needed to help secure that victory late in the game. This is true of religion as well.

Something I think is missing in both Civ5 and Civ6 is the concept of a State Religion
I've seen this idea from time to time. Historically, we could think of Henry VIII and the Church of England or the various emirates and Islam. If we wanted to broaden it, Soviet communism had no religion (or the State itself as God) as the "state religion." Atheism could be supported in the game. In Civ 6, the parallel might simply be that if you founded a religion, that is your state religion. If you didn't found a religion, you're the battlefield. You don't really get to choose which seems logical. There has to be a trade-off with religions. If I choose to focus heavily on science or building a big army for early warmongering and miss the religions, I did get some advantage for my choice, but my opportunity cost was the right to define my own religion. That design works for me. See my reply to Zaarin (below) for a bit more.

2. Make religions founded dynamically and give players the option to adopt it as state religion, tolerate it, or suppress it. Make religion have stronger influence on diplomacy and encourage the formation of religious blocs.
3. Don't like your religion? Give players the option to reform or schism their religion or develop heresies. This is a great opportunity to bring in ecumenical councils.

I like the idea of having players get a bit more control over religion, especially if you're in the battlefield because you didn't make a religion. In Civ 6, you can make missionaries and apostles of the religion you like to help spread it in your cities, but that's a very clunky mechanic. If we changed it so that the non-founders who still wanted to play the religion game could invest in faith and force a schism or reformation to create their own religion, that would make things more interesting. If you don't want to invest at all, you can still do that, but if you did want to, you'd not be locked out entirely. You'd pick a founded religion, keep their core beliefs but get to select 1-2 ones you want. This might be a good place to introduce atheism as well. You could opt for atheism as your preferred religion and repress other religions (passing up their bonuses too) in exchange for a state loyalty bonus or something so if you're warmongering or have a massive empire that's outpacing your happiness/loyalty, that could be an option.

I also really liked your suggestion about diplomacy. That's such an important thing to consider when dealing with much of history. In Civ 6, we get this idea but it's late in the game with ideology. Your pick of tier 3 government can break longstanding alliances. But if you think about religion, Europe went to war for centuries over Catholicism vs Protestantism and went to the Holy Land how many times to war against Islam? It should be part of diplomacy. The idea of being able to designate whether you tolerate or suppress another religion is a great dynamic, and something you could negotiate. And having diplomatic disagreements flare up if you don't tolerate religion is natural.

My only other thought is to not complicate it too much. I'm not accusing you of that, just expressing my own opinion that one thing civ does right is keep the mechanics simple so they're easy to learn and play with. I've played other games where they make such complicated religion and culture and dynasty systems that it's overwhelming.

Agreed. I feel like religion should ideally be like gold in these games - a flexible engine for pushing for other victories, but not a victory in and of itself.

I actually like it as a VC. Historical parallels exist in all 3 of the monotheistic religions, where 1000 years of people after the Messiah returns or the global Caliphate is proclaimed, etc. Convincing the whole world to adopt your spiritual view of the world would be quite a feat. It's a peaceful version of the Domination game, if you think about it. Games are not won by all the VCs, but just the one that gets done first. Religion can easily stagnate, just like Domination, and if it does, there are other options. The one I'd like to see added is an economic VC. I miss that one from old school Alpha Centauri, and with the corporations mode add-on, I thought they laid a lot of groundwork for how to do such a thing.

I don't think it hurts to offer the option as a field of human endeavor, to convince the whole world to share one set of spiritual beliefs, even if the game is won by other means most of the time.
 
I really don't think it does 'cheat'. Maybe I'm too naive (I mean, I definitely am. That's me), but 982 hours and I've never caught it cheating, except in ways that are documented in the wiki, such as the difficulty bonuses.
 
I spam late game. Can confirm it's possible though someone check my figures below to see if I made any mistakes.

I agree that victories should have an active component, what makes it tedious is that I'm spamming the same unit over and over with mostly the same promotions if not always the same promotions. And there's no deployment strategy like with rock bands, I can always get in, fighting my spam units in your territory just gives me more religious spread, it's basically make a bigger faith economy and click next turn over and over but with the added tedium of ordering units once when they're created and once when they arrive (and occasionally dragging them on top of AI faith units). There's no strategy here, it's basically doom stacks from older civ games except not literal stacks. IDK faith victory is not my bag and I hated going after these achievements the most but I am repeating others at this point.

Anyway a well placed (mountains and wonders or at least districts and trees) holy site with trade routes going through it will get you max 15 FPT (+1 for each trade route past the first). That's a specialist (2) a shrine (2) a temple (4) an adjacent 1 tile natural wonder (2) 4 adjacent mountains (4) and 1 for each trade route. You will never have a +6 adjacency bonus but you will almost definitely have at least 2 trade routes going through so 15 is a good average. Lots of tile improvements and luxuries give you faith, some of them like the colossal heads absurd faith (and tourism). Even with an AI, faith/cash playstyles play wide even when the AI is doing it at least so all the city-states are reachable, so you'll have added passive income beyond roughly 50 FPT/city and a lot of cities by midgame. Additionally your delegates - and thanks to medieval faires delegate spam is how basically everyone jump starts their midgame economy - are grabbing you 6 faith (with diplomatic quarter) from religious city states. All of this hasn't even taken into account religious buildings so add another 3 to each city I just mentioned. What I'm saying is several hundred FPT even on quick speed is easily feasible. And since cost increases comparing marathon to internet speed are just 6:1 and you increase faith output much more than 6 times as fast, especially once you have traders, this means that the faster the game speed, the more faith you effectively have; things are 1/6th the price but you have much more than 1/6th the output when 1/6th the turns have passed.

What I'm saying is apostle spam is realistic and something I and other players do frequently. Or at least used to before things like voidsingers were introduced to the game. Even with secret societies though if you're playing owls, or even without a society if your leader gives you any kind of faith... basically there are a lot of ways to produce a ridiculous amount of money and faith and in civ 6 money and faith are how you win. So we should not be surprised when the AI is doing it.

Honestly... in the late game the AI can't really keep up. Don't even bother with the inquisitor strategy people usually recommend. Keep a buff apostle or two in your city and wait for the AI to spam you and kill their apostles, each one that dies gives you more you-faith and keeps the AI busy feeding more hamburger into your meatgrinder. I consider manipulating a faith-happy AI the 2nd easiest way to win, 2nd only to slowing the game down to marathon speed and focusing on diplomacy (which was easy mode for deity victories in civ 5 as well).

So I guess TL;DR if you want the AI to get less spammy and want your religion to have a chance to survive without you having to devote a lot of attention to it, just slow the game speed down to marathon and make the apostles effectively dramatically more expensive.

Bear in mind though that all units move 6 times as fast in marathon speed.
 
It's not that much. I always have a lot more missionaries than AI.

The real reason they have tons of apostles is because 1) they rarely die as they retreat as soon as HP is low, and 2) they're rarely used to convert. Once you start killing them, you'd realize AI's capability to replenish religious units is no better than yours.
 
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