Spreading Goddess of protection

[cerk]

I have been thinking about a game as ethiopia. My general playstyle is peace and warring only when i need a strategic resource that is present only in enemy lands. So I have been thinking about getting goddess of protection and was wondering if i should spread such a belief to my neighbours and how it would affect my wars because I am still bad at offensive wars.

 

[CrazyG]

I usually don't give my religion to someone I intend to conquer, regardless of my beliefs.

You can still win a war against someone with the extra healing, you'll have it too. Spreading orders or defender of the faith to someone would hurt a lot more.

 

[cerk]

I was lucky in my game, the civ i fought against happened to be spain.

 

[Bhawb]

Spreading a religion like GoP is only an issue if you plan to war those people soon. I'd personally argue that a civ like Ethiopia would rarely want to war early except against a pushover neighbor, since turtling early-mid game allows them to get usually obnoxious tech leads which transition well into quick wars later on. And GoP doesn't make any difference when you can one-shot your enemy's units due to tech lead, but sharing a religion with neighbors gives a significant positive diplomatic modifier which can usually snowball into long-term friendship with subsequent DoFs, trade, etc. outweighing proximity diplomatic malus. That kind of long-term ally makes for an even easier turtling strat to snowball techs.