Stopping religion spread

[kkapalk]

I am currently playing against Maya, and their religion is rife in my cities. I have a decent amount of my own religion in several cities, and the problem started with him sending a ludicrous amount of missionaries to my area. I declared war at one point as I was so fed up of this constant conversion. My problem is that a city, for example, has my majority (6 with 30 pressure) and an amount of his religion (4 with 72 pressure). He has stopped sending missionaries but the pressure is incredible. He has none of his cities nearby but the pressure is overwhelming. I have waited for my faith to rise, bought Inquisitors and cleaned a city of his religion. But soon after the city starts to slowly convert again. I have all the faith buildings I can muster currently, but I keep using it all on Inquisitors and seem to be fighting a losing battle. Would Missionaries be a better choice? I am confused as to the strength of his religion and have never experienced it this powerful before. I need to get the pressure down but am not sure of how to do it. I need my Pagodas, etc, but also need to halt this conversion because if left in the cities they do convert.
Thanks for any help, Kev

 

[Browd]

Screenshots would be helpful, along with more information about how many cities have your religion right now, your level of faith generation, what beliefs you and the Mayans took, and where things are with Hagia Sophia, Leaning Tower and the Liberty finisher. But it sounds like you are in really bad shape religion-wise.

Missionaries are almost useless to stem the tide of religious pressure that you describe. Multiple Great Prophets are going to be required to balance the pressure and begin rolling it back. Unless you have a path to generate 3 - 4 Great Prophets over a 20-30 turn span, you should consider abandoning your religion, saving faith to buy Great Persons in Industrial+ and finding another path to victory.

Remember that pressure in a particular city is just a function of the number of cities with your religion in range of that city (religion buildings and faith generation are irrelevant). Your city with 30 pressure is either your Holy City (30 internal pressure from Holy City status) or another city that is in range of your Holy City (6 external pressure) and 4 other cities with your religion (each exerting 6 pressure, for a total of 30).

On the Mayan side, the 72 pressure is either 9 cities in range with Religious Texts (9 x 8) or 12 cities in range with Itinerant Preachers (12 x 6). Either way, his religion is very well entrenched and it may be unstoppable.

If you are just down to your Holy City, you are probably toast, religion-wise; if you still have multiple cities with your religion, you may have some hope, but it will require very high levels of faith generation (20-30+ faith per turn, at least) and readily-available paths to generating Great Prophets (hence my question about status of Hagia Sophia, Leaning Tower and the Liberty finisher, if you went Liberty).

And ask yourself this question: even if you can balance out the religious pressure, is that the best use of your resources? The Mayans clearly need to be killed in any event. Consider building an army and start razing Mayan cities.

 

[plast]

Sorry to hijack this thread but I have a related question.

What is required for a city to exert pressure? I.e. will a city that has a majority of one religion and a minority or others exert pressure for just the majority? I think I've seen it exert for both when hovering over it, but maybe I'm misunderstanding the info.

 

[Jelster]

Basically, you can't, unless you generate more pressure yourself.

I now make shure I get a temple in veery city so I can build the "Grand Temple", and send a couple of prophets to either local CS's, or if early in the game and my neighbours don't have a religion, send them there.

Generating religeous pressure is really important for your beliefs to become effective. I generally have beliefs that generate happiness and/or gold, and the more people following my religion, the more happiness/gold I get.

One thing I would like to know though is how an AI prophet can convert my capital (with a population of over 25) in one turn. Best I have seen is around 10 followers at a time, and the city didn't have any followers of the other relgion in it at all before hand.

I HATE it when missionaries & prophets come into my lands, and quite often surround them so they can't go anywhere.

 

[Browd]

Sorry to hijack this thread but I have a related question.

What is required for a city to exert pressure? I.e. will a city that has a majority of one religion and a minority or others exert pressure for just the majority? I think I've seen it exert for both when hovering over it, but maybe I'm misunderstanding the info.

Leaving aside the Grand Temple exception, each city with a majority religion will export 6 pressure for that majority religion (8 pressure with Religious Texts, and 10 pressure with Religious Texts after Printing Press).

Minority followers in a city do not have any effect on the pressure exported by a city. Faith output has no effect. Religious buildings have no effect. It's majority religion or nothing.

 

[plast]

Thanks, so when you hover over a city to get the pressure info what you see is the pressure that the city is exposed to and not what it is exerting?

 

[Browd]

Correct. Each city only exerts 6 pressure (or 8/10 pressure with Religious Texts), so no need for a tooltip on that.

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

You need to save up for Inquistiros and place them in your cities, this will literally block any incoming religion that isn't the same as Inquistiros (I found this out when Holy City was captured and I plopped my inquistior and it literally did not convert any of their own people to the Holy City's religion but kept mine).

 

[Browd]

Inquisitors sitting in a few cities are great if your problem is waves of Great Prophets and Missionaries trying to manually convert a few cities deep inside your otherwise formidable religious walls, but do NOTHING to stem a flood of passive religious pressure. And burning inquisitors to reconvert cities that have converted to another religion due to passive pressure is like trying to hold back the ocean with a toothpick.

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

Strange, I had captured Catherine's holy city, plopped and used an Inquisitor, bought another one, and when it remained in the city her religion never came up.

 

[Browd]

Never confuse coincidence with causation.

You used one inquisitor to extinguish her holy city status, which eliminated the special holy city internal pressure, which is a good thing, making it impossible for her city to reconvert through holy city pressure.

Once the internal religious flame of a holy city has been extinguished, her religion can only spread back to her holy city through two mechanisms: active spread with Great Prophets and Missionaries and passive spread through religious pressure from other cities where her religion is in the majority.

By stationing annother inqusitor in her former holy city, you successfully deterred any efforts she might have been tempted to take to reconvert Constantiople to her religion with Great Prophets and Missionaries.

But what about passive religious pressure? After you conquered and zapped Constantinople, how many other nearby cities had her religion as majority? None? If none (i.e., she hadn't spread her religion beyond her capital), then mission accomplished! Her religion is well and truly dead.

If, however, she had spread her religion to a handful of nearby cities, those cities would have continued to export passive pressure to surrounding cities, including her former holy city. Whether than residual pressure could ever reconvert her holy city would depend not on whether you have an Inquisitor stationed there (Inquisitors do not combat passive pressure) but on how much pressure her other cities were exporting in comparison to the pressure exported by cities with YOUR religion.

 

[kkapalk]

Thanks for the replies. Browd, very helpful once again. I understand the mathematics now. I have looked and he has itinerant preachers. I chose the religious texts to spread my religion faster. Also he has desert folklore. Basically I am roughly centre of the map with the Mayans South of me. They have spread their religion to my Northern cities (the smaller ones), and now are working on my larger cities. I have around six large cities with a healthy religion, and I do like to grow my religion and use the handy Pagodas and Cathedrals. I have a good amount of faith being generated, but it soon disappears when I keep trotting out Inquisitors. Like you said, it seems a waste of time using Missionaries and Inquisitors as their religion simply spreads back again. The reason my confusion set in is that this is the first time I have experienced such a strong religion. Yes, I see your point about wasting my time and resources fighting a losing battle. This had actually started to sink into my head! It just is so frustrating seeing my chosen belief bonuses wiped out by another civ, as the religion aspect of the game really appeals to me. I did generate a great Prophet and sent him to convert the Mayan capital. He did manage this, but the Mayans and Carthage declared war on me instantly after this. I have weathered a long war and am now starting to edge into the lead, so as you said my goal should be the annihilation of the thorns in my side.
Thanks again,
Kev.

 

[Browd]

Sounds fun!

At this point have you just generated 3 Great Prophets -- the 200, 300 and 500 faith prophets, with the 500 faith prophet used on the Mayan capital? (That was a waste of a GOP spread, by the way.) How did you use him for his 3 other spreads? Did Pacal pick any useful follower beliefs?

 

[kkapalk]

I didn't get a chance to use the Prophet again, as the Maya declared war instantly after and killed him. Was this a waste of a conversion because they would convert back instantly? I have checked his beliefs and he has Desert Folklore, Purchase Cathedrals, Holy Warriors, Itinerant Preachers and Peace Loving (happiness in foreign cities). This last one would explain his constant conversion of my cities.
I did as you advised and produced a few Great Prophets. I sent them to a city state, Pacal's cities and some of my own ones. I noticed as you said that the pressure from his religion went down by 8 each time. I made peace with him soon after the war started, and set about Carthage, for a while forgetting the religion problem. I went back and checked the pressure issue after getting peace with Carthage and found the pressure situation had totally changed. He had no high pressure anywhere in my cities, and my pressure was dwarfing his. Good result then!

 

[Browd]

Wasted both because of the DOW risk (an AI aggressively spreading its religion gets angry when you reciprocate -- probably just as angry as we get when they do it) and because holy cities reconvert quickly from internal pressure and the massive pressure of surrounding cities.

I view converting a holy city as a futile gesture. Better to convert multiple cities between you and his holy city to roll back the pressure. And that sounds like what you did afterwards. Excellent!