Using late religion and spreading that

[ntz]

Hi,

I have one question .. I don't understand how am I supposed to spread late religions like Christianity or Islam ... I am just playing for fun a 18 Civs Earth map and my goal is to discover certain late religion (Christianity or Islam) and just spread it worldwide .. Problem here is that after discovering that late religion and adopting that as a state religion almost every other nation starts to be pissed on me so I quickly come in `Annoyed' relations with most of the nations and then they eventually start waging a wars against me .. Especially funny moment is that even if I spent a countless hammers on building a missionaries and spread the religion to foreign cities then these other civs which are annoyed or cautious with me have greyed out my religion option (it's actually red-out in civ4 ) in diplomacy menu for converting saying `we don't like you enough' ..

So it's a circle ... And it seems to me that this is just broken logic and concept here because I would say that at least the diplomacy option `convert' should be available no matter on relations .. Sometimes it happens that other nations adopt my religion as a state religion randomly on their own but they love to switch state religion randomly later even few turns after adopting my religion and no matter that for instance I was able to spread my religion to ALL cities of that given nation.

Any thoughts or input is welcome and highly appreciated ...

thanks and regards, ~d

 

[sampsa]

Well, are you sure you are supposed to do that in the first place?

I think you can make it work by boosting relations with tech gifts or city gifts. You can use spies to force them to change religion despite poor relations (well unless I'm mistaken). The whole "strategy" doesn't have much to do with good play anyway.

 

[Thrasybulos]

I believe you can use Espionnage to try and force a conversion even if the option is not there on the diplomatic table?

I don't remember all the details, but an AI should favour the religion which is the most spread in its population. It will favour a self-founded religion (ie a religion it owns the Holy City for) over a foreign religion, though.
If there's still land available you could try gifting them cities with only your religion present?

But converting the whole world to a late religion peacefully is probably nigh on impossible... which I don't see as broken at all?
Why would a Buddhist civilization suddenly renounce its ways and become Christian just because you asked nicely?

Edit:
There is indeed something which could be considered "broken" with the game's religions: it's true that late religions do not play a role.
The first two religions will be the dominant religions in most games.
Sometimes the Monotheism religion can also become dominant.
In a few games, the next two might be adopted by their founder.
The last two never play a role as religions (they might be spread by someone going for a cultural victory, but that's it).

The option "Choose Religion" is there for those who'd like to play in a non-Buddhist or Hinduist world. But that's flavour-only (well, mostly).

So converting the whole world to a late religion might be a nice challenge, but it'll involve some
Score your attempts by the number of cities you've captured/razed, the fewer the better?

 

[AcaMetis]

The best trick to spreading religion is to gift AIs missionaries - not only does that let you build more missionaries faster, since they're no longer your units and won't count against your national limit of three missionaries (of a given religion), but AIs spreading religion to their own cities will do so without a chance to fail or without the restriction on spreading non-state religions if they're running Theocracy. Some AIs are also more likely to spread your religion themselves than others, I remember one game in particular I gifted Ramesses II a random missionary on a lark and the guy spread it to all of his cities in pretty short order. Guy must have been going for culture that game.

Beyond that there's nothing inherently broken about converting an already established religious world being particularly difficult to do, even more so peacefully. Per the game's manual it has seven religions because that was the most balanced number found during playtesting, and in situations where civs start off isolated it's much more likely that the first two, maybe three religions don't dominate the world most of the time. Although even than later religions can still play a role - anyone who's watched enough AI Survivor can attest to the fact that a civ conquering a random state religion city can lead to...questionable decision making down the line .

 

[ntz]

Interesting ...

The whole "strategy" doesn't have much to do with good play anyway.

well, it's a game, you play it to have a fun, to fantasise and imagine ...

@everybody

anyway, there are still some ugly concepts like for instance in general, why what the most that contributes to relations between countries are specifically religions and why the religions are in general so hostile to each other by a design .. And also as mentioned above I don't get the point of late religions because using them is going to only spark a problems ...

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

Late religion holy cities are great for stealing technologies. The downside is you have to run it yourself as the state religion.

 

[AcaMetis]

Religious hostility is actually leader specific, which you can see in Civ Illustrated #1 (Know Your Enemy). As for the point of late religions, mainly cultural victories I would have to imagine (which doesn't require running them as a state religion), but it's honestly more map dependant. If all civs start on a pangaea and have contact with each other before anyone founds the Monotheism religion, yeah, Divine Right doesn't stand a chance. If you're on a map where all civs start isolated you might want to shoot for a late religion to enable some religion specific bonus like Pacifism, if the (relatively) early religions have already gone.

 

[Gumbolt]

I suspect by time those religions arrive it will be a bit late. Earth 18 some of the AI will always be 1-2 cities like Spain. Others may grow big. Spending 40 hammers on a missionary would take 40 turns with a shrine to get this back. If you have no prophets then this would be hard. The religion may spread naturally but you would think most cities would of had at least one religion pending when you get the religion. You might be able to get COL from the Oracle on Earth 18. Then maybe use that and a temple for a Great Prophet. Stonehenge too would help.

This will be more about trying to have some fun rather than trying to win the actual game. On Earth 18 I am usually spamming units to take down the world. If you start in Europe most of the European AI could be dead by 1ad.