What are some good ways to ward off or check against religious victory?

[CoconutTank]

For the record, I generally play on King difficulty with standard settings, though I'm working up to trying Emperor.

It might be just my lack of understanding of how religious victory works, but it's likely the most frustrating victory type for me to fight against. Usually when I go about warring and taking cities, sometimes I'll end up defeating myself by taking a city and helping another civ win through religious victory. There doesn't seem to be any explicit warning or signs I can look for to determine how I should circumvent this "mistake".

The only short term solution that I know of is to build fresh cities that don't have any religion in order to offset the ratio of cities that are following a religion, before I go back to conquering. This solution sometimes becomes impossible late game, when there are no longer any tiles left to make a city on. The only meaningful long term solution that I know of is to completely wipe out the civ with the majority religion.

Are there other ways to avoid setting off a religious victory for other civs? I could try founding my own religion and maintaining it in order to create a religion bubble, but I don't find that particularly fun. Really wish it were possible to just deny religion or be less enthralled by it.

 

[Beaver79]

Turn of religious victory or found your own. People say founding your own religion isn't worth the effort, but as you are seeing you can lose that way.

When you found your own religion and your cities follow that religion, the AI won't convert those cities unless he considers you extremely weak (like very rarely). If you don't have a religion they will constantly be trying to convert your cities, so I don't know how you would stop that. I guess if one religion has a hold of you and is close to winning a RV, you could hire an inquisitor in a city of yours that isn't following that religion and try to wipe it out, but the AI could just come back and convert them again. They also can't use inquisitors/missionaries/apostles to convert you if you at war with them. So if someone is close you could war declare them and try to stomp out their religion in the majority of your cities.

It's tough to found your own religion on Deity without gimping yourself, but on King all you need is an early holy site and shrine and you would get one.

 

[Victoria]

Anything but Pangea
Small or tiny does not help either.
If you are on those then take out the religious enemies last

 

[Pure24]

Even if you do not have a religion, you can still build religious units of the majority religion in the city. So pick a city with a Holy Site of a different religion, build those apostles/inquisitors and get counter-converting.

Since you're going Domination, there are two other tactics you can employ.
First, you make sure that you strategically go about conquering. For instance, you're Kongo conquering the world. And then you find Peter, Saladin, and Kupe. Kupe doesn't have a religion, but the other two both have. What you want to do is take out the religious civs first - because as long as Saladin still has his religion as majority in his own civ, you're safe hitting Peter. Then take out Saladin so that your cities are divided between the two, and nobody wins. The converse also applies; start with the non-religious civs first. The key is not to mix and match. If you take out one religious civ and then go for the one without a religion, you risk the other one spreading his to yours while you're out conquering and them winning the RV.

Second tip is much more straightforward. Declare on the civ that's the closest to winning RV/is aggressively spreading its religion first! And then just condemn their units. If they were spamming them, it will not be long before the cities around them start losing their religions

 

[Datian]

This is a very sound advice, but in the end, if you do not care about the religious game, you might as well turn it off.
There's nothing worse than an involuntary defeat (religious) or victory (cultural).

 

[The Swede]

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/disable-religion-holy-site.643978/

 

[Pure24]

This is a very sound advice, but in the end, if you do not care about the religious game, you might as well turn it off.
There's nothing worse than an involuntary defeat (religious) or victory (cultural).

I kinda disagree. No, I'm not saying it's bad to turn it off... that's fine. But I think being able to 'lose' is part of what makes civ intriguing. It's not just about building your empire, but fighting off your rivals, derailing them, dealing with unexpected problems...