Could Religion be any worse?

[Pretoryan]

With everything that is bad about the game, this system is absolutely the worst. The claim was that they want to remove excessive micromanagement from the game so they removed fun systems like Builders and such, but Religion man...

All there is to do is counter-spam missionaries against the AI who will do the same, and constantly click on every single city in order to convert, just to be converted back in a couple of turns by other religions. No religious pressure, no way to maintain any kind of control over your empire or other parts of the map.

Am I missing something or is it really this bad? This mechanic is so far the only thing I made me completely want to ignore it and have nothing to do with it because its so tedious and mindless...

[monkeypunch87]

Yeah, I miss religious pressure. Always loved the passive spread of my religions.

[martinolund]

You're doing it wrong. Here is what you do. If you want to convert 20 cities then build 40 missionaries (yes, it's an overkill) and then station two of them at each city, one on an urban tile and one on a rural tile.

Then, do nothing, wait until the last turn of the age before the age ends and active them all and now you will have 100% your religion everywhere and you can use all those benefits in the next age (assuming you take the right legacy points for the next age setup).

OK sure, it won't help you during the current age but the bonuses they provide are pretty meaningless anyway (vs all other bonuses you can focus on instead) but it does preserve your sanity with this game-play loop

[Evrach]

Never underestimate how worse things can be.

[Pretoryan]

Originally posted by martinolund:

You're doing it wrong. Here is what you do. If you want to convert 20 cities then build 40 missionaries (yes, it's an overkill) and then station two of them at each city, one on an urban tile and one on a rural tile.

Then, do nothing, wait until the last turn of the age before the age ends and active them all and now you will have 100% your religion everywhere and you can use all those benefits in the next age (assuming you take the right legacy points for the next age setup).

OK sure, it won't help you during the current age but the bonuses they provide are pretty meaningless anyway (vs all other bonuses you can focus on instead) but it does preserve your sanity with this game-play loop

That sounds like a brilliant idea actually :D I appreciate that :)
Also it makes me very sad that it just kind of shows how terrible the system is :) Glad to know I'm not the only one loosing my mind with this

[Römsen]

Originally posted by martinolund:

You're doing it wrong. Here is what you do. If you want to convert 20 cities then build 40 missionaries (yes, it's an overkill) and then station two of them at each city, one on an urban tile and one on a rural tile.

Then, do nothing, wait until the last turn of the age before the age ends and active them all and now you will have 100% your religion everywhere and you can use all those benefits in the next age (assuming you take the right legacy points for the next age setup).

OK sure, it won't help you during the current age but the bonuses they provide are pretty meaningless anyway (vs all other bonuses you can focus on instead) but it does preserve your sanity with this game-play loop

Do the values of religions still play a role at all in the third age? I guess not, otherwise you would still have to be able to fight on that level... and if they still count but can no longer be changed, then it just shows how broken the current system is...

[Lord Haart]

Religion and imo diplo are the worst things and some that have put LOADS @ our place off.

[monkeypunch87]

Originally posted by Römsen:

Originally posted by martinolund:

You're doing it wrong. Here is what you do. If you want to convert 20 cities then build 40 missionaries (yes, it's an overkill) and then station two of them at each city, one on an urban tile and one on a rural tile.

Then, do nothing, wait until the last turn of the age before the age ends and active them all and now you will have 100% your religion everywhere and you can use all those benefits in the next age (assuming you take the right legacy points for the next age setup).

OK sure, it won't help you during the current age but the bonuses they provide are pretty meaningless anyway (vs all other bonuses you can focus on instead) but it does preserve your sanity with this game-play loop

Do the values of religions still play a role at all in the third age? I guess not, otherwise you would still have to be able to fight on that level... and if they still count but can no longer be changed, then it just shows how broken the current system is...

As the post said, you need to take the right legacy option during the transition.

[RamboRusina]

Yeah, it's the worst religion system in the series. Boring bonuses, only effecting foreign towns for some arbitrary reason, you gotta manually spread it and it's forced down your throat as part of era goals. Excessive micromanagement is precisely the name of the game with civ 7. Nothing is automated and fluent, instead everything has been made into a chore.

[monkeypunch87]

Originally posted by RamboRusina:

Yeah, it's the worst religion system in the series. Boring bonuses, only effecting foreign towns for some arbitrary reason,

You can choose some good civics for bonuses on your own cities with your religion.

[Judicant]

“Could religion be any worse?”

Yeah it’s called Civ6

[Rhapsody]

Originally posted by Judicant:

“Could religion be any worse?”

Yeah it’s called Civ6

This tbh. The amount of micromanaging missionaries, apostles and relics is horrible. Vastly prefer the system found in VII. It also plays perfectly with the age mechanics. But perhaps the best thing is that you can ignore religion altogether and not lose the game in medieval or renaissance just because someone spammed missionaries and nothing else.

Protip: Missionary spam is not the only means of spreading your religion.

[Lemurian1972]

Originally posted by Judicant:

“Could religion be any worse?”

Yeah it’s called Civ6

It definitely started in a worse place than this did. They both need help.

[bizzarro1]

you can use trade to spread religion. but its a pita too as youll be spending lots of diplo looking to increase trade relationships. next game i play ill ignore religion or search for a mod that rips it out. i thought the constant apostle battles or missionary waves of civ 6 were a nuisance. this is plain stupid. at least make a unit that can kill the little bastards. i know, its a step backwards back to 6, but we didnt know how good we had it in 6 :/

[Judicant]

Originally posted by bizzarro1:

you can use trade to spread religion. but its a pita too as youll be spending lots of diplo looking to increase trade relationships. next game i play ill ignore religion or search for a mod that rips it out. i thought the constant apostle battles or missionary waves of civ 6 were a nuisance. this is plain stupid. at least make a unit that can kill the little bastards. i know, its a step backwards back to 6, but we didnt know how good we had it in 6 :/

7’s religion system is better than 6’s, hands down. Religion serves two purposes: generating relics (cultural legacy) and bonus points for distant lands settlements (military legacy). You don’t need to 100% spread your religion to generate relics or get the bonus military legacy points, you just need to target specific settlements. Outside of that, you can pick up some additional bonuses, but they’re not important enough usually to stress out about religious conversion. Converting settlements doesn’t even generate negative opinion modifiers.

Contrast to Civ 6, where it’s just domination victory 2.0, but with non-military units and you don’t actually get control of cities.

[orthostatic]

Originally posted by Pretoryan:

With everything that is bad about the game, this system is absolutely the worst. The claim was that they want to remove excessive micromanagement from the game so they removed fun systems like Builders and such, but Religion man...

All there is to do is counter-spam missionaries against the AI who will do the same, and constantly click on every single city in order to convert, just to be converted back in a couple of turns by other religions. No religious pressure, no way to maintain any kind of control over your empire or other parts of the map.

Am I missing something or is it really this bad? This mechanic is so far the only thing I made me completely want to ignore it and have nothing to do with it because its so tedious and mindless...

OP they should've just taken religion out. Every opponent goes first for growth and wonder build. And even when you kill them off you can't adopt their religion as your own.

So much stupid in this civ. I'm ashamed to have bought it.