Religion options seem incomplete and confusing

[Nicesociety]

So a couple of things i have noticed about religions in this game.
1.) If you use them they really do you very little good unless you are aggressively working to spread religion. Cities do not seem to convert organically, or at least i have not seem them do so yet.
2. AI players are way too aggressive with converting all your cities and send in massive waves of missionaries to do so. They can not be attacked, stopped and even if at war, they are an untouchable unit. There really should be a way to stop missionaries from entering your territory, make them attack-able or something. I should not have to constantly build missionaries to reclaim my own cities religiously.
3. I think you should be able to "close borders" to enemy religious units in the Exploration age and beyond, or should have better opposing religion options for dealing with them.

It is possible I am missing something as the game is so new, but honestly, it shouldn't be this difficult to figure out.

As a note I have played every Civilization game released- I do enjoy most of the new features, but the religion aspect is a little frustrating to constantly see notices about cities being converted with no real way to mitigate it beyond militarily crushing your opponent out of existence.

Please add more map options, improve the UI and consider refining the religion issues, as it seems like it was a very last-thought addition. I would also enjoy being able to have more control over the transition between ages more as well.

[Aluminum Elite Master]

Not saying it's implemented perfectly yet in Civ 7, but religion was also somewhat this way in Civ 6.

The initial pressure for a holy city was kind of weak in Civ 6 and you only quickly converted nearby cities if they were at just 3 population or less. Even on Prince, another civ could sometimes jump in with a missionary or two of their own and convert all of your cities except for the holy city itself.

Same with CPUs sending apostles or missionaries in Civ 6, too. There was no way to close borders to them, and you had to wait until your first city was converted by them to even warn them to stop.

Again, I'm not trying to totally defend the way religion works in Civ 7... but what I've seen, and what is described above, it actually sounds a lot like what I remember from Civ 6.

[iatus]

Religion was always a messy business in Civilization, 7 being no exception, after a while just decided to stop caring about this part of the game after the n-th time of reconverting my city to the true religion.

[Central]

as nice as closing the borders to religious units would be, it would not really work with the cultural legacy path, which relies on religion gameplay.
in mp games people could just lock everyone out of a victory path by closing their borders all the time.

[jodnus]

Originally posted by iatus:

Religion was always a messy business in Civilization, 7 being no exception, after a while just decided to stop caring about this part of the game after the n-th time of reconverting my city to the true religion.

Yeah, it is very spammy and not fun to even try to keep up with.

It is one of the systems I hope gets reworked in some way.

[Deadwinter]

Welcome to a scam game in alpha phase.

[Navy~]

yeah, religion feels like a placeholder. i convert you , you convert me , rinse and repeat.

Almost all the religious bonuses are about what the other player has in its borders, and not your own. like ? do i need to study how many desert tiles the enemy has in his empire so i can choose a religion bonus? Or how much jungle? if he built wonders or not?

Or if the AI place a city near a natural wonder? how do i quickly do that? oh i can't the UI is ♥♥♥♥. Manualy study the entire map to scout where the natural wonders are.

Or go for the +4 sci or +4 culture or +4 gold everytime and be done with it. yeah that works.

[jodnus]

Originally posted by Navy~:

yeah, religion feels like a placeholder. i convert you , you convert me , rinse and repeat.

Almost all the religious bonuses are about what the other player has in its borders, and not your own. like ? do i need to study how many desert tiles the enemy has in his empire so i can choose a religion bonus? Or how much jungle? if he built wonders or not?

Or if the AI place a city near a natural wonder? how do i quickly do that? oh i can't the UI is ♥♥♥♥. Manualy study the entire map to scout where the natural wonders are.

Or go for the +4 sci or +4 culture or +4 gold everytime and be done with it. yeah that works.

It seems like a round about way for endeavors based on what you know about rival territory.

I was able to get a bonkers amount of science knowing my neighbor had lots of tropical tiles, selecting +1 science for every tropical tile in foreign settlements, and converting them.

So keeping your settlements to your religion is less about the advantages it confers to you, so much as it is denying rivals from having advantages based on what is in your territory.

[jodnus]

Originally posted by Central:

as nice as closing the borders to religious units would be, it would not really work with the cultural legacy path, which relies on religion gameplay.
in mp games people could just lock everyone out of a victory path by closing their borders all the time.

I could see it being balanced out with a diplomatic action. Might as well use a system that is already there?

Spend influence => Stop spread of your religion in my citities unless rival negates with influence.

[Xenpo]

Gotta be honest, if they found a way to work religion into the game without having to use units, I would enjoy that part much better.

While I did enjoy it in 6, micromanaging religious units was a cluster of Monty Python Holy Hand Grenade proportions.

[Das_Daw]

Originally posted by Nicesociety:

So a couple of things i have noticed about religions in this game.
1.) If you use them they really do you very little good unless you are aggressively working to spread religion. Cities do not seem to convert organically, or at least i have not seem them do so yet.
2. AI players are way too aggressive with converting all your cities and send in massive waves of missionaries to do so. They can not be attacked, stopped and even if at war, they are an untouchable unit. There really should be a way to stop missionaries from entering your territory, make them attack-able or something. I should not have to constantly build missionaries to reclaim my own cities religiously.
3. I think you should be able to "close borders" to enemy religious units in the Exploration age and beyond, or should have better opposing religion options for dealing with them.

1. Yes the game is very much pushing the player for conflict, way more than in Civ VI. There are almost no perks that work on you and what you do (like in civ vi). It is all just about forcing you outward. Same with the exploration age: You are very much incentivised to expand and quarrel over the new world. I get why players feel that they are irritated, because in many aspects the game doesn't allow you to focus on yourself.

2. You are also correct, AI was absolutely flooding missionaries and it was just unfun busy work to try to counter it. And even though the "religious combat system" of civ VI wasn't perfect or all that fun, at least it did provide you with means to counter enemy missionaries. Now it is just a boring flooding the zone.

Also there are no helpful map overlays and religion is only relevant for a third of the game. That is the problem with the age mechanic: If you do not start early, you don't have to bother at all with religion. Like many things in this game it does not feel like you are continuously building something, but spam and rush to meet some benchmarks.

[Lord451]

I hate the religion system here. It's not fun to engage in, it just involves spamming a unit over and over. There's no counterplay, you can't do anything against them, you can't build anything. It's just "who devotes the most gold/production to it." And the religions themselves are bad. I have to decide "what's the best religion I can create FOR OTHER FACTIONS to have." It's not about me, or my empire. My religion is entirely geared towards foreigners living abroad. WTF?

[nonya0992]

The way the AI spams missionaries is game breaking. I have to re-convert at least one city every turn at minimum. The missionary units are nearly invincible and have no boundaries. The AI knows this and chooses to use that as its main source of attack. This mechanic needs a complete rewrite and I hope the devs see this thread and hundreds like it. Its game breaking and emersion breaking. Wish we could just disable it like we could in Civ 5.

[DadouXIII]

Originally posted by Xenpo:

Gotta be honest, if they found a way to work religion into the game without having to use units, I would enjoy that part much better.

While I did enjoy it in 6, micromanaging religious units was a cluster of Monty Python Holy Hand Grenade proportions.

That's where I stand too.
In general, the less units to micromanage around the map, the better.

[Mr. Lahey]

It's exactly like real religion, a whole lot of BS mantras, crap nobody follows, fanaticism, hypocrites along with a bunch of David Koresh's and Jim Jones. So yeah, it is pretty realistic in the game. So far from as much as I've played this newest version, which admittedly isn't a lot I do have one question, why does this game seem to penalize you for making your country non religious. Finland, Sweden all of those countries are not very religious and the people are very happy,

[Bandit17]

I'm just guessing here but I have a feeling we might get a meatier Religion update/DLC in the future. What we have now is what I would call "Good enough for version 1.0."

That being said I actually prefer this version to Civ 6 which was too micro intensive for my tastes. In Civ 7 I don't have to care about my cities being converted because maybe I plan to go the Tolerance route or if I want kick-ass science I can pick beliefs that support this tactic and spam my religion on the AI at the end of the Era when most of my cities have nothing to do anyways. Starting the Modern Era with godly science (pun intended).

I just find this version of Religion to be as micro intensive as the user wishes it to be compared to previous versions where you felt FORCED to focus on it early to get the juicy buffs and later micro it or the AI could pull off a Religion Victory.