Missionaries don't work?

[EJMdesign]

It's not just me ... I've seen two Reddits on this already, and mentions on the Discord. My missionary in a settlement with a religion works fine in the city center, but absolutely will not work on any rural tile in most of the settlements I try to convert. Are the missionaries defective? Or is there a secret to making them work? Once in a while it works, but maybe with one settlement in ten. I’ve literally parked my missionary on EVERY single tile in the settlement, and been unable to get the second wave of conversion done.

Also, does it take repeated applications in rural tiles for conversion to happen? Several times when I have actually gotten the "spread religion" function to work, there's been no result.

[katzenkrimis]

Never had an issue with this.

People are complaining about rural tiles but they are easy to spot. They have very little development.

The urban tiles are cluttered with buildings.

[garravesh]

I made it through antiquity into exploration and saw a hint of religion.....must be playing the game wrong.

[TheNightglow]

oh wait, you can put them on the city center? I always played it like civ 6 putting the missionary on the tile adjacent to the city center and never had a problem
however I did run into an oddity that it didnt allow me to convert the same city twice in consecutive turns, so I didnt push out the other religion completely, it just always becomes my religion in a white icon and the other religion in a red icon....
not sure if I m doing it wrong though I just did religion for the conversion relicts, and the game gave me 16 of them so I was happy enough with that

[Early Memphis]

Originally posted by EJMdesign:

It's not just me ... I've seen two Reddits on this already, and mentions on the Discord. My missionary in a settlement with a religion works fine in the city center, but absolutely will not work on any rural tile in most of the settlements I try to convert. Are the missionaries defective? Or is there a secret to making them work? Once in a while it works, but maybe with one settlement in ten. I’ve literally parked my missionary on EVERY single tile in the settlement, and been unable to get the second wave of conversion done.

Also, does it take repeated applications in rural tiles for conversion to happen? Several times when I have actually gotten the "spread religion" function to work, there's been no result.

I have the same problem and can't find any explanation anywhere. I converted the city center of one of my own cities and my missionary has 2 charges left, but the "convert" command won't light up anywhere. I've tried a farm, a mine, a quarry and even bare ground - nothing.

[Rhapsody]

The only place you cannot move missionaries is in defensible districts while you're in war with that player.

Never had any issues with conversion myself. If the conversion action is not available, in current version of the game, it simply means that the tile is not valid for conversion because there is no population there or they have already been converted.

[Early Memphis]

I just noticed something when I converted another of my towns in the city center. The first text said "Catholicism Urban", then another text message said "Catholicism Majority" and the 3rd message said "25 Gold" - and the town now had 2 little crosses. I went back and checked the first city and it had 2 little crosses as well, although the little crosses were blocked by a military unit and I may have stopped looking after the first message.
I don't have enough experience with the game to know why I got bot urban & rural with 1 "shot" (and, of course, nothing is explained). Perhaps it's because I went to the city center? Don't know, but now I know why I couldn't convert on rural tiles, the city was completely converted already ... Rock and Roll !!!

[Rhapsody]

Originally posted by Early Memphis:

I don't have enough experience with the game to know why I got bot urban & rural with 1 "shot" (and, of course, nothing is explained).

It is explained in civilopedia and tutorials IIRC. When there's no religion present, the first conversion action will convert whole population.

[Early Memphis]

Originally posted by Rhapsody:

Originally posted by Early Memphis:

I don't have enough experience with the game to know why I got bot urban & rural with 1 "shot" (and, of course, nothing is explained).

It is explained in civilopedia and tutorials IIRC. When there's no religion present, the first conversion action will convert whole population.

Thanks for the confirmation. I don't know what you would search for in the Civilopedia (which is crap in this game). Nothing about this question is found under religion or conversion or anything else I've come up with to search for - and the "tutorials" generally aren't worth much either (nuts-and-bolts-wise). This game, like all-or-most Firaxis games is strictly work in the dark until you learn-by-doing. There's no "guide" you can purchase or download and, as mentioned, the Civilopedia sucks. It doesn't even have links (which existed but were sadly incomplete in Civ 6. This game should've been released in 2026 - after they finished it.

[Rhapsody]

*sigh*

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3447950329

[EJMdesign]

Originally posted by Rhapsody:

*sigh*

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3447950329

Yes, naturally I read that - multiple times. As I said in my post, none of that was working for me. I could occasionally get the convert function to be active on an urban tile, but generally it wouldn’t light up on ANY rural tile.

Except very occasionally it did. With no consistency I could find, and I tried exhaustively.

[Aluminum Elite Master]

Originally posted by Rhapsody:

The only place you cannot move missionaries is in defensible districts while you're in war with that player.

Never had any issues with conversion myself. If the conversion action is not available, in current version of the game, it simply means that the tile is not valid for conversion because there is no population there or they have already been converted.

Yep, the quote is right.

If at war, yes, some districts may not be able to be entered due to enemy unit presence or the fact that it's a defensible (usually, walled) district.

The only time I can't quickly scan and see if a tile is convertible or not is if it's a wonder... some wonders do kind of look like rural or urban tiles (in particular, the Great Stele wonder looks a lot like the unique Aksum improvement).

But the vast majority of the time, I can quickly pick out what tiles are which for converting. That said, if new to the game, I could see it being a bit more confusing, though, visually.

[gmsh1964]

Problem is that there are seemingly hundreds of these little tricky UI things that should not be tricky. Taken as a whole. these large amount of UI messups all contribute to this game presently annoying the crap out of a lot of us. I know its been said a million times, but Firaxis really needs to fix these things instead of going forward forward with more DLC's because this game may fail, if it has not already. And if it fails, we all lose. Man, I have been a fan since CIV 3, I am so disappointed at these guys.., damn-it!

[jariel]

i newer have had any problems with convertion, i think that maybe its just that the majorism all ready is your religion and some times if you have settlements close to other the tiles are actually another settlements tiles, and you can only see them well when you expand. Yes specially with religion the ui aint good, at all.

[Rhapsody]

The only thing I'd add is some kind of religious lense effect that perhaps highlighted valid convertible tiles and maybe even displayed possibility for claiming relics, for extra clarity. There's always room for confusion, but even like this, every aspect of religion is already much better than in Civ VI, from mechanics to interface. Each to their own, but if anyone claims the religion/loyalty pressure ticks or the cheese wheel segments in Civ VI are better UI, I'm not able to take you seriously...

[gmsh1964]

Religious Lens is a great idea.