Does anyone understand religion spreading?

[Brufus]

The game is super vague about how exactly religion is spreading, where to, how strong, etc. (at least to me it is).

If I'm trying to purge the religion of a foreign city, here's what I THINK I'm supposed to do:

1) Take an Oracle and keep it there which will slowly remove the dominant religion (in this case not mine)
2) Take a missionary and send them to the same city and start boosting my religion at the same time.

Not sure if this works because there's not a great sense of feedback in the game when it comes to spreading religion.

Here's where I REALLY get confused:

If I assimilate a foreign city that has a dominant religion, if I build a missionary, or any religion building there, won't these be pushing the current dominant religion in the city (aka: not mine)? I've been just sitting an oracle and a missionary (that I build in one of my cities) outside the city I just assimilated and am waiting for something to happen.

Any tips, advice, or just telling me how wrong I am would be appreciated. Thanks everyone!

[Being X]

In my honest opinion, you should just raze the foreign city and rebuild a new one. You don't have to waste several turns building useless Oracle and missionary.

I have two missionary and 1 oracle. It convert some pops but it failed due to the high population of enemy faith believers.

Genocide is the only way to purge them.

[Oaks]

Originally posted by Being X:

In my honest opinion, you should just raze the foreign city and rebuild a new one. You don't have to waste several turns building useless Oracle and missionary.

Wouldn't it take more turns to build a city up from the beginning again though?

[Brufus]

After probably 100 turns at least of sitting an oracle and missionary outside my assimilated city, the religion numbers haven't changed like at all. So, I'm either not understanding how it works (very possible - it's not ever explained), or the amount of progress is just so slow that it does make the Oracle and Missionary useless sadly.

[Morholt]

Oracle + Missionary combo from my experience can work on a domestic city. But it had quite a lot of my own religious pressure. As of foreign city, I'm just as confused as you are.

[Brakiros]

Well I did learn that Religious population gives a huge score boost and it's a requirement to have your religion up as soon as possible or you are erased lol

[zeddicul99]

I was really enjoying the game until I started trying to spread my religion. You can get a lot of detail out of the global overlay for religion. I am next to a city with a strength of 50 and my city has a strength of 66. I had a missionary preaching every turn in his city. But, my city is losing my own religion by the hundreds per turn and I went from 48% to 75% his religion in the last 3 turns. It is vague and makes no sense. I put the missionary back in my own city. Now it says it is denouncing other religions every turn. I am still going up fast to the other religion. Civs was quite clear on how and why a city was going up or down. The units that affected religion could make massive changes with a few hits that they had to alter the religion of a city. Weird and not well though out. I think I will focus on other games for a while until they fix things

[Brufus]

Originally posted by zeddicul99:

I was really enjoying the game until I started trying to spread my religion. You can get a lot of detail out of the global overlay for religion. I am next to a city with a strength of 50 and my city has a strength of 66. I had a missionary preaching every turn in his city. But, my city is losing my own religion by the hundreds per turn and I went from 48% to 75% his religion in the last 3 turns. It is vague and makes no sense. I put the missionary back in my own city. Now it says it is denouncing other religions every turn. I am still going up fast to the other religion. Civs was quite clear on how and why a city was going up or down. The units that affected religion could make massive changes with a few hits that they had to alter the religion of a city. Weird and not well though out. I think I will focus on other games for a while until they fix things

Not sure if this will be patched or addressed but I hope so. I've played a bunch of the game so far and understand most of it, but yeah, religion and spread is 100 percent A) Not explained and B) Not illustrated properly in any sort of UI element.

I get that religion is clearly a "side system" and not the focus of the game, but those verses are fun and really powerful that it would be fun to understand how to spread your religion or if it's even possible. We'll see.

[psuasskicker]

Agree completely. It’s one of two elements of the game (the other being the scout combat issue I posted about) that I cannot figure out at all. I have an oracle and missionary in three of another civ’s cities bordering my empire, both preaching/denouncing, and it’s doing absolutely nothing to actually convert population in conjunction with my own cities’ spread strength (which I’ve actively worked to make high). I don’t understand the mechanics of spread at all, and can’t find anything in the game or any tutorials explaining it. It’s one of the most opaque mechanics I’ve found in any game.

[skielb]

For me the combo of 2 missionaries and one oracle did the job. First in a conquered city, then in a foreign city at the border which was size 10 or so. It took several turns, but was finally successful. But the foreign city was also disconnected from the rest of its empire. Two missionaries alone did not help at all.
But it is really opaque. In my own city, I could follow the progress. In the foreign city, I could only see after a while that the dominant religion was changed to mine. I have not found if you can see anywhere more about what is happening and if you will be successful or not.

[oldschool]

i honestly thought it was just broken so i stopped using missionaries and oracles

Im playing with byzantine empire now, gonna try again with better units and will repost if i change my mind

[Renegatu]

I was able to do conversion using priest and oracle ... but you need some of them, for a city with like 10-15 province I used 6 oracle and 3 priests. It would be nice if we can group those priest & oracle in the same format with more power of conversion instead of having a lot of them moving around...

[Red Warrior]

Originally posted by Being X:

In my honest opinion, you should just raze the foreign city and rebuild a new one. You don't have to waste several turns building useless Oracle and missionary.

I have two missionary and 1 oracle. It convert some pops but it failed due to the high population of enemy faith believers.

Genocide is the only way to purge them.

LOL ....Ok had a good laugh now lets talk about the Religious conversion. You can build wonders which boost your religious growth..like Lotus Temple etc. So you build it in your city which has your dominant religion and then you build 5 to 6 Missionary and then send them to the targeted city and you gotta spread them like one prophet per tile and then give them task of converting. Wait for some more turn and then you will see the magic happening.Happy gaming.

[oldschool]

yea it works, playing with Byzantine and 3 oracles+3 missionaries is enough to convert large cities in about 10 turns. the ai doesnt like it, i had a neighbor i was allies with for the entire game in act 2 and they closed their borders to me....
not accepting zen as the 1 true faith was unacceptable so i had to eradicate them from the world

it seems like the oracles created unaligned pops, then the missionaries convert the unaligned to your religion. not sure about this however, just my impression

[Cryten]

I find it interesting that closed borders completely prevents offencive relegious spread, but you only get more verses past the intial 4 by converting enemy cities.

[Surge]

Originally posted by Cryten:

I find it interesting that closed borders completely prevents offencive relegious spread

Really? That's crazy.