How to convert my state back to my religion?

[DeadCoyote]

Hi everyone. So I got the religion and focused on updating it first instead of converting cities. And now all of my cities are converted to another faith. Is there a way to convert them back?

[tempest.of.emptiness]

A) If you have any religious units of your religion still alive, then it may be possible. Ideally you would want to convert a city with a holy site after having saved up enough faith to buy two more religious units (apostles if possible). However, waiting could be dangerous, since every turn more pressure is being applied to your cities and if you wait too long then conversion may not be possible. That being said, if you don't have enough faith to buy more religious units then converting one city might be pointless, as it will likely convert back soon.

B) If the enemy happens to have a lot of religious units in your territory, and you happen to have a lot of military units nearby, then you might be able to purge their faith from some of your cities and hopefully restore your faith to some of those. You would declare a surprise war and then kill their religious units with your military units, which will reduce the pressure of that religion in all nearby cities for each religious unit killed. Whether this is even possible is highly situational. Once you declare war the AI is likely to avoid sending religious units into your territory, and so unless there are a lot of them around when you first declare war you may not be able to do enough damage to their faith for any of your cities to convert.

C) If another civ has cities with holy sites that are still following your religion, then there is a very small chance that they might recruit religious units and use them to convert some of your cities back to your faith. This is not typical AI behavior, however - the AI does not generally buy religious units unless it founded their religion. So I mention this possibility only for the sake of acknowledging it, not because you should actually hope that it will happen. (In a multiplayer game another human might choose to do this for some reason, presumably if they believed that saving your religion would somehow increase their chance of winning.)

D) If another civ has cities with holy site that are still following your religion (as in C), then you could potentially go to war with them to conquer one or more of those cities. Once you control one you could buy religious units and use them to convert your cities. Once that goal is achieved you could even return the cities you took, if you like. This is a tricky one, because when you conquer a city it generally loses population, and that can affect what religion it is following. If there is no alternative then you might as well try, just be prepared for the possibility that the cities won't retain your religion long enough for you to conquer them - and if they do, they might convert to another faith at the time they are conquered.

E) If there are no cities left on the map that follow your religion, and no one has religious units of your religion, then your faith is dead. At that point you should make the best of the situation by looking for other productive uses for your faith. In the future, plan your response to other civs converting your cities accordingly. If all else fails, remember the military option as a last-ditch way of killing enemy religious units before they can finish converting all of your cities.

[Lemurian1972]

Originally posted by tempest.of.emptiness:

E) If there are no cities left on the map that follow your religion, and no one has religious units of your religion, then your faith is dead.

Only mostly dead. With Gathering Storm, you could wait until you get Rock Bands, earn the correct promotion, convert a neighboring city, then conquer it and bring your faith back to life.

Bringing your faith back with a Rock Band when none of your cities have it actually has an achievement. Spreading it back to the rest of your empire isn't part of the achievement, but it seems more than possible at that point, even if it's a little far-fetched.

[󰀈 McSpicy 󰀈]

This is why I invest on inquisitors and leave them in my cities. When the enemy religious units have expended all their charges on my territory I just do a quick flush out with 1 charge of [Remove Heresy] from each of my inquisitors.

[tempest.of.emptiness]

Originally posted by Lemurian1972:

Only mostly dead. With Gathering Storm, you could wait until you get Rock Bands, earn the correct promotion, convert a neighboring city, then conquer it and bring your faith back to life.

Bringing your faith back with a Rock Band when none of your cities have it actually has an achievement. Spreading it back to the rest of your empire isn't part of the achievement, but it seems more than possible at that point, even if it's a little far-fetched.

Oh, I didn't realize that a rock band could convert a city to a "dead" religion. Thanks for pointing that out.

[Dray Prescot]

Early in the game (particularly on higher difficulty levels), i.e. in the Race to get a Great Prophet and a Religion, investing in Religion is a TRAP that diverts badly needed resources for units, Districts, and buildings to something that almost never helps you win a game. So STOP wasting resources on it. ALL you should care about is keeping another Civ from getting a Religious Victory, and THAT you can do with a CONQUERED Religion from one of the Civs that you Conquer that their own Religion, Holy Sites, Religious Buildings and Lots of Faith Production that you can use to buy Religious Units of the Conquered Faith. As long as you can use those Religious Units to keep your Cities from being converted to a Religion threatening to WIN a Religious Victory, you can pursue a different path to Victory.

I used to put a lot of effort into Religion for a long time. In an earlier version of Civ I would usually try to get 4 to 5 of the 7 possible religions (each one gave the ability to build it's own religious building to help happiness in your Cities). But in Civ 6 it does not help you WIN and just drags you into a continual struggle with other Religions' conversion attempts. And I just got TIRED (recently) of that No Win situation.

[Ch53dVet]

When all else fails and your religious shrines and sites are nothing more than valuable property taken off the tax roles for the end game, there's a mod in the workshop called "Removable Districts" it allows your builder to remove the building and put the property back onto the tax roles.
I use it when my games aren't selected for the religious victory, yes, I'll still place down shrines, temples, etc... and try to establish a religion, however, my intent is to use the faith points to purchase units and buildings and when I get beat out of the race to get a "Great Prophet" and therefore a religion that's when I bring out the "Instant Urban Renewal" Builder for that "Disco 51" nightclub in my new Entertainment District, lol...

[tempest.of.emptiness]

Originally posted by Ch53dVet:

When all else fails and your religious shrines and sites are nothing more than valuable property taken off the tax roles for the end game, there's a mod in the workshop called "Removable Districts" it allows your builder to remove the building and put the property back onto the tax roles.

There are so many non-religious uses for faith that removing holy sites isn't really necessary, even if your founded religion dies out.

[DeadCoyote]

Thx a lot! Religion is not very intuitive in Civ6. )

[markb]

Hoping someone can jump back into this and help me understand...I'm in my first game of Civ 6 (played some time in earlier versions) and was busy fighting a war with a neighbour when I noticed another civ had set up a religious outpost or whatever inside the borders of my capital. I didn't do anything about it and so have only just (once the war was won) that my city has converted to the other civ's religion (Catholicism)! I am still at Pantheon/Working towards a religion in my civilisation, and I haven't created faith-based buildings or units. The nearby civ I conquered has a religion (Islam) so now my capital is one religion, my own satellite city I founded is nothing, and the three cities I captured from the conquered civ are another.

What should I do???

[󰀈 McSpicy 󰀈]

Originally posted by markb:

Hoping someone can jump back into this and help me understand...I'm in my first game of Civ 6 (played some time in earlier versions) and was busy fighting a war with a neighbour when I noticed another civ had set up a religious outpost or whatever inside the borders of my capital. I didn't do anything about it and so have only just (once the war was won) that my city has converted to the other civ's religion (Catholicism)! I am still at Pantheon/Working towards a religion in my civilisation, and I haven't created faith-based buildings or units. The nearby civ I conquered has a religion (Islam) so now my capital is one religion, my own satellite city I founded is nothing, and the three cities I captured from the conquered civ are another.

What should I do???

Did you look at the Great Person menu if there is a great prophet still up for grabs? If so, you can recruit that prophet to establish your religion. Mind you that a great prophet needs a holy site district for you to use it. it doesn't matter if the city with the holy site already has a religion. After founding the religion, the city that owns the holy site becomes your civ's holy city. You may then need to spread your own religion in your cities if you want to convert them to your religion. Keep in mind that if the holly city has been converted, you can no longer purchase religious units from your own religion so be careful.

You can't do much if all the prophets have been taken though.

[Edit] You can read the religion mechanics more in the Civilopedia.

[plaguepenguin]

Perhaps I have this wrong, because I mostly don't pay much attention to religion, but my impression is that a Holy City, the city in which your religion was founded, exerts some pressure towards your religion even after it is converted to majority some other religion. It doesn't seem to be much pressure, as the readings I got from the religion lens and city info indicated that my Holy City would convert back to my religion only after hundreds of turns, but my religion was dominant in no other cities on the map, so I assumed that small pressure came from that city being the Holy City of my religion.

[Complaintdesk]

I took a lesson from my very first game of Civ IV. My opponent was Frederick Barbarossa, and he converted all of my cities very early in the game. Of course from that point on my religion became useless, as I was unable to create religious units to convert my cities back to my faith. I figured out a strategy that I have used in every game since. Make sure to create your first city so that a tile with stone is within its borders (it can also be outside but on the border), and be the first to build Stonehenge. Make sure to place the God King policy card in your economic slot as soon as you get it and can. You will almost always be the first one to found a religion. It is also very advantageous to never completely drain an Apostle of all its charges. Apostles and religious units do not have any maintenance cost, so there is no downside to doing this. You can then place single charge Apostles around the outside of any city to prevent it from being converted. In one game I had an enemy that kept trying to convert a City State I was Suzerian of. I simply placed single charge Apostles on all the tiles surrounding the city, activated the policy that gave my religious units +5 in combat, and he got the message. Being the first player to found a religion is extremely advantageous in Civ 6, and there is very little downside to doing it, even if religion is not going to play a big part in your Civ 6 experience.