Theological Combat (answered)

[tryonedustbiter]

How do you defend against 40+ Apostles and about the same number of missionaries?

I was playing on prince, huge map, China with 7 opponents. Around turn 185, there is a huge army of apostles and missionaries marching across my map. Some of them stopped a my cities and began trying to convert them, others kept moving only to reverse course to replace those who had expired without converting me.

I had a stockpile of faith so I started buying apostles and sending them out to do battle. After my 15 one, I noticed that my gold per turn had dropped from about +120 to -140 and I was nearly bankrupt. I tried to get that back to normal but there were still dozens of enemy religious units all over my map.

It doesn't show ingame but is there a gold cost for maintenance of religious units?
Is there a cost in war weariness for doing battle with them?

How could I have better handled this?

[D3bs]

It's a tough one and I'v been in that situation. I normally have one or two Inquisitors and and the same with Apostles; the latter with a promotion that eliminates other religions when it spreads its own. I then rather cowardly keep them out of the way until the other Civ has done all the damage they can and have used up their Apostles then I convert my cities back.

I do this because I still haven't quite got my head around the theological battles and I don't want to wste my faith points when I can use them to buy buildings or combat units.

It's probably not the best solution and its frustrating seeing cities converted but it works for me.

[Paulytnz]

It's simple really.

1 - In each of your cities make sure to have a Holy Site.

2 - Keep an apostle sitting on or next to your Holy site (he will heal each turn).

3 - Keep an Inquisitor inside the city for emergency situations.

Now what happens here is the enemy Apostles will come and attack your Apostle. They will suicide on him and die as long as you DON'T attack with him. Just keep him sleeping and he will prevail. If the enemy is sending mass apostles it may be your Apostle dies. No biggy, just make another as soon as he dies or is about to. Be careful here tho the enemy will try to sit on your Holy Site. So try to keep yours sitting on it.

The inquistor you want to keep incase they do manage to convert that city. If so just use him to kill off the evil religion. Replace him if he runs out of charges.

Now here's the good part about all of this. When the enemy religious units die, their religion is wiped from your nearest cities by about 250. On top of that YOUR religion is increased in those cities by 250. So basically this is the same as a missionary being used for FREE. Each and every time one of their units die.

This is how you not only defend against other religions but at the same time actually increase your own religion at the enemies expense. Now if you can get your cities close enough to the enemy's cities, it goes without saying that this tactic can also be used to convert their cities without you even having to send in any apostles and using them up.

Just save your Faith points to replace lost apostles and Inquisitors and you will be golden.

To answer your question about religous units costing an upkeep - no they do not. It could be that you just upgraded a lot of units recently so the gold cost per unit increasing might have drained your gpt a bit. It also could be that spies have been stealing from your cities.

[tryonedustbiter]

Another question is how the AI can justify having 80+ religious units on the map at one time. I mean, if you have 10 cities, each with a holy site, you can generate 20 units per turn but I don't see any way that you could possibly build up enough faith to do that by turn 185. I didn't spend much of my faith and only had enough for about 15 apostles.

[Paulytnz]

Originally posted by tryonedustbiter:

Another question is how the AI can justify having 80+ religious units on the map at one time. I mean, if you have 10 cities, each with a holy site, you can generate 20 units per turn but I don't see any way that you could possibly build up enough faith to do that by turn 185. I didn't spend much of my faith and only had enough for about 15 apostles.

To answer this, basically the AI cheats and gets units for free lol.

[Twelvefield]

Damned good answers, Paulytnz!

[Azunai]

some random notes regarding theo combat (that were not mentioned i think) :

- if you can't afford mass apostles, use inquisitors instead. their base combat power is much lower, but they have a huge combat bonus inside your territory. for defense purposes, they are almost as good as apostles but only cost a fraction of the faith (less than half).

- it's always worth keeping apostles with the +20 combat promotion. those dudes are awesome. can almost oneshot missionaries. don't waste them on conversions or evangelizing.

- your religious units can also "heal" when they are adjacent to a holy site - not only when they stand directly on the site

[Dray Prescot]

Also religious units can not move through military units (except their own, of course). So if you are peace with their owner just from a line of units, and if you are at WAR with him your military units can attack and kill his religious units. Your religious units are normally stronger inside your own converted territory than his intruding units, and as long as they do not die, can be healed next to your Holy Sites, and eventually they can even gain promotions with enough experience. When they get promoted, you will offered a choice of one of several random skills out of about at least 5 or 6 possible skills.

Also because of the problem with religious units and possibly with raiding from certain civilizations, if I met another Civ a long way away from me while I am exploring I generally do NOT let them send visitors to my capital city (or to any other city either). Once you let them visit your capital city they now know where to send visitors you will NOT Like, i.e. religious units, privateers, spies, etc. In particular, this includes Norway and Scythia (probably Aztecs as well), and any other Civs that you know to have a large religion of their own, or to have conquered other neighbors. In the middle game, England with it's Sea Dogs could be an unwelcome visitor also (I have not gotten far enough with my current game as England, to see how effective the Sea Dogs are).