Religious Combat Strength Is Busted

[DEOVONTAY MCSLANGA]

So I noticed that the religious combat in Civ 6 is... kind of poopy. It took me a while to nail down exactly what was bugging me, and after a while I realized what it was; the religious combat is basically ripped straight from the balance issues Civ BE had, and that game was a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ turd.

Specifically, BE had a problem where disparate unit combat strengths scaled hilariously and exponentially. For example, a 100 combat strength unit could easily kill 4 units with 80 combat strength and not even lose half its hp. This lead to units feeling completely and utterly worthless if they were a single tier behind the one they were fighting.

Religious units currently follow the same rules, my Apostle with Debater can straight up murder 3 lesser apostles in a row without even having the +5 civic and not even blink. That means that my apostle with 120 religious combat strength is exponentially more valuable than a regular apostle with 100 combat strength. This is further exacerbated by the fact that killing an opposing religious unit gives you the equivalent of 1.25 missionary spreads to EVERY city in a large radius. Since my Debater can win three fights with ease, he is worth almost four missionaries and that is assuming that I never heal him, never use his spreads, and he dies after the three fights he just crushed.

My point is that what the ♥♥♥♥ were you thinking Firaxis? I love the idea of religion being its own separate war on the map, it makes the whole thing far more engaging than just found a religion and wait for it to spread. The numbers are currently ruining the entire thing, especially because the AI goes ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ham and cheats with faith. On difficulty 6 I rushed stonehenge as China and poured all my production into faith. I had a dream team of 4 apostles assembled (only 1 debater despite my prayers). They venture forth into German lands only to encounter literally 20 enemy apostles, literally more faith than every civ in the game could possibly have produced by normal means at that point in the game. I get that with a real army, fortifying and healing makes it possible to overcome odds like that. But when my apostles without debater are 100 and the AI apostles are 107 (+2 from difficulty and +5 from cheating and having civics 50 turns early) my apostles take a major defeat on every attack. It is literally impossible to win.

tl;dr
The combat numbers for religious combat units are ripped from Civ BE and that is a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ terrible thing. Firaxis needs to learn how to do math.

[Obi-wan Jabroni]

I like it. Since you cant heal religious units (at least not to my knowledge) taking a perk for 20 more strength is actually a worthwhile investment

[Astasia]

You can heal apostles by having them sleep on a holy site for a few turns.

I wouldn't say there is anything wrong with the system. You get random promotions for them, which means every apostle you get is going to have a random role to play, some are for keeping around and using in combat, some are for spreading your religion, some are for instantly sacrificing to add a religious trait or start an inquisition.

[DarkThug]

引用自 Astasia：

You can heal apostles by having them sleep on a holy site for a few turns.

Wow, I was wondering for awhile why civ6 doesn't allow me to heal my religious unit. The damn mechanic is so hidden. Thank you very much.

[Spire]

I think the Hagia Sophia wonder, and possibly others can heal as well*

edit: actually I may be mistaken about this, so disregard.

[Obi-wan Jabroni]

引用自 Astasia：

You can heal apostles by having them sleep on a holy site for a few turns.

Sweeeeet! I never knew this. Thanks!

[Paulytnz]

Just so you know guys it's not only Apostles that can heal and they don't have to be exactly on the Holy Site. They can be adjacent to it as well. So in theory you can have 3+ religious units all next to a Holy Site and they ALL will heal every turn.

Oh and also religious units (currently) cost no upkeep to keep them around. So feel free to use your faith and have a ton of them all near your cities protecting them asleep on or next to the Holy Sites. The enemy Apostles will ALWAYS target them rather that spreading religion from what I have seen. Thus they kill themselves lol.

[Spire]

引用自 Paulytnz：

Just so you know guys it's not only Apostles that can heal and they don't have to be exactly on the Holy Site. They can be adjacent to it as well. So in theory you can have 3+ religious units all next to a Holy Site and they ALL will heal every turn.

Oh I didn't notice that adjacent tiles heal. That is probably why I was able to heal in that wonder, because it was built adjacent to a holy site. So now I'm not sure about what I said with the Hagia Sophia earlier.

[Paulytnz]

引用自 Spire：

引用自 Paulytnz：

Just so you know guys it's not only Apostles that can heal and they don't have to be exactly on the Holy Site. They can be adjacent to it as well. So in theory you can have 3+ religious units all next to a Holy Site and they ALL will heal every turn.

Oh I didn't notice that adjacent tiles heal. That is probably why I was able to heal in that wonder, because it was built adjacent to a holy site. So now I'm not sure about what I said with the Hagia Sophia earlier.

Yeah that's probably what it was. I learnt this from having the Advisor popups set to "new to civ". A lot of useful info there for your first playthrough even if you are familiar with civ games. :D

[Rhudda]

All combat strength in the game works like this. That's why a seemingly measly +10 against cav is quite a big deal for spearmen.

[Helen Carnate]

Yup, build an army of Apostles, and kill off the enemy ones. Have the ones in back cover the escape of those that are low on health while they run back to the holy site. If they cant escape then hop to a city and spread that last charge you should be leaving so you dont lose any points.

[DEOVONTAY MCSLANGA]

引用自 Hagrid in a Hobbit Hole：

All combat strength in the game works like this. That's why a seemingly measly +10 against cav is quite a big deal for spearmen.

Not true, combat strength on other units scales linearly. That is why even without the +5 civic your 20 strength warrior goes nearly even with a 25 strength barbarian spearman. That is also why your slinger with 5 melee combat strength isn't automatically one shot by everything in the game. If military strength played like religious strength does, then your slinger would be one shot by virtually anything.

[DEOVONTAY MCSLANGA]

引用自 Astasia：

You can heal apostles by having them sleep on a holy site for a few turns.

I wouldn't say there is anything wrong with the system. You get random promotions for them, which means every apostle you get is going to have a random role to play, some are for keeping around and using in combat, some are for spreading your religion, some are for instantly sacrificing to add a religious trait or start an inquisition.

The issue is that those other promotions are mostly worthless compared to +20 due to the religious boost that you get from killing an enemy religious unit.

Pilgrim - Your apostle gets 3 extra spreads when he walks past a natural wonder, giving him a total of 5 spreads. A debater who kills a single enemy unit will trigger a spread on all cities in range, easily 5 or more on a standard continents map. However, a debater won't just kill one enemy unit, he can easily kill 3 without even healing thus equalling 15 spreads with bad play and even more with good play if you keep him alive.

Savage Conversion - Your apostle can waste his spreads converting barbarian units. Lol.

Orator - 2 extra spreads, see pilgrim for why this is terrible.

Indulgence Vendor - 100 gold when you first convert a city, also terrible because economy is much easier to manage in this than in Civ V. With no economy focus you can easily reach 50+ GPT with just a couple trade routes. With a heavy econ focus you can reach 500+ with mostly internal trade routes.

The only two that even come close to how good the Debater promotion is would be:

Proselytizer - Essentially acts as an inquisition and a spread at the same time. This is really good for overcoming enemy holy cities because you cannot normally inquisitor enemy cities unless you conquer them first. This may be a design oversight though, because holy cities are intentionally really hard to convert, but one charge from an apostle with this promotion does the trick. Down side is an apostle with this promotion only gets 2 charges.

Translator - Increases spread of your religion by 3 times the speed if spreading in a foreign civ. Really good because it essentially increases religious pressure, but again only gets 2 charges.

And even then, both of those have such limited uses that you can't do much with them. In order to effectively spread your religion you need to continually murder enemy religious units, and that is simply only effective with a debater.

[rhettrongun]

引用自 DEOVONTAY MCSLANGA：

引用自 Hagrid in a Hobbit Hole：

All combat strength in the game works like this. That's why a seemingly measly +10 against cav is quite a big deal for spearmen.

Not true, combat strength on other units scales linearly. That is why even without the +5 civic your 20 strength warrior goes nearly even with a 25 strength barbarian spearman. That is also why your slinger with 5 melee combat strength isn't automatically one shot by everything in the game. If military strength played like religious strength does, then your slinger would be one shot by virtually anything.

I think it may scale the same way when you get up near 100 CS though. Look at corps and armies for example. making a single tank into a corp only increases the CS by 10 points IIRC, and then making that corp into an army only increases it by 7. The 7 point increase puts it at 97 though, and that's actually pretty significant in terms of combat effectiveness.

[end_game_13]

It could use a little more balance. but remeber you can just one shot any apostle with a scout