I just lost a game to religious victory.

[ejnaneswar]

From now on I am playing all games with religious victory turned off. Here is what happened.

Playing as India on a tiny map with two extra civs (set up in advanced game settings) on prince level. I did not get a great prophet in time. So, no native religion for me. Declared an early war on my neighbor the spartans and got them. Then arabia bit the dust to me. Brazil, Kongo and Sythia remained. Sythia started spreading religion like crazy and was getting beyond 50 percent of 'religious victory'. So, I declared war, and to get to scythia, i had to go through the other two civs. Got Rio and got Kongo capital.

Then the unthinkable happened. I declared war on scythia. They were fighting with crossbows while i had modern armor and helicopters. Easy peasy. Two cities and their capital. Actually, i could get to their capital directly too, and my troops were moving there.

In the meanwhile, my helicopter was close to another of their cities, so I decided to capture it. And as soon as I did, the movie played and said I was defeated!! Seems scythia had 'majority religion' in my own civilization, thanks to that captured city!!

That was terrible. Actually, I never ever lost a civ game since civ 3 conquests. Thats because I never play above king level.. :D

This was the first time I lost a game, that too one which I was easily winning, and because of a wierd victory condition.

Now that sucks big ime. Its early morning 3:30 and I shouted so loud, the wife got up and shouted back.. hehe.

Just wanted to rant and share so that some patch comes along to some how not get into this situation in future.
Until then, NO RELIGIOUS VICTORY in my games.

So long. Cheers! And hope you dont end up having the same kind of a game loss as I did. :)

[Swade9wade]

Thank god I'm not the only one that had this happened to me. I was practicing getting used to this game. On my first match, I was going culture victory seeing that was my favorite victory type in the last game, I didn't focus on religion, and sooner then later pow I lost to a religion victory due to England.

[ejnaneswar]

So far four things I found.
1) That initial +1 faith helps with that civic card
2) Pantheon where every barb camp that is raised gives 50 faith
3) trading for faith bonus, not just gold
4) building holy sites and temples asap

Doing those four I am able to get the third prophet of the game regularly (iin all my games, i dont know why but there is arabia and fourth goes to them). 7 games so far. Just playing to get prophets as fast as possible. In a couple of games I was able to get the early wonders which helped a lot. In one game, I bought the prophet with faith as India (1200 faith and still no prophet.. so bought him with 920 faith).

Good luck with your efforts people! Previously, growth, gold, shields used to be the focus early on. Now, with this, religion seems to be THE thing to go for early on in the game.

[HeLLfire]

Gah, religious victories in my opinion is too much work. It's easy for the AI to send and surround your cities with tons of missionaries\apostles - but once you do it yourself it's just so much frigging hassle.

And back and forth with the theo. war, sigh. Atleast when you send troops you capture the city, and it's done.
But in religious wars it takes forever, and you'll have to fight for the same cities over and over and over.

[Ghuldarkar]

why is everyone talking about wonders and such, you could just get the Mysticism wildcard that gives +2 points for great prophets, then build a holy site and maybe do a prayer, and you should be set for a prophet.
I think some people haven't quite understood how you get a prophet. Prophets are not linked to faith, but are "normal" great people. In theory, you could get a prophet without any wonders and with no holy site without playing as saladin.

[HeLLfire]

Yes, the +2 Great prophet card should give you one on standard prince difficulty atleast. But that's just to get your started - if you want a religious victory on a huge map with very little war it'll be hell. Easier way is to just crush them all except one, and convert
him :P

[Ghuldarkar]

HeLLfire님이 먼저 게시:

Yes, the +2 Great prophet card should give you one on standard prince difficulty atleast. But that's just to get your started - if you want a religious victory on a huge map with very little war it'll be hell. Easier way is to just crush them all except one, and convert
him :P

Yes, true, but many were also complaining about how they don't get a prophet in their games even on easier difficulties.

[HeLLfire]

Ghuldarkar님이 먼저 게시:

HeLLfire님이 먼저 게시:

Yes, the +2 Great prophet card should give you one on standard prince difficulty atleast. But that's just to get your started - if you want a religious victory on a huge map with very little war it'll be hell. Easier way is to just crush them all except one, and convert
him :P

Yes, true, but many were also complaining about how they don't get a prophet in their games even on easier difficulties.

Aaah, yeah, if don't build a HolyDistrict reasonably fast, and buff it with shrine and later temple (they give GP points as i recall), you could lose out. But as you and me both said, get the +2 card in your wildcard slot, and you should be fine.

[merccobb]

I do find it funny that by conquering an enemy city, it can push you over the tipping point to follow that religion in your empire and hand the AI a victory. I like the concept of religious victory, but I think there needs to be some tweaking on the conditions to prevent absurd outcomes like that. Perhaps, after gaining the current victory condition, the civ then needs to complete a special project in their Holy City? That would at least give a player or AI a chance to defend against the victory by providing a countdown clock to either reverse the situation or take the Holy City.

[Panic Fire]

Daedrac님이 먼저 게시:

One thing I do to help guarantee a religion is that first policy unlock that grants +1 in capital.

Also for religious victory their cities don't matter, the goal is to have a majority of every other civilizations cities following your religion. Buy taking their city and making it yours you gave them that boost in conversions.

It's hard combating a religious victory if you don't have your own religion.

Not really, if you kill religious units it lowers there faith influence around there death. IE killing missionaries or apsotles will lower there religion around your cities. Doing it in there area will lower it around there cities. You can litterally kill there relgion by simple killing any religios unit they spawn with your forces.

[Ghuldarkar]

Panic Fire님이 먼저 게시:

Daedrac님이 먼저 게시:

One thing I do to help guarantee a religion is that first policy unlock that grants +1 in capital.

Also for religious victory their cities don't matter, the goal is to have a majority of every other civilizations cities following your religion. Buy taking their city and making it yours you gave them that boost in conversions.

It's hard combating a religious victory if you don't have your own religion.

Not really, if you kill religious units it lowers there faith influence around there death. IE killing missionaries or apsotles will lower there religion around your cities. Doing it in there area will lower it around there cities. You can litterally kill there relgion by simple killing any religios unit they spawn with your forces.

I think it only lowers in religious combat

[Paulytnz]

Ghuldarkar님이 먼저 게시:

420 Electric Love님이 먼저 게시:

Did you try "discussing" with the other cultures about converting your people? Since you were running around warmongering you might have been able to stop that insanity with a little diplomacy.

So far my experiences are:
1) they promise not to, then break that promise next turn
2) they promise not to, and keep that promise, but only because you have enough apostles/inquisitors to defend anyway.

What happens here I think is when you ask them to stop sending their religious units they do. However if any were sent to you BEFORE you mention it those ones already sent will still complete their journey and continue their action. It's like their leader can't send them the message in time or something lol.

There should be some kind of warning in game about this. Just something I noticed.

[yenkin2001]

For me I try to ensure I spread religion around so that does not happen. This Civ seems to be a lot of balancing in order to stay even with the Jones. It seems that many of the different winning strategies run counter to each other. Of course I work hard to ensure my civilization at the very least has its own religion and tend to kick out other religions, there are bonuses since Missionaries and Apostles are faith based purchases, they don't interfere with normal production of course the down size is you have to have faith generating at an alarming rate to be able to send them out. So this in turn affects how you might build out your civilizations. In some case it still makes sense to specialize cities a bit. But then you have to be careful not to screw yourself because if you need amenities and can't build an entertainment district you are pooched. Cities will rebel if you don't keep them happy.

[Ottofyre]

Mak님이 먼저 게시:

Not really. When it comes to military units, the AI is again crap on the matter. They were putting more effort into building religious units than building troops. And they never bothered to upgrade their units.

If the AI was planning on a religious victory then putting more effort into religion than military isn't crap, it's the right focus. When I go for a religious victory I keep just enough military to keep me from looking like an easy target.

Also, I rarely upgrade my units. Why does everyone keep saying that's wrong? Unless there is a sound reason to it's just a waste of money that could be better spent on something else. Never do stuff "just because". And don't make your strategy around hoping the AI doesn't do things you don't want it to.

You lost because you didn't pay attention and you want to blame the game for it. That's not going to help you get better. If you don't want to get better and just want easy games you can always win, that's fine - to each their own - but still don't come here and try to make it sound like it was a problem with the game.

The game defintely does have issues that need to be fixed but the fact that you lost when you weren't expecting it isn't one of them.

[Ghuldarkar]

Paulytnz님이 먼저 게시:

Ghuldarkar님이 먼저 게시:

So far my experiences are:
1) they promise not to, then break that promise next turn
2) they promise not to, and keep that promise, but only because you have enough apostles/inquisitors to defend anyway.

What happens here I think is when you ask them to stop sending their religious units they do. However if any were sent to you BEFORE you mention it those ones already sent will still complete their journey and continue their action. It's like their leader can't send them the message in time or something lol.

There should be some kind of warning in game about this. Just something I noticed.

that makes a lot of sense in a nonsensical way. That should really not be handled like that.

[Paulytnz]

Ghuldarkar님이 먼저 게시:

Paulytnz님이 먼저 게시:

What happens here I think is when you ask them to stop sending their religious units they do. However if any were sent to you BEFORE you mention it those ones already sent will still complete their journey and continue their action. It's like their leader can't send them the message in time or something lol.

There should be some kind of warning in game about this. Just something I noticed.

that makes a lot of sense in a nonsensical way. That should really not be handled like that.

Oh I do agree, more than likely an oversight.