Barbarians of Faith

[johnmcd]

Does anyone know if it’s possible to get religious barbarians? I’ve never seen a game where a religion spread spontaneously to a barbarian city but I don’t know if that means it’s impossible.

Also, if a city is captured by barbarians after it’s got religion does it keep it?

If the holy city falls to barbarians does it do anything to restrict the religions spread, are there any other consequences? Will the holy building be destroyed if it previously existed?

Lastly, has anyone ever seen the barbarians found a religion? I imagine it’s impossible in the game, but it’s possible, I suppose, that it’s just very unlikely.

[Cort Haus]

I've seen barbs take an AI holy city, and the religion was still in there when I took it from them a few turns later. I expect the religion would still spread.

[joncnunn]

I think it's completely impossible for barbs to discover a new tech -> founding a religion is impossible.

If you leave the barbs alone long enough they will build cultural improvements though, and that may include Temples if a religion spreads there.

Your best bet to see what happens if you leave barbs alone to to try out the map that features all civs in the Old World. By the time you can reach the New World, there will be lots of well developed barb cities.

[Kuciwalker]

You can't trade with a barbarian city, so you can't spread the religion to it. I don't know if a missionary could walk into an undefended barbarian city, were you to find one. Captured barbarian cities will no longer spread religion, because they can't form trade routes...

... or can they trade with other barbarian cities? If so, that could spread the religion throughout the barbarians...

[Enigma_Nova]

Sacrificing a Settler and a Missionary is a steep cost to test this, though.

[Proteus_MST]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
You can't trade with a barbarian city, so you can't spread the religion to it. I don't know if a missionary could walk into an undefended barbarian city, were you to find one. Captured barbarian cities will no longer spread religion, because they can't form trade routes...

... or can they trade with other barbarian cities? If so, that could spread the religion throughout the barbarians...

Would be the only possibility I could think of, i.e. that the barbs conquer a religious city and the religion spreads to other barb cities. As the barbs tend to connect their cities with roads I believe, that trade among the barbarian cities works like in a normal empire (and they also share resources if connected)

[djpsychonaut]

Originally posted by Proteus_MST
As the barbs tend to connect their cities with roads I believe, that trade among the barbarian cities works like in a normal empire (and they also share resources if connected)

The only time I've ever seen barbs building roads is in the New World on a Terra map. I'm not sure that the Barbarians are a full-flenged civ with internal trade capability etc. I would suspect that they are not...

[Proteus_MST]

Originally posted by djpsychonaut


The only time I've ever seen barbs building roads is in the New World on a Terra map. I'm not sure that the Barbarians are a full-flenged civ with internal trade capability etc. I would suspect that they are not...

I have often seen them connect their cities in my games, if there are more than one city in a large area hidden by the fog of war (as I prefer to play on large/huge maps, there are often unobserved areas large enough for multiple barbarian cities to develop).

Seems to be their normal behavior aside from developing the fat X around the individual cities

[johnmcd]

You don’t need to trade to spread religion, it’s possible for it just to appear in cities you’ve never heard of belonging to civs you’ve never met. I think it must be possible for you to trade with them tech-wise, but not knowledge wise. I’ve never seen that happen with a barbarian civ though.

I may start a game with just me as a civ, found a religion, get up to temples and monasteries to encourage the spread and then set it to zero tech so no more religions are founded and the warfare never escalates beyond warriors bouncing off walls. See if the faith ever spreads to barbarian cities. It should also be possible to kill all the defenders in a city and then try and march in a missionary, but my suspicion is that it will not let me as the computer will view it as an attack from an enemy which is not allowed to attack.

[Proteus_MST]

Originally posted by johnmcd
You don’t need to trade to spread religion, it’s possible for it just to appear in cities you’ve never heard of belonging to civs you’ve never met. I think it must be possible for you to trade with them tech-wise, but not knowledge wise. I’ve never seen that happen with a barbarian civ though.

If your religion already has spread to another civ you know this could be explained without problems by trade.
It could be that the other civ has contact to civs you don´t know and traderoutes are established between cities of this civ and cities of other civs you don´t know. Therefore your Religion could wander from City a (your Civ) --> City b (Civ know to you) --> City c (Civ unknown to you, but known to owner of city b)

[johnmcd]

Originally posted by Proteus_MST


If your religion already has spread to another civ you know this could be explained without problems by trade.
It could be that the other civ has contact to civs you don´t know and traderoutes are established between cities of this civ and cities of other civs you don´t know. Therefore your Religion could wander from City a (your Civ) --> City b (Civ know to you) --> City c (Civ unknown to you, but known to owner of city b)

Definitely that can and will happen and could well explain it on occasion.

I’m sure I played a game, a while ago now, where my religion leapt first to a city I’d never heard of. It’s possible it still happened through that vector though I suppose.

It may that if in my civ, city a is 100% Hindu and civ b’s city is 60% Hindu (but not actually converted) that can nonetheless act as a vector to a third city which may, for whatever reason, pop to 100% Hindu before the middle city.

The reasons and method of religious spread are pretty hard to fathom. Possible trade and actual trade affect the chances, as it would seem, do buildings. Roads seem to be stronger vectors than rivers for religious spread. The turns after buildings are erected seem to have a disproportionate number of conversions following them. Trading resources actively rather than just the passive +3 Rome or whatever does not seem to make a difference.

It’s all very mysterious, the Lord still moving.

[Quillan]

I'm pretty sure religion spreads through interconnected trade routes. I've had a number of games where my religion spread to cities I've never heard of and never found, but it was always in a case where I could trade with them once all the black fog-of-war had been removed. It was either on the same continent and connected to roads/rivers, or on the coast, but it has never spread across the ocean until someone developed Astronomy.

[The keeper]

No.

You cannot march a missionary into a barb city.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Proteus_MST
Would be the only possibility I could think of, i.e. that the barbs conquer a religious city and the religion spreads to other barb cities. As the barbs tend to connect their cities with roads I believe, that trade among the barbarian cities works like in a normal empire (and they also share resources if connected)

I'm not sure if they trade at all, though.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by johnmcd
You don’t need to trade to spread religion, it’s possible for it just to appear in cities you’ve never heard of belonging to civs you’ve never met. I think it must be possible for you to trade with them tech-wise, but not knowledge wise. I’ve never seen that happen with a barbarian civ though.

No. What happens is another civ's city had a trade route with the foreign city and spread the religion there. Or a missionary did.