The Value of Missionaries

[DudewithaWig]

I use missionaries quite a lot, and have found that even just one or two missionaries can convert another civ if you place them first in the capital, and then in the largest city (or second largest if the capital is the largest).

You have to do this before the mid-late game stages or it won't be quite as effective.

[RickD]

Who else would love to see a worker like option "Missionaries automatically move to nearest non-religion city and convert". Spamming missionaries is fun and profitable but it would be nice to remove some of the micromanagement.

[Nacht]

Originally posted by RickD
Who else would love to see a worker like option "Missionaries automatically move to nearest non-religion city and convert". Spamming missionaries is fun and profitable but it would be nice to remove some of the micromanagement.

How many non relegious cities are there after the very first stages? And whats the micromanegement? shift-right click, shift convert button and you never have to care for that missionary again. And isn't it fun to choose what city to convert?

[RickD]

Not when you have 3-4 religions and you are mass producing 10ish missionaries a turn to convert all your newly conquered lands and squeeze maximum cash out of your shrines. My goal at that point is to have EVERY religion I have being spread to every one of my cities, and every other civ I have open borders with. When I do this there are NO unreligious cities so I'm a bit confused about your point You have to account for the failures you will get too so you gotta build em in mass. Bigger, older cities are much harder to convert, and at this stage there are alot of those. That kind of shrine income lets you keep research at 90 percent (10 going to culture) and still make money, even with a huge continent spanning empire, muhaha. And even at the early stages when you are doing it for diplomatic reasons, most of the time if I'm missinary spamming I don't really care where they go, as long as they do their job quickly (the 3 limit is a real pita when you are trying to convert a guy 20 turns away with 10 cities, so due to the limit I want the missionary done with his work asap so I can build another)

[Lembit]

I've never known a missionary to fail in a city who's government has the Free Religion civ, is this due to the Civic or just luck?

[Hermann the Lombard]

Dominae mentioned the using missionaries in an offensive role, but I didn't see anyone mention the intel role even *before* relations go sour. Having "religious spies" often lets me know if I still have the tech lead I thought I had when I planned my attack.

[couerdelion]

Some possible contestors for better investments

The pop-rush/chopping of Oracle for a slingshot
Building a mine on the gold plains hill
The army that pay for itself because it grabs you a shrine city or three.
Oxford University/Wall Street building in your high commerce science/gold city.

But for standard builds, missionaries should be a regular build feature as long as there are cities around to be converted.

Perhaps then you want a missionary farm to complement the GP farm. What would this look like? Are we talking high food with slavery or perhaps even high food + shrine using the priests to do the building and get the GPs into the bargain. With Angkor Wat, I could see the missionaries AND prophets getting churned quite effectively.

[Urban Ranger]

I have just found out that you can't send a missionary into a barbarian city. Would be funny if I could.

Nice touch

[couerdelion]

Some data for you.

Two missionaries
Two successful conversions in cities with one existing religion. One of those cities was the shrine city although it did not have a shrine

[Hermann the Lombard]

Some more data: two missionaries, two Holy Cities, one with 2 religions and the other with 3. The "2" failed and the "3" succeeded (and the "3" was my capital, if that matters at all).