Missionary fails to spread religion

[ybrevo]

Great posts!

And thanks to all of you for discussing this missionary misery - or mission completed issue.

Sometime in the future (Hollywood and Broadway age) we might even get missionaries to convert people to Rambo, Bob Dylan or Baywatch.

Will it work? I think so ;-)

ybrevo

[rah]

I thought when you try to spread a non-state religion in a civ under theocracy, the religion icon stayed gray and couldn't be selected, so the missionary can't fail since it can't attempt it.

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Originally posted by rah
I thought when you try to spread a non-state religion in a civ under theocracy, the religion icon stayed gray and couldn't be selected, so the missionary can't fail since it can't attempt it.

The code logic is a little bit more specific than that - there's a check for "does this city belong to a member of my team" that excuses the further check "does the city's civics prevent non state religions".

So while you can't spread a non state religion to his cities, you can spread a non state religion to your cities... and if you gift the missionary to him, he can spread the non state religion to his cities.

See CvUnit::canSpread


The piece I haven't verified for a while is whether he will use the missionary you gift to him; it is possible that he will disband it instead. But if he does try to use it, he has the same chances of success that would arise were he not running theocracy.

[Theben]

Originally posted by CyberShy

You can't even spread a non-state religion to your own cities under theocracy.

False. I've done it many times.

[snoopy369]

In fact, will it allow you to gift him the unit? I may be remembering things that aren't in the game or are pre-3.13 patch, but I thought there are certain conditions that cause the AI to not accept a gifted missionary/corp exec...

[rah]

Good info. Please confirm on the gifting, since I've never tried that before.

[wodan11]

You can definitely gift missionaries to AIs running Theocracy. The AI will almost always use it in their own cities. Some AIs won't, and I don't know why, but it probably has something to do with their idiosyncrasies.

Wodan

[joncnunn]

Most of the time, if you go to the trouble of locating the missonary in the city you want the AI to use it before gifting it wil immedately use it in that city.

But sometimes the AI thinks it can better use it in another city and sends it there instead.

[Robert]

I wonder if it's meant to be that you can use non state-religion missionaries in your own cities during theocracy.
Was it possible before BtS? Maybe it's a bug.

It's a bit weird that a governament that forbids other religions can spread other religions itself.

[Solomwi]

I didn't think it was possible before BtS, but will confirm that it's possible in BtS. I was happily spreading several religions and building monasteries in my last game, when all of a sudden it hit me that I had been in Theocracy the entire time. Maybe it's a recognition that even theocratic governments can have their reasons for spreading another religion (government still has complete control over religion in the empire), or a recognition that with certain religious aspects as time-dependent as they are (think obsolete monasteries), keeping the player from deliberately spreading a non-state religion detracts from the fun of the game. Either way, I like the change.

[ybrevo]

And there he went - the fourth missionary in an attempt to spread his religion to one of my three cities which I hope will become legendary in the quest for culture victory. And he failed too ...

If this really is random, I think I am up against odds that just make this kind of victory strategy annoying, to say the least.

Have anyone of you lost four missionaries in a row in this kind of situation? I am playing the Vanilla version, and I am NOT in the Theocracy civic.

ybrevo

[couerdelion]

Re: Missionary fails to spread religion

Originally posted by ybrevo
Im am trying to go for a culture victory for the first time, and therefore I am building quite a few missionaries to spread as many religions to my 3 major cities as possible (I have founded hinduism, konfucianism and taoism myself). Now, the most annoying thing is when they fail, because I can´t see the reason why they should.

Does anyone here have some good advise how to avoid lousy missionaries who can´t do their job?
Is there something I have overlooked - eg. in my choice of civics?

ybrevo

It's damned annoying, I can tell you, when your free missionary fails and you are going the cultural route.

It has happened to me with both of the later religions that I founded in my current game and I wanted to use the missionary in a decent production city located centrally. Same city – same result and there is nothing for it but to build one from scratch.

What’s a little annoying now is that my Islamic holy city was a small filler city located near a river with relatively little production. I rather wanted to use the whip for getting basic infrastructure up and running but it seems now that I will need to get myself another missionary to start the ball rolling again.

I think the general message with third or later religions is that it takes a little perseverance for that extra 50% culture – but +250% to +300% is not actually that huge. Having said that, I still contest that the failure of that first Christian missionary set back the tide of the religion by over 200 years.

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Originally posted by ybrevo
Have anyone of you lost four missionaries in a row in this kind of situation? I am playing the Vanilla version, and I am NOT in the Theocracy civic.

It's probably happened to a lot of players - the odds of putting all seven religions into a city, without ever needing more than four missionaries to convert successfully, are about 7:1 in favor. In other words, 1 city in 8 will need more than four missionaries to convert the city to one of the religions.

So if you were always trying to put all of the religions into your three cultural cities, you'd see four (or more) consecutive failures by your missionaries about one game in three.

[Blaupanzer]

Originally posted by VoiceOfUnreason


It's probably happened to a lot of players - the odds of putting all seven religions into a city, without ever needing more than four missionaries to convert successfully, are about 7:1 in favor. In other words, 1 city in 8 will need more than four missionaries to convert the city to one of the religions.

So if you were always trying to put all of the religions into your three cultural cities, you'd see four (or more) consecutive failures by your missionaries about one game in three.

Based on what? Is this in the code, in a file? If so, tell us which one. If not, what is the basis of this set of "statistics?"

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Originally posted by Blaupanzer


Based on what? Is this in the code, in a file? If so, tell us which one. If not, what is the basis of this set of "statistics?"

The formulas for determining the probability of a successful conversion by a single missionary are contained in CvUnit::spread() in CvUnit.cpp (at least, the last time I checked - more than a year ago - everything you needed was there).

The jump from failure rates of a single missionary to "how often do we see four missionaries in a row fail when cramming all seven religions into a city" is a classroom exercise in probability theory (treat each attempted conversion as an independent non deterministic event, then figure out how to combine them).