More Awesome Than You!

Ok, so I have a religious civilization. They've pretty much lost the planet to their ally (a military civ) after losing 2 cities getting caught in the middle of a war between the other civs.  Now they have one city and a couple of spice derricks, while the other civ owns the rest of the planet.  No matter what I do, I can't get them strong enough to even convert one of the other cities.  So it's pretty much at a stalemate -- they won't attack me because we're allies, and I can't get strong enough to attack them.

Any way out of this?  Or should I just declare the planet a loss and move on?

All 3 starting types have a "win game" button.  If you get enough money, regardless of what else is going on, you can win the game.  For Religious, it's Uprising.  How much it will cost you depends on the difficulty level.

 - Gus

Ah, I didn't know that!  This particular game is on normal level.  I guess I just sit back and wait while the money roles in.  You know how much it is for the normal level?

I think it's like $16,000 per enemy city.  But I'd have to play Civ stage again at Normal to be sure.

 - Gus

yes, but you have to own 6 cities to use it.

As religious, I'd focus on taking just one city. Choose an economic with the lowest happiness. Save money until you can buy the maximum number of vehicles and then preach the heck out of 'em. When you conquer it, choose to keep it as economic. Then you can use the economic city to trade to takeover cities until you unlock the super power.

Remember, the more houses your civ has, the more vehicles you can get.

Unfortunately, I'm stuck in a small city with no room to grow (it's not my starting city), and all other cities are military.  I think I'm hosed...

I'd also reccommend building vehicles until you can convert another city. By the time I had enough money to use Uprising, I only had one city left, and used it as an easy win. Just build, build, mind your own business until you can attack someone.

Also, if you don't mind a small amount of cheating, using the "refillmotives" works similar to "maxmotives", giving fresh life to your vehicles and cities. Good when the pesky non-believers are trying to shoot you! ;)

The building cap on the secondary cities is low, and hence the vehicle cap.  I think you may indeed be hosed.  I think in your position I'd start over.

 - Gus

You win the game when it comes down to just you and your allies, normally. At least, that's my experience. Is there a single enemy city somewhere you're not seeing, perhaps because they're a single-city nation and therefore don't show up on the nation list? I've never had any problems with a religious Civ losing before, religious civs are very strong because their unit attacks are AOE and will massively tear apart enemy groups. It's much more likely to end up in a totally untenable position as an economic civ, if you spawn on a continent where everyone hates you and there is thus no one you can buy out (and thus no way to produce anything that can actually shoot or defend yourself with).

Every other city on the map is green (the color of my ally) as far as I can see.  I'll do a swing around the globe the next time I play that planet to see if there's a city that's not obvious. 

I would think that yea, if it's just you and allies you win, but in this case it's not happening.  Maybe an infamous EAxis glitch, eh?

Look for non-green, non-you spice geysers. Periodically I get cities that are so on the edge of that map that there isn't a pixel in sight.