Having just completed a religious victory with the Malakim, I've become very dubious about the benefits of Unquestioning Obedience, the upper tier religious tech of the Order religion.

It provides two benefits; you can build basilicas and choose Social Order as your Cultural civic.

The Basilica is only slightly useful. Reducing maintenance is nice for supporting a large, far-flung empire. However, at 250 :hammers: the building is prohibitively expensive to build. I never saw a situation where I would save more than 3 :gold: a turn by building a basilica; Money Changer or Tax Office are always better values for the :hammers:. The single Commander :gp: it provides comes too late to be of any real value. The -1 :culture: attached to the Basilica is just puzzling.

Social Order, on the other hand, has no real benefit that I can find. It's nearly identical to Nationhood, a starting civic, but since it's lacking the -25% War Weariness, it's actually inferior to if you plan on doing any conquest, which is essential to most victory conditions.

Even at the reduced cost in patch E, I don't consider this tech worth the cost of researching it. Am I missing some strategy that will make it useful?

with a courthouse basilica and dongeon you can have no matenence in any cities which can save you hundereds depending on the size of your empire

Yeah I agree with both of your points. Probably need to drop the cost on the basillica and put something very significant on Social Order (like no unit maintenance at all).

Love the name of this thread! :lol: I always thought that the point of the basilica was to give that extra reduction to maintenance so that you could run the empire for free. Didn't really think about the :hammers: cost, which does seem high and now that I think about it, usually I do not build basilicas because of that -1 :culture:.

Yeah I agree with both of your points. Probably need to drop the cost on the basillica and put something very significant on Social Order (like no unit maintenance at all).

How about double production speed basilicas with the Organized trait? Or is Organized too powerful already?

Is there any way to make Social Order reduce inflation? That could really be a cost saver, and play into the flavor of a static, medieval style culture.

give +x free units for each basilica?(unit supportcost)

I agree with wig. Even though I'll sometimes play the Order religion, I rarely choose Social Order or build Basilicas. Maybe at the higher difficulties, the maintenance bonus is more useful, but I can usually get away with out it (I play on Prince/Monarch). It might be better if it gave a promotion to all units built in that city. Loyalty would make good sense.

evil will always win because good is stupid

Yeah, I'm playing a game as the Orderly Malakim right now, and I've seen no need to adopt Social Order. I got Unquestioning Obedience only because it took 2 turns to research. Sometimes, when I'm taking over the world, I'll rush-buy basilicas in far-flung cities, but it does seem to cost more than it's worth.

Yeah, I'm playing a game as the Orderly Malakim right now, and I've seen no need to adopt Social Order. I got Unquestioning Obedience only because it took 2 turns to research. Sometimes, when I'm taking over the world, I'll rush-buy basilicas in far-flung cities, but it does seem to cost more than it's worth.

rush buying sort of defeats the purpose

Maybe have the Bassilica give an XP boost, like the Command Post or Adventurer's Guild? Or maybe just have it give an XP boost to disciple units?

Hm. Perhaps it could give Crusaders some kind of bonus (using the same system as the forge?) to make them more competitive to other third-tier units. That'd be nice, as I generally don't build Crusaders or Paramanders at all.

I don't know much about Social Order, but from looking at it, it does seem to be weaker than all of the other religious civics.

Maybe a hefty -50% war weariness bonus would make it more attractive... playing the Order right now, war weariness absolutely cripples me when I'm off killing the demons.

How about it gives you -50% war weariness as long as you are fighting against Evil civ's?

Ah, that sounds nice.

How about double production speed basilicas with the Organized trait? Or is Organized too powerful already?

Is there any way to make Social Order reduce inflation? That could really be a cost saver, and play into the flavor of a static, medieval style culture.

I think most people would say that the organised trait is underpowered compared with other traits - so this could be a goer