How are religious CS going to fit into things?

[eazyseeker]

So we know they will generate faith. However, realistically they should follow a certain religion, which brings me to this point:

Will religious CS provide faith only to civilizations that share their religion? If so, are they going to be able to be converted to other religions just like normal cities?

Because I can't really imagine say, Vatican City providing faith to both followers of Christianity and Buddhism. It just wouldn't work, realistically.

 

[CYZ]

Good question, it's hard to say. If religious CS work like the others they will most likely give faith regardless of their religion or yours. Since there probably won't really be something like state religion this seems fine by me.

But it could mean that a Christian Vatican gives faith to an allied civ that is mainly or even only Buddhist. And that does seem a bit odd.

 

[Louis XXIV]

I'd imagine for simplicity, they'll give faith to any religion. However, if you convert them to your religion, they're more likely to like you and give you faith.

 

[Buccaneer]

While on the topic of city-states, I have this question. Arioch said "Another report said that gold and Workers could be extorted in this way, but that it may cause the City-State to ask another civilization for a pledge of protection against the aggressor." What value does protection have anyways and what difference would it make who is "protecting" them? I get these messages when allying with a c-s of leaving the protection to an AI. Whatever, it didn't seem to affect anything anyways, esp. when I (or any human player) would/should never attack a c-s. Is this mechanism changing to something useful in G&K?

 

[smallfish]

While on the topic of city-states, I have this question. Arioch said "Another report said that gold and Workers could be extorted in this way, but that it may cause the City-State to ask another civilization for a pledge of protection against the aggressor." What value does protection have anyways and what difference would it make who is "protecting" them? I get these messages when allying with a c-s of leaving the protection to an AI. Whatever, it didn't seem to affect anything anyways, esp. when I (or any human player) would/should never attack a c-s. Is this mechanism changing to something useful in G&K?

Adds more diplo hits to you with the civ that was protecting the CS. If that civ was large or just as large as you, it may also trigger war (and chain denouncements/war by other parties).

 

[MadDjinn]

Adds more diplo hits to you with the civ that was protecting the CS. If that civ was large or just as large as you, it may also trigger war (and chain denouncements/war by other parties).

While on the topic of city-states, I have this question. Arioch said "Another report said that gold and Workers could be extorted in this way, but that it may cause the City-State to ask another civilization for a pledge of protection against the aggressor." What value does protection have anyways and what difference would it make who is "protecting" them? I get these messages when allying with a c-s of leaving the protection to an AI. Whatever, it didn't seem to affect anything anyways, esp. when I (or any human player) would/should never attack a c-s. Is this mechanism changing to something useful in G&K?

but otherwise it was a waste of time in Civ 5.

so maybe they enhanced it as well.

 

[CYZ]

I'd imagine for simplicity, they'll give faith to any religion. However, if you convert them to your religion, they're more likely to like you and give you faith.

Actually, I suspect religion will affect influence decay for all CS. Thus sharing the same religion will mean influence decreases slower, allying CS with the same religion is the most atractive then too.

To get another bonus upon that with religious CS is possible but perhaps not even needed.

 

[turingmachine]

Vatican City will not be tied to a specific religion. The in-game religions have been said to only be aesthetic, and it would give one religion an advantage if their city-state happened to randomly spawn.

If you are friends with a religious city-state, they will give you faith points. Simple as that. Converting a city-state to your religion will do nothing more than make it easier to be and stay friends with them.

They didn't re-write the whole city-state mechanic just for one city-state type.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

There was a mysterious civilian unit that belonged to a city-state seen during a PAX demo. It makes me wonder if religious city-states can produce missionaries.

 

[CYZ]

There was a mysterious civilian unit that belonged to a city-state seen during a PAX demo. It makes me wonder if religious city-states can produce missionaries.

Possibly all CS can, but religious CS are more likely to. That'd make sense.

 

[AriochIV]

I would expect that a Religious city-state provides Faith to its friends and ally in the same way as a Cultured city-state provides Culture.

Some of the Beliefs (such as Papal Primacy) specifically mention city-states following a religion, which implies to me that city-state follow world religions, rather than having their own. Since having a different religion imposes a diplomatic penalty, it wouldn't make much sense for Religious city-states to have their own religions, because then by definition they're going to have a different religion than you. So, I would guess that even Religious city-states start with no religion (or perhaps a Pantheon), and convert to another religion normally.

As to how religion affects diplomacy, I'm going to guess that having the same or different religion just adds an influence bonus or penalty. But that's a guess -- it could be more complicated.

There was a mysterious civilian unit that belonged to a city-state seen during a PAX demo. It makes me wonder if religious city-states can produce missionaries.

That would be my guess, but if so, it is an intriguing question of why a city-state would want to produce Missionaries. The owner of the unit in question was Brussels, which is (as far as we know) a Cultured city-state.

but otherwise it was a waste of time in Civ 5. so maybe they enhanced it as well.

This is one of those cases where the feature is useless unless the AI is smart enough to respond properly. There was nothing wrong with the "pledge to protect" mechanism except that the pledge did not appear to have any effect on the actions of the AI civilizations. When the AI made the pledge, it did seem to come with a real diplomatic penalty as a consequence for attacking a city-state, but I almost never attack city-states, so I totally ignored these pledges. The advantage of the new "threaten" system is to offer a real reason to mess with city-states (but not conquer them, which is counter-productive), so that pledges may be meaningful. But they still will have problems if the AI's don't respond properly to them.

 

[Beefie]

That would be my guess, but if so, it is an intriguing question of why a city-state would want to produce Missionaries. The owner of the unit in question was Brussels, which is (as far as we know) a Cultured city-state.

Maybe Religious city-states help spread the religion of their ally, as well as providing faith to ally and friends. Though this being Brussels really scuppers this idea if it's still cultural

 

[nokmirt]

.This is one of those cases where the feature is useless unless the AI is smart enough to respond properly. There was nothing wrong with the "pledge to protect" mechanism except that the pledge did not appear to have any effect on the actions of the AI civilizations. When the AI made the pledge, it did seem to come with a real diplomatic penalty as a consequence for attacking a city-state, but I almost never attack city-states, so I totally ignored these pledges. The advantage of the new "threaten" system is to offer a real reason to mess with city-states (but not conquer them, which is counter-productive), so that pledges may be meaningful. But they still will have problems if the AI's don't respond properly to them.

Perhaps, but I do like the new CS war weariness system where they band together against a civ that conquers them, or keeps bullying them.

Say your playing as the Mongols and go on a CS conquering spree, which you can do now without diplo penalty in Gods and Kings. However, if you do, you will lose influence with CSs who band together against you, and that influence with them will go down to a default negative value. The agressive civ would then have to work twice as hard to regain positive influence with City States. The point is you can conquer them if you choose, but there is a backlash if you do so. Later in the game, you may decide conquering city states is not a worthwhile enterprise, but it will be difficult to regain trust with them. And you cannot just buy them off anymore. The diplo penalty for doing this kind of thing used to last all game.

With G&K diplomacy with CSs has been worked out for the better. This way you can be a warmonger again if you choose to be a bad guy. Also, the new system makes it so you can change the direction of the game, it does not have to get stuck in one direction and remain there until the end. I like that part.

 

[Buccaneer]

Even as the Mongols, one would never need to, nor never should conquer city-states. What would be the point? It sounds like that would be even less of a point in G&K.

 

[smallfish]

Even as the Mongols, one would never need to, nor never should conquer city-states. What would be the point?

Easy fix to uranium/aluminium when you don't have them, and you need them fast!

 

[CYZ]

Even as the Mongols, one would never need to, nor never should conquer city-states. What would be the point? It sounds like that would be even less of a point in G&K.

Conquest? No. Threatening? Yes.

Imagine the Mongols moving their army close to Brussels and demanding their worker, Brussels is intimidated and gives in. But does ask you to pledge to protect them in the future, in trade for influence. You do so but Mongols threaten them again anyway. Brussels demands you do something...

 

[smallfish]

More seriously, there are a few reasons why you want to conquer a CS (in vanilla).

Say you and Germany are on the same continent, and you want to rush Germany early-game. In between your lands is a city-state, one he has allied. Here you are presented with two choices - you can naturally build up your infrastructure across the rest of the continent and hope that you can out-match the AI in tech, culture and wonders, hope that with the CS in between Germany he will not try and rush you himself. Or you can take out that city-state, AND rush Germany's capital. Then you can build a road to link your conquered lands with your own, and depending on placement of cities and proximity, this could easily lead to cheaper maintenance costs.

The other is late game resources like uranium for those who just can't afford to buy off a CS.

 

[tofofnts]

What if one of the missions you need to do to be friends with a religious CS is to convert to it's religion.

 

[MadDjinn]

I think the point was that the 'permanent' wars ended up causing far more issues than being a deterrent to conquering CSs.

Plenty of situations where an enemy is in permanent war with a CS on their borders, you push them back/take a few cities, liberate the CS and make peace. Now the enemy AI has at least 10 turns to rekill the CS with you not being able to do much about it (other than permanently leave units there).

At least this way, the CSs won't like the enemy, but can't be stuck in permanent war + they will be really hard for the enemy to pick up again.

oh, and there's still likely going to be diplo penalties for conquering CSs, but it might not be the 'warmongering' ones anymore. Major civs have CS flavours, so I'm sure Greece and Siam (plus others) will hate you for it just the same (especially if they pledged to protect - which was something that happened in vanilla already).

 

[Civsassin]

Even as the Mongols, one would never need to, nor never should conquer city-states. What would be the point? It sounds like that would be even less of a point in G&K.

Actually, in a recent game, I snatcehd a couple of workers from two nearby CSs, and they and one other declared permanent war on me. My solution was to conquer them when I didn't see a way to restore relations.