buying great people with faith

why buying great people with faith is restricted to the industrial era?

Probably a combination of balance issues and an attempt to make a good use of faith after faith buildings and faith units start becoming so expensive that they are no longer viable. Plus, by giving an alternative use of faith, it makes a natural end to missionary spam wars, thus reflecting the idea that religion looses importance from Renaissance era and onwards.

and what if this restriction was lifted? how gameplay would change?

Imo. extremely imbalanced. Buying Great Engineers with Tradition already from medieval era would skew game extremely towards Tradition (more than it already is).

I agree with kaspergm that the earlier purchase of great engineers would be an imbalance, but I also see the shift in no longer valuing a great prophet changing at the industrial level. The game achieved a cool balance of as we achieve the industrial era we focus less on religion and more on other great people.

I think that imbalance that you guys are talking about can also relate to religious building purchases because religious buildings become very expensive at the later eras. Religious buildings cost 100 faith in primitive religions while in the post information era religious buildings cost up to 4000 faith each. You'll be getting ripped off buying a religious building in later eras unless you make enough faith per turn.

Actually religious buildings start at 200 faith (up to and including medieval era) and end at 1000 faith (information era) ... just for the record.

honestly I think the real problem is not buying in medieval but renaissance. the wonders in that era are awesome especially for culture victory. also in medieval you're not likely going to have 1000 faith

Because you need a sufficient number of "followers"/consumers "praying" for those celebrities to come out of the woodwork.

Would also make the game far too short - CV would be ridiculously easy to achieve for anyone with museum/archaelogist spamming, when every you're already halfway to influential from your great musician tours in the renaissance, not to mention the wonders/Great Works you've also been able to "pray" into existence, on-demand.

killmeplease said:

why[sic] buying great people with faith is restricted to the industrial era?

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Honestly I think that is a great question.
Provided they DID NOT SCALE WITH ERA so they started out at 500 faith (quick speed) then it would create interesting scenarios and even more incentive to have faith based wars. A GP is 138 then 200 faith on quick speed so do you begin a religion and use a GP or do you get a GE and grab a wonder?

I doubt it will ever be changed at this point but I don't think it is as bad as it is being made out to potentially be, if anything it would be a hard choice between building a solid faith foundation early or grabbing an early GP and losing out on religion altogether.

^^ People pointed out the game balance issues with letting GP be faith-purchased earlier than Industrial, but @x2Madda you want GP earlier and cheaper? It would be a mess, for all the good reasons already provided.

killmeplease said:

and what if this restriction was lifted? how gameplay would change?

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Let's see , it would make tradition stronger , I agree.
you could then have a strong faith based play alongside the military one and the science oriented one.
You would have more choice involving faith even if you generate a lot through your pantheon , since you'd want 1k faith for an engineer as well as the two prophets , thus making a rush to theology a bit more attractive.

It would also reinforce piety as a secondary tree , you could viably delay rationalism to get a stronger faith generating religion and balance your faith costs , thus going for a viable snatch wonders strategy at the cost of a bit of science , this would be refreshingly good to have something new to do since I abhorre piety as it is right now, and since gogin for too much wonders early to mid game only hinders you as it is right now.

But all of those good aspect are still not good enough to justify tradition being even more OP.

I would reject the idea in the game as it is , but it still could be a lead into another way of playing ,provided someone better than me at game design would rethink faith costs,tradition and piety.

kaspergm said:

Actually religious buildings start at 200 faith (up to and including medieval era) and end at 1000 faith (information era) ... just for the record.

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Well that could be during the information era.. but Im talking about the post information era.. years after the information era..
Hmm.. well I checked and it seems that you're right.. It is 1000 faith per w/e building you want to purchase such as research lab, university or any other religious building..