The Byzantine Empire

I find it odd that the 6th belief slot is shown for all civs, but just locked out saying "available to byzantines only", Makes me think it will be a different pool of beliefs.
I agree that it seems the byzantine empire should have some sort of bonus to founding a religion, as at the moment not getting a religion will whip out their UA. However this doesn't need to be a faith-based UB, it could also be incorporated in their UA, such as less faith threshold for a great prophet to appear for example

THat is my thought as well. having the sixth belief doesn't have to be the whole and total of the Byzantine UA. I suspect they will have another part of it which helps them be in a position to take advantage of the sixth belief.

It's hard to imagine that they would expend the effort of having a dedicated pool of beliefs exclusively for one civilization, so I think it's more reasonable to expect that Byzantium will pull its bonus belief from one or more of the existing pools. How the bonus belief would affect non-founder followers of the religion is pretty straightforward: if it's a follower belief, it will affect any following city as normal; otherwise, it will only affect the founder.

I'd imagine that you'll be able to reliably found your own religion if you put any effort into doing so, though. This isn't like a wonder race where there's only one "winner."

What if you fail to found your own religion as the Byzantines? Will you just miss out on that part of their UA (if indeed there are other parts of it)? Only 50% of civs get to found their own religion. I understand that that's a pretty high number, but it's still far from certain. How will this work?

SammyKhalifa said:

I'd imagine that you'll be able to reliably found your own religion if you put any effort into doing so, though. This isn't like a wonder race where there's only one "winner."

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I hope that not only the founders of the religion are allowed to improve religion(by adding a 2nd follower belief and an enhancer belief) . The main reason to believe on this idea is because everybody and because this is one of the few ways to create a balance between those who found a religion and those who doesn't .

Non-founders who get a Great Prophet could use it to spread the religion to other cities for the follower benefits or to foreign cities for diplomacy or city-state influence. They can also establish Holy Sites which provide Faith for you to perhaps buy missionaries, inquisitors, or (with the right Beliefs) buildings. Great Prophets are not useless to civs who did not found a religion.

Sammy: Well, several civs are well-poised to found religions. The elephant in the room here is the Celtic civ. We have no conclusive information about the Ethiopians, but I'd also like to point out that a few of the vanilla Civs have UB replacements of the Temple (which now give Faith).

So, e.g., when you combine Egypt's Wonder production bonus (Stonehenge) with the fact that their Burial Tomb will presumably make Faith and Happiness (assuming it's still a Temple replacement, of course), I would imagine that they'll be a fairly good Religion-founder.

Civilized: Most of the discussion regarding the Byzantines is exactly along these lines.

Eagle Pursuit said:

Non-founders who get a Great Prophet could use it to spread the religion to other cities for the follower benefits or to foreign cities for diplomacy or city-state influence. They can also establish Holy Sites which provide Faith for you to perhaps buy missionaries, inquisitors, or (with the right Beliefs) buildings. Great Prophets are not useless to civs who did not found a religion.

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Right,but if the Founder of the religion has the power to choose the 2nd Follower belief bonus and an enhancer belief,he'll have a bigger advantage compared to the non-founders,specially if the followers of that religion did choose to get a different victory from the founder . Consider this scenario:

You plan a domination victory and decided to use faith to rush units,so you can raise a army and go to war,but you haven't been lucky enough to found a religion . You then choose one of the religions that are avaliable to you,which bonus seem good enough for you . Unfortinately,the founder of your religion didn't choose "Holy Warriors" as a second follower belief(which allows rushing units with Faith),but instead picked up "Swords into Plowshares" as a second belief,whose bonus are only avaliable when you're not in war . With this,you can't use Faith to buy units,neither go war if you don't want to lose the follower belief bonus . Some turns later,someone chose Holy Warriors,but their religion is too far away . In a few turns,someone else picked up this belief . Later,this civilization dominated an entire continent with the help of this belief and became the runaway civ . Then,you realize you lost the game because you didn't have the power to customize your religion .
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There are plenty of scenarios like this that would create an irrational race to found a religion,because the power of the founder would be far superior to the power of the followers . Let's not forget that this is the main reason why religion in Civ4 was so dissapointed .

CivilizedPlayer said:

What if you fail to found your own religion as the Byzantines? Will you just miss out on that part of their UA (if indeed there are other parts of it)? Only 50% of civs get to found their own religion. I understand that that's a pretty high number, but it's still far from certain. How will this work?

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There are plenty of other unique abilities that can be useless in certain situations, particularly the naval and barbarian oriented ones. If you play as Byzantium and don't manage to found a religion, then it's time to start over (maybe on a lower difficulty setting ).

GenjiKhan said:

There are plenty of scenarios like this that would create an irrational race to found a religion,because the power of the founder would be far superior to the power of the followers . Let's not forget that this is the main reason why religion in Civ4 was so dissapointed .

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I don't see how the race is "irrational." It's not like in Civ IV where you have to get to Buddhism or Hinduism first or you're basically screwed; all you have to be is one of the first 4 civs (in an 8 civ game) to found a religion. If the Belief bonuses are important to you and you're seriously trying, you should be able to make that cut.

If founding a religion is not important to you and you want to follow someone else's, then you're only missing out on 1 Founder bonus (it's not clear whether the Enhancer and Pantheon bonuses also apply to followers). The Founder bonuses are nice, but they're not game-breaking. And you can still benefit from the diplomatic benefits of a religion without being the founder.

@GenjiKhan: Yes, but the devs have flat out stated that you can ignore religion completely and still do just fine.

So in your example, since you didn't focus on founding a religion, you built universities instead of temples. Now you're a tech age ahead of the people who have the religion you really wanted. So while they're spamming knights and longswordsmen with faith, you're using your cannons to blow them apart before swooping in with riflemen and cavalry to mop up.

Alternatively, you spent the production on barracks and workshops, so you can hard build promoted units just as quickly as they can faith-buy basic units.

It's all Rock-Paper-Scissors, really, so long as you know how to play the game.


~R~

AriochIV said:

I don't see how the race is "irrational." It's not like in Civ IV where you have to get to Buddhism or Hinduism first or you're basically screwed; all you have to be is one of the first 4 civs (in an 8 civ game) to found a religion. If the Belief bonuses are important to you and you're seriously trying, you should be able to make that cut.

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In deity,it might be very,very hard to found a religion and Byzantine would be the most useless civ to play in this difficulty . In Multiplayer,nobody would want to pick Byzantine,because there would be a high chance that EVERYBODY is racing for being the founders and such race would make Stonehenge even more important than any other Wonder(including even the Great Library and the Hanging Gardens),then this race can be only irrational . The fact that you are forced to get Buddhism or Hinduism in Civ4 makes the race to get religion there irrational as well . I hope they do not repeat the same mistake again .

GenjiKhan said:

You know,their work on improving religion wouldn't drain so much of their production and their science and they would have a bigger army than me,if they manage to get plenty of faith to spent on units . Also,the technology gap can't be that high,thanks to the change of RAs to Education(Babylon does not count,since their UA already gives a tech leading bonus) .

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We actually don't have any information about how religion scales based on difficulty. While it isn't altogether unreasonable to assume that deity level AI might get some faith bonuses the same way they get happiness and production bonuses, we can't say this is a fact yet.

As far as multiplayer goes, it's always a giant cluster----. If you expect the developers to be able to balance multiplayer, you're just going to be sorely disappointed. They can't fix the AI code in Civ Fanatics' brains...it's screwed up beyond all repair.

Edit: Also, Byzantine is probably going to get more to their UA than just +1 belief slot. We just haven't seen it yet.


~R~

Raiki: I would hope that part of 'just ignoring religion' includes ignoring the Civs who are supposed to be religious.

Of course not, but not founding or adopting a religion (because you ignored the mechanics completely) has been said to not be an auto-lose button. Obviously we can judge that for ourselves in June, but right now all we have to go on are the comments from the devs and people with press-demos. And the devs have flat out said that religion won't be mandatory.

Raiki: I'm not disagreeing with you. I just view 'picking your civilization to play' as your first choice in the game. And, as such, choosing to play a Civilization that is religious doesn't particularly sound like ignoring it, unless of course you are choosing a handicap.

Ah, okay, I admit that I 100% missed your point. Got it now, and yes you have a point.

Still if you're a deity player, you should be able to find a trick or two to manage to found a religion on deity. So if you *want* to play a religious game, I'm sure you'll find a way.

bonafide11 said:

I would be surprised if any civ other than the founders of it would be able to choose various beliefs for it.

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I'd be quite disappointed if they don't.

CivilizedPlayer said:

What if you fail to found your own religion as the Byzantines? Will you just miss out on that part of their UA (if indeed there are other parts of it)? Only 50% of civs get to found their own religion. I understand that that's a pretty high number, but it's still far from certain. How will this work?

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This just don't make any sense. It'd be like choosing England in a completely random map. I'm quite sure it doesn't take to be the Founder of a Religion to choose the Bonus 6th Belief. And as I said, I hope that's the case for the 2nd and the Enhancer bonus.

Raiki: Well, as I am nowhere near Deity level (), I'll just bow to your wisdom there.

Ulthwithian said:

Raiki: Well, as I am nowhere near Deity level (), I'll just bow to your wisdom there.

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Oh gods(and kings), no. I didn't mean to imply that I, personally, was deity player. I'm usually Emperor...Immortal on my best days. I was just saying that whatever level people comfortably play on, they should be able to manage a religion of their very own. Now, if *I* were to stretch myself to diety...maybe not. But Snarzberry? Or MadDjinn? They'd probably have no problem.


Though...I am a deity player on Civ Rev. That *totally* counts, right?

Yeah...I'll go sit in the corner. I'm sorry.


~R~