Faith Piety and tall empires

I think there is something a bit wrong with the faith system as it is now , and since there is also something wrong with piety , I think some solutions may be workable.

Faith is designed to be more accessible to wide empire over tall empire. It is a perfectly fine principle , somewhat realisitic even. But ....Tall empires unless on desert do not have much way to come up with some faith (no need to tell me about a prince/emperor game where you build stonehenge,djenne and HS , this is not realistic at all at higher level).

It becomes a problem if you consider that Piety basically targets cultural victories.I think noone would argue that cultural victories are designed for tall empires.

So basically , piety helps tall empires to make the best use of their faith when they are pretty limited in coming up with faith in the first place.Quite paradoxal , if not downright schizophrenic.

The main consecquence is that a tall empire has quite some trouble to get some religious site spawned.

A simple fix I think would be to have peity openers that gives some pretty high faith bonus to cities for each ten citizen in city ? or +% faith by follower in city ? a free great prophet somewhere ? I won't dare to give numbers without running some simulation but yeah something should be there to help get the third and fourth prophet before you open freedom. This way you manage to get the synergie between peity and freedom finisher on your religious site.

It s a bit of a strange game design issue , the synergies exists but you need to jump start it somehow and there is nowhere anything that helps it.
Right now , when playing high level , I usually ends up forgetting about religion and going rationalism even for a cultural victory with a rather religion oriented civ.

Basically except when I rexx with messenger of gods , I feel like I m playing Civ5 'n kings.

I think that religion overall feels a little strange. It adds a lot to the game, but it needs some change. I think most of the problem is that it is made to "die out" as the game progresses. If it were made to be more important throughout the game, it would be a simple matter of adding a few more faith buildings. No need for more than that, just some more faith producers, at least one or two of which give faith for population, not unlike libraries give science for more pop.

Ideally, I'd split what is currently piety into two trees, one for culture and one for faith, and give religions major buffs mid to late game so faith could be spent on religion or GP, both as viable options. Of course, that would go with some new faith producing buildings too.

The biggest issue seems to be that because religion is made to "die off," there isn't much need for a lot of faith production, but that lack of ability to actively concentrate on faith due to limited buildings really limits what you can do to generate it.

Compare it to culture, which can give a win if you go tall, but if you go wide, you can still choose to invest in getting lots of it or none at all. With science you can go tall and use high pop cities to produce beakers or go wide with a smaller pop but work jungle tiles OR turn cash into beakers with RA's.

Faith production is considerably more limited, and I blame it on it's limited lifespan more than anything. If religions were to stay stronger later, it would be worth investing into a tree just for faith (even going cultural, since you'd need 5 full policy trees anyway) which could help tall empires, as well as buildings that could help as well. I can imagine anything from early cloisters (+2 faith on unimproved tiles? limited life but could let tall cities get extra faith, particularly early) to late televangelist studios (I could see lots of faith for tall empires there) as extra buildings.

Perhaps a revamp of the Tradition policy tree to provide a bonus of some kind on one of the policies. This would help out tall empires which is the focus of Tradition. It would also be thematic since religions are largely based on tradition.

I agree with the OP.

Linking faith to tradition (opener could be +2 faith and +2 culture in capital) like suggested and making piety bonusses depend more on size would be two nice fixes.

They should change the pressure mechanism as well. I think pressure should be based on number of followers and not a fixed number per city. That way a 4 city empire could keep their religion and not have to spend every faith point buying missionaries/inqisitors to keep religion spreading from the neighboring small cities of another religion.

theis81 said:

Linking faith to tradition (opener could be +2 faith and +2 culture in capital) like suggested and making piety bonusses depend more on size would be two nice fixes.

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I'd rather they just beef up early Piety. Make it available from the beginning of the game, and have the opener make shrines half price and double religion. Make a second level policy create +x% spread strength for every x citizens. Create an interesting decision between Tradition and Piety (and Piety vs. waiting for Rationalism).

EDIT: Perhaps give Temple an effect like library. +1 religion for every two followers (might need tweaking).

I agree that Piety and religion in general best suits wide empires, except for Mandate of Heaven which gives culture for excess happiness. I think a tweak to the policy that gives +10% gold to temples could use something additional such as temples increasing rate of spread based on pop.

Mesix said:

Perhaps a revamp of the Tradition policy tree to provide a bonus of some kind on one of the policies. This would help out tall empires which is the focus of Tradition. It would also be thematic since religions are largely based on tradition.

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I m not much of a fan of having faith bonus on tradition , because I still think that religion should be the given edge of wide empires.
I think the model should be a division between: wide civs mostly religious , tall religious empire , tall non religious empire. So one , if tall , should have to invest somehow to make it happen. The issue I was raising is that so far , at decent game level , there is no way to 'work your religion'. It is basically , being horribly lucky and get 1 or 2 religious CS encounters , rush theology and manage to snatch HS ...not very very satisfactory

SammyKhalifa said:

I'd rather they just beef up early Piety. Make it available from the beginning of the game, and have the opener make shrines half price and double religion. Make a second level policy create +x% spread strength for every x citizens. Create an interesting decision between Tradition and Piety (and Piety vs. waiting for Rationalism).

EDIT: Perhaps give Temple an effect like library. +1 religion for every two followers (might need tweaking).

Click to expand...

This could be a perfectly reasonnable way to have the possibility to 'work' your religion.
I can see myself delaying the finisher of tradition to get the opener of piety in a religious cultural game, in order to ensure I get my religion founded.

I never had a problem founding a religion on immortal when I actually wanted to found one. Most of the time I had a good start though (quarry or desert), which eventually prompted me to go for religion.
It can be harder to fight foreign religion because you usually are not the first to get one, that's true. The AI already spread it a bit which can go pretty fast on standard pangaea map.

loki75 said:

I never had a problem founding a religion on immortal when I actually wanted to found one. Most of the time I had a good start though (quarry or desert), which eventually prompted me to go for religion.
It can be harder to fight foreign religion because you usually are not the first to get one, that's true. The AI already spread it a bit which can go pretty fast on standard pangaea map.

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The thing is that it is too random. In order to found a religion in immortal , you need either to encounter first some CS or to start in desert or quarry or nw , in order to found a pantheon not too late , ths pantheon might give you enough faith to hopefully get a religion before turn 80 where the 6th religion is founded.(for deity game , for immortal you might get 15 more turns) .

So again too random , you have really have no way to working your way out of having a religion , hence the suggestion of having something that helps in an early piety opener.Something you choose !

It is quite reasonable if you consider it , if you invest an early policy, it means finishing tradition later and commiting to not picking rationalism. I think it a reasonable tradeoff for an early faith boost...and it woul make the game feels more like God N Kings