Rebalance Sacred Sites Reformation Belief

Monthar

Monthar

Deity
Joined
Mar 28, 2004
Messages
2,115
Location
Elmendorf, Tx
This reformation belief with 2 faith bought buildings (possibly 3 with Byzantium) and hyper expansion currently results in a very early cultural victory. It's possible to win before hitting the Renaissance. I've seen wins around turn 130 on standard speed on an archipelago/large islands map with Polynesia.

My suggested change is reduce the tourism to +1, but add +1 culture. This way they not only add some tourism, they also add some defense against enemy tourism. So if you spread your religion to your neighbors and they buy the faith bought buildings, you'd still have to add great works and other forms of tourism boosts to overcome the culture of those neighbors.
 
At first I thought this might work, but now I think it won't work: you only get 50% of the tourism now, so what... instead of 120 turns earlier than a regular tourism victory you still would win 60 turns earlier - probably more as you have more time to kill the 2nd, 3rd or even 4th strongest culture producer and the 'non culture AIs' are falling for your pop music way earlier anyway, even with it only being 50%.

I think they need to simply turn the 2 tourism into 2 culture (yeah, not 3 - that would be to strong as well). However these 2 culture should be convertible to tourism by hotels/airports.
 
I was thinking more about it and had another idea that might work even better. What about instead of adding 2 tourism to faith bought buildings, it adds 2 tourism to Holy Sites? It wouldn't be way over powered just from spamming a lot of cities. It might encourage the AI and players to plant more of those prophets as holy sites instead of using them to try to convert the world. Making holy sites sacred is a far better fit for the name "Sacred Sites" than putting that tourism on the buildings.

If adding the 2 tourism to just Holy Sites isn't enough it could landmarks as well. If 2 tourism on holy sites and landmarks still isn't strong enough it could be increased to 3 or 4 tourism. Yes, I know the culture from these is converted to tourism with hotels, airports and the National Visitor Center and there's a proposition to increase the culture output of these locations. However, IRL these types of sites have been visited all over the world for centuries, so it fits for adding the tourism to them long before hotels and airports are unlocked.


From a gameplay perspective, no-one is going to have more than about a half dozen or so Holy Sites and probably only about as many landmarks they can work. Plus since the landmarks won't come until the Industrial era, this should make bonus from Sacred Sites towards a cultural victory about on par with Observatories for a science victory, ie. a nice boost, but not overpowered, because you can't have them everywhere.
 
I think Sacred Sites is fine as it is because the strategy that makes it oppressive is such a massive gamble. Sure, you can get incredible turn times if you do it right, but if anything goes wrong you just plain lose. I'm really more concerned about things that give infinite flexibility and are virtually immune to mayhem (*cough* Poland *coughcough*).
 
Should probably just reserve the tourism bonus until after Archaeology is researched.
 
I really don't understand why people see issue with Sacred Sites when Jesuit Education is there. Sacred Sites has one gimmicky strategy that lets you play very fast towards one victory condition under only the best of conditions while Jesuit Education gives you absurdly cheap insta-buy science buildings that will ramp up your win time regardless of what you're trying to do. If anything needs to get whacked with the nerf bat it's JE.
 
Arachnofiend said:
I really don't understand why people see issue with Sacred Sites when Jesuit Education is there. Sacred Sites has one gimmicky strategy that lets you play very fast towards one victory condition under only the best of conditions while Jesuit Education gives you absurdly cheap insta-buy science buildings that will ramp up your win time regardless of what you're trying to do. If anything needs to get whacked with the nerf bat it's JE.
Click to expand...
Because the building's aren't that cheap unless you've really oriented your religion towards faith generation, and even then there are usually other things competing for that income.
 
Monthar said:
I was thinking more about it and had another idea that might work even better. What about instead of adding 2 tourism to faith bought buildings, it adds 2 tourism to Holy Sites? It wouldn't be way over powered just from spamming a lot of cities. It might encourage the AI and players to plant more of those prophets as holy sites instead of using them to try to convert the world. Making holy sites sacred is a far better fit for the name "Sacred Sites" than putting that tourism on the buildings.

If adding the 2 tourism to just Holy Sites isn't enough it could landmarks as well. If 2 tourism on holy sites and landmarks still isn't strong enough it could be increased to 3 or 4 tourism. Yes, I know the culture from these is converted to tourism with hotels, airports and the National Visitor Center and there's a proposition to increase the culture output of these locations. However, IRL these types of sites have been visited all over the world for centuries, so it fits for adding the tourism to them long before hotels and airports are unlocked.


From a gameplay perspective, no-one is going to have more than about a half dozen or so Holy Sites and probably only about as many landmarks they can work. Plus since the landmarks won't come until the Industrial era, this should make bonus from Sacred Sites towards a cultural victory about on par with Observatories for a science victory, ie. a nice boost, but not overpowered, because you can't have them everywhere.
Click to expand...

...Don't Holy Sites already provide Tourism when you get Hotels and have the Culture bonus on them from completing Piety? And really if you're going for Reformation, the only policy left in Piety, Theocracy, gives you +3 Gold for Holy Sites and +10% Gold from Temples which is pretty damned awesome and you should really go for it if you're pushing religion. Presuming you do adopt a Reformation belief ASAP, Theocracy basically means that one social policy gives you +3 Gold and Culture for Holy Sites alongside a free Great Prophet you can use to get said holy site right away. If you're amassing the kind of Faith to make Sacred Sites viable, it likely means you already have Holy Sites around that will get you Tourism in the late game, so adding to that seems a touch pointless.
 
Yes, the culture from them, if you've completed the piety tree, gets converted to tourism with hotels and airports, in the later game. However, the point is to keep some of the early game tourism with Sacred Sites, but not to the point of how over powered it is now.
 
At only 2% per building they might as well just remove it all together, because it will never be worth using.
 
I've tried some Sacred Sites super spam games and I agree that it is an extremely risky strategy. If you get boxed in (i.e. not enough room to expand), fail to find all other civs, are neighboring really aggressive civs, or encounter a cultural runaway, you're screwed. An early victory is extremely dependent on the other civs and the nature of the map, so victory is by no means guaranteed. But perhaps I'm biased; I tried the strategy once on King as Poland and once on Emperor as Brazil, and I was not able to replicate the results others have had (on Quick speed and on Pangaea+).
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

hokath
[Extension] Enlightenment Era for VP (4.22)
2 3 4
Replies
65
Views
7K
hokath
hokath
R
Gallery and Faith of the Masses
Replies
5
Views
814
hokath
hokath
adan_eslavo
  • Locked
  • Poll Poll
[Vote] (6-25) Sacred Sites - Rework (Based On @Stalker0 Version)
Replies
18
Views
2K
Recursive
Recursive
S
  • Locked
(6-NS) Sacred Sites - National Wonder Inclusion
Replies
3
Views
791
Recursive
Recursive
hokath
  • Locked
(8-07a) 4UC Brazil With Unique Research Lab
Replies
4
Views
1K
Recursive
Recursive
Back
Top Bottom