3.16 beliefs thread

[mystikx21]

General notes
Happiness beliefs are devalued by free happiness in piety tree. They become more important if you have to work for happiness.
Culture buffs are based on GEM scale culture yields and must be reduced to scale correctly
Food/production buffs are probably too high as well.

Pantheons
Reduce
Fertility Rites (25% food, default is 10%), should be 15%
Ancestor Worship 1 for shrines, mod is 2
Oral Tradition 1 for plantations, add faith?, mod is 2 culture
Open Sky 1 :c5culture for pastures, add faith?, mod is 2 culture
Goddess of the Hunt 1 for camps, add faith? mod is 2 food
New modded beliefs: Sacred Isles/Tranquil Refuge 2 culture and faith/food on Isles and Oasis, respectively. Should be 1 food, 1 culture on oasis and 1 culture, 1 faith on Isles, at most.

If these are perceived as too weak when reduced toward default levels they can be evened up with gold-silver-wine style pantheons to add 1 faith. I do not think this is necessary as these are more common tiles and thus more valuable over time.

God of the Sea 2 production from work boats?, default is 1. This could add food or gold if needed instead of the additional production, it's fairly good as is though.

Others open to debate
Desert Folklore is perceived as imbalanced at 1 faith in desert elsewhere but this is situational.

These default pantheons/beliefs do not appear in our lists for placement.
Earth Mother (+1 faith on copper/iron/salt)
Faith Healer - moved to enhancer (heals by cities)
Goddess of Protection (ranged attack for cities boost) - weak/to be replaced
God King (all yields +1 on palace) - weak/ to be replaced
Sun God (+1 food on wheat, banana, citrus)
Ceremonial Burial

Bugs: "formal liturgy", is listed but appears nowhere defined by the mod

Founder Beliefs - mod effects listed - we would need at least 8 here
Interfaith 2.5x science per convert (5x) (reduce)
Charitable Missions (moved from reformation), unchanged 30% influence from gold to CS - consider moving it back
Papal Primacy +30 influence (2x)
Initiation 2x gold (200 per convert)
Church Property +3 gold/city (1.5x)
Tithe 1/5 followers, (reduced was 1/4)
World Church 1 culture /3 followers, was 1/5 (restore to default)
Pilgrimage 5 culture per foreign city, was 2 faith (restore to faith/tourism?)
Peace Loving 1 happy /3 followers (was /8) (reduce)
Messiah - moved from enhancer, unchanged (move back)
Missionary Zeal 200% convert strength (was 25%), moved from enhancer (move back)
Holy Order - moved from enhancer (reduced to 25% from 30%) - move back

Follower:
Heathen Conversion - missionaries convert barbarians (moved from reformation)
Choral Music 3 for temples, mod is 6, default is 2
Holy Warriors - unchanged
Feed the World +2 food shrine/temple (should be +1, make it for all religious buildings?)
Plowshares +25% food while at peace (tone to 20%)
Religious Community - max 20% production
Guru - 4 science instead of 2 production if city has specialist
Monasteries - consider moving to reformation
Liturgical Drama 4 faith amphitheater (probably fine at 3)
Religious Art - 2x tourism/culture on hermitage (probably fine at 8 instead of 10)
Divine Inspiration - adds +1 tourism for WW.
Sacred Sites - moved from reformation, 2 tourism per purchased religious building
Ascetism - unchanged (1 happy shrine)
Religious Center - unchanged (2 happy temple)
Peace Garden - unchanged (2 happy garden)

Enhancer
Just War - condensed just war and defender of faith, should be 20-25% bonus each, mod is at 40%
Reliquary 500 faith per GP (was 50)
Underground Sect - spies spread (moved from reformation)
Itinerant Preachers - 30% farther spread unchanged
Religious Text - unchanged 25% faster spread, 50% with printing
Unity 5x spread to CS (Was 2x)
Evangelism - missionary reduces spread (moved from reformation)
Unity of Prophets - slower removal of religion (moved from reformation)

Reformation
Jesuit - adds library, purchases science buildings
Fervor - purchases later game units
Glory of god - purchase any GP with faith
Courage - purchases coastal buildings
Thrift - purchases gold buildings
Work Ethic - purchases production buildings
Cathedral 1/1/1+GW slot, was follower, move back
Mosque 1/5/1 was 1/2/3 in vanilla, was follower, move back, reduce culture and add faith
Pagoda (2/1/1, was 2/2/2), was follower, move back

 

[mystikx21]

The Race for Religion mod has been proposed as an alternative to CEP's beliefs changes. My preference at this point is to scrap most of those changes and go back to default anyway, so using something else might be appealing.

In looking it over, these are the general shifts
Pantheons all give faith sources
Most current non-faith yields for pantheons are moved to become follower beliefs, which generally give yields for things
Founder beliefs mostly center on spreading
Enhancers give effects for other cities/CS (having spread in other words)
Reformation gives things to spend faith on (this includes leaving cathedral-mosque-pagoda in reformation, and adding others)

Some issues/advantages with it
Baptism and Migration look pretty overpowered
Holy Land, Religious Converts, etc
I like simplifying tithe/church property down much like our solution for just war and defender of faith to combine them
Just War/defender of faith are duplicated, effectively, rather than condensed.
Divine Inspiration is more interesting
Feed the World is more powerful, which could be an issue
Sacred Grove and Open Sky is strong (2 culture on mills, 2 food on pasture), but you have to get a religion to get them. Not sure if that's a good trade-off or not.

 

[Spheniscine]

One thing that has to be noted is that RoR uses the Forge (production building that improves iron and requires a worked iron source in city limits), which isn't in Communitas, so those will probably need to be adapted.

 

[mystikx21]

I would not propose moving it over fully, and adjustments for individual beliefs should be expected even if we did.

My main interest is it has ideas and a coherent design that can be built around that is currently lacking, or if found wanting it could be more easily adapted to our purposes than the present design.

 

[ExpiredReign]

Exactly, coherent design. He has devised that mod with an express purpose in mind. At best we have cobbled together an assortment of partially thought through ideas and palmed it off as a fix.
This needs to be front and centre when we do this overhaul, "a purpose in mind".

 

[mystikx21]

The one major issue with the current design is that without cathedral/pagoda/mosque as a follower, the only way to meaningful spend faith is on great prophets unless you go through the piety tree. If however there's a good reward and good effect for spreading religion with missionaries/prophets, then at least spending on the religion spread "war" has rewards until the player makes a stronger commitment to the piety tree or gets to the industrial age to spend on GP. Right now there is a very incomplete interaction for spreading faith around the globe. It appears there was some effort put into resolving that problem in this mod.

 

[Spheniscine]

I know I've said this in a few places before, but just for reference:
Heathen Conversion implementation is buggy. Swordsmen don't require iron, captured settlers just convert outright, and you can even convert the rebels that appear if your empire is deep in unhappiness. This is independent of any power level concerns (which arguably exist since one missionary can raise an entire army; won't be so bad if it used up spread religion actions, or part of them). Also kinda steps on the toes of the Hun UA (which was the German UA in vanilla)

And I say this as someone who actually enjoyed using it (I had even nicknamed it "slasessa", after a piece of Internet lore)

 

[Ahriman]

I strongly dislike putting faith on lots of pantheons - I think it undermines shrines and temples and other sources of faith. I'd prefer vanilla-with-balance-tweaks.

I prefer pantheons that can give you a range of different things - some can give faith, some culture, some food, some production, some longer term bonuses, some more specialized, etc.

I think the core design is:
Founder beliefs are the most powerful, they give you bonuses for spreading the religion: either to lots of cities, to lots of citizens, to lots of foreign cities, to lots of new cities, etc.
All effects like this should be founder.

Follower beliefs can do lots of different things. Most of the religious buildings are here (though monastery could be a reformation belief). Most things to spend faith on are here (except the building class ones). Building boosters are here.

Enhancer beliefs mostly are to do with religious spread, helping you to spread, resisting other spread, etc.

Reformation beliefs do new things, and often support particular victory conditions. The tourism from faith buildings belongs here. Monasteries could belong here. etc.

 

[Gokudo01]

Religious Art - 2x tourism/culture on hermitage (probably fine at 8 instead of 10)

10 tourism and culture from a national wonder , not available on pick(have to wait late renaissance). I fail to understand how it's overpower
already super niche ( brazil, tall france )

 

[mitsho]

I'd like an Enhancer beliefs that spreads your religion to the next 10 cities (range) or something at once, maybe coupled with one of the lesser liked "spreading beliefs".

As for other stuff, I think Ahrimans explanation is a good guideline for reorganising it. That way was popular and fun and so should be taken again. Most of the balancing stuff then goes on from there 'logically', so the minutiae should not need to be discussed here in detail For example, Heathen conversion should be 'rebalanced' to a big deal if it's made a Reformation belief again (= beelining needed).

(But mystiks list is a good one!)

 

[jacktannery]

God of the Sea - If you are reducing the other powerful pantheons down, then this is much too powerful at +2 production on water resources. It needs to be toned down to +1 production.

I would recommend adding a second sea-type pantheon belief that provides +1 faith (or perhaps +1 gold?) per sea & ocean tile to compete with god of the sea.

I like the idea of pantheons becoming toned down as per your suggestion. Thal was toning everything up which meant that pantheon beliefs were having too much of an effect.

All your ideas sound great Mystik.

 

[Ahriman]

For god of the sea: one option is to have it be 1 production, but extend it to isles as well (and maybe drop the other isles policy).

So it doesn't make supercities, but its better than just 1 from workboats, which I think is a bit weak.

I agree in general that pantheons shouldn't be very strong, they need to be unambiguously much weaker than any other policy class, they're mostly for the early game before you get a religion.