June 2020 Update - Patch Notes Discussion

[huptiel]

Brazil is very powerful with sacred path and work ethic but with no early faith boost or cheap holy site getting both sacred path and work ethic is already a challenge, and then it takes some good city planning to take advantage. It's not nearly as reliable as Russia both in getting the right beliefs and to get a lot of good holy site spots.

 

[Aurelesk]

I remember that in Civilization V, the Pantheons were:

• Dance of the Aurora: +1 Faith from Tundra tiles without Forest
• Desert Folklore: +1 Faith from Desert tiles
• Sacred Path: +1 Culture from Jungle tiles

Desert Folklore was one of the best beliefs (the best?) because Desert wasn't as harsh as in Civilization VI. They tend to have a lot of ressource, Hills yield as much as Plains Hills, you can put Farms on Desert, not counting Flood plains and Oasis that make them more hospitable. Also, early Faith was really important in early game because it allow to have a Prophet and a religion, and growing your civilization was key (so you end up to exploit a lot of tiles).

I guess they changed it for "adjacency" to make it less exploitable (also: Pantheon is now linked to civilization and can't be removed). Now it is fun to see it went one extrem to the other.

My main concern is Jungle. They can burn and yield additionnal yield, can be improved with Lumber Mill so it is a relevant tile, and do not prevent improvement if they have a ressource, and the additionnal Food make the early game even better. So they are far from being a dead and unwanted tiles, just here to be chopped (like Marsh). Even if Sacred Path is not as good as the 2 others, it feels way more powerful due to Jungle being useful now.

 

[blackcatatonic]

Ah, I have fond memories of Theodora with a desert start and Desert Folklore! You could unlock two faith buildings with the extra belief! Good times.

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

Ah, I have fond memories of Theodora with a desert start and Desert Folklore! You could unlock two faith buildings with the extra belief! Good times.

And then get the Sacred Sites Reformation Belief for +4 Tourism for an easier Culture Victory. She was insane when played right, but very situational and not very good in difficult where getting a religion was hard.

 

[bbbt]

And then get the Sacred Sites Reformation Belief for +4 Tourism for an easier Culture Victory. She was insane when played right, but very situational and not very good in difficult where getting a religion was hard.

If they return in NFP I wonder if we'll get something similar or a completely different direction. If the former I look forward to the work ethic + choral music screenshots from people who restarted 100 times for the combo.

I do agree that the timing of this raises the likelihood an Ethiopia with a unique holy site is incoming.

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

If they return in NFP I wonder if we'll get something similar or a completely different direction. If the former I look forward to the work ethic + choral music screenshots from people who restarted 100 times for the combo.

I do agree that the timing of this raises the likelihood an Ethiopia with a unique holy site is incoming.

We could get Ethiopia wit a chicken coop like my dream....don't ask.

Or a Stele, cuz afaik we don't have a unique Monument, and it was one thing that made Ethiophia powerful in Civ 5, so we'll see.

 

[Kupe Navigator]

Or a Stele, cuz afaik we don't have a unique Monument, and it was one thing that made Ethiophia powerful in Civ 5, so we'll see.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Stele was boring as hell and frankly got VERY little to do with Ethiopia. Stele was a mistake in civ 5.

 

[Abaxial]

As @SammyKhalifa hinted at, there seems to be a bug that disables the production bonus if the Holy Site is pillaged, even once it's repaired. This used to happen to a lot of districts, but they were all fixed quite a while ago. I'm surprised to see the bug resurface. Hopefully, it's fixed in the July patch.

Being in tundra, it got hit by a blizzard.

 

[Johann khan]

I have been trying Work ethic, tithe and some other since this came out as I have been disappointed on how useless religion was and kinda still is in Civ 6 vs 4 and 5. There are 3 big issues with religion systems in the game:
1. The inconsistency of starting biases with religious civs
2. The lack of good faith generators.
3. Warmonger diplo penalties

They are intertwined, as aside from the usual 2 you have no real consistent way of producing enough faith for you to be competitive (emperor and above), therefore you compensate with pantheons and buildings, problem is that the usefulness of some off the buildings (pagoda with 1 diplo) doesn't generate enough faith to compete with real religious behemoths, rendering bonuses to useless for most of the game (not early but it doesn't offset the initial cost). On the other hand, the inconsistency of starting biases with certain civs makes the initial pantheons useless as well as civ benefits. In one game you could exploit work ethic with Arabia, but for that you have to reroll 5 times due to the limited amount of faith generations early game.

Since some civs have no real way of generating faith in a more or less safe manner, they are discouraged of doing so, and as a consequence their fall from grace cannot be mitigated with religion like it was before. In 4 you mitigated your crappy science with religion (or compensate for early expansion) and in 5 it was almost a game changer for culture and economy.

I think that the problem with 6 can be fixed by making faith generation pantheons or ruling out the silly notion of 1 religious building per dominant religion and instead letting other buildings to be produced at the same time, as that could add the complexity it deserves. Or maybe getting rid of religious victory maybe.

There are multiple ways of fixing this, but the general idea I want to share with everyone is that religions is one if not the aspect of the game that is the most affected by rng than anything else, and this being a game on which its meta makes human agency matter less as context and neighbors.

The warmonger diplo penalties is plain childish. It came as a reaction of some smart ass people winning diplomatically by killing the opposition. The problem with this is that it confuses diplo victory with a international voice over global issues through out the ages. Historically even if you were as cruel as the mongols, you still had a voice (and even more important) than the rest of the nations and it did matter more because of the power they held. If they wanted to penalize someone for conquering they should have had separated those two things as you cannot even protect yourself through out the game with the constant bs the ai proposes. This has to do with religion because in older simpler civs religion served as a mitigation, compensation or even enhancing your civ, whereas here it does not.

In conclusion, religion updates are good but not enough, and a Georgia is still consistently useless even after these patches. </3

 

[HiRezAudio]

Civ teams REALLY need to nerf AI Obession with soreading religion a bit.

So does it mean Kongo is your favorite civ? Since you don't have to worry about religion at all?

Not at all - Until the recent addition of the massively overpowered "Work Ethic" I just used to completely ignore religion altogether in my 'home' cities, and ignored faith generation completely until I went on the conquest path & 'inherited' holy sites.
The main reasons for this were simply that it is just too much effort in the main founding & then maintaining a religion against aggressive RU spamming by Spain, Poland etc and the consequential penalties for cities that the AI reconverts again.
My tactic was to science & culture the heck out of things & simply go annihilate the opposition, as the AI cannot fight a war to save it's life. The only time I ever lose wars is when I get jumped by multiple civs in the very early game by aggressive forward settling (they get the 3 settler & 5 warrior start plus the 80% bonuses for production, science & culture) and by the time I deal with that nonsense I am usually too far behind to catch up again. Then there are the times (ie the game before last) when there were no less than 4 of the angry boys within 6 tiles of my capital!! Talk about a bad spawn there - I lasted a whole 20 turns on that one.

However.
Since "Work Ethic" and the insane Holy Site bonuses of Sacred Path, or Earth Goddess it is now well worth the effort as by the time I use the 100% Holy Site Adjacency card and this also doubles the production of those holy sites......and with the monstrously overpowered Ethiopian leader it is impossible to lose as it appears that to me in 2 starts, each time I hit a first goody hut as Menelek I get a relic. Maybe just the way it rolled, but boy does Work Ethic & the adjacency bonus card make life easy

 

[HiRezAudio]

There's a whole lot of Civs that I'm going to be beelining Theology for, because Work Ethic and +100% adjacency is going to be silly. Sure just made Russia, Japan and Mali greatly upgraded, 3 civs that probably didn't need the boost. 14 Hammer Holy Sites!

only 14? You can get much, much more than this - right up until your HS/Lavra gets either poillaged or Tornadoed/Flooded/Blizzarded/Sandstormed upon which after the repairs are done you lose all the Work Ethic bonus as this is still not fixed in the latest version.

 

[Kwami]

only 14? You can get much, much more than this - right up until your HS/Lavra gets either poillaged or Tornadoed/Flooded/Blizzarded/Sandstormed upon which after the repairs are done you lose all the Work Ethic bonus as this is still not fixed in the latest version.

For what it's worth, Carl confirmed that the team is aware of the bug with Work Ethic and that they're working on a fix. They just didn't have time to get it in to the Ethiopia release. Perhaps next month?

 

[HiRezAudio]

For what it's worth, Carl confirmed that the team is aware of the bug with Work Ethic and that they're working on a fix. They just didn't have time to get it in to the Ethiopia release. Perhaps next month?

That's good news!
Thanks for the info