MKDELTA3
Warlord
Piety is often regarded as one of the most weakest Ancient era social policy trees. I don't know if it is a bad tree in itself but I feel that it is very problematic in it's current form.
Thinking back I feel that Piety was much more viable and fun back in G&K. It was kind of an oddball bag of various benefits but it came at the right time and didn't have any obnoxiously useless policies like Religious Tolerance. Only the opener and Organized Religion give some form of reliable, immediate benefits while every other Ancient tree is all about reliable immediate benefits, if poorly balanced ones. Many have noted the total lack of culture. Of course religion can generate culture, some pantheons can exceed even Tradition under exceptional starts but Piety is not self-supporting like the other early trees.
Essentially Piety is a race for the extremely poorly balanced reformation beliefs. It feels forced and unpleasant. You burn policies which may be useful at some point of game to pick a policy which breaks a game mechanic (you use Faith to boost religion) so that you have a chance to pick two game winning beliefs from a pool of one decent (Glory of God) and otherwise utterly dismal beliefs which have no place in being the capstone of your religion.
AI's extreme love affair with Piety makes things even more difficult. Some AI's are extremely succesfull with it. We've all seen the Piety finisher + Hagia Sophia + 500 Faith Prophet spam triple tap from AI's at some point. On the other hand we've all seen Sejong's and Pachachuti's and a dozen other AI's wastefull adventures in Piety which result in nothing but a single useless Holy Site for tremendous among of social policies.
AI's in general have an advantage at forming religions and significant other advantages at higher levels. Someone once said that "Piety only exists so that the AI can mess with the human" and this is certainly a feeling I get from it too. This is not a "boo I can't get ICS Sacred Sites spam going on" post. I often can if I want to. I can beeline Jesuit Education. The point is that it's not fun. In it's current form Piety takes fun out of the religious aspect of the game.
Perhaps the issues with Piety are a reflection of religion being so extremely luck based on this game (terrain patheons, random prophets) but the current race for reformation is harsh. If you lose it you have wasted a ton of precious early game policies. Perhaps it's fine to have SP trees with an element of risk in them but currently you either win big or lose big with Piety. There's no real middle ground except in few rare cirumstances (your neighbour has a sweet pantheon, cities with exceptional gold from tiles).
I feel that if Piety was again a Classical tree it would help with a lot of things. The playing ground for religion would be more even and those AIs who currently gimp themselves on Piety without managing to found a religion would spend their early policies on something more universally useful.
By classical era you have a quite decent idea if you are going to make it for a religion or not and you might even have founded one. Thus opening things like Mandate of Heaven would perhaps even feel like a worthy investment instead of hitting yourself on the face with a brick for not taking Legalism or something. Of course some of the policies would be extremely situational and/or useless even for a classical tree. Moving Piety to a later era wouldn't perhaps fix everything but it's hard to imagine how to improve it without making it a total no-brainer.
I don't like the current Reformation mechanic myself and I think it would need intensive and extensive rebalancing, or maybe even making the Reformation belief to be triggered by Prophets like every other religious belief.
Thinking back I feel that Piety was much more viable and fun back in G&K. It was kind of an oddball bag of various benefits but it came at the right time and didn't have any obnoxiously useless policies like Religious Tolerance. Only the opener and Organized Religion give some form of reliable, immediate benefits while every other Ancient tree is all about reliable immediate benefits, if poorly balanced ones. Many have noted the total lack of culture. Of course religion can generate culture, some pantheons can exceed even Tradition under exceptional starts but Piety is not self-supporting like the other early trees.
Essentially Piety is a race for the extremely poorly balanced reformation beliefs. It feels forced and unpleasant. You burn policies which may be useful at some point of game to pick a policy which breaks a game mechanic (you use Faith to boost religion) so that you have a chance to pick two game winning beliefs from a pool of one decent (Glory of God) and otherwise utterly dismal beliefs which have no place in being the capstone of your religion.
AI's extreme love affair with Piety makes things even more difficult. Some AI's are extremely succesfull with it. We've all seen the Piety finisher + Hagia Sophia + 500 Faith Prophet spam triple tap from AI's at some point. On the other hand we've all seen Sejong's and Pachachuti's and a dozen other AI's wastefull adventures in Piety which result in nothing but a single useless Holy Site for tremendous among of social policies.
AI's in general have an advantage at forming religions and significant other advantages at higher levels. Someone once said that "Piety only exists so that the AI can mess with the human" and this is certainly a feeling I get from it too. This is not a "boo I can't get ICS Sacred Sites spam going on" post. I often can if I want to. I can beeline Jesuit Education. The point is that it's not fun. In it's current form Piety takes fun out of the religious aspect of the game.
Perhaps the issues with Piety are a reflection of religion being so extremely luck based on this game (terrain patheons, random prophets) but the current race for reformation is harsh. If you lose it you have wasted a ton of precious early game policies. Perhaps it's fine to have SP trees with an element of risk in them but currently you either win big or lose big with Piety. There's no real middle ground except in few rare cirumstances (your neighbour has a sweet pantheon, cities with exceptional gold from tiles).
I feel that if Piety was again a Classical tree it would help with a lot of things. The playing ground for religion would be more even and those AIs who currently gimp themselves on Piety without managing to found a religion would spend their early policies on something more universally useful.
By classical era you have a quite decent idea if you are going to make it for a religion or not and you might even have founded one. Thus opening things like Mandate of Heaven would perhaps even feel like a worthy investment instead of hitting yourself on the face with a brick for not taking Legalism or something. Of course some of the policies would be extremely situational and/or useless even for a classical tree. Moving Piety to a later era wouldn't perhaps fix everything but it's hard to imagine how to improve it without making it a total no-brainer.
I don't like the current Reformation mechanic myself and I think it would need intensive and extensive rebalancing, or maybe even making the Reformation belief to be triggered by Prophets like every other religious belief.