Should Piety be moved back to Classical era?

[MKDELTA3]

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.

 

[kaspergm]

Definitely a huge NO from me. Moving Piety back to Ancient era has been a huge boost for this tree, it actually gets regular playtime now and has a good use. Yes going for a religion is a gamble, and there might be a tweeking needed between the number of AIs that actually go into Piety and the amount of pay-off you get from Piety with regards to funding a religion, but moving it into Classical again is definitely not the right solution if you ask me.

 

[Magma_Dragoon]

It is available in ancient era for the Mayans, and maybe Egypt. Maybe the Songhai too, with Oracle.

 

[GhostSalsa]

I don't agree that Piety was better in G&K. I hated it then. Moving it back, all the problems it has now in terms of not-immediately-useful policies would just be replaced by the problems of starter policies-coming too late / being too expensive as a second tree. That only ever worked when aiming for the old culture victory in pre-BNW. When the only thing you were really getting out of Piety is finishing 5 trees quicker.

There's no more old culture victory so piety needs to be more versatile. I prefer having the choice of when to open it.

You're right that the AI use of piety is pretty much ruining religion though. The fact that shared religion is a tourism modifier is a joke. Ive only ever gotten shared religion with two other civs in all my BNW games. Competing AI's send prophets to convert your friends way into the mid and late game when they won't get anything out of it except eliminate all shared religion modifiers, so there's six civs with a religion and four with a mess. Pointless. And, just as you say, makes Piety almost useless except for the Reformation race.

In my current game I avoided founding and via conversions got cathedrals in 3 cities, later Jesuit Education, later Sacred Sites for my cathedrals. In another i had to scrap the game because I put 3 policies in Piety and missed founding. The AI needs to chill out.

 

[Polisurgist]

Religious Tolerance would make way more sense as a Liberty policy. Not only is it a better fit thematically, it helps a wide empire that might pick up religious pressure from a lot of different civs rather than the single-religion path that every other Piety tenet supports.

 

[holywar]

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.

So what you're saying is the game is not hard enough. You need to increase your difficulty level.

 

[kb27787]

No, but it needs to be buffed culturally so human players can use it
I think it's in a way a blessing that AIs favor piety so much... that means more chances for pyras or hanging gardens on higher difficulties; also the saddest thing is to see an AI without its own religion complete the piety tree; wasting 5 SP on nothing and letting you have an easier game.

 

[Ninakoru]

I think separating piety from aesthetics was the right thing, and making it an ancient SP is also a great move, but it lack some push to be really useful on ancient era.

As you can see in this chart, the problem is more than tradition is so much better in everything but faith, of course. AI with their bosnuses can handle piety OK, they don't have the economy and happiness restrictions the player has, but to us players it lack some punch, we need the help we get from tradition and liberty to a lesser extent to maintain a good empire builging on the first part of the game when you are assembling your initial cities.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=512567

If you ask me, the first problem is that it needs better early culture to plow through the tree faster. Piety should be also a culture powerhouse compared to other ancient SP trees. And give some minor helps for empire building, like some bits of happiness and growth or production.

But by no means I would move it to classical era, I think the starter fits perfectly on ancient era to grab your religion faster.