The early religions

[Lone Wolf]

Use broader alignments...

No thanks. I would like the situation to be acceptable without them.

Furthermore it would need testing in Vanilla if the AI likes to research Konfuzianism, if no one else has it, if the AI has already another state religion, but not the holy city of that state religion.

Depends of the AI. But the classic BTS AI's place a higher value in a tech if the religion which it enables hadn't been founded yet. Not sure why you single out Confuzianism.

I've seen AI found many religions. Isabella often does it.

 

[Verily]

Maybe if Open Borders was moved back to Trade (or Currency?), that would ameliorate the problem a lot. Especially combined with turning off passive religion spreading. That would mean every religion except Empyrean and CoE would probably be founded before anyone could start spamming Disciples and converting other civs.

 

[Nikis-Knight]

Open borders being too soon was mentioned, along with map trading. What if cartography gained another pre-req, like (the very sensible) writing? Of course, Pact of Nilhorn would need a big price reduction to still be useful, say drop it from 500 to 200 hammers.

I could also easily see doubling the the leader religion preferences; they were a bit understated since I think Kael want more varied outcomes, rather than fewer--but an all-too-common occurance IS what we are addressing here, anyway.

Then halve or so the passive spread of all religions as is suggested.

 

[Nimbus]

I could also easily see doubling the the leader religion preferences; they were a bit understated since I think Kael want more varied outcomes, rather than fewer--but an all-too-common occurance IS what we are addressing here, anyway.

I have been doubling the leader religion preferences since .030 and it only makes a small difference. Leaders will still adopt a religion with a higher or worse modifier.

Ex. I still can get the Elohim to adopt Ashen Veil when they have a -40 instead of -20 I just have to spread the religion to more of their cities than I usually would before asking them to convert. Also it makes them more likely to switch off of a religion to the Empyrean at +50 instead of their +25 later in the game.

 

[Nikis-Knight]

Well, I don't know if you are going to get hard coded restrictions in. But forcing more work before they convert is possible and will solve the problem in some games, imo.

 

[Lone Wolf]

Ex. I still can get the Elohim to adopt Ashen Veil when they have a -40 instead of -20 I just have to spread the religion to more of their cities than I usually would before asking them to convert. Also it makes them more likely to switch off of a religion to the Empyrean at +50 instead of their +25 later in the game.

Well, that's the point of doubling the modifiers, instead of setting them to 99, that conversion is still possible, you just need to work more.

And Open Borders are signed too easily, as said.

BTW, the Bannor are often not the ones who found Order.

 

[D-Rockz]

I like the idea of having some of the later religions tech trees shortened, give them a chance to spread and do their thing before the entire world has converted to FoL/RoK

 

[Gelvan]

To give map making the prerequesite writing would make it better, even though I'd put it even behind trading. Before Trading it is just like cheating to get the whole map revealed. And open borders are similiar. Wanna now what an opponent has in his cities? make open borders, spy him out and after that: attack. Still the passive spread rate needs to get at least halved, if not completely turned off. I don't know how AI values techs in genereral. But maybe he should "like" the religion techs more? It's nescessary that it understands that having a holy city means about 48 commerce on a standard map, and a mana with a great prophet. I'm not sure how the AI "thinks" [works], but maybe if we would increase the value of mana to him to something very high, it would go for holy cities (and GP) more often? doubling the religion weight modifiers sounds good, it wouldn't make it impossible to get Elohim OO, or Shaeim RoK, just a little bit harder for the AI to switch too early.

@LW Confuzianism was just an example

 

[Aroldo]

1- What Nikis-Night says for Cartography/Writing/Open Borders.

2 - As many other pointed out, convince the AI not to adopt certain religions as light-heartedly as it does now, or in some extreme cases force them not to (though I see one might want to keep this possibility alive for variety´s sake. Then what about a game option? Already too many of them?).

3 - Perhaps make it so that you need to meet some prerequisites in order to adopt a particular religion, at least when this is not a religion your civ is supposed to like.

 

[MetalMilitia-]

Hmm, if you turn off the spreadrate completly that would probably cause some civs to never adopt a religion or adopt the religion of some conquered city. Maybe make the AI more likely to trade the religious techs to their friends? Use the tech as a spreader instead.

Doubling the weights would make it better, Ihve tried it myself once (note that some of weights are missing aswell). It wont fix the conquest problem unfortunately.

Oh! just remembered something relevant. Sometime ago the AI had a tendency to spam deciple units, this was fixed by limiting how many deciple the AI can train. This probably interferes with active spread.

 

[Gelvan]

In my actual game I turned off passive spread of all religions and founded RoK (I'm Luichurp). Short after that I've met Khazad who had researched RoK as well. After I've built two temples and spread RoK to Minister Koun (Malakim) Varn Gossam also adpoted RoK as a state religion. When I built Tablets of Bambur, in the same turn, Bannor (neighbour to Khazad) and Lanun (neighbour to me, we had no open border at this time due to war) also adopted RoK. Varn Gossam researched The Order, I researched Empyrian and someone researched FoL (supposingly the Ljoslfar).

I think it's better now that passive spreading is turned off, because the AI has more chances to research or adpot a religion if it is spread to cities that have no religon by now. On the other hand, the AI's that have had no religion (Lanun, Bannor, before tablets and Clan) have a bit of a disadvantage and will adpot whatever "Shrine" is built first by one of their neighbours. Maybe the Malakim will defect to the Order? I'm curious why the Lanun did not research OO by now - they have built Heron Throne, so they could do it.

the Shaeim died quite early. It's turn 233 now.

 

[WarKirby]

I think moving open borders back is a bad idea. The relations bonus it gives is a good way to stave off war and get trade going early on, which is excellent for builder civs.

Closed borders also REALLY hamper exploration. I'd really rather not see it moved back at all.

 

[MetalMilitia-]

Well...now im pissed. I turned off the passive spread. I got a pretty interesting game going as amurites, a round of good vs evil. Little did i know that in the opposite end of the continent the Khazad were converting all the evil civs to neutral by deciples through open borders so that by turn 300, 4 of the 5 evil civs had allready adopted RoK. Higher weights against RoK wouldnt even make any diffrence because the religion had been spread to each and every city. sigh!

Its just infinitely annoying to me. Anyone happen to know where I might change diplomatic proposals?

 

[lordrune]

2 - As many other pointed out, convince the AI not to adopt certain religions as light-heartedly as it does now, or in some extreme cases force them not to (though I see one might want to keep this possibility alive for variety´s sake. Then what about a game option? Already too many of them?).

AIs should really not adopt religions that don't fit their flavour IMHO. I saw Os-Gabella adopt Order and change to Good - I cringed.

If it were possible, I'd like to see the Sheaim and Elohim AIs in particular totally avoid religions that will change their alignment.

The other good and evil leaders it probably doesn't matter quite so much, but it should still be discouraged - e.g. backwards evil AIs like Doviello and Clan - flip a coin - heads FOL will spread to them and they'll stay how they were, tails ROK will spread to them and they'll go neutral. That sort of alignment shift should happen one game in ten, not one game in two.

 

[lordrune]

Maybe that's one of the reasons the AI's are so behind in your game...

Althrough in my games I've seen some AI's doing the tech race really badly with no particular reason, while everyone else does OK.

Balseraphs seem to do well - probably because they research Festivals, so they get markets (one of the two key early-game buildings you want in every city - elder councils being the other one).

I've seen certain AIs researching mid-game military technologies like Stirrups and Smelting, when they haven't yet got markets, and it irks me.

 

[Honor]

Adopting a religion that goes against your original alignment should give a happiness penalty until you convert to one that is in tune with your original alignment. This could be grounds for an argument that adopting the first religion that spreads to your cities is not always a good idea (if the AI could somehow be programmed to *know* this too).

Evil Civs
----------
Ashen Veil: -
Octopus Overlords: -
Council of Esus: -
Fellowship of Leaves: +3
Runes of Kilmorph: +3
Empyrean: +3
Order: +6

Neutral Civs
----------
Ashen Veil: +3
Octopus Overlords: -
Council of Esus: -
Fellowship of Leaves: -
Runes of Kilmorph: -
Empyrean: -
Order: +3

Good Civs
----------
Ashen Veil: +6
Octopus Overlords: +3
Council of Esus: +3
Fellowship of Leaves: +3
Runes of Kilmorph: -
Empyrean: -
Order: -

 

[MetalMilitia-]

Still think its better to prevent/manage the spread reather than prevent the ai from adopting religions. Increasing the weights wont work on its own in any case.

 

[Honor]

Consider my post an off-topic gameplay/flavor suggestion, then

 

[MetalMilitia-]

Adopting a religion that goes against your original alignment should give a happiness penalty until you convert to one that is in tune with your original alignment. This could be grounds for an argument that adopting the first religion that spreads to your cities is not always a good idea (if the AI could somehow be programmed to *know* this too).

There are allready existing values in the civ4leaderhead.XML that manages what religions the diffrent leaders are more/less likely to adopt. The tag <ReligionWeightModifiers>.

Edit: ah ok fair enough. Its a valid point though but mostly for human players.

 

[lordrune]

There are allready existing values in the civ4leaderhead.XML that manages what religions the diffrent leaders are more/less likely to adopt. The tag <ReligionWeightModifiers>.

Has anyone experimented with making those weights more aggressive? ie greater magnitude than +25 or -25? (Excepting -100 in specific cases of course)