12/1 Feature request: hinder one religion from dominating a landmass with passive pressure

[Edaka]

First of all, I'll admit my bias: I've been playing on Pangaea lately, so this issue may not be present at such a scale on other map scripts.

Now to the point: often times I see one founder dominate an entire landmass with his religion. While at first that founder usually works towards that domination by actively buying missionaries, soon the process becomes automatic due to the strength and scaling of passive pressure. It makes it nigh impossible for other founders to fight the foreign religion, even with inquisitors, and any work done by missionaries becomes undone pretty quickly as well.

The problem is exacerbated by the various buildings, faith buildings, policies and beliefs that further increase passive pressure without offering a countermeasure against it. Temples and all faith buildings except pagodas and churches give +25% passive pressure. Churches give +40%. Fealty policy gives +50%, albeit only in cities without the religion already present, but it still makes fighting it frustratingly difficult. That one enhancer (Scripture?) gives +20% and +40% later on, not counting the trade route pressure and the extended range.

I'll agree that all of these options, except the temple, have relatively high opportunity costs (you have to really invest in them, so they'd better be strong). However, it's still really easy to stack up to +50% or +75% pressure in most normal games. Combine that with the natural scaling of pressure on the amount of cities with the majority. Meanwhile, there are no effects offering real counterplay or at least reducing this pressure, while at the same time there is one for missionaries - correct me if I'm wrong, but the conversion resistance on those faith buildings doesn't work against passive pressure. Moreover, missionaries don't scale like passive pressure does, they become progressively worse when used on the same cities over and over, they can be blocked with inquisitors and they also cost faith, where the cost also scales...

I personally think that a humongously high passive pressure is not an engaging mechanic, it allows certain players in the game snowball, it makes missionaries irrelevant, and it makes the religion game be over relatively quickly.

There are several ways to go about reducing the importance and impact of passive pressure:
1) reduce passive pressure and/or its natural scaling across the board. Clean and simple.

2) reduce existing passive pressure boosts. For example, down to +10% or +15% on temples and faith buildings, down to +33% on fealty.

3) replace the existing passive pressure boosts with missionary boosts. For example, +25% missionary strength instead of +25% passive pressure. Make it so that spreading pressure is an active process that actually has a cost.

4) add passive pressure resistance modifiers to buildings/faith buildings/policies/beliefs. For example, temples still provide +25% pressure, while at the same time reducing all non-majority religions pressures in this city by 25%. This would reduce the homogeneity of religious landscape and allow multiple religions to co-exist next to each other more easily instead of it all being a steamroll.

5) make inquisitors stationed in cities reduce passive pressure of non-majority religions in the city by 50%. Though I fear that the AI will have to be taught this, so that probably means it's a no-go.

6) add a "Declare Heresy" proposal to World Congress. -25% passive pressure to target religion. Target religion cannot be proposed as a World Religion (and vice versa - a World Religion can't be declared a Heresy). Multiple Heresies can be declared/active at a time. The effects would need to be relatively tame due to how easy it would be to gang up against just one founder. Ultimately this seems like a fun option, but one that would be most difficult to code and balance.

EDIT: while browsing through the already available options in the SQL table for buildings, I noticed that there isn't an option to boost local missionary strength, so my proposed option number 3) is not feasible at the moment.

However, there is another option we can use instead:
7) replace the flat pressure with increased pressure from trade routes.

 

[AndreyK]

I think that missionaries strength should scale

 

[cerk]

The problem is exacerbated by the various buildings, faith buildings, policies and beliefs that further increase passive pressure without offering a countermeasure against it. Temples and all faith buildings except pagodas and churches give +25% passive pressure. Churches give +40%. Fealty policy gives +50%, albeit only in cities without the religion already present, but it still makes fighting it frustratingly difficult. That one enhancer (Scripture?) gives +20% and +40% later on, not counting the trade route pressure and the extended range.

The counter is getting pressure boosting buildings of your own. Buildings reducing pressure makes them useful for 'not losing' which is kind of unfun.

make inquisitors stationed in cities reduce passive pressure of non-majority religions in the city by 50%. Though I fear that the AI will have to be taught this, so that probably means it's a no-go

Countering a passive mechanic with another that also clutters my screen with a unit in the city. I like inquisitors the way they are now. If we really want to go this route we can maybe increase passive pressure through the 'arts' process, as disseminating valuable holy rituals as part of the civ's culture. (probably just a niche thing that nobody is going to bother with)

1,2,6,7 sound solid and we could leave it as it is for India.

I must say apart from Spain who makes an annoying use of missionaries, I dont think a religion has managed to dominate an entire continent in my games.

 

[Edaka]

The counter is getting pressure boosting buildings of your own. Buildings reducing pressure makes them useful for 'not losing' which is kind of unfun.

Agreed on the fun factor.

Countering a passive mechanic with another that also clutters my screen with a unit in the city. I like inquisitors the way they are now. If we really want to go this route we can maybe increase passive pressure through the 'arts' process, as disseminating valuable holy rituals as part of the civ's culture. (probably just a niche thing that nobody is going to bother with)

Yeah, you're right about another passive mechanic being just as boring.

Having thought of it, I think 3, 4, 5 and 6 would all require new code, so that makes them undesirable. In that case, we're left with 1, 2 and 7. Honestly, I'm personally leaning the most towards 7, because exchange of faith through trade is not only thematically accurate, but also kinda weak at the moment.

Besides, if we removed the passive pressure boost from temples and religious buildings (while replacing with other spreading boost like 7), those would still be strong buildings. Temples with the Grand Temple have 5 2, if I'm not mistaken, which is fairly strong for that stage of the game. I also remember faith production directly influencing religious unrest and, again, religious pressure, though that could've got changed a long time ago.

I must say apart from Spain who makes an annoying use of missionaries, I dont think a religion has managed to dominate an entire continent in my games.

Yeah, I figured it must be the Pangaea experience. Though the more I think about higher pressure via trade, the more it makes sense to me. With the passive religious spread being weaker overall and stronger via trade, that could actually promote intercontinental spreading a little more. Not sure if it's good in terms of gameplay, but I certainly like the idea. I find it very hard and not worth it to spread religion on other landmasses at the moment.

All that said, I also think that missionaries should be the primary driving power of religion spreading. In the end, they have a faith cost that adds up over time, you have to be careful with other civs' borders and their opinions. At the moment passive pressure does it without any of these disadvantages, so why should I bother using missionaries? I think it makes beliefs tied to missionary use weak as well (though I don't want to start a discussion about those here).

 

[ridjack]

All that said, I also think that missionaries should be the primary driving power of religion spreading.

If this is the route we end up taking, I'd really want the attrition mechanic to get a long, hard look. As it stands, it's basically impossible to make any real use of missionaries for foreign spreading; even one round of attrition is enough to make the missionary essentially useless.

 

[Recursive]

you have to be careful with other civs' borders and their opinions.

This will be even more true in the next version

 

[Stalker0]

If this is the route we end up taking, I'd really want the attrition mechanic to get a long, hard look. As it stands, it's basically impossible to make any real use of missionaries for foreign spreading; even one round of attrition is enough to make the missionary essentially useless.

open borders my good sir!

 

[andersw]

Now it depends on what kind of game you play and of course how wide you are but I think there is control over passive spread and there are a several factors.
If I greed and take beliefs without religious buildings I know I will have less pressure and I know its a risk.
Am I going fealty or not?
How quick was I to found and do I generate enough faith to spread fast?
When its time to enhance, do I need Orthodoxy or can I take anything?
Who are my neighbours and what choices did they make?

 

[pineappledan]

All religious buildings produce more passive pressure than they resist. One way of addressing this complaint is to level out resistance values with pressure values.

Make some of the religious buildings mainly resistance, rather than spread. Synagogue and Mandir could have 30% resistance and only 15% spread, for instance.

This doesn't necessarily solve the problem because one of your strongest tools to resist foreign religious pressure is your own religious pressure. It might help though, and with the added benefit of a little more difference between all the religious buildings.

Another thing I have been advocating for a while is a passive resistance Enhancer belief. We have 1 belief which enhances passive spread, 2 beliefs that enhance active spread, 1 belief that resists active spread and enemy inquisitor actions, and 1 belief that enhances your own inquisitors, but we don't have a belief that confers passive resistance.

 

[Stalker0]

I am loathe to start adjusting religious values again, we have gone through that many times, and personally on the fractal/continents maps I play on the spread pace feels very good. So I wouldn't want to start adjusting values as a baseline, the question is...is there something that could be more tailored to Pangea maps that wouldn't affect other maps

 

[andersw]

I am loathe to start adjusting religious values again, we have gone through that many times, and personally on the fractal/continents maps I play on the spread pace feels very good. So I wouldn't want to start adjusting values as a baseline, the question is...is there something that could be more tailored to Pangea maps that wouldn't affect other maps

Since citiy locations are more dense I would say its likely more of an issue on pangea.

 

[Edaka]

Since citiy locations are more dense I would say its likely more of an issue on pangea.

It's not only that - passive spread also really falls off over land gaps, namely oceans and isolating mountain chains. Like, a lot. It makes for a stark contrast with very strong pressure over land tiles.