(4-33) Proposal: Buff India's UA (Part 1 - Passive Pressure)

Status
Not open for further replies.

azum4roll

Lost the game
Joined
Jul 17, 2018
Messages
3,481
Location
Somewhere
Current India's UA:
1. Starts with Pantheon
2. Great Prophets 35% cheaper
This roughly translates to 1 more Prophet over the game, and the first one comes earlier​
3. All owned cities convert when you found a Religion
Owned cities get just enough pressure to convert (currently bugged at certain population numbers)​
4. Each follower of State Religion in an Indian city provides 2% Growth and emits 10% more Religious Pressure, if the State Religion is the Majority Religion of the city
Note that there's no bonus if the city isn't following the State Religion​
Pressure bonus is capped at 350%, or 35 followers​
5. Cannot build Missionaries
6. UNDOCUMENTED: Does not suffer from Religious Unrest

For reference, how passive pressure works:
All "distance" explicitly or implicitly mentioned below refers to trade route distance.
Majority religion of a city emits 6 pressure per turn to all other cities within range (= trade route range), modified by pressure modifiers and India's UA. Actual pressure reaching other cities is reduced by distance; less pressure for cities further away. Trade route targets receive pressure as if they're 0 distance from the source. As a result, pressure to a given city can be increased by building religious buildings, building roads/railroads, building trade route lengthening buildings, having Global Commandments, or just sending a trade route.

India's UA is essentially giving 0.6 pressure per follower, after all modifiers.

India's increased pressure has the following problems that hinder its use:
1. It's based on the number of followers of his primary religion, but India often has troubles keeping it due to the inability to purchase missionaries, relying entirely on passive pressure and prophets to spread it.
For example, you can simply quash India's religion by spending one missionary spread on each Indian city once you found. India can found a religion early, but not early enough to accumulate 1000 pressure on his cities before others found.​
2. There are other common sources of pressure% such as Temple and most religious buildings which make the pressure% from UA matter less due to diminishing returns.

The Proposal:
1. Instead of 10% Religious Pressure, an Indian city emits 1 flat Pressure per follower, capped at 24 followers
Unlike the current 0.6 Pressure per follower, this would be before modifiers​
This essentially doubles the pressure from a city for every 6 followers, capped at 500% of base pressure at 24 followers​
It's a UA, and should be impactful to offset the con of not being able to build missionaries to spread​
2. Instead of barely converting owned cities when founding religion, each non-holy city of India gets 1000 pressure of the new religion
This should help kickstart their religion, and prevent others from easily converting them early on​
It's possible but very unlikely that the cities don't convert, so we shouldn't have to change the UA wordings​
 
+1 is still probably not enough in the early game to get you going. Maybe I’m wrong though. If it’s +1 before modifiers then that’s 1.25 pressure if city has a temple, which is more than 2x stronger than what it is now.

I have always really liked the idea of this UA, but the implementation and actual gameplay feel of it always leaves me cold. I don’t like caps on UA abilities. It feels like a UA is something you should always be trying to push to its limits, and having those limits arbitrarily defined by a self-limiting mechanic instead of the gameplay feels wrong. But, without a cap, there is no way to have passive spread be strong enough that it can support itself early, yet weak enough that it doesn’t become a tidal wave in late game.
 
What's the reasoning of India not able to build missionaries? Can't we just remove this limitation?
 
+1 is still probably not enough in the early game to get you going. Maybe I’m wrong though. If it’s +1 before modifiers then that’s 1.25 pressure if city has a temple, which is more than 2x stronger than what it is now.

I have always really liked the idea of this UA, but the implementation and actual gameplay feel of it always leaves me cold. I don’t like caps on UA abilities. It feels like a UA is something you should always be trying to push to its limits, and having those limits arbitrarily defined by a self-limiting mechanic instead of the gameplay feels wrong. But, without a cap, there is no way to have passive spread be strong enough that it can support itself early, yet weak enough that it doesn’t become a tidal wave in late game.
You can think of this as a 16.7% pressure increase per follower, stacked multiplicatively with other modifiers.

I think this cap is ok. It's unlikely you get 24 followers earlier on where you need the pressure, and 24 followers already give 5 times the pressure.
 
I sponsor this.
 
Proposal sponsored by azum4roll.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom