[Vote] (5-52) War Halves Passive Religious Pressure

[Enginseer]

Voting Instructions
Players, please cast your votes in the poll above. Vote "Yea" if you'd be okay if this proposal was implemented. Vote "Nay" if you'd be okay if this proposal wasn't implemented.

You can vote for both options, which is equivalent to saying "I'm fine either way", but adds to the required quorum of 25 votes in favor.

All votes are public. If you wish, you can discuss your choice(s) in the thread below. You can change your vote as many times as you want until the poll closes.

VP Congress: Session 5, Proposal 52

Proposal:

Current	Proposed	Rationale
Cities send the same religious pressure regardless of peace/war status.	Cities at war with other cities send 50% of what they would send in religious pressure.	If the passive religious spread is supposed to represent the movement of religion, then war should definitely reduce this movement. This creates a counterplay in case you have a neighbor that is too dominant with their religion. It's useless to see that you are fighting with someone because you dislike their religion being dominant in your cities, but stalemating and then having your own faith wiped out.

 

[Stalker0]

I get the idea but this will have a pretty major impact on religious spread, as periodic wars are very common. You also get the double whammy that your passive is delayed and you can't send missionaries there either.

 

[Enginseer]

I get the idea but this will have a pretty major impact on religious spread, as periodic wars are very common. You also get the double whammy that your passive is delayed and you can't send missionaries there either.

Be more peaceful and diplomatic with your neighbors. You can't be in perpetual war with War Weariness as a concept to permanently try to drive out someone's religion from your cities.

Alternatively, you can spread to a peaceful civilization and they can still spread for you while you war with your own neighbors.

It is kind of ridiculous when there is no play to counter the religious pressure snowball once it starts rolling (super noticeable after the Industrial Era). Even declaring war to periodically reduce the pressure a bit can help a bit and add more control that you can somehow fight back against. If you have to constantly use Inquisitors, then you are delaying your ability to purchase Great People. Even so, Inquisitors only temporarily cut pressure in a city and don't stop the snowballing from constantly building up.

 

[BliTTzZ]

I get the idea but this will have a pretty major impact on religious spread, as periodic wars are very common. You also get the double whammy that your passive is delayed and you can't send missionaries there either.

Alternatively this can be 75% isntead of originally proposed 50%.

 

[Recursive]

Should require no AI changes to handle.

 

[pineappledan]

I dislike the notion you can hamper an enemy’s spread via a war declaration. You already have inquisitors to deal with removing unwanted spread.

If you have to constantly use Inquisitors, then you are delaying your ability to purchase Great People

Yes, you have basically described the intent. This is exactly how it’s supposed to work. If your neighbour is a powerful spreader it is costly to keep your religion alive, and you will have to give up things like GPeople you might have otherwise spent faith on.

 

[ilteroi]

iirc this is already the way it works? because religious pressure is linked to trade route distance and trade routes avoid enemy territory. so the effective distance increases if you declare war.

 

[Enginseer]

iirc this is already the way it works? because religious pressure is linked to trade route distance and trade routes avoid enemy territory. so the effective distance increases if you declare war.

My religion pre-war:

I declare war, the pressure does not change.

 

[Enginseer]

I will sponsor this.

 

[Stalker0]

I already think war hits religious spreading enough, I feel like this change is very unnecessary.

 

[Enginseer]

I already think war hits religious spreading enough, I feel like this change is very unnecessary.

Closed borders hit religious spreading the same as how war "hits religious spending enough", the AI rarely tries to use their missionaries when you don't open your borders to them.

It doesn't make sense for 2 nations to have the same amount of pressure when they're at war with each other. Do you expect their state religion to spread the same amount of faith to their neighbors regardless of war or peace? At peace, it is much easier to spread faith, but at war, in hard times it can be more difficult to spread around.

 

[Stalker0]

It doesn't make sense for 2 nations to have the same amount of pressure when they're at war with each other. Do you expect their state religion to spread the same amount of faith to their neighbors regardless of war or peace?

the problem is you are assuming that passive pressure is the religion game, which it’s only a part. Religious spread is a combination of passive and active spread. Active spread is completely shut down during war, and so overall the amount of spread is already greatly slowed down during war

 

[pineappledan]

We already have a way to halve passive pressure to cities: Inquisitors.

This proposal would give players a way to completely shut down passive spread to 0%, or to at least save a large pile of on inquisitors. Neither of which interest me. blocking passive spread is Celt's Schtick.

 

[Rekk]

We already have a way to halve passive pressure to cities: Inquisitors.

This proposal would give players a way to completely shut down passive spread to 0%, or to at least save a large pile of on inquisitors. Neither of which interest me. blocking passive spread is Celt's Schtick.

@Enginseer How will this interact with the Inquisitor passive ability?

 

[Enginseer]

We already have a way to halve passive pressure to cities: Inquisitors.

This proposal would give players a way to completely shut down passive spread to 0%, or to at least save a large pile of on inquisitors. Neither of which interest me. blocking passive spread is Celt's Schtick.

@Enginseer How will this interact with the Inquisitor passive ability?

It has no interaction whatsoever. Inquisitors do not halt passive pressure in any slight bit. They only remove half (or at least equivalent to 1 follower of) existing pressure created by either passive or active pressure.

Spoiler Evidence :

They also just reduce the active power of nearby missionaries/great prophets.

375 is generated from being halved due to an Inquisitor (from 750). They ended my turn in foreign territory so they lost 250 (from 1000).

the problem is you are assuming that passive pressure is the religion game, which it’s only a part. Religious spread is a combination of passive and active spread. Active spread is completely shut down during war, and so overall the amount of spread is already greatly slowed down during war

This would only make sense if I'm declaring war in the early game where active spreads take up the majority of the pressure sources. In the mid-late game, passive spread takes over completely. When the pressure was more localized throughout the early-late game, your idea makes sense, but it begins to globalize as technology progresses and a war declaration should be enacted to hinder its effect. The AI unknowingly screws itself over by building railroads which the enemy pressure seems to conveniently use to amass a massive pressure snowball. There were wars even in post-Medieval times over religious pressure which oppressed the amount of passive pressure you can bring to neighbors. Inquisitors act as a band-aid to passive pressure by halving it by consuming themselves. That's not really ideal. If I need to stop a neighbor from being dominant in their religion, I'll have to conquer a city and get an inquisitor in the current version of VP to try to reduce it and that's even if I conquer a city. If I stalemate, I lose the religious battle as if I didn't declare war.

 

[Stalker0]

Inquisitors do not halt passive pressure in any slight bit. They only remove half (or at least equivalent to 1 follower of) existing pressure created by either passive or active pressure.

I feel like there is a mistake somewhere in here, as the two statements seem contradictory.

 

[Enginseer]

I feel like there is a mistake somewhere in here, as the two statements seem contradictory.

Inquisitors do not halt sources of passive pressure in any slight bit.* They only remove half (or at least equivalent to 1 follower of) the total existing pressure created through passive and active pressure.

Let's say an owned City not following my Majority Religion gets +100 Passive Pressure/Turn. An inquisitor gets generated to maybe destroy 2000 Pressure. That's 20 turns of Pressure eradicated. Great. Now how much does it take for me to generate one Inquisitor? Would it be 20 Turns? (less? more?) They are quite expensive in Faith cost and that is only for one City. It might be the case where I have 4 owned Cities not following my Majority Religion receiving +100 Passive Pressure/turn. Would that be fun to play against? The last obstacle is to declare war and try to get the source of these cities out of my city's beliefs (and that's if I succeed).

The top religion gets to chuckle to themselves and spend their Faith in Great People freely. They do not need to worry about inquisitors aside from a few conquered cities that are very resilient while the losing religion has to either risk their religion being eradicated or not purchase any Great People at all.

 

[Stalker0]

Inquisitors do not halt sources of passive pressure in any slight bit.* They only remove half (or at least equivalent to 1 follower of) the total existing pressure created through passive and active pressure.

Let's say an owned City not following my Majority Religion gets +100 Passive Pressure/Turn. An inquisitor gets generated to maybe destroy 2000 Pressure. That's 20 turns of Pressure eradicated. Great. Now how much does it take for me to generate one Inquisitor? Would it be 20 Turns? (less? more?) They are quite expensive in Faith cost and that is only for one City. It might be the case where I have 4 owned Cities not following my Majority Religion receiving +100 Passive Pressure/turn. Would that be fun to play against? The last obstacle is to declare war and try to get the source of these cities out of my city's beliefs (and that's if I succeed).

The top religion gets to chuckle to themselves and spend their Faith in Great People freely. They do not need to worry about inquisitors aside from a few conquered cities that are very resilient while the losing religion has to either risk their religion being eradicated or not purchase any Great People at all.

ah, that top statement about passive and active pressure threw me.

In quick summary: You are saying that Inquisitors do nothing "passively" to "ongoing passive pressure". They do impact the result of passive pressure on a city when they are actively used.

To further the summary: An inquistor put in a city will do nothing to passive pressure (only halfing active pressure). They have to be used to impact passive pressure.

 

[azum4roll]

When pressure is accumulated in the city, there's no classification of "passive" and "active" anymore. It's just pressure accumulated.

Inquisitor's passive ability: reduce active foreign pressure
Inquisitor's active ability (which consumes it): reduce accumulated foreign pressure

 

[ilteroi]

so why not extend the inquisitors passive ability to reduce passive pressure per turn as well?

why link the pressure reduction to war state? and btw i checked, the trade route path cost multiplier for enemy tiles was removed end of 2020 because it caused enemy cities to be considered out of range for attacks (oops).