[Complex] (7-NS) Inquisition rework

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ma_kuh

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OP proposes to remove Inquisition while adding a new belief entirely. This proposal is to rework Inquisition instead, removing the overlap with Spies.
These two proposals are independent but related.

Proposal:
Inquisition (Enhancer belief)
  • Inquisitors cost 33% less :c5faith: faith. => Inquisitors remove 25% more pressure when Removing Heresy.
  • Inquisitors generate 25 :c5gold: gold for each converted :c5citizen: Citizen when Removing Heresy.
  • Your cities generate 1 :c5faith: faith per turn for each Follower of your religion, reduced by 1 for each Follower of a foreign religion, and generate 10 :c5gold: gold per turn if :c5unhappy: Religious Strife is 0.
    • [Fallback if Religious Strife bonus cannot be implemented as-written: "Your cities generate 1 :c5faith: faith and :c5gold: gold per turn ...", and ignore the Religious Strife clause]
  • Spies exert 52 Religious Pressure on Cities they occupy.
  • 2 :c5happy: Happiness for spies stationed in Foreign Cities.
Explanation:
Inquisition is on the weaker side, all things considered. The belief is so diluted, and what it does do well (converting foreign followers into gold) only provides up-front spikes in gold; if you manage to clean out all foreign pressure in your empire, you stop receiving rewards! That's a terrible feedback loop.

Here we swap the cheaper Inquisitors for more powerful ones. Currently, if you use an Inquisitor on a city you reduce the foreign followers by 50%, if you hit it again that's 75% total reduction, at the cost of two Inquisitors (costing 400 :c5faith: before era modifiers). By jumping straight to the 75% reduction, the belief makes it cost only 300 :c5faith:, and reduces the amount of clicks needed to achieve this bigger swing in numbers. Win-win.

By replacing the instant-yields of with yields per turn we similarly remove the negative feedback loop from removing heresy, creating a reverse-Universalism kind of effect. In this way being ahead in the followers game in owned cities isn't a drawback, it's a benefit (as it should be). It also interacts positively with Indulgences, which is a flavor win.

The Spies component is removed entirely to sharpen Inquisition's focus. There's no need for this effect on an Enhancer belief, and the OP's proposed alternative is similarly focused on the Spies directly, which is better for both beliefs. Incidentally, this also reduces the number of ability lines from 4 to 2, matching the majority of other Enhancers.
 
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There would be significant overlap with Thrift, the Follower ability that gives you 1 gold-per-turn per Follower, capped at 10. This is undesired, but for the sake of simplicity we leave this as a future problem to solve.
You could have this belief generate :c5faith: Faith instead, as there is currently no follower belief that generates it based on number of followers.
 
You could have this belief generate :c5faith: Faith instead, as there is currently no follower belief that generates it based on number of followers.
Didn't we rework the follower belief that gave faith?
 
Yeah that thrift overlap is pretty direct.

What about a bonus if a city has no foreign followers?
 
Having the reward be more faith feels like it could add a feast/famine dynamic to the belief, where if you don't have the faith to buy Inquisitors, you can't bring your faith engine back online. If you can buy plenty of Inquisitors, then you probably don't need the faith. But it would mean more Great People down the line. Hard to say.

Having some primary effect and then doubling it with no followers could be good. It might be a little tedious to need to comb through your empire to make sure no one has ticked back up to 1 follower though. Also not sure how great it would feel to be expending an Inquisitor on just 1 follower to maximize benefits.

What would you say to:
Your cities generate 1 :c5gold: gold per turn... => Removing Heresy grants 10 turns of "We Love the Kind Day".
 
Having the reward be more faith feels like it could add a feast/famine dynamic to the belief, where if you don't have the faith to buy Inquisitors, you can't bring your faith engine back online. If you can buy plenty of Inquisitors, then you probably don't need the faith. But it would mean more Great People down the line. Hard to say.

Having some primary effect and then doubling it with no followers could be good. It might be a little tedious to need to comb through your empire to make sure no one has ticked back up to 1 follower though. Also not sure how great it would feel to be expending an Inquisitor on just 1 follower to maximize benefits.

What would you say to:
Your cities generate 1 :c5gold: gold per turn... => Removing Heresy grants 10 turns of "We Love the Kind Day".
I don't know about 10 turns, but the idea that an inquisitor could give a few turns to flip out a bad WLTKD resource is a very interesting idea.
 
An on-demand instant purchase 300 :c5faith: WLTKD trigger at any turn count is an outlandish bonus. Please no.
 
Having some primary effect and then doubling it with no followers could be good. It might be a little tedious to need to comb through your empire to make sure no one has ticked back up to 1 follower though. Also not sure how great it would feel to be expending an Inquisitor on just 1 follower to maximize benefits.
Could relax to just "no :c5unhappy:religious strife" instead of no foreign followers whatsoever. There are a few sources of flat reduction for that which can act as a buffer.

Cities gain +10% :c5gold: Gold and :c5faith: Faith in the city if there is no :c5unhappy: Religious Strife Present.
 
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An on-demand instant purchase 300 :c5faith: WLTKD trigger at any turn count is an outlandish bonus. Please no.
Would a 1 turn WLTKD really be that OP? It would be extremely handy to swap out bad WLTKD resources at the cost of faith.... if this was literally the focus of a belief around inquisitors (removing most other benefits), is that really so out of line.
 
With how WLTKD resource now can pick resources you already own, yeah I would think that's pretty OP. You can just spend 300 :c5faith: to reroll WLTKD for 1 turn until you roll it for 26 turns.

Inquisitions become a slot machine.
 
With how WLTKD resource now can pick resources you already own, yeah I would think that's pretty OP. You can just spend 300 :c5faith: to reroll WLTKD for 1 turn until you roll it for 26 turns.

Inquisitions become a slot machine.
as opposed to a person that just gets a string of very easy to obtain WLTKD resources and can just do it anyway?

Really the only benefit of such a proposal would be to minimize bad luck on your WLTKD resources, it wouldn't give you any more than a person with a lucky streak of WLTKD resources could gain without any faith spending. And of course, the oppurtunity costs of not selecting a religious benefit giving you things all the time.
 
A few thoughts coming out of this discussion:
  1. Moving from flat yields (gold/faith in this case) to %% yields is a simple way to take off the initial overlap with Thrift. I like it in theory. How hard is it to implement the "if no Religious Strife" rule? I'm somewhat confident "+yield/follower -yield/enemy follower" would be pretty easy, not sure about "+%yield/follower" but that might be interesting too.
  2. My intuition is that the WLTKD stuff, though compelling, is maybe a little too far out there for a simple change. I still think there's space for a WLTKD Enhancer though (and Symbolism and Sacred Calendar are very overlapped).
  3. In the future, I see an interesting synergy between Inquisition and the Follower beliefs Asceticism, Creativity, Diligence, Scholarship, and Thrift. You're trying to maximize total followers, not just >50%. I want to play into that a little more if possible. Next congress goals.
 
not sure about "+%yield/follower" but that might be interesting too.
Vanilla had a bunch of % yield per follower abilities that have been scrapped. You could go that direction.
My intuition is that the WLTKD stuff, though compelling, is maybe a little too far out there for a simple change. I still think there's space for a WLTKD Enhancer though (and Symbolism and Sacred Calendar are very overlapped).
More than balance, I have a concern that such an ability would make the WLTKD system trivial.
 
There are a few sources of flat reduction for that which can act as a buffer.
I'd say there are too many sources. Rationalism in particular basically removes it (you need 16? followers not following your majority religion).

Oh, and +10% :c5faith: in city is horrible because it rounds down. Might as well be +1 :c5faith:.
 
I'm torn with this now. On the one hand, I think that "+1% gold/follower" helps with removing overlap with Follower beliefs, but on the other it's such a fiddly bonus. If you're barely above 50% religion, it's not even 1 gtp. Which is by intent, because Inquisition is aiming to be the "everyone in my cities follows this religion" belief. But then gold will continue to balloon as the game goes on and total follower count scales. And this is precisely the point in the game we're trying to pull gold OUT of the game, not inject more.

I think I need to leave this as flat yields for now. It makes more sense for an earlier belief to have flat yields, and it's less unwieldy. The other Enhancers are fairly flat scaling too. I'll add a faith component to separate it from the Follower beliefs, and I'm still planning to circle back to add some spice to the Follower beliefs next congress.

Amendment:
Removed:
  • Your cities generate 1 :c5gold: gold per turn for each :c5faith: follower of your religion, reduced by 1 for each follower of a foreign religion.
Added:
  • Your cities generate 1 :c5faith: faith per turn for each Follower of your religion, reduced by 1 for each Follower of a foreign religion, and generate 10 :c5gold: gold per turn if :c5unhappy: Religious Strife is 0.
  • [Fallback if Religious Strife bonus cannot be implemented as-written: "Your cities generate 1 :c5faith: faith and :c5gold: gold per turn ...", and ignore the Religious Strife clause]
 
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Timestamp post to arrange all the threads in a neat order.
 
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