9-6: Testing out Syncretism

[Stalker0]

So thought I would try a game to test out Syncretism.

I have set up about as Ideal Scenario as you are going to get. I have myself of Ethopia vs Byzantium, Spain, India, Celts, and Mayans.

So its a free for all of religious heavy hitters. If this motely crew can't stuff my civ full of followers (and give me the full bonuses of that Syncretism) than nothing will!

I have started off doing it right. I didn't spread initially to weaken my own pressure in my cities for later conversion. So got a very early enhancer.

Turn 126: I have spread pagodas and my religion to my city. So far only one hit on the foreign religion radar, bagging me a +1 science and faith. I'll keep this log open, lets see if the belief starts to scale up with time.

Turn 140: As hoped, my neighbors are eager to share their new beliefs with me. A....little too eager. They have already flipped 3 of my 6 cities. I use 2 missionaries to bring them back, and I now have a +6 science/faith bonus from the belief (as well as +12 to all yields from pagodas). I feel like I will need to switch to inquisitors to ensure that only controllable passive spread is hitting my cities now, otherwise I will be blowing a huge amount of faith on missionaries to keep the balance right.

Turn 150: I have my inquisitors out, so now its just passive pressure to deal with. I currently have a +8 science/faith from the belief for 6 cities.

Turn 160: The passive pressure continues. I still have a +8, but that's because 2 of my cities have just flipped to neutral religion, and I will have to buy yet another missionary to keep them in line.

That's where I'll stop for tonight and pick it up tomorrow. So far the key issue to me compared to pagodas, is once you have pagodas, you don't care what religion you have. So if your city flips, hey still getting that nice bonus. But with Syncretism, you have to maintain this fine balance of enough foreigners to give you the bonus, but not so many teh city flips and gives you nothing.

Day 2

Turn 172: Up to a +12 bonus now as I stabilized my faith in the other two cities. My plan is to try and use trade routes to get Byzantiums religion to flip one of my cities, and then missionary it into the rest. The more religions I have, the harder it is for any one of them to flip me, so this should in theory give me a greater bonus with less work to do overall. We shall see.

Turn 190: Got into a nasty war with Spain and wasn't focused on my religion. And holy crap I paid for it. All but my holy city have gone neutral. I am now getting a +2 bonus only. Getting a number of missionaries now to right the ship.

This is a very important "UI note" for this belief. While you get a notification that your city converts to someone else, you don't get one if the city goes neutral. That makes it very easy to forget, so if you are not careful you will lose your bonus.

Turn 201: I converted my way back into it. I'm noticing now that sometimes I need 2 hits with the missionary bat to get my cities right, as the pressure continues to mount. I have now prebrought a lot of missionaries, as I recognize I will need them throughout the game to maintain this bonus.

Also, one of my cities remains neutral. It will be my Byzantine seed city, to allow some followers of that religion into the rest of my civ. Considering the pressure its generating (it has the new Orthodoxy power) it shouldn't take too much longer.

Currently at +15 bonus.

Turn 221: My one city still hasn't flipped. Darn, the one city I actually wanted to shift! My bonus is now +18. For those curious I am getting a +21 bonus to all yields for the pagodas.

Turn 235: The pressure is increasing. I'm at the point now where I am burning a couple of missionaries every 10 turns to maintain a hold on my cities. Exactly that one damn city that won't flip the way I want it to!

My bonus has dropped to +15 as I haven't finished converting back my cities. Lesson learned, buy as many missionaries as you possibly can when they are 170 faith a pop (with fealty) instead of 270.

The game may not last too much longer. Spain is steadily pushing me back. I though my Mehal Sufaris fortified in forts would be enough but Spain has a much larger army and my lines are starting to crack.

Turn 254: I just finished another expensive war with Spain. I even had to bribe Theodora with one of my puppets just to get her in the fray and hold off the Spanish hoard.

My bonus after another round of 3 missionaries is +18 (my pagodas produce +16 to all yields). I also have -9 happy due to religious dissension. At this point, I am able to purchase Great Persons with faith....so the desire to make more missionaries to reconvert is lacking.

I think I'll stop at this point for some conclusions below.

 

[Bromar1]

I feel like the parts of syncretism are anti synergistic. If you want to make lots of culture from citizen birth, you go fealty. However this passively increases your religious pressure, which gets you less foreign religions!
Not sure if this is a flaw or genius design

 

[Stalker0]

The game I played was a bit unusual, in that it had so many strong faith players. But ultimately it came down to 2 strong religions butting against mine, which to me is a fairly common scenario we can do some takeaways from.

1) This belief requires a lot of micromanagement. You have to be watching your cities every turn, because you don't get a notification when a city goes neutral. And it does, a lot. Ideally your playing this belief on the razor's edge. You want enemy followers to be close to the line for the best bonus.

2) The belief costs me about 9 happiness at the end (I should have kept better track of this throughout the game, oh well). Now tradition tends to be pretty happy so I wasn't too worried it for most of the game. But there were times my happy dipped, and an extra 9 happy would have been very nice.

3) Comparing this to the Pagoda. The thing that makes the pagoda work is it doesn't care which religion wins. In fact, this game was an excellent pagoda game. Normally I would spread, get pagodas, and sit back and let my enemies convert my cities. I don't care, I'm still getting my full bonus...I might even pick up a few new religious buildings.

With this belief, you get the best bonuses when your enemy religion is strong. But that means its also more work to maintain your religious dominance in the face of that. That costs missionaries, which means the faith bonus of this belief goes out the window. In fact, I consider the belief a faith drain right now, not a faith bonus. Overall, I was getting much better yields with the pagoda than I did this belief, and the pagoda required very little effort or maintenance.

So ultimately I think that is the issue with this belief, its too contradictory. It either needs to work like the pagoda, where you don't have to maintain a religious majority (or it somehow works with a neutral religion), or it needs to be reworked. Its just too much effort for too little bonus. The neutral religion would be interesting, because that's easier to maintain when you have multiple religions going out a city, and you get no religious dissension at that point.

 

[Gazebo]

The game I played was a bit unusual, in that it had so many strong faith players. But ultimately it came down to 2 strong religions butting against mine, which to me is a fairly common scenario we can do some takeaways from.

1) This belief requires a lot of micromanagement. You have to be watching your cities every turn, because you don't get a notification when a city goes neutral. And it does, a lot. Ideally your playing this belief on the razor's edge. You want enemy followers to be close to the line for the best bonus.

2) The belief costs me about 9 happiness at the end (I should have kept better track of this throughout the game, oh well). Now tradition tends to be pretty happy so I wasn't too worried it for most of the game. But there were times my happy dipped, and an extra 9 happy would have been very nice.

3) Comparing this to the Pagoda. The thing that makes the pagoda work is it doesn't care which religion wins. In fact, this game was an excellent pagoda game. Normally I would spread, get pagodas, and sit back and let my enemies convert my cities. I don't care, I'm still getting my full bonus...I might even pick up a few new religious buildings.

With this belief, you get the best bonuses when your enemy religion is strong. But that means its also more work to maintain your religious dominance in the face of that. That costs missionaries, which means the faith bonus of this belief goes out the window. In fact, I consider the belief a faith drain right now, not a faith bonus. Overall, I was getting much better yields with the pagoda than I did this belief, and the pagoda required very little effort or maintenance.

So ultimately I think that is the issue with this belief, its too contradictory. It either needs to work like the pagoda, where you don't have to maintain a religious majority (or it somehow works with a neutral religion), or it needs to be reworked. Its just too much effort for too little bonus. The neutral religion would be interesting, because that's easier to maintain when you have multiple religions going out a city, and you get no religious dissension at that point.

I'd considered making it work as a neutral religion, but I feared it would be confusing. Another possibility is simply to increase the bonuses from non-following followers.

G

 

[pineappledan]

Sounds like everything I expected to hear. Your holy city is usually your only one with >14 citizens until mid-renaissance. Your max number of yields is always (pop/2)-1, so in your 8+ pop fringe cities you can only muster 1 yield from syncretism. Your core cities aren’t going to get spread to, and your capital/holy city pumps out so much of its own pressure that maintaining a foreign religion in it is more trouble than it is worth.

Now you’re set in a no-win situation where your enhancer gives you puddly yields unless you actively import missionaries deep into your zone, which means allowing a foreign city to convert a city, then buying missionaries there to take deeper into your territory. That’s a crapload if Faith you are burning for 3-4 extra yields, which you are going to constantly maintain so that your own passive pressure doesn’t wipe out your syncretism yields.

Big unhappiness, big micro, big pain-in-my ass. Too few yields under any condition for anyone to care.

 

[ElliotS]

I'd considered making it work as a neutral religion, but I feared it would be confusing.

I think make it work as a neutral religion. Hell I wouldn't mind it if it worked while the city is fully converted to another religion (as long as you owned it and had at least 1 follower of your religion.), but that might be too strong.

 

[Gazebo]

I think make it work as a neutral religion. Hell I wouldn't mind it if it worked while the city is fully converted to another religion (as long as you owned it and had at least 1 follower of your religion.), but that might be too strong.

It is worth a consideration - I like the core concept of the enhancer enough that I'm not going to let go of it too easily.

G

 

[Gothic_Empire]

I'm playing a game with it as The Celts right now. I've got Cooperation, Bran the Sleeping Guardian, and Syncretism, combined with Mandirs for extra food.

I'm the culture leader by one policy. I have only one city with foreign religious followers. It's pretty good even without the passive part -- or at least it works really well in this specific, cheesy build.

 

[Gothic_Empire]

It is worth a consideration - I like the core concept of the enhancer enough that I'm not going to let go of it too easily.

G

I like the enhancer, so please don't let the usual grumping influence you too much.

 

[Almonds]

Maybe it could be tweaked so that your Holy City received 1 science and 1 faith for every 3 followers of different religions in your Empire. That way it wouldn't have to be a constant balancing act of keeping your religions just above majority in your other cities, and instead just let you benefit from having your religion be peacefully conquered. I described it as a tactical retreat from the religious game altogether in the other thread. It syngergizes with Pagodas well enough that you would want to initially spread it to your other cities to get those built in anticipation of foreign conversion, so it's not like it doesn't require some faith spending to set up.

Personally I am such a huge fan of the new Enhancers (especially this one) finally being brought fully into VP levels of polish so I really want to find a best working solution for this belief.

 

[Stalker0]

I think make it work as a neutral religion. Hell I wouldn't mind it if it worked while the city is fully converted to another religion (as long as you owned it and had at least 1 follower of your religion.), but that might be too strong.

Adding the Neutral part takes a lot of my issues with it out.

1) No more babysitting: Now I can wait until the "your city is converted" before I have to care about my religion. That is a big peace of mind for me.

2) Reduces unhappiness. You don't get religious distress from a neutral city, so that removes some of that problem.

3) Fewer missionaries to manage. Maintain neutral religion gets easier the more beliefs you add in. Its much easier to maintain in the face of strong religions than making your own dominant.

 

[Gothic_Empire]

Maybe it could be tweaked so that your Holy City received 1 science and 1 faith for every 3 followers of different religions in your Empire. That way it wouldn't have to be a constant balancing act of keeping your religions just above majority in your other cities, and instead just let you benefit from having your religion be peacefully conquered. I described it as a tactical retreat from the religious game altogether in the other thread. It syngergizes with Pagodas well enough that you would want to initially spread it to your other cities to get those built in anticipation of foreign conversion, so it's not like it doesn't require some faith spending to set up.

Personally I am such a huge fan of the new Enhancers (especially this one) finally being brought fully into VP levels of polish so I really want to find a best working solution for this belief.

This feels pretty good.