Affinity as a religion, or an ideology.

[Minor Annoyance]

The all too obvious way to go with an expansion is to make affinity part of a religion or ideology system. Or could they use both systems, having the same affinity be a religion for one colony and an ideology for another?
What past system would fit affinities best?

 

[Ryika]

Religion + Ideological Pressure + Culture Swap. ^^

You spread your Affinity with trade routes, your spies and the new "Zealot" (Missionary) unit. Pressure causes unhealthiness when your affinity is not dominant in your city and if you lose too much/are too low for too long that city changes owner to the one who's pressuring your city. At the same time every city you have pressure on will give you points toward your affinity -> that's how you level it, the tech tree only gives buildings that increase the pressure your cities can produce (and strong, but expensive to maintain buildings - on other leaf techs, so not every game plays out exactly the same). The AI will of course hate you for spreading your affinity into their lands, enforcing conflicts (and ideally wars if they realize they can't withstand your Affinity Pressure) and thus getting rid of the very passive gameplay in the later half of the game.

 

[Kutuzov]

I feel like Civ V's religion mechanism would have been a much better way to do Affinities too. At the very least, a few buildings that generate a particular type of 'faith' which accrues to certain levels to produce affinity levels. With each level gained, the cost increases for the next one. I guess we'd need to have some sort of timer accrue points from the game start and the player is given a choice which affinity he wants to buy first when he accrues sufficient points.

If the buildings that generate 'faith' were only purchasable with faith, this would also give the player some choices as to what to do with his accumulated faith: buy a building and generate it more quickly or get that next affinity level now but wait longer for the next one.

We could also have specialist slots for some more advanced buildings so that we can generate more 'faith' faster.

I like Ryika's ideas too.

There's so much potential for development with this idea. I hope that Firaxis will take the time to do one expansion at least so that some of the potential of this game is realized.

 

[LORD ORION]

It should probably more of a matrix type of output based on Virtues and Affinity.

eg:
Affinity + Virtue Tier = Bonus
Then you could get all sorts of outcomes for combinations.
eg: Harmony Might(all t1) vs Harmony Knowledge(all t1) vs Harmony (T1 Virtue Width Synergy bonus)
For the width bonus, you could actively be trying NOT to get all the virtues in a Tree (like prosperity) or your width bonus would disappear in favor of the Tree bonus (eg you get a certain bonus for having 6 T1 virtues from multiple trees, but if you ever get all 5 from 1 tree that bonus is overwritten)