Apostolic Palace - FAQ

[didact]

Could someone PUHLEASE (please) make a AP FAQ as I am completely mistified as to how I lost this game that I was going to win.

I had 2 other civs on my continent the other 4/5 on the other.

My continent took my religion and all was good. Then I took out neighbor 1 and I was now in the lead. Waited for tanks then took out neighbor 2. Had approx 50% of land mass. About 5 or 6 turns before most of the cities stopped revolting.
BOOM!!!!

Diiplomatic Victory: Options, Vote for Pacal or Abstain.

WHAT?!!?! those aren't options. What triggered this ?

ARGH, please. I will pay money for a quality documentation on the AP!!!

Otherwise I turn it off in my games. Would rather keep it on....

 

[ButSam]

The main reason to keep the AP on is that religion has finally become a very major concern in the game.

I would like to understand the AP more, and will run some tests when I get a chance. Here is a starter though; please feel free to ask questions. A lot of questions I had were answered here.

From Civ IV BtS Info Center: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=222075#UN

Apostolic Palace +4 +2 (prophet)

The Apostolic Palace becomes available when you have researched Theology. You must have also declared a state religion and it can only be built in a city where your state religion holds sway. Once it is complete, the builder may switch state religions later. The Palace allows a religion to play a major part in international affairs, centuries before the UN makes its appearance.

The most basic feature of the Apostolic Palace is that it triggers elections for the head of the Palace. The owner of the Palace is automatically in the running just the same as with the UN. Their rival is the leader who has the largest population living in cities that share the Palace's religion and acknowledges it as their State Religion. The head of the Palace can then set a voting agenda for a variety of context-based resolutions. The Palace also opens up the option for a victory through a diplomatic vote.

Leaders who share the Palace's religion (or who own the Palace) become full voting members. They also enjoy a production bonus to every building of that religion in their cities. Leaders who don't have that as their state religion, but happen to have cities that share the religion don't get the production bonuses but they still get a vote on all Palace resolutions. A full voting member can have their production bonuses revoked and suffer a happiness penalty if they openly defy a resolution. The only way to regain full membership is to then vote on a later measure that passes. (This same sort of concept of demoted membership also now applies to the UN.)

According to a hands-on preview the AI's tend to convert to the religion of the Palace for the eligiblebility of becoming the head of the Palace. This works to the benefit of the Palace's owner as well, because the faith becomes a sort of alliance that can protect its members from attacks from leaders of other faiths. The Palace does balance itself out, as the more you spread your religion to your neighboring civs, the less weight your own votes carry when trying to pass resolutions.

Some of the options available through the Palace are:

• forces nations to stop trading with a certain civ
• maintain an Open Border's policy
• holy wars
• trade embargos
• peace enforcement (basically say, don't go to war with me)
• assigning cities to their "rightful" owner
• Possible to win an early diplomatic victory
• Is rebuffed by Communism and made obsolete by Mass Media. At this point, the more modern United Nations takes over many of its functions

Some of the new resolutions will also be available with the UN and yes, you can defy them if you choose. The choices available for voting are:

• Yes
• No
• Never (Defy Resolution)
• Abstain

 

[zienth]

Pacal had built the AP (presumably on the other content), probably a while back. All of the other civs on that continent each had a least on city with that religion. You didn't have any cities with his religion, and the AP diplo victory vote only comes up when all civs have at least one city with that religion. Apparently, one of the other civs on your continent had a city with that religion. When you conquered him, you then had a city with that religion so now every civ had at least one city so, voila! The vote happens, Pacal wins, you lose.

People who think this is a reasonable victory condition would say you should have built the AP yourself, or made sure to raze any city that has the APs religion, have a missionary standing by to put a non-AP religion in any city you create on the same turn you create it, and run theology at all times. No problem.

People who think this is a bad victory condition think it's BS to be able to become world leader by winning the vote of a tiny minority of the world's population.

Zienth

 

[didact]

I agree with option 2, I think it's BS to be able to win w/ only having 1 city w/ religion in other civs and being able to win because you built the silly thing. I'd go w/ if over 50% of population/cities in Civ have that religion in it then maybe. Way to powerful for some weak Civ to come from behind because they built one wonder. Everything else I seem to like about the AP but the victory conditions need to be changed IMO. Thanks for info.

 

[Silence101]

Even if you build the AP, if you change your state religion, you lose your full membership status, right? I've never done it, but I thought that was how it worked.

 

[didact]

Hence, my request for a FAQ as all I see is conjecture and speculation, or people even spreading false information. Please EVERYONE, don't post to this thread speculation and conjecture. How about we create a list of Questions to answer ?

How often does a vote for leader occur ?
Do you have to have your religion in all civilization for diplomatic victory?
What is the actual loss/gain due to defying a resolution?
What are the triggers that allow various options to pop up ?
What happens if you own the AP and you switch religions?
What happens if you take the AP from someone else and they built it as another religion?
What happens if you raise the city w/ AP in it, can you build another?
Is it built faster with stone/marble?
How many hammers does it take to build?

Feel free to add more questions to the list but please only post first hand technical information you gather from doing or learned through reading the code.

 

[ButSam]

I would not go that extreme on the AP. It makes religion an important consideration now, moreso than pre-BtS, which is a very good thing IMHO. Culture victories didn't used to be a threat with AIs, should it be disabled too?

It's a shift in strategy required. You do not have to own the AP to win. You just need to be aware of the benefits of being the same religion as the AP (whoever builds it), and be aware you may become an "infidel" -- the target of a Crusade. That doesn't mean you are destined to lose the game, nor does it mean everyone will necessarily declare war on you (although that is a possibility). You may need to convert to a religion you didn't found, even if you founded a different religion, so you are no longer an infidel. Guess what, sometimes the AI has to also. You will need to be prepared for a possible defensive war with people of the AP religion if you don't share their religion, but you should be prepared for a defensive war anyway. You may even have to spread a religion you didn't found to other cities in your civ if you notice the AP religion spreads to your civ so you can increase your voting stature.

It takes adjusting to, but it is by no means a game-breaker. It just requires a shift in strategy, and a bit more attention to religion than previously.

 

[ButSam]

Do you have to have your religion in all civilization for diplomatic victory?

The AP's religion must be in at least 1 city in all civs in order to vote a religious (diplomatic) victory.

The defense against this is to spread the AP's religion to as many cities as you can when you notice it enters your civilization. This also increases your voting power. The drawback is you may be boosting the coffers of the founding civilization's shrine, but you gotta do what you gotta do. Instead of whining against the victory condition, adjust your strategy to meet it -- make sure the AP victory is not secured by someone in last place because you were asleep at the wheel when the religion spread to your civ!

What is the actual loss/gain due to defying a resolution?

Loss = no longer a full member (lose production bonuses that the AP grants to people who are full members).
The loss in membership status goes away when you vote for a resolution which passes.

NOTE: You must have either built the AP, or have the state religion of the AP established, in order to be a full member.

What happens if you own the AP and you switch religions?

You still count as a member, and get to vote, since you built it.

Hope that begins to help.

I do have a couple of points of speculation, but I will refrain from posting those, save one which I feel fairly confident about...

I have noticed that resolutions offered tend to depend upon the diplomatic status of the members with the infidels. If a member is at war with an infidel, the option for all to declare war is likely to appear (or the slightly less stringent trade embargo). If there are no differences in status among the AP members and the infidels in war/peace or trade/embargo, some of the more generic options appear such as "open borders with all members".

Sam

 

[Silence101]

How often does a vote for leader occur ?
Don't know.
Do you have to have your religion in all civilization for diplomatic victory?
Yes - at least one city in every Civ, so every Civ is at least a voting member
What is the actual loss/gain due to defying a resolution?
Full members lose full member status - become voting members. Voting members can't become leaders of the AP
What are the triggers that allow various options to pop up ?
Don't know.
What happens if you own the AP and you switch religions?
That was my question. Edit: The AP will still retain it's original religion, but my question was whether or not the owner would be eligible for AP elections now that they're running a different state religion.
What happens if you take the AP from someone else and they built it as another religion?
It's a world wonder - they can't rebuild it and the original religion the AP represents cannot be changed.
What happens if you raise the city w/ AP in it, can you build another?
No
Is it built faster with stone/marble?
No
How many hammers does it take to build?
400 h

 

[didact]

The only thing I don't like is the Victory Condition. Everything else is cool.

You can win by being a backward civilization on a single island and know nothing but theology and own the AP while others have Mass Media and not have your religion spread but to just one city of all the other Civs and win?!

Makes absolutely no sense to me. AP should only sway civs where their religion is entrenched. If my country is Christianity, why the heck should I care what extremely small portion of Islamics think (Islam would be the religion of the of AP) of my population thinks? However if greater than %50 of my population believes in that religion then heck yeah, they can win the game that way.

NOTE: I had mass media but Pacal didn't hense AP not obsolete.

 

[lulu135]

I like everything about the AP except for the victory. It's just not an interesting way to win or lose a game, too early and too biased. I'm thinking about simply removing the victory resolution from the game in a mod. the AP should be for trade embargoes, holy wars, and other major game-changing events, but it's cheap to just vote yourself winner based on an arbitrary religious distribution in cities. What difference does it make if some minority religion votes themselves winner if I can stomp all over them the next turn? The UN victory is much fairer, you pretty much have to to have most of the world in your pocket to pull it off.

 

[zienth]

The AP's religion must be in at least 1 city in all civs in order to vote a religious (diplomatic) victory.

The defense against this is to spread the AP's religion to as many cities as you can when you notice it enters your civilization. This also increases your voting power. The drawback is you may be boosting the coffers of the founding civilization's shrine, but you gotta do what you gotta do. Instead of whining against the victory condition, adjust your strategy to meet it -- make sure the AP victory is not secured by someone in last place because you were asleep at the wheel when the religion spread to your civ!

And what if you are the last civ to get the religion? How fast can you spread it if the vote comes up two turns after it spreads to your most remote fishing village? If you're the last person to get it, it is likely that you got it in a recently founded city or a recently captured one. In either case, it will take a few turns before you can get a missionary built there, and even then you would now have just 2 cities with that religion. It would take many turns to get it spread enough to effect the vote, and the vote could come up the very next turn after it spreads. So just saying "the defense is to spread it to your other cities" doesn't cut it. If you're the last to get it, you won't have the opportunity to spread it.

The only defense is to take extreme measures to make sure you never get a city with that religion. You must raze every city you capture that has that religion. You must switch to theology and stay there, or else keep closed borders to prevent foreign missionaries and never have a city without a religion for even 1 turn. All this to defend against a civ that might be a tenth as strong as you. The best defense against the AP is to raze the city that built it.

But other than the victory condition, I like the AP. It can add a lot of interest to the game. I just think the victory condition is badly broken, and I doubt really think the 3.13 patch is the correct fix. It's better than before, you can't get a cheesy win as easily (you need at least one friend/vassal), but you can still lose because you let a minority religion spread into a 1 pop fishing village.

Zienth

 

[methane]

What is the actual loss/gain due to defying a resolution?
Full members lose full member status - become voting members. Voting members can't become leaders of the AP

I believe there's also an unhappiness penalty in all cities that share the AP religion.

What are the triggers that allow various options to pop up ?
Don't know.

Well, every civilization needs at least one city with the religion for victory to be an option. I think a member needs to be at war with a non-member for holy war to be an option. If 2 or more members are at war you can vote for the 'end the war' against 1 of the members. There's also resolutions to sign open borders with everyone and for everyone to sign defensive pacts (probably only if everyone is at peace). You can also have trade embargoes against non members.

What happens if you own the AP and you switch religions?
That was my question. Edit: The AP will still retain it's original religion, but my question was whether or not the owner would be eligible for AP elections now that they're running a different state religion.

The AP always retains its religion, but the owner is always eligible for election, even if he has no religion or a different relgion.

What happens if you take the AP from someone else and they built it as another religion?
It's a world wonder - they can't rebuild it and the original religion the AP represents cannot be changed.

as above, you should be eligible for elections.


To stop a diplomatic victory:

1) Spread the religion among your own cities and to give yourself voting power (go to organized religion if you need to) or
2) Spread the religion among the cities of the worst enemy of whoever leads the AP to ensure at least one AI won't vote for him or
3) Conquer a lot of the cities with the religion to give yourself voting power or
4) Raze any cities you capture that have the religion so you'll never get the religion or
5) Bribe the two top civs in voting power to war with each other/ trade embargo each other. If they hate each other, neither will cast votes for the other for diplomatic victory or
6) Adopt theocracy as a civic before the religion spreads to your civ or
7) Get an ally without the religion to adopt theocracy or
8) If you have vassals with voting power switch to the AP religion yourself so your vassals will be forced to vote for you instead of your rival or
9) If your only cities with the religion are on another continent, spin it off as a colony, or liberate them to a vassal so you don't have the religion any more. or
10) If you have cities on another continent or island without the religion, spin them off as a colony so there's at least one civilization without the religion. or
11) raze the city with the AP...I'm not sure if this works, but others have recommended it.

There's probably some other strategies for avoiding an AP victory, but these are the only ones I came up with in the 10 minutes or so it took me to type this. There's nothing 'cheesy' about a victory you can avoid if you pay a little bit of attention.

Go to the victory screen (F8?) regularly and check out 'members' to see what religion the AP is, who owns it, who the members are, and what they're voting power is. You should be doing this regularly (and also check if someone is going for a cultural victory).

 

[didact]

"Their rival is the leader who has the largest population living in cities that share the Palace's religion and acknowledges it as their State Religion. "

Many of your theories are flawed because of the above statement.

If NO ONE else has the AP's religion as their state religion, they can not be voted for. My options were Pacal or Abstain, not a good choice. Why would anyone switch to another religion when it's only in one city ? This actually forces you to have a state religion and not have free religion

Any of your spread the religion options are flawed becasue as soon they have the religion in one city they can win. First you'd have to switch to organized religion (1 turn of Anarchy), then the city they converted could have very little production power so it might 10/20 turns to make a missionary, maybe it fails when you try and spread it to another city?. By that time the AP Civ could have infested everyone else and won the game. Or they could have already infested them and now you're last, no time to react.

Taking control of the AP is the only sensable thing to do keep from loosing and in that case it's a broken feature, i.e. if you don't get the AP you loose. Very silly concept for a game. "The one that has the AP wins"

The other concepts for victory are cool and make sense,

Domination, heck yeah, if you control most of the earth, you win.
Space Race: If you're the first one to visit another star and maybe spread humanity there, heck yeah you win.
UN: Everyone thinks your the coolest Civ around, you're darn good at playing politics, heck yeah you win.
Culture: You've got the 3 most awesome cities in the world, yep, good reason.
Score: Well if time runs out you gotta have something to go by ... so someone wins.

OR!!!!!
Some piddly little civ that everyone's barely hear of created this building and controls this relgion and spreads it to one of your cites wins because ....
because.... because why ? Makes no sense

HOWEVER if most of the worlds population thought it was a pretty good religion then heck yeah, that makes sense, win the hearts and minds of the people then you control the world

Note: I might have to make a new thread and figure out how get tighter control of it as this has spun off on a tangent. The point of this was to generate a FAQ on the AP. Now it's back to conjecture on why or why not the AP is cool. We can't even have good arguements as we don't have a FAQ.

 

[methane]

Any of your spread the religion options are flawed becasue as soon they have the religion in one city they can win. First you'd have to switch to organized religion (1 turn of Anarchy), then the city they converted could have very little production power so it might 10/20 turns to make a missionary, maybe it fails when you try and spread it to another city?. By that time the AP Civ could have infested everyone else and won the game. Or they could have already infested them and now you're last, no time to react.

If you're the last one in the game without the religion it is ridiculously easy to avoid getting it. You have a long time to switch to theocracy, and don't keep any cities with the religion.

If you get the religion while there are still others without it you have plenty of time to spread it yourself, or to follow any of the other suggestions I gave.

You admitted in the first post that you were surprised that this option came up. You weren't paying attention...go to the victory screen throughout the game and keep track of what's going on next time.

 

[KMadCandy]

The only defense is to take extreme measures to make sure you never get a city with that religion. You must raze every city you capture that has that religion. You must switch to theology and stay there, or else keep closed borders to prevent foreign missionaries and never have a city without a religion for even 1 turn. All this to defend against a civ that might be a tenth as strong as you. The best defense against the AP is to raze the city that built it.

If you're the last one in the game without the religion it is ridiculously easy to avoid getting it. You have a long time to switch to theocracy, and don't keep any cities with the religion.

about theocracy ... you have to hope they don't have success changing your civics with spies. also, some quest rewards can spread the religion to other civ's cities, even cities with a religion already. i do not know whether being in theocracy stops that (logically it ought to, but logic doesn't always apply and i don't know how to check the code).

 

[Bhruic]

Voting power is based on the population of any city with the religion present. Voting power is doubled if the religion is your state religion. Even if you've spread the religion to all your cities, if you don't have it as your state religion, a smaller empire may end up with more votes than you if it's their state religion.

Conditions for other votes -
1) Stop war against X: Civ X must be a full member of the AP and at war with a member of the AP.
2) Declare war on X: One full member (but not all full members) of the AP must be at war with X, and X must not be a member of the AP.
3) Stop trading with X: One full member of the AP must be trading with X, and X must not be a member of the AP.
4) Open borders with all members: All full members of the AP do not currently have Open Border treaties with each other.
5) Assign city from X to Y: Civ X must be a voting, but not full member of the AP, and Civ Y must be a full member of the AP. The two civs must not be at war. Civ Y must have a higher culture on the city plot (not the city itself) than Civ X does.

Note the use of "full member". To be a full member, you must have the AP as your state religion, or you must own the city with the AP. If a Civ is merely a voting member, they can't trigger most of the conditions. For example, a voting member can never qualify to be assigned a city.

Voting takes place every 9 turns (modified by game speed), but if there are no valid voting conditions, no vote will take place.

Bh

 

[ButSam]

The only thing I don't like is the Victory Condition. Everything else is cool.

You can win by being a backward civilization on a single island and know nothing but theology and own the AP while others have Mass Media and not have your religion spread but to just one city of all the other Civs and win?!

Makes absolutely no sense to me. AP should only sway civs where their religion is entrenched. If my country is Christianity, why the heck should I care what extremely small portion of Islamics think (Islam would be the religion of the of AP) of my population thinks? However if greater than %50 of my population believes in that religion then heck yeah, they can win the game that way.

NOTE: I had mass media but Pacal didn't hense AP not obsolete.

I am somewhat sympathetic to this argument, in that I would like to see a fixed percentage minimum for each civ (such as 10% of its population -- it shouldn't be high, but it should be more than spreading the religion to a newly-founded size 1 city). However, there is an easy counter to this. The AI has to spread the AP religion to your civ at some point in time. When that happens, switch to Organized Religion, and build missionaries in that city to spread the religion. Then you will increase your total number of votes, and be able to shoot down the resolution. (I forget whether Organized Religion requires your state religion in order to build free missionaries; if so, you may need to switch state religion also. Or, you may prefer to simply build a monastery and not switch civics.) This is exactly what I mean by the AP elevates religion to a concern equal to other concerns. Sometimes, the right strategy is to focus on religion, even if it has nothing to do with your victory condition you are pursuing, in order to prevent the AI from getting that victory.

If you have not yet had the AP religion but fear another player (AI or human) is close, switch your civics to Theology and they can't spread the non-state AP's religion to you.

The victory condition has an easy counter for the human player. The only bad thing is that the AI seems to dislike missionaries in general, but my one experience with an AP victory showed the AI had spread the AP's religion. The AI does tend to employ Theology regularly during the middle-game as well.

By the way, the majority religion is not always the state religion, or the religion with the most political sway, historically. Church of England and Church of Ireland are prime examples.

Sam

PS: My one AP victory came after much fighting, and there were only 4 other civs on a Small map to spread the religion to. I had to take over a few cities, wait forever for someone to switch out of Theology (and pay big tech bonus to the AI to influence the switch, after a failed spy attempt to force the switch), and settle a couple of extra cities to increase my number of votes. It took real work -- it was not a cakewalk by any means.

 

[ButSam]

Let me add this to the list of questions:

* Does the Free Religion civic allow you to be a full member, or just a voting member?
* Does someone with no state religion (but not Free Religion) become a full member or a voting member?

 

[CivDude86]

Always voting unless you built the AP (don't know if capturing it works).