Are early warmongers too reliant on Hero Worship?

[Voremonger]

I've been playing Rome on the newest alpha version of VP and it's a lot of fun. I've noticed however, that with Rome in particular whether or not you manage to get Hero Worship makes a huge difference. The game plan that Rome's kit suggests is to conquer a bunch of Cities in the early game using Legions and Ballistas and to then scale off of the territory you conquered. Notably though the point in the game where you would do that aligns relatively closely with the point where you can potentially found a Religion. And while Rome is pretty good at conquering Cities they do not get an inherent extra payoff unless you get Hero Worship or are surrounded by minor Civs (and even then it's much faster to take 4 Cities from a major Civ). So I feel like whether or not you get Hero Worship and the associated instant benefits has a huge impact on whether or not you're able to snowball off of your conquest. That is why in my opinion Wine is currently by far the best starting Luxury Resource for Rome since it drastically increases your chances of getting both Goddess of Springtime and Hero Worship in order to scale into the late game. Tea can also be good due to the early production and late Culture scaling but it's more risky.

Other Civs to consider:

• Assyria, The Huns: They already have a payoff for conquering Cities, so I think it doesn't matter as much. If anything, the last time I played Assyria (on VP v4) the problem was rather to conquer Cities in the first place.
• Carthage: I've never really played them, I don't know how viable they are for early warmongering.
• Denmark, Songhai, Sweden, the Iroquois, the Zulus: I haven't played them on VP v5 but I would imagine they have similar issues (though to a lesser extent).
• Greece, Persia: They have their power spike comparatively earlier so whether or not you get Hero Worship has less of an impact (though it's still noticeable).
• Spain: They get a bunch of free Faith and their power spike is later on anyways. Conversely, if one of the AI is Spain they'll most likely pick Hero worship before you can.
• The Aztecs, The Celts: As a human you should be getting enough Faith to found very early, the AI are bad with the Aztecs so it's not much of a concern if you play against them.
• The Ottomans: I feel like their early power spike with Siege Foundry isn't sharp enough for Hero Worship to have a large impact.

I think it would be nice if there was more than a single Founder Belief that grants military benefits or if there was a mod option that allows duplicate Founder Beliefs similar to the BALANCE_ANY_PANTHEON option.

 

[hokath]

it would be nice if there was more than a single Founder Belief that grants military benefits

Yes, I think that's a separate problem we should definitely address. You can see my working proposal in my tweaks mod, here is a copy of the relevant code

Spoiler :

  WarReligions.sql looks to make the military appeal of Religion better
  -- New Enhancer "Cremation" to contend with Zealotry
   - 200% Combat Strength as Faith when your Units die
   - 10 Culture on Birth
   - 1 Happiness from City on River

  -- Teocalli remake to sort out Faith engine runaway
   - Faith on kill to 20 GAP only if the Unit is created in that City, scaling
   - loses XP
   - 20% Prod to Units in City
   - Loses Supply, moved to Gurdwara
   - Pressure increased to 50%
   - +1 Happiness base

  -- New Founder "Eternal Glory"
   - +4 Production, Faith, Border Growth to Courthouses
   - +2 " for every Foreign City following the Religion
   - caps at 40 Cities
   - Heavenly Stair NW: Faith/BGP on kills in all Cities and 5 GAdPoints to Holy Sites
       old Teocalli but rebalanced and now locked behind Reformation

  -- New Founder "Mastery"
   - +1 Happines per 8 Followers in non-Enemy Foreign Cities
       if you think about it, this will actually cause DoW on you
   - +1 Science and Culture for every 2 Followers in City-States
   - max 80 followers
   - Martial Sanctum NW: 15 XP to newly created Units in City and 5 GGPoints to Holy Sites
       old Teocalli but now locked behind Reformation
   - Mastery follower renamed "Abstinence" and Asceticism renamed "Remedy"

  -- Hero Worship changed to "Ritual Sacrifice"
   - Loses conquest yields
     non-scaling not appropriate for Founder imo
   - +1 Food and Prod in Holy City for every 2 Followers of Foreign Religions
   - max 100 followers
   - 50 Faith and GAP for every converted Citizen when using Inquisitor
   - Great Altar NW +% prod changed to 20 Food and Prod on kill during Golden Age

  -- New Enhancer "Dharma War"
   - City conquer bonus from Hero Worship
     some niche cases really liked this effect (e.g. Japan), so keep it somewhere
   - 200% strength to Tourism on kill

On the Founder stuff, I don't think Hero Worship is very health because a) feast or famine effect and b) unlike other Founders you don't have to spread it, meaning you can get religion payouts without religion investment.
You can see in the above I've moved the effect to an Enhancer, delaying it and locking it behind more Faith.

By the way, have you tried the Council of Elders on Rome?

 

[Voremonger]

On the Founder stuff, I don't think Hero Worship is very health because a) feast or famine effect and b) unlike other Founders you don't have to spread it, meaning you can get religion payouts without religion investment.

I would be 100% fine with replacing Hero Worship with something else and then balancing warmongering Civs around that. Looking at the proposed changes I would be fine with them; they're at the place where I would think "I guess I'll take them if I can" which is I think the correct power level for customizable bonuses. Though I think that yields on losing Units is always a non-viable option for humans. When I experimented (on VP v4) by just editing the config files I made a change where God of War granted Faith on City conquest so that basically you could found a Religion with any Civ if you're aggressive in the early game. That was back when founding was much harder though and obviously extremely snowbally.

On the topic of replacing Beliefs, I also don't like Defender of the Faith since it feels like the primary use case is to just stack the passive yields (I usually take Crusader Spirit even though I consider it to be worse because it results in more fun games). Maybe Defender of the Faith could be changed to getting yields when war is declared on you or if you kill Units in your own territory?

- +2 " for every Foreign City following the Religion

+2 what? Surely you don't mean +2 to all of the above yields, I think that would escalate extremely quickly. I would always take that even at +1.

By the way, have you tried the Council of Elders on Rome?

I also tried Council of Elders and Holy Law. For Rome I open with Authority because I really want the free Settler and Production in order to pump out Units. I get free Culture from Villae so I feel like the yield you're lacking the most is Science. My subjective impression was that Holy Law was a bit better for that since it synergizes with the free Culture.

 

[Voremonger]

I was unable to find the thread for your VP Congress proposal so I'm posting it here: unless this was changed when I wasn't looking, Persia can still build Satrap's Court in every City, regardless of whether or not they settled it themselves. So I think that anything granting a bunch of yields to Courthouses is going to be either OP on Persia or useless on everyone else. I would prefer a replacement for Hero Worship to look more like this: "When you conquer a City following your primary Religion, the City retains all of its population and gains a free Courthouse and a free Worker." That would still give you a bonus that is immediately useful but way less snowbally and tied to you spreading your Religion first.

 

[hokath]

I made a change where God of War granted Faith on City conquest so that basically you could found a Religion with any Civ if you're aggressive in the early game.

It's an interesting alternative to what there is currently (which is nice to think about because of how similar it is to Aztec atm).
I'm not sure the AI would understand it very well.
A related thought: Would we hope to have an AI where -- in a competitive game of appropriate difficulty -- its not a lock-in that you can wipe out a neighbour merely by choosing to do so?
Not sure.

unable to find the thread

Soz I should have linked it, here

Surely you don't mean +2 to all of the above yields

Yes, and don't call me Shirley.
I had it at +1 and I found that even what I considered a successful opening, with my neighbour of 7 cities fully converted, 7 prod/7 faith felt very weak for a Founder.
How strong is a Founder?
My back-of-the-envelope comparison: a fully stacked Holy Law is I think 1250 (?) of 3 yields; so if a policy comes once every 30 turns then it's worth over 100 yields per turn (!).
Second quick comparison to Council of Elders' quadratic scaling effect which gives comparative boatloads of production, but also science. Ofc you outscale in the later game, but the yields are worth a lot less then.

You raise a good point about pesky Persia. The problem is that Courthouses are the only accessible way to pick out annexed cities with a belief; everything else needs new code.

Maybe Defender of the Faith could be changed to getting yields when war is declared on you or if you kill Units in your own territory?

Both of these too, I think.

I feel like the yield you're lacking the most is Science

Yes I felt the same way in my game (before Byzantium crash -- probably -- killed it), that's why I went Council of Elders. But you make a good point about the synergy with Villa.

 

[Voremonger]

My back-of-the-envelope comparison: a fully stacked Holy Law is I think 1250 (?) of 3 yields; so if a policy comes once every 30 turns then it's worth over 100 yields per turn (!).

I would estimate the yields as follows: with Rome my current game plan (huge map, Epic, Immortal) is to settle a total of 3 Cities, then build Legions and Ballistas, then conquer another 4 Cities (after that Happiness becomes too much of an issue), then develop the territory that I have. I don't know how to value the border growth, but +4 Production and +4 Faith per Courthouse would already give me a total of +32 yields per turn without having to build any Missionaries. In principle the extra Production is also going to reduce Unhappiness but I think Distress is not that much of an issue anyways.

Generally speaking I think one ought to be careful with yields that are proportional to more than one thing. If you have no Courthouses or only a single one the proposed Founder would be useless but in my last game I had like 10 going into the Industrial Era. The current Council of Elders theoretically has a quadratic scaling but it's so flat that I think it's not that much different from a linear scaling; the old one had a strong quadratic scaling and was (I think) changed precisely because it was too swingy. But then again passive yields coming off of conquered Cities are I think always worse than they appear at first glance because you usually have to take Civs/Policies that scale poorly on their own in order to get to that point. My experience with e.g. Factories is that the quadratic scaling is very noticeable if you go Authority -> Fealty -> Imperialism with like 20 Cities; I usually build next to no Coaling Stations/Seaports due to competition with Factories until I get something like Third Alternative.

A related thought: Would we hope to have an AI where -- in a competitive game of appropriate difficulty -- its not a lock-in that you can wipe out a neighbour merely by choosing to do so?

For a single-player game I see all of the AI as mere stepping stones anyways. I think the better question is whether the one human player is likely to win the game after killing one of their neighbors. Yes, I am choosing to kill an AI with low risk of failure but that comes at a huge opportunity cost. I end up with a lot of Cities but all of my Cities are going to be severely underdeveloped and I also had to take the comparatively worse passive bonuses of Authority rather than Progress. To win the game it's not enough to kill one of the AI, I have to kill all of the relevant ones before they can cheese me with a Science Victory.

I'm not sure the AI would understand it very well.

The AI would take it and then get outscaled, just like with Authority. May make sense to tie some of the yields to things like clearing Encampments or bullying CSs to make the ouput less swingy.

 

[ElliotS]

I don't know if Hero Worship is THAT important for me as a Warmonger. Like sure, it's good, but the WLTKD one is also very good and not feast or famine.

The beliefs that are key for me at least are Teocalli + Zealotry. Having the ability to chain endless units and use my production/gold for everything else is beyond impactful. I don't think I love having my beloved Teocalli taken out back, shot, chopped into pieces, and shoved into a few other religious beliefs, but I do feel like a few other choices wouldn't be amiss.

My thoughts would be:
1- A new founder that gives -2% Military Upkeep per city following your religion. (Max 25?) It would also give +10 Faith & 5 Culture per 10 military units you own. This would be a more economic package that supports your aims and is a lot less snowbally.
2- A new enhancer that gives "Gold bought units gain full XP. Whenever you capture a city-state, automatically release it and gain a sphere of influence on it." If it needs to be stronger it could grant double or triple yields from city states under your sphere of influence. Diplomatic victories are a very common way that would-be domination victories end. This would further support it.
3- Teoclli loses 15 XP and gives units Woodsman.
4- New Relgious Building that gives Amphibious and +15 XP. Maybe +3 Faith and +2 Gold.
5- A new follower belief that gives "Training a unit gives 25% of it's production cost as culture/science to the city that built it."

It just feels like there are only a few beliefs worth taking, and having a few more would probably help balance things out.

 

[andersw]

Im not sure, Its easier to conquer early on lower difficulties, also depends on the availble land.
Holy law, Council of elders and the WLTKD founder are all great for wide and provides yields that hero worship doesnt.
I would say I find teocalli more important for me than hero worship.

 

[looorg]

I rarely pick Hero Worship, even with a warmonger typ civ. I would find Teocalli is more important imo, it's a basic pick for almost all my games. Orders is probably more important then Hero Worship. It's so specific. Sure it's a big yield when you take a city but I prefer the small constant or more common yields then have to resort to capturing multitudes of cities. Long drawnout Siege-wars are so annoying. In the end it quickly drops of to. I will do my conquering early to mid game. If I have to do end-game wars they will either be slogs since there is a zombie-horde of units that need to be killed for not that many cities. Or it's a giant civ vs giant civ and then I can't be bothered.

I rarely pick Orders tho. It's even more rare that I pick Crusader (is that the offensive one? I forgot, I think that is it or is it Crusader Spirit or something). The Defender one is just so much better imo. God of War? Basically pointless. I would rather pick Protection over God of War.

I mostly pick Theocratic Rule or Evangelism as the founder.

Authority tho is more or less a must take for almost any game. The yields you get from killing units and barbarians for the early game is to important to give up for any of the others. That plus a free settler. It's not as important to finish it tho, so you can pick a point in Tradition if you need the free pops. That said I think there might have been some changes to Allhambra so it might be important again, if it is not only for horse units. Also I don't care for the conscripts or the bought units. So it's three or four picks of Authority that is needed. How many depends on the game.