Constant incremental cost increase for religious units.

[CaptainPatch]

I _always_ play on Marathon. As a result, the Religion warfare can last for millenia. In my current game, right around 200 A.D., an Apostle costs >3,000 Faith. And by the year 1000 A.D.it's likely to cost >4,000 Faith.

In my opinion, anything in excess of 2,000 Faith is way, way too excessive. (Even then.....) There needs to be some reasonable cap put on the price tags of religious units.

 

[Victoria]

I do not play Marathon
Is religious pressure more important in that game then?
Do you take Holy order?
Surely you accumulate more faith in a longer game?

 

[Halcyan2]

I mainly play Marathon and I never have a problem with the cost of religious units.

First off, the increasing cost of religious units is no different than the increasing cost of settlers or builders.

Secondly, the best way to win religious battles is through theological combat (NOT through religious spread actions). So every Apostle that you make is one you should keep for the rest of the game (other than 2 for religious beliefs + 1 for inquisition). When you get an Apostle, go for any Debater you can find. For the others, use all but one of their charges and then keep them around to mob and fight off any other religious units.

Exodus of the Evangelists is a very powerful dedication that really helps you spread your religion. Yerevan is a priority if it's in the game. And Moksha's promotion which gives your Apostles a second promotion is really really good too.

Optional stuff: Mahabodhi Temple gives you a head start with Apostles. Hagia Sophia and Mont St Michal are nice but aren't really necessary. Meenakshi Temple isn't worth it and is bugged (the gurus don't seem to actually boost your strength).

 

[Archon_Wing]

Also true of Naturalists, which is why I only bothered with a few parks before GS (and rarely at all now)

 

[CaptainPatch]

I mainly play Marathon and I never have a problem with the cost of religious units.

First off, the increasing cost of religious units is no different than the increasing cost of settlers or builders.

Secondly, the best way to win religious battles is through theological combat (NOT through religious spread actions). So every Apostle that you make is one you should keep for the rest of the game (other than 2 for religious beliefs + 1 for inquisition). When you get an Apostle, go for any Debater you can find. For the others, use all but one of their charges and then keep them around to mob and fight off any other religious units.

Exodus of the Evangelists is a very powerful dedication that really helps you spread your religion. Yerevan is a priority if it's in the game. And Moksha's promotion which gives your Apostles a second promotion is really really good too.

Optional stuff: Mahabodhi Temple gives you a head start with Apostles. Hagia Sophia and Mont St Michal are nice but aren't really necessary. Meenakshi Temple isn't worth it and is bugged (the gurus don't seem to actually boost your strength).

I'm familiar with a;; the things you mentioned, but I apparently have arrived at the opposite conclusion. I believe much relies on several factors:
1) Size of the map. The bigger the map, the more cities you can have. The more cities, the more Holy Sites. The more Holy Sites, the more Faith generation. Etc.
2) How many civs are in the game. The more of them there are, the faster the map gets filled up, limiting the space available for YOUR cities.
3) How many City States there are. They take up space, affecting available space for your cities. Plus they are a bone of contention between civs with Religions as they keep "stealing" other civ's City States in the religious tug of war.

In my current game, I have a Colossal pangaea map (mod), so you would thing space wouldn't be a problem. But there are 9 civs in play (including mine) with 30 City States. The way the program dropped in my AI opponents and City States, I spent most of 3000 years getting by with six cities of my own. ("Recently" expanded to eight.) I am NOT a warmonger, so expanding my cities by conquering City States is not an option for me. (Though that is precisely what Kongo did, conquering six City States.) Even with being Suzerain of all five of the Religious City States, plus having built most of the Faith-generating Wonders, I'm generating only about 200-300 Faith per turn. That means it takes me about ten turns to generate ONE 3000 Faith Apostle. Contending with six other Religions, all of us seeking religious dominance really burns through Apostles and Missionaries. What I am looking at now is an eventual religious stalemate as all of us become unable to afford to buy our "troops". (Even though I've already eliminated two of my competitor Religions.)

With no Faith cap for buying units -- keeping in mind all the other things that also cost Faith to buy -- by the year 2000 AD, an Apostle WILL cost >5,000 Faith. That's too damn expensive to be able to push a religious offensive and maintain any kind of religious defense to thwart opponents' sneak attacks. Which means that a Religious Victory becomes impossible.

 

[Halcyan2]

I'm familiar with a;; the things you mentioned, but I apparently have arrived at the opposite conclusion. I believe much relies on several factors:
1) Size of the map. The bigger the map, the more cities you can have. The more cities, the more Holy Sites. The more Holy Sites, the more Faith generation. Etc.
2) How many civs are in the game. The more of them there are, the faster the map gets filled up, limiting the space available for YOUR cities.
3) How many City States there are. They take up space, affecting available space for your cities. Plus they are a bone of contention between civs with Religions as they keep "stealing" other civ's City States in the religious tug of war.

In my current game, I have a Colossal pangaea map (mod), so you would thing space wouldn't be a problem. But there are 9 civs in play (including mine) with 30 City States. The way the program dropped in my AI opponents and City States, I spent most of 3000 years getting by with six cities of my own. ("Recently" expanded to eight.) I am NOT a warmonger, so expanding my cities by conquering City States is not an option for me. (Though that is precisely what Kongo did, conquering six City States.) Even with being Suzerain of all five of the Religious City States, plus having built most of the Faith-generating Wonders, I'm generating only about 200-300 Faith per turn. That means it takes me about ten turns to generate ONE 3000 Faith Apostle. Contending with six other Religions, all of us seeking religious dominance really burns through Apostles and Missionaries. What I am looking at now is an eventual religious stalemate as all of us become unable to afford to buy our "troops". (Even though I've already eliminated two of my competitor Religions.)

With no Faith cap for buying units -- keeping in mind all the other things that also cost Faith to buy -- by the year 2000 AD, an Apostle WILL cost >5,000 Faith. That's too damn expensive to be able to push a religious offensive and maintain any kind of religious defense to thwart opponents' sneak attacks. Which means that a Religious Victory becomes impossible.

I think part of the problem is that you have a particular/set way you want to play, which just doesn't seem conducive to Religious Victory.

What difficulty are you playing at?

What governors and promotions have you been investing in?

So it sounds like 6 cities isn't enough to generate the faith you need. Maybe you should be settling a lot more cities? Compact lots of cities and have them reinforce religious pressure. That's one strategy.

Personally, I like giving each of my cities plenty of space (at least their 3 tile radius) but based on the situation you described you might need to compact as many cities together as possible.

Another key factor is what religious beliefs did you choose? Pantheon and Follower beliefs often have a big influence on your faith generation. What Enhancer did you take? If you are really buying that many religious units, then maybe you should choose Holy Order for reduced costs. Did you get any Golden Ages and did you take Exodus of the Evangelists?

Once again, I would recommend hoarding your Apostles. The AI doesn't think about unit conservation. You want gangs of 3-5 Apostles. Then every time an AI sends a missionary or Apostle, you kill it and that is essentially a free religious spread for you without costing you any faith. How many Apostles have you bought throughout the game?

I don't know how you define "warmonger" but you could also go on a pillaging spree (which I did even before GS upped the pillage amounts). Pillaging Holy Sites and Plantations generate free Faith for you. And pillaging holy sites slows down your opponents. I spend a lot of time at war even when I DON'T want any of the AI's crappy cities.

 

[CaptainPatch]

I think part of the problem is that you have a particular/set way you want to play, which just doesn't seem conducive to Religious Victory.

What difficulty are you playing at?

What governors and promotions have you been investing in?

So it sounds like 6 cities isn't enough to generate the faith you need. Maybe you should be settling a lot more cities? Compact lots of cities and have them reinforce religious pressure. That's one strategy.

Personally, I like giving each of my cities plenty of space (at least their 3 tile radius) but based on the situation you described you might need to compact as many cities together as possible.

Another key factor is what religious beliefs did you choose? Pantheon and Follower beliefs often have a big influence on your faith generation. What Enhancer did you take? If you are really buying that many religious units, then maybe you should choose Holy Order for reduced costs. Did you get any Golden Ages and did you take Exodus of the Evangelists?

Once again, I would recommend hoarding your Apostles. The AI doesn't think about unit conservation. You want gangs of 3-5 Apostles. Then every time an AI sends a missionary or Apostle, you kill it and that is essentially a free religious spread for you without costing you any faith. How many Apostles have you bought throughout the game?

I don't know how you define "warmonger" but you could also go on a pillaging spree (which I did even before GS upped the pillage amounts). Pillaging Holy Sites and Plantations generate free Faith for you. And pillaging holy sites slows down your opponents. I spend a lot of time at war even when I DON'T want any of the AI's crappy cities.

I play at Prince because with the next step up the AI opponents start to get advantages like starting with two Settlers or an additional Warrior or similar things.

I've got all but two of the Governors in play. I _always_ start with the diplomat so I can get suzerainty on City States ASAP. Then comes the guy in the derby hat to improve city productivity. I added Victor, the military governor because my fifth city was "behind enemy lines" and kind of isolated, so defense seemed a priority there. The religious leader was my fifth governor, so his late inclusion probably affected Faith generation, at least to a minor degree.

I was limited in my city building early on because the program dropped three of my 8 AI opponents practically on my first city's doorstep. (All within 12 hexes of my first city.) I had to do "end runs" around them just to get cities five and six. Numbers seven and eight are placed on _really marginal_ locations with very limited numbers of usable tiles.

My pantheon belief was Monument of the Gods because I really, really favor building Wonders for the advantages they give. (Didn't move fast enough to get Stonehenge though. No nearby Stone in my first city.) As much as I wanted to pick 50% discount Apostles and Missionaries, I went with additional charges, additional Housing, immediate new city conversion, and additional envoys for initial City State conversion.

Most of my policies deal with money-generation, so I guess if I switched to faith-generation so I might be able to up faith/turn to @400-500. But even if I did, I would still be looking at @10 turns to buy an Apostle.

I define "warmonger" as being anyone NOT of the "Let's all try to get along peacefully" philosophy. As such, for me, pillaging is a no-no. "Walk softly and carry a big stick" is how I roll. I have Declarations of Friendship with EVERYBODY, and Alliances with five of them. And I'm suzerain over 15 of the 30 City-States (six of those 30 having been absorbed by other civs. In 3100 years of playing, I had ONE war early on when Scotland thought I would be easy pickings. He caved just when I was on the verge of taking his capital. We've been quite friendly since then.

I _do_ engage in religious warfare by having my Apostles fight with their Apostles. I see that as being a battle to "win the hearts and minds" of the city dwellers. (Besides, if I don't attack them, they WILL attack me.) I have found that using Apostles down to having only ONE charge left is a good way to create a religious military force: place a one-charge Apostle next to a city and sooner or later an opposing religious unit will come a-calling. Have several in close proximity to one another allows them to pile onto those opposing units for a quick kill -- which also causes a +250 boost for my Religion in nearby cities and a -250 drop for theirs. That's better than a Conversion charge. Wounded Apostles DO need to run back to one of my Holy Sites to heal. That has become problematic, having to traverse half of a pangaea continent TWICE to get a wounded Apostle back on the front line. (As I extend my railroads across the continent, it's becoming less problematic)

Throughout the game, I have bought about 30, maybe 40 Apostles and only a couple Missionaries. (Missionaries don't fight worth beans. They die waaaayyyy too easily.) Because of the way I use my Apostles, I may very well still have my very first Apostle in play. I've only had about five become martyrs over the millenia..

For Victory Conditions, I disabled, Cultural, Scientific, and Score, with no turn limit. Those conditions are, imho, way too easy to attain. (At least on Prince Difficulty.) I've only got Domination and Religious still active, and I really have no intention of having ANYONE attain a Domination victory. That leaves Religion, and that's why these escalating prices worry me. My endless game may well extend to 5000 AD as no one will be able to keep enough units in play to secure a Religion victory.

 

[Carto]

I think playing on a larger than normal map is throwing the apostle cost out of balance. As you noted, a larger map means more cities to convert. As you also noted, the crowded map made it difficult to place enough holy sites to get the faith generation you need to push beyond 30-40 apostles. That seems like a high number to me; I usually have about half that, but on standard size maps.

All of this is to say that you're pushing the apostle system to the limit with your game setup, so it's probably not the best case study of whether cost scaling works as a system. If you were playing on a standard map, with a standard starting position density, the scaling probably wouldn't be such a hindrance. As it is, you could compensate by starting a war with a religious competitor, so you can pillage their holy sites for more faith and condemn their religious units to reduce the competition. But playing a peaceful strategy also can be tough on religious victories.

ETA: Have you tried the Constant Religious Units Cost mod? (https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1675931647)

There's also variants for districts and civilian unit costs. All seem useful if you're playing past the score finish.

 

[Halcyan2]

I've got all but two of the Governors in play. I _always_ start with the diplomat so I can get suzerainty on City States ASAP. Then comes the guy in the derby hat to improve city productivity. I added Victor, the military governor because my fifth city was "behind enemy lines" and kind of isolated, so defense seemed a priority there. The religious leader was my fifth governor, so his late inclusion probably affected Faith generation, at least to a minor degree.

Unless there's a really good city state around (maybe Kandy or Yerevan), I don't think Amani is that important at the start. She's essentially just 2 envoys. (Maybe you can keep moving her around for Era points but it should be relatively easy to get Golden Ages on Marathon at this stage). I also think Victor is a waste in your game.

I would start with either Pingala (culture/science boost), Magnus (if you are harvesting. Great with Goddess of the Harvest), Liang (builder charges and cheaper districts). Given your disabled victory conditions though, I would eventually bring Moksha out and save promotions to get double promotion Apostles.

You do know that you don't have to bring out multiple governors? You can use some governor tiles to get a heavily promoted governor?

I was limited in my city building early on because the program dropped three of my 8 AI opponents practically on my first city's doorstep. (All within 12 hexes of my first city.) I had to do "end runs" around them just to get cities five and six. Numbers seven and eight are placed on _really marginal_ locations with very limited numbers of usable tiles.

Maybe you could include some screenshots so we can analyze your city placement.

My pantheon belief was Monument of the Gods because I really, really favor building Wonders for the advantages they give. (Didn't move fast enough to get Stonehenge though. No nearby Stone in my first city.) As much as I wanted to pick 50% discount Apostles and Missionaries, I went with additional charges, additional Housing, immediate new city conversion, and additional envoys for initial City State conversion.

Eh, I don't think Monument of the Gods is that great and I love wonder building myself.

The best pantheons tend to be Earth Goddess (tons of extra faith) and Goddess of the Harvest (if you harvest). My personal favorite tends to be Divine Spark.

If you are really going that wonder heavy, you should really choose Divine Inspiration (my favorite follower belief) rather than Religious Community housing. That can be a lot of extra faith generation throughout the game.

Mosques are okay but then you really should double down on Apostles, and get Moksha's double promotion ability. (I tend to favor Cathedrals for the great work slot).

I don't think Religious Unity is that great (except for maybe Tamar). At best, it's a free envoy. I think Tithe and Church Property are most reliable. If you are spreading heavily, then Pilgrimmage or Cross-Cultural Dialogue or World Church might be okay.

And if you are building so few cities then I wouldn't bother with Religious Colonization. Converting a new 1 pop city is easy. It's just a single Missionary charge. You should have chosen Holy Order, or at least Missionary Zeal instead.

Your religious belief choices aren't really conducive for a Religious Victory emphasis. Maybe that is one of the reasons you are having such difficulty.

I define "warmonger" as being anyone NOT of the "Let's all try to get along peacefully" philosophy. As such, for me, pillaging is a no-no. "Walk softly and carry a big stick" is how I roll. I have Declarations of Friendship with EVERYBODY, and Alliances with five of them. And I'm suzerain over 15 of the 30 City-States (six of those 30 having been absorbed by other civs. In 3100 years of playing, I had ONE war early on when Scotland thought I would be easy pickings. He caved just when I was on the verge of taking his capital. We've been quite friendly since then.

I don't bother with Declaration of Friendships any more. Most of my wars against other civs are wars to liberate cities, especially city states. DoF's also prevent you from participating in a lot of emergencies, which can be very profitable.

I _do_ engage in religious warfare by having my Apostles fight with their Apostles. I see that as being a battle to "win the hearts and minds" of the city dwellers. (Besides, if I don't attack them, they WILL attack me.) I have found that using Apostles down to having only ONE charge left is a good way to create a religious military force: place a one-charge Apostle next to a city and sooner or later an opposing religious unit will come a-calling. Have several in close proximity to one another allows them to pile onto those opposing units for a quick kill -- which also causes a +250 boost for my Religion in nearby cities and a -250 drop for theirs. That's better than a Conversion charge. Wounded Apostles DO need to run back to one of my Holy Sites to heal. That has become problematic, having to traverse half of a pangaea continent TWICE to get a wounded Apostle back on the front line. (As I extend my railroads across the continent, it's becoming less problematic)

Maybe next time you should try Missionary Zeal - Religious units ignore movement costs of terrain and features.

 

[CaptainPatch]

All good suggestions, people. Yes, my configuration is probably not the best for Religion Victory. It's meant for what I enjoy most about Civ -- building an empire. From scratch, rather than taking a lot away from other civs. Usually by 1900-2000, I've become the tech leader, so winning the Space Race cuts the game short. And similarly, all those Wonders cranks out soooo much Culture and Tourism, a Cultural Victory usually happens by the 20th century. (Often several centuries earlier even.) Victory by Score or Turn numbers seems too abrupt. I prefer having ONE clear, uncontested victor to end the game. That left just Domination -- which I keep mainly to track the size of everyone's Military Power -- and Religion.

BTW, the combination of Egypt (Monument-builders) and Monument of the Gods is hard to beat for LOTS of Ancient and Classical Wonders. Add the policy to get +15% towards Wonder-building and it's +45% building speed over everyone else. (Only +30% if anyone also uses the Wonder-building policy.) That's enough of an edge to snag @90% of all Wonders by the end of the game. The left-handed advantage is how much time the other civs lose by having started Wonders, only to lose the race. (Somewhat mitigated by the construction being converted to a pool of production points. But still....)

[How do you do screenshots? I never took any. And a Colossal map would probably need at least 8 to get full coverage.]

 

[Tarry]

Your faith output seems too low. Simply put, you need more cities then you would have more holy sites to generate more faith. Get 2-3 settlers go plant them as a group to generate enough loyalty to support each other, or find crappy areas where you can get a decent faith adjacency bonus and just build your holy sites/shrines/temples there. Any place with a 3+ adjacency bonus and no loyalty issues is a good site.

As for spreading your religion. How many city states do you need to control to win the game. None. they can help, but you don't need them.
You win the game by wiping out the other religions one civilization at a time. Do that.
Build two teams each of of 3 apostles and 6 missionaries and 1 guru.
Send those team into another Civ and wipe out their religion from every single city of theirs. Ignore the rest of the world while focusing on that one civ (other than home defence), it's not important.

If they have no city of their own with their own religion then they cannot make any more religious units and they have lost the religious war. Any civilization that has not founded a religion should be ignored until you have wiped out all the founded religions - those civilizations can not win the religious war. You can convert them at your leisure once you have no religious opponent.

As for fighting the war. If they have a religious unit in their home territory kill it with your apostles. Your missionaries aren't there to fight they just move up and swarm cities and mass convert them one at a time. Once they have no cities with their religion ignore that civilization and go do the same to the next civilization because they have now lost the religious war. All those home Apostles you should send them out on the attack to kill enemy religious units in their home territory.

Having more apostles in your attack swarm means you can share the incoming religious damage amongst many more targets, AND your guru can heal many more targets with his healing charges, then you don't need to take that 20-30 turn healing journey. Making a guru and sending it to heal your attack swarm takes 1/2 the time from sending front line apostle units back home to heal and then return to the front lines.

All those apostles on home defence are wasted units. Killing their religious units in your territory doesn't win you the war, sure, it stops you losing it, but that's what inquisitors are for - home defence.

 

[CaptainPatch]

Ah, but having MANY City States for which you are suzerain is a deterrent to other civs declaring war on you. Who wants to declare war when it means there will be 15 City States jumping against you? All of which could get leveed to create a MASSIVE force against you? PLUS access to all of those City State resources.

Presently, aside from the current Apostle cost (>3000 Faith), my big problem is that the remaining Religions are concentrated on the other side of the pangaea continent. (Think Australia. My cities are concentrated in the NW. Theirs are down in the SE and E. It takes a lllloooonnnngg time to get units to the "front lines". And even longer to run wounded units back to be healed and then back to the front lines again.

With the Wonder effects I have available, my Apostles get 7 charges and a second promotion. That second promotion will be either +2 charge, or triple strength against other civ cities. [I'm not entirely certain if triple strength works against City States, so for them I use the +2 charges.]

 

[Carto]

I hear you on playing builder games. I tend to alternate between slower builder games and the occasional fast game, usually the game of the month. For my builder games, I tend to pack a normal size map with low sea levels, and set the pace to epic. I get to place two or three good cities, then I try to hang on for as long as I can. If you want to add more challenge to your builder games, I recommend pushing the AI up a couple of notches instead of playing bigger or longer games. It's a pain figuring out how to catch up with the AI's initial advantage, but once you do, the challenging parts of the game become more fun. There's a mod out there that gives you all the same starting units as the AI on higher difficulties. It's a great way to try out the next level.

That being said, I think the way you set up the game is the cause of this grind. Playing on a map that's 3.5x the normal size means you'll need a lot more units to convert all those extra cities. Playing on marathon means that you've doubled the amount of time it takes to generate yields. We need to take that into account when we talk about apostle costs; on normal, 5 turns of faith for the 41st apostle doesn't seem too far out. Also remember that the peaceful builder strategy that you're pursuing may not be suited for a religion victory, which is sort of a cross between culture and warmonger play styles.

 

[Takfloyd]

This is kind of a pointless thread.

The thing is that you're playing the game in a very specific way using a bunch of specific and rather extreme playstyle limitations and settings. The game wasn't balanced for this kind of play. You can't really complain when it's your own fault that the game is like this for you. Instead, you should just make some simple balance mods that make the game more enjoyable for your playstyle, such as reducing the costs of religious units. If you've never done any modding before, just find a mod that does something similar to what you want and then edit it in notepad, it's very easy to figure out yourself how to do it once you have it in front of you.

 

[CaptainPatch]

This is kind of a pointless thread.

Sort of yes; sort of no. You actually highlighted the core of the problem: Firaxis balanced the game for ONLY the middle-of-the-road settings. Average Difficulty, average land mass, average speed, average everything. Any player deviating from those average settings can NOT expect everything -- or most anything for that matter to work in an entirely reasonable manner. Which strikes me as being kind of lazy on their part. Like the disclaimer on the back of sporting event tickets: "Management is not responsible for any mishap that may occur while you attend this event."

 

[Takfloyd]

Sort of yes; sort of no. You actually highlighted the core of the problem: Firaxis balanced the game for ONLY the middle-of-the-road settings. Average Difficulty, average land mass, average speed, average everything. Any player deviating from those average settings can NOT expect everything -- or most anything for that matter to work in an entirely reasonable manner. Which strikes me as being kind of lazy on their part. Like the disclaimer on the back of sporting event tickets: "Management is not responsible for any mishap that may occur while you attend this event."

That's not really true. They balanced for a range of different setups, but with so many possible combinations, they can't account for everything. I doubt there are many players who play on Marathon, but at such a low difficulty, with some victories turned off, without going to war, on a huge map, and with Religious victory of all things as their goal. It's an absurd combination, and while it's good that the game allows you to play like that, you can't complain when the game wasn't balanced for it. Most Marathon players will probably be playing on Deity and making liberal use of conquest to win. Most peaceful religious players will probably be playing on small maps at a faster game speed. In both of those cases, the game is balanced quite OK.

 

[CaptainPatch]

That's not really true. They balanced for a range of different setups, but with so many possible combinations, they can't account for everything. I doubt there are many players who play on Marathon, but at such a low difficulty, with some victories turned off, without going to war, on a huge map, and with Religious victory of all things as their goal. It's an absurd combination, and while it's good that the game allows you to play like that, you can't complain when the game wasn't balanced for it. Most Marathon players will probably be playing on Deity and making liberal use of conquest to win. Most peaceful religious players will probably be playing on small maps at a faster game speed. In both of those cases, the game is balanced quite OK.

You do realize that neither of us can prove our assertions, don't you? There is NOTHING available to show which way most players setup their games. And like most people, we tend to think that there WILL be a substantial number of players that share our preferences, even if that "substantial number of Players" amounts to just a distinct minority. But even you note that Marathon vanilla WILL have balance issues. Yet, Firaxis deliberately included Marathon as a readily available option. Along with all of the other parameter settings that WILL affect balance. What percentage of parameter settings combinations are noticeably unbalanced? Who can say? Did Firaxis at least try to check each combination for balance? Unlikely, but ONLY Firaxis could say.... and I doubt that they would ever state just which combinations they did test for. I don't blame them. TOTAL testing is beyond being a herculean task. But when I reflect on what WAS said, did Firaxis EVER actually say that ANY given combination was actually thoroughly tested for balance? If they did, I missed that statement.

 

[GreekSpeak]

You do realize that neither of us can prove our assertions, don't you? There is NOTHING available to show which way most players setup their games. And like most people, we tend to think that there WILL be a substantial number of players that share our preferences, even if that "substantial number of Players" amounts to just a distinct minority. But even you note that Marathon vanilla WILL have balance issues. Yet, Firaxis deliberately included Marathon as a readily available option. Along with all of the other parameter settings that WILL affect balance. What percentage of parameter settings combinations are noticeably unbalanced? Who can say? Did Firaxis at least try to check each combination for balance? Unlikely, but ONLY Firaxis could say.... and I doubt that they would ever state just which combinations they did test for. I don't blame them. TOTAL testing is beyond being a herculean task. But when I reflect on what WAS said, did Firaxis EVER actually say that ANY given combination was actually thoroughly tested for balance? If they did, I missed that statement.

The unmodded generic GS setup screen has 510,720 (8*5*19*12*14*4) possible combinations for a game setup. (This doesn't included the simple choice of which Civ.) Going to advanced setup pushes this into the billions. So, yes, no one actually thinks anyone even remotely considered trying to test even .01% of the possible setups.

Under those conditions, choosing a form of play that largely deviates from vanilla (e.g., discarding several popular victory conditions and intentionally avoiding "winning") is more likely to lead to issues. In this example, an alternate universe identified in the OP, religion dominates all other form of existence. If Apostles are the only way to win and are being constantly purchased, then following the existing logic of the game, their value SHOULD BE extremely high. It's the same elsewhere. The more valuable and more important units (GPs, Apostles, settlers, builders, etc.), civics, techs and districts cost more and more as the game progresses and /or units /districts are created.

Why should religion be different (and specifically Apostles) and have capped cost?

 

[CaptainPatch]

By your own reasoning -- "510,720 (8*5*19*12*14*4) possible combinations" -- it's obvious that for a MASSIVELY large number of combinations, there was not even an attempt to create balance. So why think that a set of parameters that works for a very few combinations will work ideally (or even reasonably) well for ALL of the other combinations? Do you really think that paying a 10,000+ price tag in _any_ combination is definitely "reasonable"?

It seems to me that the simple solution would be to add a price caps option check box in the Advanced Setup (in the same place where there is a "No barbarians" checkbox) would work. Rather than essentially punishing someone for having decided to play the game "the wrong way".

 

[Halcyan2]

By your own reasoning -- "510,720 (8*5*19*12*14*4) possible combinations" -- it's obvious that for a MASSIVELY large number of combinations, there was not even an attempt to create balance. So why think that a set of parameters that works for a very few combinations will work ideally (or even reasonably) well for ALL of the other combinations? Do you really think that paying a 10,000+ price tag in _any_ combination is definitely "reasonable"?

It seems to me that the simple solution would be to add a price caps option check box in the Advanced Setup (in the same place where there is a "No barbarians" checkbox) would work. Rather than essentially punishing someone for having decided to play the game "the wrong way".

Eh. I think those price values can be very reasonable in a Marathon game.

Once again, I mainly play Marathon myself. You can generate quite a lot of faith and gold.

In the mid to late game, you have units and buildings that cost thousands of gold to rush buy. Rush buying districts can cost tens of thousands of gold. Rush buying Great People can cost tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands in gold or faith.

So yeah paying thousands for religious units is not unreasonable either.