Decreasing AI number of missionaries

[Fimbulvetr]

If that was true, before the patch you could have recruited missionaries without building a shrine. I wouldn't know, I got Kongo on my first and only pre-patch game but I think that would have been mentioned in the patch notes.

For this mod, I think adding a great work slot of the relic type, like the temple, wouldn't be too overpowered and make missionaries purchasable again.
If that's too strong there's always the possibility to create a new, and thus unused, great work object type, plus the corresponding slot type, and give that unusable slot to the shrine.

 

[Lord Yanaek]

Your right. This table apparently controls both the number of units supported and the need to have a building at all so the entry must have been there before.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

First, let me preface all the following with this: I am NOT a Modder and am totally unfamiliar with lua or xml - the last computer language I studied was 'Fortran' in college (on stone tablets and papyrus).
But, I've been rummaging through the Civ VI files and noticed that in the Units.xml files for all the religious 'units': Missionary, Inquisitor and Apostle, there is an entry labeled:
"CostProgressionParam1=". The values are 6 for Inquisitors and Missionaries, 15 for Apostles. I presume that this indicates the rate at which the cost of the unit increases with each succeeding purchase of the unit. Couldn't jacking up these values make spamming missionaries (or any other unit) progressively so expensive as to limit it?
This also would have the advantage that it doesn't make a Religious Offensive impossible, just very, very expensive and requiring a serious commitment in resources and religious districts and buildings to implement it.

 

[Fimbulvetr]

I might not have as many games under my belt as many of you but what I saw matched what others describe: massive religious unit spam by the AI. These units can only be bought with faith and they are by no means cheap. Still the AI (in my case: Prince level, which means 0 bonuses for both the human player and the AI) can build massive armies of those and swamp me. My deduction: the AI cheats, probably getting massive amounts of faith for free, same as gold. That would also explain how they can found religions so early with such ease.
Therefore, increasing costs would certainly reduce the numbers, but not by enough, and the human player would still be a cripple in comparison. Limiting the number of units directly seems like a much more direct and therefore more effective way to deal with this, and reduces the advantage of the cheating AI.
Religious offensives with more units are still possible - as long as you build enough temples to support these units. Maybe we need to allow 2 missionaries and 2 apostles per building though, that depends on how many holy sites the AI tends to build.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I might not have as many games under my belt as many of you but what I saw matched what others describe: massive religious unit spam by the AI. These units can only be bought with faith and they are by no means cheap. Still the AI (in my case: Prince level, which means 0 bonuses for both the human player and the AI) can build massive armies of those and swamp me. My deduction: the AI cheats, probably getting massive amounts of faith for free, same as gold. That would also explain how they can found religions so early with such ease.

If it were true that the AI 'cheats' and its actions are independent of normal Religious/Faith accumulation, then what was the point of increasing the costs of Religious Units in the latest Patch? I'm assuming there was a point, and it wasn't to avoid Human Religious Unit Spamming, which I have not heard anyone complaining about. It was aimed at AI 'behavior', and it had an effect: in games I played before the Patch, the AI sent 7 - 10 Missionaries swarming around my Civ at a time. In my first post-Patch game, same Difficulty Level, same number of AI opponents, and the 'spam' was 4 - 6 Missionaries, with another Missionary following about 3 - 5 turns behind, or just about long enough to accumulate the Faith points necessary to buy him. Checking the standings, and the two Civs that sent those Missionaries were each accumulating about 30 - 40 Faith points per turn.
So, from that admittedly small sample, I'd estimate that the Patch cut down on the Missionary Spam by about 33 - 50%. Making Missionary costs increase by, say, 25 - 33% per additional Missionary/Apostle would slow down and spread out the 'wave' considerably, and force a concentration on generating Faith points to continue it for long.

Of course, we also have to consider what any effects on reducing Religious Unit 'Spam' might have on Religious Victory and the difficulty of getting one before the game ends at (normal speed) Turn 500. Worst Case Scenario, on a Huge map with maximum number of opponents a religious victory might become mathematically impossible...

 

[Fimbulvetr]

I tested my version where I gave the shrine a relic slot: I recruited a missionary, kept it around until I had enough faith for another, and could buy the second without problems. The limit I set to 1 doesn't seem to apply. at least not to the human player.

Spoiler code :

UPDATE Unit_BuildingPrereqs SET NumSupported = 1 WHERE Unit IN ('UNIT_MISSIONARY','UNIT_APOSTLE');
UPDATE Unit_BuildingPrereqs SET NumSupported = 1 WHERE Unit IN ('UNIT_INQUISITOR');
INSERT INTO Building_GreatWorks (BuildingType, GreatWorkSlotType, NumSlots) VALUES ('BUILDING_SHRINE','GREATWORKSLOT_RELIC',1);

Would have been nice.