[NFP] [discussion] Major flaws of Civ VI - part 3: Faith economy and production costs

[aieeegrunt]

I consider myself a hardcore 4x player and I find the features and mechanics in Civs 6 & 5 (with expansions) as rich as in Civ 4, in some parts even more. Civ 4 had its own predictable and repetive strategies too that was never polished in patches.

(Ed Beach and co just need to switch 1upt back to some sort of limited stacking )

Some posters who hate Civ 6 & Firaxis just exaggerate things. Its good to give critique but constant smug insults to FXS dont give much content to the discussions.

Being able to stack one of each class, and reducing most ranged units to a range of one would solve a lot of issues with movement and combat in this game

If you don’t have a scout in your stack, you don’t get to see the contents of an enemy stack until after you comitt to an attack

 

[Victoria]

Being able to stack one of each class,

At the moment we can stack 3 of one type, weirdly I sometimes use a captured settler with a forward unit to give it better visibility, monumentality helps with this as the settler can move 4.
What you are suggesting is some type of weird compromise for what is in effect using the larger map like a localised battle.
It’s great to come up with the ideas and it has its merits but everyone seems to have a different view. It is sort of mild stacking in a tactical overlay to me which seems counter-intuitive

The whole scout class thing is a merging of skirmishes and scouts in a compromise

 

[kaspergm]

At the risk of continuing this thread off topic, I'll say that the problem with the limited stacking concept imo. is that it sort of eliminates the idea of different unit classes. If you can stack a melee unit with a ranged unit and a siege unit, you get essentially a unit that is both tough on defense and can attack at a distance and can take down city walls. The beauty of the current system - for all its faults - is that essentially each unit can be one of those things, but not more than one. That's what adds the strategic layer to the combat, which imo. is a good thing.

 

[civac]

That is not necessarily true. A catapult/ranged/melee stack should have less combat strength than a stack of three melee units or a two melee units and a ranged unit. Nor would it hit as hard on range than a stack of three ranged units. I suppose 2melee/1ranged would be fairly similar to 3melee.

 

[kaspergm]

That is not necessarily true. A catapult/ranged/melee stack should have less combat strength than a stack of three melee units or a two melee units and a ranged unit. Nor would it hit as hard on range than a stack of three ranged units. I suppose 2melee/1ranged would be fairly similar to 3melee.

Well, the model suggested above which I was referring to was stacking one unit of each kind. So it's not that you can stack any combination of units, it's the choice between, say, swordsman alone, or swordsman + archer, which I feel would take out much of the strategic depth, because the stack would always be better than just the single unit.

 

[Socrates99]

I think this sums up my feelings about this very well. I usually go for a high faith strategy for all culture and science victory games, and it really is more flexible and useful than gold.

But it does have its costs. Gold, production, science and culture are essential to building an empire. Faith is not. To even go for a high faith strategy means that you are deliberately shorting your capabilities in other regards- yes, it may be worth it, but it isn't immediately cost-free. Plus for me Monumentality is not always a given- you do have to work to get the Golden Age, and may have to do things that otherwise don't make sense (for example, I built a galley in a one-tile lake once just for the +2 Era score to try to reach Monumentality), which is also a cost. And for me the payoff period isn't really 3 Eras, since I often find it hard to make a Classical Golden Age and don't usually have much faith generation by that time. For me it's the Medieval Monumentality that really matters which means that the time period where faith is "OP" is itself somewhat circumscribed.



Always interesting to see different playstyles. For me, the rate limiting step in Empire development is how quickly can you get districts up and running in newly founded cities. After the first two or three this seems to become interminable with escalating district costs. The best way around this is with Moksha and Divine Architect, with four promotions on Rayna an alternative but not as good. So I routinely use the first 6 Governor promotions available to get Magnus with Provision and then Moksha with Divine Architect.

Again I'll reiterate it's a non religious game I'm talking about. Unless you're getting massive faith from a pantheon or a mod or mode you're building HSs for faith. Every HS makes other districts cost more. If you're dumping promos into Moksha and spamming HSs to build districts in a non religious game you're borrowing from Peter to pay Paul. Faith is a useful and powerful currency but like I said in my first post there's a lot of "if thens" necessary to make it so.

Unlike faith, gold is a necessity for building and unit maintenance so you'll spam harbors and CHs in any game. With a good trade network set up you can easily be swimming in gold. That's ignoring the easily exploitable AI trades where friends and allies give away the farm for a few luxuries. Since gold is plentiful and Reyna has fewer garbage promos she's almost always going to be the better option.

There's always caveats like if your geography, a wonder, your civ or pantheon is providing a flood of FP. That randomness is what keeps us coming back right?

 

[MrRadar]

What if price in faith were = price in gold, adjusting downwards to gold, just that? They say, money makes the world go round and faith moves mountains, that should make them kinda equal-ish in my books, maybe... perhaps? CH does give TRs with all kinds of benefits including diplomatic, but then HS also do give you a shot at religion with all kinds of perks plus a chance of of buying various useful stuff, they should even out somewhat.
And bloody IZs still do need a major boost/reason to exist. Else, Civ VI will forever remain a fantasy game even without considering certain gamemodes

 

[Planktonic]

Again I'll reiterate it's a non religious game I'm talking about. Unless you're getting massive faith from a pantheon or a mod or mode you're building HSs for faith. Every HS makes other districts cost more. If you're dumping promos into Moksha and spamming HSs to build districts in a non religious game you're borrowing from Peter to pay Paul. Faith is a useful and powerful currency but like I said in my first post there's a lot of "if thens" necessary to make it so.

Not sure what you mean by "non religious game." Do you mean a game where you're not going for religious victory? Because I almost never play for religious victory but always found a religion when going for science or cultural victory (even on Deity). I never build holy sites just for faith without the background of an underlying religion and its associated advantages.

Unlike faith, gold is a necessity for building and unit maintenance so you'll spam harbors and CHs in any game. With a good trade network set up you can easily be swimming in gold. That's ignoring the easily exploitable AI trades where friends and allies give away the farm for a few luxuries. Since gold is plentiful and Reyna has fewer garbage promos she's almost always going to be the better option.

There's always caveats like if your geography, a wonder, your civ or pantheon is providing a flood of FP. That randomness is what keeps us coming back right?

Nothing that you say is exactly wrong, but I don't think it is exactly right either. I still think that fundamentally faith is a better investment in purchase power.

Consider: at base, you can build a shrine, temple, and worship building in any holy site. The buildings in total will provide +11 faith (+9 faith and +2 Great Prophet Points that translate to faith once all religions are founded) at a cost of 380 hammers and requiring 3 GPT maintenance cost. These become available much, much earlier than the buildings for commercial hubs (except for market) which is also a major advantage- the "discount rate" for Civ 6 over a period of 30 turns is ~66%, by which I mean that a lump quantity available at turn 1 is equal to very roughly 2/3 of the value of that quantity after 30 turns. So all faith accruing buildings are available basically by the end of the Classical, whereas all gold accumulating buildings are available only at the end of the Industrial, basically a 3 Era difference (say 90 turns just to be conservative and for ease of comparison). If we accept the conversion rate of 1F = 2G, then by the beginning of the Medieval you can have the equivalent of 19GPT (22 - 3) for a cost of 380 hammers. By the end of the Industrial (90 turns later as a very rough estimate) that would roughly equate to 63 GPT in the Industrial for a cost of 380 Classical period hammers .

In a commercial hub, you can build a market, bank and stock exchange: this will at base provide you with +12 gold at a cost of 740 hammers. But the majority of these are Renaissance and Industrial era hammers; by the same logic, discounting the gold quantities generated (forward) and the production quantities required very roughly equates to 23 GPT in the Industrial at the cost of 330 Classical period hammers.

These are very rough back-of-the-envelope calculations, but the difference in scale is major. Yes, it is true that you need to generate some base gold just to maintain your buildings and units etc. But in terms of generating *discretionary* currency to put towards your victory condition, I don't think it's even close. Faith gives vastly, vastly greater ROI than gold.

It is true that there are other associated features to be considered that are hard to quantify, but I think these can overall be considered to cancel out. Faith with a religion allows you the religious belief bonuses; worship buildings have other bonuses (eg. +1 amenity for stupa etc) and there are important units (Naturalists, Rock Bands) that can only be purchased with faith. Commercial hubs can generate more gold if powered, and allow for trade routes that can generate additional gold as well as food/production/science/culture etc. But in my gameplay experience these simply don't measure up in aggregate to the purchase power excess faith provides. I've tried to develop empires using Reyna with Contractor; it is much much more impractical in gameplay (for me) than using Moksha.

you'll spam harbors and CHs in any game.

Just to revisit this, again to highlight the differences in playstyles, this isn't true for me. I build harbors mostly for the housing on coastal cities, and build just enough commercial hubs to maintain my buildings and units, until much later in the game when other more essential districts have already been built. C'est la vie.

 

[greenOak]

The thing is gold or faith isn’t either or. It is true that building holy sites generally means you build fewer commercial hubs and harbors, but a full on faith economy is still supplemented with enough CH/harbors to keep a steady stream of gold coming in.

It’s been mentioned before, faith is just a stronger currency than gold. Not only is the conversion rate (to hammers) cheaper, holy sites generally have better initial yields than commercial hubs. This gap gets even bigger when you consider pantheon and religion synergies (dance of the aurora, desert folklore, work ethic). Trade routes help close this gap but require the investment of an extra 160 hammers.

Granted faith can’t be spend on as many things, but you can spend it on arguably the two most important units in the game thanks to monumentality. Also golden ages are easy to achieve after the classical era, so you’re basically guaranteed two eras of monumentality.

Making free inquiry better would also help this balance issue. I’ll wager I’ve done as many fast Phoenicia science runs as anyone, and despite spamming a half price harbors while ignoring faith generation, I am consistently 10-15 turns faster taking monumentality instead of free inquiry. The 30% discount and extra movement to builders should not be underestimated. I think making free inquiry should at the very least be an option for the renaissance.

 

[UWHabs]

The thing is gold or faith isn’t either or. It is true that building holy sites generally means you build fewer commercial hubs and harbors, but a full on faith economy is still supplemented with enough CH/harbors to keep a steady stream of gold coming in.

It’s been mentioned before, faith is just a stronger currency than gold. Not only is the conversion rate (to hammers) cheaper, holy sites generally have better initial yields than commercial hubs. This gap gets even bigger when you consider pantheon and religion synergies (dance of the aurora, desert folklore, work ethic). Trade routes help close this gap but require the investment of an extra 160 hammers.

Granted faith can’t be spend on as many things, but you can spend it on arguably the two most important units in the game thanks to monumentality. Also golden ages are easy to achieve after the classical era, so you’re basically guaranteed two eras of monumentality.

Making free inquiry better would also help this balance issue. I’ll wager I’ve done as many fast Phoenicia science runs as anyone, and despite spamming a half price harbors while ignoring faith generation, I am consistently 10-15 turns faster taking monumentality instead of free inquiry. The 30% discount and extra movement to builders should not be underestimated. I think making free inquiry should at the very least be an option for the renaissance.

Yeah, it's a lot easier to find a +3 holy site than it is to find a +6 commerce hub. Now, granted trade route yields are pretty crazy even without bonuses so if you're looking at it 100% for economy, CH + Market + Trader >>> HS + Shrine + Temple. But as mentioned, it's not either/or like CH/Harbor essentially is.

Free Inquiry is pretty strong, true, and in some games I definitely can make some good use of it. Especially in Dramatic Ages mode where it also turns campus adjacency to gold. But it also suffers from being obsoleted an era before Monumentality. So many games I basically only get the infrastructure up to truly make use of FI only after it's no longer an option. One more era for it and I'd be rocking it, whereas usually by the renaissance I don't need the Monumentality bonuses nearly as much. If it was changed so Monumentality ended the era before, I'd definitely change around a little more.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

Just an example of how monumentality isnt necessarily breaking the game by its own, but depends on the insane synergy with high early faith generation:

In my current game I play as Spain, my first two holy sites and trade route yield me "only" a meagre total of 22 faith per turn. In this case I (for once) opted out of Monumentality in favour of Exodus of the envangelists, as I really wont be getting too many settlers out of the ordeal. Instead the vast amount of nonreligious cities south of me instead give pretty good return on investment in terms of missionaries, as I can likewise only afford a handful of those. Had i had about 40-50+ faith per turn though, I would definitely had taken monumentality (yet) again.

 

[Aurelesk]

Just an example of how monumentality isnt necessarily breaking the game by its own, but depends on the insane synergy with high early faith generation:

Except the insane synergy is way easier to pull off, and you do not need that insane synergy anyway to enjoy from Monumentality the most.

The first four Golden Age dedications has their own strength. I would argue that Exodus of the Evangelists is the most overpowered, because it allows to kill neighboring Religion with ease and have your own to be the dominant one on the continent. But nobody loves the Religion game. There is some kind of gentleman agreement with Religion that prevent players to actively seek that victory.

Free Inquiry and Pen, Brush, and Voice are not bad, but you are neither likely to have a lot of Harbor / Commercial Hub for the former, nor have a lot of Districts for the latter. At that stage of the game, you are at the Expansion stage. Either there is land available left to settle therefore you focus around Settlers (Ancestral Hall), or there is none so you build your military in hope to conquer your neighbor (Warlord's Throne), or you cannot conquer yet so you improve your lands in hope to be stronger and conquer in the later game (Warlord's Throne) or not (Audience Chamber). In all cases, Monumentality seems to be the better pick, either to expand or improve.

The infamous Magnus does help with this. It allows to chop feature more effectively for faster Settler production, remove the Population cost from the equation, and because of that Population non-cost you can freely move him around to your newly settled city in order to Faith-buy settler once the Population reached 2 and further extend your expansion.
In a sense, the problem comes also from the Ancestral Hall that reward every new City with a free Builder.

Monumentality becomes broken once you have a really Faith economy.

1. Relics generates 4 Faith while first Envoy to religious City-State give your Capital 1 Faith. Unlocking those bonuses early may give you a small pocket of Faith enough to make Monumentality worth it.
2. Work Ethic + Adjacency Pantheon are incredible: you have high Faith to buy, extra Production for the Settler, and both yield can be double with Scripture.
3. Shrine and Temple effectively give 3 and 5 Faith respectively due to Great Prophet point is converted into Faith, which is +8 additional Faith (and not 6).
   
4. Now that Pilgrimage works with your own cities, you gain 2 extra Faith for each new city following your Religion. It may need to buy Missionary for this, or you could chose Religious Colonization as your Enhancer belief.
5. Worship building is the only tier-3 building available by the Classical era, contrary to the other that need to wait the Industrial/Modern era. It means you can push your Envoys to 6 in religious City-State in order to gain that +3 yield early in the game.
6. The City-State of Chinguetti is gamebreaking: it gives you to Trade Route 1 Faith for every follower.
7. Kilwa Kisiwani can give you +15% Faith in your empire once you are Suzerain of 2 religious City-State. The Casa de Contratación can also give you +15% Faith in non-home continent city with a Governor.

Basically, Monumentality is best because nobody love Religion gameplay and because Free Inquiry / Pen, Brush, and Voice are not likely to be used at full potentiel this early in the game. FI / PBV allows to enjoy your well-builded lands, while Monumentality allows you to have land to begin with and improve it fast.

 

[Socrates99]

Not sure what you mean by "non religious game." Do you mean a game where you're not going for religious victory? Because I almost never play for religious victory but always found a religion when going for science or cultural victory (even on Deity). I never build holy sites just for faith without the background of an underlying religion and its associated advantages.



Nothing that you say is exactly wrong, but I don't think it is exactly right either. I still think that fundamentally faith is a better investment in purchase power.

Consider: at base, you can build a shrine, temple, and worship building in any holy site. The buildings in total will provide +11 faith (+9 faith and +2 Great Prophet Points that translate to faith once all religions are founded) at a cost of 380 hammers and requiring 3 GPT maintenance cost. These become available much, much earlier than the buildings for commercial hubs (except for market) which is also a major advantage- the "discount rate" for Civ 6 over a period of 30 turns is ~66%, by which I mean that a lump quantity available at turn 1 is equal to very roughly 2/3 of the value of that quantity after 30 turns. So all faith accruing buildings are available basically by the end of the Classical, whereas all gold accumulating buildings are available only at the end of the Industrial, basically a 3 Era difference (say 90 turns just to be conservative and for ease of comparison). If we accept the conversion rate of 1F = 2G, then by the beginning of the Medieval you can have the equivalent of 19GPT (22 - 3) for a cost of 380 hammers. By the end of the Industrial (90 turns later as a very rough estimate) that would roughly equate to 63 GPT in the Industrial for a cost of 380 Classical period hammers .

In a commercial hub, you can build a market, bank and stock exchange: this will at base provide you with +12 gold at a cost of 740 hammers. But the majority of these are Renaissance and Industrial era hammers; by the same logic, discounting the gold quantities generated (forward) and the production quantities required very roughly equates to 23 GPT in the Industrial at the cost of 330 Classical period hammers.

These are very rough back-of-the-envelope calculations, but the difference in scale is major. Yes, it is true that you need to generate some base gold just to maintain your buildings and units etc. But in terms of generating *discretionary* currency to put towards your victory condition, I don't think it's even close. Faith gives vastly, vastly greater ROI than gold.

It is true that there are other associated features to be considered that are hard to quantify, but I think these can overall be considered to cancel out. Faith with a religion allows you the religious belief bonuses; worship buildings have other bonuses (eg. +1 amenity for stupa etc) and there are important units (Naturalists, Rock Bands) that can only be purchased with faith. Commercial hubs can generate more gold if powered, and allow for trade routes that can generate additional gold as well as food/production/science/culture etc. But in my gameplay experience these simply don't measure up in aggregate to the purchase power excess faith provides. I've tried to develop empires using Reyna with Contractor; it is much much more impractical in gameplay (for me) than using Moksha.



Just to revisit this, again to highlight the differences in playstyles, this isn't true for me. I build harbors mostly for the housing on coastal cities, and build just enough commercial hubs to maintain my buildings and units, until much later in the game when other more essential districts have already been built. C'est la vie.

I am mostly talking about non-founding games. Founding before the AI isn't as bad as it used to be but it's still a significant early investment. One I rarely bother with unless it's the VC I'm going for or it specifically benefits my Civ (ie Byzantium).

You're looking at just buildings and forgetting trade routes, selling luxuries/open borders/etc and that tiles generally produce more gold than faith. Gold is a more flexible currency and without some specific situations, more bountiful. Great merchants and admirals can be recruited throughout the game whereas GPs are one and done.

I'm not saying it's either/or....well maybe I am. You have limited district slots before they reach a heavy cost. You could build a few CHs or harbors plus HSs plus Campuses, Theaters whatever your chosen VC is. Or you could skip HSs altogether and build just the necessary districts for your VC and use Reyna instead. I'm only saying that investing in Moksha for divine architect when your game isn't built around spreading a religion is far from OP and there are better choices. Great, you got Moksha up and running early, but how many HSs are chewing up district slots instead of Campuses, TDs, etc? They're part of the reason districts are costing more in the first place. Borrowing from Peter to pay Paul.

That's why I'm not sure that faith is as OP as implied. It can be a means to an end but often it can be better to just go for the "end". It's powerful but there are other avenues that might be better given the situation and planned VC. I like that it's a useful currency in VI. It was kind of "meh" in V.

I'm sticking with what I said in my first post, I'd just nerf faith by making units cost more. It's mostly monumentality that's the issue. OFC even with as powerful as monumentality is, if I'm spreading through early aggression I'll often choose free inquiry because I'm not going to recruit many settlers but I'll get a boatload of eurekas. Pointing out how good free inquiry is is a frequent theme in the strategy and tips forum and not just by me.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

Except the insane synergy is way easier to pull off, and you do not need that insane synergy anyway to enjoy from Monumentality the most.

Of course you need plenty of faith to pull off the really broken benefits of Monumentality. Monumentality with a low fpt (in my case, 22) does not yield many settlers, 2 or maybe 3 at most in the average game (as well as the opportunity cost of no missionaries, and more expensive hard built settlers). Sure those settlers are nice, but they dont break the game. When reaching 50-100 fpt or more however, you can sustain a new settler every other turn, and often fill out most of the available land within that era. The cities no longer need to hard build settlers and can focus on infrastructure, while you can still afford the odd missionary.
The level of faith you have fuelling a monumentality based economy is what allows you to break the game, not a single relic with 1 envoy in a CS, it's simply way too low to be considered OP in my book.

The City-State of Chinguetti is gamebreaking

Let's not exaggerate too much here please.

 

[Aurelesk]

Of course you need plenty of faith to pull off the really broken benefits of Monumentality. Monumentality with a low fpt (in my case, 22) does not yield many settlers, 2 or maybe 3 at most in the average game (as well as the opportunity cost of no missionaries, and more expensive hard built settlers)..

You are very hard to follow. You first say you cannot pick Monumentality because you have low Faith, then say Monumentality prevents you to buy Missionaries. Except... if you have low Faith to begin with, then the Religious game might be out of reach already. But if you aim to have enough Faith to be relevant in the religious game, then you cannot dismiss Monumentality because you have low Faith.
In a sense, you pick Exodus of the Evangelists just to save your Religion, not to expand it?

Even with low to no Faith, Monumentality is still a great dedication. Its power is not limited to a Settlers purchase on Faith scheme. It has:

• +2 Movement for Builders.
• Builders, Settlers and Traders are purchasable with Faith.
• Settlers and Builders are 30% cheaper to purchase with Gold and Faith.

I tend to buy a lot of Builders and some Settlers with Gold anyway, so Monumentality would still be a solid pick. That dedication is already very good with no Faith, great with some Faith, and overpowered with a huge Faith output. Which is your point: Monumentality is broken with a huge Faith output.

But let's take the other way: what should you pick when you have low Faith anyway? Except if you already plan to have many Harbor / Commercial Hubs (Free Inquiry), or want to come back in the religious game (Exodus of the Evangelists), then Monumentality is still the better pick.

That is the power of Monumentality: when everything aligns, it is broken. When nothing aligns, it is still good.

Let's not exaggerate too much here please.

Kumasi is widely considered as one of the 10 best City-States. However, it needs you to have Trade Route from Cities with many Districts, to City-States only. It allows you to have a very good Culture from it to the point of ignoring Theater Square completely. Now that Democracy and Wisselbanken work with City-State, Kumasi might even be in the 5 best City-States.

Chinguetti is the same with Faith, instead you do not need to Trade with City-State but anyone you want, while the district count change to a Follower amount (still a Population cap in some sort). You can have both Domestic and International Trade Route and it works: it is that versatile. But you need either to found a Religion, or have a majority Religion. Like Kumasi, it allows you to have a very good Faith to the point of ignoring Holy Site completely.
Currently in my game, Chinguetti is responsible to more than 300 Faith per turn with my 20 Trade Routes (which means my Cities has an average of 15 Followers, which is probably not far from the truth).

 

[UWHabs]

You are very hard to follow. You first say you cannot pick Monumentality because you have low Faith, then say Monumentality prevents you to buy Missionaries. Except... if you have low Faith to begin with, then the Religious game might be out of reach already. But if you aim to have enough Faith to be relevant in the religious game, then you cannot dismiss Monumentality because you have low Faith.
In a sense, you pick Exodus of the Evangelists just to save your Religion, not to expand it?

Even with low to no Faith, Monumentality is still a great dedication. Its power is not limited to a Settlers purchase on Faith scheme. It has:

• +2 Movement for Builders.
• Builders, Settlers and Traders are purchasable with Faith.
• Settlers and Builders are 30% cheaper to purchase with Gold and Faith.

I tend to buy a lot of Builders and some Settlers with Gold anyway, so Monumentality would still be a solid pick. That dedication is already very good with no Faith, great with some Faith, and overpowered with a huge Faith output. Which is your point: Monumentality is broken with a huge Faith output.

But let's take the other way: what should you pick when you have low Faith anyway? Except if you already plan to have many Harbor / Commercial Hubs (Free Inquiry), or want to come back in the religious game (Exodus of the Evangelists), then Monumentality is still the better pick.

That is the power of Monumentality: when everything aligns, it is broken. When nothing aligns, it is still good.



Kumasi is widely considered as one of the 10 best City-States. However, it needs you to have Trade Route from Cities with many Districts, to City-States only. It allows you to have a very good Culture from it to the point of ignoring Theater Square completely. Now that Democracy and Wisselbanken work with City-State, Kumasi might even be in the 5 best City-States.

Chinguetti is the same with Faith, instead you do not need to Trade with City-State but anyone you want, while the district count change to a Follower amount (still a Population cap in some sort). You can have both Domestic and International Trade Route and it works: it is that versatile. But you need either to found a Religion, or have a majority Religion. Like Kumasi, it allows you to have a very good Faith to the point of ignoring Holy Site completely.
Currently in my game, Chinguetti is responsible to more than 300 Faith per turn with my 20 Trade Routes (which means my Cities has an average of 15 Followers, which is probably not far from the truth).

Yeah, I've had a few games with I would say moderate faith yields, founded an early religion, and wanted to spread it, so I went Exodus. And at the end of the era, what do I get out of it? +4 GPP = 4 faith per turn, and I have probably gained enough faith from that and elsewhere to get maybe a couple apostles and missionaries. So in the end, I get maybe 5 or 6 free charges on religious units. Now, sure, if you haven't founded the religion, I have absolutely used it to secure one, but frankly, barring ludicrous faith yields, you simply can't produce enough at that early stage to get any use. And that's being lucky - I've had games where I pick it thinking that I can use it nicely, and then get slogged down in things and have to rush hard to even get a temple out to be able to build apostles.

And yeah, that's also the part of Monumentality that's broken, even without the faith purchasing, it still gives you bonus movement and cheap gold buying when you need it most. It definitely shows you something when they converted them to policy cards for Dramatic Ages mode that they nerfed Monumentality to no longer give you the settler discount, and also boosted Free Inquiry by giving gold for campus bonuses.

Of course, all of this distracts from the points that settlers are insanely valuable early in the game. There's a reason why the #1 pantheon choice in virtually every game is "get a free settler right now". I would wager that if the ONLY bonus from monumentality was to immediately gain a free settler, people would STILL pick it more often than not. I know for me, I would gladly still pick it even if it gave no bonuses to settlers or faith purchasing, and was simply "+2 movement to builders and 3-% cheaper to buy with gold". Sure, it would change my strategies, and thus would not need to be argued in this thread about faith economies anymore, but even with just that, I think it would still be the popular choice. The fact that you can turn ANY faith into civilian units with it is just icing on the cake.

 

[Petr Milovanov]

Tl;dr: Faith economy offers an easily accessible way to circumvent production as the bottleneck for empire development, thus eliminating much of the strategic planning normally required for succeeding in the game.[/QUOTE]

I use this all the time. To somewhat reliably use it, you need tundra (as opposed to desert/jungle where this is a lot harder to abuse). Tundra because the pantheon is relatively uncontested, there is usually a lot of tundra to settle, and the land is relatively uncontested as well.

I recently abused this as I mentioned earlier, both for Portugal science, Pericles culture and Zulu domination, for smooth deity wins. I personally think tundra, right now, is among the absolutely strongest terrain types because of the dance + work ethic + monumentality + 4x Moksha synergy. It's absolutely bonkers how fast you can buy settlers and buy a fresh +6-8 adjacency holy site in the new cities, and eventually have the faith cost repay itself very quickly for every new city you do this with.

In addition I choice Pagoda as worship and have a lot of diplomatic favor that not depends of envoys in CS and relationships with another nations.

Plus you can buy GP for faith.

 

[Johann khan]

I think Monumentality is not bad considering most of the religious civs are subpar in other key aspects of the game such as warfare. Warfare to me is even more broken than religion due to the scale economics. Although I think faith output should be lowered and scaled as it is with food, production and gold like it is done to resources or unique improvements. If two people start playing and one starts to conquer the living hell of everything that one is gonna win in almost every aspect towards the end of the game, because this game does not really penalize you from collecting cities, which in turns the more cities the merrier. That is why I think warfare is even worse than this. It would be ideal to have some sort of synergy system, targeted towards flat out conquering with no social, political nor economic repercussions. If one abuses religion vs the other one conquering the cities I will bet my money that on equal terms the warmonger will have the edge.

The reason I think monumentality is not fundamentally broken is because it is really really hard for a lot of trashy religion civs to get a decent chance of winning the game. Furthermore, not all religious based civs benefit from warfare and are dependent on diplo strategies. That being said not all religious civs are created equal, Poland and Georgia are not as broken with tundra, work ethic combo as it is with Russia or Japan.