Divine Prophets AI

[MaXimillionZero]

When I played w/o Choose Religions (long ago) the Holy City was randomly placed, and seemed to favour cities with few other religions. So my strategy is about bundling valuable shrines, and w/o Choose Religions I would get Confucianism founded is some new struggling frontier city that was never going to produce valuable military units.
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That behaviour should be the same regardless of whether you have choose religions on or off. It's divine prophets that let's you choose the founding city, not choose religions.

 

[MaXimillionZero]

Idea: - I would love to see a random missionary (neutral -not attached to a civ) occasionally spawn from a holy city and head off to spread a religion in a city that doesn't have it. No resources necessary, unplanned, and not under player control. - Living World Stuff.

But that's already in the game, since religions automatically spread through trade routes.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

That behaviour should be the same regardless of whether you have choose religions on or off. It's divine prophets that let's you choose the founding city, not choose religions.

Choose religions let you choose any religion. Without choose religions Divine Prophets lets you choose from those that you have the techs for.

Personally, I would prefer choose religions not be an option in C2C because religions are not all equal and selecting a later religion instead of an early one breaks the purpose of the religions.

 

[JosEPh_II]

Choose religions let you choose any religion. Without choose religions Divine Prophets lets you choose from those that you have the techs for.

Personally, I would prefer choose religions not be an option in C2C because religions are not all equal and selecting a later religion instead of an early one breaks the purpose of the religions.

I agree with DH here wholeheartedly.

JosEPh

 

[Thunderbrd]

I'll respond here with what I said elsewhere:

IRT Choose Religions, I don't think they should all be made equal. In general, all should instead be given more game benefit focus so that none are better or worse than the other but not equal. Yes, they should be a bit more balanced but balanced by preferences rather than some kind of universalism approach such as was utilized in Vanilla or by an assumed tech progression justifying improved religions as time goes on.

With DP considered, every religion should have defined 'flavors' which compares to the leaderheads to determine what religion, after their historical favorite, they attempt to found. I think the trick is to isolate these 'flavors' and determine what each religion should really excel at. I love how different Asatru is from the standard norm, how the early religions do so well with food but not so great at gold, how Voodoo is the strongest for offering production. The original religions suffer a little from being somewhat undifferentiated by default still.

The solution begins with isolating what game benefit feature each religion should bring to the table as their primary 'gift'. Then we adjust the religion's buildings benefits to harmonize with the established intention and make sure that all in all, each is roughly equivalent to the other.

Personally I love Choose Religions and rarely consider turning it off when starting a game. Are some religions less valuable than others? Sure... that's exactly why I like Choose Religions being ON!

 

[JosEPh_II]

@T-Bird,

The last line of your quote is the crux imho. Who's going to go thru this process? And if undertaken by a single individual then personal preference will rule (obviously). And as such will be a 2 edged sword.

I play with DP on at times, but I don't use it with Choose. As historically Choose has had problems playing "nice" with other Religion Options. Maybe this isn't the case anymore? But maybe it still is? I'm not sure.

JosEPh

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

The religions have been matched to the tech tree. Having Choose Religions allows you to cheat the tech tree and get benefits earlier than you should.

I say remove "Choose Religions".

 

[strategyonly]

The religions have been matched to the tech tree. Having Choose Religions allows you to cheat the tech tree and get benefits earlier than you should.

I say remove "Choose Religions".

I agree with that.

 

[Thunderbrd]

But isn't this why its an option at all? If you don't like it, don't use it! It's kinda unfair to players who enjoy the option to remove it isn't it?

I do not believe that the religions as they are currently designed are in any way a reflection of improvements via technology, with perhaps the exception of Scientology, which despite its vast gold income capacity is still a religion I would gladly allow another player to capture if I could get Asatru or Confucianism instead, so its obviously not THAT out of whack.

I will agree that the religions are currently established to be most helpful in the era's they are introduced. I will also agree that there is a particular adherence to religious thought evolution in playing without Choose Religions on. I can also agree that if we are making more advanced religions that the imbalance issue could become more problematic as time goes on. But the point cannot be made strong enough that I and I would imagine many other players LOVE this option and as a result, it should be allowed, despite any imbalance it may present. This is something I'm quite certain any player who chooses to play with it is well aware of after just one game on the setting.

For us, we'd have to reset the global defaults every time we want to play the game if it's taken out.

@ Joseph: I believe that an objective evaluation of each religion would be possible. In fact, I tend to feel that they are already fairly well balanced to each other with some few exceptions. Where these exceptions exist does not correlate in the slightest with the advancement of technology representing improved religions. For example, I personally find Druidism and Animism are far superior to Hinduism and some others for their food benefits. So my point is that there already is some of this balance-by variation of focus thinking going on in the religions as they are. It would just take a bit more identification and progression down this line of thought to bring them all into harmony on both a tech progression and free religious selection basis.

Who would do this? Well... its the kind of thing for us all to discuss out I think.

Also... I'm not sure what you mean by play nice exactly but if you're talking about bugs, I've recently repaired every religious option combination in the codes. They should be working perfectly right now and if they aren't I need to know.

 

[JosEPh_II]

As for my last bit. it was about bugs and not meshing with other Options like Limited Religions. It's, from my stand point, a historical observation. Back in the RoM heydays all kinds of weird bugs plagued the Choose Option. Therefore I have not used it in a long time. So since you have repaired it I should pull back on my objection to it, because my concerns are outdated now.

JosEPh

 

[ls612]

The religions have been matched to the tech tree. Having Choose Religions allows you to cheat the tech tree and get benefits earlier than you should.

I say remove "Choose Religions".

That is what I think should happen as well. The religion progression is there for a reason, and Choose Religions can totally mess up the balance.

If we remove this, and address Religion clustering that JosEPh has been pointing out the balance may be improved greatly.

 

[JosEPh_II]

Question: Would it be possible or plausible to merge Choose Religions with the BUG screen Option of Multiple Religion Spread (MRS)?

MRS is an Option I can't live without. So for me to even suggest this is a struggle with myself.

JosEPh

 

[Thunderbrd]

Question: Would it be possible or plausible to merge Choose Religions with the BUG screen Option of Multiple Religion Spread (MRS)?

MRS is an Option I can't live without. So for me to even suggest this is a struggle with myself.

JosEPh

Not really... Choose Religions wouldn't play nicely as an in-game toggleable option (talk about a cheat then huh?) I agree that MRS is a non-ditchable option and I wouldn't want to corrupt it with some kind of merger between two independently different options like these two.

 

[JosEPh_II]

Okay! Now I don't have an internal struggle going on.

JosEPh

 

[AIAndy]

Maybe just tag all the imbalanced options which some people love with (Not recommended). That way you can still choose it but know that you screw with the balance that way.

 

[KingArthur666]

The religions have been matched to the tech tree. Having Choose Religions allows you to cheat the tech tree and get benefits earlier than you should.

I say remove "Choose Religions".

I third, or maybe it's fourth, this idea. I have never used "Choose Religions" as it seems like a pretty big cheat to me. Those who still want the option always have "Ctrl-W".

I also support changing "Divine Prophets" to "Divine Missionaries". Also make it give the missionary to ever civ when they research the tech, not just the first one to research the tech. Then each player can choose to spread the religion, or not. I've seen the AI too often get the Great Prophet and settle it in a city instead of founding a religion. I got clear to the Medieval Era with not a single AI founding a religion and I didn't found all of them that I could have.

 

[MaXimillionZero]

Also make it give the missionary to ever civ when they research the tech, not just the first one to research the tech. Then each player can choose to spread the religion, or not. I've seen the AI too often get the Great Prophet and settle it in a city instead of founding a religion. I got clear to the Medieval Era with not a single AI founding a religion and I didn't found all of them that I could have.

I'd prefer it if any player who discovers the tech before the religion related to it has been founded would receive a missionary. That way religions would get founded by somebody, but wouldn't spread to every player automatically.

 

[Thunderbrd]

I've seen the AI too often get the Great Prophet and settle it in a city instead of founding a religion. I got clear to the Medieval Era with not a single AI founding a religion and I didn't found all of them that I could have.

This has been repaired.

 

[JosEPh_II]

This has been repaired.

Seems next game I'll have to give DP another go then. To see how it rolls out.

JosEPh

 

[KingArthur666]

This has been repaired.

I updated the svn recently and the AI started getting religion, this must be why.