Dural UU Suggestion

KillerClowns

Emperor
Joined
Oct 6, 2007
Messages
1,139
With the College of Theology implemented, it is suddenly in the Dural's best interests to have as many religions as possible in their cities. But religious techs are expensive and, since the Dural can't build temples anyways, mostly unnecessary unless they're founding them. Meanwhile, religions themselves can't always be relied on to spread to themselves.

I'm thinking the Dural could have a UU, "Student" (may need a better name), that starts with no religion and cannot attack. Instead, it can go to a foreign city, pick up any of the religions present in that city via an ability, and then gain that religion. It should be barred from spreading religions to foreign cities, so it can only take learn religions from others and bring them to the Dural.

For instance, let's say you have the Empyrean and FoL, and your Bannor neighbors have the Order. Rather than waiting for the Bannor to send a disciple, or for the Order to spread by itself, you could send a Student to learn the Order religion, then bring him home and have him spread it to your cities like an Acolyte.

Ideally, the Student would be able to ignore borders so you could pry, say, the Ashen Veil out of your somewhat ill-tempered demon-worshiping neighbors, but only if there's a way to keep the Student from spreading its learned religion to foreign cities. A disciple who ignores borders could be problematic to balance with regards to religious victories.
 
I'm playing a dural game now. I find that even founding religions isn't much use, becuase they have now ay of getting great prophets until theology. Except from random events...
 
As long as you make sure to found a religion whose shrine can be built by something other than a Prophet (FoL, Esus, etc.) they still benefit from founding religions. Unfortunately the best religion for them IMO is RoK, as it is early game, takes little effort to found, and supports their military. I really, really wish that Great Engineers could found the RoK shrine. In fact I will probably allow them to in my personal mod, as it seems appropriate.
 
A religious student would be pretty cool. Make him bNeverHostile (can go anywhere with no threat of attack) but 1 movement, and have him sacrifice himself like the low tier disciple units do when attempting to spread the religion. Then you have the opportunity cost of having to build them and transport them repeatedly to make up for the convenience of being allowed to go anywhere and "steal" any religion that you want to add into your cities.
 
That actually does sound like a really cool idea for the Dural. Basically their religious options are limited but flexible.

That said, the College of Theology is nice but I don't think the Dural should be built around it too much; not only is Theology a very late game tech, but the Dural have ~very~ little reason to want it; none of the previous techs do much of anything for them.

I would almost prefer the College of Theology on Priesthood, maybe toned down a tiny bit, with each of the Schools requiring the tech for the appropriate religion. 'Course you'd probably have to give the Dural something else on Theology, but at least then they would have a way to get priest specialists before ~the very end of the game~. XD

EDIT: Alternatively, the College of Theology could possibly unlock a "high priest" version of the Professor? Not sure what that would be...
 
Then you have the opportunity cost of having to build them and transport them repeatedly to make up for the convenience of being allowed to go anywhere and "steal" any religion that you want to add into your cities.

I like the basic "Collect 'em all!" idea, but not the ability of Students to freely penetrate borders. Yes, there's an opportunity cost, but it seems like a chore to me. I'd rather the bonuses greater, but the challenge greater too. Allow the College earlier (And obviously re-name it "College of Before Theology"), or otherwise increase the benefit, but require the Dural to obtain Open Borders, take a city by force... or just exercise some patience.
 
I almost always end up going CoE with the Dural. I like that it helps me remain as neutral as possible in my dealings with my neighbors and getting a GM to build Nox Noctis is pretty easy.
 
EDIT: Alternatively, the College of Theology could possibly unlock a "high priest" version of the Professor? Not sure what that would be...

Tenured Professor - Ignores all orders, costs triple upkeep, when on the same tile as a student provides +5:science: :lol:
 
This actually sounds like a pretty good idea. It would add a little more flavor to the Dural because Oghma knows they need some. I used one of those generator things and got Volton Dimoroc. Awesome? I think so. :D
 
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