Faith Loss on Capturing Holy City (Issues)

[chicorbeef]

Hey, so this is not really an issue I've personally suffered from, but in a couple of the photojournals I saw, and in reddit posts like this (https://www.reddit.com/r/civvoxpopu...sible_bug_lose_all_faith_when_capturing_holy/), I think that this can have some unfortunate side effects.

The original intention is to prevent an early takeover into an early enhance, right? So is it possible to disable this mechanic once you reach Renaissance or Industrial Era?

 

[Gidoza]

Hey, so this is not really an issue I've personally suffered from, but in a couple of the photojournals I saw, and in reddit posts like this (https://www.reddit.com/r/civvoxpopu...sible_bug_lose_all_faith_when_capturing_holy/), I think that this can have some unfortunate side effects.

The original intention is to prevent an early takeover into an early enhance, right? So is it possible to disable this mechanic once you reach Renaissance or Industrial Era?

That's one way to do it. Another option would be that the faith is instantly invested in Missionaries for that religion (if you don't already have one of your own). That way your faith is still invested, but you need to earn your faith from scratch to get the Prophet to enhance with the new religion.

 

[chicorbeef]

That's one way to do it. Another option would be that the faith is instantly invested in Missionaries for that religion (if you don't already have one of your own). That way your faith is still invested, but you need to earn your faith from scratch to get the Prophet to enhance with the new religion.

But what if I don't want those Missionaries and would rather spend on GP?

 

[amateurgamer88]

Normally, we need 800 Faith to find a religion and 1100 Faith to enhance. How much faith would we need to enhance if we capture a Holy City? 1100 Faith? If so, does making the cost of the next Prophet 1700 Faith help? Otherwise, can we make the civ that capture a Holy City pay 25% more Faith for all future Prophets with the next Prophet costing 2,125 Faith (25% more of the 1700 Faith)?

 

[Bhawb]

The capture mechanic has always been a bit difficult to balance because you inherently get a massive benefit from having two civs worth of faith going into one religion. That's why the current system got put in place originally, and why I think any allowance for stockpiling of faith for a GP while another civ builds your religion for you is going to have abuse concerns. The system is already highly beneficial for the capturing civ, it is often the 2nd best religious situation behind founding a religion next to a non-founder; it doesn't need the added benefit of easy enhancing.

I support converting the faith into Missionaries since it is what you should be doing anyway with the current system. If you aren't going to found you might as well adopt your neighbor's religion and spread it as much as possible until you take it yourself. You can often immediately get a reformation this way. Autobuying Missionaries just relieves some uninteresting micro and opportunity for a confusing mistake for inexperienced players while also presumably being more AI friendly as well, since I doubt they understand the optimal strategy here.

 

[Gazebo]

What if I convert the lost faith into GAP or Culture? The issue is the double-whammy nature of capturing a holy city and getting your faith investments and theirs all at the same time.

G

 

[Bhawb]

What if I convert the lost faith into GAP or Culture? The issue is the double-whammy nature of capturing a holy city and getting your faith investments and theirs all at the same time.

G

The problem is you can already get both investments as long as you can get that civ to convert one of your cities. Getting the auto-missionaries isn't functionally any different than if you waited till the last attack before capturing, bought a ton of missionaries, and then conquered the holy city. If the concern is the doubling of faith investments we need some other penalty.

 

[amateurgamer88]

The issue I have with auto-missionary is when there are two holy cities I can potentially capture and I get the religion I don't want. Suddenly, I have no faith left and don't want to spread the religion I just acquired. Why should I be penalized if circumstances force me to capture one holy city before the other? In this case, it's no different from me losing all my faith since I get nothing out of it.

 

[Gazebo]

The problem is you can already get both investments as long as you can get that civ to convert one of your cities. Getting the auto-missionaries isn't functionally any different than if you waited till the last attack before capturing, bought a ton of missionaries, and then conquered the holy city. If the concern is the doubling of faith investments we need some other penalty.

It's more akin in my mind to getting a refund on your 'bad' faith than what you describe. If you fail to found, and then capture another holy city, it would be comparable to missing a wonder and getting the consolation culture prize.

Edit: converting faith into anything related to faith is a no-go. It makes the loss of the holy city too punishing for the loser, and way to beneficial for the victor. Even if missionaries, you're still effectively gaining double or more faith for free at a point in which faith points are at a real premium.

G

 

[Rekk]

It's more akin in my mind to getting a refund on your 'bad' faith than what you describe. If you fail to found, and then capture another holy city, it would be comparable to missing a wonder and getting the consolation culture prize.

Edit: converting faith into anything related to faith is a no-go. It makes the loss of the holy city too punishing for the loser, and way to beneficial for the victor. Even if missionaries, you're still effectively gaining double or more faith for free at a point in which faith points are at a real premium.

G

Like he said, the option is already available, and will remain available with your suggestion, short of the game killing all of the player's missionaries on city capture.

 

[chicorbeef]

I think we're going a little off-topic. Early game, it works, it prevents over rewarding someone who captures a Holy City, which is fine. But late game, losing thousands of that you were saving for GP (because you couldn't do anything else with that ) really sucks, especially if you're a new player that doesn't know about this feature.

So is it possible to just straight up disable this feature once you enter the Renaissance (Missionary/Faith purchase costs rise here anyway, saving up for GP is common here, and most Religions are enhanced by now)? If not, is there some other way to prevent huge losses in the mid-late game?

 

[psparky]

Is it worth considering losing faith that represents the "cost" of the religion you acquired, rather than all of it. Something like the cost of one or two Great Prophets and some cost per city following the religion or per follower. You get to keep any remaining balance. Maybe the cost of the next GP is also increased appropriately.

 

[Bhawb]

The inherent issue with this being balanced by any loss of faith is that you can just preemptively invest your faith into spreading that religion. To give an example, lets say you start nearby a civ that founds Catholicism, and you miss out on founding a religion so you decide to take theirs. But before you take their Holy City, one of your cities gets converted to Catholicism. You can now spend all of your faith buying Missionaries and spreading Catholicism like crazy. So by the time you take the Holy City of Catholicism, two civs have been investing all of their faith into one religion, which you now get the benefit of, and you lose barely any faith since you already spent most of it. You won't get an early enhancement, but you can get an early reformation and potentially even wait for the civ to enhance on their own (since they might save more faith with you buying missionaries for them).

Auto buying Missionaries when you capture the Holy City just reduces the "skill" factor of doing the above proactively. The current system removes the specific abuse case of using another civ's first GP to found, and then your first GP to enhance, but doesn't actually solve the issue of you being able to double-invest in a religion and then take it over. No system that removes faith will be able to combat that situation.

We essentially have two separate concerns regarding the system. One is OP's situation, where you lose faith you weren't going to abuse, and the other is the situation I described above.

I think the first step is confirming what issues are we trying to avoid in regards to taking over religions. Is it just the quick enhance abuse? Or is it the idea of getting a strong religion too early off of double investment? And for how long are these concerns really relevant in a game?

 

[Bascule2000]

Instead of eliminating all faith, would it be possible to do this? Subtract the cost of a prophet from the capturing civ's faith, without spawning a prophet (and increase the cost of the next prophet). If the religion has been enhanced, charge the capturing civ the cost of two prophets. If the civ's faith would go negative, set it to 0, but allow it to keep any surplus faith.

 

[Gidoza]

The inherent issue with this being balanced by any loss of faith is that you can just preemptively invest your faith into spreading that religion. To give an example, lets say you start nearby a civ that founds Catholicism, and you miss out on founding a religion so you decide to take theirs. But before you take their Holy City, one of your cities gets converted to Catholicism. You can now spend all of your faith buying Missionaries and spreading Catholicism like crazy. So by the time you take the Holy City of Catholicism, two civs have been investing all of their faith into one religion, which you now get the benefit of, and you lose barely any faith since you already spent most of it. You won't get an early enhancement, but you can get an early reformation and potentially even wait for the civ to enhance on their own (since they might save more faith with you buying missionaries for them).

Auto buying Missionaries when you capture the Holy City just reduces the "skill" factor of doing the above proactively. The current system removes the specific abuse case of using another civ's first GP to found, and then your first GP to enhance, but doesn't actually solve the issue of you being able to double-invest in a religion and then take it over. No system that removes faith will be able to combat that situation.

We essentially have two separate concerns regarding the system. One is OP's situation, where you lose faith you weren't going to abuse, and the other is the situation I described above.

I think the first step is confirming what issues are we trying to avoid in regards to taking over religions. Is it just the quick enhance abuse? Or is it the idea of getting a strong religion too early off of double investment? And for how long are these concerns really relevant in a game?

This. If we don't provide missionaries upon capture, then it has to follow within the logic of things we can[t do already, which it doesn't.