Fantastic except for hypocrisy

[marvin7]

Sorry if this was ever addressed before. I have searched...

I absolutely love this mod. Pure genius and the AI is good thanks to you guys taking the time to do what you do. The only objection I have is that in every game most civs are adopting Fellowship of Leaves. In once case everyone adopted Runes. I usually play with 10 or 12 civs and handpick 4 or 5 each of evil and good 2 or 3 neutral. I play on emperor and aggressive and lakes. Really good challenge. But the games aren't what they could be because all the evil guys become tree huggers. If I don't adopt they treat me poorly. Makes me nuts when tebryn buddies up with ethne or enion. Then, if anyone picks up another religion they get hammered.

Can we change race objectives, religion diplomacy importance weightings by race and possibly even make the total research path for each religion closer in terms of total research required? I would LOVE to have a game in which the first religions to pop up were always a surprise. Tired of seeing the leaves always adopted by all. Hypocritical if you ask me! Also, in general, the benefits of each religion should be expanded just a bit more. I think a religion should give tech research bonuses for certain techs, for example.

The only other thing I would humbly suggest is that magic play a slightly stronger role up front. All towers should have a much stronger effect. All the 4 magic type techs should flow into both the summoning and sorcery techs. As it stands, researching macemen is a lot more important than getting mages.

Last, skeletons should be able to wield bronze and iron weapons. A similar summons for good and neutral that is perm till killed should be created. All of the towers should have more immediate and bigger benefits.

Thanks a ton. Keep it up.

 

[Teg_Navanis]

I agree that it would be fun if there was more religious conflict/diversity in the game. As it is now, most civs stick with the first religion that spreads to their cities and stay with it for the rest of the game, which sadly, is often the same for the majority of civs. Only rarely have I seen civs adopting the Order or the Ashen Veil (I only saw Hyborem and an Ashen Veil civ in one of four 0.22 games, noone adopted the Order as state religion but me). Perhaps increasing AI weights would help.

Magic gets incredibly powerful after a while (yeah, adepts usually can't do very much), and the AI isn't that good at using it. Two reasons why I do not wish it buffed.

 

[kenken244]

one of the main problems is that octopus overlords is founded to late, an religions spead to quickly along with ais adopting nearly any religion they get in their cities and sticking with that even if there are more cities ith another one

 

[Silverkiss]

I don't know, in all my latest games both the Order and the Veil where founded and they were adopted soon, and there were plenty of religion diversification earlier (the 3 early religions where founded with like 10 turn difference to each other)....

 

[Mutineer]

You are playing pangea stile of crowded map. In this kind of map contacts and trade routes tend to establish resonably fast, speeding up spreading a first religion, making it dominant.

If you like more divercity, try to play continents, for example.

 

[katika]

Certain civs/leaders tend to target a favored religion. The Ljosalfar get FoL incredibly fast, and the Khazad get RoK not too long after. I think that Hannah and the Balseraphs (maybe just one of the leaders) go for OO relatively soon, but I'm not positive. Only evil/good civs will go for The Order and the Ashen Veil respectively, so make sure that OO and RoK don't convert everyone to neutral. Playing continents, islands, or any other map with multiple major landmasses will often result in more religions being founded.

So switch up some settings, handpick some different civs, and you should find a fairly good variety of religion most games.

 

[Bringa]

There are switches in the code that prevent a non-neutral AI from RESEARCHING a tier 1 religion that will change their alignment from changing (evil AIs do not research Runes, good AIs will not research OO); what I think is missing is a switch that will make it much, much less likely for them to ADOPT one of those religions. The interesting religions for these AIs are the tier 2 religions (Order and Veil)--however, the AI doesn't understand that it can be worth waiting for those, and so it adopts a tier 1 religion, and by the time the tier 2 religions appear, the tier 1 religion has spread so far through their realm that they won't change.

I think non-neutral AIs should have a strong reluctance to adopt alignment-changing religions; after all, alignment is not an arbitrary value--it's supposed to reflect something characteristic about this leader. Certainly alignments can change, and that's an awesome part of FFH2: it's so very dynamic. But I believe they shouldn't change for no reason at all. Say an evil civ just CANNOT get any religion other than runes and it really needs a religion, or say an enemy is really putting pressure on that evil civ through diplomacy to adopt the religion (can you imagine a Bannor civ being much more powerful than say a Clan of Embers civ but the Bannor civ opting not to go to war but rather force Order on the orcs?).

In short: changing alignments are cool, but there needs to be a strong reason behind such huge changes. An easy fix for now would be to discourage non-neutral civs from adopting alignment-changing religions.

 

[xAlephx]

That's why I use my free disciple unit to convert someone else to my faith asap.

 

[Helsturm]

I've found that if you have technology trading off, civs are less likely to focus in on one religion.

For example, if Flarous is bee-lining towards Ashen Veil, she usually won't stop to research FoL just because it may have spread to her.

It also keeps them from easily creating their own disciples to spread among their own cities. So, if more than one does spread to their cities, you can convince them later on if they never actually researched the religion.

 

[Thennorin]

There are switches in the code that prevent a non-neutral AI from RESEARCHING a tier 1 religion that will change their alignment from changing (evil AIs do not research Runes, good AIs will not research OO); what I think is missing is a switch that will make it much, much less likely for them to ADOPT one of those religions.

That's interesting... I didn't know the design team had thought about it - Like the OP, I find that one of the early religions gets adopted en masse in many of my v0.22 games. The epic good vs evil battles I want to see fizzle out before they get started as most civs become the same alignment. It doesn't happen all the time but it happens often enough that it's very annoying.

I'd love to see all leaders be much, much less eager to take up a religion that will change their alignment (except maybe Perpentach, because he's crazy anyway ). I think they should only do it when the vast majority of their cities have the religion in them, and even then the chance should be low. As it stands, the importance of an AI leader's starting alignment is minimal because it's too likely to change during the game.

 

[onedreamer]

You are playing pangea stile of crowded map. In this kind of map contacts and trade routes tend to establish resonably fast, speeding up spreading a first religion, making it dominant.

If you like more divercity, try to play continents, for example.

Lakes and Highlands tend to have very late trade routes available because of no rivers ending into seas. Your example, continents, is actually an example of earlier trade routes (between civs on the same continent) than Lakes and Highlands. Pangea is different from these 2 and more similar to continents.

I think that what causes this problem (over expansion of a religion) is a feature that I never liked exactly because of this side effect: granting a priest on completing the research of a religious tech, even if you're not the first to achieve it. This means that if the AI will trade for this tech (not uncommon even between civs of different alignement, in the beginning when there aren't many negative diplo-modifiers), it will get a priest, use it, and convert to that religion. I understand that this feature was probably introduced for the opposite goal: direct the AI to research a certain path (for example Sheaim Corruption of Spirit) and be able to switch to this religion thanks to the free priest, but it often has bad results.
What might help is awarding the free priest only upon researching the tech but not if you get the tech via trade.

 

[felwar]

Actually one thing I'd like to see is that if the AI founds a religion, he should be almost gauranteed to switch to it. I think this is what cripples the Order and the Veil sometimes. Without someone actually converting to the Veil, Hyborem never even shows up.

Of course, this wouldnt help the situations where one side founds both Octopus Overlords and the Veil. In that case, it may also help to put greater weight on the AI's religion choice based on total population under that relgion and current alignment.

 

[Nikis-Knight]

hmm, sounds like an option to disable religious tech trading would be very interesting. Wonder if it is doable?

 

[GeeJo]

Pretty sure it is, as I can't remember being able to trade for Awaken the Ancients from the Kuriotates or the Sheaim.

 

[onedreamer]

That's because you don't have the prereqs. to trade it, but yes there is also a tag to make a tech non-tradable. For example the special religious techs (the 2nd ones) are not tradable, even if you have prereqs.

 

[kenken244]

part of the problem is that two early religions change to neutral but not to evil or good so most players are neutral. i think a solution would be to move the alignment one step in its direction instead of making them good.

so if a neutral civ adopted OO it would turn evil and a neutral civ on runes becomes good in addition to the effects now

 

[Grey Fox]

so if a neutral civ adopted OO it would turn evil and a neutral civ on runes becomes good in addition to the effects now

Thats already how it is, or maybe it isn't. Maybe It's just what I've always thought that it is?

 

[kenken244]

no currently they turn civs neutral but not to the other alignments

 

[loki1232]

Meh i recommand just playing with tech trading off.

 

[Silverkiss]

Yay for that, loki.

Tech trading off has many advantages... Not only the religions aren't that much spread, but you get to specialize (is that correct?) and get the benefits, instead of trading and getting all techs...