Final Tuning: The "F" stuff

[chicorbeef]

Do people like the new churches? I find they just don't payoff in many realistic scenarios. You need to build so many missionaries to make them payoff, are there commonly situations where building churches then missionaries actually spreads faster than just building missionaries? To gain on raw %, you need to build 20 missionaries after a church to gain on that dimension. However, its only relevant when that marginal 5% is what tips a city, which won't happen most of the time. And for your own cities, inquisitors are still better. So that 5% bonus matters only when in a tight religious competition for a foreign cities, where you are purchasing massive numbers of missionaries.

Even if the above happens, prophets or military seem like better solutions that diluting your own religion just to spread it. The extra passive pressure is nice, I'll give them that, but its an easy "F" for me. Am I I'm missing something?

I'm not a particular fan of churches but do keep in mind that it provides 4 faith as well and can cost less than 200 faith with Fealty, meaning individual churches can pay off for themselves.

 

[Grabbl]

Do people like the new churches? I find they just don't payoff in many realistic scenarios. You need to build so many missionaries to make them payoff, are there commonly situations where building churches then missionaries actually spreads faster than just building missionaries? To gain on raw %, you need to build 20 missionaries after a church to gain on that dimension. However, its only relevant when that marginal 5% is what tips a city, which won't happen most of the time. And for your own cities, inquisitors are still better. So that 5% bonus matters only when in a tight religious competition for a foreign cities, where you are purchasing massive numbers of missionaries.

Even if the above happens, prophets or military seem like better solutions that diluting your own religion just to spread it. The extra passive pressure is nice, I'll give them that, but its an easy "F" for me. Am I I'm missing something?

I don't think churches are F, also when I admit that I very rarely choose them since they lost the third spread... however, in theory, they generate faith, provide protection and once you have a good number of churches, very strong missionaries, so I don't think they need a touch, at least not a very significant one.

 

[Enrico Swagolo]

Do people like the new churches? I find they just don't payoff in many realistic scenarios. You need to build so many missionaries to make them payoff, are there commonly situations where building churches then missionaries actually spreads faster than just building missionaries? To gain on raw %, you need to build 20 missionaries after a church to gain on that dimension. However, its only relevant when that marginal 5% is what tips a city, which won't happen most of the time. And for your own cities, inquisitors are still better. So that 5% bonus matters only when in a tight religious competition for a foreign cities, where you are purchasing massive numbers of missionaries.

Even if the above happens, prophets or military seem like better solutions that diluting your own religion just to spread it. The extra passive pressure is nice, I'll give them that, but its an easy "F" for me. Am I I'm missing something?

I didn't really take Churches even before the nerf, and now I'm not even considering them. It is nice to see an AI get them, take his cities, inquisitor them and keep his building, but the same can be said about any other religious building. I'd rather take Veneration.

 

[Stalker0]

The issue with churches to me is that the AI is now even better with usIng inquisitors...so much so that sometimes I really can’t missionary my way through a civ now, every city is locked down (I think this was one of iterois recent tactical changes because its newish behavior to me, before I would see only a few inquisitors for a civ)

This makes early conversion even more critical, so I find its better to spend my faith on early missionary than build up for churches and then spread.

While churches give faith, veneration gives more. So if you can’t convert, churches just sit their useless.

I don’t know if it’s an F for me...but it’s close and I could be swayed.

 

[Bromar1]

The issue with churches to me is that the AI is now even better with usIng inquisitors...so much so that sometimes I really can’t missionary my way through a civ now, every city is locked down (I think this was one of iterois recent tactical changes because its newish behavior to me, before I would see only a few inquisitors for a civ)

This makes early conversion even more critical, so I find its better to spend my faith on early missionary than build up for churches and then spread.

While churches give faith, veneration gives more. So if you can’t convert, churches just sit their useless.

I don’t know if it’s an F for me...but it’s close and I could be swayed.

I remember churches went from +50% to +25% pressure. Maybe split the difference and give them +33% pressure?

 

[Bromar1]

In both cases I feel like river settling is being punished. I may be wrong but I'm thinking the only benefit to settling on a river is the water mill and the baths. Shouldn't settling on rivers be a no brainer? Or should I be thinking about the above and settling one tile away?

I'm not totally sure if this is a valid complaint, but I've played like 10 games now and it still feels valid so I'd like to hear someone else's thoughts.

Edit: Actually I turned the bad events off but I now recall there being drought or something for non-river tiles so I guess that it probably balanced. But my point about the wind plant still stands.

River vs non river settling is weird to me. Baths are a hugely important building if you have any kind of golden age synergy and it sucks to miss out on them. I feel like it would make more sense to have less river specific buildings instead of having bad events to punish river cities

 

[Bromar1]

The building is balanced, you don't need to be china to use it. Just use great merchants

That's my point though, Synagogues by themselves are kinda bad unless you can support them, and saying "just using great merchants" is a pretty significant opportunity cost (great merchant WLTKD was recently nerfed, now you need to have towns built to have long WLTKD).

Honestly, I find WLTKD kinda unreliable (from randomness, hostile CS, etc) that I either go all in on getting them (tradition for merchants, Fealty for burghers, etc) or just ignore wltkd boosts

Mosques have a similar effect but planning around golden ages is much more reliable than wltkd randomness.

 

[Gazebo]

The issue with churches to me is that the AI is now even better with usIng inquisitors...so much so that sometimes I really can’t missionary my way through a civ now, every city is locked down (I think this was one of iterois recent tactical changes because its newish behavior to me, before I would see only a few inquisitors for a civ)

This makes early conversion even more critical, so I find its better to spend my faith on early missionary than build up for churches and then spread.

While churches give faith, veneration gives more. So if you can’t convert, churches just sit their useless.

I don’t know if it’s an F for me...but it’s close and I could be swayed.

I found a bug that made Inquisitors obsess with cities that had other religions with zero followers. Fixing that made them hunt for real cities.

I could make the power scaler affect both missionaries and inquisitors.

G

 

[Stalker0]

I found a bug that made Inquisitors obsess with cities that had other religions with zero followers. Fixing that made them hunt for real cities.

I could make the power scaler affect both missionaries and inquisitors.

G

G, you mean you fixed the bug and that’s why inquisitors are now acting this way...or you just found a bug and their behavior will revert to what we saw before?

 

[Gazebo]

G, you mean you fixed the bug and that’s why inquisitors are now acting this way...or you just found a bug and their behavior will revert to what we saw before?

I fixed and that’s why they work now.

G

 

[LukaSlovenia29]

Glad to see inquisitors acting more rationally, thanks, Gazebo!

 

[Moi Magnus]

Glad to see inquisitors acting more rationally, thanks, Gazebo!

Rationnal inquisitors... once again, Gazebo choose gameplay over realism

 

[Gazebo]

I found a bug that made Inquisitors obsess with cities that had other religions with zero followers. Fixing that made them hunt for real cities.

I could make the power scaler affect both missionaries and inquisitors.

G

Quoting myself- would a scaling buff to inquisitor power bring churches into line?

 

[Deadstarre]

do inquisitors have power? they remove all foreign religions entirely i think, only exception being one of the enhancers makes the religion 'sticky' even after inquisitted

 

[ElliotS]

do inquisitors have power? they remove all foreign religions entirely i think, only exception being one of the enhancers makes the religion 'sticky' even after inquisitted

They also convert like a missionary with 1 use IIRC.

Quoting myself- would a scaling buff to inquisitor power bring churches into line?

Probably not. I would make the church reduce empire-wide faith purchase costs and increase conversion of missionaries by 2% each, up to 30%.

 

[Workerspam]

Does anyone like Synagogues as a follower belief? I ferf like it is pointless unless you are already all in on a WLTKD strategy (China, Fealty, etc)

When I go Tradition Synagogues are a strong consideration since it serves a dual purpose: makes the WLTKD I always want in my capital stronger and the production makes my secondary cities significantly more productive.

 

[pineappledan]

First things first, I would put the passive pressure from churches back up to 50%. Not sure why that was dropped in the first place.

 

[Stalker0]

Quoting myself- would a scaling buff to inquisitor power bring churches into line?

No, because cities don’t really have to use them now. The ai just keeps an inquisitor in every city (or moves them around well to make it appear so).

So their blocking is now their strongest feature, a church buff wouldn’t do much

 

[Gazebo]

No, because cities don’t really have to use them now. The ai just keeps an inquisitor in every city (or moves them around well to make it appear so).

So their blocking is now their strongest feature, a church buff wouldn’t do much

The AI tracks other player missionary/prophet movement and tries to stay in cities closest to them. That's probably what you're seeing. 5D checkers.
G

 

[Stalker0]

The AI tracks other player missionary/prophet movement and tries to stay in cities closest to them. That's probably what you're seeing. 5D checkers.
G

Oh agreed, the AI is doing a great job with it. But the consequence is that missionary spreading now stops cold...so missionary boosts are much weaker now.

I’ve been playing a lot of Terra starts. I’m curious how successfully religious spreading is on regular starts when you often don’t even meet another civ until inquisitors are on the board.