First GP Generation - Capital vs Most Faith City

So currently when your first Great Prophet is made, it is created in whatever city is generating the most faith income at the time.

There have been debates in the past as to whether it should instead simply go start in the capital.

Having thought about it for a while, my stance is.... it should go into the capital no matter what. These are my reasons:

1) There are several religious policies that really synergize with your best city (aka capital in 99% of cases at this point of the game). Its a big loss to lose that synergy. This is especially true for Tradition play.

2) Sometimes you can game the faith income to put the GP where you want it, but that is not always an option.

3) Even if you don't want the holy city in your capital, the city that has the most faith output is not necessarily the city you want it in either. The capital tends to be the central city of most configurations, so by dropping it in the capital, a person can generally move the GP more easily to where they want it.

4) The player still has the option to move the GP, its just that in the vast majority of cases, the GP is now where they actually want it to be.

 

I would say that the absolute best would be giving the option to choose the city when the prophet is born. That is significantly more work though, especially in creating the UI.

In lieu of that, I agree that the capital is the best choice most of the time.

For certain belief combinations where it doesn't matter, I might consider other cities so that my capital has less things it needs to build. Even then the capital still is a good choice.

 

Agree, if possible, we should get a choice where it would spawn, but if not possible, it should always always always spawn in your capital.

 

Except... I don't think it works that way

I believe it processes each city in turn and whichever city contributes the last needed point gets the prophet, so I think you can often manipulate things to get it where you want it, although sometimes at the cost of a delay of a turn or two.

As it stands, it would be roughly proportional to the faith generated by each city.

 

AI always founds their religion at the city the prophet spawns in. If it's not the capital, there's a chance the city would revolt and become a city state, losing them the religion. This alone warrants a change in some way.

 

There's another, more balance issue with founding outside your capital. Very often, your first missionary spread is not enough to convert your capital. This means either spending an entire extra charge, or waiting until it converts passively. Either can greatly slow down your religion game.

 

I do like the flavor of appearing in cities with high faith, but I think the gameplay complaint is completely valid and I'd support this change.

 

I think it's cool that this can be in other cities, but only if all other capital effects could be switched out. I understand that for domination victory a static starting point that is a certain distance away makes sense, but it's be nice if I could switch specialisation sometimes. There could be a process that lets you switch capital at some cost, but your first city is still the one needed for domination victory. Alternatively a cooldown of like a 100 turns could be used, so you can't just swap your capital away from a domination loss.

More on the issue at hand. I think (not sure) your faith resets to 0 after you find a religion making you waste several turns of faith if you do want to establish a religion in capital and you spawn elsewhere. This seems unnecessary to me and widens the gap.

 

The issue with GPs spawning in cities other than the capital brings to my mind an even bigger balance question:

Should we not just have a feature where any Great Person, regardless of technology or any other factor, can instantly be moved from one city in your empire to another? Currently we can do this with Great Admirals and ONLY Great Admirals until Airports are researched and built in every city. Once we reach the Industrial Era we can faith purchase Great People in any city we want, but we still have to rely on physically moving the ones that are "naturally" born.

In Civ 6 we can already see how this feature would work as that is currently how Civ 6 works. Since Great Person points are a single pool in Civ 6, they always spawn in the Capital, and thus a feature exists to allow you to move a Great Person to any other city in your empire instantly for the sake of convenience.

We already have the code in VP to move Great Admirals around as needed, and I think that it should work the same way for all other Great People. If it worked that way, the conversation about where your Great Prophet spawns is moot as you can relocate them to whatever city you want to make your Holy City without wasting additional turns.

Civ 6 has already "borrowed" heavily from VP, so I don't see any problem with borrowing back some of their mechanics.

 

I wouldn't mind if GP could move instantly between cities, but wouldn't it be easier to let you choose a holy city when founding? Let the prophet spawn wherever, just make holy city a player choice.

 

I agree with Melchizedek. GP should get the teleport option like GA. Founding a religion and choosing the beliefs you want is crucial on high difficulties: waiting just one more turn to move the GP to the capital or where you need him could be the difference between founding or not.

Often I just pop it where he spawns especially when i'm not the first to found.

 

I can more easily accept that a Great Admiral would teleport between cities, because their archetype actually has something to do with movement in commanding ships. Great Admirals also make a greater use of this ability, because not all coastal cities have to be connected through ocean, so depending on where they spawn, they could not even assist your navy, if not for this ability.

Giving all great people this ability takes away in my opinion the fact that these are actually meant to be units when a lot of them would just be insta pop upon birth. There is also less of a possibility to attack other great people of other civs that are in transit.