Im pretty sure that faith is not ment to be good for great people. I just simply see it as a way to make faith useful for anything else but religion. They have done similar things for production in which you could trade production for another resource, gold is also similar in the way you can purchase stuff at a poor ratio but the gold ratio to great people points seems to be better then the faith ratio.
I agree that Faith for Great People is not supposed to be the primary use. I think gold having a better ratio than Faith is reasonable, because Gold is less useful. Faith gets you other yields, Great People, AND directly works toward a victory condition. Gold is just worse production except for maintenance and Great People.
I think holy district is similar to the space port in that it is strongly tied to a victory condition.
The Holy Site is buildable from the very start of the game. I will be upset if Faith is only useful if you are going to WIN with religion. That sounds stupid.
Then there could be something that improve the faith ratio to great people points later into the game, maybe a civic such as the enlightment after its discovery you get a % off the great people patronage cost but it would be rather late in the game.
That would be nice, yes. Some more nuance to the scaling.
From what I have seen great people actually become stronger the more you have of a certain district. For example Newton increase the science yield of university by +2 which is obvious stronger the more universities you have. The same can be said about the great artist who need museums to show their art.
I've seen some of that, yes. I've also seen Engineers who boost Campuses, Scientists who provide specific Eurekas (which is less useful the more science you make), Enginners who rush Wonders (which is less useful the more Industrial Zones you have), etc. The fact that it isn't consistent is a good reason why Faith (or Gold) will be useful for Great People because you can buy only the GPs you need.
Even as a universial great people resource I think faith only manage second place as gold seems to have better ratios and the two main gold district, harbour and commerce hub also provide great people points that are useful throught the game while we do not know if great prophet points is useful after founding religion.
Yes, this is true. It sounds like a severe balancing error to me.
To me it seems like specialisation of civilization in which you focus on a few districts will be a strong way to play. Some cards provide 100% adjacency bonus but only to a single typ of district and city states only provide boost to a single type of district each so you can focus on a single type of city state + a single type of district. Naturally you can only have a single district in each of your cities but if you play as Kongo the choice is simplified with the lack of the holy district.
Those cards are designed to be situationally powerful. For proper balance, there must be a time to use none of them. That would likely be because either all your adjacency bonuses suck (no good terrain of any type) or because you diversified (good terrain in different clumps). The latter seems far more likely to me.
I am not sure about that. Holy districts cost as much as any other district and wont give many great persons as all other district choices will provide more great people points then the holy district can purchase throught faith. Faith could be used to purchase units while under theocracy but again investing into faith without a religion seems to be a waste.
I meant that you can build a Holy Site to be flexible and then you don't have to commit to other District strategies until you see what you get. See your terrain, see your neighbors and their agendas, and THEN push for science/culture or whatever.
Overall I simply think it is better to build a significant amount of cities and focus on a great person type to be really great in that. Religous civs will likely want a holy district in every city as they are likely to target religious victory. Kongo may want a commerce hub and theather square in every city to make use of the extra great person point bonus it have. Even district with poor adjacency yield still have about as useful buildings and do provide as many great people points. Even a campus that provide like 1 science in adjacency bonus do still give one great scientist point per turn and its buildings are as good as ever. As far as I see it the only significant disadvantage Kongo may have is it may be unable to win a religious victory and may have a harder time to stop one from happening. But the advantage of getting a religion for free seems to be a very good trade for not being able to win a religious victory.
Oh I agree with all of the Kongo analysis. I just disagree with the analysis about Faith as a yield.
