Going for Gold: Enhancer Beliefs

[Melchizedek]

I wonder something more generally. Are religious beliefs supposed to be equally strong? Considering the investment needed to get there first, it seems reasonable that one enhancer could generally be stronger than another. This would play into the decision whether to spread your religion early or save up for the enhancer.

 

[Stalker0]

There seems to be a growing belief that Orthodoxy is now too strong due to the recent pressure changes over water. My belief is that orthodoxy was probably OP before on pangea but worked alright on more water maps like continents. Now that the map types have more equalized pressure, I'm guessing more of us are now seeing the full fury of Orthodoxy.

I personally think it is worthy of a nerf.

 

[Paramecium]

Concerning the Enhancer Beliefs, I want to talk about the Syncretism Belief.

Syncretism:

+1 , and in the Holy City for every 2 :c5population: of other Religions in owned Cities.

+1 in a City for every 15 per turn it produces, capping at half the number of Followers.

The second part is quite simple, if you have a science orientated civ, you get more faith for something you already try to get as much as possible. It is quite straight forward.
The first part on the other hand is just from its reading very powerfull, because scaling with just 2 Followers of a other Religion for +1 of three different yields is awesome and especially, there is no cap to it!
But I have to say that I nearly hardly ever picked that belief, because it is like Pagodas, you need other religions in your city to make those beliefs work the best, which is mostly dependent on your neighbours and their possible religions.
On the other side, having to many other religions in your empire will cause religious unhappiness which I try to generally to avoid.

So I rarely pick that belief, how do you see it?

But that wouldnt be enough to justify my post, because with that belief there is an elephant standing in the room. In one of my last games I conquered as Rome the Celts' Capital and let the Holy City untouched, because they snuck up Hero Worship which I wanted to get originally for myself.
As I went on conquering, I sadly had to learn, that the Holy City doesnt trigger the Founders Belief effect, so I was nearly inclined to remove the Celts' religion entirely, because I couldnt use the Pantheon of it either. But when I went through my city list looking for cities which could build Wonders beside my Capital, I noticed, that the Celts' Holy City was on top of my production.
Not only that, it was the same for science and faith. It was all thanks to Syncretism. As my empire grew, that bonus got absurd. With around 20 cities at roughly 20 citizen per each, that bonus got +200! For three yields, from just one mechanic!

So I have to say, that belief is up to be broken, if you are lucky that one of your neighbours enhanced his religion with it, get his holy city and just keep that religion there, the rest of your empire can have your own or another religion. That boni will just sky rock!
So I would say, there should maybe a limit to it like for some of the founder beliefs. +200++ production before any percentage modifier is just too strong and like it worked for me, I dont think that was the intended way how it should be used.

 

[Melchizedek]

That's interesting, Paramecium. Can you benefit from two enhancers at once? I thought that if you had your own holy city then conquered another civ's, you had to choose one or the other.

 

[LifeOfBrian]

Paramecium, that sounds like a bug, so please create a github report so it can be addressed.

Other than that, I love the combo of Syncretism and Pagodas (and another building as a follower), just allowing my cities get washed over with followers of multiple religions, with the exception of my Holy City which then gets a lot of yields from Syncretism. This is especially useful in current versions where the religious spread seems quite imbalanced and where it's really hard to keep your cities following your religion without often using inquisitors.

 

[Melchizedek]

I know this thread is about enhancers, but I've always found Pagodas to be situationally strong when I want to found but don't want to invest in making my religion dominate the continent. However, I've never considered taking Syncretism, as the yields sound small compared to other enhancers. At the point of choosing an enhancer, the science boost is usually quite small for me as only my capital is probably over 15 beakers by then. Is Syncretism more of a late bloomer?

 

[Stalker0]

I know this thread is about enhancers, but I've always found Pagodas to be situationally strong when I want to found but don't want to invest in making my religion dominate the continent. However, I've never considered taking Syncretism, as the yields sound small compared to other enhancers. At the point of choosing an enhancer, the science boost is usually quite small for me as only my capital is probably over 15 beakers by then. Is Syncretism more of a late bloomer?

Yeah theres a few notes on Syncretism.

1) It is more of a late bloomer. As your civ is taken over by other religions the bonus scales pretty well, especially with a very wide civ.

2) Its a great belief when you don't want to fight an enemy religion (such as being in the center of several strong religions). Just keep an inquisitor in your capital to clense it periodically when it flips, but otherwise you aren't wasting faith maintaining your religion in the face of strong pressure and can instead spend that faith on GP in industrial.

 

[CrazyG]

I know this thread is about enhancers, but I've always found Pagodas to be situationally strong when I want to found but don't want to invest in making my religion dominate the continent. However, I've never considered taking Syncretism, as the yields sound small compared to other enhancers. At the point of choosing an enhancer, the science boost is usually quite small for me as only my capital is probably over 15 beakers by then. Is Syncretism more of a late bloomer?

It can be very strong for a warmonger who doesn't convert conquered cities.

 

[stii]

Yeah it is the ideal religion for you get from conquering a holy city.

If you have loads of faith you can also setup some nice things with it too. Take 2 faith buildings as your religion perks, then after you build them flip all your cities to a different religion and get all the benefits from both. Syncretism will then give your capital a huge production boost.

This also happens naturally sometimes where the AI really wants to convert you so you just let them and just leave your capital.

 

[JamesNinelives]

I tend to use Syncrectism when I found but am surrounded by other founders so I know I'll have my work cut out for me keeping my religion dominant in all my cities . I also like pagodas for the same situation.

Something that I think people often don't appreciate is that even when your own religion is dominant in your cities, you will always still have followers of other religions in your cities. You can check the breakdown individually. It won't be a lot per city, but if you have a lot of cities it can add up to a lot and IMO because the yields go to the capital it's something that's always useful for me. I've never really added it all up, but in that situation it seems like the best pick to me.

It also means that when my cities are being flipped repeatedly by my neighbours it's not such a pain beacause at least I get some benefit from it. I usually want to still have my own religion dominant most of the time because although it costs faith from me it takes more effort to convert a foreign city than it does to defend your own, so it's still a net benefit to me in terms of raw yields compared to my rival. That's how I tend to see it anyway.

 

[Stalker0]

There seems to be a growing belief that Orthodoxy is now too strong due to the recent pressure changes over water. My belief is that orthodoxy was probably OP before on pangea but worked alright on more water maps like continents. Now that the map types have more equalized pressure, I'm guessing more of us are now seeing the full fury of Orthodoxy.

I personally think it is worthy of a nerf.

I'm going to quote myself here as I didn't see any reaction to this and wanted to give it one more look. I feel Orthodoxy is solidly OP at the moment and could use a nerf...even with Churches and another religious building you will not fight Orthodoxy once it gets to your continent without constant inquisitor maintenance.

 

[pineappledan]

I'm going to quote myself here as I didn't see any reaction to this and wanted to give it one more look. I feel Orthodoxy is solidly OP at the moment and could use a nerf...even with Churches and another religious building you will not fight Orthodoxy once it gets to your continent without constant inquisitor maintenance.

Orthodoxy does too much. It’s actually the TR pressure multiplier that is the most potent, because it also stacks with the pressure modifier

 

[LifeOfBrian]

I've been saying Orthodoxy is OP for a long time, so hopefully it'll get nerfed considerably or perhaps even changed altogether. I've been avoiding using it because it's OP, but that also means I'm usually forced to:
- conquer large swaths of land for my religion to hold on organically,
- pick the inquisition enhancer for common purges,
- go for the syncreticism/pagodas combo while retaining my own religion solely in the holy city.

Any other strategy just leads to me having to dump inordinate amounts of faith into inquisitiors without getting anything in return and suffering a lot of turns of unrest.

I'd personally change Orthodoxy completely to something else (not something that enhances the religious spread) and I'd remove the 40% from Churches (reduce to 25%, give something else in return). That should lead to more balanced religious distribution throughout the games.

 

[Melchizedek]

Why is balanced religion distribution automatically desirable? I get it if people think Orthodoxy or Churches are currently too strong, but I don't get why enhanced spread would be automatically off the table as a mechanic. A fast spreading religion is just one of dozens upon dozens of kinds of advantages you can earn in the game. It would only be OP if (a) it gives more benefit for the investment than equivalent choices nearly all the time or (b) it led to a victory condition without counterplay. But there's plenty of counterplay to religious spread. You can conquer the spreader; or use Pagodas and Synchretism to get almost as much from their religion as they do; or ignore them and still win by investing in other ways to get yields for victory; or use inquisitors/prophets to beat them back. If (a) is the problem, a nerf would be sufficient. The point of balance isn't to make sure that all the outcomes are identical.

 

[pineappledan]

I’m not opposed to enhanced passive spread, but orthodoxy currently has these bonuses:
20% further spread
20% stronger spread
2x TR spread
2x spread to CS
That’s 4 bonuses. No other enhancer does 4 things.

that’s why for my more beliefs mod I broke orthodoxy into 2 parts (stronger/further passive spread and TR/CS pressure) and made each slightly stronger.

 

[Stalker0]

I also don't think churches are OP. A 15% strong spread is nice, but its gentle breeze while orthodoxy is a hurricane.

 

[Bromar1]

I’m not opposed to enhanced passive spread, but orthodoxy currently has these bonuses:
20% further spread
20% stronger spread
2x TR spread
2x spread to CS
That’s 4 bonuses. No other enhancer does 4 things.

that’s why for my more beliefs mod I broke orthodoxy into 2 parts (stronger/further passive spread and TR/CS pressure) and made each slightly stronger.

I'm pretty sure the passive spread and trade route spread bonuses were 2 separate beliefs that got merged into 1. I think G combined them because they were too weak on their own

 

[Noob Fanboy]

Here it's an example of how strong syncretism / pagodas combo can be in certain situations. I'm playing Deity Epic. I got an isolated start with Babylon, my closest neighbour was Austria. I founded my religion using Goddess of Springtime and Stonehenge. Then I went with Orders / Terracotta Army and declared war on Austria. By the time I conquered her I enhanced religion to Syncretism / Pagodas. Then I went straight towards getting Pagodas in all cities and reforming (I used a prophet and inquisitors to help me reach the %). Meanwhile, Cartague was pressuring with her religion. I was able to get To The Glory of God in reformation while at the same time i was converting all my cities to Cartague religion. With the help of syncretism I was able to snatch many key wonders from the AI. All of that got me into the winning position that I am now.

Best thing about this? You can get as many buildings as you want, If someone with a different religion convert one of your cities then just spread that religion to all cities to get the building. You have -3 reduction to religion unrest between pagodas and temples so having multiple religions in same city is not an issue at all. In fact it actually benefits you

P.D: Austria is a pain on the ass even as a vassal, constantly competing for CS, i am working towards securing some alliances so I don't get sanctioned in the future.

 

[Kim Dong Un]

I also don't think churches are OP. A 15% strong spread is nice, but its gentle breeze while orthodoxy is a hurricane.

I've been on the "OP Orthodoxy train" for ages, but here is my current first hand example that refutes your claim: Spain conquered Arabia and has roughly 15 cities converted (including CS) with churches, meanwhile I've converted Netherlands + Greece for around 15 total cities (including CS) with Orthodoxy.

Spoiler :

You can see for yourself that she's applying more pressure, and by a decent margin too. Also, there are no other beliefs affecting pressure, and not all of my conversions came from pressure alone; I used a prophet to convert Greece, and quite a few missionaries across several nearby cities + CS. This is the first time I can recall being 'countered' while choosing Orthodoxy, but the proof is in the pudding when trying to manage heavy hitting religious civs like Spain and Byzantium.

 

[stii]

Yeah that is what I've found too, the player with churches is the one who converts everyone not Orthodoxy. It doesn't seem like it should be such a huge swing over other faith buildings but it is.