Going for Gold: Founder Beliefs

Is this item in a reasonable state of balance?


  • Total voters
    12
  • Poll closed .
I didn't intend that tone. Its just strange to see a belief which was really highly regarded through this whole discussion receive more benefits.

That's why I posted the changelog - I put up things that I see from AI testing, and then I want feedback. If 250 feels like too much we can remove/replace. The AI taking it was often one of the worst faiths.

G
 
Hero Worship: GA/GG is the last thing a warmonger civ needs

I agree, I always end up with more GGs than I know what to do with already; if I'm planning to warmonger this won't make me want to pick it. I really like pineappledan's idea of something on GG/GA birth, which is unique and provides synergy opportunities for civs that have unique interactions with GGs already.
 
I had suggested that GG and GAs could generate X yields passively while alive, but I didn’t like the idea. It would encourage you not to build citadels/VoDs; it would be weird.
 
More GG/GA never hurts a warmonger. A citadel in the right place will be game changing, turn an impossible war into a winning war. More GA means you can have one other strong group of fleet to attack another weaker point of your enemies. Its a very interesting idea to give GG/GA to hero worship.
 
More GG/GA never hurts a warmonger. A citadel in the right place will be game changing, turn an impossible war into a winning war. More GA means you can have one other strong group of fleet to attack another weaker point of your enemies. Its a very interesting idea to give GG/GA to hero worship.
True, but you want great generals before you attack, not after your attack succeeds. Even with moderate warmongering, I can usually get 2 generals by classical, which is enough to snowball into more and more generals. What if selecting Hero Worship immediately gave you a general as an early game steroid? That can actually help you capture cities instead of only rewarding after capture (ie. Win-More)
 
pop limiter now 300, was 200
I didn't intend that tone. Its just strange to see a belief which was really highly regarded through this whole discussion receive more benefits.
While i was not a part of the discussion i would say that it is well... it is not very weak, but i played coulple of games with it couple of months ago and it felt quite underwhelming.

However my personal feeling right now is that probably all of pop/cities limiters should be increased. While i do understand that it was introduced to prevent runaways - it actually kills the whole option of committing heavily into your religion thus reduces number of strategies. This is basically punishing player for playing good, which is in my opinion a bad design. (side note: there are other mechanics like this that were introduced over the past year and i don't like all of them)
 
While i was not a part of the discussion i would say that it is well... it is not very weak, but i played coulple of games with it couple of months ago and it felt quite underwhelming.

However my personal feeling right now is that probably all of pop/cities limiters should be increased. While i do understand that it was introduced to prevent runaways - it actually kills the whole option of committing heavily into your religion thus reduces number of strategies. This is basically punishing player for playing good, which is in my opinion a bad design. (side note: there are other mechanics like this that were introduced over the past year and i don't like all of them)
Anything that scales with the number of owned cities is in danger of becoming win-more/snowball when it comes to domination. You expend very little effort converting a conquered city to your religion.
 
Anything that scales with the number of owned cities is in danger of becoming win-more/snowball when it comes to domination. You expend very little effort converting a conquered city to your religion.
I understand that, but it should be solved some other way (ideally)
 
I enjoy having the caps there. They give less experienced players an idea of how much they would need to convert for a spreading belief to be effective.
 
I think the real problem here is that bonuses from converting a conquered city are seen as essentially identical to rewards for conquering the city in the first place, since people march inquisitors, prophets, or missionaries right along behind their armies. Perhaps Hero Worship could attempt to synergize with that behavior a bit more, and reward converting puppets and occupied cities. Perhaps for each puppet city controlled that follows the religion, demanded tribute increases by some X percent.
 
I think that using city conquest as an activator is fine. I just don't see how the quantity and type of yields given by Hero Worship can add up to what the other beliefs can provide, even if you are conquering cities really quickly. If you have other benefits to taking cities, Hero Worship just starts to seem pretty minor.

The main use of hero worship that I can find is if you are able to conquer a lot of cities quickly after getting your religion, when faith is still a premium yield. At this stage of the game, the gold and GG points are also useful. Getting a great admiral from taking coastal cities is a neat trick. However late game, the yields just become really minor. Neither gold nor faith are that important, and the amount you earn will only be a trickle. Each successive great general is much less important the previous one. Its window to be useful is just so small, and there are options for science or production that can also provide a boost to your military at about the same time, with more flexibility and better late game.
Curious, do people use Divine Inheritance for Venice / OCC? Ideally that playstyle would be its absolute strongest. If people still use other founders instead of DI for those scenarios....than DI clearly needs some love.
I do for OCC and I think its an important part of the strategy. You can get full value without spreading your religion, which you sometimes don't have the faith to do. That niche is kind of pointless though, because you always want to spread to reform anyways (the change to Basil changed this). Council of Elders and WoT can also be good choices for an OCC. I haven't tried it, but way of the pilgrim and apostolic tradition both seem alright as well.
 
What if the yields for great general tiles were dependent on the number of great generals you've ever generated? That would make generating them more appealing through the entire game.
 
I'd prefer if Hero Worship were reworked with one or more of the following elements:
1.) to boost a civ's warmongering strategy (which can be done in a number of ways, for example bonuses towards attacking cities, production bonuses towards military units, unique promotion for all owned units (e.g. faster healing, perhaps always or perhaps upon pillaging a tile/gaining a promotion), production bonuses towards building military buildings etc.),
2.) to give yields of the better type(not faith/GG points/golden age points) when conquering a city and/or creating a GG/GA,
3.) to give (extra) yields when killing enemy units, pillaging tiles&trade units,
4.) to remove influence decay from all military city states,
5.) to reduce unit maintenance cost.

I don't particularly prefer any sort of combination, but I really do wish the bonus would be significantly better than now (i.e. more comparable to other founding beliefs) and available immediately upon founding/even before building the Reformation building.
 
I think we should just wait for the next version and try it out then. It's worthless in it's current state, but from what Gazebo said here, the scaler will be 100 :c5faith: 25 :c5war:GG/GA for every 2 pop, whereas previously it was 60:c5faith::c5goldenage: for every 3 pop (changelog didn't contain it though, so maybe he decided against it). It's effectively 50:c5faith: 12.5 :c5war: per pop compared to previous 20:c5faith:20:c5goldenage:, though with the caveat that uneven numbers still give you the inferior value if it works like it did before. It didn't matter if a city had 3-4-5, or 6-7-8 pop as they gave the same yields, so now it'll be 3-4, 5-6, 7-8 with equal gains etc.

I think it will have a niche, but that remains to be seen.
 
I think even with the proposed change (100 faith, 25 gg/ga points per 2 pop) it will still be considerably worse than most other founders while still requiring more effort to gain yields than other founders. Like others have said, when you're warmongering, you're not usually lacking GAs/GGs (not to mention that as you warmonger and get more and more GGs/GAs, you need more and more GG/GA points to generate the next one, so the bonus GG/GA points from this founder belief will result in very few extra GG/GA along the course of a game) and value of extra faith quickly pales in comparison to other yields, especially since you probably won't be using faith for missionaries to spread (because you'll be spreading with inquisitors in your newly conquered cities).

Also, it won't be 3-4, 5-6, 7-8 with equal gains, but 2-3, 4-5, 6-7, 8-9 etc.

Furthermore, let's say you conquer a city with 18 pop. That's quite high for many AI cities (except for very late eras), which means it won't be that easy to conquer. According to the proposed formula you'll gain 900 faith and 225 GG/GA points. At that point in the game, that will probably be enough faith for 2-3 missionaries and a not-that-big portion of a new GG/GA (if it'll be your 5th GG, it'll be around a quarter of a new GG, if I remember correctly). That hardly seems like a worthy reward for conquering a relatively big AI city, with the majority of yields not coming in the early eras when they matter the most.

So I personally don't need to test out this formula in a new version, because the numbers show it will be worse than most founder beliefs, especially considering that some will receive another buff (like Holy Law).

And lastly, I think it's odd that a Founder belief (that only Founders benefit from) geared towards warring style is significantly worse than a Reformation belief geared towards warring style, when that belief benefits other civs as will.
 
Can I plug @pineappledan's GGP and GAP on altar, + yields on GG&GA birth based on number of followers idea again?

Are there other beliefs that have trigger overlap like Hero Worship and Crusader Spirit do?
 
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My recommendation was for :c5faith:/:c5goldenage:/SomethingElse on GG or GA birth. GG/GA points on birth is silly. Since those Births are fairly rare, even for warmonger games (I only ever get 8-9 in total from combat in a given game), and it’s fairly hard to time, I would suggest the yields could be fairly high on a per-follower basis. You can also get the trigger off of wonders,events, etc. Maybe :c5science:, since there is only 1 other founder which gives that? :c5production: Would be nice since the alter gives :c5production: on holy sites, but instant :c5production: boosts are dangerous.

I did suggest that GG/GA points could be added as a yield directly onto the great altar though.
 
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Not GG points on birth, just GG Points in general to help you get your next GG to proc the as yet undecided yields from birth.
 
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