Going for Gold: Reformation Beliefs

[pineappledan]

Which is funny because DotF was forwarded as justification for why my reformation proposals were too weak. But now people are saying that DotF is just too strong

 

[Gidoza]

Which is funny because DotF was forwarded as justification for why my reformation proposals were too weak. But now people are saying that DotF is just too strong

This itself is interesting because I've tended not to take DotF because I thought it looked wimpy and would get more out of Crusader Spirit or anything else.


Is it possible to test these in a vacuum somehow?

 

[CrazyG]

Which is funny because DotF was forwarded as justification for why my reformation proposals were too weak. But now people are saying that DotF is just too strong

When? I'm seeing posts that are years old calling it strong.

 

[pineappledan]

When discussing my proposed orthodoxy reformation. DotF came up a few times as an easy benchmark for yield potential.

 

[SuperNoobCamper]

This is the high end of the yields, the average yields of conquering an average city is much lower and sometimes less than one turn worth of culture.
I think it's below average and could use a buff, not just nerfing the over performing beliefs.

3 turns of culture and 1,000 gold is a low reward?

I think defender of the faith should just lose a yield already. It frequently comes up as better than the other choices just for that sweet faith and culture.

 

[Stalker0]

Which is funny because DotF was forwarded as justification for why my reformation proposals were too weak. But now people are saying that DotF is just too strong

Well ultimately its the same thing. I mean when you identify one thing as stronger than everything else, your choice is "buff everything else" or "nerf X".

The strength of DOTF was absolutely a proper justification to critique your proposals at that time, as no one would take them when DOTF was available. What we are discussing now is that perhaps it is best to nerf DOTF to bring things in line. Once that's done, if you wanted to compare your ideas to the "new pack" I think it makes sense.

 

[chicorbeef]

Quite an old thread.

Anyway, I want to bring up one reformation belief that I feel is still a little weak, and that's Sacred Sites. Right now, for Tall tourism, Inspired Works is king. For wider empires, I feel like Faith of the Masses is kind of the go-to. Sacred Sites does not really seem to have a good niche.

I think the wonder bonuses should be removed, and instead a percentage tourism penalty reduction per city could take its place. I believe the problem before with these kinds of beliefs in policies is that it didn't scale right with larger map sizes, because the reductions were flat, (eg. -3% tourism penalty per city).

I think it would be better if it were made percentage-wise then, like "tourism penalty from cities reduced by 33%". This should be possible because I remember something like this existing in Vanilla Liberty (correct me if I'm wrong, because I don't really know how the code works) and it would scale with map size then.

I think it could have a good niche as warmonger or just non-Artistry tourism too, since it doesn't rely on teching towards Culture buildings and works well with Fealty.

What do you guys think?

 

[JamesNinelives]

I think Sacred Stites could stand to be a little stronger. I don't have a lot of experience going for cultural victory though.

 

[pineappledan]

I think sacred sites is fine. The tourism on wonders is the biggest factor, not the faith buildings. When combined with goddess of beauty, you have a huge incentive to hoard wonders, and it can be very potent if you’ve managed to maintain a competitive tech position (council of elders can be huge for that).

Goddess of beauty, council of elders, 2 faith buildings (ideally mosques and synagogues), and sacred sites can be huge if you’ve managed to get >3 ancient/classical wonders

 

[LifeOfBrian]

I think faith of the masses is considerably stronger than the rest of the reformation beliefs and should be nerfed.

I'm not going to comment on sacred sites because I usually don't play for a cultural victory.

 

[Stalker0]

I think sacred sites is fine. The tourism on wonders is the biggest factor, not the faith buildings. When combined with goddess of beauty, you have a huge incentive to hoard wonders, and it can be very potent if you’ve managed to maintain a competitive tech position (council of elders can be huge for that).

Its my belief that tourism mods are so high in the late game, and musicians so strong at that point...that it invalidates any source of tourism in the early game for CV purposes. But I haven't really given SS a go in a while...maybe its time to go for it and see if I can my mind.

 

[Drakle]

What is people thoughts on Holy Land, which gives delegates for Holy Sites and Landmarks? I'm wondering how many delegates it could be possible to get as

India - Great Prophets require 35% less Faith.

Prophecy - Prophets of this Religion are 25% stronger and Cost 25% less.

And maybe Ceremonial Burial which is faith on Great Person expenditure, to get more Great People.

Though the delegates from landmarks are somewhat annoying with Tradition/Great Persons since great person tiles often destroy Antiquity Site which can't be seen. And Holy Land encourages a diplomacy victory, but Landmarks are best grabbed with Artistry.

 

[zeofig]

Holy land also has great potential if you conquer people.

 

[JamesNinelives]

great person tiles often destroy Antiquity Site which can't be seen.

Hmm. I wasn't aware of this.

 

[chicorbeef]

Hmm. I wasn't aware of this.

This was an issue that was raised before, I'm pretty sure you automatically gain an artifact if a GPTI is on an Antiquity Site when you research Archaeology, not 100% sure though.

Anyway, I think the late game ramp up of Tourism is strong enough that generally, prioritizing Science/Culture to get there first is usually better than prioritizing straight Tourism. Also, Inspired Works allows you to purchase Archaeologists with Faith at affordable prices, which is a big point that makes it better than Sacred Sites right now, at least in my view. People are talking about reducing or reworking the per-city tourism penalty in the new version changelog however, which should benefit Sacred Sites, so I think we should hold off on changing it for now.

While we're talking about reformation beliefs, I agree with @LifeOfBrian that Faith of the Masses is a little too strong right now. I think the amphitheater bonus and the ability to buy amphitheatres should be dropped, it's only fair since Jesuit Education doesn't give the ability to buy Libraries, and the Amphitheatre bonus means an easy +5 in every city, more if you have applicable Luxuries (this building/belief is ridiculous with Lapis Lazuli), and Faith of the Masses has a better secondary effect anyway.

 

[JamesNinelives]

I haven't noticed AI civs taking Faith of the Masses doing any better than with other reformations, but I suppose the AI doesn't always prioritize reformation so it may have already built most of it's Ampitheatres by that point.

 

[Legen]

While we're talking about reformation beliefs, I agree with @LifeOfBrian that Faith of the Masses is a little too strong right now. I think the amphitheater bonus and the ability to buy amphitheatres should be dropped, it's only fair since Jesuit Education doesn't give the ability to buy Libraries, and the Amphitheatre bonus means an easy +5 in every city, more if you have applicable Luxuries (this building/belief is ridiculous with Lapis Lazuli), and Faith of the Masses has a better secondary effect anyway.

The problem with dropping Amphitheaters from FotM is that the next building in the list is the opera House, which comes at late Renaissance, much later than when you typically reform (Medieval). Meanwhile, Jesuit Education's first building comes at early Medieval. That makes FotM perform poorly for a long time, and was a critique I made after an old photo journal with Austria. In the end, FotM couldn't compete with the other beliefs, despite me being in a situation where culture was a major priority and being production starved due to Tall Tradition, as its main benefit would take too long to come.

I don't think we should drop Amphitheater. Better consider a different nerf if it is overperforming that much.

 

[LifeOfBrian]

I would drop amps from the list and replace them with circuses, which come around about the same time as universities. I'd also drop the plus happiness from cities following the religion.

 

[SuperNoobCamper]

I still think both Defender of the Faith and Crusader's spirit are really weak reformation beliefs.
I think Defender of the faith could be slightly better if it allowed purchase of defensive buildings with faith just like Faith of the masses and Jesuit education both buffing a certain line of buildings and allowing purchasing it with faith.
Crusader's spirit is ok on paper but the amount of gold/culture on city capture is very low already that's barely noticeable .... Sometimes it's less than the amount needed to upgrad a medieval unit to a renaissance one which is absurd in my book.

 

[Rekk]

According to people in the Spain thread, Inquisition is still awful. @BiteInTheMark

Oops, Wrong kind of belief.