How can I stop the early religions from strangling the later ones?

[JonathanStrange]

Although as a primarily Ljos player, I don't mind see anyone see the light and joining the FoL - but I should add, at the Deity/Immortal levels it doesn't seem to do much good as far as making other civis not try to stamp out every Elf (so the "world is too peaceful" is hard for me to believe after dozens of games) - but if the real "problem" is that other religions aren't getting into the picture, I could welcome a middle game Event where a religion is spontaneously founded and converted to by an appropriate civ; i wouldn't want an Elven Ashen Veil civ but a Sheaim one would work. As more religions get founded, more Events could increase the founding of and/or spontaneous conversion to the other religions.

The early religions could still have their usual supposed benefits of calming down aggressive neighbors but once the early game was starting to fade, schisms and heresies events could shatter the early peace. It would seem to cost the early founders researching what others get spontaneously but maybe their research costs could be reduced too. I don't know. I'm still looking for the peace dividend from FoL myself as I often am attacked by fellow co-religionists.

 

[Lone Wolf]

I'm still looking for the peace dividend from FoL myself as I often am attacked by fellow co-religionists.

You'll just have to suck up to other civs to get OB and spread it manually. Sure, an early religion is beneficiary to the player who founds it, but it's also boring and unrealistic.

 

[Monkeyfinger]

If you want to do the "modify weights" method, increasing weights for religions that strongly fit a civ's lore isn't going to help you much (it'll only do anything if that religion is in the civ's empire as a minority, in which case they might adopt it anyway.) 0 is the lowest "adopt even if only 1 crapsack hovel has the religion" weight - everything above it only matters when multiple religions are present in an empire, and AIs tend not to found religions if they already are following one, so AV Bannor is only likely to get order in their empire if someone else founds it and it spreads to them.

You need negative weights on everything else to make it so that they need to be spread to more than one city. Something like 0 weight for a clearly "official" religion, -30 for one that kinda sorta fits, -60 for one that the civ is neutral to, -90 for one that it diametrically opposes. So Sabathiel's weighting list might look like this:

Order: 0
Empyrean: -60
Runes: -30
FoL: -60
Esus: -90
OO: -60
Veil: -90

I haven't really played around with this myself so I don't know how well those exact values would work, but I know the basic idea is solid: Negative weights are the key.

Note that -99 means an AI controlled civ can never adopt the religion, while -100 means that a civ can't adopt the religion whether it's AI controlled or human controlled.

 

[Lone Wolf]

and AIs tend not to found religions if they already are following one, so AV Bannor is only likely to get order in their empire if someone else founds it and it spreads to them.

Spread by acolytes is not the only way religion can get into the city. There is such a thing as natural spread. And conquest (Flauros declares war on Arturus! Flauros had taken a RoK city! Flauros adopts RoK!)

(it'll only do anything if that religion is in the civ's empire as a minority, in which case they might adopt it anyway.)

That doesn't make sense, without weights the AI's don't usually adopt minority religions (unless they found it, and even then not always).

My Sabathiel is

Order: 90
Emp: 0
RoK: -20
FoL: -20
CoE: -60
OO: -70
AV: -90

I included both positive and negative veights.

 

[Monkeyfinger]

Spread by acolytes is not the only way religion can get into the city. There is such a thing as natural spread. And conquest (Flauros declares war on Arturus! Flauros had taken a RoK city! Flauros adopts RoK!)

No sh

it. I never said it had to be acolytes, just that it had to spread.

That doesn't make sense, without weights the AI's don't usually adopt minority religions (unless they found it, and even then not always).

But with weights they might.

 

[Lone Wolf]

But with weights they might.

And that's exactly why the positive weights are good too.

No . .. .. .. .. I never said it had to be acolytes, just that it had to spread.

My apologises. I've read "and it spreads" as "and spreads it". Still, natural spread is a pretty common occurance.

 

[Renaud]

Don't forgot finding and destroying the holy cities of the religions you don't like, and using inquisition. In my game as Amurites right now I'm going for either a tower or religious victory (whichever i get first) and i've destroyed Kilmorph and Empyrean holy cities so far. Order just popped up and i've got my big fishy Overlord eye on them...

I accidentally captured instead of sacking the FOL holy city, so I have to control FOL spread with cultist inquisitions (apparently I can't use inquisition to drive out the non-state religion if it's the holy city of that religion). My Overlords are now up to 50% influence....all hail Cthulhu, hehe.

 

[Tasunke]

This is why I backstabbed the Vampir, my AV ally, for KEEPING the empyrean holy city (formerly Malakim) when I was AV Shieam, (trying to rid the other religions and destroy the world).
Now is that role play, or is that role play?