How do you defeat the Apostolic Palace?

[Ankh]

I just tried winning an AP diplo victory, and it was much easier than I expected. I conquered one civ early, at which point there were three others; two weak and one strong, each with their own religion. I didn't have an opportunity to found my own, so I adopted the nearest weak neighbor's religion, built the AP, conquered him, then spread it to the last two AIs, and won in the 1200s.

So yeah, it probably should be tweaked a little.

After reading your post I only see that the AP is working as intended. I assume this was a pretty small map since you only had 4 AI as rivals. Small maps makes for a completly different game. Winning on a small map compared to a huge one is two different things.

As I understand it there were only 2 AI left since you had conquered two which I now assume you had the lead and were now the most powerfull civ and basically already had the game won, you just had to decide how you wanted to end it and the AP saved you all the work of either conquring what was left or pressing eot untill your spaceship was done.

A diplomatic win in the 1200s seems about right what the AP tries to accomplish namely early wins in the game without the need for wars.

 

[Percy]

Run state property should remove the effects of apostolic palace but will destroy your very effective coporations

Huh? How does State Property counters any effect of the AP?

EDIT: oh my god, Ankh, not again, PLEASE. It's ridiculous to be able to elect yourself, period.

 

[Florian]

Percy,

You can't equate making a colony with losing a wonder city. Colonies are relatively late-founded cities, and you release them (if at all) at a point in time when your empire is very large. At the time the AP gets built, your empire is not so large, and the city that built it is not so peripheral to your plans (obviously, or you couldn't have built a wonder in it). Losing control of the city would be a HUGE disincentive to ever building the thing. Also, it wouldn't be like real life at all. The sovereignty of the Vatican is irrelevant to my point, which is that Italy didn't have to lose Rome's production and income when it agreed to let the Vatican be independent.

 

[Florian]

AIs with only a few votes should never vote "no" in these things. Only "defy." That would fix some of the stupidities.

The basic principle guiding a fix of the AP should be this: no civ should give a rat's hindquarters WHAT the Pope says unless 1) the Pope is the leader of its state religion, or 2) the Pope's religion is the dominant religion in its empire. And by dominant, I mean more than 50% of its people belong to that religion, not "we have 5 religions, but the Pope's religion has a 2% lead over the next one down."

 

[Percy]

You can't equate making a colony with losing a wonder city.

Well, i do =)

Colonies are relatively late-founded cities, and you release them (if at all) at a point in time when your empire is very large. At the time the AP gets built, your empire is not so large, and the city that built it is not so peripheral to your plans (obviously, or you couldn't have built a wonder in it).

Once again, there is a mistake in the reasoning here. You say you "build it early". Well, if it changed, why do you assume you would still build it at the same time?
Besides, the real Papal States were created in 752, which is usually much later than it is built in the game.
The point of this proposal is precisely to not make it a no-brainer, but to have to weigh the pros and cons of creating a religious entity. If you don't want to, fine, don't do it. And let your neighbours benefit from the pros and lose from the cons.

Losing control of the city would be a HUGE disincentive to ever building the thing.

Obviously, it should bring a number of advantages as well. I believe committing resources to reach a certain goal is strategic.

Also, it wouldn't be like real life at all. The sovereignty of the Vatican is irrelevant to my point, which is that Italy didn't have to lose Rome's production and income when it agreed to let the Vatican be independent.

First, as i've stated before, it's impossible due to the way Cities work in CIV to have two cities on the same spot or almost. Call that game limitation.
Second, the Papal States (long before the Vatican existed) were an autonomous state, before. The effective leader of the city of Rome was the Bishop of Rome. That's why it does make sense to not have the control of the city, but to hand it over.
Established in 752, was an independent government.

 

[Florian]

Once again, there is a mistake in the reasoning here. You say you "build it early". Well, if it changed, why do you assume you would still build it at the same time?

How much could it change, Percy? It has to come a long time before the Modern Era (Mass Media) or there's no point to it. Whatever changes, you'll still be building it early--MUCH earlier than you'll be liberating colonies.

Besides, the real Papal States were created in 752, which is usually much later than it is built in the game.

You're missing a crucial detail here. In 752, the city of Rome was independent already. No larger polity was benefiting from the city, and hence no larger polity had to lose the city. From 800 until the mid-19th century, Rome & environs were a nominal part of the Holy Roman Empire, but "nominal" needs to be stressed. The HRE never got to levy taxes on the Papal States; it was the other way around, truth be told. The only thing the Holy Roman Emperor got out of the bargain was the right to call himself Holy Roman Emperor. If you wanted to model that dynamic in a Civ game, the Apostolic Palace would have to be built in a Barbarian city a little ways outside your empire. That way, to whatever extent you managed to bend the Pope to your wishes, it would be a city GAINED, not a city lost.

Obviously, it should bring a number of advantages as well.

It "should"? It does! It adds 2 hammers to every temple, monastery, and cathedral of the pertinent religion, and opens up a menu of powerful diplomatic options. Just how much more powerful do you want it to be?

First, as i've stated before, it's impossible due to the way Cities work in CIV to have two cities on the same spot or almost. Call that game limitation.

It's not just a game limitation. It's a spatial limitation. You can't have two cities occupying the same spot in real life either. The Vatican City is a "city" in name alone. In actuality, it's just an administrative district. In Civ IV terms, it's equivalent to having one of the specialists in your size 20 city become independent of your empire.

 

[Percy]

It "should"? It does! It adds 2 hammers to every temple, monastery, and cathedral of the pertinent religion, and opens up a menu of powerful diplomatic options. Just how much more powerful do you want it to be?

Obviously, i'm talking about changing the AP. So you keeping talking about what the AP does is, well, not really relevent to what i said. I'm not saying it's not interesting, mind you. Just it has little to do with what i'm talking about.
Still, when i'm talking about power, i'm talking of DIPLOMATIC power. The +2 hammer is quite strange, actually, and does not make much sense, the way i see it.

It's not just a game limitation. It's a spatial limitation. You can't have two cities occupying the same spot in real life either.

Semantics.
And anyway, you can have two separate cities touch each other, that's a conurbation if i'm not mistaken on the english term.

The Vatican City is a "city" in name alone. In actuality, it's just an administrative district. In Civ IV terms, it's equivalent to having one of the specialists in your size 20 city become independent of your empire.

In our present, yes. But i'm talking about the Papal States, since it's when such thing as a Papal leadership really influenced the world.

 

[Florian]

Obviously, i'm talking about changing the AP.

To be specific, you were talking about making it more powerful, in order to make up for the fact that you've suggested it should eat one of its builder's best cities. I'm pointing out that it's already quite powerful.

And anyway, you can have two separate cities touch each other, that's a conurbation if i'm not mistaken on the english term.

Sure. You could do that in Civ I, as I recall.

In our present, yes. But i'm talking about the Papal States, since it's when such thing as a Papal leadership really influenced the world

Right. And the Papal States were independent from their beginning. No contemporary empire had to sacrifice a core city in order for them to form. In a scenario, you could emulate this by having a small Papal Civ in existence from the beginning of the scenario. In the epic game, however, there's no good way to do it except the way it's already being done, i.e. wait until someone builds the Apostolic Palace, and then make IT the Papal Civ. When you make the AP, you become the "Papal States."

 

[Percy]

To be specific, you were talking about making it more powerful, in order to make up for the fact that you've suggested it should eat one of its builder's best cities. I'm pointing out that it's already quite powerful.

I was talking about changing it. Making it more powerful, having different mechanisms, and more drawbacks, most notably losing control over the city you build it in, in a system akin to the one of colonies.
You're saying at the same time it's quite powerful, so my proposition of making it more powerful is not good, and yet at the same time my proposition would be too much of a drawback? I'm precisely hoping to strike some balance here

Right. And the Papal States were independent from their beginning. No contemporary empire had to sacrifice a core city in order for them to form. In a scenario, you could emulate this by having a small Papal Civ in existence from the beginning of the scenario. In the epic game, however, there's no good way to do it except the way it's already being done, i.e. wait until someone builds the Apostolic Palace, and then make IT the Papal Civ. When you make the AP, you become the "Papal States."

I gathered a different opinion from this article but it is entirely possible that i misunderstood part or all of it.

 

[Phrederick]

After reading your post I only see that the AP is working as intended. I assume this was a pretty small map since you only had 4 AI as rivals. Small maps makes for a completly different game. Winning on a small map compared to a huge one is two different things.

As I understand it there were only 2 AI left since you had conquered two which I now assume you had the lead and were now the most powerfull civ and basically already had the game won, you just had to decide how you wanted to end it and the AP saved you all the work of either conquring what was left or pressing eot untill your spaceship was done.

A diplomatic win in the 1200s seems about right what the AP tries to accomplish namely early wins in the game without the need for wars.

I agree that the AP is mostly fine as is. I had previous posted that it was almost impossible to win via the AP early, and that anyone complaining about it just didn't understand it or didn't make important modifications in how they played.

In the game I won, Darius had twice or more land than I did, and had a tech lead. I could have won through targeted beelining and a massive military emphasis (this is marathon, which is certainly easier regarding military affairs), but victory was not at all assured. I also focused on the AP, and if I hadn't, I probably would have gotten a bit more land. So when I won, I had one vassal (who had founded the religion I used with the AP), and there was one weak (mansa) and one super-strong (darius) ai. This was on a small pangaea, which I chose as the easiest possible map to win an AP victory on. I thought that even with that map setting it would be very hard, but it wasn't.

I think the AP is mostly fine as is, but it does need a small tweak, because only a single city is too easy a threshold on smaller maps. To make it more map-size independent, perhaps something like some percentage of the entire world population divided by the number of civs must follow the religion in each civ: If it's 10%, and there's a total of 500 pop points between 5 civs, then each civ must have .1*(500/5)=10 pop points in cities with the AP religion. The numbers are obviously just for the sake of argument, but I think that might help solve the problem by forcing a non-trivial number of cities to have the religion per civ.

However, I also haven't yet had a game where the AP has negatively affected by gaming experience, so I really wouldn't care if they don't change it. If I were to lose a game due to the AP, I'd probably just reload the last autosave, delete the AP from whomever has it, and give myself an engineer with which to rush-build it. Sure, that's cheating, but I play to enjoy myself, not to follow rules that I don't feel enhance my enjoyment or to compare myself with others.

 

[Florian]

I gathered a different opinion from this article

Right, well, in real life there are many shades of grey between "independent" and "fully under the power of Empire X." The Papal States owed their existence to Frankish (and later German) intervention, and the Emperors often viewed him as a vassal (and before the 11th century, often got away with treating him as one), but it was nothing like having a city as part of your empire in Civ IV.

 

[Percy]

Well, it seemed they actually renounced their control over a territory ( = city in CIV's terms) to hand it over to a somewhat independent leader (which, IMHO, fits quite well with the concept of a colony/vassal).
But besides the letter of the historical reality (if such thing exists), i simply think that it makes sense, and creates a nice twist.

 

[IthacaMike]

Does thre Inspired Missionary quest/event allow you to spread your religion into cities where it normally wouldn't spread?

Looking at the XML it looks like you may be able to just insert your religion into an oponent's city. If so there is no absolute way to keep the AP's religion out of your territory.

IthacaMike

 

[Florian]

Percy,

What happened is, Pepin and Charlemagne made a deal with the Pope: the Pope would support their claim to the throne (for Pepin, since he wasn't technically the king when the deal was first struck) or grander, their claim to be Emperor of the West (for Charlemagne, who started out as King of the Franks and wanted something more). In return, they would protect the Pope from the Lombards, an Arian (heretical) or pagan (it's debated which) tribe that occupied Northern Italy and was making the Pope very nervous. This gave the Franks a chance to legitimize their claims to power and a pretext to make war on the Lombards and extend their influence to the south. Since the Franks were Catholic, it also had value to them as a good deed.

So you see, it's not as if the Franks conquered land and then ceded it to a vassal. They made a bargain with a sovereign entity (the Pope, who at that point owed nominal allegiance to the Emperor in Byzantium, but was in actuality beyond his reach to help or to harm), and their part of the bargain was to provide protection and territory. You could say they lost the newly conquered territory, I guess, but 1) that's a lot different than losing a core city, and 2) they conquered in for the Pope in the first place.

To model this in Civ IV would require the possiblity of a power vacuum, i.e. a well-developed region (not just a barbarian area) that wasn't actually part of a major civ. It would need a scenario. Could be a very cool scenario, though.

 

[Percy]

Well, i think the thing i proposed sorts of mimick that, in a way. You mention gaining the support of a religious leader, and that's exactly what i would hope you get from "vassalizing" the AP state. Also, it doesn't have to be built in your core city. There again, balancing your strategy would be the key: build it fast in a core city, or build it slowly in an outer one?

 

[Percy]

Just for the kicks, i played a quick game. I've won an AP-enabled Diplomatic victory in 2:20 hours.

The settings were:
Darius (Fin,Org) of Persia.
Monarch, Hemispheres, Standard size, Epic speed.

Here are the saves (starting, ending), and here is the victory screenshot, which shows the ridiculous number of votes the others can get.

Spoiler :

The game went this way: i started isolated on an island. Quickly teched to Theology to build the AP and found Christianity. I spread Christianity to all of my cities, but to none of the AIs. It did spread by itself to one of Charlemagne's city, but that's it. When i hit Optics (i prioritized it a bit), i used Caravels to spot the AIs and send them missionaries. I tried to convert the lousiest cities they had. Only Monty, who had founded Buddhism, posed a problem since he wouldn't agree to Open Borders in spite of me offering him half the tech tree... Anyway, i then beelined Cuirassiers so that i could take the smallest Aztec city, converted it, and sued Monty for peace offering the city back. Two or three turns later, came the resolution screen, and next turn i won.

If that's not abusing, i don't know what it is Scored about 65k points, btw. Except for the trick with Monty, i never warred against anything but a couple of barbs early on.

 

[Florian]

Also, it doesn't have to be built in your core city. There again, balancing your strategy would be the key: build it fast in a core city, or build it slowly in an outer one?

In my book, if a city can build a wonder in a reasonable amount of time, it's a core city. And you don't have many of them around the time you'd be making the AP. When you speak of an option to "build it slowly," you're talking about 30-50 turns. That's like saying to the AI, "Please, beat me to this wonder, I really don't want it."

 

[Percy]

In my book, if a city can build a wonder in a reasonable amount of time, it's a core city. And you don't have many of them around the time you'd be making the AP. When you speak of an option to "build it slowly," you're talking about 30-50 turns. That's like saying to the AI, "Please, beat me to this wonder, I really don't want it."

That's what i don't get with your reasoning, Florian.
On the one hand, you say it'd suck to lose a city. Then, you say it'd suck if it was the AI who lost a city.

That's exactly what i'm talking about, and that's exactly what i meant with having to make a strategical choice: do i "sacrifice" a decent city to get the buffed-up AP, or do i try and build it in a less-prominent city, and take the risk that one of the other players/AIs makes the choice of building it fast, in a good city?
It's a bit similar to gambles such as delaying the Oracle or Liberalism to get a better tech. And some people don't even try to be the first at the Oracle, because it's too much of a gambit, and sacrifices too much. You could think the same with the AP: is it worth the trouble in this particular game i'm playing, or not? That's what i find interesting. As it stands, i don't find it interesting, see the game i finished two posts above =)

 

[Florian]

Percy,

It actually _would_ suck if it was the AI who lost the city, because that would make it less competitive, and it wouldn't be smart enough not to cripple itself.

We agree that as it stands, the AP victory is cheap and ridiculous.

 

[Larklight]

Losing control of the city would be a HUGE disincentive to ever building the thing.

Of some small note, in FfHII, building the wassitifical gate. (mercutian?) losses you the city, but gains you an important ally.

Maybe building it could create another civilisaition with no cities, and whose survival was tied to that city. Not a proper civ, but a mini-one, who aimed to win by diplomacy, religion and bargaining.

-and I agree the current syustem is bad- UN/AP victories should make everyone else 'UN vassals' or so (in the same way that most countries oppose war nowadays unless the UN allows it, unless you defy, such as the US did. They got the unhappyness and dislike of the world, but the freedom)