Improved Byzantium

[Monthar]

Since Byzantium's UA requires founding a religion it becomes useless if you're not able to found a religion. Unfortunately, the default Byzantium civilization doesn't aid in founding a religion. Therefore I've come up with this simple mod to improve Byzantium's UA.

This mod adds a free shrine in all your cities. This works exactly the same as Carthage's free harbors. That is, you immediately get the free shrine in your capital and all other cities you found or capture, even if you haven't researched Pottery yet. Since the shrine is flagged as free, it also has no maintenance cost just like all other free buildings.

To install, either download and extract the attached .zip file to your "Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 5\MODS" folder, or you can grab the mod from the Steam Workshop from in game.

Edit: I caught one minor mistake with version 1. I had the "Affects Saved Game" setting unchecked, so the mod wasn't required by saved created with the mod loaded. Thus the mod wasn't reloading when loading a game that was saved while playing with the mod. I've corrected this and uploaded the change in the v2 zip. The corrected version has also been uploaded to the Steam Workshop.

 

[megistatos]

Doesn't this make the Byzantine's a little OP? The Celts get an early boost to their founding their pantheon/religion but no actual benefits to their religion whilst the Byzantines get an extra belief but no help towards their religion.

Shouldn't you just focus on building an early shrine and taking a faith producing pantheon?

 

[PrinceFartsalot]

Doesn't this make the Byzantine's a little OP? The Celts get an early boost to their founding their pantheon/religion but no actual benefits to their religion whilst the Byzantines get an extra belief but no help towards their religion.

Shouldn't you just focus on building an early shrine and taking a faith producing pantheon?

Maybe a free shrine in the first 4 cities? Or half cost for shrines, or shrines provide double . I think any of those would be less OP than free shrines.

 

[megistatos]

Maybe a free shrine in the first 4 cities? Or half cost for shrines, or shrines provide double . I think any of those would be less OP than free shrines.

Yeah, that sounds more balanced. To be fair the mod is to make them a more fun civ to play, rather than a suggestion to Firaxis.

 

[AlienFromBeyond]

If only Byzantium had the ability to forcibly adopt someone else's religion as their own (Romans copying Greek religion, Byzantium itself and Christianity with the Orthodox church) so instead of making their own, they one from somewhere else to soup up for themselves.

 

[Monthar]

Considering shrines only give 1 faith and only cost 1 gold maintenance, I felt this was the simplest option that's fairly well balanced. The AI starts with pottery on King and up. With their bonuses they can have their shrines or shrine UB built in the first few turns, on top of the faith they'll get from meeting religious CSs and gaining faith from ruins with their extra units.

Now compare this to Carthage's free harbors. Not only are they not paying the normal 3 maintenance on the harbors, but with the one commerce policy they gain extra gold from the harbors and they aren't limited to just the first 4 cities.

Also, consider how long it will typically take a player to build more than 4 cities, even with exploiting the AI for all the gold they can get and demanding tribute from all the CSs. The fastest I've seen posted is turn 40 on standard speed for 4 cities. That's an average of 13 1/3 turns per new city. So if you managed to build the next 3 cities on turns 13, 26 and 39, that's only 82 faith of the minimum 200 needed for the first prophet, if you weren't able to get a pantheon that added more faith.

In my testing it seems to be fairly balanced against the other religious oriented civs.

 

[mitsho]

Not sure if this is balanced since it gives you much early faith. What about

50 free instant and 2 per turn in capital upon researching classical tech x (say Philosophy?).

In my mind, we already have Celts, Ethiopia and Mayans as "Fast Religion", Byzantines should go for "Better Religion" imho.