India

[Stalker0]

Because I (and @Gizmoman and @amateurgamer88) already tested X under optimal conditions with a civ optimized for X and chose a pantheon and follower belief optimized for X, and under those conditions it didn't work.

You saying that I need to repeat the test under arbitrarily different conditions where the only possible outcome is it working less well to prove the same point is asinine. You're just making more work for someone else to prove a point that has already been made, and that you are perfectly capable of proving to yourself. You and I both know perfectly well it won't convince you though, because stronger evidence already failed to convince you.

So you aren't "debating ideas", you're just moving the goalposts and wasting people's time.

you were saying that passive pressure from your initial city was not enough to convert your starting cities. Considering that missionaries are the standard way to spread religion...I don’t get why that’s broken. Passive pressure augments and reinforces pressure, it’s not the primary vehicle for conversion, and never has been in any version of the mod. Only after the initial city conversions does passive start to turn into a dominant way to deliver pressure.

I can respect that passive pressure is not sufficient for India, and I think your evidence reinforces that. So...we change India...seems simple enough to me.

 

[pineappledan]

Considering that missionaries are the standard way to spread religion...I don’t get why that’s broken. Passive pressure augments and reinforces pressure, it’s not the primary vehicle for conversion, and never has been in any version of the mod. Only after the initial city conversions does passive start to turn into a dominant way to deliver pressure.

I have never seen passive pressure as peripheral mechanic that isn't supposed to convert people. In my opinion passive pressure should spread your religion and only stop at counter-pressure from other religions. Overall, I think the majority of conversions should come from passive spread, and missionaries should be there mainly to direct and create centres for more passive spread to take place, until an equilibrium is reached.

You and other members of the community have asserted a vision of passive spread as this thing you don't want to have to worry about. And so its role has been diminished more and more.

I can respect that passive pressure is not sufficient for India, and I think your evidence reinforces that. So...we change India...seems simple enough to me.

My opinion is that it's not sufficient for ANYONE. What you consider an augmenting, reinforcing pressure to missionary spread I consider a neutered mechanic, which has been rendered weaker and weaker by yours and other community member's demands that it be made so. No amount of tests is going to convince you of that it should be made stronger again, because you are coming from a viewpoint that doesn't see passive pressure as a legitimate, active spreading mechanic, and I do.

EDIT:
I have made a General Balance thread with a poll

 

[DeAnno]

Overall, I think the majority of conversions should come from passive spread, and missionaries should be there mainly to direct and create centres for more passive spread to take place, until an equilibrium is reached.

Missionaries you pay for and control. Passive spread is hard to control, and also extremely snowbally by nature. When the AI surrounds you with passive pressure you can't beat it with passive pressure, because they already have more and you have less; if it's too strong relative to missionaries, you just lose your religion. I don't really understand the view that the mechanic which naturally snowballs and is costless should be more powerful than the one that you need to invest in and can focus in specific directions.

 

[CrazyG]

Because I (and @Gizmoman and @amateurgamer88) already tested X under optimal conditions with a civ optimized for X and chose a pantheon and follower belief optimized for X, and under those conditions it didn't work.

I just converted two of my own cities this patch via passive pressure as Polynesia. Stop being a drama queen.

 

[Gazebo]

Alright, in next version India will convert 50% of all citizens in every owned city when you found. That's the only change. Should help with the initial rollout of faith, and avoids the pitfall cost of having to convert your cities passively and/or wasting prophets.

G

 

[Gizmoman]

I think you're misunderstanding something. The main issue wasn't that it was impossible to flip cities over with passive pressure, they do flip over eventually. The problem was that if another civ sends missionaries to you, you every missionary provides hundreds of turns worth of pressure and essentially turns your UA against your religion. Yes you can fight this with inquisitors, but you're paying double the cost (since every missionary got two uses) and you put your city into resistance.

That said, we can try G's fix out, maybe the initial burst will be all that's required to build up some initial followers in your cities and help you combat enemy missionary spam.

 

[pineappledan]

This happened a while ago, but while I am out documenting things anyways:

India was first to found on our continent, but I wiped his religion out through passive pressure alone (I didn't missionary him). Persia AI passive flipped 1 city to my religion and then actively spread it to the rest of his cities. The whole continent is now Protestant.

I'll just reiterate that passive pressure is weighted too highly on per-city pressure, and not enough on per-follower pressure, in my opinion. India's cities are still bigger than everyone else's, but he can't leverage it.

Spoiler :

 

[pineappledan]

I've played two standard India games (with 3/4 UC) about 150 turns in (unfortunately the 6-7-5 hotfix wasn't save game compatible for me, so I had to start another). Gandhi now faces another kind of pressure, and that is to expand as fast as possible. Both games had me found very quickly between turns 65-85 (Incense / Wine starts + I found some faith ruins) opening with God King / Tradition, but it ended up being counter-productive; the earlier you found through excelling at initiating religion -- which is, of course, the entire purpose of playing India -- the less time you have to actually establish any satellite cities that can be converted via your first prophet. Despite having great tall starts with several early wonders secured (including Pyramids for the free Settler), I was rendered into the same situation where it takes 50+ turns (after founding) for my 3rd city onward to actually flip. My pop was already practically double of any met civs, and both games consisted of immediate faith purchases of Churches / Cathedrals (1st game) + Mandirs / Cathedrals (2nd game).

Considering India is one of the most religious focused civs, it still kinda feels like your fighting against the grain a bit, and that's not even accounting for the limited belief choices and no missionaries. Keep in mind, this is with what I'd consider "good" gameplay, and only on King. If I can have ideal conditions, yet still struggle to firmly establish the necessary pressure with a civ whose entire kit relies on religious seniority, then I'm not so sure the current buff will be enough (especially for AI India who's very prone to early human missionary spam). This is still just a first impression with small sample size, but I'm doubtful the new system is going to provide the required Unph.

On a positive note, my first game had already been tainted by a forward settling Zulu who ended up taking one of my cities after a prolonged assault. It's almost unheard of for Supreme Leader to lose cities on King within the first 75 turns, so kudos again to the VP crew for the continued improvements to AI diplo + strategy.

*I will finally agree with @Stalker0 that World Wonders do seem to be all over the board right now, though I must admit that I kind of like the variance and true randomness as to when / if opposing civs are engaged in wonder races. I also assume this is in part due to Recursive's tweaks to AI flavors alongside build orders / priorities generally becoming more and more refined, which is a good thing.

Apparently the new automatic conversion isn't always enough to ensure that you can keep your religion.

What is the math on how passive pressure is calculated these days?

 

[Gizmoman]

Apparently the new automatic conversion isn't always enough to ensure that you can keep your religion.

What is the math on how passive pressure is calculated these days?

It seems it's like rounded down, so sometimes uneven populated cities just don't flip.

 

[Grassland Farm]

I'm appreciating the change. Needs a lot of experimenting since it's highly variant on 1) How many cities you can settle and how big they are before founding 2) How fast you're founding.
But my game so far feels... Fair. A super-giga-Ethiopia is running away in my game and yet he's not significantly threatening my religion, yet.

 

[LifeOfBrian]

I agree that there are some big concerns about the passive pressure and how it works/doesn't work, so hopefully that will be looked at. Honestly, I'd be ok with India getting the old Spanish UA, so its cities would always be safe religion-wise.

 

[Rekk]

Instead of "half" of the population converting on found, I think it should be half + 1, ie odd size cities stay the same, but even size cities actually gain the religion.

 

[Melchizedek]

In my first game on the new beta I had six cities at founding on turn 77 as Emperor/Progress. Three cities flipped the same turn and the other three had my religion within a couple of turns. Will be interested to see (a) whether there are any unreasonable problems later and (b) whether Tradition can get the religion going for India well enough.

 

[Drakle]

Given the mod is moving away from passive pressure as a useful mechanic, should India's UA get adjusted to remove this as a mechanic? Because I played a game as India, and despite founding first, my religion got overtaken in short order by a religiously aggressive Ethiopia. And there was literally nothing I could do about it, bar conquering them.

Maybe something to do with Syncretism, instead of pressure.

 

[Melchizedek]

Drakle, are you on the latest patch? India's UA was adjusted to convert half the citizens in cities other than the holy city on founding (rounded down).

 

[Drakle]

Drakle, are you on the latest patch? India's UA was adjusted to convert half the citizens in cities other than the holy city on founding (rounded down).

Yes. My cities converted. Then Ethiopia converted all the city states around me and his own cities, and the pressure is killing me. I can't eliminate him with a single Great Prophet, and he just bounces back really quick. That's literally the only counter move. Religious building pressure doesn't help much, it adds nothing noticeable. And despite my cities having a lot more population than his, it doesn't matter because more cities beats more pops.

 

[Drakle]

If religious pressure is going to remain broken (why was it changed, it was working fine). I have a few suggestions for an updated UA

Old

Font of Dharma
Starts the game with a Pantheon and Great Prophets require 35% less Faith.

Each Follower of your primary Religion in a City increases Religious Pressure and Growth.

Cannot build Missionaries.

New

Font of Dharma

Starts the game with a Pantheon and Great Prophets require 35% less Faith.

Each Follower of your primary Religion in a City increases Growth, while foreign followers increase Faith. All citizens and cities count as followers for belief purposes.

Missionary strength doubled against own cities and friendly city-states and halved against foreign cities.

This keeps the less spreading nature of India's religion. Foreign faiths don't actively hurt your empire as much. BUT it does pigeonhole you towards beliefs with pop requirements, and Syncretism.

Another idea

Font of Dharma

Starts the game with a Pantheon and Great Prophets require 35% less Faith. Great Prophets gain +1 spread per Holy Site (Capped at 5)

Each Follower of your primary Religion in a City increases Religious Pressure and Growth.

Cannot build Missionaries.

This makes the Great Prophet conversions stronger but pushes the religious push to the later game when the issue is more early to mid-game.

Or the smallest change could be that, that the founding faith conversion, also converts 50% of close city-states, some amount of pops in trade range. Or it triggers on trade routes from the ancient to the medieval era. Since Dharmic Religions have spread well beyond India, with much of Indonesia and Indochina, Hindu before being overtaken by Islam and Buddhism respectively (the latter of which is also Dharmic). So the surrounding city-states convert, but a strong religious push by another player can push India back out.

Really, I'd prefer just reverting these religious changes.

 

[pineappledan]

I don’t want to change india. I want to fix india.

I really like their design, and there’s no reason why it shouldn’t be workable if passive spread scaled with population/policies/buildings like it is supposed to, rather than relying entirely on a critical mass of cities.

 

[stii]

I think the issue with India isn't really the idea but the power level. Being unable to spread your religion normally is fine as long as the reward is worth it. I don't think anyone is unhappy with the Celts because they don't have passive spread. That is probably because they have lots of benefits to compensate.

Maybe India should be the reverse, if they can't spread with missionaries they should be immune to foreign missionaries (not sure if this is possible?). We need to make it seem like less of a drawback and more of a different play style. If the idea is to passively spread India probably needs a bonus to passive spread in some fashion. Maybe just +1/+2faith per city. Overlaps with the Celts but there are only so many tools to deal with religion

India does suffer from religion spread being pretty awkward. Spreading is all of nothing, either you flip cities and get benefits or it isn't enough and does nothing.

 

[Floats your boat]

I would hate to have another civ that disables some mechanics for other players if it's in the game. If India pressure would be so high you can't select churches, orthodoxy, and build your religion around passive pressure or forces you to do so when you play it (along with prophecy) that's a bad design.