Is this idea balanced?

[brianb1974]

After being frustrated at the inability to get religion in my cities, I had an idea.

What if an explorer that visited a holy shrine got "converted" and become a missionary? This would give you a way to get religion into your cities if the natural spreading isn't enough. It would also provide a real use for a crappy unit that isn't really good for much else.

Is this possible with mods? Does it take away too much of the advantage of founding your own religion by making it too easy to go out and steal all the religions? If so, how could it be balanced?

 

[Serenity42]

It's an interesting idea, and it draws upon the idea of the power of religion. I'm just not sure it'll work. But here are some ideas, take them or leave them as you please:

1. Shrines, being the easiest to build, are too common to induce the effect you propose. Consider changing the effect building to, at minimum, a cathedral. Personally, I would suggest that only the "super building" for a religion - the one that is built by a Great Prophet - would be able to convert the unit.

2. It should be only a chance of conversion rather than a certainty, and the chance should hinge on a few key elements: A) State Religion - if there is a state religion, it should make the Explorer resistant to changing to any other; B) City Culture - higher culture improves conversion chance, lower culture serves as an inhibitor. In any case, the chances should be relatively low - no more than 15%, otherwise wholesale theft of religion will be the norm.

3. There should be a higher chance of "spread failure" when you instruct your explorer-turned-missionary to introduce the religion in one of your cities. Normal missionaries have a pretty good chance of spreading a religion, but that explorer is just an inspired chap with a compass. His chances should be worse. That also helps keep the power of the unit under control.

(I do agree with your point that explorer are nigh on to worthless, especially in the late game. Once all the goody huts are gone, mine are just strategically parked to keep the fog dispersed and, by extension, the barbarian count down.)

Just some ideas. The problem is I know so little about XML and Python that I don't know how possible any of that really is.

 

[ripple01]

It's an interesting idea, and it draws upon the idea of the power of religion. I'm just not sure it'll work. But here are some ideas, take them or leave them as you please:

1. Shrines, being the easiest to build, are too common to induce the effect you propose. Consider changing the effect building to, at minimum, a cathedral. Personally, I would suggest that only the "super building" for a religion - the one that is built by a Great Prophet - would be able to convert the unit.

Correct me if I am wrong, but the shrine as the OP states is the "super building" you refer to...

Oh, and AFAIK, this should be doable with Python...

Cheers,
ripple01

 

[Serenity42]

Correct me if I am wrong, but the shrine as the OP states is the "super building" you refer to...

Whoops. I got the idea of the shrine mixed up with that lowest-level building. I think CIV4 calls it a temple.

 

[brianb1974]

Yes I meant the holy shrine--unique building. I don't know about giving him a higher chance of failure. That would require the game to remember his original identity. I was thinking just turning him into a normal missionary. Maybe he could be required to spend some number of turns at the holy shrine studying to become a missionary. And after all that study, he could still fail if you try to spread the religion to a city that already has some. And the trick won't work under theocracy of course.

I don't want wholesale theft of religion to be the norm, but I think this could be balanced. I'm thinking it will mostly be useful for an isolated civ to get some religion between optics when you can go exploring and astronomy when trade routes facilitate natural spread. And it requires that the shrine be built and you build an explorer to go find it. And generally speaking, the owner of the shrine doesn't mind his religion being "stolen". Unless he's going for AP cheese, he wants his religion to spread far and wide.

 

[Serenity42]

Maybe he could be required to spend some number of turns at the holy shrine studying to become a missionary.

Sounds like a great compromise.

It's a great idea! I hope someone builds it; I'd be interested in giving it a spin.

 

[OzzyKP]

I think it is a great idea actually, and entirely balanced. I don't think you'd need to keep the unit at the shrine a very long either. Maybe just give him a 30% chance to turn to a missionary. Maybe even make it 100%. It wouldn't unbalance things.

If the shrine owner doesn't want people taking their religion, then they can close borders.