Is Way of the Pilgrim inherently unbalanced (human vs. AI)? How would you change it?

Does the Way of the Pilgrim need to be changed?

  • Yes, it's inherently unbalanced in human vs. AI terms, needs a radical change

    Votes: 9 64.3%
  • Yes, but just tweak the numbers a little

    Votes: 3 21.4%
  • No, it's good as it is now

    Votes: 2 14.3%

  • Total voters
    14
Thanks for the reply, just one more question - what is "normal missionary use"? I'm asking because if I'm not using Way of the Pilgrim, I'm using only Great prophets to convert other religions (I save up to get 2 or 3 of them and use them simultaneously), because on Deity I'll fall behind in religious spread at the start and once the AI has spread to other religions, it's bad cost/benefit to try to convert them with missionaries.
 
Thanks for the reply, just one more question - what is "normal missionary use"? I'm asking because if I'm not using Way of the Pilgrim, I'm using only Great prophets to convert other religions (I save up to get 2 or 3 of them and use them simultaneously), because on Deity I'll fall behind in religious spread at the start and once the AI has spread to other religions, it's bad cost/benefit to try to convert them with missionaries.

Probably the better phrasing is "normal faith use".

So generally you are using your faith in a couple of key ways:

1) Saving for a GP (aka holy site)
2) Conducting spreads with other religious beliefs.
3) Getting religious buildings
4) Saving for GP in industrial.

So how much "bang for your faith buck" do you get for WotP spreads vs other methods.
 
Not necessarily - I'm mainly looking for a cost-benefit analysis here if the use against 'minmaxed' cities versus just normal missionary use is actually that substantial of a difference in a normal playthrough.

Just entered Renaissance as the Maya, totally neglecting culture. I built my religion around WotP and the fact I'm on a continent with 3 other founders; in retrospect, my belief choice is pretty bad in order to deal with happiness but I'm mostly messing around with WotP. Should I continue, Faith of the Masses is going to fix everything nicely.

Anyway:

Spoiler :
civmayaren1.png


That's Deity and I'm happily ahead of everybody culture-wise. Even Tradition Siam with cocoa monopoly in wat-powered jungle is starting to lag behind after a good start.

Spoiler :
civmayaren2.png


That's my culture-through-faith machine at work, targeting Portugal/Siam main cities. I'm not even min-maxing attrition, and wanted to spread to some minor cities that flipped so that I could timely reform (see turn 120 spreads, for a "normal" missionary use)
 
Ok, thanks for the reply, do you have any specific requests with which civ, policy trees, map settings, difficulty ..., to make comparison?

I think Gazebo is referring to intentionally weakening WotP missionaries before using them to spread?
 
Just entered Renaissance as the Maya, totally neglecting culture. I built my religion around WotP and the fact I'm on a continent with 3 other founders; in retrospect, my belief choice is pretty bad in order to deal with happiness but I'm mostly messing around with WotP. Should I continue, Faith of the Masses is going to fix everything nicely.

Anyway:



That's Deity and I'm happily ahead of everybody culture-wise. Even Tradition Siam with cocoa monopoly in wat-powered jungle is starting to lag behind after a good start.



That's my culture-through-faith machine at work, targeting Portugal/Siam main cities. I'm not even min-maxing attrition, and wanted to spread to some minor cities that flipped so that I could timely reform (see turn 120 spreads, for a "normal" missionary use)

looking at your religion, you are also getting culture through jungles and culture on growth (which tends to spike early and fall away late).

you may be right but the problem is your culture is getting mixed with other benefits, making it hard to see how much WOTP is contributing.
 
Well it's a progress game, so I'm getting culture through techs, buildings and then cooperation. Jungles are included in the deceitful +33 :c5culture:. I rushed Medieval and then Renaissance delaying growth to maximize the per-era scaling so things will get funny soon.

I founded (and enhanced) on t86 and got 3 and a half policies in 40 turns, about 5800 :c5culture:. I started spreading to enemy cities around t100, I first converted nearby CS and a couple of my cities.

Spoiler :

civmayarel1.png



So far WotP accounted for 2200 :c5culture: , or about 40% of my culture.
 
So far WotP accounted for 2200 :c5culture: , or about 40% of my culture.

Ok now we are getting somewhere, this is a good metric....do you know how many missionaries you have used so far in your spreads? Then we could compare it to Apostolic Palace and see how the two would have compared.
 
ToThePain, thanks for the reply. Hmm, my strategy for WotP is not only to weaken my missionaries, but also to intentionally ignore smaller cities and focus exclusively on the bigger cities, not trying to full convert any AI. I imagine the second part of my strategy is not common missionary use, because usually you'll want to convert as many cities as possible?

Randomnub, that's great, thanks for showing that!

Stalker0, the main benefit from WotP compared to Apostolic is that the latter is basically only useful very early before the AI has spread its religion everywhere and later on only when converting via Great Prophets. On Deity, unless I'm playing Ethiopia, Maya, Spain,..., I can't benefit from Apostolic that much because the AI is so quick in spreading religion. Whereas with WotP I can benefit it either in the beginning (because AI's pantheon followers count as foreign religion followers) or later in the game. Plus with WotP I'll never spread with Great Prophets because I'll get much less culture from 4 spreads than if I use that faith for 10 or 20 missionaries, giving me 20-40 spreads. So that's why I think it's hard to compare the two...
 
Exactly, I'd only pick Apostolic if I have good reasons to think I'll be the only founder on my continent. In this game so far I would have benefit from Apostolic quite a lot for the first 3-4 missionaries (when converting my own cities and nearby CSs), getting more culture and a bigger capital, but after that I couldn't easily flip enemy cities (I would have picked the enhancer that erodes enemy pressure but still...). Apostolic performs good, but Pilgrim stays relevant the whole game. I bought 9 missionaries fwiw, 4 of them at full price, and only 3 of them had 3 uses thanks to Borobudur; I already reported a bug with existing missionaries not upgrading... saved 3 of them around for nothing. Now that I have reformed and flipped the nearby CSs every single future missionary (225 faith, Renaissance+Piety) is going to be tossed into Siam or Lisbon capitals for about 250x3 culture and minimal follower gains.

Edit: oh look, new patch. New game. :crazyeye:
 
Exactly, I'd only pick Apostolic if I have good reasons to think I'll be the only founder on my continent. In this game so far I would have benefit from Apostolic quite a lot for the first 3-4 missionaries (when converting my own cities and nearby CSs), getting more culture and a bigger capital, but after that I couldn't easily flip enemy cities (I would have picked the enhancer that erodes enemy pressure but still...). Apostolic performs good, but Pilgrim stays relevant the whole game.

But Early > Late. For example, I will often use Apostolic to get me a key policy I need to snag a wonder, something I may not have been able to do with WOTP in the early game. But of course maybe your right and you get such a crazy late game culture hit for WOTP it actually blows AP out of the water. That's why we want to get some data points.

So for example. you mentioned that you are getting 750 culture late game with single missionary for WOTP. What turn time is that, and how much faith is it costing you?
 
Not late, now. In renaissance. I wrote 225 :c5faith: for ~750:c5culture:. In Medieval it was 200 :c5faith: for ~375 :c5culture:, or 150 :c5faith: for ~500 :c5culture: with Fealty/Borobudur. I had a strong early game (manage to hit #3 baktun on t52, razed Boudicca 3rd city twice in two wars to have enough breathing room... bad luck with CS but can't complain) and with Progress I can only snowball harder. That to say that even with no missionary micro and busy converting CSs and own cities (for 0 gain through WotP, unlike Apostolic) in order to reform I am pretty happy with the ~t100 results. Now that's also Maya allowing some lenient early game due to their kit, if I played a weaker early game civ I might have picked Apostolic, or gone Authority for a totally different game...

From now on it can only become ridiculous, judging from earlier stories about missionaries sent into 60 pop holy cities. While at the same time Apostolic would be next to useless.
 
WOTP will always be better later on than Apostolic if you use your faith to send missionaries but you can spend your faith on other things, and build other wonders, take polices other than fealty. Now maybe the bonuses for committing this hard are worth it but it isn't automatic. It is also a lot harder for normal civs without faith generation to do this. A religion civ should be able to do something pretty powerful with religion.

There are plenty of powerful things that are useless late game but they snowball you enough early game. Things that are useless early but powerful late are a much harder sell.
 
In Medieval it was 200 :c5faith: for ~375 :c5culture:,

This is a good benchmark. With Apostolic I'm lucky to get 250 culture for the equivalent faith. Now I do get food along with it (which at this stage in the game is quite useful)....but that is a big culture difference, and that's at the time when Apostolic is supposed to shine. If this results are consistent than I agree there should be an adjustment.
 
But Early > Late. For example, I will often use Apostolic to get me a key policy I need to snag a wonder, something I may not have been able to do with WOTP in the early game. But of course maybe your right and you get such a crazy late game culture hit for WOTP it actually blows AP out of the water. That's why we want to get some data points.

So for example. you mentioned that you are getting 750 culture late game with single missionary for WOTP. What turn time is that, and how much faith is it costing you?

Its not really late, it's mid game culture. Apostolic beats WOTP for culture initially but as soon as religion has spread to cities, Apostolic's culture falls off a cliff. WOTP continues to be a huge source of culture, and converts faith to culture at somewhere between 2-3 culture per faith. In the mid - late game, this converts faith to culture better than anything else. Faith should b eused for WotP missionaries up until its possible to buy great people, and sometimes, even then.

@LifeOfBrian - I also use the missionaries on the largest cities.
 
I did a run with Byzantium using WOTP to see what my experiences were. I wanted to see just how much I could squeeze out of the belief.

From turns 114 - 127 I converted France who was my only neighbor. France had no religion, but even so I managed to get 600 culture from the effort. Its less than I would get from AP, especially considering my own city conversions....but it was better than I expected.

But then the real test took place a bit later. I went ahead and used some faith to get my GP for enhancing, and to buy Monasteries.
Then starting on Turn 192 I bought a massive amount of missionaries (54 in total!!!!) before the Renaissance cost increase (with Borobodur). I also have Fealty for a further cost decrease, making my missionaries only 120 faith at the moment.

I found my target.... Babylon with a holy city, and then Denmark to the east of that....who had been taking the pressure from Babylons religion. So I went in for the kill!

Now for this test, I decided not to abuse any missionary attrition. I wanted to see how good this was straight up, so I had Open Borders on. That said, Babylon's holy city was only taking 500 pressure at a time.... which was very strange because I didn't see any holy buildings for the beliefs. The other cities took 900 pressure at a time. I generally bombed them until the culture dropped to 90, then I moved on to another city. I converted all of Babylon, a bit of Denmark, and a couple of CS. Ultimately I wasn't trying to be super optimal, just converting the cities I found along the way.

After the dust settled by Turn 200, here are the stats:

Culture Gained: 20,477
Faith Spent: 6,560
Culture Per Faith: 3.17
Culture Per Faith (removing Byzantium's 15% discount): 2.71

Missionary Charges: 141 (Avg: 2.61 charges per missionary....aka some missionaries were before borobadur, and I used a few charges to finish my own city conversions).
Avg Culture Per Charge Spent: 145 (this is probably the best metric because this ignores the faith spends that have a Byzantium bias and just shows us raw missionary efficiency. Aka for any civ, even one with lower faith....could expect this kind of efficiency)

Culture Conclusions: So I already knew that WOTP scaled well into the late game....but what this run showed me was just how good WOTP can be in the midgame. These are very good numbers, 145 culture per charge is honestly as good as AP is in the initial expansion phase, and this belief maintains it a lot longer. While it does take longer for this to ramp up compared to AP....it holds its strengths for much much longer. Further, in this run I was mostly isolated, and my neighbor did not have their own religion. Had I been more religiously crowded, I could have gotten those culture numbers even sooner.

Overall I was incredibly impressed with WOTP culture output, and I now agree with the other posters in this thread that it blows AP away in terms of culture output.


Tourism Notes
So I've often said that tourism in the early game does so little I basically ignore it as a yield. However, WOTP provides such a powerful and focused tourism benefit that it actually needs to be accounted for. I produced ~17,500 tourism to Babylon along the way (rough number, I didn't track it precisely but I have ~20k right now and other civs I haven't bombed are about 1500). That is enough to be influential for days...which this early in the game does mean something from a trade route perspective. The fealty finisher actually works really well here. I had the 10% open borders bonus, but then once I hit the tipping point and made Babylon my religion, I was now getting a 50% tourism boost from shared religion. That combined with the bombs gave me an exceptional tourism push.
 
Stalker, thanks for such a detailed analysis, glad to hear it! May I make one suggestion? Load the game on turn 192, have your missionaries attrition to 250 strength (either in Babylon territory before making a deal for open borders or in territory of another civ, perhaps the French) and only then use them all up the same way you did now. I'm really curious how much more culture and tourism you'll get that way.
 
Stalker, thanks for such a detailed analysis, glad to hear it! May I make one suggestion? Load the game on turn 192, have your missionaries attrition to 250 strength (either in Babylon territory before making a deal for open borders or in territory of another civ, perhaps the French) and only then use them all up the same way you did now. I'm really curious how much more culture and tourism you'll get that way.

Unfortunately my autosaves will only take me back 5 turns which isn't enough. What I will do though is continue the run and make of bunch of new missionaries, and this time try it as you mentioned.
 
I made a new batch of missionaries and went after India. This time I tried to use the "attrition cheat" to see if I can milk even more culture. The AI actually gave me a big help here. I hit one of India side cities and the capital, and India used inquisitors in both cities to reset me. As a result, I got a lot of efficiency with these missionaries.

Culture Gained: 9,205
Faith Spent: 3,610 (Missionaries were 190 now)
Culture Per Faith: 2.55
Missionary Charges: 57 (Avg: 3 charges per missionary)
Avg Culture Per Charge Spent: 161
Avg Culture Per Charge Spent (Capital Only): 177


I think that decaying the missionary helped a little....but the fact that the AI inquisitor me was a much bigger factor, getting me the juicy 250 type numbers again and again. Also with Borobudur you can only attrition one time if you want to make full use of all of yours charges.


To highlight the bonus in simpler terms, I am currently 4 full policies ahead of my 2nd place competitor....as Progress and with more cities than anyone else. I do have Mendicancy and Veneration gives me a bit of a boost....but the vast majority of my culture lead seems to be due to the WOTP.

Edit: So far it seems the best "milking" I can do, is to send missionaries into a bad border, draining them to 250 pressure. Then send those missionaries into a fresh Open Bordered enemy capital. With that I can get my Culture per Charge up to about 286. So that exploit can push me about 50% better than what I'm doing normally....which yeah could be pretty exploitative.
 
Last edited:
There is of course, one risk of doing conversions in a place where you don't have open borders....a risk I think you will evitably hit if you use this strat consistently....the war declare kill all your missionary move.

Spoiler :

upload_2020-11-15_18-21-26.png

 
I did a run with Byzantium using WOTP to see what my experiences were. I wanted to see just how much I could squeeze out of the belief.

From turns 114 - 127 I converted France who was my only neighbor. France had no religion, but even so I managed to get 600 culture from the effort. Its less than I would get from AP, especially considering my own city conversions....but it was better than I expected.

But then the real test took place a bit later. I went ahead and used some faith to get my GP for enhancing, and to buy Monasteries.
Then starting on Turn 192 I bought a massive amount of missionaries (54 in total!!!!) before the Renaissance cost increase (with Borobodur). I also have Fealty for a further cost decrease, making my missionaries only 120 faith at the moment.

I found my target.... Babylon with a holy city, and then Denmark to the east of that....who had been taking the pressure from Babylons religion. So I went in for the kill!

Now for this test, I decided not to abuse any missionary attrition. I wanted to see how good this was straight up, so I had Open Borders on. That said, Babylon's holy city was only taking 500 pressure at a time.... which was very strange because I didn't see any holy buildings for the beliefs. The other cities took 900 pressure at a time. I generally bombed them until the culture dropped to 90, then I moved on to another city. I converted all of Babylon, a bit of Denmark, and a couple of CS. Ultimately I wasn't trying to be super optimal, just converting the cities I found along the way.

After the dust settled by Turn 200, here are the stats:

Culture Gained: 20,477
Faith Spent: 6,560
Culture Per Faith: 3.17
Culture Per Faith (removing Byzantium's 15% discount): 2.71

Missionary Charges: 141 (Avg: 2.61 charges per missionary....aka some missionaries were before borobadur, and I used a few charges to finish my own city conversions).
Avg Culture Per Charge Spent: 145 (this is probably the best metric because this ignores the faith spends that have a Byzantium bias and just shows us raw missionary efficiency. Aka for any civ, even one with lower faith....could expect this kind of efficiency)

Culture Conclusions: So I already knew that WOTP scaled well into the late game....but what this run showed me was just how good WOTP can be in the midgame. These are very good numbers, 145 culture per charge is honestly as good as AP is in the initial expansion phase, and this belief maintains it a lot longer. While it does take longer for this to ramp up compared to AP....it holds its strengths for much much longer. Further, in this run I was mostly isolated, and my neighbor did not have their own religion. Had I been more religiously crowded, I could have gotten those culture numbers even sooner.

Overall I was incredibly impressed with WOTP culture output, and I now agree with the other posters in this thread that it blows AP away in terms of culture output.


Tourism Notes
So I've often said that tourism in the early game does so little I basically ignore it as a yield. However, WOTP provides such a powerful and focused tourism benefit that it actually needs to be accounted for. I produced ~17,500 tourism to Babylon along the way (rough number, I didn't track it precisely but I have ~20k right now and other civs I haven't bombed are about 1500). That is enough to be influential for days...which this early in the game does mean something from a trade route perspective. The fealty finisher actually works really well here. I had the 10% open borders bonus, but then once I hit the tipping point and made Babylon my religion, I was now getting a 50% tourism boost from shared religion. That combined with the bombs gave me an exceptional tourism push.

Thanks for doing this. I don't think that any other founder converts faith to culture at the same rate?

Tradition Celts with WotP and veneration is a very strong culture engine. Veneration is relatively better for smaller empires. For the Celts, they don't generate foreign pressure, so WoTP is especially strong. The tourism makes trade routes give growth, which really helps for tradition. I actually managed to win a 5 city Immortal tourism victory with this strategy, on an incredibly easy map. (Mountains made it so that there were only three mountain passes to access my empire, and a coast.)
 
Top Bottom