LifeOfBrian
King
- Joined
- Aug 21, 2019
- Messages
- 757
I've been thinking that The Way of the Pilgrim founder belief (gain 15 culture and tourism when spreading your religion to cities with followers of other religions, scaling with how many there are) is inherently unbalanced because the way to maximize its benefits is so specific & counterintuitive it's hard to teach the AI how to do it, so it'll always be much better in human hands vs. the AI's hands. I've been decreasing the numbers from 15 to 10, to 7 and eventually to 5, but the point remains that while I can make it comparable in human hands to other founder beliefs, it'll still be underused by the AI if it picks it.
Why? Because the way to go is to 1.) pick the fealty opener even if you then go to Statecraft or Artistry, 2.) intentionally weaken your missionaries before using them and 3.) purposely using them against the holy cities/biggest AI cities where they'll make the smallest dent. That goes against the AIs principles for missionary spread, so I'm not sure how to "teach" the AI how to follow both rules. As a human, if I have open borders with my target civ, I'll leave my missionaries in the lands of some other AI to attrition down to the strength of 250 before moving them to the lands of my target AI, using them twice at the strength of 250. If I don't have open borders with my target AI, I'll move my missionaries next to the target cities and let them attrition to 500, so the first time I use them they'll be at 500 strength, and the second (last) time I use them they'll be at 250 strength. Because they're so weak, the number of my followers will increase as slowly as possible and the number of other religions' followers will decrease as slowly as possible, both allowing me to gain more culture from using the WotP on that city. After a while (for example when in a 20 pop AI capital there'll be 4 or 5 of my followers) I'll ignore that city for a while and target another city (or another civ altogether), keeping my eye on when it'll be inquisitioned/purified of my followers so I can reap full benefits from using WotP on it again.
I haven't seen the AI use these tactics, in fact the AI never uses missionaries against my holy city, I've never seen the AI pick only the fealty opener, nor any of the other tactics. So there's a lot of "lost" yields from suboptimal play when the AI picks WotP. I'd recommend changing the WotP altogether 'cause it's an inherently AI-unfriendly game mechanic. Given the constraints of not using new code, I'm not sure how I'd change it, but if there's no other ideas, perhaps I'd simply have an alternative to Apostolic tradition where instead of food&culture you'd get some other type of yields upon increasing the number of your followers via missionaries/great prophets. Alternatively I'd go for something like GA 30% longer, 2GAP in all your cities and 15% more culture in your cities during GAs - like a wide alternative to Divine inheritance.
Thanks for your replies
Why? Because the way to go is to 1.) pick the fealty opener even if you then go to Statecraft or Artistry, 2.) intentionally weaken your missionaries before using them and 3.) purposely using them against the holy cities/biggest AI cities where they'll make the smallest dent. That goes against the AIs principles for missionary spread, so I'm not sure how to "teach" the AI how to follow both rules. As a human, if I have open borders with my target civ, I'll leave my missionaries in the lands of some other AI to attrition down to the strength of 250 before moving them to the lands of my target AI, using them twice at the strength of 250. If I don't have open borders with my target AI, I'll move my missionaries next to the target cities and let them attrition to 500, so the first time I use them they'll be at 500 strength, and the second (last) time I use them they'll be at 250 strength. Because they're so weak, the number of my followers will increase as slowly as possible and the number of other religions' followers will decrease as slowly as possible, both allowing me to gain more culture from using the WotP on that city. After a while (for example when in a 20 pop AI capital there'll be 4 or 5 of my followers) I'll ignore that city for a while and target another city (or another civ altogether), keeping my eye on when it'll be inquisitioned/purified of my followers so I can reap full benefits from using WotP on it again.
I haven't seen the AI use these tactics, in fact the AI never uses missionaries against my holy city, I've never seen the AI pick only the fealty opener, nor any of the other tactics. So there's a lot of "lost" yields from suboptimal play when the AI picks WotP. I'd recommend changing the WotP altogether 'cause it's an inherently AI-unfriendly game mechanic. Given the constraints of not using new code, I'm not sure how I'd change it, but if there's no other ideas, perhaps I'd simply have an alternative to Apostolic tradition where instead of food&culture you'd get some other type of yields upon increasing the number of your followers via missionaries/great prophets. Alternatively I'd go for something like GA 30% longer, 2GAP in all your cities and 15% more culture in your cities during GAs - like a wide alternative to Divine inheritance.
Thanks for your replies