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
So after my runthrough with WOTP...I do agree that some changes need to be made. The culture production is much stronger than I realized until I really sat down and saw it go.

That said, I don't think a fundamental rethink is needed yet. Its true that the human can "milk" the belief more than the AI can...but I can say that about a lot of things in Civ 5. Its the simple fact that the policy gives such a large amount of culture for such a long time that makes it too good.

I think the simplest answer would be to put a cap on the maximum amount of culture you can get from a single conversion. That way it can still be really good (probably still the best faith -> culture converter), but a cap ensures the culture / faith ratio never gets out of control and that a human can't exploit the system and get 300 - 250 culture a spread.
 
Stalker0 and tothePain, thanks for the replies.

Re: missionaries loss due to DoW, a recommendation:
- when having them attrition in foreign lands, have them embarked in a coastal tile far from the entrance to AI's cities - that way they'll be most safe in case of a DoW
- after that, have them escorted by your own military units when moving to their destination (you'll have open borders to get to there and with the target AI).
 
Ok, I did a small experiment with min-maxing WotP.

Four different scenarios. Two are with AI's holy city of Palenque (pop 22, starting with 21 foreign followers) and two are with AI's city of Calakmul (pop 10, 9 foreign followers). In all cases I have open borders with the Maya. In the first Calakmul scenario, I used 11 missionaries with 2 charges with 1000 strength, in the other I used 11 missionaries with 2 charges with 250 strength - because in both cases the returns soon became very small, I used just 1 charge, whereas in Palenque I used both charges. All missionaries were bought for 150 faith (Fealty opener discount). I intentionally didn't build Borobodur to see the strength of WotP with 2-charge missionaries.

#1

T176, Calakmul with 1000 strength missionaries (culture per charge):
150, 135, 120 x 2, 105 x 2, 90 x 5

Total of 1185 culture, which means 107,27 culture per 1 charge

#2

T176, Calakmul with 250 strength: 150, 135 x 5, 120 x 5

Total of 1425 culture, which means 129,45 culture per 1 charge.

#3

T181 Palenque with 250 strength (culture/tourism)
1x 330/544, 5x 315/519, 4x 300/495, 1x 285/478

T182: 5x 285/473, 6x 270/448

Total of 6435 culture, which means 292,5 culture per charge. I spent 1650 faith on 11 missionaries, which means a ratio of 3.9 culture per 1 faith. Total of 10650 tourism, which means 484,09 tourism per charge and 6.45 tourism per 1 faith.

#4

T181 Palenque with 1000 strength missionaries (culture/tourism)
1x 330/528, 1x 315/504, 1x 300/480, 1x 285/456, 2x 270/432, 1x 255/408, 2x 240/384, 2x 225/360

T182
1x 225/373, 3x 210/348, 4x 195/323, 3x 180/298

Total of 5130 culture, which means 233,18 culture per charge and 3,11 culture per 1 faith. Total of 8331 tourism, which means 378,68 tourism per charge and 5,05 tourism per 1 faith.

This shows a significant benefit to 1.) attritioning your missionaries to 250 (or at least 500 if you can't get open borders with the target civ) before using the first charge and 2.) focusing on AI's capital/biggest cities with the most foreign followers, even if that means cycling and waiting while the AI purges its own cities. I imagine with more effective use of inquisitors WotP will be even stronger because stationed inquisitors will further weaken your missionaries and will be quicker to restore the foreign followers.

In the Palenque case, the benefit from attritioning meant around 20% more culture gained. This was a relatively small sample of 11 missionaries, whereas in my WotP games I'll continue to use missionaries well into the Industrial era and sometimes even in Modern era considering the benefits are bigger than saving up for great writers. Only when I start to save for 4 great scientists do I stop purchasing missionaries.
 
I'm just going to nerf it to 10-scaling, instead of 15.

G
I think that's a fine change, but I would still put some kind of cap on the max value you can get. This reduces the human exploits to milk maximum effort out of it...while still leaving it as a very strong and solid belief.
 
I don't think this alone will solve the problem of significant difference in strength in the hands of 1) AI, 2.) human playing normally and 3.) human trying to maximize the benefits. This way, the AI that picks this founder will be even worse than before, while we'll still be able to milk a lot of culture&tourism out of it, especially if we get Borobodur.

I'd still rather have this reworked to something else, maybe for a wide GA founder, like I mentioned in the beginning, or have an alternative to Apostolic tradition (different yields).
 
@Gazebo , in your tests, how often does the AI take the nerfed Way of the Pilgrim and how does that AI usually fare? I've manually changed the values in ilteroi's new build to 10/10 and when I didn't pick it, I didn't see any AI taking it, and when I picked it, it was mediocre to the point I was wishing I had instead taken some other founder.
 
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