Opening Piety?

[TheGrumpyBuddha]

I'm going to stand by and clarify my earlier thoughts on Piety. In the early game, Social Policies are about getting as much free stuff as possible to kick-start your empire. Tradition excels at this; a free Monument in your next three cities, plus what's typically an amphitheatre in your capital. It also offers a lot of gold, happiness, food, and later aqueducts.

It's a little sad but it's almost as if the Piety (and Honor, come to think of it) trees handicapped themselves by trying to not look like Tradition.

If the Piety starter was +3 Faith in your capital, and then the next step was a free shrine in every city, or free temple if you have a shrine, it'd be stronger, but it'd look just like Tradition, just Culture swapped out for Faith. Similarly, if Honor gave you a free Barracks, it'd be a little stronger, but again, look too much like Tradition.

 

[VicRatlhead5199]

It's a little sad but it's almost as if the Piety (and Honor, come to think of it) trees handicapped themselves by trying to not look like Tradition.

If the Piety starter was +3 Faith in your capital, and then the next step was a free shrine in every city, or free temple if you have a shrine, it'd be stronger, but it'd look just like Tradition, just Culture swapped out for Faith. Similarly, if Honor gave you a free Barracks, it'd be a little stronger, but again, look too much like Tradition.

I'd be perfectly fine with them imitating tradition in that manner, at least then the trees would be more balanced.

 

[Zaimejs]

What a great idea... Liberty=free granary, Barracks for honor and shrine for piety.

Why not? That would be much better than the way it is now. I don't mind Liberty as it stands... but man... piety. What the heck?

 

[kaspergm]

I wouldn't necessarily be against such an idea, but I still think that Piety (and Honor) don't necessarily have to stand up against Tradition and Liberty. I think Tradition/Liberty working as primary trees and Honor/Piety(/Patronage/Aesthetics/Commerce/Exploration) working as secondary support trees (possibly taking mixed with primary tree) works fine.

That is not saying that Piety is fine as it is. I do think there are major issues with Piety, the most urgent being that most of the Piety policies benefit you very little in early game. 20 % discount on religious purchases is completely irrelevant until after you've founded and most often also enhanced your religion, which is not going to happen before late classical/early medieval era. Temple and Holy Site gold similarly will not benefit you before you've got several of these up and running, again not going to happen before medieval era. Religious Tolerance is a gamble and won't help you till someone has started spreading their religion into your land - again, medieval era is a good guess. The opener and Organized Religion does help you a lot founding a religion, but the benefit from these could be merged into one policy without being unreasonably powerful imo.

All of that wouldn't be too much of a problem - you could just open tree, perhaps pick organized religion, and then wait with rest - if not for the Reformation policy. This one provides a real dilemma, because if you pick Piety, a major part of this is to get a good reformation belief (and unfortunately (?) AI does know which ones are the good ones), so you have to either walk through a handful of mediocre policies that won't help you til much later in order to grab a good Reformation, or you will most likely see the reformation beliefs of choice being taken by some suicidal AI who went all-in on Piety from start only to be annihilated by someone else soon after.

Not sure what the best solution to this problem is. Moving up reformation beliefs to earlier in the tree might work (possibly calling them something else), but not sure that's ideal for balance? Other ideas that might solve this problem?