I think there are few enough religions in the game that it should be very hard to eliminate them completely.
I imagine there are a bunch of potential gameplay bugs that happen from not having a holy city. What happens if you raze the holy city, and then that religion is selected to be the world religion?
Do founder benefits disappear when the holy city disappears?
I still think that this "making cities other than the capital important" thing is way overblown as a design goal. It just isn't that important to be worth a whole bunch of mechanic changes, I already find second and third cities become very important by the midgame.
FYI, not razing holy cities looks to be part of the fall patch. We probably don't need to worry about it, and it seems like an okay change. The alternative might be to have an extra diplomatic penalty as a warmonger for doing it. I'm pretty sure attacking Jerusalem or Mecca or Qom would really annoy some folks based on the history of wars. Burning them to the ground and destroying holy sites really would.
But it seems simpler to just prevent it with a tag to preserve any bonuses that are associated with it.
Sure, but it also seems simpler to keep the current system where great prophets are spawned in your capital and where that is where the AI founds holy cities.
Right. The point is we probably don't need to do anything to make this an effective change. Firaxis is doing it for us, and all we're doing is deciding what that means. Which is not much, because it mostly applies to human quirks of settling a prophet somewhere else as a religion.
So I've been back at it and modding again. I went after adjusting the social policy trees (just for my game). I thought I might put it out there and see what people think. I started with the idea to just leave the trees alone as much as possible. I just wanted to fix what I considered to be dud policies. Here's the changes that I made:
Tradition:
Legalism - Changed from 4 free culture buildings to 2 free culture buildings.
Finisher - Changed from 4 free aqueducts to +3 food per city (this is merely due to the vanilla bug. I'd like to keep the aqueducts.)
Liberty:
Switched Collective Rule and Republic. Collective Rule is now required for Republic (was the other way around).
Collective Rule - Earlier in the tree now. Removed the Capital city Settler production bonus (since it's an earlier policy).
Republic - +2 production per city and 5% production for buildings (was +1).
Finisher - Got rid of the free great person. Added +5 flat happiness and +1 happiness per Arena.
Honor:
Finisher - Added a Golden Age to the finisher.
Piety:
Theocracy - Changed from 10% gold from temples to 25% gold from temples (reflecting the newest patch when it arrives).
Religious Tolerance - Removed the 2nd pantheon effect. Added a golden age. Added +1 faith per Theatre, Opera House, or Museum.
Patronage:
Merchant Confederacy - Changed from +1 gold per city state trade route to +3 gold per city state trade route.
Aesthetics:
Artistic Genius - Added -10% culture cost for future policies in addition to the free Great Artist.
Ethics - Removed -10% culture cost effect (moved to Artistic Genius). Added a free Great Artist, Great Musician, and Great Writer appearing. Artistic Genius policy now required as a prerequisite in addition to the Flourishing of the Arts policy that already was required. Moved it graphically in the tree a bit to reflect that.
Commerce:
Opener - Removed Capital city bonus. Added +2 gold per city.
Wagon Trains - Changed from +2 gold per land trade route to +8 gold per land trade route.
Trade Unions - Added -20% Building maintenance costs in addition to the -50% road maintenance costs already there.
Exploration:
Merchant Navy - Changed from +1 gold per Lighthouse, Harbor, or Seaport to +2 gold per Lighthouse, Harbor, or Seaport.
Navigation School - Kept the Great Admiral effects. Added +1 Science per Lighthouse, Harbor, or Seaport.
Rationalism:
Sovereignty - Changed from +1 gold to +2 gold on Science buildings.
I haven't tried playing with these settings yet, but I think that should be an improvement over the vanilla settings without requiring a complete overhaul.
Just had a thought on Piety. Many may not like the added faith for culture buildings. I play my games with much higher faith costs. In those games, the extra faith is needed and useful, so +1 faith for Theatres, Opera Houses, and Museums is pretty nice. I left off Monuments intentionally as I would like Monuments to be less powerful than those other buildings and merely give culture.
I also went with a strategy that I think the developers had in mind. They wanted weaker effects earlier in the tree and more powerful ones later. Also, later trees like Rationalism should be more powerful than earlier trees. The AI plays with a strategy of filling out 1 or 2 trees at a time and getting too far away from this strategy would give the human player an advantage over the AIs, thus making the game easier.
I also play my games with the unlocking eras for policies a bit different. Tradition, Liberty, and Honor are still ancient era. Everything else is pushed back 1 era.
The four free culture buildings is already a weak policy, because it mostly just gives you monuments, which are cheap, and because even if you get ampitheaters, they're not useful to get early because they're mostly a great works slot.
With only 2 buildings, this becomes a junk policy.
Got rid of the free great person. Added +5 flat happiness and +1 happiness per Arena.
This is weird synergy. Culture building bonuses don't belong in Piety, if anything they belong in Aesthetics.
And.... faith from museums and opera houses? That has very strange flavor.
Merchant Confederacy - Changed from +1 gold per city state trade route to +3 gold per city state trade route.
I actually like the free culture buildings. I view them as an aid to expanding your borders quicker than normally. This way you just build your cities and go about production and the culture boost expands your city limits faster. If anything code it in such a way that if the next tier culture buildings are available then they are built as well. Though that would probably be too much. Nevermind.
Religious Tolerance - Removed the 2nd pantheon effect. Added a golden age. Added +1 faith per Theatre, Opera House, or Museum.
I like that the useless 2nd Pantheon belief is gone but I too don't immediately see the connection of to these buildings. Yes an argument could be made for it but a more visible connection to a yield would be better, boost perhaps?
Added a free Great Artist, Great Musician, and Great Writer appearing.
Like Ahriman, I think a promotion effect to units would be better here to reflect the 'schooling in navigation', instead of boosts to the water buildings. What those promotions are however is problematic since by this time our navies should be up and running, so buffing land units for the sea is almost redundant. So I am not sure.
Having said that, any changes made are a step towards a better mod, even if a couple of steps are to the side.
-I might pair off the culture expansion rate effect in tradition with the free culture buildings, rather than reduce their number. It looks from the design sketch Thal intends this as a second tier pick right now instead of as required as it is in vanilla. (I don't think the intended extra culture on the culture buildings is necessary either, or it should be rather more limited to particular buildings if so).
- I note from the general public that monarchy's current design was regarded okay as well. This suggests the science bonus intended in the design plan isn't needed either and we could leave it more or less as is as a minor happiness/gold bump. That isn't a definitive opinion, but given that there doesn't seem to be a huge push to get rid of monarchy so far expressed here either as is, and a general feel that science bonuses are mostly unnecessary on top of growth advantages and the science penalty for wider empires?
Liberty in GEM used a 20% settler bonus in all cities rather than the 50% bonus in the capital. A policy that's just a free settler isn't that expansionary because part of the appeal of going wide is to keep being able to expand a little faster on top of getting a quick bump from one free city. I'd also agree we should move happiness earlier into the tree. There's a blank slate for the immigration related policy in liberty on Thal's slate that could be used for the either extra production or to provide happiness. It's definitely too powerful with both a flat happiness and bonus to arenas, and as a finisher rather than as a policy pick. If there's a pick here that needs a buff, it's the opener, and bonus production might be the best place to park there (either to 10% to buildings or +1 to city) and to change "Republic" into a flat happiness effect.
I think the arenas bonus would be fine in Honor if needs be. I assume the reason the golden age is added is that Honor's finisher scored really poorly in the overall ballot and might be seen as too weak (I'm not sure why, gold from kills is pretty strong). But it's re-arranged in Thal's design. And for the most part, that design for Honor looks "strong enough" in how it is re-arranged, with the possible exception of the opener being somewhat limited. We could buff it by playing with the numbers if the effects are too weak.
Piety: I also don't like the faith on the culture buildings option. If there's any faith-culture crossover policy wise, it should be from being able to buy certain culture buildings with faith, as needed, or be able to gain some small culture bonuses from some combination of the following: holy sites/religious buildings/faith accumulation, holy city, to bump up the tree's competitive balance with other ancient trees for accumulating policies a bit.
I don't mind the golden age-tie in on Thal's design here, but I do mind it with a ton of happiness related effects concentrated in the tree rather than spread out to beliefs. Piety seems like it should interact strongly with faith and faith uses like religion rather than do a lot of other unrelated things.
(non-early trees, but thoughts anyway)
Spoiler:
Patronage - Agreed it might be better to have influence than extra gold. The gold boost is rather low relative to the science and tourism bonuses you get from major civs. I'd be fine with stripping out the CS quest for a trade route in favor of the influence advantage of having a trade route.
Aesthetics - The AND part is really strong.... I do really like moving forward the 10% discount, and it should be paired with something as it is a rather boring effect on its own. I don't like the idea of having two policies that give free great people in this tree plus the discounted rate, plus the ability to faith buy three different GPs. I'd rather see a boost to tourism or culture buildings here. I'm not sure the fall patch option is great here, because it mostly relies on open borders and trade routes to do so, but it's an effect we might want to use somewhere and is definitely more interesting than the 10% policy discount.
Commerce - +2 per city seems okay instead of the capital bonus. Favors wide a lot though. +1 and +5-10% per city might be sufficient as that would give tall a better reason to take a look at the tree.
Agreed, +8 might be overkill on wagon trains. I think wagon trains might be fine if it's getting the discount on roads/rails plus a minor increase from +2 to land routes. Fall patch is combining the GM faster plus the GM 2x stronger effects, so that's in. I don't like the landknecht mercenaries effect in the patch though. I'd rather commerce boosts gold and makes it more effective and the biggest problem in the tree, other than wagon trains, is the bonus science on gold buildings being combined with the discounted gold purchase costs. I'd consider adding a buff to internal city connections in this tree (or the freedom ideology), on top of buffing them anyway within the mod back toward vanilla figures.
Exploration: Merchant Navy/navigation school - seems like the best option would be a way to increase embarked speed and sight, possibly that of admirals as well, and maybe add XP to new naval units or a bonus to naval combat on the other policy, or some combination thereof. I'd consider adding a 20% bonus to archaeologist production and/or work speed in this tree as well somewhere. I would not add science to coastal buildings, and if the gold stays, I'd consider moving it to combine with the treasure fleets bonus. Vanilla's change to buff the East India Co national wonder is pretty lame as well.
Rationalism: Sovereignty gets pummeled with the gold. It's a lame effect, and not very powerful. I'd rather see one policy in this tree reduce the wide per city effect if possible and do some re-arranging of the tree.
About piety: One thing that is generally useful that piety actually gives very little of is faith. ven if you don't have a religion you can still buy buildings/units when a religion is spread to you. If not you can buy great persons with it. It is certainly more generally useful than bonuses on religous building which you only build to generate faith, and that you skip in many religions. I also think that it is reasonable that piety should be better if you found a religion, that is its niche. Further, I believe that it should give some gold/happiness/culture even if you can get these with a religion. Otherwise you just have to use your religion to compensate for not taking tradition/liberty which is inferior to having both.
Opener: 1 faith per city Generally useful, encourages early expansion. Better than liberty opener if it helps you get the right pantheon. Probably worse in the long run as the culture helps with border expansion.
Organized religion: build shrines and temples in half the time, shrines and temples provides +1 faith. Makes shrines/temples decent by gathering all the bonii in the same policy. Good if you make a temple/shrine religon. If you have a special temple building you can stop at this point.
Righteousness: +15% faith generation Scales well and rewards players for creating a good religion
Reformation: (requires Organized Religion and Righteousness) No change except the required policies. Having to take policies just to get a new one is not fun so I put it after the generally useful policies. There is a point in not making this the finisher so that you can get the extra belief for your religion without wasting too many policies
Religous Tolerance: Cities benefits from additional pantheon beliefs as before. -10% unhappiness from population. Piety needs some happiness and religous tolerance is generally not useful, though occasionally good (say if someone took desert faith from you). Since it is specialised it is better to remove it from the main chain to reformation. The change gives a bonus to tall empires to balance the bonus to wide from the opener, organised religion and religion in general.
Powerful clergy alternatively Peace of God
1 culture and gold for each city following your religion alternatively Immediate golden age, -33% cost of golden ages The fifth policy should give culture and pehaps gold. It would be fun to have an active bonus but that would probably be tied to spreading your religion. The golden age idea is not bad either
Finisher: Free Great prophet. Holy sites give + 3 gold +3 culture The problem with "free" great prophets is that it is hardly for free. The cost increase so rapidly that it is a small bonus if you can not get dynamic bonii for it.This is also what makes holy cities bad and why they need bonii. As it is now they are mostly a way to bank faith for great persons. If you can actually make the great prophet free that would be great. Otherwise you can give a discount on prophets by 25%.
I wasn't trying to say "This is the way it has to be" by making some changes. I was just trying to facilitate a discussion. It's a work in progress.
I don't particularly like the free faith on culture buildings effect either, but that 2nd pantheon effect is just so worthless. I was trying to replace it with something without adding more happiness. I think the Piety tree should be about religions only, which means things related to religious buildings or units. We're also limited to things that already exist in the Policies table, so many ideas just aren't feasible. For instance, the mechanic allowing the purchase of buildings with faith is broken in the game. It introduces bugs. Firaxis has to fix that or there would have to be a pretty extensive mod to do it. No simple fixes there.
I don't like the extra happiness so big at the end of the Liberty tree. I want to shift it earlier in the tree and re-arrange that a bit, also decreasing it from +5 to +3. I just think that the vanilla design has a major lack of happiness in the Liberty tree, which is what you need most if going wide so I started big.
I don't care for the Legalism policy in tradition. I always considered 4 free culture buildings to be too strong. I also don't like an arbitrary number of buildings when that type of stuff is dependent on map size. I want to change that, but not sure to what.
I added the Golden Age to the Honor closer because I was looking through the trees and that closer looked really weak compared to other tree's closers. Also, warring civs have happiness issue usually so Golden Ages are rare for them, so I thought a bonus one would be a nice complementary effect. I tried that one out yesterday and it was pretty good. I filled out the Honor tree. I was building an ancient era/classical era army and having trouble in gold due to unit maintenance. That Golden Age helped a bit and by the time that came I was ready to attack my neighbor and take his capital. Worked well.
I may change the wagon trains policy from +8 down to +6 for land trade routes. +2 is just so worthless. I was just trying to come up with a number that would make me actually use land trade routes. I came up with 8 because I was trying to think of what sea trade routes usually gave me and I remembered them being around +20 gold or so per route. Land trade routes are half of that, so maybe around +10 I guess. I figured it needed something to get caravans on par with cargo ships.
In Aesthetics, I was looking at the tree and saw the back end of the tree as really, really weak. A free great artist is okay, but not great. I thought combining that with the -10% future policy costs would make it finally a decent policy. Then, the question was what to do with Ethics. I wanted it to be something strong since it's at the end of the tree. I also didn't want to add any culture or tourism so not to throw off the balance there. If you notice, none of the changes I was making add any culture anywhere. 3 free great people may be too strong. Might want to just make it a great writer and great musician.
In Exploration the focus is on naval empires. I wanted to keep that so that means naval units or naval buildings. Options are limited there. The opener already adjusts naval units.
So I made some changes again today...tweaking it further.
I upped the free culture buildings for Legalism up to 3 from 2.
Re-structured Liberty somewhat. Moved +5 happiness to Meritocracy. Shifted the -5% unhappiness from population to the finisher. Shifted +1 happiness from city connections to the finisher. Added +1 production per city to the Liberty finisher. Republic still gives +2 production per city and +5% production for buildings. So liberty is focused on settlers, workers, happiness, and production with some culture bonuses too (on the opener and representation).
Adjusted the Piety tree again.
Opener - +1 faith per shrine. Half build times for shrines.
Organized Religion - +1 faith per temple. Half build times for temples.
Mandate of Heaven - -20% faith costs for religious units. (no change)
Theocracy - +3 gold on holy sites, +25% gold from temples, +1 faith for temples.
Religious Tolerance (or Free Religion as it's defining in the code) - +1 faith on culture buildings other than the monument and broadcast tower. Can't think of anything better to put here. Would like something else.
Reformation - Free Reformation Belief
Finisher - Free Great Prophet and +3 culture on holy sites.
Also, reduced land trade route gold down to +7 from +8 on Wagon Trains policy.
Ethics (Aesthetics) gives a free great writer and great musician (eliminated the great artist).
Still a work in progress, but I can give it a try. Definitely don't like that Religious Tolerance policy in Piety. I want to steer clear of giving more culture. Maybe +1 happiness on temples and shrines is a possibility. I'd like to keep that tree focuses on religion.
@Chumchu I'd dispute that faith is generally useful. Buying Great People comes late, missionaries and inquisitors are often more of a hassle (but are a sink) and belief-related costs are quite random. Great Prophets after number 2 also often just increase faith production via holy sites (though I think we can change that more back to culture and increase the costs of great prophets and lower the amounts of free ones available). I'm not saying we need less faith, but overloading it into Piety isn't the solution imho.
@EricB Looks nice, but I do think your list gets away from the core idea of the ideas posted in the opening post of this thread. Not sure what to say here
Meanwhile, I'd decided to go a bit over the thread and redo the opening post list with the not-detailed effects:
Tradition
Culture + Culture from Buildings
Gold and Happiness in Capital per pop Free City Defenses + Better Garrisons
faster construction of better Wonders Free Culture Buildings + Fast Border Expansion Free Growth + Growth Buildings
Faster Great People + little Science Wonder: Hanging Gardens?
Liberty
1 Culture per City + 1 free tile per city
5 Happiness + Faster Policy Rate Free Worker + faster Workers Free Settler + faster Settlers
Instant Gold + Cheaper Tile Buys 1 Production per City + 20% towards buildings*
Happy+Gold for City Connections Wonder: Parthenon (Smithy + better internal trade routes?)
Honour
Bonuses vs Barbarians
Bonuses from defeating Units and CS Cheaper Upgrades + more bonuses from pillaging Defensive Unit, faster construction of military + Happiness Buildings
Happiness/Culture from Garrisons OR barracks Free Great General, stronger units and generals
Happiness from Arenas, Science from Barracks Wonder: Zeus (doubles army)
Piety
1 Faith, 2 Gold
Immediate and Faster Golden Ages Happy on religious buildings & improvements Temples give Gold in % and 1 culture, Holy Sites give culture
Rel. Pressure and Defense per Pop, free temple Free Great Prophet, rel. buildings give 5 % towards Great People
Extra Belief Wonder: Hagia Sophia (earlier, takes missionary effect?)
*I moved the building bonus to the Policy, but it can stay on the wonder?
What's the +1 faith +2 gold policy on the opener? I wouldn't mind the +5% to GPs, as a little flavor, but I don't know that the great prophet needs the help as a separate policy.
What's religious buildings and improvements (holy sites?)
I've never really liked *having* to max out a policy tree just because of its finisher or fitting a theme that can change relatively quickly depending on your map choice.
This approach would be more flexible than specializing and the AI would manage policies better
The AI looks at the Policy Flavors when deciding what policy to take. Those would have to be meticulously accurate for the AI to select policies correctly.
I see a lot of culture being added in Thal's proposal. We really have to be careful about that. It's fine to mess around with speeding or slowing the policy rate, but there has to be a balance between culture and tourism or the culture victory will become too easy or too hard.
I'm not sure any of the policies can be tweaked to reflect map size, the variables would be too many to account for. So perhaps leaving the number of Free Buildings as they are for the time being.
@mitsho
So the Pyramids is now just a stand alone wonder with the same benefits?
Also could you edit the table to include the policy names above each description? Please?
I am unsure by what exactly "Rel. Pressure and Defense per Pop" does over the mechanics of religious pressure in the game currently. Care to elaborate?
Liberty's "Instant Gold". How are you imagining this to be determined? A fixed total, a pro rata on existing city numbers, population? This will need some 'fleshing out'.
Over all though, I quite like those ideas. They all seem to fit thematically and there doesn't seem to be any glaring over-buffed policies.
I think this discussion shows the variety of problems the original designers went through in developing this game. Even with policies laid out before us we all feel one is better than another or one needs to be fixed in some way. However each of us has a different "one policy". Consensus modding, you have to love it!
I dunno, I thought 1 faith was a bit too weak and I don't think faster shrines/temples are all that much worth it. It's a bit of a open question mark, that opener
I wouldn't mind the +5% to GPs, as a little flavor, but I don't know that the great prophet needs the help as a separate policy.
It's an open question mark. Basically from this thread, the production wonder is preferred which leaves the "Great Work Slot" and the "Free Settler + Faster Worker" to battle it out between each other. It's not a question I want to answer definitively right now...
Also could you edit the table to include the policy names above each description? Please?
Sure, but I'm not sure how this will help. I'll do it tomorrow though since I'll have to look up the names myself. The table above is a copy of Thal's tables in the opening post after all, only a bit more rudimentary since I didn't take the time to make it pretty in excel and post a screenshot here I'm just not motivated to do that right now though...
I am unsure by what exactly "Rel. Pressure and Defense per Pop" does over the mechanics of religious pressure in the game currently. Care to elaborate?
It basically doubles the pressure your religion dishes out, pretty similar to the Grand Temple National Wonder. It's one of Thal's suggestions from the opening post.
Liberty's "Instant Gold". How are you imagining this to be determined? A fixed total, a pro rata on existing city numbers, population? This will need some 'fleshing out'.
Instant Gold works per era as it did in GEM. It was around 100 for classical era (and standard speed) if I remember correctly. But yes, fleshing out is sthg all of them need, but that is just balancing, you know, haggling over the numbers
Over all though, I quite like those ideas. They all seem to fit thematically and there doesn't seem to be any glaring over-buffed policies.
I think this discussion shows the variety of problems the original designers went through in developing this game. Even with policies laid out before us we all feel one is better than another or one needs to be fixed in some way. However each of us has a different "one policy". Consensus modding, you have to love it!
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to these buildings. Yes an argument could be made for it but a more visible connection to a yield would be better, 
boost perhaps?
