Poll: Location of the 1st Great Prophet spawning

[LifeOfBrian]

I've had numerous games where either my 1st Great Prophet spawned far away from my capital (despite my attempts to not make it so, by artificially reducing the faith in other cities so it would spawn in my capital) or it happened to the AI, making their holy city not the capital, but some 4th or 5th city that is near the borders (making them lose their religion upon conquer much faster than if it were in the capital). The current system imo is neither human-friendly nor AI-friendly and I fail to see any real benefits if the game allows for the great prophet to spawn elsewhere and not in the capital.

So I wanted to see if there's perhaps a broad consensus in the community for changing the system so the 1st Great Prophet would always spawn in the capital. If you have any other ideas or alternatives, please let us know in the comments, there might be another, better solution than both the current system and the idea of always spawning in the capital.

Thanks for the votes&feedback!

 

[psparky]

I much prefer the current system for the variety it provides. If it is changed, it would be nice if there was a global define to revert to the current system.

 

[youngsteve]

I don't even know how it works. Heard it was the city with most faith each turn, but this turned out not so true in a recent game. Great Prophet is born in secondary city, even though my capital had more faith beeing produced. Being annoyed as I had no road to capital at this time & close to religions being all taken, I reloaded the previous go, & this time was born in my capital. Crazy.

 

[ilteroi]

it goes into the city which takes you over the threshold. so tends to be the city with the highest faith generation but not always.

 

[Milae]

Pretty sure this is what decides it:

Spoiler Code :

if(MOD_BALANCE_CORE_BELIEFS)
{
int iBestWeight = 0;

int iTempWeight;

CvCity* pLoopCity;
int iLoop;
CvGame& theGame = GC.getGame();
for(pLoopCity = kPlayer.firstCity(&iLoop); pLoopCity != NULL; pLoopCity = kPlayer.nextCity(&iLoop))
{
iTempWeight = pLoopCity->GetFaithPerTurn() * 5;
iTempWeight += theGame.getSmallFakeRandNum(15, kPlayer.GetPseudoRandomSeed() + iLoop);

if(iTempWeight > iBestWeight)
{
iBestWeight = iTempWeight;
pBestCity = pLoopCity;
}
}
}
if(pBestCity != NULL)
{
pSpawnCity = pBestCity;
}

So basically the city with most faith per turn will usually get it, but any city with 1 or 2 less has a chance.

 

[LifeOfBrian]

Thanks for the code/explanation!

So that means the system is far more easy to manipulate by a human player (i.e. a turn before GP generation you manually decrease the faith in those cities you don't want your GP to spawn, then on the next turn reinstate back, for example by (not) working national wonders & other tiles that grant faith yields)...

 

[azum4roll]

The AI can actually lose their religion if their holy city revolts. Which is funny seeing that city states can't build missionaries/prophets even as a founder...

 

[General_Drax]

Capital for sure. Let me decide if I want to found in another city.

Very unlikely for Tradition, maybe for Authority. I do not play Progress at all so that's it =).

 

[Stalker0]

I personally feel that 95% of the time I want the GP in my capital, and the times that I don't, the GP won't necessarily go in the city I want it to anyway. So I say capital always, and then if I want to move it, I move it.

 

[Bryan317]

I was torn on this. For variety it would be nice to see holy cities be something other than the capital. But the main issue is what you brought up at the beginning of your topic... The AI needs the prophet to always spawn at the capital in order to keep the game challenging and balanced.

 

[SuperNoobCamper]

In very niche (like going for Hero worship) situations i prefer to have my holy city to be a non-capital city given my capitalwould be almost always busy building World/National wonders and i don't want to clog the production waiting list even more with the religious wonder.
But most of the time i would like it to spawn in the capital as it's especially crucial for some strategies to work and some beliefs like Symbolism for Arabia and generally Council of Elders for wonder purposes become non options if the GP spawned in a satellite.

 

[Fluffball]

I chose first prophet in the capital partly because i always move it to my capital if it doesn't spawn there, i agree that the AI potentially suffers if a prophet spawns in a none capital and because the current system has a double random.i.e. there is a random roll every turn after you have enough faith for a great prophet and then a 'none controllable' spawn point. Playin epic most religions religions tend to go within a 20 turn window and the last 2-3 can all go within 2-3 turns.

The random turn you get a prophet can already decide if you get a religion or not and then if you do get a prophet and it is not in your capital you can potentially lose out on a religion just moving it for one turn.

I like a bit of uncertainty but losing out on a religion as your prophet spawned multiple turns after you had enough faith and then having it spawn in an outlying city is a bi too much for me and one of the few times i tend to save scum.

 

[psparky]

there is a random roll every turn after you have enough faith for a great prophet

In VP, the prophet always spawns as soon as you have enough faith - no roll needed

 

[bahamut19]

I like having the Prophet be in my largest faith producing city, especially since some pantheons give yields to the capitol and the holy city. Why not have 2 cities with a little bit of a yield boost?

Plus, how many nations have their holy city in their current capitol in real life (I know the game isn't real life, just furthering my argument)? Riyadh is a capitol, Mecca is not. Riyadh is great for industry and business, Mecca is great for tourism and faith generation. Tel Aviv is a capitol, Jerusalem is not. Tehran is a capitol, Qom is not. Jakarta is a capitol, Yogyakarta is not. I could go on and on, but I think you get my idea. Holy cities were rarely (yes,there are exceptions) the cities famous for commerce, trade, or governance.

 

[azum4roll]

At least make the Holy City immune to revolutions if we intend to keep this system.

 

[PlanarFreak]

With the current way Holy Cities work, it feels like the optimal move is to always found in the Capital.
This makes it frustrating when it's difficult to control where the Great Prophet actually spawns.
So it seems like the solution would be to make the Great Prophet spawn in the Capital...
And if nothing else were changed about the game, that would be my vote.

But I do think it would be nice to go in a different direction - after all, I think it would make the game less interesting if Holy City = Capital for every Civ and Religion.
So I think I'm the only one who voted for Option #3, haha!

Here's my idea:
I think that the game in general could benefit from better city specialization (not just for Faith, but for Science, Production, and Gold).
In short, make more incentives for the player to found the Holy City in a different city from the Capital.
Unfortunately, ideas are cheap... I can say this, but it would be a lot of work to design and implement such a thing.

If such a thing could be done, it would still need a more deterministic way to place the first Great Prophet.
Always spawning in the Capital would then be less optimal, as the player would more often have good reason to Found elsewhere.
Instead, the Great Prophet would always spawn in the City with the highest Faith (using the cities' age or population as the tiebreaker).
After all, if specialization was rewarding, the city with the highest Faith would more than likely be the optimal spot anyways.
Honestly, I think using highest Faith is also a pretty good idea for the game as-is; even if placement is frustrating, it has the benefits of being intuitive and thematic.

And while I'm here... a final thought:
No matter what method is chosen for spawning, there will always be a chance for frustration because there will always be exceptional cases.
Which means the only way to ensure that there won't be frustration would be to allow the player to directly choose the spawning city.
Now from my understanding of the underlying system, it's not possible to allow the player to purchase the Great Prophet in any city, as none of the cities have a Religion yet.
So the only way I can think of to accomplish this is to create an event to allow the Player to choose from among their current cities.
This method is very game-like, but it isn't bad either since it provides maximum freedom.

 

[DeAnno]

Another way to smooth the path to founding wherever would be to give GPs more movement. As it is at 2 moves it's extremely costly in time to move the GP around, even if you already have a road network. If they even had 4 like missionaries sometimes they would be able to jump whole cities on the first turn.