[NFP] Post-Update Founder Beliefs

[yung.carl.jung]

I don’t get why people say it’s not worth founding a Religion? You can just build a few Holy Sites for faith etc.

Religions are nearly impossible on Deity, and they're simply bad. Holy Sites are good. Faith is good. Religions add nothing. I'd rather buy a builder with monumentality than spread my religion around. I'd rather buy a settler than "improve" my religion (which does very little..). Beliefs are weak AF. Pantheons are strong AF. That is why religions in and of themselves are weak. They offer close to zero benefit now that Choral Music is mostly gone.

Going for multiple Holy Sites for Monumentality is still a top-tier strat. But that doesn't even require a religion.

Allowing an AI to spread to you is unironically better than founding a religion on your own.

Religions are mostly good for era score, which is a testimony to their utter weakness currently. So many beliefs need a buff, and religion in general needs to be a worthwhile mechanic so that spreading is more beneficial. Currently it is completely removed from the game and almost any type of victory.

 

[acluewithout]

snip

I play Immortal mostly, so happy to defer to others on Deity. But I just don’t think Religion is hard to get if you’re building (or conquering) Holy Sites anyway and provided you have a larger map and are happy to get one late. You may have to run a project or two, but that’s not hardship. Not certain to get one, sure, but surely not that hard. Anyway, not going to argue about it.

Not hard to spread / support your Religion either. Just don’t use your Great Prophet until you’ve built all your cities. Then when you use the GP, all your cities with HS convert automatically. Defending your Religion is then pretty easy, just a Inquisitor and a Missionary.

Is the Religion that valuable? Meh. Yes, Beliefs are weak. Loyalty is helpful, but pretty situational. Era Score can be handy though. So, yeah, pretty weak overall but okay if you keep your investment limited. Hopefully Beliefs get buffed next patch.

 

[tedhebert]

I play Immortal mostly, so happy to defer to others on Deity. But I just don’t think Religion is hard to get if you’re building (or conquering) Holy Sites anyway and provided you have a larger map and are happy to get one late. You may have to run a project or two, but that’s not hardship. Not certain to get one, sure, but surely not that hard. Anyway, not going to argue about it.

Not hard to spread / support your Religion either. Just don’t use your Great Prophet until you’ve built all your cities. Then when you use the GP, all your cities with HS convert automatically. Defending your Religion is then pretty easy, just a Inquisitor and a Missionary.

Is the Religion that valuable? Meh. Yes, Beliefs are weak. Loyalty is helpful, but pretty situational. Era Score can be handy though. So, yeah, pretty weak overall but okay if you keep your investment limited. Hopefully Beliefs get buffed next patch.

It's not that they're so hard to get, especially non-diety games, but... they slow down every other aspects of first 50-75 turns, and for some strong civs, that's not important, but for some weaker civs, it can really make the game difficult. personnally, I feel the tradeoff really isn't worth it, unless i feel like going for RV. There's ample other interesting stuff to do in the game with your faith.

I also think that AI civs would be a LOT stronger if they just let go of religion if they're not RV oriented, especially in the early game.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

I play Immortal mostly, so happy to defer to others on Deity. But I just don’t think Religion is hard to get if you’re building (or conquering) Holy Sites anyway and provided you have a larger map and are happy to get one late. You may have to run a project or two, but that’s not hardship. Not certain to get one, sure, but surely not that hard. Anyway, not going to argue about it.

Not hard to spread / support your Religion either. Just don’t use your Great Prophet until you’ve built all your cities. Then when you use the GP, all your cities with HS convert automatically. Defending your Religion is then pretty easy, just a Inquisitor and a Missionary.

Is the Religion that valuable? Meh. Yes, Beliefs are weak. Loyalty is helpful, but pretty situational. Era Score can be handy though. So, yeah, pretty weak overall but okay if you keep your investment limited. Hopefully Beliefs get buffed next patch.

You're right in that it's not necessarily "hard" to get a religion or to spread a religion, but you're asking the wrong questions. Is it mathematically smart to get a religion? Will it make you stronger or will it make you win faster? Most of the time, no, allowing the AI to convert you will let you win faster.

I still found a religion every time I can, but little comes of it. The simple question is: Is it ever worth it to spread religion over buying a builder or Great Person? and the answer is "no" in 99% of cases.

 

[bengalryan9]

You're right in that it's not necessarily "hard" to get a religion or to spread a religion, but you're asking the wrong questions. Is it mathematically smart to get a religion? Will it make you stronger or will it make you win faster? Most of the time, no, allowing the AI to convert you will let you win faster.

FWIW, I'd say a majority of players don't particularly care about the answers to these questions. There are certainly players who shoot for the quickest most efficient victories possible, and that's fine, but some of us just like to found a religion for fun/to roleplay/to play around with different approaches. Your "right" questions may be completely different from someone else's "right" questions, and that's okay.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

FWIW, I'd say a majority of players don't particularly care about the answers to these questions. There are certainly players who shoot for the quickest most efficient victories possible, and that's fine, but some of us just like to found a religion for fun/to roleplay/to play around with different approaches. Your "right" questions may be completely different from someone else's "right" questions, and that's okay.

I don't always play for fast victories either, but even for roleplayers game balance matters, no? A roughly balanced game only makes RP possible, if anything. Just imagine, for a second, that Impi had 15 less combat strength. Just for the sake of argument. It would make them so horrible, that even with a massive army of Impis you could not ever beat a decently defensive AI. It makes it virtually impossible for you to roleplay as Shaka, which would be super frustrating. It's the same for religion.

I also don't always make "optimal" choices in my games, rather I try out lots of new/creative strategies. But you know which strategy I've never tried? Building a Neighborhood in every city. Because they're just mathematically horrible. They're barely even worth building for the Eurekahs.. Now if Neighborhoods were just a slight bit better, there might be a creative strategy around it, or I might build them more often when I'm roleplaying (neighborhood buildings are fun! yet I never get to use them). Currently, some systems in Civ 6 are just so horribly balanced that they do not allow for meaningful alternatives. That is where my problem lies, not with optimal play at all. I realize most people dgaf about fast win times, and that's totally fine. The game shouldn't be balanced around that solely.

 

[bengalryan9]

I don't always play for fast victories either, but even for roleplayers game balance matters, no? A roughly balanced game only makes RP possible, if anything. Just imagine, for a second, that Impi had 15 less combat strength. Just for the sake of argument. It would make them so horrible, that even with a massive army of Impis you could not ever beat a decently defensive AI. It makes it virtually impossible for you to roleplay as Shaka, which would be super frustrating. It's the same for religion.

I also don't always make "optimal" choices in my games, rather I try out lots of new/creative strategies. But you know which strategy I've never tried? Building a Neighborhood in every city. Because they're just mathematically horrible. They're barely even worth building for the Eurekahs.. Now if Neighborhoods were just a slight bit better, there might be a creative strategy around it, or I might build them more often when I'm roleplaying (neighborhood buildings are fun! yet I never get to use them). Currently, some systems in Civ 6 are just so horribly balanced that they do not allow for meaningful alternatives. That is where my problem lies, not with optimal play at all. I realize most people dgaf about fast win times, and that's totally fine. The game shouldn't be balanced around that solely.

Does balance really matter to role players, though? I would think there'd be an understanding that not everything is balanced in the real world. If I were a role player would it really bother me that, I don't know, Georgia is weaker overall than Rome? Probably not. I'm no historian, but weren't the Zulu at a pretty big disadvantage against the British in real life, too?

I build neighborhoods even though I know I probably shouldn't. I don't chop even though I know I probably should. Sometimes I build bad wonders. Can't really explain why, it's just personal preference. I wouldn't even call it strategy. I still win pretty easily on Deity while rolling random civs, so it's not like it's holding me back at all.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

Does balance really matter to role players, though?

of course it does. balance always matters, even when roleplaying on settler difficulty. you regularly see complains from roleplayers about their favorite UU being extremely weak, and for good reason imho. if a Civ has certain unique traits, those shouldn't be worthless. if Impi were literally worse than spearmen, I doubt most people would upgrade them, and even roleplayers would only upgrade them reluctantly.

I do definitely agree with you that balance is in the end a bit trivial since you can win on Deity while roleplaying and doing what you like. but that is only the current state of the game.

just for the sake of argument: what if the deity bonuses were given to settler AIs, and all other difficulties were made even harder? do you think most roleplayers, or peaceful players would not care about that? i doubt that, they'd be screaming bloody murder, and for good reason! ridiculous scenario obviously, but it just goes to show that a lot of things are only possible in somewhat balanced games. a semblance of balance is the precursor to any kind of meaningful gameplay. roleplaying is one of those things.

 

[Kwami]

I don't know. The only time I've lost or come close to losing against the AI was when I didn't found my own religion and the AI had a religious victory, or just about. If nothing else, founding and spreading your own religion to your own cities is a good defense against the AI winning a sneaky religious victory.

 

[berlin88]

I have yet to buy the new DLC, so I can only comment on what's in the patch, but here are my observations.

The first beliefs taken in my current game were choral music and synagogue, with religious settlement as the first pantheon belief to go. However, that was not consistent. I replayed the early part of the game multiple times, and the AI varied what religious beliefs it took, sometimes taking meeting house or fertility rites instead of religious settlements and synagogue, but always taking Choral Music.

I prefer to get Work Ethic and Meeting House as my first two beliefs, so I am largely unaffected by the AI prioritizing Choral Music, except in games where I select Peter the Great. I also generally take Fertility Rites as well, which is usually available when I pick my pantheon belief.

The AI definitely benefits more from Choral Music than Warrior Monks or some of the other Beliefs it was taking before, but Firaxis needs to shake things up a little more, so that each AI civ has its own priority list, instead of every AI civ rushing to grab the same handful of beliefs. Some AI civs would benefit from other beliefs more than they would Choral Music.

While I prioritize getting the 1st or 2nd religion so I can get Meeting House and Work Ethic, I don't put much emphasis on getting the additional enhancer beliefs, and just take whatever is left when I finally get around to picking one.

 

[Archon_Wing]

of course it does. balance always matters,

It sure does. Look at the Nuclear Plant. The damage from a plant is greatly exaggerated (they just don't go off like atomic bombs) making them bad from both a balance and immersion perspective.

Having things be useless means that one has less tools to play with, and thus limits the options they have. "X still works on Deity" is not a good argument because people can win with 1 city. One might as well just limit us to only building campuses and commercial hubs, and we could still say that. :

In Civ 4, Religious Victory was also a meme, but abusing the power of the Apostolic Palace was hilarious and worth doing even if it wasn't the best strategy.

 

[acluewithout]

You're right in that it's not necessarily "hard" to get a religion or to spread a religion, but you're asking the wrong questions. Is it mathematically smart to get a religion? Will it make you stronger or will it make you win faster? Most of the time, no, allowing the AI to convert you will let you win faster.

I still found a religion every time I can, but little comes of it. The simple question is: Is it ever worth it to spread religion over buying a builder or Great Person? and the answer is "no" in 99% of cases.

No worries. I more or less agree with that. I don't think it's that hard to get a Religion (or require that much investment, and I don't think it requires that much to spread your religion if you delay popping your GP until you've built your Holy Sites. But I agree you really don't get that much from Religion outside of very particular use-cases. So, yeah, bit of a wash at the moment.

 

[Kmart_Elvis]

I think religion's biggest problem is the opportunity cost of it. It requires you to research holy sites (even worse if you can't find a natural wonder), spend precious production on a holy site and then running prayers projects, etc. when you could be building an extra settler and some slingers for defense. It's just that I've been caught way too many times with my pants down going for a religion and then finding my neighbor surprise war me. I find it too easy to get lured into getting the first religion at the expense of my infrastructure or defense.

Of course, if I'm specifically going for RV, or playing a civ with religion bonuses (Poland, Khmer, etc), I'll go for it. But I do recognize it's a gamble, and I find myself getting smoother games when I ignore getting one. When I first played Civ VI, I was all about religion and RVs... Now my playstyle has evolved into atheistic SVs.

 

[UWHabs]

I think religion's biggest problem is the opportunity cost of it. It requires you to research holy sites (even worse if you can't find a natural wonder), spend precious production on a holy site and then running prayers projects, etc. when you could be building an extra settler and some slingers for defense. It's just that I've been caught way too many times with my pants down going for a religion and then finding my neighbor surprise war me. I find it too easy to get lured into getting the first religion at the expense of my infrastructure or defense.

Of course, if I'm specifically going for RV, or playing a civ with religion bonuses (Poland, Khmer, etc), I'll go for it. But I do recognize it's a gamble, and I find myself getting smoother games when I ignore getting one. When I first played Civ VI, I was all about religion and RVs... Now my playstyle has evolved into atheistic SVs.

Combined with the fact that generally speaking, early holy sites take up spots that would be ideal for an early campus (or else potentially are on a high-yield tile next to a natural wonder). It just makes it too hard to be willing to spend hammers that way and have to wait a long time to see rewards for it.