Proposal for Beliefs Overhaul

[Stalker0]

The funniest part about your answer is that I could just lie to you and tell you that it only works the first time you improve the tile.

sure, until you start getting bug reports that the belief is not working correctly.

what’s actually funny is this wouldn’t effect me, I’m one of the lazy ones. I’m trying to be a proponent for people that I know are not lazy.

 

[stii]

Change generally seem fine, nothing too powerful in the additions and the more powerful abilites getting weakened. If lots of stuff is getting nerfed by god of the open sky should get it too as it just a bit better than everything else similar.

The improvement one is a bit diddly but I can't ever see taking it so I won't ever have to re-build over and over

Orders losing morale is a bit painful as it make building out of multiple cites a bit awkward. But it is a powerful ability so making it weaker makes sense.

 

[Thibix Magnus]

I like the concept of animism, I'd go for a founder with the same concept ideally, I would really love some beliefs that make unimproved tiles a viable alternative (because pristine maps look beautiful in this game), providing tons of faith and culture at the expense of production. I hoped to try to mod that a long time ago but never went through

https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...voring-unimproved-tiles.646014/#post-15490515

 

[InkAxis]

I like most of these ideas.

Animism should boost lakes and then it might be fine.

I don't think Creativity needs to be changed, it's actually more unique than all the other X yield per X follower and it is much faster than others. Maybe the culture could be slightly boosted.

Trickster God is, uh, tricky. It's hard to say how people will play with it, but in any case I think it can be cut as we do have enough pantheons.

 

[chicorbeef]

I like Revelation, it's simple but it gives a niche that I think could synergize with plenty of strategies. The founder that gives from technologies currently feels a bit out of place with the rest of its bonuses.

Not the biggest fan of Trickster God, it seems like it's just meant to be used better by high difficulty AI with early workers, and it seems somewhat exploitable.

About Creativity...should we just remove it or rework it altogether? It feels like it's virtually impossible to get the belief right, since with +1 per 2 it's too powerful, but with +1 per 3 it's too weak.

Does features in Animism mean forests/jungles/marshes etc.? The concept seems ok but as an enhancer...don't like the unimproved requirement on a belief you'll probably get fairly late. To be honest, I think Enhancers are mostly fine, the one I do like is the Abode of Peace rework, buying diplo units with sounds fine.

I like a few of the proposals overall, but I'm of the impression that the amount of change here is a bit much.

 

[pineappledan]

Trickster and animism can be tried for yourselves in my more beliefs mod (link in my signature).

I can tell you from my own experience with these beliefs that animism feels pretty good, and the timing as an enhanced is the best place for this kind of bonus. I’ve written several long winded posts justifying it, but at this point maybe people should just try it?

trickster god is pretty slow to found and it’s a struggle to use it well. I never felt it was OP or unduly fiddly myself, but I don’t use civ 5 as a self-harm click hole, and I have heard from several users that I am somehow handing them the rope by which they will hang themselves. Which is… completely absurd in my opinion, but I’m less interested in ramming this through than I am I’m not having this conversation again, so maybe I’ll just take it out if the OP.

 

[InkAxis]

I think animism certainly can work, your forests and jungles won't be all improved yet, and others might not be improved in certain starts/ tech amounts. I think it could use a little more omph though.

About Creativity...should we just remove it or rework it altogether? It feels like it's virtually impossible to get the belief right, since with +1 per 2 it's too powerful, but with +1 per 3 it's too weak.

Could just increase the faith. Or increase the cap without removing the faith.

 

[pineappledan]

I like a few of the proposals overall, but I'm of the impression that the amount of change here is a bit much.

Addressing this real quick.

There's a lot of proposals because the beliefs balance and design is in a bad place right now. There would have been fewer proposed changes 2 years ago, because many of my changes consist of rolling back changes.

It feels like beliefs have been in a state of flailing around for about a year now. various abilities have been stripped out of some places and tacked onto others without any discussion or general agreement in the community. No one asked for Zealotry to get a missionary spread power bonus, and no one asked for Global Commandments to get a passive spread bonus, for instance. These kinds of changes just happened without any justification or community input.

 

[chicorbeef]

Addressing this real quick.

There's a lot of proposals because the beliefs balance and design is in a bad place right now. There would have been fewer proposed changes 2 years ago, because many of my changes consist of rolling back changes.

It feels like beliefs have been in a state of flailing around for about a year now. various abilities have been stripped out of some places and tacked onto others without any discussion or general agreement in the community. No one asked for Zealotry to get a missionary spread power bonus, and no one asked for Global Commandments to get a passive spread bonus, for instance. These kinds of changes just happened without any justification or community input.

Fair enough, I don't have actual experience with your changes, so I'm basically just hypothesizing.

But aren't there some things tacked on in your proposals? For example, why does Mendicancy have the erosion ability now? Why does Symbolism get the happiness bonus? Why change Syncretism?

 

[pineappledan]

I changed syncretism and mendicancy by removing the faith per science and faith per gold (up to 1/2) from those beliefs, respectively. These were taken from old pantheons and I don’t really think they work very well anywhere, so I just took them out for now. It's possible they could be added back for a follower belief, since I think that's probably the best place for bonuses like these.

my philosophy around enhancers is that they should enhance your religion in some way, by which I mean make some core aspect of the religion game more effective, as opposed to just giving yields. This generally takes the form of 4 methods:

1. improving an existing faith sink
2. Creating a new faith sink
3. Make spreading religion more powerful
4. Reward spreading religion more

Mendicancy didn’t do any of these things; it just gave yields in all cities. Syncretism inverts this by rewarding you for having other religions spread to you, which is maybe okay? But, I added the yields per foreign follower scaler to syncretism as a sort of hedge, and weakened the original syncretism scaler yields. I liked how this gave the belief incentives both for spreading and being spread to, because the previous version of it created weird incentives for purely not spreading.

 

[Heinz_Guderian]

I am up for trying it. Honestly I would be for adding a lot more beliefs in general, I think pantheons are in a good place but also wouldnt mind even more of them since that is something you always will use. I think the founder beliefs are what is lacking the most, I think all of them are pretty bad and boring. Most of the time I want council of elders because it is the only one that is really giving me what I want, but it has been nerfed so hard that it feels pretty meh now. Is it really that hard to design founder beliefs? I think people would be fine with them overlaping in the holy site yields, at least personally I usually dont take them into too much consideration anyway.

 

[pineappledan]

Some Possible follower Beliefs that use the gold to faith and science to Faith abilities:

Veneration - (1 and 10% of faith purchases converted to and )

Replace and break into 2 beliefs​

Indulgences:

+1 Faith per 10 Gold per Turn it produces, capped at half the Followers in the City.
10% of the cost of Faith Purchases in this city is converted into Production and Gold.​

Guruship:

+1 Faith in a City for every 5 Science per turn it produces, capping at half the number of Followers.
10% of the cost of Faith Purchases in this city is converted into Culture and Food.​

 

[Thibix Magnus]

I would like a move towards making beliefs simpler, less mixed bags, but more powerful, as is the case for some of the proposed changes here. Just one feature, or a couple that are focused on one aspect like city states. I would add for example "erosion" as a single feature enhancer but much stronger. Otherwise the effect on your game is kind of diluted and tones down the fun and replayability of beliefs.

 

[pineappledan]

I would like a move towards making beliefs simpler, less mixed bags, but more powerful, as is the case for some of the proposed changes here. Just one feature, or a couple that are focused on one aspect like city states. I would add for example "erosion" as a single feature enhancer but much stronger. Otherwise the effect on your game is kind of diluted and tones down the fun and replayability of beliefs.

There are many beliefs that just do 1 thing. The problem with this is that it's hard to make 10 beliefs that all do 1 thing, and that 1 thing is roughly as strong as 9 other things.

 

[pineappledan]

Added Indulgences, Guruship, and a new reformation belief to the new beliefs proposal: Work Ethic

(Reformation) - Work Ethic

May build Workshops, Windmills, and Factories with Faith. These buildings produce +2 Production each.
Tile improvement rate increased by 25% for Workers and Archaeologists.
​

So the game requires an additional 3 founders, 8 followers, 3 enhancers, and 3 reformation beliefs in order to have enough beliefs for a full, 22 player game.
So far, this proposal:

removes 1 founder and 2 followers
adds 1 Founder, 8 Followers, 2 Enhancers, and 2 Reformations
​

So that means We would still need 3 Founders, 2 Followers, 1 Enhancer and 1 Reformation

 

[pineappledan]

Some ideas for the remaining slots. They would pretty much all require help from another modder to come in and help with DLL integration:

Change to Transcendence:

Change Sacred Garden Reformation Building to Heavenly Grotto (2, +2; +5Gold to Holy Sites)
Move Sacred Garden to City of God​

(Founder) - City of God

Can build the Sacred Garden Wonder (+3 +5; +5 Food from all Holy Sites)
Gain 10 whenever your Holy City gains a Citizen, scaling with the number of Cities following your religion (max 25 cities)​

(Founder) - Earthly Paradise

Can build the Place of Truth Wonder (+2 +6; +10%Production towards Buildings in the City; +5 from Holy Sites)
10 When a City constructs a Building, scaling with Era.
Gain 25 whenever you construct a World Wonder, scaling with number of Cities following your Religion (max 25 Cities).​

(Founder) - Caste System

Can build the Royal Parsonage (+1, and +1/ for every 3 in City; +5Culture to Holy Sites)
+1 from Specialists
+10% Ranged Attack to all Archery units
+1 for every 3 Citizens working tiles
+1 Production from Labourers
Cannot manually assign citizens in cities following this religion​

(Founder) - Call to Faith

Can build the Baptistry Wonder (+10 Faith; +5Faith to Holy Sites)
Receive 10 for each additional follower of your religion gained every turn.​

(Follower) - Mindfulness

Specialists in this city generate +1 of their respective Great Person Point​

(Follower) - Blood Tax

Supply-free military Units spawn near Cities that reach (or have already reached) a multiple of 10 Citizens.​

(Enhancer) - Mandala

Cities following your religion do not generate religious pressure, except your Holy City.
Religion spreads from your Holy City 10% faster and 10% further away for each City following your Religion (Max 25).
​

(Enhancer) - Martyrdom

+40% Resistance to Religious spread in cities following This Religion. Some other bonus.
​

(Reformation) - Neopaganism

+2 in the city for each Religion present in the City (max of 8).
Gain the Pantheon belief bonus of the second most popular religion in the City.
​

(Reformation) - Underground Sects

+1 Spy
Spies can perform a unique action (TBD).​

 

[Heinz_Guderian]

The Caste system one might be very frustrating since the AI sometimes really does a horrible job of choosing tiles, and the mindfulness one sounds very weak. I think veneration was good as it was, I think the split might make those a bit weak.

 

[pineappledan]

There's more beliefs there than are needed to fill it out. Caste system can be dropped, but it's such an evocative belief I always try to add it into these lineups. It would directly buff the AI, since they use the city governor exclusively, and it would be good for players that just want to turn off the micromanagement, and benefit directly for that. It depends wholely on the AI governor doing a good job though, which is still an area that people are actively working on.

Veneration is:
+1 in the City.
10% of the cost of Faith Purchases in this city is converted into /

(Follower) - Indulgences
+1 Faith for 10 GPT, capped at half the Followers in the City.
10% of the cost of Faith Purchases in this city is converted into /

(Follower) - Guruship
+1 Faith for 5 SPT, capped at half the number of Followers in the City.
10% of the cost of Faith Purchases in this city is converted into /

So that looks pretty close to parity to me. Indulgences and Guruship would scale more, because they aren't locked to 4 flat yields up front. Their faith to other yields conversion is the same 10% rate, but / and / aren't as strong as /. They aren't far off though.

 

[Stalker0]

My thoughts:

I think Veneration is a rock solid belief and wouldn't desire to break it up.

Work Ethic seems decent. We already have a lot of hammer producing beliefs, but generally stacking hammers on hammers has a lot of diminishing returns, so I think this would just give more civs options for hammer beliefs, rather than creating a "super hammer civ". It might also be cool if workers could be bought with faith, though that would be a more ribbon ability.

The idea of Transcendence and City of God swapping buildings seems ok to me. I can see why you want +5 food to holy sites going to city of god considering the beliefs context, and +2 happy for transcendence could be a pretty nice bonus. I think City of God has neat concept, worth a try.

Earthly Paradise - I like the idea of a belief around buildings. I think the world wonders is a bit much, there are already good beliefs around wonders and wonders don't need more help imo, but something around buildings and bonuses I think would be fun and solid.

Caste System - I will echo that rely on AI assigning of specialists here is just not the way. I like the concept of restricting specialists, but I think the only way to make this work is to go ALL the way. So something like this:

• A city with the majority of this religion can only assign laborer specialists.
• Gain +1 and +1 GPP to all specialists for every 3 in the city

So the idea is that each "3" people are split into hammer, culture, and science people. You are still gaining GPP but its watered down as EVERYONE gets assigned in this system.... so you gain small bonuses but to all specialists.

Call to Faith - Is this just another "gain X when you convert" people belief? Seems pretty generic and watered down, not my favorite.

Mindfulness is solid.

Blood Tax - I'll leave that to the war people, my gut says this isn't all that great.

Mandala - A neat concept, I think it will be very weak at 10% distance, as I doubt that will give the holy city enough range to really reach out and get to your more wide spread cities, let alone opponent cities. So I'm not sure what the niche is here, Martyrdom seems much better for the "don't touch my cities with your religion", and orthodoxy gives better passive spread benefits. I could see this work with a TR focused spread, such as TRs from your holy city deal 3x pressure or something....although that would probably be broken with Venice.

Martyrdom - I can get behind the idea of increasing resistance to enemy pressure....but the fact that's all it does is lame. Most enhancers give me really nice bonuses, and there is syncretism if I'm getting religiously swallowed. I'm not sure when I would take this one.

Neopaganism - I'm worried that this + pagodas would just scale like crazy. I do like the idea of getting a second pantheon belief, that is neat. Frankly could we just do something where you select this, and instead of an enhancer, you could just select another pantheon from the main list?

 

[pineappledan]

I think Veneration is a rock solid belief and wouldn't desire to break it up.

I like Veneration too. It's got a unique faith purchase mechanic that I think can be stretched into at least 2 beliefs though. I have always said I think the belief yield converters would work best as a follower. Just trying to maximize and use all the code available before demanding new tools.

Work Ethic seems decent. We already have a lot of hammer producing beliefs, but generally stacking hammers on hammers has a lot of diminishing returns, so I think this would just give more civs options for hammer beliefs, rather than creating a "super hammer civ". It might also be cool if workers could be bought with faith, though that would be a more ribbon ability.

There is no production-based Reformation belief. That's the last of the faith purchase X,Y,Z beliefs that I would want though; don't need to make that format half of all reformation options.

Also, just the mental image of the Dutch picking this belief and faith-purchasing mindmills is *mwah*. Peak Protestant.

Earthly Paradise - I like the idea of a belief around buildings. I think the world wonders is a bit much, there are already good beliefs around wonders and wonders don't need more help imo, but something around buildings and bonuses I think would be fun and solid.

Trying to think of triggers that don't happen every turn, like unit kills, or that don't scale astronomically into the late game, like Trade route completion, is pretty hard. completing a wonder is one of the few "rare" triggers left that could be made into a scaling founder belief trigger.

Caste System - I will echo that rely on AI assigning of specialists here is just not the way. I like the concept of restricting specialists, but I think the only way to make this work is to go ALL the way. So something like this:

• A city with the majority of this religion can only assign laborer specialists.
• Gain +1 and +1 GPP to all specialists for every 3 in the city

So the idea is that each "3" people are split into hammer, culture, and science people. You are still gaining GPP but its watered down as EVERYONE gets assigned in this system.... so you gain small bonuses but to all specialists.

I don't really get what you're suggesting here, but I'd just as soon drop Caste system. We don't need 4 new founders, we just need 3 that we're happy with.
I think the viability of Caste system depends entirely on how happy people are with the Governor AI. People seem pretty happy to just automate workers at this point, so if we ever get to a similar point with city AI we can re-look at this proposal.

Call to Faith - Is this just another "gain X when you convert" people belief? Seems pretty generic and watered down, not my favorite.

We have Gain X yields from missionary spread, Gain X yields from Inquisitor de-conversion, and X yields when a whole city converts. The only one I can think of that we're missing is a basic catch-all for individual followers converted via any method.
I think it would be best if not all the new Founder beliefs added were slight modifications to the rare trigger with scaling yields based on followers/cities format.

Mindfulness is solid.

Probably too solid. It's a +33% GP rate, before modifiers. That's huge.

Blood Tax - I'll leave that to the war people, my gut says this isn't all that great.

Basically a copy of the Honor policy. It's probably not great, if you compare the amount of free hammers that each free unit constitutes vs, say, Diligence. Could make the free units spawn more often if it's not strong enough.

I'm basically running out of ideas for viable follower beliefs that aren't just another faith-purchase building. I don't want to make every new belief just another one of those.

Mandala - A neat concept, I think it will be very weak at 10% distance, as I doubt that will give the holy city enough range to really reach out and get to your more wide spread cities, let alone opponent cities. So I'm not sure what the niche is here, Martyrdom seems much better for the "don't touch my cities with your religion", and orthodoxy gives better passive spread benefits. I could see this work with a TR focused spread, such as TRs from your holy city deal 3x pressure or something....although that would probably be broken with Venice.

Yeah, obviously for an enhancer as drastic as this, we would need to test what is fair.

Passive spread is most effective when compounding from several cities. So what level of power and distance (and in what proportion) is something that probably just needs to be experimented with in order to get the right level for 1 super-charged pressure-cooker city.

Martyrdom - I can get behind the idea of increasing resistance to enemy pressure....but the fact that's all it does is lame. Most enhancers give me really nice bonuses, and there is syncretism if I'm getting religiously swallowed. I'm not sure when I would take this one.

What if it also had the ability that halved the power of Great Prophets and Inquisitors? Then Prophecy/Sainthood would probably need another extra tool given to it.

Maybe Prophecy could be changed to:
Prophets of this Religion 25% stronger, cost 25% less Faith, and have 1 additional Spread action.
+3 to base Holy Site yields.

Neopaganism - I'm worried that this + pagodas would just scale like crazy. I do like the idea of getting a second pantheon belief, that is neat. Frankly could we just do something where you select this, and instead of an enhancer, you could just select another pantheon from the main list?

I was talking about this as a Reformation; you think it should be an enhancer?
Sending someone back to the pantheon selection screen is probably a very difficult task re: the UI
Also, if someone could just pick a 2nd pantheon belief, would that mean you just get the dregs of what is left over? What about a larger map with more players? would you only get the choice of the last 2-3 pantheons left?
Lastly, there's the problem that Pantheons are balanced against each other specifically in the context of them being early-game boosts. So if you get to pick God-King as your Reformation belief, that's a lot stronger than if you got something like Expanse, if that was all that was left over.
But on the level, most pantheons are just weaker than either an enhancer or a Reformation belief, so getting a pantheon belief -- and nothing else -- as a Reformation would be really weak. It would need something else I think, ideally something that is tech locked, as almost all of the Reformation beliefs follow that pattern.