Proposal for Beliefs Overhaul

[pineappledan]

Alternative Reformation idea:

Gain 1 Additional Spy, and all spies can perform the [INSERT NAME HERE] action

Unique spy action:
Performs a 2000 strength spread action in the target city, Gain a large sum of Faith and Tourism with the targeted civilization.

 

[Stalker0]

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.

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.

I'm still not on board with changing prophecy so I'll just leave that one alone

So on the pantheon idea you could do it in various ways. You could do it like theodora and just get access to all. Or you could just let them select another pantheon that is left....considering we might add a number of pantheons with this idea there will probably be plenty left.

I do think you underestimate the flexibility of this concept. Sure in many cases I wouldn't want another pantheon.... just as I often don't want XYZ reformations for various reasons. But sometimes maybe I have a great combo that an existing pantheon would be great for, and then I would take it.


To the notion of Enhancer vs Reformation....I wasn't really going there. I was just about the idea that you could have pagodas, and then add this belief on to get really strong scaling with many religions. Pagodas are already a pretty decent building if you are surrounding by religions, add this in and it might scale out of balance.

 

[Stalker0]

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.

I don't think such a concept will ever be desirable. Sure automated workers are fine most of the time....but never all the time. There are always times I want to make corrections. Even if governors were good most of the time, there will always be cases that I will want to manually adjust specialists. Not being able to do that will just be frustrating.

I don't mind turning that mechanic off completely (ala no specialists at all) because then I don't even think about it (aka the governor can't do it "wrong"), I just turn my attention towards other things.

 

[pineappledan]

To the notion of Enhancer vs Reformation....I wasn't really going there. I was just about the idea that you could have pagodas, and then add this belief on to get really strong scaling with many religions. Pagodas are already a pretty decent building if you are surrounding by religions, add this in and it might scale out of balance.

This would be tempered by the fact that I'm talking about weakening syncretism significantly, and if it is a reformation belief, you at least had to seriously spread in order to earn the reformation before you let your cities become religious melting pots. I think the idea of giving the 2nd most popular religion's pantheon is cleaner than allowing people to pick their own pantheon. Probably less work too, since you wouldn't have to call up the Pantheon selection screen again. If it were to be a reformation, I would like to think about a tech-locked ability to accompany that 2nd pantheon though.

 

[Heinz_Guderian]

I never automate the workers at least

 

[pineappledan]

Nor do I.

At any rate, we need 4 more founders, The 5 possibilities we came up with are:
- Use technology discovery as a yield trigger (implemented already)
- Use world wonder construction as a yield trigger
- Use Citizen birth in 1 city as a yield trigger
- Catch-all yields on follower conversion to your religion via any method
- hardcore role-play that gives small all-round buffs, but turns off citizen management. (unpopular)

It's pretty fair to say Caste system is out of the running, so are the other ones passable options, or can you think of some different ideas?

 

[FishAvenger]

Idea: one mechanic that hasn't been used at all is unique religious tile improvements. It would add a great deal of variety to have religious tile improvements instead of more religious buildings, which are starting to overlap a bit with the proposed additions. A neat way to go might be to have a few different improvements for different terrain. This could provide a nice synergy with pantheons. In order to make religious improvements faith-purchasable, they could be tied to a dummy unit which would be expended to build the improvement. I imagine the limiting factor here would be available art assets.

 

[pineappledan]

it would be basically impossible to tie an improvement to a city. You could have multiple religions in your empire, but you could have this improvement throughout your empire. There's no way to keep that localized.

 

[Drakle]

It's pretty fair to say Caste system is out of the running, so are the other ones passable options, or can you think of some different ideas?

For a Founder, Spawning an army on founding and a combat bonus whenever you spread religion? So you have to keep spreading to maintain the bonus, and could do a mass spread, and then kick off a war.


Anyway, in terms of Pantheon beliefs. How about more non-founding intended beliefs?

I had an idea for two.

Adoption - Can't found religion. Gain free choice of Great Person (No Great Prophet). Recieve second free choice upon adopting a majority religion.

Local Gods - Can't found religion. Each city can pick a terrain-related bonus. Stays on adopting majority religion.

The AI wouldn't be allowed to pick these two maybe until a number of turns have passed, its a non faith civ, or unless they are some of the last to pantheon found.

Another idea I had was.

Outward Drive - Free Settler. All cities gain free Shrines. Gain Faith and Culture upon city settlements.

 

[InkAxis]

it would be basically impossible to tie an improvement to a city. You could have multiple religions in your empire, but you could have this improvement throughout your empire. There's no way to keep that localized.

Maybe it could give you a unique unit that builds an improvement? That would be interesting.
Speaking of unique units..

Outward Drive - Free Settler. All cities gain free Shrines. Gain Faith and Culture upon city settlements.

This is OP, especially for India. So, maybe a unique settler? That would be interesting, not sure if it would be purchased with faith or just produced. It could start cities with a shrine for example. But that's probably more like a follower.

Gain 1 Additional Spy, and all spies can perform the [INSERT NAME HERE] action

Unique spy action:
Performs a 2000 strength spread action in the target city, Gain a large sum of Faith and Tourism with the targeted civilization.

I like this.

 

[Heinz_Guderian]

The creativity follower is just laughably bad. Compared to the science follower for example, and culture isnt that much more valuable than science

 

[pineappledan]

Maybe it could give you a unique unit that builds an improvement? That would be interesting.

That's not the problem, the problem is you can buy that unique improvement unit, and then move that unit it to a city that doesn't follow that same belief, and build the improvement there.

You can funnel all your improving through 1 city to have all of that improvement across your whole empire. It would be like if you only needed 1 city converted to a different religion with the Cathedrals belief, and that 1 converted city let you build Cathedrals in ALL your cities.

Also, a religious tile improvement probably interferes with your monastery GPTI in some way.

 

[InkAxis]

That's not the problem, the problem is you can buy that unique improvement unit, and then move that unit it to a city that doesn't follow that same belief, and build the improvement there.

You can funnel all your improving through 1 city to have all of that improvement across your whole empire. It would be like if you only needed 1 city converted to a different religion with the Cathedrals belief, and that 1 converted city let you build Cathedrals in ALL your cities.

Also, a religious tile improvement probably interferes with your monastery GPTI in some way.

That's true. It could have a local faith purchase cooldown which I think is an unused feature. That way, if you really did want to use it in one city it would be possible but would take a long time.

 

[pineappledan]

In thinking about a belief improvement, I kept running into issues and resolutions to address those issues that all pointed to any belief improvement just working better as a building. It did get me thinking about a new potential Founder though:

(Founder) - Libations

Can build the Akapana Wonder (+100% religious pressure; +5 to Holy Sites; No minimum population conversion requirement)
Can spend Faith to perform a Challa ceremony, giving the Akapana +1 to All Yields ( ).
Can Choose a Reformation belief upon completion of 10 Challa ceremonies
​

So it’s like a reverse-founder that puts the wonder first, and instead of spending faith on missionaries and spreading your religion, getting yields that scale based on followers, and then cap with a wonder, you spend faith on pumping your wonder up. The wonder has no yields to start, but can be substantially more powerful than any other wonder.

This is heavily based on Leugi’s Tiwanaku civilization mod, which does something similar, but with an improvement.

 

[Drakle]

In thinking about a belief improvement, I kept running into issues and resolutions to address those issues that all pointed to any belief improvement just working better as a building. It did get me thinking about a new potential Founder though:

(Founder) - Libations

Can build the Akapana Wonder (+100% religious pressure; +5 to Holy Sites; No minimum population conversion requirement)
Can spend Faith to perform a Challa ceremony, giving the Akapana +1 to All Yields c5food:).
Can Choose a Reformation belief upon completion of 10 Challa ceremonies
​

So it’s like a reverse-founder that puts the wonder first, and instead of spending faith on missionaries and spreading your religion, getting yields that scale based on followers, and then cap with a wonder, you spend faith on pumping your wonder up. The wonder has no yields to start, but can be substantially more powerful than any other wonder.

This is heavily based on Leugi’s Tiwanaku civilization mod, which does something similar, but with an improvement.

Can you keep doing it after 10?

Anyway, sounds decent. But I wonder how it would play with Byzantium, using this, and a faith generating Founder.

 

[pineappledan]

There probably would need to be a max of 25 or something, like other scaling founder abilities. 10 would just be the point where the wonder is powerful enough to reform, since it unlocks immediately.

the belief would be special-made for civs like Byzantium that have their own large source of faith, since the ability works like a faith sink, like the spreader beliefs (council of elders, etc.) it does have more faith than those dedicated spreader beliefs though, since the wonder does gain faith yields.

as Byzantium specifically, they would HAVE to build the akapana to start using the belief, so they would be locked into Challa ceremonies as their means of founding, but otherwise it would function like any other double-founder. Since the wonder is available much sooner than the other reformation wonders, I can’t see the AI failing to use this

 

[Stalker0]

In thinking about a belief improvement, I kept running into issues and resolutions to address those issues that all pointed to any belief improvement just working better as a building. It did get me thinking about a new potential Founder though:

(Founder) - Libations

Can build the Akapana Wonder (+100% religious pressure; +5 to Holy Sites; No minimum population conversion requirement)
Can spend Faith to perform a Challa ceremony, giving the Akapana +1 to All Yields ( ).
Can Choose a Reformation belief upon completion of 10 Challa ceremonies
​

So it’s like a reverse-founder that puts the wonder first, and instead of spending faith on missionaries and spreading your religion, getting yields that scale based on followers, and then cap with a wonder, you spend faith on pumping your wonder up. The wonder has no yields to start, but can be substantially more powerful than any other wonder.

This is heavily based on Leugi’s Tiwanaku civilization mod, which does something similar, but with an improvement.

Conceptually this is a cool idea. You focus your faith into a single massive project, and the religious pressure in theory helps you with some of the spread, taking a little heat off your missionary work. I agree some kind of cap is likely necessary, though probably less that some people think (at some point the faith buying GP wins out over a simple +1 more yield).

Balance numbers aside, I like the uniqueness of this one... these are the new beliefs that get me excited, as i think it pushes a design space we haven't explored yet. So thumbs up from me!

 

[FishAvenger]

That's not the problem, the problem is you can buy that unique improvement unit, and then move that unit it to a city that doesn't follow that same belief, and build the improvement there.

You can funnel all your improving through 1 city to have all of that improvement across your whole empire. It would be like if you only needed 1 city converted to a different religion with the Cathedrals belief, and that 1 converted city let you build Cathedrals in ALL your cities.

Good points. A faith improvement could maybe work as an enhancer belief, if you're still looking for those.

 

[AndreyK]

There probably would need to be a max of 25 or something, like other scaling founder abilities. 10 would just be the point where the wonder is powerful enough to reform, since it unlocks immediately.

the belief would be special-made for civs like Byzantium that have their own large source of faith, since the ability works like a faith sink, like the spreader beliefs (council of elders, etc.) it does have more faith than those dedicated spreader beliefs though, since the wonder does gain faith yields.

as Byzantium specifically, they would HAVE to build the akapana to start using the belief, so they would be locked into Challa ceremonies as their means of founding, but otherwise it would function like any other double-founder. Since the wonder is available much sooner than the other reformation wonders, I can’t see the AI failing to use this

I think that scale should consider map size and game speed