Religion and Great Prophet Improvements

[Codenaugh]

I play a lot of multiplayer games and in 90% of games, religion is not a factor at all. In 99% of games, it is barely a factor at all. One of the things that bothers me about religion is that once you have established a religion, all Great Prophet points you earn from that point forward are completely wasted.

An obvious and simple change for the better would be to exchange excess Great Prophet points for additional faith instead of let them go to waste.

The change I would really like to see is allowing as many Prophets in the game as players. However, someone with an already established religion could still grab Great Prophets. Each time a Prophet was grabbed and used by a civ that already has a religion, it would reduce the total number of religions allowed in the game.

Additionally, add a religious-based bonus to each Great Prophet... They would still be used to establish a religion for a civ that hasn't established one, but might also have another side effect that scales with the current era like other Great Persons in the game. For example, a 100 faith bonus, a free missionary, automatically starts an inquisition, eliminates other religions in nearby cities, etc.. Maybe even one of the last Prophets could allow for a 3rd belief to be selected right off the bat. The list goes on and on.

The only caveat I see with all this, is that you may want to devise a scaled system where civs without religions require less Great Person points to get a Prophet, thereby making it easier to establish new religions rather than snuff them out of existance. You might accomplish this by having holy sites produce 2 Great Prophet points until a religion is established. After that it would become only 1.

 

[dunkleosteus]

Personally, I don't think founding a religion should require a great prophet. That's more like organizing your cultural and spiritual beliefs. I think prophets should behave much like other great people throughout the game. There was a mod that added Great Theologians which did something similar, but it kept great prophets for founding religions. I would like great prophets to do two things when expended:

1) Grant a special ability or bonus just like other great people. This could be granting eurekas or inspirations, giving free gold or faith, giving an extra policy slot of a certain type, increasing loyalty or religious pressure in a city, etc

2) If you haven't reformed your religion, you can do so. I don't think this is something that should be shoehorned into apostles because this is a pretty serious thing for a faith to do. It's not something done by a nameless apostle.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

Here is my idea for Great Prophet improvements and decided to look for this one instead of making another.

All of them will still be able to found a religion with one of their charges. They also will have another special ability that can be used as well. If all religions have been founded they can still use the abilities.
Confucius- Shrines and Temples provide Culture and hold 1 Slot for a Great Work of Writing.
John the Baptist- Creates a Relic
Laozi- Religious Pressure is doubled from this city with a Temple.
Sidddhartha Gautama- 15% more faith in Cities when not at war.
Simon Peter- Shrines and Temples in Holy City provides +2 Housing and 1 Slot for Religious Art.
Zoraster- Triggers the Inspiration for Mysticism, Shrines and Temples provide Science
Adi Shankara- Can heal adjacent religious units.
Bodhidharma- Creates a free warrior Monk Unit
Irenaeus- Triggers the Inspiration for Theology, Inquisitors can remove heresy an extra time.
O No Yasumaro- Creates the Kojiki Great Work of Writing
Songstan Gampo-Your cities add more loyalty towards with your religion
Haji Huud- +3 Movement for religious units and missionaries and apostles gain one extra spread.
Madhva Acharya- +10 Strength in Theological Combat
Martin Luther- Triggers the Inspiration for Reformed Church; +4 Combat Strength against units following other Religions.
Thomas Aquinas- Campus buildings receive faith equal to their science output.
Francis of Assisi- Unimproved tiles with an appeal of Charming or Breathtaking provide +2 faith.

 

[God of Kings]

Girolamo Savonarola for example could significantly boost faith and religious defence at the cost of gold, culture, tourism, amenities, and loyalty.

 

[KingsGambit7]

Here is my idea for Great Prophet improvements and decided to look for this one instead of making another.

All of them will still be able to found a religion with one of their charges. They also will have another special ability that can be used as well. If all religions have been founded they can still use the abilities.
Confucius- Shrines and Temples provide Culture and hold 1 Slot for a Great Work of Writing.
John the Baptist- Creates a Relic
Laozi- Religious Pressure is doubled from this city with a Temple.
Sidddhartha Gautama- 15% more faith in Cities when not at war.
Simon Peter- Shrines and Temples in Holy City provides +2 Housing and 1 Slot for Religious Art.
Zoraster- Triggers the Inspiration for Mysticism, Shrines and Temples provide Science
Adi Shankara- Can heal adjacent religious units.
Bodhidharma- Creates a free warrior Monk Unit
Irenaeus- Triggers the Inspiration for Theology, Inquisitors can remove heresy an extra time.
O No Yasumaro- Creates the Kojiki Great Work of Writing
Songstan Gampo-Your cities add more loyalty towards with your religion
Haji Huud- +3 Movement for religious units and missionaries and apostles gain one extra spread.
Madhva Acharya- +10 Strength in Theological Combat
Martin Luther- Triggers the Inspiration for Reformed Church; +4 Combat Strength against units following other Religions.
Thomas Aquinas- Campus buildings receive faith equal to their science output.
Francis of Assisi- Unimproved tiles with an appeal of Charming or Breathtaking provide +2 faith.

That is bloody brilliant! I hope someone from Firaxis stumbles upon this thread. A man can dream..

I, for one, feel that religion has been underperforming ever since its inception in Civ5. For some reason, the devs seem to be wary of making the religious policies too impactful on the game. I feel that almost all religious policies should be buffed at least a little bit. Some more than others, as there are some solid ones and some that never see play. If the devs feel that religion has suddenly become too powerful, then they should simply introduce some mechanic to help with that. A few policies, including maybe a Dark Age one that is especially strong, can serve to remove all religion from your lands and maybe even gain some kind of ideology/secular advantage against the religious players.

As it is, religion is neither a solid way to achieve victory, nor can it be easily acquired. That's a big paradox if you ask me. Another problem is that holy sites without an established religion are next to useless, as is faith for non-religious players in general. All you do with that faith, is use it up late in the game to grab an important GP. It's kind of lame.

One possible fix would be to give some sort of secular advantage to non-religious players and convert their faith and GPP points (which would accumulate after all the GP are spent) into some secular kind of policies and GPs. For example, having not found a religion, you could have a few civic boosts (The Enlightenment comes to mind) for free. Perhaps secular players might benefit from getting a bonus Wild Card Slot and a few anti-religion policies they could use, while at the same time you could make religious policies and effects much stronger. This would make for a much more interesting dynamic. I feel that as of yet, there is little choice in whether you want to push your religion, or allocate resources elsewhere. The players should have the benefit of using faith for various purposes, not just for spamming missionaries. Better rates of transferring Faith into GP would be great. And I think every Civ that has gotten a religion should have the option of using faith to buy some stuff for cheap - be it settlers, builders, armies or some kind of district buildings.This shouldn't be limited to picking the specific policy, but rather the player should be able to pick one of several possible options at the start, and maybe take a second later, by using up an Apostle (or maybe a multifunctional Prophet, if they decide to reimplement them in the game).

I also agree with OP that GPPs for Prophets should convert into Faith (or have some other benefit) after the GP is taken.

As far as policies go, I think the ones providing Envoys, Stewardship and Lay Ministry are close to useless.

I feel that, ultimately, the fight between the secular states and the religious states should be at least as aggressive as the one between the main 3 ideologies. Make the player choose whether to pursue a secular state or a religious one. You could have a choice between 3 types of states early on - religious, philosophical and agnostic/anarchistic (maybe? I'm open to suggestions.)

Give the philosopers a wild card slot. Give the religious guys a religion, and give the anarchistic states better gold, markets, ways to leverage their gold and a few special policies. (The last one is still a work in progress.) That would make the game interesting, with 2 main choices - one early, and one - late.

Religious buildings should come cheaper as well. As it is, they are almost never worth the price of admission.

Another big thing that should definitely be implemented is the option of highjacking another's religion and using it to your full advantage. Contemporary USA comes to mind. It's a wild Protestantism that is tied into its Media Culture (and let's ignore if it does anything useful at all in reality) and serves to form the cultural outlook of the country in a great way. But Protestantism was founded by Martin Luther in Germany, while it comes into its own across the ocean.

I say - give the non-religious states the option to adopt another's religion and balance it, so that the original founder gets significant political benefits for a while, while the receiver of this religious ideology can work, by spending resources and faith, in order to one day gain the full benefits of the religion. Most importantly - states with the same religion should have a great incentive for mutual cooperation.

I guess all of these things will be improved in a second expansion. I'm starting to get weary of this way of doing things though. As it is, I will consider buying Civ7 with the second expansion to save myself some money and time..

Closely related to the this topic is the subject of underperforming policies. Just one example - most of the wildcard policies that give +2 or +4 GPPs are basically useless in the second half of the game. They should provide +2/+1 for each district of the type or something similar. Similarly, does anyone ever get Survey or God King? Survey should probably give scouting units like +5 CS in addition to the XP, and God King should probably give +1/+1 for every city in order to be taken seriously.
I want to make a topic about all the policies that are currently underperforming, but I don't feel that I am proficient enough in the game to do that. (I haven't beaten Immortal yet.) I'd love to hear others thoughts on that matter though. Would someone want to make such a topic? I could give some suggestions.

 

[Gray Bell]

Perhaps rather than the standard +2/+4 GPP this could be converted into (sorry, just saw the biggest owl ever) wildcards that reward certain actions with GPP. The obvious example is Generals and Admirals where GPP are earned for battles and exploration (say 20 points per battle or 5 points per barbarian). Great merchants could be earned by +1 per active trade route per turn (+2 if its to another Civ). Great engineers could be earned by mining strategic resources.

 

[UWHabs]

The simplest way would be to essentially fold a lot of the apostle functionality into great prophets.
-Allow all civs to found a religion. Your first prophet does that.
-Any subsequent prophet you gain can evangelize beliefs or start inquisitions. If you get any further ones, then maybe they join as a form of super-apostle (multiple promotions, or just a higher combat strength?)

If you do this, then you probably lower the cost of a prophet, but remove that other functionality from them, so that they can only spread or fight, basically. And at least it means you actually have a race to "finish" your religion, you may not be able to get your finisher belief if you keep getting beat out for the prophets.

 

[Phrozen]

We would have to expand the number of great prophets but that isn't hard. John Wycliffe, Jan Hus, Jabir ibn Zayd, and John Calvin off the top of my head.

 

[God of Kings]

We would have to expand the number of great prophets but that isn't hard. John Wycliffe, Jan Hus, Jabir ibn Zayd, and John Calvin off the top of my head.

...and Joseph Smith and L. Ron Hubbard too!

Others include Girolamo Savonarola and many others as well.

 

[acluewithout]

The simplest way would be to essentially fold a lot of the apostle functionality into great prophets.
-Allow all civs to found a religion. Your first prophet does that.
-Any subsequent prophet you gain can evangelize beliefs or start inquisitions. If you get any further ones, then maybe they join as a form of super-apostle (multiple promotions, or just a higher combat strength?)

If you do this, then you probably lower the cost of a prophet, but remove that other functionality from them, so that they can only spread or fight, basically. And at least it means you actually have a race to "finish" your religion, you may not be able to get your finisher belief if you keep getting beat out for the prophets.

I like it. I think I’d suggested something similar elsewhere too.

Moving apostles evangelise beliefs to great prophets, and so letting players compete all game for GPs, makes sense.

Some additional thoughts:

- You still need a cap on how many religions the game has - it has to be less than the total number of players or religion won’t work mechanically.

- I’d also like players without a religion able to still grab GPs even after all the religions are founded. So, GPs would have three abilities: found religion (up to a max); evangelise religion / start inquisition (instead of apostles); and some “secular” ability, eg boost loyalty or faith output, perhaps with a random chance of granting a relic.

- I’d like civs that haven’t founded a religion to be able to adopt one as a state religion. So, Spain might found catholicism. You could choose to adopt that religion, becoming a catholic country.

- Relatedly, Id like players to get another pantheon or cultural belief mid game, that would work based on the religion they’ve founded or adopted (as described above).

That is bloody brilliant! I hope someone from Firaxis stumbles upon this thread. A man can dream..

I, for one, feel that religion has been underperforming ever since its inception in Civ5. For some reason, the devs seem to be wary of making the religious policies too impactful on the game. I feel that almost all religious policies should be buffed at least a little bit. Some more than others, as there are some solid ones and some that never see play. If the devs feel that religion has suddenly become too powerful, then they should simply introduce some mechanic to help with that. A few policies, including maybe a Dark Age one that is especially strong, can serve to remove all religion from your lands and maybe even gain some kind of ideology/secular advantage against the religious players.

As it is, religion is neither a solid way to achieve victory, nor can it be easily acquired. That's a big paradox if you ask me. Another problem is that holy sites without an established religion are next to useless, as is faith for non-religious players in general. All you do with that faith, is use it up late in the game to grab an important GP. It's kind of lame.

One possible fix would be to give some sort of secular advantage to non-religious players and convert their faith and GPP points (which would accumulate after all the GP are spent) into some secular kind of policies and GPs. For example, having not found a religion, you could have a few civic boosts (The Enlightenment comes to mind) for free. Perhaps secular players might benefit from getting a bonus Wild Card Slot and a few anti-religion policies they could use, while at the same time you could make religious policies and effects much stronger. This would make for a much more interesting dynamic. I feel that as of yet, there is little choice in whether you want to push your religion, or allocate resources elsewhere. The players should have the benefit of using faith for various purposes, not just for spamming missionaries. Better rates of transferring Faith into GP would be great. And I think every Civ that has gotten a religion should have the option of using faith to buy some stuff for cheap - be it settlers, builders, armies or some kind of district buildings.This shouldn't be limited to picking the specific policy, but rather the player should be able to pick one of several possible options at the start, and maybe take a second later, by using up an Apostle (or maybe a multifunctional Prophet, if they decide to reimplement them in the game).

I also agree with OP that GPPs for Prophets should convert into Faith (or have some other benefit) after the GP is taken.

As far as policies go, I think the ones providing Envoys, Stewardship and Lay Ministry are close to useless.

I feel that, ultimately, the fight between the secular states and the religious states should be at least as aggressive as the one between the main 3 ideologies. Make the player choose whether to pursue a secular state or a religious one. You could have a choice between 3 types of states early on - religious, philosophical and agnostic/anarchistic (maybe? I'm open to suggestions.)

Give the philosopers a wild card slot. Give the religious guys a religion, and give the anarchistic states better gold, markets, ways to leverage their gold and a few special policies. (The last one is still a work in progress.) That would make the game interesting, with 2 main choices - one early, and one - late.

Religious buildings should come cheaper as well. As it is, they are almost never worth the price of admission.

Another big thing that should definitely be implemented is the option of highjacking another's religion and using it to your full advantage. Contemporary USA comes to mind. It's a wild Protestantism that is tied into its Media Culture (and let's ignore if it does anything useful at all in reality) and serves to form the cultural outlook of the country in a great way. But Protestantism was founded by Martin Luther in Germany, while it comes into its own across the ocean.

I say - give the non-religious states the option to adopt another's religion and balance it, so that the original founder gets significant political benefits for a while, while the receiver of this religious ideology can work, by spending resources and faith, in order to one day gain the full benefits of the religion. Most importantly - states with the same religion should have a great incentive for mutual cooperation.

I guess all of these things will be improved in a second expansion. I'm starting to get weary of this way of doing things though. As it is, I will consider buying Civ7 with the second expansion to save myself some money and time..

Closely related to the this topic is the subject of underperforming policies. Just one example - most of the wildcard policies that give +2 or +4 GPPs are basically useless in the second half of the game. They should provide +2/+1 for each district of the type or something similar. Similarly, does anyone ever get Survey or God King? Survey should probably give scouting units like +5 CS in addition to the XP, and God King should probably give +1/+1 for every city in order to be taken seriously.
I want to make a topic about all the policies that are currently underperforming, but I don't feel that I am proficient enough in the game to do that. (I haven't beaten Immortal yet.) I'd love to hear others thoughts on that matter though. Would someone want to make such a topic? I could give some suggestions.

Two thoughts.

The reason religion is weak is because it’s also a victory condition. You can’t buff it too much, or anyone who has a religion would steamroll everyone. IMO religion should never have been a VC, it rules out too many fun mechanics, but we are where we are.

You also can’t have people “stealing” religions. I think adopting them as described above is okay (but would need work), but stealing would really kill balance.

You have to somewhat bork your empire to get and spread a religion. So, you tend to have a weaker empire if you’re going for RV. But that’s okay, because the way religion works, you don’t have to compete with stronger civs toe to toe - religion largely doesn’t depend on tech or production. If stronger nations could steal religions it would kill that balance. There’s no point getting a religion early - just muscle up and steal one later.

 

[KingsGambit7]

The reason religion is weak is because it’s also a victory condition. You can’t buff it too much, or anyone who has a religion would steamroll everyone. IMO religion should never have been a VC, it rules out too many fun mechanics, but we are where we are.

I agree actually. I don't want them to buff religion as a whole so much, as to make the choice of building holy sites and focusing on faith accumulation more impactful as a whole. As it is, players are rarely encouraged to build Holy Sites if they fail to acquire a Prophet, and what's even worse - if you go for a Prophet and fail to get it, you may just rage quit rather than play a mockery of a game. There should always be useful applications for an abundance of faith.

You also can’t have people “stealing” religions. I think adopting them as described above is okay (but would need work), but stealing would really kill balance.

But isn't that exactly what happened in world history time and time again? I'd think that if the original founder went under, or alternatively - suffered a very bad dark age - it would make sense that the civilization could temporarily lose its cultural identity and another civilization would take hold of this cultural heritage. I've been listening to some podcasts on philosophy lately, and I found out that this is just what happened to the Ancient Greek heritage as it slowly faded into oblivion and was curiously resurrected by none others than the Muslim Arab Philosophers. Similarly, Christianity was more or less founded in Rome, but it was taken up by others. As it is right now, if Christianity hypothetically managed to successfully promulgate into a universal world religion, it would probably be the USA that would gain the most of it. Oh well, I guess that's why we have three different denominations in the game.

To be fair, I just want for religion to work fluently in the larger framework of the game itself and to provide some unique and dynamic features to the gameplay and political maneuvering.

Things that should be improved in my opinion.

- There should always be an incentive to build a Holy Site (and especially one with a good adjacency bonus) and accumulate faith. Not just when you've established a religion and are pushing for a religious victory or a strong Founder benefit (I've always assumed that Founder/Follower beliefs functioned as in Civ5, but I gotta check..) For this to happen, there should always be a useful way to spend faith, attached to each religion. But you can't give the option of buying military units to just one religion. That doesn't make sense at all. Thankfully, it seems that they've chosen to, at least temporarily, assign this function to a Golden Age buff. (edit: Oh, it turns out it is a Government building and not a Golden Age buff.) Oh well. It's better than nothing. Myself, I'd rather have the religious founders compete among a pool of Founder Belief options that gave slightly different ways of spending faith. Then it would make a lot of sense that some Civs would want to get your religion, and others might want to avoid it. I would even go so far as to suggest that every such Founder Belief would come with a possible debuff, which would activate only in a Dark Age, and would present a strong incentive for some Civs to avoid letting this religion get to their cities at all cost.

- There should always be some strategical incentive to adopt another's religion and to eventually fight to push it yourself. The first would require that all possible sets of beliefs actually provided something useful. As it is - I wouldn't really care to adopt a religion that gave me Feed the World and Mosques, if I have no intention of building Holy Sites or to spread religion myself. The second would require that some tangible benefit would be given to players that have a majority religion, but who are not its founders, to spread this religion overseas. As it is, I don't think beliefs like Crusade actually work for followers, or am I mistaken? At any rate, this is a world history game, and seeing as a great part of our history is derived from the epic clash of European Christianity and the Muslim East, I feel it makes total sense that there should be incentives for follower civs to adopt a religion and fight together with its founder to assert its interests. There is currently no such incentive whatsoever.

- I don't dislike the idea of civs competing for different beliefs, as that serves to give each religion its own identity and provides a nice strategical aspect of non-religious states choosing deliberately to adopt a certain religion that serves their interest. I feel that this idea should simply be expanded upon and perfected. The sad thing is that part of the game has been largely untouched since Gods and Kings. That's just bad. I hope that they put some additional work into this part of the game in the 2nd expansion, but I'm skeptical. I feel that they intend to develop this further in Civ7, which is a shame. As it is, most policies are intentionally left underperforming and have basically negligible effect on the course of the game. Yes, buffing all of those policies considerably, without providing a counterbalance, would dis-balance the game. But that's only natural. Whatever change you make into the game, you have to balance. I say - buff the religious policies, especially those that are underperforming; provide players with incentives of adopting and spreading anothers religion as well; and finally - provide a new mechanic that serves to fight against religious pressure. I, personally, would introduce the unit of a 'Philosopher', that is purchased by faith, and that can remove religious pressure, and develop a sort of secular philosophical state that gives an extra Wild Card slot and special (and powerful) philosophical policies.

Thanks for the discussion at any rate! I hope it can continue.


P.S. Edit: I am trying to come up with a way in which religious victory can be reworked, to be more relevant to real world history, and to provide more interesting dynamics. I feel that it should require completing a large set of steps, including one that deals with establishing a monopoly on such religion, that would benefit the Founder, but it would be possible for others to achieve as well. I can imagine a process by which Great Prophet points might be converted into pools that serve to advance the level of the religious establishment that a Civ has. Maybe the Founder of a religion will get 50% bonus points to advance in levels of his own religion, and maybe to win a religious victory, you'd have to have, say, 'level 3 centralized World Church' (for the religion in question) with a special district for that very purpose, and if more than one player competes for that honor, they'd have to find a way to resolve this between themselves. The Christian Church split into 3 warring factions, as a result of a similar dilemma. I think the same should happen in a real game.

Getting benefits from religion should be easy, while getting a religious victory should be very hard, and would involve an eventual split and rivalry between initially friendly and cooperative neighbours.

Overall, I don't see a reason why this aspect of the game shouldn't be improved upon. As it is, it is far from optimal, and it's kind of disappointing. Anything can be implemented with some ingenuity and balancing. I expect more of Firaxis at that point!

 

[Aurelesk]

Religious victory is no more than a Domination victory but instead of crippling your enemy by taking their cities, you strenghthen them with religious beliefs without declaring wars. Against real players, that's not even an acheivable victory: just hide Inquisitor in your city and convert back to your religion: you can deny a religion victory for others people so easily.

For me, there is 4 points that I don't like in it:

1. The Prophet race & Prophet point
2. Only half+1 civilization can go for this victory
3. Faith is not that great currency
4. Religious conversion

1. The Prophet race & Prophet Points
Contrary to other Great People, Great Prophet is unique. Therefore, Great Prophet points are useless if you recruit one. The only reason for that is because Great Prophet create a religion. A civilization can deny Religion of the others by recruiting all the Prophets. So: to make a Prophet like other Great People, we need a way to create a religion without the Great Prophet. I propose to allow the Guru to be able to create a religion. You will have now 2 ways to create a religion: with a Prophet or a Guru. But we need to make Guru a religionless units, because the game allow to recruit religious units only if you have a religion. Guru is the better unit for it, because he can't convert cities contrary to Missionaries or Apostles. But making it religionless make killing a Guru inefficient since he can't produce a negative religious pressure aura. So maybe just heal the killer when a Guru is killed?
I like the idea to make the Prophets like Generals, increasing theological combat strength of nearby religious units and have a retreat option to have a small bonus. I like and in fact dislike the idea: is it really a good idea to make Prophet appear to be a warlike figure in it?

2. Only half+1 civilization can go for this victory
I think this is really the thing that hurting me the most. For half the player, one victory condition is out of reach. But, allowing all civilization to go for a religion will be a mess. I think we need a way to make every players able to win a religious victory. I like to propose the Reformation:
When a civilization without a religion is following an other civilization religion and the holy city of this religion is captured or following an other religion, it is now possible to use a Prophet or a Guru to launch a Reformation in a holy site. The city convert to your new religion, have the same beliefs of the original religion except you don't have a founder belief. This new religion exert double pressure against cities that follwing the ancient religion.
But maybe we need an artificial delay to be able to launch a Reformation, mostly because it will be to easy to do one in Classical era and win the game without to much effort. Maybe make the Reformation possible if you have reached the Enlightenment?

3. Faith is not that great currency
Except buying religious units and Naturalist, Faith can buy the same thing that the Gold can do. Maybe Faith need to have exclusive, like buying Envoys in city states or maybe just buy a new quest to not make straightforward (Pray for a quest), or use Faith instead of Gold to change policy. I don't really have idea for this.

4. Religious conversion
To convert a city you have only this possibilities:
• Send a Missionary or an Apostle to convert the city.
• Send a Apostle fight religious units, win and convert with an aura of religious pressure
• Use passive pressure from cities. A converted city will have a pressure of 2, 4 or 8 if it's a converted city without Holy Site, with Holy Site and a Holy City. Maybe the Worship building need to add religious pressure to your city.
• Use Trade route. It give +1 Pressure (and +0,5 back). This is fairly weak. I think we need to change this to make it more viable. For example: a Trade from a city give 50% of the pressure and receive 25% of the prossure of the destination city. Of course, a Holy City (+8), with Scripture (+50%) and Moksha (×2) will give +12 Pressure (50% of 24) which is really huge. But you can't focus that much because other cites will send only +3 with a Holy Site (+4) and Scripture (+50%). But it's a double edge: you can receive up to +6 Pressure from it.

But I think Spy can have a role in it. It will be interesting to send a Spy in a Holy Site and lead a campaign of proselytism that can add +200 Pressure for you religion and -200 Pressure for the others religion.


For short:

• Guru are now able to create a religion. They are now religionless, can now be purchased in a Holy Site with a Temple in a city without a religion, and killing them heal the killer instead of create an aura of negative pressure.
• Great Prophets works now like Great Generals: they increase theological combat strength of nearby units and now have a retreat ability that give small bonuses.
• Great Prophets are still able to create a religion. They can now be expanded to add more beliefs or launch a inquisition.
• You can now launch a Reformation with a Prophet or a Guru with the Enlightenment Civic. A Reformation is possible only when the majority of the cities of your civilization are following an other civilization's religion, and that civilization's holy city is captured or is following an other religion.
  • The Reformation have the same beliefs of the original religion but the founder belief is disabled. This new religion exert double pressure against cities following the original religion.
• Worship buildings add now +2 pressure of their religion to the city they are in to help convert the city, and not to add pressure to others cities.
• Trade route exert 50% religious pressure at the destination city from the sending city, and receive 25% religious pressure at the sending city from the destination city (it was +1 and +0,5 respectively).
• Spy now have a new mission: "Lead a campaign of proselytism". When the mission is done, it will give +200 Pressure to your religion and -200 Pressure to the others religion.
• Creating a religion or launching a reformation only convert the city which your in, and not all the cities of your civilization with a Holy Site (is that even an intended mechanic?).

But that's only to add more layers to a Religion victory. But the Holy Site need more purposes to help for Tourism and Domination victory. Well, it already help a little:
○ Tourism victory: Relics give Tourism, Holy Site give Appeal, Naturalist (for National Park) need faith, and you can buy Great People with it.
○ Domination victory: A tiers2 Government building give the ability to buy units with Faith, and you can buy Generals with it.
Well, you can say that some belief help in that way too. But you need a religion for that. Holy Site need to be interesting for people who don't have a religion too (the Faith buy of Builder with the Golden AGe dedication is really useful). For exemple, make 'Martyr' ability default to all Apostle (and make the Mont-Saint-Michel give the ability to Apostle), allow to Guru to heal military units, make National Park more pratical or allow Holy Site to heal military units too without the according Pantheon (only when not attacked, and make the Pantheon work better?).