Religion Founding

[BeijingCat08]

Is it me, or is the AI much slower to found religions in 0.34 than before? It used to be that (on Emperor) getting FoL or RoK first - even Ashen Veil or Order sometimes - was a real challenge, but now I've had games where I've rushed Ashen Veil or Order and then gone back to found all the rest just to get the Holy Cities.

 

[retro V]

Not just you. I've gone like 200 turns in an epic emporer game before someone founds the first religion; used to be about turn 120 in 0.33. Takes another 200 turns for the rest to get founded as well.

Seems like the AI lost its weights for teching religions which isn't such a bad thing. Now they might adopt a religion and stick to it rather than trying to found more just for the sake of it. Unfortunately this does make it a bit easy for the player to get multiple holy cities.

 

[Sarisin]

I play at the lesser Monarch difficulty and have not noticed a change. The elves still beeline Way of the Forests and the dwarves still beeline Ways of the Earthmother.

In Epic speed games, they founded both well before Turn 200.

The others always seem available, though, as they are not beelined.

I did manage to found Empyrean in one game rather early when I got an Ecclesiastic from a lair...but, still had to get Honor much later before I could build a temple, etc.

 

[Annex]

Played on Immortal and beelined for Order, only to have the Malakim found it 27 turns before me

Forgot what turn it was on, but he founded it before he founded Empyrean for some reason

So I cant tell if theres a big change or not.

 

[BugReportage]

Malakim get first dibs on religions, you get what's left over.
It's what they do best.
The funny thing is, one time they founded FoL...

 

[Monkeyfinger]

Yeah, the AI lost freebie techs on the highest levels. It still gets some, just less than before. So they have less of a leg up on beating you to religions.

The fact that they have to deal with the new barbarians is also an issue, though that slows you down as well.

 

[fuzzy_bunnies]

Does it even matter though? I'm thinking the free disciples from lairs thing is still a little overdone. I have 3 founding religions in my capital at turn 130ish just from roaming around.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

one issue that I've noticed in FFH2 is that most games end up dominated with just a couple religions ( usually FoL and RoK cuz they come early ) . this makes things a bit dull cuz of A. not enough religious conflict and most important B. if there are no AV civs around ( as is often the case if the sheaim are not in the game ) the end game gets really stagnant, which is quite obvious since with no AV spreading the AC ( which was designed primarily to address late-game stagnation and keep things fun as long as possible ) doesn't go up and civs are just shaking hands or barking at each other.

this is due to the AI still using vanilla mechanics for religion, but religion in FFH2 is TOTALLY different.

suggestion: make the AIs a LOT more willing to adopt religions they found. they should also take into account if they own the holy city for a religion, and even more so if the holy shrine has been built there. this will mean a lot more variety in practiced religions and make sure that things stay fun and don't drift into a RoK+FoL world

 

[fuzzy_bunnies]

one issue that I've noticed in FFH2 is that most games end up dominated with just a couple religions ( usually FoL and RoK cuz they come early ) . this makes things a bit dull cuz of A. not enough religious conflict and most important B. if there are no AV civs around ( as is often the case if the sheaim are not in the game ) the end game gets really stagnant, which is quite obvious since with no AV spreading the AC ( which was designed primarily to address late-game stagnation and keep things fun as long as possible ) doesn't go up and civs are just shaking hands or barking at each other.

this is due to the AI still using vanilla mechanics for religion, but religion in FFH2 is TOTALLY different.

suggestion: make the AIs a LOT more willing to adopt religions they found. this will mean a lot more variety in practiced religions and make sure that things stay fun and don't drift into a RoK+FoL world

I'd like to 2nd this one too... last couple games the AC hasn't gone above 15. Boring! I dunno why, but lately all the evil civs get destroyed early or severely handicapped. When I first started playing, the evil civs ruled the map... now its the opposite.

 

[Annex]

one issue that I've noticed in FFH2 is that most games end up dominated with just a couple religions ( usually FoL and RoK cuz they come early ) . this makes things a bit dull cuz of A. not enough religious conflict and most important B. if there are no AV civs around ( as is often the case if the sheaim are not in the game ) the end game gets really stagnant, which is quite obvious since with no AV spreading the AC ( which was designed primarily to address late-game stagnation and keep things fun as long as possible ) doesn't go up and civs are just shaking hands or barking at each other.

this is due to the AI still using vanilla mechanics for religion, but religion in FFH2 is TOTALLY different.

suggestion: make the AIs a LOT more willing to adopt religions they found. this will mean a lot more variety in practiced religions and make sure that things stay fun and don't drift into a RoK+FoL world

Thirded, although the game im playing now is alright, Malakim having founded AV is the most powerful civ, systematically destroying the other civs (All RoK) while im sitting in the middle (as Illians) biding my time and slowly building my army. Kind of interesting.

But as it is now civs prefer to share religions for the diplomatic bonus. Instead I think they should try to adopt thier own religion more for the heroes and possibly to snag a holy city.

 

[popejubal]

I've been seeing a decent number of religions founded before the religious tech from rescued prisoners founding in a city when they get ferried home.

 

[Turinturambar]

One change I have been trying out which works pretty well was moving the founding of the religions to earlier techs:

OctopusOverlords to Fishing.
Fellowship of Leaves to Hunting.
Runes of Kilmorph to Mining.
Empyrean to Education.
Council of Esus to Trade.
Order to Code of Laws.
Ashen Veil to Knowledge of the Ether.

You still need the real religious techs to get any benefit from the religion (apart from the +happy), so this mainly works to get the religions spread out.

I also modified the AI Tech scripts so that they pursue a religious tech after they have it as their state religion and they have some base economics techs(Education etc.).

One problem is that Agnostic civs can found the religions, haven't found a good workaround for that.

 

[Trieste]

one issue that I've noticed in FFH2 is that most games end up dominated with just a couple religions ( usually FoL and RoK cuz they come early ) . this makes things a bit dull cuz of A. not enough religious conflict and most important B. if there are no AV civs around ( as is often the case if the sheaim are not in the game ) the end game gets really stagnant, which is quite obvious since with no AV spreading the AC ( which was designed primarily to address late-game stagnation and keep things fun as long as possible ) doesn't go up and civs are just shaking hands or barking at each other.

Yea this sucks but I've played a few games with FoL and RoK turned off in the options. You get more religious variety and it's a lot of fun. This used to cripple the Ljos and Khazad but they fixed it in a recent patch.

 

[Jojomo]

I've noticed this as well. My latest game is playing as the Calabim on Noble. I only really tried to get RoK founded, but since nobody else had founded the other religions (by turn 400 or so), I've now gobbled up all the others (with the exception of AV, because I'd like to delay Armageddon if possible, and Empyrean because it's a tad unthematic).

I was surprised I made it to RoK at all when I discovered the Luichirp were in the game (didn't get techs from goodie huts, just beelined it a bit).

On a related note, I've noticed that if I found RoK, then later found the Order, then very often (3 games of 3 so far I think) they wind up with the same holy city. Possible bug?

 

[Marnok]

I've seen recently :
- Barbarian founding a religion (first time I have seen that)
- Elves founding Order (possibly a lair result, possibly the AI trying something different?)
- NO religions by quite late in the game (turn 400-ish?) - I then suddenly noticed and tried to rush them, and the AI beat me to each one in turn!
- Sudden inexplicable spread of AV through *all* AIs, resulting in massive AC before I even had my socks on

 

[esvath]

Just played 0.34 g last night as Varn Gosam, Malakim, Monarch, Pangaea, Large.

I found disciple for Order and OO from the dungeons. Also found a Great Prophet from another dungeon. Got another GP from event. I brought the disciples and GPs to my city, build BOTH Order and OO holy shrine. Free law and water mana at turn 150s.

Both OO and Order started to spread. The OO only spread randomly through trade-routes and fairly slow to spread. BUT, Order had faster spread-rate and automatically spawned free Acolyte when Order had spread (okay, it's 75% chance but it was almost 80-90%)! So, without the proper tech, I could spread Order to the whole world. The result (15 turns later) : 6 civs were Order (incl Balseraph and Doviello), 1 agnostic (Illian), 1 ROK (Khazad). It is not fun at all...

I think that late-religions get over-powered because of disciples from dungeons. If they could be founded in the same time as (or even faster than) OO, FOL and ROK, the late-religions' faster spread-rate will guarantee their dominance. For Order, this will get worse because of the free Acolytes.

 

[Dora190]

Does it even matter though? I'm thinking the free disciples from lairs thing is still a little overdone. I have 3 founding religions in my capital at turn 130ish just from roaming around.

I have to concur, I founded 6, 3 from disciples - same unit 3 consecutive dungeons and 3 by the normal method. I wasn't even trying to found them either!

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

Yea this sucks but I've played a few games with FoL and RoK turned off in the options. You get more religious variety and it's a lot of fun. This used to cripple the Ljos and Khazad but they fixed it in a recent patch.

well that works, but disabling 2 religions out of 7 isn't really a solution

it does seem like the AI is kinda lazy at founding religions in 0.34 ...

anyway, another possible change would be to lower the "automatic spread" chance ( i.e. the one that happens with trade routes. disciples stay unchanged ) of the "early" religions ( FoL, OO, RoK ) and raise the "automatic spread" chance for later religions ( order, empy, CoE , AV ) .

this has been done in many mods for vanilla civ in order to avoid having early religions ( hinduism, buddhism, judaism ) dominate and late religions ( christianity, islam ) be useless due to the fact that they arrive when the others have already spread everywhere, and it works very well imho.

 

[fuzzy_bunnies]

Well, the option of making religious preferences stronger would also work. IE even if the Sheaim have been Order for most of the game, they should still try to research and switch to AV if they can. Ditto for elves and FOL and dorfs and RoK.

 

[Marnok]

Perhaps religion preferences could affect the spread of that religion (if that doesn't happen already) so a favoured religion will spread signifcantly faster. Then make sure that the AI is smart enough to switch if a religion is more widespread or will affect more people...?