"Religions no longer grant visibility in cities"

[Slax]

Wow - no more visibility in enemy cities with your founded religion? Thats a big change! What do you think of this?

 

[Gaius Octavius]

I was wondering about this, too. I still don't believe it.

 

[Willowmound]

Makes sense with the new espionage system. Now you pay espionage points for that kind of informartion.

 

[ohcrapitsnico]

Excellent idea, I'm happy with it, being able to see into otheres cities is ridiculous IMO through religion. At least that works extremely well with my mod.

 

[Release Roger!]

All about money I guess. I'm ok with it though...

 

[Soneji]

Its stupid. Ok, I understand they are trying to beaf up Esp. however

In the early ages, churches and religion were good indicators and providers of information.

 

[Methos]

Wow - no more visibility in enemy cities with your founded religion? Thats a big change! What do you think of this?

Just to clarify, you have it as your state religion, correct? I just want to make sure, as you must have it as a state religion to see into their cities.

It makes sense to remove this due to the espionage system.

 

[cybrxkhan]

that sucks. now i can't see the primitive enemy army pathetically trying to prepare against my modern one.

 

[ohcrapitsnico]

that sucks. now i can't see the primitive enemy army pathetically trying to prepare against my modern one.

Well than you really don't need to see if thats the case.

Thats what espionage is for.

 

[vilemerchant]

Its stupid. Ok, I understand they are trying to beaf up Esp. however

In the early ages, churches and religion were good indicators and providers of information.

They were, but it would take 6 months for a letter containing that information to arrive from a foreign land.

 

[GeoModder]

They were, but it would take 6 months for a letter containing that information to arrive from a foreign land.

And what timescale did a turn represent again during the hightime of religions ingame? 10-15 years?

 

[Brandonazz]

And of course the several years-per-turn doesn't make that irrelevant

IMHO it should be that way at the start with a cutoff date.

 

[Josephias]

Its stupid. Ok, I understand they are trying to beaf up Esp. however

In the early ages, churches and religion were good indicators and providers of information.

They were, but it would take 6 months for a letter containing that information to arrive from a foreign land.

Which is next to nothing in a 20-year turn


I will not mind much mission removed -- if the foreign cities with your religion could be used as a source of Espionage Points against that civilization.

If not done now, maybe there is room for a new expansion

 

[homan1983]

I was wondering about this, too. I still don't believe it.

Well believe it baby cuz its happening.

To the OP, there are 2 main reasons why this change is going into effect:

1) The new espionage system has the potential of giving the same effect with enough investment

2) With the apostalic palace, religions have gotten an unbelievable boost, so this was a way to balance is out again.


It was also a little cheesy that you could see people's cities just because you had expanded your religion to them, sure its not that useful when playing 95% of your games [aka vs AI] but in a competitive game it woulda been really annoying and a major reason for people to never allow any missionaries in their borders and hence significantly nerfing the religion system.

 

[JZ Temple]

I think it's a motivation to use the new espionage system rather than a slam against establishing religion in those cities. For me it will mean the end of grinding out missionaries as ersatz spies.

 

[Methos]

After looking at Watiggi's screenshots it is definite that religion no longer allows you to see into an AI's cities. This is per pedia shots.

 

[Seidrik_The_Gray]

What we used to have was in fact a combination of espionage and religion.

In the hay day of early religions, the ruling class used religion as a tool to control the populace via doghma, secret commities, special courts, secret police, etc... Additionally, organized religions were used to keep tabs on their people and promote their own religion at the expense of others, subvert local politicians, repress challenging ideas, support the ruling class, etc...

What I'm trying to say is that this is how it should be. Rather than merging a weak espionage system with a strong religion system, BtS has moved toward giving us a stronger espionage system and also separated the function of espionage from the function of religion.

It's much more fun this way also, which is the bottom line.

 

[Dutch Canuck]

This change makes sense to me too. I thought it kind of silly I had to pump out missionaries for spying; but before BTS there was no good alternative in the game. Now that espionage is more sophisticated, it stands to reason that this change was made...

I saw an early screen shot in the library here that showed the consequences of investing in spying and when I noted the visibility feature and I asked myself what was the point of missionaries doing that any more... Now I have the answer - they removed the rendundancy

Are there any religious buildings that generate espionage points now? If so that would wrap things up quite nicely.

 

[Seidrik_The_Gray]

Are there any religious buildings that generate espionage points now? If so that would wrap things up quite nicely.

Nice! I missed that earlier...muahahahaha