Remove the free faith from Religious CS

[Autoclave]

I don't like when somebody on the other side of the continent has randomly met a religious CS and got 8(!) faith, when I need an incredible effort to be the first one to take my prefered pantheon. It ruins the core concept of racing for the religion and pantheons in the game, turning it into a luckfest.

A cultural city state does not give you +20 culture, neighter should faith CS give you faith on its first meeting. Ruins don't give you faith until turn 20! You are not expected to have faith too soon without much effort. Is early exploration, building a scout an effort you say? It is, but you already start with a warrior, and depending on luck people had even 2 CS faith neighbours nearby.

Please remove this free faith from CS as it make pantheon just acquiring just too random. You could just as well award randomly a pantheon from the very start as the effect is basically the same. Hey! You won a free pantheon, you didn't build the shrine but here you go, free pantheon!

And while we are at it, also remove this stupid random 50% great prophet chance once you reach the 200 faith threshold, it should be 100% chance once you reach 200. I've seen it plenty of times when the last spot for religion was taken by a civ which reached the threshold later than me.

 

[Doktor Vic Tim]

Yeah, the faith gain from Religious CS when you first meet them is quite high. I once met two of them who lived next to each other at turn 3 and got a whopping 16 faith. That's quite an early pantheon. And I quickly allied wit hthem thanks to lucky barb quests and captured workers.

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

Yeah, totally agree with this. FPT from them is fine, it takes time and effort to get them to friend/ally status.

It really hurts the religious civs who are designed with the fact that they'll be having a good run at a pantheon in mind, when some players meet one of these CS and takes the lump of faith and potentially steal the first few pantheons.

 

[njmfff]

A cultural city state does not give you +20 culture, neighter should faith CS give you faith on its first meeting. We already have too much random in this game.

Speakin' of random, I hate random GP generation. In several games I am first to get pantheon (thanks to CS), grab desert folklore, but other AIs still get GP before me since my faith is 250+ faith and no GP spawn. Same for second GP. Then I am stuck with religion that has some worthless beliefs, like +1 happiness per foreign city of another civs... and on Immortal\Deity, you can't really compete with AI for CS religion spread, since they seem to spam missionaries\GP even in Information era every turn.

You'll lucky if you manage to grab your neighbor CS and keep it as your own religion.

 

[Alziel]

After a recent game I had with Morocco, I'm all for the Faith gift. My starting spot was surrounded by three Religious City States - and I met all three in the first three turns for 24 Faith! Needless to say I snatched Desert Folklore on turn 3 (I started with lots of Desert thanks to the Moroccan starting bias).

But yes - it sucks when the boot is on the other foot.

 

[holywar]

I totally disagree. I think it gives you a great incentive to explore early on. I would like it better if the cultural city states also gave you a culture boost too.

 

[meowschwitz]

culture should give culture for being met
maritime can give a food boost
military can give a promotion
mercantile can give double gold
and faith can stay the same.

That makes exploration super important and makes every city-state give some sort of boost.

this sounds like a good mod to make

 

[lokithepunishr]

Faith from CS is BullS! I played as Celts and I took the 2nd pantheon (after losing the 1st on turn 2), that is crap, the only thing about the Celts that makes them worthwhile is that you can get first pantheon and generally first religion.

Also, when playing as Ethiopia I got 5th pantheon, after Stele was my first in my build order, WTF?

I'm only playing on Emporer (spelling?) but still I feel that a religious civ shouldn't have to worry about this type of stuff

 

[leadtothehead]

culture should give culture for being met
maritime can give a food boost
military can give a promotion
mercantile can give double gold
and faith can stay the same.

That makes exploration super important and makes every city-state give some sort of boost.

this sounds like a good mod to make

I really like this idea, the religious city state discovery is kind of neat and giving similar bonuses to the other CS seems like a good idea to me.

 

[bbbt]

culture should give culture for being met
maritime can give a food boost
military can give a promotion
mercantile can give double gold
and faith can stay the same.

That makes exploration super important and makes every city-state give some sort of boost.

this sounds like a good mod to make

I could get behind this. It's strange that faith CS's give faith, and everything else gives gold.

 

[bbbt]

Faith from CS is BullS! I played as Celts and I took the 2nd pantheon (after losing the 1st on turn 2), that is crap, the only thing about the Celts that makes them worthwhile is that you can get first pantheon and generally first religion.

Also, when playing as Ethiopia I got 5th pantheon, after Stele was my first in my build order, WTF?

I'm only playing on Emporer (spelling?) but still I feel that a religious civ shouldn't have to worry about this type of stuff

I think the AI starts with pottery on Emperor, so they can build the shrine right off the bat.

1st pantheon on turn 2 is crazy - they must have found a ancient ruin that gave 20 faith. I don't think they could find two city states that fast.

 

[JohnMK]

Building a Stele (Ethiopian Monument) before building a scout was a mistake, for a multitude of reasons.

I'm fine with the system as it is, in this regard, and I respectfully disagree that starting with Civ X should guarantee Effect Y, though I could get behind adjusting the greet gift to something in keeping with the flavor of the CS, e.g. culture from a culture CS.

 

[TLHeart]

Why is when people can't make the game play so it makes it easy for them to win, do they want a feature removed?

There are many good pantheons, one needs to learn how to play to the randomness of the games, instead of preconceived ideas of what should happen.

You really want a religion, then focus on it, explore, and just remember there are other civs doing the same thing.

 

[TLHeart]

I think the AI starts with pottery on Emperor, so they can build the shrine right off the bat.

1st pantheon on turn 2 is crazy - they must have found a ancient ruin that gave 20 faith. I don't think they could find two city states that fast.

It only takes 10 faith for that first pantheon. Easy for the AI to get that from the city states since they start with bonuses.

 

[lokithepunishr]

Why is when people can't make the game play so it makes it easy for them to win, do they want a feature removed?

There are many good pantheons, one needs to learn how to play to the randomness of the games, instead of preconceived ideas of what should happen.

You really want a religion, then focus on it, explore, and just remember there are other civs doing the same thing.

You are missing my point, I play on random civs 99% of my games, but when I random Celts or Ethiopia I expect that their bonuses should give me at least 1st or 2nd choice, yes I got 2nd choice with Celts but seriously, even 2nd choice with Celts makes it . I met 2 Maritime CS first off, but that doesn.t help compared to the guy that meets 2 Religious CS straight up

 

[Browd]

culture should give culture for being met
maritime can give a food boost
military can give a promotion
mercantile can give double gold
and faith can stay the same.

That makes exploration super important and makes every city-state give some sort of boost.

this sounds like a good mod to make

A mod that implements much of this already exists: http://www.picknmixmods.com/mods/c90ec87e-219a-40b8-a000-e03b54574e3e/mod.html

This also requires his DLL mod: http://www.picknmixmods.com/mods/d1b6328c-ff44-4b0d-aad7-c657f83610cd/mod.html

 

[Cpt Oblivious]

culture should give culture for being met
maritime can give a food boost
military can give a promotion
mercantile can give double gold
and faith can stay the same.

That makes exploration super important and makes every city-state give some sort of boost.

this sounds like a good mod to make

The counterbalance should then therefore be that either faith ruins are available from turn 1 instead of 20, or you can't get culture/pop/unit upgrades/gold from ruins until 20, right? I mean, just in terms of balancing it.

You are missing my point, I play on random civs 99% of my games, but when I random Celts or Ethiopia I expect that their bonuses should give me at least 1st or 2nd choice, yes I got 2nd choice with Celts but seriously, even 2nd choice with Celts makes it . I met 2 Maritime CS first off, but that doesn.t help compared to the guy that meets 2 Religious CS straight up

It's annoying sure, but no less annoying than say Napoleon hitting a culture ruin and getting a 3rd turn SP, and getting to his 2nd policy by the time you finish your monument and get the first one. CS location and type- much like ruins- are random, and early exploration to get that early benefit from either should be rewarded.

 

[isau]

I agree it should be removed.

 

[TLHeart]

You are missing my point, I play on random civs 99% of my games, but when I random Celts or Ethiopia I expect that their bonuses should give me at least 1st or 2nd choice, yes I got 2nd choice with Celts but seriously, even 2nd choice with Celts makes it . I met 2 Maritime CS first off, but that doesn.t help compared to the guy that meets 2 Religious CS straight up

No, I am not missing your point, you expect to be first to get the religion, an expectation. And get upset when the AI beets you to it.

I have played the celts and Ethiopia, and have always had a powerful religion with them, even if I am not first to the Parthenon the game has many random elements to it. One has to leverage the unique abilities with the terrain and city states. You just have expectations of what the game should be, to make it easier for you against an AI, that is not very good.

So I disagree with you about nerfing the religion from city states. It adds to the game, makes the human player adapt, and think, to the game.

 

[Autoclave]

No, I am not missing your point, you expect to be first to get the religion, an expectation. And get upset when the AI beets you to it.

I have played the celts and Ethiopia, and have always had a powerful religion with them, even if I am not first to the Parthenon the game has many random elements to it. One has to leverage the unique abilities with the terrain and city states. You just have expectations of what the game should be, to make it easier for you against an AI, that is not very good.

So I disagree with you about nerfing the religion from city states. It adds to the game, makes the human player adapt, and think, to the game.

It's a racing game, who gets to be the first to get that unique belief. I am already forced to adapt based on my starting location. It ruins the balance between difference civs. As arabia your starting bias leads to you prefering the desert folklore. But you are not given any extra special faith generation bonus. You need to work for it, go piety, build a shrine ASAP and so on.

As celts you don't get to start on a desert, you are supposed to be the first that will pick-up a pantheon but you will rarely take advantage of such a powerful belief like desert folklore. And this is the right balancing IMO.

And now lets just throw all that out of the window and make your success being the result of some random events, this is CiV, not a lottery.

You'd probably mention the wonder racing aspect of the game, similar to beliefs, which are all unique, however, I do have at least some benchmarks where i know what wonder by which turn will go, I can see the wonder being build outside of the city if I have an embassy, I can also check if the other civs has the required policy open for the tree. There is a system there.

Here, religious CS are just random free pantheons for those who don't usually work hard to get them. There has to be a logical reason why they didn't allow faith ruins until turn 20! Why??? Because they thought that would be way too unfair to religious civs. So why do we have faith CS granting free faith??? Doesn't this go against this logic and concept?

Would you rather play a game where pantheon always be the result of random lottery regardless of you building any faith building? I would rather have some effort put into it. I want players to make sacrifices if they want something badly, like going piety for example.