Rhye's of Europe Civ Discussion Thread

The Pope/Player relationship should be worked upon.

I was thinking about introducing a new concept (shouldn't be hard to implement). I call that "Faith Points". This is somewhat similar to Charlemagne's scenario.

- Everyone starts with 0 faith points.
- Setting new state religion +1 faith point.
- Changing state religion (SR) resets the faith points.
- Spreading the SR to a city (naturally or with a Missionary) +1 point.
- Spreading a non-state religion -1 point.
- Performing a prosecution +1 faith.

Then comes the Great Prophet use. Right now GPs are very underpowered. They can only light-bulb and settle, no third option and furthermore the light-bulb is somewhat week. With a Great Prophet, one can instantly boost their faith points (i.e. +5 or +10, depending on the balance).

What are FP useful for, well that will depend on the religion.

For all players (regardless of the religion)
- diplo boost for sharing the same religion (i.e. +1 pnt for 3 FPs)

Different religions will have different benefit from high number of Faith Points.

Catholicism:
- huge diplo boost of relations with the Pope
- gifts of units and gold from the Pope
- increased chance to lead the Crusade
- if FP are hight enough, a Catholic player at war with a non-Catholic one can ask for a defensive Crusade (i.e. a bunch of units will spawn in the player's capital). That will be very useful for Spain and Portugal in particular (also for Hungary if we ever improve Turkey's AI enough). I think defensive Crusades against Orthodox nations should be excluded, I cannot think of a Catholic Crusade against an Orthodox nation (other than the IV-th Crusade, but that is already covered in the game).

Orthodoxy:
- big stability bonus (Caesaropapism implies strong church = strong secular authority) (useful for Byzantium)
- lower maintenance cost (useful for Byzantium and Moscow)

Islam:
- lower unit cost (i.e. 1% per FP, capped at 25%), that should cover the Jihad (useful for Arabia)
- faster Growth (for Turkey and Cordoba)

Protestantism:
- increased research rate (capped at 10 - 20%)
- increased production (i.e. 1% per FP capped at 20% or 15%)
(useful especially for the new born Netherlands and Sweden as well as the British that require a lot of production for all the colonies)

The Crusader/Gifts combination will be powerful in the beginning, but it will lose its attractiveness as the game goes on (the gifts of units will only be units produced by the Pope). Spawning Crusaders will have cap on the tech level (i.e. no Line infantry will ever appear for a Crusade). That way the potential benefit from switching from Catholicism to Protestantism is big, however, the Faith Points will start from 0 (or just +1).

At the same time, the other religions are a symmetric, but not disbalanced. Bulgaria and Kiev will have reasons to stick to Orthodoxy beyond the UHV. Byzantium will have a great incentive (stability wise) and Moscow will want the even lower maintenance.

What do you guys think?
 
All great ideas, but is the AI going to be using any of them?

How is the 4th Crusade addressed in the game?
 
All great ideas, but is the AI going to be using any of them?

How is the 4th Crusade addressed in the game?

The AI will be easy enough to code (at least for the above cases). I will simply make the AI aim at a specific amount of Faith Points then use the GP accordingly. All benefits other than the defensive Crusade are passive (the AI doesn't have to think) and the defensive Crusade is: well if you are can ask for one, then just go ahead and ask.

4-th Crusade: If you have more gold than the Pope, you can pay gold and become the Crusade leader. Furthermore, you can "deviate" the Crusade towards the capital of any non-Catholic civ (i.e. Constantinople).

It doesn't happen for the AI, so I should probably change that to: If you have more gold than the Crusade leader. Right now the Pope is ridiculously rich. Also the AI takes advantage of that only in the case of Venice and Genoa (vs the Byzantines) and Spain and Portugal (vs Cordoba).
 
Just an idea.

If you get 5 or 10 Faith Point, you get a guard (Papal Pikeman) in capital (you can move it). Because I like those Papal Pikemans in Charlemagne Scenario very much.
 
Just an idea.

If you get 5 or 10 Faith Point, you get a guard (Papal Pikeman) in capital (you can move it). Because I like those Papal Pikemans in Charlemagne Scenario very much.

For now I don't want to implement new unit types and such. I basically want to make it so that Rome will have something to do with all those units that are getting build. The Pope will gift units build by him in Rome, then send them across the map and then gift them. That way Faith would be a competition between the Catholic players, there will be only so many units and they will all need to fight for the favor to get them.
 
But then civs who are closer to Rome will have a benefit. Maybe the Pope could "teleport" his units to catholic civ's capitals? Just an Idea here: If a catholic civ's capital is in danger, it could pay the Pope some gold or something and get a troop this way (if the Pope has any available), but that civ would lose some FP, so it would only be used in an emergency (It could be similar to mercenaries).
 
But then civs who are closer to Rome will have a benefit. Maybe the Pope could "teleport" his units to catholic civ's capitals? Just an Idea here: If a catholic civ's capital is in danger, it could pay the Pope some gold or something and get a troop this way (if the Pope has any available), but that civ would lose some FP, so it would only be used in an emergency (It could be similar to mercenaries).

Gold for instant troops, that is called Mercenaries :) use that :)

For a big war, there will be an option for a defensive Crusade.
 
What if units built by the Pope are automatically mercenaries? And that they are cheaper for catholic civs? IIRC, there is a thread in the customization forum about AI unit weights. I don't exactly understand how it works, but if I've understood well enough, it's possible to have the AI emphasize a certain unit. Maybe that could be the Papal Pikeman, or another special unit?
 
What if units built by the Pope are automatically mercenaries? And that they are cheaper for catholic civs? IIRC, there is a thread in the customization forum about AI unit weights. I don't exactly understand how it works, but if I've understood well enough, it's possible to have the AI emphasize a certain unit. Maybe that could be the Papal Pikeman, or another special unit?

Mercenaries and gifts from the Pope are completely different things.
 
But I thought it could be something unique to the Catholic civs, and also sometimes there aren't any Mercenaries. If a catholic civ is in desperate need for a mercenary and there aren't any then it's probably going to lose a city or worse - which means it and the entire group of catholic civs will be weakened, which is "bad" for the pope, so the pope must keep a few units for hire for the desperate civs, if he doesn't his religion will weaken.
But I can see some situations which could go wrong: Burgundy getting mercenaries and warring with them on catholic France, and stuff like that.
So I guess we could forget about this idea and maybe implement it in the future with another idea to make it better.
 
Gifts of money are always good...in fact, if one can limit the research rate of the Pope, he can dole out his tithe collections back to the faithful.
Hear ye, hear ye, come to Rome and redeem your faith mileage!
 
Gifts of money are always good...in fact, if one can limit the research rate of the Pope, he can dole out his tithe collections back to the faithful.
Hear ye, hear ye, come to Rome and redeem your faith mileage!

Something along those lines. The next step would be to force the Pope to Theocracy + Religious Law only civic, which generates a ton of cash, which should go somewhere. Basically I want to make the Pope the trump card of the Catholics.
 
But, didn't the pope always be a manupilating bastard to all nations?

I think the Pope should more likely to force civs to adopt divine monarchy / religious law/ theocracy, and also, the cost of Divine Right is too high to induce human players to research. How about: the Pope, or any holy-city-owning civs will likely to gift Divine Rights, and civs who research DR by themselves get stability boost and +esiponage bonus, who adopt DR from other civs get penalty and will more likely to be civic/religion influenced.

Or: disallow influence civic/religion until Divine Rights. And civs with electorate get stability / espionage penalty against Divine Monarchy.
 
I think the most RFC-like way to represent "faith point" is via international conference. The Pope will hold the conference like AP / UN owner, and manipulate civs by asking for gold or civic change. If you are rich and faithful, you can bribe the pope to get more city via conference, or declare war on your enemy. Orthodoxy and Islam can have same system by a project granted by Divine Rights.

This way, we can let the Pope tech straightly to DR, therefore enable the system and crusade.
 
The general opinion that I have met in people is that the AP mechanics are broken. Some people pointed out that the Pope never traded cities. City trade between Orthodox players is absolutely inaccurate. By its nature, the Orthodox church cannot "order" the secular authority to do anything.

I don't want to make the Pope all good, but I don't want to make him all bad either.
 
3Miro, can you please tell if it is technically possible for a human player to start a game as Pope's vassal? And if the answer is yes what do you personally think about renaming Germany to HRE starting as Rome's vassal with the goal to break away by 1500 AD as a new UHV?
 
Also, unrelated question about current Germany starting date and place. Why 940 and why Frankfurt? The Kingdom of East Francia have lasted from 843 to the coronation of Duke Henry I of Saxony in 919; the Holy Roman Empire is thought to begin with the Coronation of Emperor Otto I in Rome on February 2, 962. Regensburg was the capital of East Francia. Aachen was much more important than Frankfurt.
 
On the starting year question, someone else would have to answer. Some of the decisions were taken 1 - 2 years ago.

In the Civ IV mechanics, it is impossible for a human player to be the vassal of an AI player. Besides breaking free would be eas since it only requires land and population, Rome has not enough of either.
 
How about a voluntary vassal? That way You'll only break off if you turn down the pope's request, that seems pretty much historically correct no?
 
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