Runner up 'prize' for not reasearching a religion first

[Mesix]

It would also be nice if each of the religious techs had some benefit beyond just the religion. Something that matches the name of the tech and the theme of the religion, but is not specifically tied to the religion (i.e. a new unit, promotion, or building). The techs should also lead somewhere in the tech tree.

I like the idea that the player (who is not first) gets a diciple rather than a random city with the religion. This gives them the option to spread the religion to one of their cities or use the deciple in another way. It also makes a little more sense. The deciple wanders into the city from a far away land preaching the tennants of his faith.

It would be kind of cool if the diciples that are gifted when the tech is researched (as opposed to the ones that are built) could be a bit more powerful with the sacrificial powers. They should provide more than 20 culture, automatically spread the religion to a friendly city (instead of having a chance to fail...wouldn't that just defeat the purpose), and perhaps also be able to be sacrificed to generate some other special effect that is appropriate to the religion they practice. This would make them kind of like a weak "great person" and give the player a few options for a one time boost.

 

[Chandrasekhar]

Being able to get a religion without founding or having it spread to you is already pretty powerful. I'd not increase the benefits that you get from this feature yet.

 

[Nero's fire]

The religious techs not leading anywhere doesn't seem to be a problem since FfH is much more about specilization and it doesn't seem fair to make those crazy octopi loving people have to learn about the god of dirt just to advance in tech. The only thing I can see that could be linked to the religous techs (besides the tech only availble to that relgion) would be something like priesthood and since priesthood is pretty much useless without a religon it seems a very moot point.
Further imporvements to the propossed disciple seem to be going too far. After all getting the disciple means that you were runner up.

 

[DieselBiscuit]

You guys all make good points. BUt I have a few concerns:

1. Is it weird that A civ may found a religion and then halfway around the world, in a civ they havent even met, a city shows up on their radar because it knows the religion too?

This may be modifiable in the main code. I am looking into it atm and my idea is that this ability comes with building the holy shrine. To build the holy shrine you must sacrifice a prophet in any city with the religion. This founds the holy city and makes you the 'owner' of the religion, which I think is line with the flavor of the mod (a great prophet somehow sanctifying the bond between the people and the god in question, making them his favoured ones). After getting the holy city this way you'll be able to build the holy shrine there like a normal wonder and this wonder will grant you the line of sight currently associated with having the holy city.

2. Should religions be this easy to specify or is a little randomness better? Do we want a player to just be able to pick that he wants runes and get it (with the only difference being if get the holy city or not?).

But I do agree that its not fun to be researching a religion you want and miss out on it by a few turns and have wasted all that effort.

As someone (you?) mentioned earlier, the problem is that religious techs in FFH only grants benefits if you got that religion in your cities. In vanilla they lead somewhere generally useful to everyone. This makes your efforts somewhat worthwhile even if the religion is founded on the other side of the planet.

This makes it, as you say, a waste of all the effort you put into getting it and I'll imagine it could break a game for you in multiplayer. An answer could be giving the founder/builder of holy shrine additional benefits but that's not relevant to the mechanics in question atm.

I would consider returning the research to the player as the most balanced option but it seems out of flavor. In vanilla civ religions are founded by ideas. In FfH they are founded by gods, so its easier to grasp that seperate civs could start worshiping the same religion without any knowledge of each other (since they are just just follwoing the same divine teaching).

And I guess I could see that the place with the holy city would get some knowledge of the other civ just through their divine connection.

So I guess I could see that when a religion tech is founded, if the player doesn't already have the religion in one of his cities (and hes not agnostic) he could get the religion in a random city.

Anyone think thats a bad idea?

As said above, I think it's a good idea, but I think getting a free disciple in you capital is preferable to a random city, or you could alternatively found it using the algorithm from the CvPlayer.foundReligion()-method (probably what you meant in the first place ).

Additionally, I think the cost of getting multiple religious founding techs should be increased, proportionally to the number of techs you already have. An example would be tripling the cost of every founding tech and giving each player a starting amount of beakers in the tech amounting to 2/3s of the cost. Every time you aquire such a tech, your current beakers in the other techs are halved making it increasingly hard to get all religions, maximally adding a cost of ca. 200% (200% - 100% * (2/ (3*2*2*2*2)) = 195.8%) to your last religious tech. Whoa! Maths!

This would also help reducing the absurd happycap-increase that the Religion-civic can give you atm (a possible +9 happy faces with temples).

Did any of this make sense?

 

[marioflag]

I think that if you found a religion having knowledge of all cities is an advantage too huge. Founding the shrine and having knowledge on the map of all civs which adopt your religion would be more appropriate and balanced.So i would support that idea.
Instead of a free disciple, for civs which don't found a religion, i think would be better to have a random chance perhaps 50% or less to have a religion spreading inside one of your cities.In the opposite case if discovering a tech would mean a certain spreading of a religion inside one of your cities, it would mean that if you have discovered all 6 techs you would have all 6 religions inside your empire which is not balanced IMO.A disciple could mean another advantage over AI because a human would wisely try to use the disciple inside the capital or his most important city, AI is capable to "think" that the best choice when spreading a religion is the capital?I seriously doubt about it.
I think that changing the religion system would require other balancement which would require also new features to add in the mod, so while giving runners up a prize would be good i hope it wouldn't alter all the religion system.

 

[Chandrasekhar]

This may be modifiable in the main code. I am looking into it atm and my idea is that this ability comes with building the holy shrine. To build the holy shrine you must sacrifice a prophet in any city with the religion. This founds the holy city and makes you the 'owner' of the religion, which I think is line with the flavor of the mod (a great prophet somehow sanctifying the bond between the people and the god in question, making them his favoured ones). After getting the holy city this way you'll be able to build the holy shrine there like a normal wonder and this wonder will grant you the line of sight currently associated with having the holy city.

Seems that this would pretty much remove any benefit from being the first to a religion. Giving a leg up to the runner up is one thing, but removing all incentive to be first to a founding tech is another entirely.

 

[DieselBiscuit]

Instead of a free disciple, for civs which don't found a religion, i think would be better to have a random chance perhaps 50% or less to have a religion spreading inside one of your cities.In the opposite case if discovering a tech would mean a certain spreading of a religion inside one of your cities, it would mean that if you have discovered all 6 techs you would have all 6 religions inside your empire which is not balanced IMO.

I agree that this would indeed be the issue if one does not apply other restrictions, such as perhaps not giving a disciple unit if you have a state religion adopted. This would mean that players looking to abuse this mechanic would have to do without state religion in 10 additional turns per religious tech they wanted that free disciple from.

A disciple could mean another advantage over AI because a human would wisely try to use the disciple inside the capital or his most important city, AI is capable to "think" that the best choice when spreading a religion is the capital?I seriously doubt about it.
I think that changing the religion system would require other balancement which would require also new features to add in the mod, so while giving runners up a prize would be good i hope it wouldn't alter all the religion system.

A simple, temporary solution would be to use the function for founding a religion to determine where the disciple spawns and make the AI automatically found it there, as this function uses parameters like city size (positive) and the existence of other religions in the city (negative) to determine a suitable city (it is currently VERY reluctant to found in the capital but that is really easy to change).

The main problem would get the AI to be competitive with human players in pumping that Great Prophet out and getting the holy city founded, but I imagine a little weighing of preferences the CityAI is not very difficult to achieve. You could also pull of an AI that switches every surplus citizen in its biggest/most food producing city to Priests as soon as an religion was within reach and automatically goes for Pacifism but I think that would be a little too tough on players on higher difficulties.

Think of the fun (masochism) of a tech race towards Philosophy if it was to give a free prophet under these new circumstances

 

[DieselBiscuit]

Seems that this would pretty much remove any benefit from being the first to a religion. Giving a leg up to the runner up is one thing, but removing all incentive to be first to a founding tech is another entirely.

I fail to see how my suggestion removes all incentive to be the first. For one, you will get to be the first to build a temple of the chosen religion, which allows you to recieve Great Prophet-points faster. This is very in cue with my view that a fast teching civilization maybe wouldn't be the first to get the favors of a god without actually putting some faith in there.

Technocrats and merchantilists aren't always the most religiously inclined, ya know.

 

[Unser Giftzwerg]

You guys all make good points. BUt I have a few concerns:

1. Is it weird that A civ may found a religion and then halfway around the world, in a civ they havent even met, a city shows up on their radar because it knows the religion too?

2. Should religions be this easy to specify or is a little randomness better? Do we want a player to just be able to pick that he wants runes and get it (with the only difference being if get the holy city or not?).

But I do agree that its not fun to be researching a religion you want and miss out on it by a few turns and have wasted all that effort.

I would consider returning the research to the player as the most balanced option but it seems out of flavor. In vanilla civ religions are founded by ideas. In FfH they are founded by gods, so its easier to grasp that seperate civs could start worshiping the same religion without any knowledge of each other (since they are just just follwoing the same divine teaching).

And I guess I could see that the place with the holy city would get some knowledge of the other civ just through their divine connection.

So I guess I could see that when a religion tech is founded, if the player doesn't already have the religion in one of his cities (and hes not agnostic) he could get the religion in a random city.

Anyone think thats a bad idea?

The one potential onion in this ointment would be the matter of obtaining the 'Way' tech via trade. Would obtaining the tech via trade also spread the religion to a random city? Do we want it to spread the religion, or do we want it to not spread?? If we do not want it to spread if it is learned via trade...can that distinction be coded?

Aside from the narrow issue of tech trading, I suppose your proposal here is somethig that should be in the game, due to popular demand. It cannot be said such a change would be disruptive to balance, as luck can already spread the same religion to your lands. It makes sense that a god would accept a new batch of adherents, even if that god dos not consider them as fondly as the civ that busted their ass to be first in line.

I do favor your proposal to select a random city to gain the religion, over the Disciple alternative. First, this system will never fail. Disciples sometimes fail to spread that religion, and then where are you? Second, the game already has religions as a force not entirely under player control. Lastly, why should the runner-up get to choose which city to put that first religion? The first-place winner didn't get to choose the Holy City. Runner's up should not be allowed the advantage of starting their religionin their best temple-bulding city. The random city method is clearly preferable.

Personally, the existing system has one very strong charm (IMO): if you miss your first choice you gots pressure to get your second choice or at least your fifth choice. And that leads you to combination you might not ordinarilly try, such as Ashen Veil Elohim. Or Octopus Overlord Khazad. I've played games where good civs 'fell from grace' but then by later researching the Order returned to their good status. That's more than just a wargame played and finished and forgotten. That's a plot to an epic story.

I love Civ because of games like that one. Games where you can see a nation running up against some vast challenge and being transformed by the experience. The best games I've played have been the ones where things have gone wrong. In my last three games I got screwed out of: founding a religion, then starting in an area with zero mana nodes, to my current game where I could not obtain any metal at all until about Yr325 ... all of these games have forced me to different approaches and different tech progressions. They've been some of the best games of Civ I've ever played.

So even though I personally like the occasional frying pan to the face when it comes to religious research, I feel compromise is in order. Too many players just hate it. By spreading the religion to a random city, the player can get the religion of choice. But spreading it further might be pretty inefficient. And so it might be advantageous to still go for a different religion, and the days of crazy Orderly Calabim on Crusade shall not perish entirely.

 

[Night Hawk125]

What about something like "A message in the stars" tech, when a religion is founded somewhere in on earth, everybody with the tech profits from it a tiny bit or temporary (few happy faces or something like that) because your people have read in the stars somewhere on earth the divine had returned to earth. But it could also work backwards, like when you are a good civ and the Ashen Veil has been discovered somewhere on earth, your people will grow uneasy.
With this kind of a general tech, everybody that didn't found out a religion is still in the race.

 

[Great Oleander]

The one potential onion in this ointment would be the matter of obtaining the 'Way' tech via trade. Would obtaining the tech via trade also spread the religion to a random city? Do we want it to spread the religion, or do we want it to not spread?? If we do not want it to spread if it is learned via trade...can that distinction be coded?

Aside from the narrow issue of tech trading, I suppose your proposal here is somethig that should be in the game, due to popular demand. It cannot be said such a change would be disruptive to balance, as luck can already spread the same religion to your lands. It makes sense that a god would accept a new batch of adherents, even if that god dos not consider them as fondly as the civ that busted their ass to be first in line.

I do favor your proposal to select a random city to gain the religion, over the Disciple alternative. First, this system will never fail. Disciples sometimes fail to spread that religion, and then where are you? Second, the game already has religions as a force not entirely under player control. Lastly, why should the runner-up get to choose which city to put that first religion? The first-place winner didn't get to choose the Holy City. Runner's up should not be allowed the advantage of starting their religionin their best temple-bulding city. The random city method is clearly preferable.

Personally, the existing system has one very strong charm (IMO): if you miss your first choice you gots pressure to get your second choice or at least your fifth choice. And that leads you to combination you might not ordinarilly try, such as Ashen Veil Elohim. Or Octopus Overlord Khazad. I've played games where good civs 'fell from grace' but then by later researching the Order returned to their good status. That's more than just a wargame played and finished and forgotten. That's a plot to an epic story.

I love Civ because of games like that one. Games where you can see a nation running up against some vast challenge and being transformed by the experience. The best games I've played have been the ones where things have gone wrong. In my last three games I got screwed out of: founding a religion, then starting in an area with zero mana nodes, to my current game where I could not obtain any metal at all until about Yr325 ... all of these games have forced me to different approaches and different tech progressions. They've been some of the best games of Civ I've ever played.

So even though I personally like the occasional frying pan to the face when it comes to religious research, I feel compromise is in order. Too many players just hate it. By spreading the religion to a random city, the player can get the religion of choice. But spreading it further might be pretty inefficient. And so it might be advantageous to still go for a different religion, and the days of crazy Orderly Calabim on Crusade shall not perish entirely.

I totally agree with Giftzwerg!

 

[Gamestation]

A concern of mine related to religions in FFH is if you choose a medieval start instead of ancient. I tried a medieval start as the Grigori and founded Fellowship of the Leaves. Obviously being a Grigori would mean that I would not want to be founding any religions except to totally screw up everyone else's strategy (which is possible as things are right now). Oh and also I had techs that should have been impossible for the Grigori to research (hidden paths, arete, mind stapling). If there is something that needs to be dealt with, it would have to be this.

The random spread to one of your cities when you research the tech does not sound like a bad idea to me. Maybe it can specifically spread to the capital to make things a bit simpler. I think maybe the religion line of sight thing should be eliminated as well so that civs won't be meeting each other by all researching the same tech.

 

[AlazkanAssassin]

I strongly belive that those who do not research it first should not get the religion given to them in any way.
You missed it, I'm sorry. Either you didn't try very hard for it, or someone else did.
The technologies already do have a benefit for you when you are not the first one to discover it. you need them to build the temples. Even if i'm another religion, I will still often spread runes to all my citys so that I can build their temples.
Admitedly, this does not help if you cannot find the religion and get it spread to you. But that is part of the fun of religions. If everyone can get the religion without getting it from the founder, then we will lose a lot of variety in the game. If everyone can get one of the first three religions, why would anyone but the human player ever try order or veil?
I love it when I have filled my continent with followers of my religion(say, OO) by subdueing or destroying all heretics.(runes and leaves) then I hear that the order has been founded in some far off pagan land. By the time I can get there another religious bloc has formed against me.

I hate missing out on a religion I'm going for, but I wouldn't want to eliminate the rush for them.
Without the potential to lose out on a religion it will simply become a rutene part of your research, not an important goal. Would you ever see ljosalfar without leaves? or dwarves without runes? I think a lot of variety would be lost.

Pardon my rambling.
And have a nice day.

Edit: And one more comment, if two nations on separate continents started worshiping the same god, what are the odds that they would worship in a similar enough way so as not to brand the others as heretics?
On earth even small religious differences can lead to separation of two groups nominally of the same religion (see catholic/orthodox/prodestent or shiite/suni)
Would dwarves who worship Kilmorph get along with Doviello who do in a different way? I bet they'd try to kill each other over it.

 

[Lord Vermillion]

I strongly belive that those who do not research it first should not get the religion given to them in any way.
You missed it, I'm sorry. Either you didn't try very hard for it, or someone else did.
The technologies already do have a benefit for you when you are not the first one to discover it. you need them to build the temples. Even if i'm another religion, I will still often spread runes to all my citys so that I can build their temples.
Admitedly, this does not help is you cannot find the religion and get it spread to you. But that is part of the fun of religions. if everyone can get the religion without getting iot from the founder, then we will loose a lot of variety in the game. If everyone can get one of the first three religions, why would anyone but the human player ever try order or veil?
I love it when I have filled my continent with followers of my religion(say, OO) by subdueing or destroying all heretics.(runes and leaves) then I hear that the order has been founded in some far off pagan land. By the time I can get there another religious bloc has formed against me.

I hate missing out on a religion i'm going for, but I wouldn't want to eliminate the rush for them.
Without the potential to lose out on a religion it will simply become a rutene part of your research, not an important goal. Would you ever see ljosalfar without leaves? or dwarves without runes? I think a lot of variety would be lost.

Pardon my rambling.
And have a nice day.

AMEN!!!!! I agree 100%

 

[Unser Giftzwerg]

AMEN!!!!! I agree 100%

I know I voted for compromise, but my true enthusiasms lie with these folks.

 

[Unser Giftzwerg]

A concern of mine related to religions in FFH is if you choose a medieval start instead of ancient. I tried a medieval start as the Grigori and founded Fellowship of the Leaves. Obviously being a Grigori would mean that I would not want to be founding any religions except to totally screw up everyone else's strategy (which is possible as things are right now). Oh and also I had techs that should have been impossible for the Grigori to research (hidden paths, arete, mind stapling). If there is something that needs to be dealt with, it would have to be this.

The random spread to one of your cities when you research the tech does not sound like a bad idea to me. Maybe it can specifically spread to the capital to make things a bit simpler. I think maybe the religion line of sight thing should be eliminated as well so that civs won't be meeting each other by all researching the same tech.

These [EDIT: the comments on the Grigori] are all good points too, which I temporarrily forgot to mention wile caught up in all the stirring prose.

[If it is decided runners-up get religion in a random town, the choice should be made like it is currently done for the HOly City. That is, it should preferentially select a non-capitol city. Capitol city = rapid temple construction. The winner does not get this advantage; why then should the losers get it?]

 

[AlazkanAssassin]

I agree that those religious techs should not be handed out with the era starts, and I remember that being of Kael's wish list as one point.

Not the bigest concern, in my opinion, because I never start anywhere but ancient era.

 

[lorgen]

An interesting discussion. Some of Dieselbiscuits ideas about a prophet founding the holy city makes a lot of sense. After all, which government have researched their religion today. The religions were founded by the prophets.

And why are the holy cities in todays religions holy cities? Muhammed was thrown out of Meccah, and went in exile to Medina, founded the first mosque and later returned to Meccah. Without the prophet, no holy cities. Jerusalem and Jesus... Need I say more?

BUT, how about changing religion to rituals? "A huge gathering of Khazad elder took place beneath the mountains. Strange things had been seen at the top of the huge mountain range. It was as if something stirred deep inside it. After months of meditating and chanting at the base, it suddenly happened... She talked to them. The goddess was awake again. The words were faint in the beginning, but rapidly gained strength. She told them where to find her runes. The runes of Kilmorph. They were buried in the city of (random city becoming the holy city). She ordered them to build a shrine to strengthen her influence in the world, and they were promised great rewards"

Making religion rituals (not hurriable except maybe if you have a great prophet?) would make more sense than it being a tech (at least in my little brain ). This would fit better with the fact that founders of religions are prophets/groups of persons that have been "chosen" and then have spread it to the rest of the community. Also, the runner-up would not suffer a huge beacon hit (but a lot of wasted time in terms of hammers....)

 

[marioflag]

I don't know if in the mod it is different from vanilla game but perhaps to make this techs useful for runners-up an option could be enabled.
For example in the case that techs of Runes of Kilmorph is researched by another civ and you don't have yet that tech it should be impossible to spread that religion inside your cities!In other words the tech is a prerequisite to have this religion inside your cities.No tech you can't imagine what is runes of kilmorph, no infernal pact no mages which worship the demons.In this way the shrine would be less powerful, while for runners up the tech would be anyway useful because it allows the religion of this tech to be spreaded inside your cities.The 6 techs could be useful for runners up also in other ways without changing the religion system so much (alazkanassassin has his good points), like adding some building, wonders units, rituals or something else.One thing which in my opinion should be considered is the mutual acceptance between religions.If i have in a city ashen veil and runes of kilmorph why ever they should accept each other?it would be more likely that they would cut the throat of each other!In this mod unlike vanilla religion have an alignment, opposite ideologies.Some negative effects should happen when 2 opposite religions are spreaded inside one city

 

[Nero's fire]

I tend to play on very competitive games so more often than not if I fail to get a religous tech then I can kiss the other two good by. And in all of my games the people that found the religons became quickly the most powerful nations in the game. How many times have you been able to beat the elves to leaves? Right now I feel that there is much too much luck involved in getting relgions and if I lose out, then I will be out of the game for several centuries. Religion is just too important in FfH for it to be left up to chance completely.

The computer is pretty dumb but people aren't. In multiplayer everyone is b-lining to some religion and more often then not the person that got there, got their first through luck not skill or effort. Only by playing someone like the grigori can you remove yourself from this equation and in those games I find the only way to win is through quick conquest with my adventurers. (on a side note I always found it fun in earlier mods as the Grigori to found ashen veil then later create ban the divine)

I can see the problems with a disciple popping up as opposed to just a religion spreading to one of the cities. And perhaps make things a bit more difficult to the loser by having them make a project or something seems reasonable. I just don't think that a player should be prevented from using a very key mechanic in the game completely.

On another note the later two tend to be stronger then the first three. With order you can completely reduce your maintance, very nice late game with a large civ. And can you say hellfire? Who doesn't want little demons running around their land causing havok for everyone else.