second butlerian jihad

[davidlallen]

We have been deadlocked for a while on the question of overlap between Technocracy religion and Ixian thinking machines. Here is an idea which completely changes this question. I propose we remove Technocracy and add a new religion, Butlerism. It is *anti* technocracy. Give Ixians and their allies all these high research and industry buildings with thinking machines. This new religion is the *counter* for all those things. It should specifically appeal to the late game player who is *behind* on tech, and it will give advantages in attacking Thinking Machine units and cities.

This religion will also have certain unique spreading and gameplay characteristics. One of them I don't know how to do yet but the others are easy.

1. It is founded by researching a very critical late game tech, say Desert Industry. You have to found this. The holy city will belong to a tech leader, which as you will see, is mostly bad news for this player, but it is unavoidable.

2. Once founded, the religion is likely to spread in cities which have a low era, whose players are *behind* in technology. Only the holy city will be at a tech leader. Players who are behind will get the best chance to adopt the religion. Geographical distance does not matter.

3. When the religion spreads to a city, if the city has any of the automated buildings or contains any Ixian walkers, the city has a revolt. This revolt only lasts 1-2 turns but has the effect of destroying these units and buildings.

4. A city which has the religion can not build any automated buildings or walkers. One possible implementation of this is to remove the Thinking Machine resource from the city; I am not sure exactly how to implement this yet. If the religion does spread to a tech leader city, they are welcome to remove it with inquisitors, and then they can build the buildings again. But the religion may spread there again and repeat.

5. This is the cool part ... the Butlerism missionary is invisible and can enter enemy borders. It is not a spy, it is a missionary; but it travels like a spy. So there is little that the enemy can do, to prevent the missionary from entering the city. As a Butlerism player, you send missionaries to all the high production enemy cities and set off these revolts. Of course you still have the national limit of 2-3 missionaries, and the standard chance of failing to spread a religion still applies.

6. All units owned by a player following Butlerism as a state religion get a free promotion, Fury. The icon is an arm holding a flaming torch. The effect is to give +25% combat strength against walker units. If possible, this bonus should also apply when attacking any unit in a city that contains automated buildings or walkers.

What do you think?

 

[idahopotato]

I think this is a really awesome idea. I started testing an Ixian civilization, and it is not that difficult to get the walkers. I am starting to feel like I could destroy anyone with them. I love this idea of yours, especially regarding the Dune universe and its 10,000 years of hatred towards thinking machines.

 

[Ahriman]

I don't really like this. Obviously, I just wish you would adopt my design for technocracy Ix
I can't help but feel that my compromise proposals account for nearly all your concerns. Its hard to tell though what your concerns are, because you don't really post them.

For others: its in the modpack thread here:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=335213&page=18

and in preceding pages.

Some concerns on this design:

1. It is founded by researching a very critical late game tech, say Desert Industry. You have to found this. The holy city will belong to a tech leader, which as you will see, is mostly bad news for this player, but it is unavoidable.

I think having an undesirable religion founded by the first to a particular tech is just really bad design. You should *never* be penalizd for getting more tech, or for being the first to get a tech. (Oooh, I discover desert industry; if I'm not Ix, no worries, if I am Ix, all my walkers in my second best city just got destroyed).

2. Once founded, the religion is likely to spread in cities which have a low era, whose players are *behind* in technology

How would you even do this?
You would have to massively rewrite the religion spreading algorithms.
Currently, religions spread only to cities that have no religion, based only on distance.

3. When the religion spreads to a city, if the city has any of the automated buildings or contains any Ixian walkers, the city has a revolt

Ugh. So, a human player will know to concentrate all their walkers in only a few cities, or leave them in tiles outside, while the AI will get its walkers destroyed. A human player can protect their walkers by putting them into a city that already has the religion, but the AI doesn't understand how to do this.

Also, you're making the Ixian UUs into a liability, rather than a bonus. Why would you bother building them when you risk having them be arbitrarily destroyed?
Some of them are already arguably underpowered for their tech level.

4. A city which has the religion can not build any automated buildings or walkers

So... basically Ix gets screwed.

So there is little that the enemy can do, to prevent the missionary from entering the city

Why is having your buildings and units be destroyed, in a way that you are completely helpless to prevent, a good thing? This sounds like the kind of thing that, if it happened to me, would make me delete the entire mod in disgust.

The effect is to give +25% combat strength against walker units.

I think the idea of a religion that specifically hurts a single faction is just terrible design, and incredibly narrow. In a game without Ix, the religion is useless.

I would far prefer that we continued to discuss Technocracy/Ix, and that you tried to communicate your problems with my design suggestions more clearly. Almost every time you have come up with a concern (eg: not wanting Ixian buildings to require a specific religion) I have proposed a compromise which would incorporate your concern (eg: having Ixian Automated Factory and Ixian Research center NOT require technocracy religion).

 

[davidlallen]

Thanks for the feedback; I will think about it. My ongoing objection to your techno/ix design, as I have stated several times, is that Ix *must* follow technocracy in order to build their own UB. In your current design, this is still the case for the power plant. As we dig more into it, we find more and more overlap between the themes; both ix and technocracy want AI. Surely in a large universe, we can find a religion concept and a civ concept that don't overlap.

Several initial replies. In my current design, the first level buildings do not require thinking machines. I see the AI for all civs build them very often. If Ix is not in a game, the TM resource is up for grabs and it is highly valuable, so it will be grabbed. Even if Ix is in a game, the TM resource should be highly desirable in order to build the units and buildings; so other players besides just Ix will have them. So, there are a bunch of reasons why this is not Ix-specific.

@ Slvynn -- see, it is not personal.

 

[keldath]

reat idea david! making a bulterian religion as the basis for the ix is swell.

 

[Ahriman]

My ongoing objection to your techno/ix design, as I have stated several times, is that Ix *must* follow technocracy in order to build their own UB. In your current design, this is still the case for the power plant

Think of it this way: the Power plant is not really a UB, its just a mechanism of giving IX synergies with a particular religion.

Imagine that the Technocaracy religion has two buildings, the factory and the research lab.
These two buildings have:
a) a synergy with thinking machine resource (more output)
b) a synergy with the Ixian civ (less unhappy)

Imagine that we literally just had these two buildings, and they were something like:
Automated factory. Requires Technocracy religion. +25% hammers. +25% hammers with Thinknig Machines resource. +2 unhappy. +2 happy if ownerfaction=Ix.

Computerized research center. Requires Technocracy religion. +25% beakers. +25% beakers with Thinknig Machines resource. +2 unhappy. +2 happy if ownerfaction=Ix.

This is really the core design intention.

This is similar to how there are synergies in some other buildings with some factions; for example, the Imperium religion cathedral has a synergy with the Sardaukar Cooperation resource. The Landsraad religion cathedral has synergies with the various other trade resources (which gives a mild synergy with Ecaz, who can get more of these).

The design I had is just a slightly different way of implementing this core intention; the point of the powerplant building was to spread the bonus from thinking machines resource over one more tech, and require a few more hammers, rather than instantly building a +50% building.
And using UBs for IX without the unhappy was the simplest way to have Ix suffer less from unhappiness.

They weren't really intended to be Ix's only UBs.

So, maybe the simpest thing to do would be to create some other entirely separate Ixian UB, which has nothing to do with technocracy religion, and eliminate the Ixian versions of the automated factory/research lab/power plant completely.

Do you think that would work for you?

 

[Deliverator]

Whilst I do like the idea of Butlerianism being represented in the mod in some more concrete way, I think there is an issue with a religion that penalises an individual faction.

Religion vs Religion and Civ vs Civ balancing can be tricky already when you are adding unique mechanics. Having Religion vs Faction feels like a tough thing to balance. If you make Ix more powerful to compensate for the fact that they could get battered in the late game, then they will be too powerful if, for whatever reason, Butlerism doesn't take hold.

My other issue would be that we already have a fanatical jihadist religion in Mahdi and this would sort of overlap with that.

Rather than having a full blown religion, you could perhaps have a new tech Neo-Butlerism that enables an anti-Thinking Machine unit bonus and maybe a new unit as well. If you put the Thinking Machine units in their own Combat Type then you could make specific anti promotions for them.

Surely in a large universe, we can find a religion concept and a civ concept that don't overlap.

I fully agree with this objective. The benefits of Technocracy and Ix as proposed are far to similar, as I've said in the modpack thread. In addition, I don't find Technocracy as laid out very flavourful. In the books, all the advanced technology is generally said to come from Ix / Tleilax / Richese. Robots/computers comes from these distant offworld locations that are flaunting the Butlerian rules, rather than being produced by Houses themselves. So, I feel that the Ix / Thinking Machine method is the more Dunish way of doing robots and computer technology in the mod.

However, I can't see how we can make Butlerian balanced when it is focused on a single civ (in Ahriman's succinct summary "basically Ix gets screwed"), despite the fact that I approve of representing the anti-machine attitude more in the mod.

I wonder if there is a different seventh religion we could have...

 

[idahopotato]

Under the proposed scenario, Ix only gets screwed if the have thinking machines, right? I haven't gotten that far yet, but what happens if someone develops atomic weapons? In this mod or in the vanilla even? Perhaps there could be a Landsrad resolution that bans thinking machines, and only then would Ix get penalized if they decided to follow through anyway.

 

[davidlallen]

Automated factory. Requires Technocracy religion. +25% hammers. +25% hammers with Thinknig Machines resource. +2 unhappy. +2 happy if ownerfaction=Ix.

Computerized research center. Requires Technocracy religion. +25% beakers. +25% beakers with Thinknig Machines resource. +2 unhappy. +2 happy if ownerfaction=Ix.

Filtering out the power plant is a good simplification. But this still does not address my core objection, which is, Ix cannot build these buildings unless they convert to technocracy. An Ixian player who wants to stay neutral on religion, or for diplomatic reasons wants to follow another religion, has no way to access these buildings despite having Thinking Machines.

I wrote a proposal where there are Ixian UB of these buildings which don't require technocracy, but they reduce to a single +50% building since Ix will always have their own UR. So I agree with your point on that.

If you would like to propose some different UB for Ix, which are not variants on the above, that would certainly help. The walker units alone are not enough to make them a unique replayable civ.

I would still like to explore another religion which does not share the same concept as the civilization. I would still like to add a Second Butlerian Jihad effect in a more significant way.

 

[davidlallen]

Under the proposed scenario, Ix only gets screwed if the have thinking machines, right? I haven't gotten that far yet, but what happens if someone develops atomic weapons? In this mod or in the vanilla even? Perhaps there could be a Landsrad resolution that bans thinking machines, and only then would Ix get penalized if they decided to follow through anyway.

I agree that we have not done much with atomics. The units are there, but there is no specific penalty for using them. We had discussed giving an atomic strike the effect of turning a mesa terrain into flat rock; but this caused a lot of argument. The main objection is that the AI would never use it to make a shortcut, even though the one memorable use of atomics in the books was for exactly that.

Today suspensors and vehicles *can* move through mesa even though their help says they cannot. We can fix this bug; I am a little nervous this may cause both the human player and the AI some difficulty in pathfinding. I have occasionally seen long chains of mesa, or even solid rings around sink terrain. We have to playtest that carefully before introducing it for real. If we introduced that, we could also make atomics remove mesa and see if players used it.

 

[davidlallen]

If you make Ix more powerful to compensate for the fact that they could get battered in the late game, then they will be too powerful if, for whatever reason, Butlerism doesn't take hold.

That is a good point. We need to make Butlerism spread to one city of every civ, so that any civ *could* adopt it. Then if Ix becomes powerful, there is a counter which can be used. Just like if one player is building a lot of tanks, the other players can build more AT soldiers. BTW, spreading in this way does not require any major rewrite; I have already added three different spread mechanisms. It is just a random chance of the religion appearing in any city, higher if the city has a low era.

My other issue would be that we already have a fanatical jihadist religion in Mahdi and this would sort of overlap with that.

Human history is certainly full of different fanatics on different topics. I feel if we introduce thinking machines, we should introduce the "counter", just like the books.

Rather than having a full blown religion, you could perhaps have a new tech Neo-Butlerism that enables an anti-Thinking Machine unit bonus and maybe a new unit as well.

I don't see too much difference between putting these abilities into a religion, vs putting them into a tech. A religion seems to capture the concept of "jihad" a little better.

---

I agree my current definition of Butlerism is focused on thinking machines, we can broaden it a little and tone down the specific anti thinking machine aspects. For example, their temple could be a Recruiting Center, which gives +1 hammer per city following the religion. We could limit the Fury promotion to only applying against walkers, not against cities containing TM related units. We could make the revolt effect smaller, or make it independent of the missionary; although I like the concept of a Butlerian Firebrand who goes to cities and induces this type of revolt. It is similar to any negative random event; I have not heard that this type of event makes the player throw up their hands and abandon the mod.

 

[idahopotato]

It is a big theme of the books, so I like where you are going with it. I asked earlier about the atomic weapons as well, because I was wondering how other civs respond to it. I don't know if it is possible, but I figure that if a civ created thinking machines, just as if a civ used atomic weapons, all of the other civs would band together to destroy that one civ. Is it possible to create an instant alliance as such?

 

[Ahriman]

Rather than having a full blown religion, you could perhaps have a new tech Neo-Butlerism that enables an anti-Thinking Machine unit bonus and maybe a new unit as well. If you put the Thinking Machine units in their own Combat Type then you could make specific anti promotions for them.

This seems reasonable. I would call them Walker units though, they could easily be piloted or remote-controlled.

I fully agree with this objective. The benefits of Technocracy and Ix as proposed are far to similar, as I've said in the modpack thread.

Well, I think they are partly only too similar because people choose to interpret Technocracy as being non-robotic. Under my interpretation, Ix is just a technologist faction (like Ecaz is a trade faction or the BTls are a biological/religious faction - or like the University is a technologist faction in Planetfall/SMAC), and then the Technocracy religion is about artificial intelligence and computerization.

So in my mind, Ix's faction theme are industrial mechanized walker/battlesuit type units (the walkers - which could just be mechwarrior type things) as opposed to normal infantry (the point is using machinery rather than training and tactics and numbers), and then technological innovation and creativity - Ix is renowned for new technological inventions and embracing new technologies easily.
So I could see them for example having a UB that reduced the upgrade costs for units.

And then in my mind, Technocracy religion is about artificial intelligence and robots, and violating Butlerian strictures. Ixians would be slightly better at going this way, because they are great technologists, but any faction other than the BG's or BTl or Fremen potentially could go that way. You don't think the Harkonnens or Ordos would use forbidden technology if it gave them an advantage or they thought they could get away with it?

A way to emphasize this would be:

a) Change the "Thinking Machine" unique resource to "Ixian technologies". So Ix can keep these for itself, or share them with others.
b) Have the Ixian Walker units require "Ixian technologies" resource.
c) Have two Technocracy buildings:
Automated Factory, +30% hammers, +1 unhappy in the continent, +10% hammers with Ixian technologies resource.
Computerized Research Lab. +30% beakers, +1 unhappy in the continent, +10% beakers with Ixian technologies resource.
d) Have an Ixian Unique building; Ixian Slunkworks, provides +10% beakers, units in the city upgrade at -40% gold cost.
e) Have some random Events that capture the flavor of Butlerian backlash. The events trigger only in cities with technocracy religion (or only with the buildings?) and can cause uprisings or building destruction. Kindof like how slave uprising events in vanilla happen only with the slavery civic.
We can use events to add a lot of flavor. This is one of the strongest features of the Warhammer mod.

But this still does not address my core objection, which is, Ix cannot build these buildings unless they convert to technocracy. An Ixian player who wants to stay neutral on religion, or for diplomatic reasons wants to follow another religion, has no way to access these buildings despite having Thinking Machines.

You're missing the point. These are the religion's buildings. They are not the faction's UB. Thats like complaining that Ecaz can't build CHOAM buildnigs unless they have Landsraad religion, or that Fremen can't build Temples of Muad'Dib unless they have , or that Corrino can't build Feudal estates unless they are Imperium Religion.

I did have an alternative design where these really were the Ixian buildings, and in that case I'm happy to let Ix build them without the religion.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=8622849&postcount=344

Just as long as we do not let Ix get all of the benefits of Technocracy religion without ever adoptnig it. Ix needs to have greater incentive to adopt Technocracy religion than other factions, not less.

I wonder if there is a different seventh religion we could have...

I'm open to suggestions.

Under the proposed scenario, Ix only gets screwed if the have thinking machines, right?

In the status quo, the thinking machnie resource is Ix's resource from landing stages, it comes very early, and all the walker units require this resource.

I wrote a proposal where there are Ixian UB of these buildings which don't require technocracy

Under every proposal of yours that I have seen, Ix has no incentive to pursue or adopt the Technocracy religion, which IMO is an instant design failure.

I feel if we introduce thinking machines, we should introduce the "counter", just like the books.

As above, Walkers need not be controlled by AIs, and we can have a counter through Events rather than a religion.

I have not heard that this type of event makes the player throw up their hands and abandon the mod.

I have not seen any random event that destroys most of your army in a city. Do you really think that instantly losing multiple units in a city would be fun to happen to you, when there is nothnig you can do to prevent it?

 

[idahopotato]

I like the banding together of all other civs better than random events destroying your units. If your state religion is technocracy, then the butlerianism should not have that great of an effect. How does it work currently with competing religions in a city that isn't the state religion?

 

[Deliverator]

Well, I think they are partly only too similar because people choose to interpret Technocracy as being non-robotic. Under my interpretation, Ix is just a technologist faction (like Ecaz is a trade faction or the BTls are a biological/religious faction - or like the University is a technologist faction in Planetfall/SMAC), and then the Technocracy religion is about artificial intelligence and computerization.

Personally, I've always interpreted Technocracy as being about artificial intelligence and robots just like you. It is because Technocracy = computers/robots and Ix = computers/robots that I think there is too much overlap there. If we had a trade advantages religion then the advantages of being Ecaz would become less distinct, so having a religion that gives the same advantages as Ix makes the advantages of that civ less distinct.

That said, I don't want to give up entirely on the Technocracy religion - I think it is has some merit.

Perhaps we could have BOTH Technocracy and Butlerism (Butlerianism?) in the game for eight religions. This could be the way to make sure that Butlerism doesn't totally discriminate against Ix, and achieve more balance. I think Butlerism will feel lopsided without an opposing religion.

Perhaps we should think of the Technocracy religion as the replacement for the Thinking Machines resource and give Ix advantages towards founding it and other synegies with it. You could even call the religion Thinking Machines to stop any of the conceptual issues that go with Technocracy. Then you can have a late game source of conflict between the Neo-Butlerians and the users of Thinking Machines.

 

[Ahriman]

so having a religion that gives the same advantages as Ix makes the advantages of that civ less distinct.

So lets tweak Ix into technologist innovators, so that they are diffwerent from an industrial/robotic religion.

I think Butlerism will feel lopsided without an opposing religion.

I really dislike Buterlism as a religion, for many of the reasons above. It only makes sense as a reactionary movement; what if Thinking Machines or Technocracy are not really major issues in the game? Why would a Butlerian religion spread if the machines were very weak - or even if they got wiped out (imagine if Technocracy was founded and then destroyed entirely, but Buterism spread unabated)? And what else would it do except oppose machines, that didn't overlap with other religions?

I would much rather represent a backlash with Events triggered off technocracy religion than creating a counter-religion-religion.

And also, making it a religion would also then put it in conflict with all the other religions.

It also is too much of an alternate future; allowing for a resurgence of machines is one step removed from reality ("reformation"), trying to model a resurgent counter-reformation is two steps removed.

Finally, if we're going to have all kinds of anti-robot stuff, then the robots themselves need to be a lot more powerful.

 

[idahopotato]

I am starting to think that a religion called Butlerianism is not needed. Whatever religion is the dominate in the galaxy, I guess you might call it Imperialism, as well as Zunsunni (and possibly Shai Halud, Mahdi, etc), would use the "Orange Catholic Bible" which already has as a major tenet "Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a man's mind."

I have only played Ix once so far, but I found it much easier to dominate other cultures, both technologically and militarily with the robots. I doubt they need to be more powerful, even with the anti-robot stuff

 

[Ahriman]

I have only played Ix once so far, but I found it much easier to dominate other cultures, both technologically

Ix currently has not technological advantages over other factions. I suspect you just had a good start position and a low difficulty level.

IIRC the Walkers are currently too concentrated in the tech tree as well, so some of them never really see play.

 

[idahopotato]

I was playing on a low level, but I did not have a great starting off area. And I have played the same level with other factions and only the Fremen were able to build up that fast due to their sand mobility. I also do a lot of tech trading with other factions, whereas I never traded any tech when playing Ix and was leaps above everyone else. Whenever I play, the Fremen and Ix factions for the CPU are in the top 1-3 spots on the list.

Something else odd that happened to me with Ix is that after I was pretty well advanced on the tech charts, I got ten or so technologies in a single turn. I don't know what I did or what building/tech/wonder I just achieved, but I got a whole list of tech from the tree all at once. I kept meaning to ask about it, but forgot until just now.

 

[davidlallen]

Something else odd that happened to me with Ix is that after I was pretty well advanced on the tech charts, I got ten or so technologies in a single turn.

Ten? That seems pretty amazing. Let's see, could be from your borders spreading and covering goody huts, or exploring goody huts, or having a high beaker output so that you complete more than one tech per turn, or the result of tech trades. Can you remember if you did anything, or did they just appear? For example, a tech trade or the result of your own beakers would involve at least clicking something in a dialog box.