At the bottom of this post is some links, the loyalty guide is on the left next to experience. It needs to be changed for GS civs but the mechanics are there.
One thing I question is the occupation loyalty malus and buff. Is it always -5/+5 in your observations? If so, that's strange because the min and max are set to 0 and 10 respectively. Additionally, the garrisoned unit loyalty is set @ +8, not +5. So unless I'm misunderstanding those entries in the database I listed a few posts back or the game is using something different to figure those values, I question the -5/+5.
I really like TGMs suggestions around Religion. I like the Religion system, and I really don't think it should be massively reworked or ditched, but it could maybe use a bit of a refresh.
I'd really cooled on the idea of recruiting Great Prophets all game, and I think the unused GPP = faith is a better and more elegant solution to unused GPP. But it would be good to have easier ways to get Relics, and I think tying that to Great People is a good idea.
I think it's a no-brainer that Beliefs should get another look the same way Pantheons have. Too many beliefs just don't matter.
I also think FXS need to look at three other things.
Apostles, Inqusitors and Missionaries. I think these guys, particularly Apostles, need to have a little more untility beyond just spreading Religion. Like, they should have a bit of non-Religious utility. Maybe that could a few more non-Religion Promotions for Apostles, but maybe Inqusitors and Missionaries could also spend the charges to have some effect on eg loyalty or growth.
Unique units. There should be some way to get slightly different flavors of Religious Units. No idea how but it really kills me that it's the same 3-4 units for all Religions every game. I think Monks, as underwhelming as they are, were a good idea. More like that would be good. Like, maybe there should be more beliefs that unlock unique Religious units (indeed, I think the Guru would have been better if it was tied to a belief rather than being available to everyone).
Religion as a victory condition needs a complete overhaul. If the AI played even a marginally competent game, the religious victory would be utterly impossible on most maps.
I mean, you can easily snuff out a neighboring religion by just running up to its holy site and converting while it's barely up and running. That's an easy bit of poaching. An AI could be programmed to prioritize doing that to its neighbors, but that's one of those "unfun" winning strategies that players would be unsatisfied with, so I wouldn't expect to see that be too normal of an occurrence.
So what is more normal is for a number of civ's to get their religions running with full steam, meaning they're building a faith engine. To protect your religion, all you have to do is keep apostles or inquisitors parked in cities. They can't be attacked in cities (or encampments), so once there's enough faith to buy more apostles, just flip the city back and make the purchases required to get your religion back online.
The AI right now isn't really trying to win by RV. It's just indulging the player by attempting to put up a stolid fight.
I mean, you can easily snuff out a neighboring religion by just running up to its holy site and converting while it's barely up and running. That's an easy bit of poaching. An AI could be programmed to prioritize doing that to its neighbors, but that's one of those "unfun" winning strategies that players would be unsatisfied with, so I wouldn't expect to see that be too normal of an occurrence.
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I agree with a lot of what you say about RV, but I do have to say that the AI does go for weaker/new religions to try and take them out early. I've had them try it on me a number of times. They aren't consistent, and are rarely if ever successful, but they do try. And the way to solve that is to just declare war and condemn all their units, so it's super imperfect and something humans can easily game.
In Civ V, religion was a well-refined system. But it wasn't a victory condition, and they very intentionally designed it to sunset in the later eras as the great powers shifted away from the notion of divine right. Made sense.
But they were victims of their own success. Religion was such a well-received accomplishment, they made a victory condition out of it. And now we have the mess that we have now, where you have a bunch of the same units running around, visually indistinguishable (so, for instance, you can run smack-dab into a Debater without realizing it). Everyone's fighting using the same narrow set of tools. Nobody should ever win except through overwhelming the other guy with apostle spam.
Though I kind of don't see them outright removing a victory type, I think this would be a good thing for the devs to make a poll for. Sort of a referendum. Vote whether you want to keep the religious victory as-is, or change/remove it and make the proper adjustments to have it fit as an additional game mechanic like loyalty is, but not tied to its own victory type.
I play with it off! I haven't seen an AI actually get particularly close to winning a religious victory, but I turn it off in case it happens (because then I can ignore religion) and also I imagine it might make the AI focus more on other more competitive goals instead of spamming holy sites everywhere. Of course, if I'm playing a civ that has any sort of religious bonuses, I'll keep the victory on, so that I have the option to go for that. But when I'm playing any other civ, the religious victory is the only victory I turn off, and I turn it off most of the time.
I think religious victory is great, gives us some interesting leaders like Phillip II and another government not too mention a Casus belli. It's an interesting way to do combat and gain "territory" without a lot of warmongering penalties. I hardly ever condemn now because I don't want to give one religious civ an advantage over another if I'm neutral and I want to have the positive spread of my own religion by legitimately defeating rival religious units.
I don't see any reason why they should completely remove religious victory, but just rework and enhance it for the future.
I for one like the fact that they launched with two passive victory types (science and culture) and 2 aggressive (domination and religion) to an extent.
The RV is great because it is a fast victory. The main issue with it being broken is it is another form of combat and currently the AI is its own worst enemy with religious combat because dead units also = loss of faith.
I think the most annoying thing about religious victory is moving all those missionaries all over the place all the time, it would be cooler if religious victory were achieved by fulfilling different requirements, rather than bringing your religion to all the civs.
I think the most annoying thing about religious victory is moving all those missionaries all over the place all the time, it would be cooler if religious victory were achieved by fulfilling different requirements, rather than bringing your religion to all the civs.
I think the most annoying thing about religious victory is moving all those missionaries all over the place all the time, it would be cooler if religious victory were achieved by fulfilling different requirements, rather than bringing your religion to all the civs.
This is spot on that the real problem is the tedium of movement to distant lands, especially since missionaries and apostles have a very finite lifetime, which requires maintaining a constant stream.
I’ve mentioned a proposed solution in other threads: make international airline agreements a thing. An open borders-like agreement between civs that lets them use the rapid mobilization to each other’s airports. And make this available at flight.
To keep it simple, I suggest that a one-tile Settlement outside borders could be as simple as a 'shell' Settlement Improvement (1 Builder Charge) on the tile, which would establish it as 'friendly' territory, and then a 2nd Builder Charge could place an Improvement on it. That could be a Pasture, Farm, Quarry, Plantation or Mine over an appropriate Resource, or a Fort hat simply protects the tile - but any of them could also 'spawn' a Trading Post if a Trade Route goes through or to it. IF the tile gets incorporated into a city border, or you invest a Settler and convert it into a City Center, the original Settlement Shell disappears, and if it becomes a City Center it adds one Population Point to the new City.
I could see some Unique Improvements adding into this system nicely - an American Settlement -Trading Post like Bent's Fort, for instance, or the current Australian Outback Station . . .
To whom it may concern, Firaxis is advertising the position of full-time writer with historical and research knowledge. I think that was Pete Murray's job.
I've sometimes turned that off, although it still doesn't seem to change the AI behavior very much. What I'll usually do instead is just ignore religion altogether and not worry about my cities being converted.
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