Shrines

[TheJopa]

Anyone thinks religious shrines are bit too strong? Anyone ever tried to compete in a game without owning a shrine? Income they bring, with Bazaar, is simply so big, that you can run 100% science and still earn money for rush buying. Without shrine, waging major war is almost impossible, because of mintenance of captured cities. And Ashen Veil is weak because its shrine gives beakers instead gold.
Toning them down to wonder-like buildings would be better, I suppose. Like Runes shrine providing +gold per temple (like twisted spire) and gold resource, Order acting as second palace and reducing war wearines empire wide...
I guess that tis is major balance change so I don't expect it will be in. And probably some players think that it gives incentive to capture shrines and makes civs that have them, albeit strong, target of all other civs. But then AI won't target your shrine, just opposite, if you are strong, he will avoid touching you. I just wanted to hear your opinions on this.

 

[eekhoorn]

They are powerful, but I wouldn't say too powerful. It might be refreshing to change some of the shrines to something else beside +1 gold / city, though.

And yes, I actually have won games without any shrines, usually if I play Grigori I don't bother going for religions.

 

[SchpailsMan]

I think that's an AI issue rather that a balance/gameplay one, because it's right that AI players should try to capture shrines more aggressively.

If anything, I guess the main problem about the AV Shrine is that there are means to get more money +x% bonuses than science +x% bonuses, which makes raw money bonuses more valuable than raw science bonuses. Appart from that, they are really the same (it's just a matter of how far you have to push the slider to end up with the same tech and gold rate). In Vanilla, you can get up to +175% science (Ofxord, library, university, observatory) and + 200% gold (Wall Street, bank, grocer, marketplace), the exact numbers might be slightly wrong but overall the game is slightly biaised towards gold but somewhat evened out with monasteries and free religion. In FfH2 I think there are a lot of gold modifiers (not all of those are positive though), including those from civics) but only a few science modifiers (is there anything appart from libraries, the Crown and maybe one or two civics ?), so that raw gold bonuses may be much more rewarding than raw science bonuses.

(noob question: is the Crown still a world wonder ? there was talk at some point to make it a national wonder, or maybe turn the Bazaar into a world wonder, but I can't remember if that change was effectively done and can't check at work).

 

[Frozen-Vomit]

If the Bazzar was made a world wonder it would be far too unbalancing in my opinion.

Maybe to move it to a later tech would solve this problem.

So:

- Bazaar as world wonder at domasticate camels would be cool flavorwise and would beef up the mounted branch with a powerfull wonder

 

[Endovior]

The shrines are (with the notable exception of the AV shrine) essentially unchanged from vanilla... the only other thing they do is provide mana. They aren't unbalanced there, nor are they here.

 

[Chandrasekhar]

There is supposed to be some extra benefit from founding a religion, you know. Sure, it's powerful, but is it as powerful as a free tech or specialist that you can get with other techs? Though I have to agree with you about the Veil one being rather weak, especially since it also causes a diplomatic penalty.