Simple questions, simple answers

[Shamajotsi]

Besides the Reformation Beliefs, Tears of God and Religious Art, what other beliefs have been added or changed?

 

[MikHolmes]

My original question was if any food was lost from the granary-city when routing to your other cities, but it looks like that's been answered (no, it's extra food).

Currently, I'm wondering if tourism, and by extension, works of art, are of any use if you're not going for a cultural win.

Additionally, I've found conflicting information about trade routes, caravans/cargo units, and plundering.
You can plunder other Civs' routes by entering a route hex and selecting "plunder trade route" option, right? Does the caravan/cargo unit have any effect on this? If the unit isn't touched when the route is plundered, what happens to the unit? Can the unit itself be plundered, or is it just like plundering the route? I also heard something about waiting along the route for the unit to pass through your hex, which will automatically capture it.

(Normally I'd experiment on my own and figure it out, but I've had to go to work, and I'm jonesing for a fix)

 

[Calouste]

Besides the Reformation Beliefs, Tears of God and Religious Art, what other beliefs have been added or changed?

Religious Texts has been cut from 34% (68% with Printing Press) faster spread to 25%/50%. Cathedrals have a Great Work slot instead of a Great Artist slot and only 1 base culture.

In general, culture is a lot harder to come by past Monuments, so culture producing Pantheons are more valuable.

 

[Brassnbricks]

That's not true, it will not let you build a caravan or cargo ship if all your trade routes are currently in use. No queuing up a caravan to be ready for a new route being available.

Strange, I could've sworn that I was still building caravans when I had a full set of trade routes. Might have just been an observational error on my part.

How come I'm not able to use my caravans? 3 of them are in use, but for the remaining three, there are no available routes, even though there are AI cities and city-states on the map that are visible.

My guess is that all remaining cities are out of range. Try building infrastructure or researching techs and see if you can reach them afterward.

Bah. The CODE function doesn't work here, so I'll have to show you differently.

Basically, you do this: [ quote ]Text you want to quote goes here.[ /quote ]

Just take the spaces out of the 'quote' tags.

Yeah, this seems to work alright. Thanks!

Besides the Reformation Beliefs, Tears of God and Religious Art, what other beliefs have been added or changed?

I'm not sure how many of these beliefs are new or not, since I wasn't overly familiar with the beliefs in GnK, but there's a Pantheon belief called Ancestor Worship that gives +1 culture from shrines.

Cathedrals are down to 1 culture, but they have an art slot. Religious Texts is down to 25/50% bonus religious pressure from the 34/68% of GnK. Reliquary gives 50 faith per GP expended--I thought it was 100 in GnK, but I might be off on that. Other than that (and, of course, the new reformation beliefs), religion looks pretty similar to before, though in my games thus far, the AI has been much more aggressive about founding and spreading religions.

My original question was if any food was lost from the granary-city when routing to your other cities, but it looks like that's been answered (no, it's extra food).

Currently, I'm wondering if tourism, and by extension, works of art, are of any use if you're not going for a cultural win.

Additionally, I've found conflicting information about trade routes, caravans/cargo units, and plundering.
You can plunder other Civs' routes by entering a route hex and selecting "plunder trade route" option, right? Does the caravan/cargo unit have any effect on this? If the unit isn't touched when the route is plundered, what happens to the unit? Can the unit itself be plundered, or is it just like plundering the route? I also heard something about waiting along the route for the unit to pass through your hex, which will automatically capture it.

(Normally I'd experiment on my own and figure it out, but I've had to go to work, and I'm jonesing for a fix)

Trade routes first: Think of the caravan/cargo ship as a moving tile improvement. To plunder the route, you have to be on the caravan/ship directly, just like pillaging an improvement. This ends the trade route, declares war on the caravan/ship's owner, and likely annoys whoever was on the other end of the route. Route pathing doesn't change, so if you see a route and hang around, the loot pinata will eventually waddle your way.

Tourism/Art: Even if you don't care about tourism, art is responsible for most of your culture. Culture specialists only exist as part of the artist/writer/musician guilds, which are unique and only have two slots apiece--so that's six culture specialists per empire, tops. Culture buildings, except the monument, all give only one culture apiece if they're empty, so if you want culture, you'll need art and artifacts. For buying policies, you can have your writers pump out political treatises for lump sums of culture, but I'm not sure if those count toward your cultural defense against other people's tourism.

Even if you're not going for a cultural win, tourism can be used as a way to quietly make other players miserable. If you can rack up enough tourism to put a lot of pressure on another player during the ideologies eras, they pretty much will have no choice but to goose step with whatever ideology you pick, or they'll get crushed by empire-crippling unhappiness. All ideologies have policies that benefit them when dealing with other players of the same ideology, but more importantly, if you're being culturally dominated by two different players of two different ideologies, you're going to eat a ton of unhappiness no matter which ideology you pick. So, in short... make sure you have at least some art handy.

 

[MikHolmes]

Trade routes first: Think of the caravan/cargo ship as a moving tile improvement. To plunder the route, you have to be on the caravan/ship directly, just like pillaging an improvement. This ends the trade route, declares war on the caravan/ship's owner, and likely annoys whoever was on the other end of the route. Route pathing doesn't change, so if you see a route and hang around, the loot pinata will eventually waddle your way.

Tourism/Art: Even if you don't care about tourism, art is responsible for most of your culture. Culture specialists only exist as part of the artist/writer/musician guilds, which are unique and only have two slots apiece--so that's six culture specialists per empire, tops. Culture buildings, except the monument, all give only one culture apiece if they're empty, so if you want culture, you'll need art and artifacts. For buying policies, you can have your writers pump out political treatises for lump sums of culture, but I'm not sure if those count toward your cultural defense against other people's tourism.

Even if you're not going for a cultural win, tourism can be used as a way to quietly make other players miserable. If you can rack up enough tourism to put a lot of pressure on another player during the ideologies eras, they pretty much will have no choice but to goose step with whatever ideology you pick, or they'll get crushed by empire-crippling unhappiness. All ideologies have policies that benefit them when dealing with other players of the same ideology, but more importantly, if you're being culturally dominated by two different players of two different ideologies, you're going to eat a ton of unhappiness no matter which ideology you pick. So, in short... make sure you have at least some art handy.

Thanks a ton! That makes a lot more sense than what I was thinking.
So, its a lot harder to just ignore culture all together, since it acts as defense against tourism. If I was focusing on science and military and eschewing culture, it would be likely that culture-focused enemy civs will culturally dominate me to the point of flipping. But while gaining culture will inevitably produce tourism-gaining art, I can safely ignore going out of my way to get tourism buffs if all I'm doing is gaining enough culture to defend myself, right?

Additional question, if you're being culture-dominated by one civs of one particular ideology, there is no risk to you, save another civ's ideology coming in to mess with you. Is there any "happily accepts your culture" like there is "happily accepts your religion"?

 

[Higgy]

I got the first religion but i never had the option to have a reformation belief, what do I have to do to get one? If it matters, two other civs got to pick reformation beliefs. Thanks

 

[Buccaneer]

Higgy, I believe you have to have the policy for it first.

 

[Loopdy Doopdy]

Does anyone know how the Portuguese Nao special ability works? I go up to other civ's tile but I don't get an option to do anything.

 

[Higgy]

Higgy, I believe you have to have the policy for it first.

Ah, should've checked that first! It's the last one in the Piety branch, thanks!

 

[Loopdy Doopdy]

Does anyone know how the Portuguese Nao special ability works? I go up to other civ's tile but I don't get an option to do anything.

Never mind I figured out the problem. But, apparently a tireme upgraded into a Nao can't use it's special ability

 

[Browd]

Religious Texts has been cut from 34% (68% with Printing Press) faster spread to 25%/50%. Cathedrals have a Great Work slot instead of a Great Artist slot and only 1 base culture.

In general, culture is a lot harder to come by past Monuments, so culture producing Pantheons are more valuable.

And Ceremonial Burial has been cut from 1 happy per city to 0.5 happy per city and Peace Loving changed from 1 happy per 5 peaceful foreign followers to 1 happy per 8.

 

[Giskler]

Brassnbricks: You can do quotes really easy by using the buttons in the lower right corner of each post. If you want to quote multiple posts, just click on "multi" and keep going til you get to the last one then click "quote" on that one. You will now get all the quotes you wanted already formated and ready to be answered/commented.

 

[taulph88]

Why can't I spread my own religion to my own cities by caravan?

 

[Calouste]

Why can't I spread my own religion to my own cities by caravan?

That means that your cities are close enough to be subject to the normal religious pressure. You'll only see the religious pressure symbol with trade routes if the distance between the cities is larger than the distance that religious pressure work, which is 10 tiles, or 13 if you have the Itinerant Preachers belief.

 

[DonStamos]

I figure now's a good time to ask again:

Can Byzantium pick a Reformation belief as its bonus belief?

 

[Ogrelord]

Does anyone know how the Portuguese Nao special ability works? I go up to other civ's tile but I don't get an option to do anything.

Nau special ability only works for City-State and only once.

 

[Brassnbricks]

I figure now's a good time to ask again:

Can Byzantium pick a Reformation belief as its bonus belief?

Afraid not. Reformation beliefs are purely gained through the related social policy.

Does Underground Sect work with diplomats, or only regular spies?

A quick field test says indicates that no, diplomats with Underground Sect do not exert religious pressure on the cities they are stationed in. If I had half a brain, I would've remembered to flip the diplomat back over to spying and double-check before quitting the game. Sorry.

Edit: That's about it for now. I'll be back around 1200 UTC if anyone still has questions.

 

[Leugi]

I have but one question. Does having your religion spread to another civ also helps in building culture influence over it?

 

[Belial|GoD]

Very very very stupid question but:

How do you use a great merchant to puppet a city state for Venice?!
I received my first free great merchant of Venice by researching optics, and I feel like I've tried everything but couldn't find the option available. I only can see the option to "conduct trade route".

Is there an obscene gold cost to do it, and the option doesn't show up till you have the gold?

 

[Brassnbricks]

I have but one question. Does having your religion spread to another civ also helps in building culture influence over it?

Yes. Sharing a religion in the majority of your cities gives a +25% bonus to influence going in both directions.

Very very very stupid question but:

How do you use a great merchant to puppet a city state for Venice?!
I received my first free great merchant of Venice by researching optics, and I feel like I've tried everything but couldn't find the option available. I only can see the option to "conduct trade route".

Is there an obscene gold cost to do it, and the option doesn't show up till you have the gold?

Using the Merchant of Venice to buy a city-state costs no gold at all (and, if you have the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, it actually GIVES you money). Once you have the merchant, march him into the territory of the city-state you want to buy (as if you were going to conduct a Vanilla/GnK trade mission). Note the second option in the menu to your left--it should look almost exactly like the first, except with a large gold coin on it. That's the one that lets you puppet the CS. The only real restrictions on it are that you have to actually be in the CS's territory, and you can't be at war with the CS.