Argive
Chieftain
I really like the fundamentals of G&K but Id like to tweak them so the religion and policy aspects of the game play better. In my games, Ive observed that the spread of religions doesnt require much player attention in the form of training and fielding missionaries and that it doesnt speed up until the late renaissance and industrial eras. As a result, the religious wars of the medieval and early renaissance eras dont happen. Neither do the medieval and renaissance periods happen the way they did as the dark ages followed by a phenomenal rebirth in Europe and as business-as-before in most other places. To remedy these, Id like to change religion and social policy in the following manner and I hope that some of the good folks in the forum will help out as Im totally lost with XML and whatnot. So here are my not-so-humble suggestions for a mod:
1. Religious buildings and wonders to be overhauled. I have a tier system in mind here, with shrines as tier 1, temples as tier 2, pagodas / cathedrals / monasteries / mosques as tier 3, Angkor Wat / Notre Dame / Hagia Sophia / Great Mosque of Djenne as tier 4, and the Sistine Chapel as tier 5. If your religion has the belief associated with one of the tier 3 buildings, you should, as before, be able to purchase it with faith. But there should already be a temple in the city. Later, when you have the tech, you can construct an appropriate tier 4 building.
a. I would make shrines ¾ the cost of vanilla and temples ½ the cost of vanilla so they would be constructed more easily, allowing pantheons and religions to emerge faster. I havent seen anything like a major religion being established around 1200 BC, which is what happened in our history.
b. Pagodas, cathedrals, monasteries and mosques should also be halved in terms of their faith cost. That way, they can be built earlier and yield more faith earlier. Together with what I propose for the religious wonders, this would make for a more realistic and fun gameplay (read on!)
c. These tier 3 buildings should yield 3 faith, 3 culture, and a specialty. The specialties would be 3 happiness for pagoda, 2 culture and an artist spot for cathedral, more faith and culture with incense or wine for monastery, and 3 faith for mosque. This way, religions like the historical Buddhism and Hinduism will increase happiness soon after they are established, but those like the historical Abrahamic religions wont, simulating part of the transition to the medieval period.
d. Tier 4 buildings (Angkor Wat etc.) should ALL provide a great prophet, 5 faith, 5 culture, and a specialty bonus. This would be 5 happiness for Angkor Wat, 3 culture and an artist slot for Notre Dame, 5 gold for Hagia Sophia, and 5 faith for the Great Mosque. For Angkor Wat, you must have a pagoda in the city; a cathedral for Notre Dame; a monastery for Hagia Sophia; and a mosque for the Great Mosque. This way, civilizations will be more specialized as time passes based on their earlier choices and their ability to devote resources to certain wonders. Also, the incentive to save up all your faith for your second great prophet getting dibs on the best enhancer beliefs will be gone and you will actually construct a cathedral before someone like Thomas Aquinas comes along and gives your religion its final shape.
e. I would make the Notre Dame the prerequisite of the Sistine Chapel and give Sistine Chapel 15 happiness and 10 gold. That way, civs like Western Europe can really take off after a huge slump. Others cantinterpret this as no pain no gain if you like, but you could also think of it as Asian-style civs having no incentive to devote scarce resources to happiness-boosting buildings. Theyve done well so far, so why change things? Now, I know that Sistine Chapel wasnt built in Paris, but neither was it built by a civVatican City is a city-state, no? Besides, you could think of it as being sponsored by the French and Spanish kings in partwho were, in game terms, competing to complete the Notre Dame first...
f. I would reduce the faith cost of missionaries by half so that its possible to enter a war of conversion with other civs. Since tier 4 buildings all provide great prophets, this wouldnt be a losing proposition re: enhancer beliefs.
g. In contrast, I would increase the faith cost of inquisitors 5 times but make the cathedrals belief reduce that cost to one tenth. This way, cathedral-building faiths will have inquisitors as easily as missionaries while others will simply choose to get 5 missionaries with the same faith. This is to simulate the relative tolerance of Islam and Asian religions vis-à-vis Christianity. If Islam and Christianity are facing one another, you may think that this will give the latter an unfair advantage, but remember that Islam historical Islam boosts faith, so for each inquisitor that the cathedral-people can field, the mosque-people can field 1.5 to 2 missionaries if they play their cards right. Oh, and I think you shouldnt be able to train inquisitors starting with the industrial era. Fairs fair. Salem didnt happen again. Come to think of it, perhaps we should give Spain a further reduction in inquisitor cost?
2. Since culture is tied to the acquisition of new policies, cathedrals will make it easier to go for the culture victory, provided that you can not only found the cathedral-building religion but also beat your co-religionists in the race to build the Notre Dame and the Sistine Chapel. On the other hand, pagoda-building civs will enter their 2nd and 3rd golden ages earlier, and they can use that advantage to compensate. Finally, mosque-builders can choose a variety of booster beliefs to convert their surplus of faith into other assetsholy warriors, for instance. A bit stereotypical, but not completely off the mark, I hope. (Imagine playing as the Ottomans: You choose mosques, train many missionaries and convert a lot of other civs and city-states, build the Great Mosque, and with your second great prophet you choose holy warriors Then muchos Janissaries and Sipahis Can you keep it up afterwards? It should be possible if you have somehow kept up your culture, allowing you to pick rationalism rather than piety.)
3. That brings me to policy. I think the costs of policies are too high. It should be possible to have finished honor, tradition, and piety in the 1600s, but in my games, with all the wonders and culture-boosting buildings I built, this wasnt easy. I think the concern here is that culture victory shouldnt be possible in the renaissance period. I understand that, so I propose to match reducing the costs of policies by a half with increasing the production cost of the utopia project tenfold. Its the utopia project after all, it should take 150 years in the modern era.
4. I think patronage and commerce should be mutually exclusive like piety and rationalism are. This is to simulate the choice between acting like Louis XIV and acting like Oliver Cromwellthe first was all about external glory, the second, if Max Weber was right at all, focusing your energies in the domestic economic sphere. The first bought city states with its pomp, the second with money. And I cant think of any real-life examples of hybrids. I think commerce-oriented civs had the upper hand in our world, but Id make this a really hard choice. To that end, I would slightly boost commerce 25 to 50 percent increase in all commerce-related benefits as patronage is really powerful in the original game.
5. I would also make Liberty and Tradition mutually exclusive, as one represents the monarchical tradition and the other the republican one. All in all, then, youd have honor, liberty or tradition, piety or rationalism, patronage or commerce, and one of the three modern branches. I think this is apt also because the policies in the honor branch are really key to civilization without them, the barbarians might get the better of you.
Many thanks in advance to the kind souls who will suggest ways of doing these.
1. Religious buildings and wonders to be overhauled. I have a tier system in mind here, with shrines as tier 1, temples as tier 2, pagodas / cathedrals / monasteries / mosques as tier 3, Angkor Wat / Notre Dame / Hagia Sophia / Great Mosque of Djenne as tier 4, and the Sistine Chapel as tier 5. If your religion has the belief associated with one of the tier 3 buildings, you should, as before, be able to purchase it with faith. But there should already be a temple in the city. Later, when you have the tech, you can construct an appropriate tier 4 building.
a. I would make shrines ¾ the cost of vanilla and temples ½ the cost of vanilla so they would be constructed more easily, allowing pantheons and religions to emerge faster. I havent seen anything like a major religion being established around 1200 BC, which is what happened in our history.
b. Pagodas, cathedrals, monasteries and mosques should also be halved in terms of their faith cost. That way, they can be built earlier and yield more faith earlier. Together with what I propose for the religious wonders, this would make for a more realistic and fun gameplay (read on!)
c. These tier 3 buildings should yield 3 faith, 3 culture, and a specialty. The specialties would be 3 happiness for pagoda, 2 culture and an artist spot for cathedral, more faith and culture with incense or wine for monastery, and 3 faith for mosque. This way, religions like the historical Buddhism and Hinduism will increase happiness soon after they are established, but those like the historical Abrahamic religions wont, simulating part of the transition to the medieval period.
d. Tier 4 buildings (Angkor Wat etc.) should ALL provide a great prophet, 5 faith, 5 culture, and a specialty bonus. This would be 5 happiness for Angkor Wat, 3 culture and an artist slot for Notre Dame, 5 gold for Hagia Sophia, and 5 faith for the Great Mosque. For Angkor Wat, you must have a pagoda in the city; a cathedral for Notre Dame; a monastery for Hagia Sophia; and a mosque for the Great Mosque. This way, civilizations will be more specialized as time passes based on their earlier choices and their ability to devote resources to certain wonders. Also, the incentive to save up all your faith for your second great prophet getting dibs on the best enhancer beliefs will be gone and you will actually construct a cathedral before someone like Thomas Aquinas comes along and gives your religion its final shape.
e. I would make the Notre Dame the prerequisite of the Sistine Chapel and give Sistine Chapel 15 happiness and 10 gold. That way, civs like Western Europe can really take off after a huge slump. Others cantinterpret this as no pain no gain if you like, but you could also think of it as Asian-style civs having no incentive to devote scarce resources to happiness-boosting buildings. Theyve done well so far, so why change things? Now, I know that Sistine Chapel wasnt built in Paris, but neither was it built by a civVatican City is a city-state, no? Besides, you could think of it as being sponsored by the French and Spanish kings in partwho were, in game terms, competing to complete the Notre Dame first...
f. I would reduce the faith cost of missionaries by half so that its possible to enter a war of conversion with other civs. Since tier 4 buildings all provide great prophets, this wouldnt be a losing proposition re: enhancer beliefs.
g. In contrast, I would increase the faith cost of inquisitors 5 times but make the cathedrals belief reduce that cost to one tenth. This way, cathedral-building faiths will have inquisitors as easily as missionaries while others will simply choose to get 5 missionaries with the same faith. This is to simulate the relative tolerance of Islam and Asian religions vis-à-vis Christianity. If Islam and Christianity are facing one another, you may think that this will give the latter an unfair advantage, but remember that Islam historical Islam boosts faith, so for each inquisitor that the cathedral-people can field, the mosque-people can field 1.5 to 2 missionaries if they play their cards right. Oh, and I think you shouldnt be able to train inquisitors starting with the industrial era. Fairs fair. Salem didnt happen again. Come to think of it, perhaps we should give Spain a further reduction in inquisitor cost?
2. Since culture is tied to the acquisition of new policies, cathedrals will make it easier to go for the culture victory, provided that you can not only found the cathedral-building religion but also beat your co-religionists in the race to build the Notre Dame and the Sistine Chapel. On the other hand, pagoda-building civs will enter their 2nd and 3rd golden ages earlier, and they can use that advantage to compensate. Finally, mosque-builders can choose a variety of booster beliefs to convert their surplus of faith into other assetsholy warriors, for instance. A bit stereotypical, but not completely off the mark, I hope. (Imagine playing as the Ottomans: You choose mosques, train many missionaries and convert a lot of other civs and city-states, build the Great Mosque, and with your second great prophet you choose holy warriors Then muchos Janissaries and Sipahis Can you keep it up afterwards? It should be possible if you have somehow kept up your culture, allowing you to pick rationalism rather than piety.)
3. That brings me to policy. I think the costs of policies are too high. It should be possible to have finished honor, tradition, and piety in the 1600s, but in my games, with all the wonders and culture-boosting buildings I built, this wasnt easy. I think the concern here is that culture victory shouldnt be possible in the renaissance period. I understand that, so I propose to match reducing the costs of policies by a half with increasing the production cost of the utopia project tenfold. Its the utopia project after all, it should take 150 years in the modern era.
4. I think patronage and commerce should be mutually exclusive like piety and rationalism are. This is to simulate the choice between acting like Louis XIV and acting like Oliver Cromwellthe first was all about external glory, the second, if Max Weber was right at all, focusing your energies in the domestic economic sphere. The first bought city states with its pomp, the second with money. And I cant think of any real-life examples of hybrids. I think commerce-oriented civs had the upper hand in our world, but Id make this a really hard choice. To that end, I would slightly boost commerce 25 to 50 percent increase in all commerce-related benefits as patronage is really powerful in the original game.
5. I would also make Liberty and Tradition mutually exclusive, as one represents the monarchical tradition and the other the republican one. All in all, then, youd have honor, liberty or tradition, piety or rationalism, patronage or commerce, and one of the three modern branches. I think this is apt also because the policies in the honor branch are really key to civilization without them, the barbarians might get the better of you.
Many thanks in advance to the kind souls who will suggest ways of doing these.
