Suggested Religion Changes

[Fluxx]

First of all I want to say I have had alot of fun with the G&K expansion and it added/changed alot of aspects in the game I wanted to see implement.
However there are two major things that bug me in the new religion system that I hope gets changed.

First of all the most important thing is attaining ownership of an opponents Religion Capital. Currently you get no benefits of conquering a holy capital, which doesnt make sense from both a game and a reality perspective.
My suggestion is that if you conquer a holy capital you should be in control of the religious leadership, therefor gaining the founders bonuses that are associated with that religion and also you should be able to enhance the religion if it wasnt enhanced already. This should happen whether or not you already have a religion of your own.

Why this suggestion? Well first of all I have had games where a civ died out (by me), but their religion was by far the main religion in the world, therefor making a good part of the game mechanic void. This was especially frustrating because I had my own religion, but it was impossible to convert my cities to the religion. Not only did I spend the resources and commitment to both getting a religion, something that is a big commitment on the higher levels, but also the commitment of conquering the AI with the dominant religion.
Yes this would mean you 'own' 2 (or more) religions, but would that really break the game? Faith is still a finite resource and most games you would have to choose which religion suits your plans better.
Also if you have not been able to found a religion yourself you should be able to obtain them through conquest. Look at history, how often has Rome, Mecca and Tibet been sieged because of the wealth and power that came with these holy cities.
The only problem I see game mechanic wise is if you 'pop' a GP, which religion should it be associated with? Well simple, if you own multiple religions, just give the player the choice which religion the GP should be associated with when it is birthed.

Now the second suggestion is a straight forward one, and more of a personal perk. Monasteries used to be a normal building in vanilla, attainable by anyone. Now however you have to spend a follower point on it to get acces to it, in my opinion this is a bad design.
My suggestion would be that that it should be purchasable by any religious city through faith.
Why? Simply put the building itself is very underwhelming/costly unless you have multiple incense/wine in the city. To commit a follower point to it only is benefitial if you have alot of wine/incense in your empire (something that is very rare on most maps).
So lets say I start a map, and I notice my surroundings have alot of wine/incense. Then I make the decision I want to found my own religion, I obtain the pantheon that gives bonuses for wine/incense. Great, however some turns later you get the message that a religion has been founded and they "randomly" took the monastery follower. It is just a giant kick in the *. You are getting strategically punished by the random number generator. Something that was a big complaint in Civ4, and luckily the developers moved away from in Civ 5.

So to sum this giant thread up (got way longer than I expected).
1. If you conquer a holy capital you should be the proud owner of that religion.
2. Monasteries should NOT be a follower trait, but purchasable by any religious city through faith.

 

[RealHuhn]

Why would you ever invest anything in your own religion when you can just build military and capture a holy city? I think that's the reason why it is how it is, especially on higher difficulties. Going for a religion is risky but can be very rewarding. Capturing holy cities would take away that element.

Monasteries are kinda weak but they are also cheaper than Pagodas/Mosques. A situational belief which can be quite good given the right circumstances. I don't really see the problem here.

 

[Rooftrellen]

I can agree to some extent with monasteries, just due to the fact they aren't accociated with one religion and are found all over the world.

I think when conquering a holy city, it's not bad currently, since getting benefits from two religions (or one without ever investing) would be a bit too strong, but maybe could be made better by allowing the removal of religion from puppet/occupied cities by military force, rather than having to invest faith into purging the religion your military gained. To offset the net faith gain, I'd say cities having their religion removed/suppressed by military should get a growth penalty, lose population, cause extra unhappiness, and maybe occasionally go into resistance.

My biggest problem with religion is how faith costs go up and great prophets stop appearing. Religion is too cool of a concept to end up doing so little late game.

 

[Monthar]

I disagree with everything the OP suggested.

Monasteries have the same +2 faith and +2 culture as a Pagoda. The only differences are the Pagoda also has +2 happiness and the Monastery costs 25% less faith (150 initially). With just a single wine or incense in the city's rings you get an additional +1 faith and +1 culture, which is like getting the faith from a Mosque with the Culture from a Cathedral that's not running a specialist. So having just 1 wine or incense in the city makes this slightly cheaper building better than the others as long as you don't need the happiness, because at that point all 4 buildings would give a total bonus of +6 faith/culture/happiness (+3/+3/0, +2/+2/+2, +3/+2/+1 or +2/+3/+1). What makes it even better than vanilla is you no longer have to have wine/incense in the city to have a monastery.

Since the monastery is cheaper than the other 3, you can get one in all your cities much sooner, thus increasing your FPT and CPT much earlier.

 

[theguy8882]

I want more beliefs. I find that there aren't enough beliefs that aid a science victory, and I also find I seem to pick the same beliefs over and over, because others don't seem as good to me.

 

[Gamewizard]

I also disagree with the OP. Being able to reap founder benefits of a conquered religion AND still have benefits of your own religion is OP. And what if you conquered 2 holy cities? Do you want benefits of 3 religions?

Something I may consider is having the option to change from your religion to the conquered religion, but at some cost. Maybe the number of followers in all cities is halved, or you stop generating faith for x number of turns.

Anyways, I like the way it is. It makes religious civs like the Celts and Ethiopia stronger, as you will get to choose from the stronger beliefs.

 

[The_Quasar]

I also disagree with the OP. Being able to reap founder benefits of a conquered religion AND still have benefits of your own religion is OP. And what if you conquered 2 holy cities? Do you want benefits of 3 religions?

Agreed... having more than 1 religion is both unrealistic and OP.

Something I may consider is having the option to change from your religion to the conquered religion, but at some cost. Maybe the number of followers in all cities is halved, or you stop generating faith for x number of turns.

I'm not sure I agree with this... changing a whole civ's religion overnight? It was an absolute disaster when it happened to England in the Tudor times. No, it makes little sense...

Anyways, I like the way it is. It makes religious civs like the Celts and Ethiopia stronger, as you will get to choose from the stronger beliefs.

This is an excellent point... after all, what's the point of having a religious advantage if you can't take advantage of it? It would make the Celts and Ethiopia not worth playing...

 

[Grendeldef]

In general I like the implementation of religions as it makes the game more versatile but I disagree with few fundamentals on how it works or more precisely, it doesn't.
First & by far the most important one is the limitation of religions per game based on the number of civs. I fail to see the point of this - it doesn't make sense in relation to real world nor gamewise. It shouldn't matter how many civs, especially unknown civs, are believing to whatever when a civ wants to start a religion.
Gamewise it does make sense that pantheons and believes are unique but again; why the increased amount of faith needed to found a pantheon ? If those has to be incremental let's at least remove the unknown civs from equation. For a civ A worshipping sea it's irrelevant how many unknown civs are worshipping whatever somewhere else.

Totally different things are the holy cities when conquered. Instead of making a long list of complaints I'll offer few possible changes.
The conquerer should have few options for what to do with it
a) keep the current status but as the owner changed the amount pressure it provides should decreased, perhaps halved
b) remove the holy city status which would remove the pressure it provides gradually ie like razing a city. This should also affect all the cities having the same religion.
c) convert the city immediately to follow conqueror's religion in which some sort of religious resistance should affect it and nearby cities

Another minor issue is the spreading produce which is plain stupid. Hopefully it was kept simple due to low priority and is planned to be improved. Currently it's optimized for ICS which is something I oppose - intelligence, especially in city placement should be encouraged. There're several things that could affect the pressure output of a city like population, fpt, wonders, proximity of borders, distance form a holy city, missionaries born in the city etc - almost endless list of things.

Obviously there could also be more pantheons & believes but these are only fine tuning issues compared to the functionality of religions.

G

 

[Fluxx]

There have been quite some replies.

First of all people are concerned that it would be OP to gain the benefits of multiple religions, and/or that you can better go for military instead and conquer civs to gain a religion. Now to adress the latter, this is simply untrue.
If you are reliant on conquering other civs to get the founder beliefs, you are reliant on their respective choices in the religion. The advantage of founding your own religion is having the choices of your beliefs, plus the early bonuses of your beliefs.
So for it to be profitable to not invest in a religion yourself and conquer one instead, you need:
1. A religious capital close to you
2. It needs to have 'profitable' beliefs for your civ
3. You need to actually conquer the capital while fighting a civ that has the 'upper hand' due to the bonuses they receive from their religion
4. It needs to happen in a certain timefram because religion uses diminishes over time.
5. You need to reinvest/build the religious infrastructure to make use of faith.

Basically this means alot of things have to go right, and you still have to invest alot to make the religion benefitial to you.

Now to adress the concerns of having multiple religions being OP/being unrealistic.
First of all only 5 out of the 8 founder beliefs give you passive bonuses, and out of these 5 it is very debatable if 2 of them have enough of an impact to consider OP-ness, and 1 of the 5 does not work retroactively (Initiation Rites).
Next to that Cities can still have only 1 religion. This means that even if you 'own' multiple religions, you still have to make a strategic/tactic decision which religion you want to spread/use.

So a couple of different scenario's based on conquering another holy city that has a 'usefull' founder belief:

1. I already am the leader of the dominant religion on the map, this means that I probably got the beliefs I wanted/invested alot in the religion. The conquered religion is minor and only spread through the cities of the mentioned civ. This means that I get 4-5 cities worth of founder belief for a short period of time, while I probably will still convert the conquered cities to my own original religion.
2. I failed to spread my own religion to other civilizations, however the conquered holy city is the dominant religion the map. Dependant on the other beliefs, there is a good chance I will convert my own cities (if they arent already being converted on their own) to the new religion.
3. It is very early in the game and no religion has been enhanced yet. This gives me the strategic decision to enhance/go with either my own religion or the conquered one, leading to only one of them being my main religion.
4. The 'dreaded doom scenario'. There are two main religions on the map. I own one of them, and I conquer the holy city of the second dominant religion.
Now given that this already is already difficult to do and conquering the stronger/strongest AI capital already gives you a great edge you get 15-20 cities worth of founder belief bonuses.
Yes this gives you a giant boost, however it is debatable if it is not a 'win more' scenario. Also any conquered city with the new religion potentially 'suffers' from having inferior beliefs depending if the AI made good choices for the religion.

Now quickly about the monastery. There are some people who support it, and others who are against it. The people who are against it mostly say it is cheaper, therefor it should be a follower belief because it can be potentially the same/more net output in comparison to a church/mosque/pagoda.
Well first of all numbers can be tweaked, the monastery can always start costing 200 faith if it is accessible to all.
Second, happyness is generally a more important resource than culture/faith. There is a reason why there is no +3 happyness building, and why alot of faith/culture often is 'converted' to happyness/gold.
In any case my main argument for the change was it being a situational building + investment of a belief point + randomness of the AI choosing it.

 

[afedyuki]

I think you should get the benefits of at most one holy city at a time. So if your conquer someone else's holy city you should get an option to make it your "state religion" but loose the benefits of old holy city (if you have one).