The early religions

[MagisterCultuum]

The Luchuirp are beeliners, but only to Construction, not to a religion founding tech.


For the most part, I don't think that the AI should be weighted more than -99 against any religion. From a practical standpoint -99 would be viewed the same as -100, except that with a -99 weighting it is still possible for a human to adopt an unthematic religion.

I'd like there to be events where having the Empyrean in Calabim cities can cause revolts. It could work sort of like the old Cult of the Dragon events.

 

[PaulusIII]

I'd like there to be events where having the Empyrean in Calabim cities can cause revolts. It could work sort of like the old Cult of the Dragon events.

Same for RoK in Calabim cities. The way I see it RoK would preach that the oppressed human peasantry of the Calabim would get the rewards of their honest hard work instead of the parasitic vampire upper class.

Maybe there should be a way of disabling certain unique mechanics if a civ adopts an unrealistic religion. That would reflect that they can change society, but that would come at the loss of certain benefits... such as that the Calabim vampires wouldn't be able to feast on their subjects with impunity anymore.

 

[Monkeyfinger]

Same for RoK in Calabim cities. The way I see it RoK would preach that the oppressed human peasantry of the Calabim would get the rewards of their honest hard work instead of the parasitic vampire upper class.

Rewards of the hard work of a calabim commoner = promotion to Moroi, and possibly a vampire if he does well as a moroi

with or without RoK

 

[MetalMilitia-]

Link spreadrates into alignment so that random spreads will only occur from neutral-neutral etc and alignment change can only be done by deciple units.

If this cant be done, reduce the spreadrate of ROK and FOTL, Im not too keen on this because it means that random conversions will still occur albeit not as commonly.

On a side note i also think AIs should be much less willing to sign open borders with people of diffrent alignement and religion.

As it is atm i think it ruins the purpose of the alignment system.

Furthermore, Id like to point out another annoying effect of the current system; captured cities will retain their religion and civs will therefore flip adopt religions/flip alignement when conquering cities. Now that cant be right.

Tech pathing has also exaserbated the problem, with less civs going for religions RoK and Fotl will have more time to spread.

 

[Keeper_GFA]

Link spreadrates into alignment so that random spreads will only occur from neutral-neutral etc

This is a great idea. IMO.

 

[Lone Wolf]

If this cant be done, reduce the spreadrate of ROK and FOTL, Im not too keen on this because it means that random conversions will still occur albeit not as commonly.

You can disable the random spread by changing the spread rate to 0.

Furthermore, Id like to point out another annoying effect of the current system; captured cities will retain their religion and civs will therefore flip adopt religions/flip alignement when conquering cities. Now that cant be right.

Yeah, it's pretty annoying.

 

[Gelvan]

After a game where Basium, and Einon turned neutral thanks to OO, while Alexis and the Clan turned neutral thanks to Empyrian, which produced together with Sandolophon, Arturus, Valledia and Rhoanna a complete neutral game, save for the Shaeim who went for AV and Bannor who went for the Order, I think, there are some arguments against the Alignment change...

The Order never spread near Basium - because Rhoanna was THE enemy of the Bannor and so they never had Open Border. AV spread a little bit to Khazad lands, but not enough to make the day. Ljoslfar went with FoL which spread to Rhoanna, but that's it. Kilmorph did not show up in that game. OO ruled the World (mostly) and there was a fierce fight between Rhoanna-Ljoslfar against the rest. Even the Shaeim went with OO before they researched AV.

I think there are several problems

- Passive Spread
- Civ's adpoting "wrong" religion
- Civ's just NOT researching new religions (when they already have one)
- Open Borders too early (offtopic: as well as Map Trading - they kill the explore feature)
- Civ's not adopting/spreading the religion from which they are holding the holy city.

Maybe it's because of the + diplomacy modifiers for the same religions but I don't think that's the only point.

The main problem could be, that some religions change the alignment only to neutral - Let's say Kilmorph would work like Order and make everyone good. Still this would lead to games with only good Civ's if everyone adopts Kilmorph. Therefore I'd say let the neutral AI-Civ's be able to adopt every religion. While the Good one's have a modifier of -50 against adopting AV and OO, likewise the Evil woudn't adopt RoK and Order. OR just increase the modifier for "you are evil" to about -6 instead of -2, so that they would not open borders. (and possibly remove passive spread if there is no open border?)

Empyrian, and Esus could be neutral, meaning they do not change alignments at all, but REVERSE them to the leaderspecific startup.

Something like this

Order, RoK -> change alignment to good. (there is an angel behind the whole thing)
Empyrian, Esus -> change alignment back to leader-specific (not so much divine involved)
FoL -> change alignment to neutral (nature IS neutral)
AV, OO -> change alignment to evil. (we're talking about demons here)

Good -> cannot adopt OO, AV
Neutral -> can adopt everything
Evil -> cannot adopt Order, RoK

well, just some thoughts, and still there is the problem of just neutral games, if Ljoslfar are in the game :/

 

[Lone Wolf]

Let's say Kilmorph would work like Order and make everyone good. Still this would lead to games with only good Civ's if everyone adopts Kilmorph.

Exactly, that would be even worse.

Empyrian, and Esus could be neutral, meaning they do not change alignments at all,

Empyrian reverting someone Good back to Evil is rather strange, lorewise.

just increase the modifier for "you are evil"

That's a good idea. I think that the passive spread rate for RoK and FoL need to be reduced, if not eliminated and that the leaders should have more strong religion modifiers also.

 

[MetalMilitia-]

The main problem could be, that some religions change the alignment only to neutral

Nope, civs will pretty much adopt the religion which is most represented, alignment has no impact on their choice. Ihve seen evil civs first adopt RoK then some random spread/deciple spread order to a major city and then they go order. Its not at all unusual to see a game were most civs end up adopting the same religion and you will end up with only 2 or 1 alignments represented. The system still seem to have vanilla civ spooking around where everyone would like to adopt the same thing for diplomacy modifiers but this is more of a symptom than the problem.
(edit: sry, i missread the first bit )

- Passive Spread
- Civ's adpoting "wrong" religion
- Civ's just NOT researching new religions (when they already have one)
- Open Borders too early (offtopic: as well as Map Trading - they kill the explore feature)
- Civ's not adopting/spreading the religion from which they are holding the holy city.

Civs should still be able to adopt religions that are "wrong" and to change alignment, it goes hand in hand with the theme of fall and redemption, but it shouldnt happen randomly by passive spread.

Actually the AI does researce new religions even if it allready adopted one. Those techs still stay on their tech path. Unfortunately when a later religion is invented it is not likely to be adopted right away because the earlier religions would allready be heavily represented which is really because of the passive spreadrate.

So the main problems that should be change are:

-Passive spreadrate
-Open borders
-Religionweightmodifiers (and as a side note, these should not be effected by conquered cities)

 

[Gelvan]

What if Open Borders would be availabe at Trade? Then, most religions have been founded somewhere and (if everyone has the same research rate), for the ones who don't have a religion there would be a nice Empyrian and Esus option, which would increase their attraction for AI and humans alike.

Furthermore it would make it more attractive to fight neighbours or make a permanent alliance with them.

Together with increased (decreased?) modifiers for "other alignment" this would make some good friends / bad enemies right from the beginning and - what's the idea behind this - decrease the chance of adopting the religion of an enemy.

But of course, to delay open borders that far in the tree, makes for some difficult starts and a complete different strategical approach. Which in this stage of the mod is maybe not the thing the team's looking for.

but still, increased diplo modifiers for other alignments sounds good to me. (unless of course, the passive spread "works" too, even if there is no open border agreement?)

btw. true about Empyrian.

edit: ok, I see it has not so much to do with the diplomacy which religion is adopted but more with the spread rate.

edit2: and yeah you're right about wrong religions - somehow it bugs me if Elohim goes with OO but somehow it still is logical. But maybe there should be hard coded preferences, like the Shaem has? They can adpot everything, but they will most often go with Ashen Veil and even switch to Ashen Veil if it is researched later.

 

[Lone Wolf]

edit2: and yeah you're right about wrong religions - somehow it bugs me if Elohim goes with OO but somehow it still is logical. But maybe there should be hard coded preferences, like the Shaem has? They can adopt everything, but they will most often go with Ashen Veil and even switch to Ashen Veil if it is researched later.

The Elohim have a veeery slight modifier against OO. Stil, I can see a sect arising in the Elohim lands claiming that only the might of the Overlords can save the world from greater evil. I do think that possibility of it should be lessened.

(unless of course, the passive spread "works" too, even if there is no open border agreement?)

Religion can passively spread without Open Borders, but no OB prevents the Disciple spamming. With reduced or eliminated spread rate, it'll have an effect.

 

[Gelvan]

Ok, I'll start a new game (pangaea, huge desert in the middle, noble diff.) with passive spread edited to zero and we will look what happens..

 

[Lone Wolf]

Well, you'll eliminate only one of the problems...

 

[MetalMilitia-]

Im sure the passive spread works exactly like in vanilla civ. Its unrestricted by border agreements and afaik it doesnt even need contact to spread. I might be wrong though. If it only spreads through open borders then it would be a simple solution to just make the AI less likely to have open borders, which would make sense.

 

[Lone Wolf]

I already explained the Open BOrders thing.

 

[Gelvan]

okay, now it's turn 234 and the situation (on noble difficulty) is as follows:

I (Ljosalfar) researched FoL and spread it with priests of the leaves to 4 cities of the Balseraph, they have 7 in total, which lead to them adopting FoL as state religion. Even though, they have FoL (tech) they did spread it only to one more city so far.

no other religion has been discovered, There are Svarts, Calabim (who got eaten by Acheron), Shaeim (they had bad luck, because I found a AV savant in a dungeon), Sidar and Amurites. I could have researched easily each religion, but that's not the point.

I think the AI needs to understand, why it is so important to have a religion, and to found one, if there is holy city available.

 

[Imuratep]

@ Gelvan: In Vanilla your last point strangely is not a problem. The AI likes to research religions a lot and you have to do efforts to get one (except for Konfuzianism). What is the difference between Vanilla and FFH concerning this?

 

[megamanx06]

I think the problem is more that Evil/Good Civs tend to take the first religion spreading to their lands, insted of going for a religion more suited for them.

I'm with this.

 

[Gelvan]

@ Gelvan: In Vanilla your last point strangely is not a problem. The AI likes to research religions a lot and you have to do efforts to get one (except for Konfuzianism). What is the difference between Vanilla and FFH concerning this?

Maybe the tech tree? In FFH you don't have to research the religion-techs, while in Vanilla they are prerequisite for other techs and areas.
Furthermore it would need testing in Vanilla if the AI likes to research Konfuzianism, if no one else has it, if the AI has already another state religion, but not the holy city of that state religion.
If not - the problem would be similar.

also in Vanilla it doesn't matter which religion you research, but in FFH it changes the whole game. maybe the AI fears to change his game?

furthermore this was only a one time observation. I'll make another game, with more civ's (more crowded) and on Monarch, maybe that gives better data.

(on a side note: beeline works for Khazad and Ljoslfar and also the Shaeim always have Sorcery before anybody else in my games. this shows, that the AI can be teached, and that's a good sign.)

 

[civ_king]

Use broader alignments...