[R&F] The state of Holy Sites and Great Prophets

[Trav'ling Canuck]

Also, don’t forget that Holy Sites only sort of compete for the same sites as Campus districts. You get minor adjacency bonuses from woods ...

Only until those woods are gone.

Also, if you don’t found a religion, it’s usually advisable to not spend faith on missionaries or apostles, because, as has been said here many times already, faith is it’s own versatile currency since R+F. So you’re not really helping someone else.

​

That's a bit of a bonus to not founding a religion. You don't have to defend it, so you can spend your Faith on other things instead of religious units.

 

[liv]

I just got 14 era score founding a religion - so that is something
I had lots of holy sites and they had belonged to civs I had eliminated. For some reason converting those cities to my Mongol religion resurrected some holy ghost and whoops I will be in a golden age.

 

[AmazonQueen]

An interesting thing about Holy Sites is that they can give you other yields - obvious ones are Culture via Choral Music (which has a strong synergy given civics gets your more faith and relgion stuff) or Science and Culture via Jesuit. But there are other cards and that let you do this too.

My guess is that Holy Sites aren’t underpowered if you could really spreadsheet it, except in that “everything is rubbish except campus and or theatre square” way. But. Holy Sites feel weaker given they don’t keep giving you great people all game. And Religion more generally feels unengaging if you haven’t actually founded a Religion.

I agree with Prophets allowing you to evangelise etc. rather than Apostles. Prophets should also have some perk for Civs that don’t found a religion, whether it’s a retirement bonus or just some generic boost loyalty or boost faith per turn thing. A having a majority religion - even if you didn’t found it - needs to be more meaningful.

If you take Choral Music and aren't going for a cultural victory you can pretty much ignore theatre squares. Culture from shrines and temples will get you through the civics tree fine.

 

[kryat]

If you take Choral Music and aren't going for a cultural victory you can pretty much ignore theatre squares. Culture from shrines and temples will get you through the civics tree fine.

Largely true, but you wouldn’t get great works, which stave off someone else’s culture victory. And gives you something to sell.

 

[Softly]

I always see people advocating for Great Prophets after all the religions have been founded (give relics, evangelize belief, start inquisition etc.) but it would be a logistical nightmare. Would you be able to get a second great prophet before all the religions have been founded? If not then what would happen if the AI doesn’t build any holy sites?

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

I always see people advocating for Great Prophets after all the religions have been founded

That's mostly a reaction to having a special currency (Great Prophet Points) that only applies to the early turns of the game and then has no application.

If you avoid winning long enough, all of the great people points eventually become worthless, but it happens so early with Great Prophet Points, it highlights the weakness of a game system based on having different buckets to fill for different things. Which is not to say that that's always a bad game design feature, but when the bucket fills up early, and the currency whose only purpose is fill up the bucket therefore becomes obsolete so early, it can feel awkward to a lot of players.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

I mean, I imagine that after your first Prophet, you'd just have a great person called "Apostle" that is gained in the same way others are gained. In general they'd do the things they do now.

 

[UWHabs]

I always see people advocating for Great Prophets after all the religions have been founded (give relics, evangelize belief, start inquisition etc.) but it would be a logistical nightmare. Would you be able to get a second great prophet before all the religions have been founded? If not then what would happen if the AI doesn’t build any holy sites?

To me, I would give every prophet a "second" ability. So you could even get the first great prophet and simply retire him for a free relic, for example, if you'd rather not found a religion yet. So yeah, if you get a second prophet before all the religions are founded, then no problem, they just have a more expensive prophet to fight for.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

To me, I would give every prophet a "second" ability. So you could even get the first great prophet and simply retire him for a free relic, for example, if you'd rather not found a religion yet. So yeah, if you get a second prophet before all the religions are founded, then no problem, they just have a more expensive prophet to fight for.

Would take some creativity and need to be thought through well, but another possible use for a second Great Prophet could be to trigger a schism in another religion.

 

[acluewithout]

I always see people advocating for Great Prophets after all the religions have been founded (give relics, evangelize belief, start inquisition etc.) but it would be a logistical nightmare. Would you be able to get a second great prophet before all the religions have been founded? If not then what would happen if the AI doesn’t build any holy sites?

I've thought about this before. It could be a good mechanic in some ways - denying other Civs their own Great Prophet and Religion. But could also be abusive. You can already spam theatre squares and deny anyone else great writers. Imagine if you did that with Great Prophets - particularly with Divine Spark etc. It would make winning a Religious Victory trivial.

One solution is maybe you can only use the Revelations cards for your first Great Prophet, or some other bonuses for your first GP only. But no, I don't have a really good and neat solution, and maybe that's why the game works the way it does.

 

[bbbt]

I always see people advocating for Great Prophets after all the religions have been founded (give relics, evangelize belief, start inquisition etc.) but it would be a logistical nightmare. Would you be able to get a second great prophet before all the religions have been founded? If not then what would happen if the AI doesn’t build any holy sites?

I think something should be done with the great prophet points after all religions have been founded, but not necessarily another 'great prophet'. The most basic could be something like the first person to hit the threshold each time experiences a 'religious revival' and gets a one-time burst of extra faith and religious pressure from their cities (that increases with the threshold each time). Not earth-shattering, but something.

 

[Nigel_Tufnel2]

I almost always play with mods, and the Rule with Faith mod adds a Great Theologian class where all your GP points go if you don't found a religion. I usually play with Religion Expanded as well (caps religions at 16, new faith buildings, etc.), so I always found, and so I earn (and compete for) GrTh points after founding. These two mods have entirely changed my game play - Holy Sites have been my favorite districts for months now, with no burn out. There are so many fantastic mods!

https://civ6customization.gamepedia.com/Rule_with_Faith (description)
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/rule-with-faith.601999/ (civfanatics page)
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=901339687 (Steam page)

 

[previously on lost]

Faith is my favorite currency! Play as Russia in a cold world. Get the pantheon that gives faith from tundra. Earn a golden classic age. Buy a zillion settlers and builders. (While you collect all the great writers and artists with your lavras, boosted Pingala and the oracle.)

 

[Kmart_Elvis]

Faith is my favorite currency! Play as Russia in a cold world. Get the pantheon that gives faith from tundra. Earn a golden classic age. Buy a zillion settlers and builders. (While you collect all the great writers and artists with your lavras, boosted Pingala and the oracle.)

+1 to the currency. Faith is so easy to get as Russia. I also like to get the Grandmaster's Chapel and buy a bunch of Cossacks with them. Expand into the tundra the first half of the game, build as many lavras as possible, beeline Theocracy and Military Science, then take over with your huge army in the second half of the game. I also like to run Raid as a policy so I get 30 faith for every pillage. Russi is very versatile.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

I also like to get the Grandmaster's Chapel and buy a bunch of Cossacks with them.

Grandmaster's Chapel can be good if you're playing a lean, peaceful game, too. You can use your accumulated Faith to buy some cheap units to combine together for the Corps and Armies boosts and era scores, saving some gold.

 

[kaspergm]

The main problem with Holy Sites is that they aren't campuses and they compete with each other for spots.

I agree with this, and would like to say what others have borderline hinted at, that the fact that you can end up without a religion even if you've focused early resources into a HS is a pretty big problem, and really an unnecessary one. Unlike Civ5, eliminating another religion is pretty easy in Civ6, so there's really no reason why there needs to be a limit on number of religions in the first place.

If one wanted to spice things up, I think you should make it so that number of religions is unlimited, but you can only found a new religion if a religion is not present in your city. However, if a religion is present in your city, you can instead use a prophet to reform that religion. This would allow you to substitute some of the beliefs, but will give you a major diplomatic penalty towards the owner of the original religion. They could also add the reformation beliefs from Civ5 but in a different context, so if someone reforms your religion the owner of the original religion gets to choose a special belief, that affects his ability in combating the reformed religion.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

If one wanted to spice things up, I think you should make it so that number of religions is unlimited, but you can only found a new religion if a religion is not present in your city. However, if a religion is present in your city, you can instead use a prophet to reform that religion. This would allow you to substitute some of the beliefs, but will give you a major diplomatic penalty towards the owner of the original religion. They could also add the reformation beliefs from Civ5 but in a different context, so if someone reforms your religion the owner of the original religion gets to choose a special belief, that affects his ability in combating the reformed religion.

That's an excellent suggestion!

 

[SammyKhalifa]

I think you'd possibly run out of beliefs.

 

[lindsay40k]

What’s all this ‘HS don’t generate Great People’ business? Faith is a currency that can effectively be converted into any kind of Great Person. Sure, money does the same thing. But, when you need all your coin for something else, that second revenue stream - which can be gotten online early on, and is likely going to be in a bunch of your early conquests - is useful. However, the religion dynamics make it difficult to make a direct comparison between that and a Commercial district.

 

[kaspergm]

I think you'd possibly run out of beliefs.

Well, if that's a problem that can't be solved ...