[Tuning] Religion: Enhancer Beliefs

[Stalker0]

In this thread, we will take a look at the Enhancer Beliefs to see how they stand up next to each other and if any of them need tweaking.

Overall, I will use a simple ranking system to look at them.

A - Great, no change
C - Is a bit too weak, a bit too strong, or just not quite interesting enough. Needs some possible adjustment.
F - Is too weak or too strong, and needs some love.

Note: I am going to use the abbreviation FR (following religion) as a shorthand here.

Clericalism +1 happy per two cities FR, +15 to resting influence for CS FR.

(A)

Ultimately Pacifism gives a better overall bonus for spreader religion, but if your goal is to focus your religion only on yourself than this is a solid belief. The CS influence is nice early game, though starts to lose steam later on.

Evangalism: Get science when spread religion to foreign city. Missionary conversion strength +25%.

(A)

A solid enhancement to a spreader religion. Makes spreading strong and gives you a good benefit for doing it.

Pacifism: Missionaries/Inquisitors cost 30% less faith. Holy City gains +1 happy per 6 followers in non-enemy foreign cities.

(A)

Another great spreader belief. The cost reduction to me is actually stronger than Evangelism increased strength, the happiness is a very nice bonus. One of my favorites.

Resilience: Prophets 25% stronger, 25% less faith. Rival Inquisitors and Prophets reduce religious pressure by 75% instead of 100%.

(C)

Ultimately if a normal prophet or 2 can't crack an area, these enhanced prophets won't be able to do it either. The rival removal is pretty meh (scripture can give you more resilience ultimately). Really the only reason to get this is to get cheaper GP for holy sites...so you have to be in love with Holy Sites.

And then realistically other faith generating beliefs like Sainthood can give you the extra faith to make up for it...or to be used for other Great People instead.

There may be a niche for this one, but overall I think other beliefs do it better.

Ritual: Religion spreads 30% farther away, and double speed to friendly city states.

(F)

In terms of spreading, pacifism and evangelicalism will ultimately get you much more efficient spreading to areas that don't have religion...AND you get a bonus for getting your religion there.

The only real use of this belief is to break into areas that have a religion and actually stay there. In this way, this and Scripture perform the same function....and ultimately to me Scripture does it better.

There is nothing this one does I can't do better with another belief.

Scripture: Religion spreads 25% faster (50% faster with printing press). Spies exert extra religious pressure on cities.

(A)

Ultimately you don't want this belief. You want to be getting one of the other beliefs that give you nice benefits for having your religion, or allowing you to spread your religion to pagan cities much quicker than this belief can.

However, there are times when you need to crack an established religion, or are under religious assault yourself from religious pressure and don't want to give up your religion.

In these cases, I find Scripture the most efficient belief to do the job. Its the only belief I find that can actually fight an existing strong religious pressure (in conjunction with GP and missionaries) and actually hold the territory, as opposed to just pop in and convert....only to lose the conversions after a few turns.

So its a niche belief, but handles its niche well.

Sainthood: +1 science/culture in holy city for every 6 followers in foreign cities. 100 Faith for poping a great person (Era scale).

(A)

Another really solid one. Evangelism provides quicker benefits (faster religious spread more immediately science), but long term this one can provide better overall benefits, so it just depends on what you need.

Tithes: +200 gold per city converted. +1 gold/faith per 4 followers in foreign cities.

(A)

If you want gold, this one will give you lots of it. What makes it nice compared to evangelism is that this works when a city is converted by anyone, whereas evangelism has to use your missionaries. Sainthood to me has stronger long term bonuses, but you get quicker gold early game with tithes, so again its based on preference.

Zealotry: Purchase land units with faith.

(A)

Holy war here we come! If you want an army in a hurry, there no better way to do it.

 

[Dawnbringer]

In this thread, we will take a look at the Enhancer Beliefs to see how they stand up next to each other and if any of them need tweaking.

Overall, I will use a simple ranking system to look at them.

A - Great, no change
C - Is a bit too weak, a bit too strong, or just not quite interesting enough. Needs some possible adjustment.
F - Is too weak or too strong, and needs some love.

Note: I am going to use the abbreviation FR (following religion) as a shorthand here.

Clericalism +1 happy per two cities FR, +15 to resting influence for CS FR.

Rating: B-. Not the greatest. Not the worse. It's just in the middle of the pack. However, I feel that diplomacy is still one of the easiest victories to disrupt, which holds this back quite a bit.

Evangalism: Get science when spread religion to foreign city. Missionary conversion strength +25%.

Rating: A. One of the better choices. Gives a good amount of science per missionary.

Pacifism: Missionaries/Inquisitors cost 30% less faith. Holy City gains +1 happy per 6 followers in non-enemy foreign cities.

Rating: C. I don't see this as that great compared to Evangelism, especially when evangelism gets missionary strength AND science when converting. I think clericalism beats this in terms of happiness.

Resilience: Prophets 25% stronger, 25% less faith. Rival Inquisitors and Prophets reduce religious pressure by 75% instead of 100%.

Rating: C+. 25% cheaper prophets means you have to be spamming them for holy sites, which means you probably aren't spreading your religion, which means you're a "defensive" religion. Not a good sign overall. But having a lot of sites may make your city look sexy.

Ritual: Religion spreads 30% farther away, and double speed to friendly city states.

Rating: F. (A for India)

You want to spread your religion? Spam missionaries. But if you're India, this might be the enhancement you want since you can't buy missionaries. Since you have insane religious pressure, increasing your pressure range would probably be better.

Scripture: Religion spreads 25% faster (50% faster with printing press). Spies exert extra religious pressure on cities.

Rating: B+.

If you want to dominate the world via your religion, this is probably the best choice, as religious pressure is far better in the long term. This is crucial against Spain since you can't convert her cities with missionaries. However, this is utterly futile against India. But apart from those, this will generally put an insane amount of religious pressure on others.

Sainthood: +1 science/culture in holy city for every 6 followers in foreign cities. 100 Faith for popping a great person (Era scale).

Rating: A+. Getting both science and culture, and then even giving you more faith for using GPs. It does have higher requirements to get a decent amount of culture and science, but if you've converted a couple of civs, it shouldn't be a problem.

Tithes: +200 gold per city converted. +1 gold/faith per 4 followers in foreign cities.

Rating: A. Tithes is far faster to get going, and will easily pay for itself (and pay for everything else) with the gold and faith bonus. You'll get TONS of gold for this easily.

Zealotry: Purchase land units with faith.

Rating: C+. Army in a church. But then again, why bother with this when you can just use Tithe and have more versatility with your gold? Unless you're rolling in faith with double faith NW, this isn't going to outperform Thrift/Tithes.

 

[kenneth1221]

I find Ritual to be incredibly annoying in the hands of the AI, on larger maps with more cities. The wideness of the AI's play creates a loop where a massive amount of cities are reinforcing each others' religion from a much farther distance than normal, making it impossible to dislodge. In my past two games, albeit on Warlord difficulty, the passive pressure even managed to convert rival holy cities and entire civs to boot.

 

[Enrico Swagolo]

Clericalism - not bad

Evangalism:very good

Pacifism: very good

Resilience: very good to bad, if you are Byzantium/Spain, went wide and/or took +10 faith per city you can cover almost an entire city with Holy Sites before Industrial if you try. If you also got 2 Founder beliefs (like Transcendence + Hero Worship), those Holy Sites will turn your city into an absolutely insane centre of literally everything.

Ritual - you need no satanic rituals to make me NOT take it. It's bad and unappealing.

Scripture - I don't like it and never take it.


Sainthood - very good to good, it's way better than Resilience if you are much Taller than wider. Doesn't need +10 faith per city thingamajig to become great.

Tithes
Very good little helper.

Zealotry - last time I took it it was worthless. Why not just take Tithes which AI never takes instead and buy those units with Gold, not nerfing your Faith that could also be spent on buildings/prophet/missionary in the process?

It needs some faith strapped on to it. Maybe +2 Faith for you per city following the religion, or scaling 10 Faith every time anyone following your faith kills an unit, anything to make it more appealing.

 

[Funak]

Clericalism +1 happy per two cities FR, +15 to resting influence for CS FR.

(A)

Ultimately Pacifism gives a better overall bonus for spreader religion, but if your goal is to focus your religion only on yourself than this is a solid belief. The CS influence is nice early game, though starts to lose steam later on.

Never actually used.

Evangalism: Get science when spread religion to foreign city. Missionary conversion strength +25%.

(A)

A solid enhancement to a spreader religion. Makes spreading strong and gives you a good benefit for doing it.

Stopped using a while back when someone said that using it is cheating, never really saw much good from it when I was using it however.

Pacifism: Missionaries/Inquisitors cost 30% less faith. Holy City gains +1 happy per 6 followers in non-enemy foreign cities.

(A)

Another great spreader belief. The cost reduction to me is actually stronger than Evangelism increased strength, the happiness is a very nice bonus. One of my favorites.

Never used.

Resilience: Prophets 25% stronger, 25% less faith. Rival Inquisitors and Prophets reduce religious pressure by 75% instead of 100%.

(C)

Ultimately if a normal prophet or 2 can't crack an area, these enhanced prophets won't be able to do it either. The rival removal is pretty meh (scripture can give you more resilience ultimately). Really the only reason to get this is to get cheaper GP for holy sites...so you have to be in love with Holy Sites.

And then realistically other faith generating beliefs like Sainthood can give you the extra faith to make up for it...or to be used for other Great People instead.

There may be a niche for this one, but overall I think other beliefs do it better.

Did this actually get nerfed? Thought it used to be inquisitors reduce religious pressure by 50% instead of 100%

Either way I don't really use it.

Ritual: Religion spreads 30% farther away, and double speed to friendly city states.

(F)

In terms of spreading, pacifism and evangelicalism will ultimately get you much more efficient spreading to areas that don't have religion...AND you get a bonus for getting your religion there.

The only real use of this belief is to break into areas that have a religion and actually stay there. In this way, this and Scripture perform the same function....and ultimately to me Scripture does it better.

There is nothing this one does I can't do better with another belief.

After the buff to it this one is pretty solid actually.

Scripture: Religion spreads 25% faster (50% faster with printing press). Spies exert extra religious pressure on cities.

(A)

Ultimately you don't want this belief. You want to be getting one of the other beliefs that give you nice benefits for having your religion, or allowing you to spread your religion to pagan cities much quicker than this belief can.

However, there are times when you need to crack an established religion, or are under religious assault yourself from religious pressure and don't want to give up your religion.

In these cases, I find Scripture the most efficient belief to do the job. Its the only belief I find that can actually fight an existing strong religious pressure (in conjunction with GP and missionaries) and actually hold the territory, as opposed to just pop in and convert....only to lose the conversions after a few turns.

So its a niche belief, but handles its niche well.

Never really seen much use for this, might be decent for india but I usually prefer picking something with a reward.

Sainthood: +1 science/culture in holy city for every 6 followers in foreign cities. 100 Faith for poping a great person (Era scale).

(A)

Another really solid one. Evangelism provides quicker benefits (faster religious spread more immediately science), but long term this one can provide better overall benefits, so it just depends on what you need.

Pick this one quite a bit, it's solid.

Tithes: +200 gold per city converted. +1 gold/faith per 4 followers in foreign cities.

(A)

If you want gold, this one will give you lots of it. What makes it nice compared to evangelism is that this works when a city is converted by anyone, whereas evangelism has to use your missionaries. Sainthood to me has stronger long term bonuses, but you get quicker gold early game with tithes, so again its based on preference.

Pick this one quite a bit, it's really solid.

Zealotry: Purchase land units with faith.

(A)

Holy war here we come! If you want an army in a hurry, there no better way to do it.

Used it once, didn't get much use out of it in that game, probably really solid for someone like Spain, if you could ever motivate not picking Tithes.

 

[ProkhorZakharov]

In my experience (deity difficulty), Pacifism is way better than everything else. I've got over 100 happiness from it, and I don't see how it's possible to have a populous empire without it.

 

[Deadstarre]

In my experience (deity difficulty), Pacifism is way better than everything else

this. and it's literally game breaking when you take aesthetics where 1 happiness = 1culture as well. i was on my way to change it in the files just now to something more appropriate when i began to wonder how nobody else had noticed this. the cheap missionaries bonus is basically enough on it's own to warrant the entire enhancer, but 1 happiness per 6 followers (guess how much pop deity cities have?) is just stupidly overboard.

 

[Galbias]

Haven't tried Pacifism but going by the yields I get from Sainthood which is also based on numbers of foreign followers, the amount of happiness you get seems pretty crazy. The thing is, having massive overkill happiness isn't super gamebreaking. It's definitely strong (more GAs are never bad), especially with said Aesthetics policy, but I'd probably rather have overkill Science/Culture from Sainthood. That said, the amount of happiness you can get from it feels kind of cheap, I think it would be fair to give it a nerf (say, 1 happiness per 10 followers to start) maybe combined with some other buff, preferably something more thematic. It'd be really neat to have it give War Weariness pre-Ideologies to someone who declares war on you, but I think War Weariness is based on Public Opinion so I'm not sure how easy that would be to implement.

Also, I find by far the biggest threat to Happiness later on is War Weariness, so the best use of the excess Happiness from Pacifism would probably be for warmongering, ironically.


I think Clericalism definitely needs a buff, in addition to being much worse for Happiness than Pacifism, the +15 to CS resting point is pretty junk. Even with good religious spread (note that Statecraft, which you'd presumably want to use this with, is competing with Piety), the +15 CS resting point is junk, Great Diplomat spam means that you'll only be able to maintain a couple zero-effort friendships and 15 Influence is a lot less than it used to be. It was decent in Vanilla but it really doesn't cut the mustard here.

I would say +50% from Diplomatic Missions to CS following this religion would be a good way of keeping the same general theme.

 

[tu_79]

I agree with Clericalism. I've tried it a couple of times and it competes with Statecraft, unless you cherry-pick here and there. If you don't take Piety, it's quite difficult to maintain your religion on those CS, so combining it with a full Statecraft tree is not doable early, and it's useless later. I only see it useful if you're going to focus on trade routes to CS.

How about 'Diplomats 50% stronger' instead? So it's better at claiming single CS (tactical), but not effective for worldwide diplomacy.

 

[Stalker0]

I will throw in that the longer I've gone, the less I like Clericalism, so I would agree to a buff.

 

[Galbias]

I agree with Clericalism. I've tried it a couple of times and it competes with Statecraft, unless you cherry-pick here and there. If you don't take Piety, it's quite difficult to maintain your religion on those CS, so combining it with a full Statecraft tree is not doable early, and it's useless later. I only see it useful if you're going to focus on trade routes to CS.

How about 'Diplomats 50% stronger' instead? So it's better at claiming single CS (tactical), but not effective for worldwide diplomacy.

I like the idea of it giving you the bonus only on CS following the religion to encourage spreading but that would be fine too.

Or maybe just a flat +20 influence or so, 50% in every city state would be pretty strong.

 

[tu_79]

Or maybe just a flat +20 influence or so, 50% in every city state would be pretty strong.

+20 or +15, the problem is the same. Without a Statecraft investment, you still need diplomats or fulfilling quests. With Statecraft, spreading is difficult. With both Piety and Statecraft and bothering to convert as many City States as possible, there are a few automatic friendliness that will stay just until civs go nuts sending diplomats. During middle age and renaissance it's good, but it decays strongly.

+50% would be on diplo units strength that performs on a CS that shares the religion. that'll be good for people that need to ally specific CS. Send a Great Prophet and some diplo units later. It'll make it easier to keep neighboring CS, too.

 

[ElliotS]

+20 or +15, the problem is the same. Without a Statecraft investment, you still need diplomats or fulfilling quests. With Statecraft, spreading is difficult. With both Piety and Statecraft and bothering to convert as many City States as possible, there are a few automatic friendliness that will stay just until civs go nuts sending diplomats. During middle age and renaissance it's good, but it decays strongly.

+50% would be on diplo units strength that performs on a CS that shares the religion. that'll be good for people that need to ally specific CS. Send a Great Prophet and some diplo units later. It'll make it easier to keep neighboring CS, too.

Yeah, the benefits of +15 resting point just really aren't there considering buying a single ambassador is 30-50 turns of friendship and possibly allies the city state.

It's just dumb that your bonus is useless unless you're ignoring city states. (Because once again, a single diplomatic unit will bring it above the threshold and make the +15 resting point worthless.)

I could also see it giving +25% city state yields or something, like a mini-Siam. (Or combine with Siam for Siam Prime.)

 

[tu_79]

I could also see it giving +25% city state yields or something, like a mini-Siam. (Or combine with Siam for Siam Prime.)

Worth considering.

 

[phantomaxl1207]

Pacifism is really powerful. You can just ignore Happiness with it. As long as you don't let your Religion fade away or decide to attack those who follow your Religion. Religious Pressure eventually makes the cheaper Missionaries quite ineffective.

I agree with Clericalism giving a boost from CSs. The base influence increase seems lacking, especially when the AI starts going crazy with Diplomats or compared to other Enhancers.

Zealotry is pretty decent, until Industrial when Faith costs get too high. I would say you would want a good Medieval economy and a nice Faith income to take advantage of it.

 

[Stalker0]

So so far there appears to be consensus that clericalism could use a boost, but nothing else is standing out from the ground too much

 

[ElliotS]

I would agree that Zealotry could use a small buff in regards to purchase costs later, as faith doesn't scale like gold does. Other than that and the Clericalism consensus I think that Resilience is the only one that needs discussion.

It's slightly annoying to capture cities with this, and impossible to really take an entrenched area with prophets, but overall seems pointless for the human player. You get what, 1 or 2 more holy prophets versus other beliefs?

Maybe other people have different feelings, but I find Resilience absolutely worthless.

 

[Galbias]

Thinking more about Pacifism I'd be fine with just a straight up nerf to 1 happiness per 10 followers or something like that.

For Clericalism...maybe it could have the happiness per cities removed since Pacifism already has that, and just be something like +Influence from Diplomats, +25% to CS yields? The CS yields honestly don't tend to be super strong in the first place so I'm not sure that would be a big boost Hmm.

I would agree that Zealotry could use a small buff in regards to purchase costs later, as faith doesn't scale like gold does. Other than that and the Clericalism consensus I think that Resilience is the only one that needs discussion.

It's slightly annoying to capture cities with this, and impossible to really take an entrenched area with prophets, but overall seems pointless for the human player. You get what, 1 or 2 more holy prophets versus other beliefs?

Maybe other people have different feelings, but I find Resilience absolutely worthless.

I agree on both counts. I feel like the main effect of Resilience should either be to generate additional pressure on cities that already have the religion, or greatly reduce/eliminate foreign pressure, as sort of a niche belief if you've got some religious powerhouse with Ritual who's going to hit you and anyone else you've converted with a massive amount of pressure. Sort of like a weaker version of the Spain/Celts ability, possibly along with some other small benefit. Right now it just helps your religion not get removed by GP/Inquisitor which is fairly pointless and serves more to annoy your enemies than get anything done.

 

[LukaSlovenia29]

I agree with Galbias&co., I too would like an Enhancer belief that would serve as a counter-act against strong passive religious pressure.

 

[LukaSlovenia29]

I've been thinking that a nice and consistent buff to Zealotry would be the ability to use faith to also upgrade units, not just buy them. I'm not sure if the game mechanics allow for this or if it would be too OP, but it'd bring it much more on par with the other really strong enhancer beliefs.