How useful does everyone find the Persecution civic? I never see the AI use it and I rarely touch it myself. While an established civ can make a reasonable return out of the EP boost, most UHVs never really give you the chance to get to that point anyway. I just don't see the benefit over Theocracy or OR. The only time I think it might be useful is for a civ like Ajmer, but in that case it just doesn't feel quite useful enough unless you opt to go smash everyone to pieces and crush any respawns that crop up.
Usefulness of Persecution
- Thread starter Bluebags
- Start date
blizzrd
Micromanager
I have never adopted Persecution. I do espionage early when Persecution is often not available, late espionage is often useless anyway.
Yeah, that's Ajmer, but the objective is effectively a "control X by X" objective because of the limits on how persecution works, especially with the spawns/respawns. Even though they collapsed as Hindu and all cities were Hindu, I had Sindh respawn on me as Sunni and it instantly spread to all their cities.
I think the espionage contribution of Persecution is well balanced (though I don't tend to end up using it much for that), but I reckon it needs an additional perk or two. Something like "can persecute Vassal cities" would be good for Ajmer, maybe "can build an additional persecutor", "successful persecutions remove 1-X religions" (as opposed to just one), "chance of minorities fleeing cities upon city conquest" (meaning you might not have to suffer the diplo hit if you want to get rid of them anyway), or even something as trivial as "+100% persecutor build rate". Just something extra or two extra to make the civic a bit more appealing.
I think the main problem with any of these suggestions though is how to encourage the AI to make use of them, but that's its own concern in some ways.
I sometimes use persecution for civs like the Abbasdis and Safavids, as they need to get their religion spread quickly, in their regions (especially Safavids, who have a too many religions already in place).
PS. And of course the Ghorids, who need to wipe out any other religion, except for Islam, I find persecution helpful too.
PS. And of course the Ghorids, who need to wipe out any other religion, except for Islam, I find persecution helpful too.
How does Persecution actually help in that regard though? You're almost better off being in OR to build missionaries without monastaries and using persecutors to remove unwanted religions. In my mind there's no real "benefits" in terms of using persecution features if you are running the Persecution civic.
Sorry let me clarify, I "sometimes" use persecution, but I have to agree, that it should be tweaked. I sometimes use it, but in reality, as you said the best way is to go with organized religion, or with the Ghorids/Safaivds, Theocracy.
embryodead
Caliph
It's handy on Caliph, where you need to run Espionage economy with some civs. AI Safavids use it, though it's because it's their favorite civic.
I agree it can be handy for your espionage economy (and would be awesome if the unlimited spy benefit of Absolutism wasn't almost useless by the time you got there), but my criticism stems more from the Persecution civic's lack of contribution to the actual persecution theme/options in the game.
Sure, no non-state religion spread is great for many of the religious UHVs, but you're taking the hit of an extra unhappiness for that. Running OR or Theocracy, you only get that additional unhappiness hit for a brief period when you use a Persecutor, with a turn of unrest added in, but in return you get a great boon either for your infrastructure or military.
What I would like to see is some changes that make the Persecution civic more useful for prosecuting an actual campaign of persecution against populations. I don't think any of the suggestions I mentioned above would imbalance the various economic/civic options in the game, but it might encourage players to use it a little more than just when their espionage economy is developed fully.
Similar threads
