What do you think about Arabian "Last Prophet" ability?

[Hakan-i Cihan]

In that case there should also be a compensation for Greece if you leave the wild card slot empty. Maybe a lump sum of gold for every era you did not use it in. Could be a motivation not to use its UA.

I don't think you can leave the wild card slot empty. Even if that is possible your comparison is still a bad one. With Greece it is up to the player to use or not to use the UA. But with Arabia if you found a religion before being the last, than you don't have any UA anymore. If you do found a religion by using the UA, you are left with the leftovers and probably some/most of your cities are converted already to other civs religions.

 

[Werewolflord]

It s useful if beliefs are balanced, founder belief might be the least balances one but in civ vi every religion will get à fait building wich seem to be balances between them. The founder belief might be weak but the others should be ok, si arabia should be able to have a good religion(especially with Saladin) without focusing on it on early game, rather useful in my opinion.

 

[dturtle1]

I voted but didnt comment earlier...things to do and such but I am in the rather useful camp and seems to me one of those abilities that has low potential power but good consistency to make up for it. Low Difficulty Levels not so useful, High Difficulty levels very useful. You may not get a super duper religion but you spent zero opportunity cost on it as well. It is kinda like the Kongo ability of getting a religion for free... You cant make sure it suits you perfectly and you have to wait for it but that is ok because it didn't cost you anything .

It is not very often you get to have your cake and eat it too

 

[Khalid]

I don't think you can leave the wild card slot empty. Even if that is possible your comparison is still a bad one. With Greece it is up to the player to use or not to use the UA. But with Arabia if you found a religion before being the last, than you don't have any UA anymore. If you do found a religion by using the UA, you are left with the leftovers and probably some/most of your cities are converted already to other civs religions.

I think that founding an religion with Arabia before the last one is the same decision of the player as a decision by a Greek player not to fill in the wildcard slot or the for the Rome player to found cities too far away from each other, so that the roads are not automatically connected.

What I fear a bit is that especially on lower levels it might take too long for the AIs to get the prophets, or even too many civs might ignore religion, so you will never spawn your free great prophet.

 

[elitetroops]

I don't think you can leave the wild card slot empty. Even if that is possible your comparison is still a bad one. With Greece it is up to the player to use or not to use the UA. But with Arabia if you found a religion before being the last, than you don't have any UA anymore. If you do found a religion by using the UA, you are left with the leftovers and probably some/most of your cities are converted already to other civs religions.

Then how about what is the compensation for France if you don't build any wonders? Skipping all wonders might very well be a viable strategy in many games. Or maybe you build only some ancient or classical wonders and win before tourism has any impact on the game. Like founding a religion with Arabia, it is a choice you make (except maybe on the highest difficulty you might end up without wonders even if you didn't plan for the game to go that way). It's not like you can very easily found a religion by mistake even if you don't want to.

There are plenty of abilities and uniques that won't matter or come into play at all in some games. Some because you choose to play a different kind of game, other abilities might be rendered useless by certain map scripts. I don't see any problem with that at all, as long as there also are games where they can be useful.

 

[stealth_nsk]

What I fear a bit is that especially on lower levels it might take too long for the AIs to get the prophets, or even too many civs might ignore religion, so you will never spawn your free great prophet.

Well, you just need to found religion yourself on lower difficulties. Or go midway, building Holy Site relatively early, but not investing much into race.

 

[Louis XXIV]

I don't think you can leave the wild card slot empty. Even if that is possible your comparison is still a bad one. With Greece it is up to the player to use or not to use the UA. But with Arabia if you found a religion before being the last, than you don't have any UA anymore.

Then don't found a religion early, focus on other things.

If you do found a religion by using the UA, you are left with the leftovers and probably some/most of your cities are converted already to other civs religions.

That seems to be the compensation then. If you want to not use the UA, you can get better bonuses.

 

[Krajzen]

I've realized religious race would look very sifferent this time.

In civ5 religious race was very random and speed of gaining prophet fluctuated wildly because there were many unpredictable factors of faith output - terrain, resources, natural wonders, AI order of taking pantheons, rising pantheon costs, what civs are on the map, stonehenge, religious ruin bonus, religious city states and lucky early quests, finally that stupid half random generation past faith threshold...Some civs were getting religion very early and others very late and faith output by the classical era could vary between 1 and as much as 20.
Meanwhile in civ6 you get prophets with GP points and the ways to get them are:
- holy site (1gppt)
- one per game stonehenge (only if you have stone and flat grass next to capital)
- one policy (+1) and one pantheon (+1) to boost GPP.

That's it. Early game GPP amount without stonehenge will usually differ between 1 (most civs, one holy site) and around 4 (city spam or pantheon/policy).

This should make religious race more equal, predictable, dramatic and ending quicker. Which is all good because randomness of that process in civ5 and fact there were always too late, dead religions (unable to spread) was silly. And that's all good news for Last Prophet because second-to-last religion should be founded by the early medieval (I hope).

 

[Browd]

You forgot that each Shrine also gives +1 GPP. From Arioch's site:

Shrine
Requires: Astrology
Cost: 65 production; Maintenance: 1 Gold
Yield: +2 Faith, +1 Great Prophet point, +1 Citizen slot

 

[kamex]

Is anyone else concerned that when playing against Arabia on higher difficulty level, it will be even harder to found a religion - I imagine this being frustrating when playing as Spain etc.

 

[dturtle1]

Well, you just need to found religion yourself on lower difficulties. Or go midway, building Holy Site relatively early, but not investing much into race.

This...Building a Holy site a little earlier is the perfect way protecting yourself against A.I stupidity.

I dont get the sudden need that abilities need to perfectly useable on every map and on every difficulty. Arabia's UA is really good on higher difficulty levels, does it really matter if it not so good on lower difficulty levels? Norways UA is really good on Large Island Maps. Does it matter that Norway's ability is not so good on Pangea Maps?