What's a part of the game you never use or interact with?

[MrRadar]

I will never do anything to increase celebration length. You are correct, it gets you 50% less policy slots. This is why I have never played as Rizal.

I don't know how this deceptive "bonus" slipped through in the development process. There's even a memento which extends celebration by 25% - another waste. They really should change it, for example, giving +50% boost to celebration effects, not it's length. And maybe they should tone down the abundance of happines a bit, now chaining celebrations is a usual thing rather than a feat.
As for Rizal, I played him recently, and yes, you must look for all available alternatives to get another social policy slot, to keep up.

2nd is Religion, apart from using a few missionaries to get enough relics for the age, I do not care which of my own cities follows mine own religion, which neighbors follow it. It is difficult to see the benefits or at least take advantage of all the boons you get.
Once again it comes down to resource, I can spend my missionaries (Production) on getting relics or spreading for the sake of spreading and getting the feeble bonuses, but not both.
I really wish they would do away with missionaries all together, make it strictly passive spread, based on distance plus trade routes.

And please please get rid of the religion city flip floping. Just have a percentage that gets influenced over time, updates whenever the city gains population.
Have all the perks in tiers.

Although I agree that religion mechanics is supertedious and one of the worst in the game, it became just a tad more bearable after the increased cost of buildings, as that indirectly effected on the number of missionaries that can be put on the map by both: the player and AI.
As for the bonuses, they can be pretty strong. For example, Apostolicism on Deity guarantees you at least double the number of the relics required for Toshakhana GA, and then you can keep, for example Shamanism in Modern. Shamanism gives +2 culture from every tundra tile in foreign settlements, so with some missionary work you can bring +500 additional culture to start the Modern age or even more.

 

[MutilationWave]

Even 500 extra culture isn't enough to get me to mess with religion beyond the legacy paths. These days I just take the religious trait that converts settlements on conquest so I have to mess with it even less.

 

[Timothy001]

Religion = Boring. I only build missionaries to satisfy requirements to get relics. Maybe a few to keep my settlements my religion. Once thats done, no cares. I have never unlocked any more religion beleifs. Just the original 3m then the culture tree one.

 

[tman2000]

I don't know how this deceptive "bonus" slipped through in the development process. There's even a memento which extends celebration by 25% - another waste.

The entire game is designed so that there are dozens of little upgrades and bonuses to obtain that makes it seem like there's a lot of variety, but then in order to prevent massive imbalance they use overall systems to neuter the possibility of those bonuses actually mattering too much.

The whole system of tying social policy uptake to celebrations is a way of limiting the pace at which you acquire these bonuses so that by the time you're stacked out pretty strongly the crisis is already well underway. It's also why, with the natural yield scaling by Modern Age, the game ceases to have anything to do because once you have big yields and lots of policies from the beginning, it's already out of balance.

I may be simplifying/exaggerating, but the issue nevertheless is that they've built in pacing mechanisms to slow progress in certain ways, but this just eliminates meaningful choice and strategy. The celebrations seems to me like a trade-off they chose that was required for the design vision even if it made other features fall flat. It also has a distinctly Civ Revolution feel to it.

 

[tman2000]

The 2nd and 3rd religious unlocks are so incredibly difficult, especially on large maps, I literally made a thread thinking it was broken.

From what I understand the 3rd unlock doesn't exist. I made a mod where a Great Person can trigger an additional founder's belief. This plus the second belief pickup will fill all three slots, so I assume the 3rd slot exists for a future civ that utilizes it. Not that there are more that two bonuses that even matter.

- Many of the IP bonuses don't make any sense, so I'm selecting the same few every time. They need to balance these better IMO.

I think some of these are first come first serve? There's always one that says all players can grab it. If so, it means the less good bonuses are for stragglers to pick up. Does this imply the AI just doesn't befriend IP as often?

- The plague crisis. Again, maybe it's me, but this is fun to somebody? I turn this off every single game.

It would be fun if it was connected to trade and you could mitigate it by forgoing trade. Or if war also contributed to spreading it, where the AI itself would gain greater willingness to end war in the face of plague. This sort of thing. Problem is, look at how broken the roads and trade system are. Very underdeveloped mechanic. Other than 1UPT tactical warfare and adjacency placement, managing city connections is the one other thing that you could meaningfully do on the map. You could manage trade, food distribution, happiness effect on distant cities. Oh well...

 

[tman2000]

Even 500 extra culture isn't enough to get me to mess with religion beyond the legacy paths. These days I just take the religious trait that converts settlements on conquest so I have to mess with it even less.

Did they nerf the science bonus with toshakhana?

 

[MutilationWave]

Sorry, I'm not sure what you mean.

 

[Aa602213x1023]

I'm not sure if this is fully on point, but I don't appreciate the graphics as much as I should. The amount of detail that went into the different building appearances for different civilizations is striking, and I should really zoom in occasionally just to marvel at how beautiful the game can be. Sometimes the "one more turn" attitude makes me play too quickly to fully absorb the game's appearance.

 

[MutilationWave]

I'm not sure if this is fully on point, but I don't appreciate the graphics as much as I should. The amount of detail that went into the different building appearances for different civilizations is striking, and I should really zoom in occasionally just to marvel at how beautiful the game can be. Sometimes the "one more turn" attitude makes me play too quickly to fully absorb the game's appearance.

Yeah my neighbor was over and I was showing him the game, explaining it a bit. But when I zoomed in on one of my cities he went "Wooooow". The detail is definitely appreciated.

 

[Leucarum]

The graphics are gorgeous, but I think they lost a lot in terms of functionality. I don't want to knock the amazing work the graphics put into making them, because the detail is impressive and well researched. But it's a little like if you'd asked Picasso to design a country's traffic signs. The results would certainly be striking, but would they be as good for directing traffic?

 

[Lord Lakely]

Crises.