Why bother maintaining religious purity?

[gdwitt]

New mod:"Merged the Missionary and Great Prophet (mostly redundant)."
I depended on the great prophet landmarks for a faith boost.
Obviously the AI spent faith on Great Prophet conversions and later Great Scientists and Great Merchants.
I can confirm both of these through anecdotal evidence from 3 different games.

Two questions arise:
1) Does one gain the faith points independent of the religion of the population?
Ex. If have 3 of my religion, 2 of another, 2 of another and 4 without choice, how many unmodified faith points does this give?

2) With more missionaries coming (no great prophet), how will you deal annoying problem of keeping my cities aligned with my religion?
I don't like the hassle of making 4 inquisitors every turn to keep up with the parade of foreign missionaries.
Does it really matter if a city is 50% my faith?
It appears that even with this hindrance, I get plenty of faith points by just building the shrines and temples and landmarks.
In fact I like converting my city to Christianity to build Cathedrals and then letting it get converted to several different religions so I can faith-build temples and mosques all in one city.

In sum, please help: Aside from specific enhancer requirements for buildings, how does keeping my religion alive in my cities matter?
If they match my neighbors, am I not on better diplomatic ground?

 

[Hawawaa]

For #2 I think in the future religious buildings and wonders will shield your cities from enemy conversions. And I believe your holy city will be very hard to convert too (these ideas have been brought up when Thal gets back into religions but for now finalizing up leader changes is priority).

 

[Gamerwiz]

I was curious about that item in the change list...I don't have time to reinstall and load up a game, can someone explain to me what the change is? It literally just basically takes away the "great person" functions of great prophets aside from religion creation/enhancing and gives that to missionaries?

 

[mystikx21]

No. It eliminates the missionaries, not the prophets. The idea is likely that religion will spread more organically, and then you can use GPs for that to increase it, to make mass conversions, or for their great person functions.

I suspect there were intermediate steps we could have used to keep both (limits on missionaries, decreased flavor, etc), but they're also a rather less useful unit after the very early stages versus inquisitors and prophets, which retain a high rate of return.

 

[Teaf]

Were Inquisitors removed also? because I cannot buy them either.

 

[Ahriman]

No. It eliminates the missionaries, not the prophets. The idea is likely that religion will spread more organically

This seems in general like a big and unnecessary nerf to religion. Having to get a second great prophet before I can effectively start to spread my religion is really going to slow things down. It also means that I have to have 3 prophets before I can upgrade the religion, which is tough given how the incremental cost of prophets rises.

Every time I found a religion, I always immediately pick up a missionary asap to spread to 2 other cities; with 3 religious cities the passive spread rate can start going on its way, with only one religious city the spread rate isn't fast enough to surpass the population growth rate of cities, and so cities don't get a religious majority and religions don't spread.

I really think that this solution is worse than the problem it was trying to fix.

But of course I'll have to play it to see.

 

[mystikx21]

If the organic/passive spread is high enough (and pop dependent as usual), we shouldn't need a GP to spread it or missionaries for that matter in the early game.

My guess is the problem was missionary spam by the AI, which could have been resolved in a couple intermediate steps (reducing the cap to 2, reducing the flavor on missionaries, etc). But that tends to be most often through using prophets anyway in my experience rather than missionaries. I'm haven't generally experienced a lot of missionaries only. The missionaries tend to be cheap in the mid-game for spreading faiths, but are extremely less effective at it by then, given enough spread early on. So I would say the issue was the AI not so much trying to convert you but that it was wasting a lot of faith points.

@Teaf I don't think inquisitors were supposed to be removed, no.

 

[cleaner]

I like to also voice my opinion that the removal of missionaries completely was a rather disappointing decision. I think it takes an aspect of the game away and as already said, makes spreading religions more difficult. For all the reasons that you need more faith for a prophet, then you sometimes don't get one directly and you use them also usually to enhance your religion, at least I do. Missionaries in my opinion were fine in being a small version of the prophet, requiring far less faith and to make up for it, being weaker than the prophet.

PS: I also lack inquisitors in my current game. There is no Civilopedia entry for them either.

 

[gdwitt]

This change is an improvement over the missionary spam we have been dealing with for many

think about it: what was the advantage of missionaries outside those 30 or so turns when your neighbors had no religion?
Having your religion become dominant seems to have little use in this game other than a few positive diplomacy points with neighbors. Nothing compared to Civ 4.

See my points above: It might be an advantage to have multiple religions within and without your empire.

By mid-game, my missionaries were useless in distant cities due to adjacent pressure.
I hope it's removed as a quest.
It really annoyed me that the only quest I could get from distant cities was an impossible conversion request.
I would recommend adding maybe another level of enhanced beliefs devoted solely to religion spread.

Some intermediate choice should be considered down the road.
My preference was in an earlier thread: let the missionaries replace the useless spies.
It will greatly reduce micromanagement and be more realistic.

 

[Stalker0]

So the question becomes, once there are two civs near each other with a religion, will I still be able to convert cities without using a GP with organic spread, or will I functionally need to use a GP to overwrite the religious strength of my opponent?

 

[mystikx21]

Right, we would need to test the alternatives here to see how we can move the religion needles in cities still, with passive spreads and directed spread. I should also think inquisitors would still be useful in this task one way or the other (to keep GPs out or to control undesirable passive spreads). If they are not working, that's a problem.

gdwitt, there are/can be benefits to accumulating other faiths in your cities, but it depends on what those benefits are. I will sometimes leave one alone with a distinct pantheon behind it because it benefits pastures or plantations or jungle, where the terrain is favorable for such a belief over what I have selected myself. I can recognize the value of having a diverse system herein, but the likelihood is that your own faith has its own particular benefits for being spread and practiced, if you have selected beliefs accordingly.

Tithing or certain religious buildings don't require dominance to be beneficial, but others do. It will depend on what value we place on those benefits, how substantial they are, and how easy it is to maintain them under a no-missionary system. I would agree that there was a problem wherein the AI would use missionaries long past their point of useful returns, but resolving that problem can take multiple steps instead of severe ones. We may need to know how those will work also in the event the passive+GP spread method is less ineffective or not engaging enough to pursue.

Your proposed alternative of converting them to agents would be interesting here, but may not be as easy to do and implement and is effectively what providing a bigger passive spread/resistance and prophets already does. We may ultimately need some work from the other direction too (seeing if we can get the AI to quit wasting as much faith on missionaries by limiting their total amount available, or reducing flavor values, etc).

 

[Dunkah]

Does the pantheon spread with the religion? I always thought that once religion started the pantheons were lost.

 

[mystikx21]

No. Pantheons will become attached to the religion that is founded on top of it and spread alongside it. They won't cease to exist unless the religion is exterminated via growth of others and inquisition. This is why some of them are short term and some are long term in benefits. Culture on shrines is a longer-term benefit flowing from having built many shrines while culture or faith on a particular resource or improvement is advantaged by location and may only be very useful for the early stages of the game and stop providing as much benefit in relative terms as your empire grows or expands. Some are in between (food on camps for example).

 

[Stalker0]

Your proposed alternative of converting them to agents would be interesting here, but may not be as easy to do and implement

What if we gave existing agents some passive missionary bonuses?

Having an agent in a foreign city spread some religion pressure there. Having a counterspy in your own base provides some counter religious pressure.

Offering it as a way to perhaps institute the idea with easier code.

 

[mystikx21]

Perhaps, but agents don't arrive until well after the missionary phase of the game either. In and of itself, that's probably fine. Just an issue with timing.

 

[Dunkah]

What the heck do agents have to do with religion?

I think that the thing to do is allow each city to have multiple religions. They are either on or off. An missionary can spread it once then they are done. In Real Life... Once you allow a religion in to your community you just aren't going to make it go away.

Just legislate the effect those religions have.

It's simple... easy to balance.

IF you have effects for other cities and effects for your cities, then adjust the strength of those effects by how diluted the religion is.

 

[Stalker0]

What the heck do agents have to do with religion?

It was basically a way to introduce the missionary like agents system...without having to create a brand new thing for missionaries.

I really like the idea of using missionaries like agents are used, but I don't it could be done in a mod.

 

[Anvari]

It was basically a way to introduce the missionary like agents system...without having to create a brand new thing for missionaries.

I really like the idea of using missionaries like agents are used, but I don't it could be done in a mod.

TBH i don't get it because when G&K was released, most ppl didn't liked the menu-based spying and i don't think that changed much. I'd rather have Spies and Espionage like in Civ4 but that would be tough to implement.

 

[mystikx21]

@dunkah In real life there are dozens (if not hundreds or thousands) of examples of suppressing, exterminating, persecuting, or expelling other practices of faith (and non-faith). The anomaly is tolerance of non-majority faiths (including in Western liberal societies in the modern day suppression and hostility and prejudices toward Islam or atheism or Mormons, and not far removed from Jews or Catholics on a similar level). That's not realistic for one to say that allowing spread is to be considered a norm. To me this is a feature, not a bug, within religion to establish in group out group competition and rivalry. It's expected behavior that conflict and social strife and ostracized peoples follow rather than peaceful adoption.

Secondly the game play value of a faith is much more than it was in civ4, where it basically just allowed more happiness via temples and cathedrals for multiples, plus some diplomatic effects. Instead we have other tangible benefits that we would want to maximize with majority populations. Allowing spread therefore is or can be an undesirable effect.

Adding a mechanic to legislate effects sounds like something we would a)have to micromanage a lot more than dropping a GP or inquisitor and b) something we would have to teach the ai to maximize particular benefits (spread this religion here for more culture, this one here for more food, etc). I would rather see passive spreads controlled with inquisitors and GPs than have a religious state mechanism as a result.

 

[Dunkah]

Got it.

I am just trying to think of a way to simplify the whole thing.

I know that there are societies where religious suppression is the norm but the overall majority allow just about anything. And no matter how much you try unless you wipe out whole populations the belief itself can't be put to rest.

I just think it would be much simpler to make the spread boolean. On or off... and you either get all of the benefits of the home religion or a watered down version of many.