Why so few beliefs?

[pineappledan]

CBP has the same number of possible beliefs as the base vanilla game:
9 Founders
16 Followers
9 Enhancers
9 Reformations

I am wondering why this is kept the same? Is there a technical limitation which prevents VP from increasing the total number of beliefs? At the Huge map setting, this only leaves 4 possible follower beliefs for the last religion to pick. Would it be possible to increase the offerings to 10/20/10/10, or even 11/22/11/11? Founding on larger map setting can feel really restrictive right now.

This would also alleviate some of the issues with 43 civ map setting, where only 8 civs can possibly found. Bringing the total number of unique beliefs up to that level would create far more problems than it would solve, but I think even pushing the max number of religions to 10 or 11 would make those larger game modes far more enjoyable.

 

[Gidoza]

I've sometimes wondered myself why there is a limit on religions at all: I think it would be interesting to have early game religion be more fluid and easy to "eliminate" other religions by mere missionary means (capital included).

But yes, fair enough, one or two more beliefs couldn't hurt.

 

[kenneth1221]

Found this with a quick search: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=83903448

So the author of that mod seems to imply that the only limitation on the number of religions game-wise is the number of available beliefs (and maybe the last founder gets soft-locked? Not sure, wouldn't want to play a game just to find that out). Seems to me that if you add more beliefs, you can have more religions.

Then the question becomes what kinds of bonuses could fill a hole in the current design.

 

[pineappledan]

I can think of a few:

Spoiler Pantheons :

Trickster God - Faith for completing improvements, favouring starts that require a lot of 'terraforming'
10Faith and 5 when you complete a non-road Improvement or remove a feature. (does not scale with era)
+15% Worker improvement rate.

God of Chaos - less focused than god of the sea with global bonus and aggressive edge
+2 in City.
1 and 1 for every 2 coastal or ocean tiles worked by a City.
Pillaging a tile provides an additional 10HP

God of Travellers - TR-focused belief
+2 and +2 in Cities with an active Trade Route (Destination or Origin)
+1 Trade Route Slot

Spoiler Founder :

Caste System - All-rounder bonus for removing micromanagement
Unlocks the Royal Parsonage wonder: (+3Faith, +3Culture, and +1/ for every 4 in City; +5Food to Holy Sites)
+1 Yield from Specialists
+1 Production for every 4 non-Specialists
+10% Attack to all units
Cannot Assign/Unassign citizens in cities following this religion

Holy War - Rewards conquest, but also gives some more conquest tools: a fast-attack mounted unit
- small amount of Faith and GAP on conquering a City, scaling with population and Era
- Unlocks unique units that can be purchased with Faith
- Unlocks House of God Wonder: (+2, +2, +2, +5 production to all Holy Sites)

Spoiler “Ghazi Unit Line” :

View attachment 529421
Ghilman
200
11CS
5 moves
Mounted Unit
Rashidun Promotion (+50% Attack, Ignores ZOC, No Movement to Pillage)
Can move after purchase
Can move after attacking
No terrain or fortification bonus
No purchase cooldown

View attachment 529422
Mamluk
Available at Gunpowder
400
23CS
5 moves
Mounted Unit
Rashidun Promotion (+50% Attack, Ignores ZOC, No Movement to Pillage)
Can move after purchase
Can move after attacking
No terrain or fortification bonus
No purchase cooldown

View attachment 529429
Mujahideen
Available at Rocketry
600
45CS
5 moves
Mounted Unit
Rashidun Promotion (+50% Attack, Ignores ZOC, No Movement to Pillage)
Lashkar Promotion (double movement in hills, +50% flanking damage)
Can move after purchase
Can move after attacking
No terrain or fortification bonus
No purchase cooldown

Hero Worship Rework - Yields for GGenerals, a unique trigger
- Gain Faith, Culture, Gold, and Science when a Great General/Admiral is born.
- Unlocks Great Altar

+5 faith
+15% unit production
+3Faith to Citadels
+3Gold to Holy Sites​

Spoiler Followers :

Exegesis
Doubles the power of your Pantheon belief

Communalism
25Gold, Faith, and Production on completion of an internal trade routes to/from this City, scaling with Era.
+2 Production if City has a Specialist.

Apocrypha
Great Works provide +1 Tourism and +1 Faith
Yields from Expending Great Writers, Artists and Musicians are increased by +20%

Jizya
+1 for every Follower of other Religions in owned Cities
Owned cities not following this religion provide a free Military Unit every 8 Population.

Spoiler Enhancers :

Martyrdom - passive resistance
Follower reduction from Inquisitors and Prophets is halved. (Moved from Prophecy to here)
+100% Resistance to passive Religious Pressure.

Iconoclasm - Per-Citizen Inquisitor bonus contrasting with Inquisition's flat bonus
50 for every citizen converted by an Inquisitor.
-10%Building maintenance on Empire

Guruship - Strengthens Religious buildings effects.
+2 to of 2 yields for each Building Purchased with Faith in this city.
+6Culture to your Grand Temple.

Spoiler Reformation :

Orthodoxy (current orthodoxy belief renamed to Ecumenism) -
Constabularies and Police Stations can be purchased with Faith
+3Culture and +2Faith from Constabularies and Police Stations.
Foreign Great Prophets suffer attrition damage in your territory
+50% Attrition rate.

Liturgical Language - Tall CV civ tenet to contrast Holy Site and Faith of the Masses' Wide CV. Compounds religious authority.
+1% Tourism modifier for each Follower in in that civilization.

Spoiler Belief name changes :

Orthodoxy => Ecumenism - orthodoxy has nothing to do with spreading, it’s about maintaining correct beliefs. Some other concept should be used to label increased pressure.
Dioceses => The First Estate - still Christian, but more a political than specifically catholic term for the church’s right to governance and to collect taxes from a consenting aristocracy and peasantry.
Jesuit Education => Ordination/Catechism/Seminary
Cooperation => Filial Piety - I just like it better

 

[azum4roll]

+1 Trade Route? Does that mean Gandhi (and some other religious civs) can start trading before he researches Trade?

 

[pineappledan]

+1 Trade Route? Does that mean Gandhi can start trading before he researches Trade?

I suppose if you managed to build caravans without unlocking trade then go nuts
Obviously I'm not arguing for all these to be adopted, but they are some interesting/fun holes that I thought could be expounded upon.

- There was a warmonger founder that rewarded conquest, but not one that game you more war tools
- There wasn't a warmonger founder for "defensive" warring, where you don't have to kill cities
- There is no representation of North American religions at all
- There an enhancer belief that augments active religious resistance (inquisition), and 4 that augment spreading, but nothing to help resist passive pressure
- "Syncretism" civs usually just go buildings, but there's space for an additional belief that rewards not converting your own cities
- There are direct references to christian doctrine in many of the beliefs; some are oddly specific as well (dioceses, jesuit education). I think some references to hinduism, islam, and pre-colonial systems of belief (midewiwin, shamanism, druidism, mana) would be some welcome diversity.

 

[azum4roll]

I suppose if you managed to build caravans without unlocking trade then go nuts

...right. Unlike world wonders it doesn't give a free trade unit.

 

[JamesNinelives]

I'm absoutely in favour of adding more options! I play on Huge maps a lot and I think it would also make religion more fun by reducing the frequency of having the beliefs you want taken by others.

If you want this idea to have broad appeal though I strongly reccomend leaving the existing beliefs as they are. I would be really annoying for me to have some of my favourite existing beliefs changed as a part of this, e.g. Cooperation.

More choice would be fun, and more diversity would be wonderful! Changing (even renaming) existing beliefs would be annoying to me.

 

[kenneth1221]

TLDR: Pantheons are adequate flavorwise but could definitely use more, I lean towards reducing Christian references as opposed to increasing global religious references (but on further reflection would have no real problem with more global religious references), and more buildings would be a very easy way to add beliefs.

I assume these are just brainstorming proposals as opposed to polished ideas? These are pretty flavorful but I couldn't imagine playing a Caste System game (at least not without some buff to urbanization.) Seems like you could weaponize it pretty aggressively against human players, but I'm not sure the AI would be at any disadvantage whatsoever for picking it or getting it force-spread to their cities. That'd actually be a really cool offensive strat against an opponent that doesn't actually care about it.

Spoiler On Pantheons :

Not sure we need more pantheons, in part because there are already more than enough of them, in part because I feel that they're vague enough that they can describe literally anything. (However, I'm going to contradict myself here and say that it would be nice to have ~43 pantheons for those games where you try to play with literally everyone. Would get very crowded design-wise, though.)

On the subject of pantheons, I see a few flavor gaps myself. There's very little that could be interpreted as Animism, no World-Soul akin to the Roman conception of a Numen (I guess God-King or God of All Creation, but those imply the worship of a God), nothing like Japanese kami (to oversimplify, spirits/gods in all things), or Shakespearean faeries (or in general Western mythological faeries, supernatural beings that follow strange rules). Gameplay-wise I'm not sure how I'd interpret those.

Spoiler On how everything is so Christian :

Yeah no I reviewed the beliefs in the base game. Everything below this is an opinion that is based somewhat in ignorance. Since VP ended up adding Christian flavor to its new beliefs, I see no problem with making a conscious effort to add global flavor, and it's uniquely VP over base G&K that shoehorns "God" or "Goddess" into every pantheon belief. Leaving everything I wrote before coming to this realization in case anyone else is approaching it from the same angle I am.

A thought on the extra-super-duper-Christian belief names: on one hand, a lot of them can't be helped since I assume most of us were raised in a Christian part of the world and as a result developed our knowledge of religion through the lens of Christianity. More generic sounding beliefs, such as Defender of the Faith, could refer to lots of different things but to our ears have a western and Christian cultural connotation (and that's disregarding the egregiously Christian ones like Jesuit Education, Dioceses, Crusader Spirit, Defender of the Faith... you know, all of the Reformation ones really are).

My suggestion would be to try to reduce the explicit Christianity of the current names first as opposed to introducing beliefs that use names from cultures not our own because a) we risk misrepresenting that culture (which is touchier when it's not Christianity, or no longer actively practiced in part because of Christianity) though it's entirely possible that there are enough people in the community who are experts in non-Christian religions to do them justice and b) because part of the charm of Civ, I think, is that almost every building is given these incredibly generic names, with standouts as unique buildings for specific civs. Shrines and temples, not churches or synagogues. Universities, not seowons or madrasah.

My hot take/two cents on this is that the flaw is not that we're missing religious representation from around the globe but that what we have is too steeped in the language of Christianity and that introducing (for example) Mana as a belief runs the risk of being like "oh, that's a name that sticks out." If a belief for Mana was included, I would err on the side of naming it something like "Supernatural Force," which could be interpreted to cover (according to Wikipedia) Mana, Orenda, Manitou, and even Kami if you squint. On the other hand, that strips away the flavor to the point of insipidity. It's past midnight for me here, so I don't know.

That said, it is shocking how few non-generic or non-Christian beliefs are in VP. Even Gods and Kings had things like Peace Gardens, Choral Music, and Guruship. We don't even use the concepts that have at this time long since culturally osmosed into the west like Reincarnation or Karma.

On further reflection, most of the current non-Christian religious flavor in VP comes from buildings. My last game I played with Enginseer's VP Bare Necessities, which adds in even more buildings. I liked having the options to choose specific buildings with specific applications. Unfortunately something in my playthrough was bugged because of VP changes and I effectively went through the game without a second follower belief, but such is life.

Anyways, actual ideas. Disclaimer: I have little experience translating ideas I think are cool to gameplay that doesn't suck. My approach is cool ideas first, game balance second, and this is all rough draft/pure concept level:

Spoiler New Pantheons :

• Foundation/Divine Sojourn: gain +1 faith, +1 culture in capital for each city settled.
  • Flavorwise, I'm thinking something like Rome or Israel, where the Aeneid or Exodus are really important stories. Practically, no idea if this bonus is remotely balanced

• World Soul/All Spirit/Animating Force: +1 food, production, culture, science in every city.
  • Flavorwise, a pantheon you take if you're planning on not founding, because (as bad as this will sound) historically a lot of these faiths get displaced by organized religion. In-game, it rewards you for not embracing organized religion and stealing a holy city from someone else.

• Forest Spirits: Gain 10? 15? faith and 5? 10? culture whenever a forest is chopped down.
  • Flavorwise, like the fairies in The Elves and the Shoemaker. As humanity encroaches upon the unknown, even as it destroys it, it learns from it. Honestly, not sure this is balanced. Would be OP with Progress since you often want to chop anyways.

• Duality: Gain faith per turn in your capital equal to the difference between your global happiness and unhappiness.
  • Alternatively: gain 3 faith per turn in each city that has equal happiness and unhappiness. Lose 1 faith per difference in happiness and unhappiness.
  • Might be micromanagement hell
  • Taoism, Zoroastrianism, it's vague enough that you can imagine whatever you'd like

• Titanomachy/Death of the Old Gods: Gain +1 faith in the Capital per Civ with more military power than you. Caps at 8 faith total. Scales inversely with map size i.e. on Duel, you get all 8 if the other guy is stronger, on Huge, you need 8 people stronger than you.
  • High risk, high? reward
  • Flavorwise, it's if you worship the new gods who killed the old gods, like the Greek Titanomachy.

• War in Heaven: Gain faith based on unit strength whenever attacking a unit with less base combat strength than yours.
  • Flavorwise, this one is more Miltonesque than Titanomachy. The idea is this time, you worship the god who put down a rebellion.

Spoiler New Founder Beliefs :

• Cosmic Balance: Unlocks Wonder that slightly reduces needs in holy city w +5 faith to Holy Sites. During a Golden Age, -20% empire needs.
  • This is my take on karma as a Founder belief. Might be totally unbalanced.

• Shining Path: Unlocks the Great Augury, a Wonder gives +5 science to holy sites. When you gain a tech, get a highly watered down version of the bonus from Holy Law
  • Yes, it's kind of a Dune reference, but there are doubtless many religions that explicitly state that one day all of their followers will inherit the world if they just do everything right (which might lend itself to something more militaristic?).

• Blood for the Gods: Unlocks the Spire of Sacrifice, a Wonder that gives +5 food to holy sites. Killing units gives a watered down version of the Authority bonuses --I'm thinking 50%? -- but also faith.
  • Why yes, it's a ridiculous theme park idea of the Aztec needing constant sacrifice in order to avert disaster. It's also about a fourth of the Aztec UA, but by the time this is online it won't matter.

Spoiler New Follower Beliefs (for buildings, just look at Enginseer's VP Bare Necessities, which does it pretty well) :

• Reincarnation: On expending Great Person, gain GPP of that type in the Holy City. (a flat 10, scaling with era?)

• Monastic Tradition: Faith building that gives a UNIQUE, kept on upgrade, promotion that strengthens melee units (the standard 2-move line). Something not too powerful, like +5% defense in friendly lands, can pillage without expending movement, gain culture if you get attacked and live. There's a decent-sized worldwide tradition of people attacking monks and the monks living. Also give other standard building bonuses.

Spoiler New Reformation Belief(s) :

• Liturgical Revival/Holy Tongue for Common Man: Great Works and artifacts of your (holy city holder's) civilization in other civilizations' cities now give you tourism to that civilization. Great Works now produce +1 faith and +1 culture. All religious buildings now give +1 food, +1 tourism.
  • I just think it's kind of impressive that Hebrew transformed from a liturgical language to a living language in the course of just a century.

Anyways, those are my thoughts, but since I've only come back to Civ after taking time in the real world, I may be a tad misguided.

 

[Recursive]

My two cents on this:
- I think more belief options would be great, as long as they're balanced. More (meaningful) choice is pretty great; why not?

I'm absoutely in favour of adding more options! I play on Huge maps a lot and I think it would also make religion more fun by reducing the frequency of having the beliefs you want taken by others.

If you want this idea to have broad appeal though I strongly reccomend leaving the existing beliefs as they are. I would be really annoying for me to have some of my favourite existing beliefs changed as a part of this, e.g. Cooperation.

More choice would be fun, and more diversity would be wonderful! Changing (even renaming) existing beliefs would be annoying to me.

- I wouldn't mind some renaming and more diversity in religious influence. Taking so much inspiration from Christianity with the current naming scheme doesn't fit the spirit of Civilization, in my opinion.

But I'd agree with James that leaving existing beliefs the way they are (unless rebalancing numbers a bit) would be an advisable idea for broader appeal.

Anyways, those are my thoughts, but since I've only come back to Civ after taking time in the real world, I may be a tad misguided.

Sharing ideas is never misguided. That's what the forum's for!

 

[Voremonger]

Generally, the more things you add to a game the more difficult to balance it becomes.
I am not fundamentally opposed to adding more Beliefs, but adding Beliefs that are both balanced and interesting is very difficult I think.
For instance, I think that while the militaristic Beliefs you are proposing are interesting they are way too good compared to what is currently in the game.

Anyways, at least for now you can probably edit the mod config files to make Beliefs non-exclusive, which would allow for an arbitrary number of religions.
To make Pantheon Beliefs non-exclusive edit (1) Community Patch/Core Files/Core Tables/CustomModOptions.xml:
<Row Class="6" Name="ANY_PANTHEON" Value="0"/> -> <Row Class="6" Name="ANY_PANTHEON" Value="1"/>

I haven't tested this, but to make Beliefs in general non-exclusive you probably have to edit (1) Community Patch/Core Files/PNM Mods DB/TRAITS/AnyBelief.sql:
ALTER TABLE Traits ADD AnyBelief BOOLEAN DEFAULT 0; -> ALTER TABLE Traits ADD AnyBelief BOOLEAN DEFAULT 1;

 

[Heinz_Guderian]

Well, the suggestions doesnt have to be those exact numbers, the most important part of the suggestions are the themes of the beliefs/pantheons

 

[black213]

I agree with the premise of this thread but belief names should definitely be 'universally applicable' (don't know how to word that better), unless specific religions were to receive localized names for beliefs (where possible), which sounds good on paper to me but is probably impossible to implement.

 

[Voremonger]

Well, the suggestions doesnt have to be those exact numbers, the most important part of the suggestions are the themes of the beliefs/pantheons

I think with some of the proposed beliefs it is literally impossible to balance them without changing their theme.

The belief that lets you purchase regular land Units with Faith (I think it's called Zealotry) is already pretty strong because it greatly increases your capability to produce Units.
If you add a Belief that lets you purchase Units with Faith which are stronger than regular Units that will automatically crowd out Zealotry.

The Hero Worship rework is also fundamentally unbalanced because the amount of Great Generals you get varies wildly depending on your Policies.
If you wanted to balance it it would have to be okay with Authority -> Imperialism and garbage otherwise.

Caste System is also fundamentally unbalanced because it gives you Combat Strength and yields in all of your Cities at the cost of a small amount of yields in all Cities.
If you wanted to balance the fact that you are getting free stats for all Units and Cities with the other founder beliefs the increase would have to be really small.
At this point the Belief would no longer feel good to take.

 

[hokath]

The Hero Worship rework is also fundamentally unbalanced because the amount of Great Generals you get varies wildly depending on your Policies.
If you wanted to balance it it would have to be okay with Authority -> Imperialism and garbage otherwise.

This is true for many existing beliefs, like the ones that give yields on expending great people or capturing cities.

 

[pineappledan]

Changing (even renaming) existing beliefs would be annoying to me.

I’m not in love with some of my own name changes, but I think if something like an ITR bonus we’re introduced then cooperation works. I also really like the idea of adding filial piety as a belief because it’s general, but still overtly Confucianist idea and we have no confucian beliefs. Cooperation seems so general, I am thinking that I will change my original idea’s name though

I lean towards reducing Christian references as opposed to increasing global religious references

Christianity with the current naming scheme doesn't fit the spirit of Civilization, in my opinion

I agree with the premise of this thread but belief names should definitely be 'universally applicable'

We need to talk to a comparative theologian . I will agree that this is a small failing of VP, that the beliefs as a whole have gotten more christianized from the base game. I am partly to blame for that (dioceses was my name suggestion)

I’m gonna change some of my names, if I can, to more generalized ideas.

If you add a Belief that lets you purchase Units with Faith which are stronger than regular Units that will automatically crowd out Zealotry.

the idea for my ghazwa unit line was to make a melee unit that was like an attack only unit, that would totally crumple on defense. The mamluk unlocks in Renaissance, but only has the CS of a knight, but has this massive +attack and ZOC bonus. If the numbers aren’t there yet, maybe I will tweak them, but they are meant to be a side-grade to anything that zealotry could unlock, and ONLY available through faith purchase.

re the Great generals thing, I think you have a point, though there are also civs like Portugal that can get plenty of GGs and GAs without the policies you indicated. As Hilary said though, you wouldn’t pick this belief if you weren’t going to synergize with it anyways.

Caste System is also fundamentally unbalanced because it gives you Combat Strength and yields in all of your Cities at the cost of a small amount of yields in all Cities.

Yeah, I don’t know if my idea hits the mark, and the AI wouldn’t be encumbered at all by it (they use default settings; they’re the AI). I thought it modelled the inflexibility of the caste system quite well, and some players who don’t appreciate the micro might appreciate the ability to disable a part of the game they never use anyways while still benefiting from it.

just a thought. Obviously I won’t try to push my ideas too hard, but the idea of a caste-based belief appealed to me, and i would be very interested in seeing other people’s caste-system belief proposals

Mana as a belief runs the risk of being like "oh, that's a name that sticks out."

apparently it doesn’t though? Mana is a subheading in the anthropology of religion article in Wikipedia; a taxonomic English term for stored/innate/housed spiritual energy, encompassing specific examples like Orenda and Kami. I guess we have Gygax to thank for this contribution to anthropology.

 

[Snipergw]

More beliefs is a great idea. In particular Caste System of the original poster is a great suggestion, I would take it every game.

There are some other mods that do interesting things with pantheons that might be looked at for inspiration; JFD's "JFDLC" had a search bar added to the pantheon selection screen so you could much easier find one suitable for you. That is probably too large a change though, and I'm sure it brought bugs with it. The "World at War" mod allowed you to "build your own" pantheon by selecting up to four deities or rituals that gave various tiny bonuses. It felt really satisfying, but is also too big a task at this stage. Still, inspiration can be taken from it.

Fully agree that we need more non-Christian themed beliefs. Where are my Dakhmas? My nature spirits? Animism is too flavorful to leave out!

 

[pineappledan]

As I said, I think we only need to add 2/6/2/2 to have a more ideal set of beliefs. that's enough to feel like there's still enough choice in leftover beliefs for a late founder on the largest regular map size ()

Since only 1 person has offered their own ideas so far I will just comment on @kenneth1221's post. I will pick out my favorites and comment on them. Don't take this as me putting you down; I selected these 3 specifically because I like them as much or more than my own ideas:

Shining Path: Unlocks the Great Augury, a Wonder gives +5 science to holy sites. When you gain a tech, get a highly watered down version of the bonus from Holy Law

Basically Holy Law or Way of Transcendence, but yields on Research instead of Policy or Era unlock. I love it; so clean. Also, Dune reference. Here's how I would adjust it:

Divine Revelation
Unlocks Holy Archives (333, +5 science to holy sites, 3 slots for Great Works of Literature (+8/2 when themed))
Gain 5// for each city following your Religion whenever you discover a new Technology (max of 20 cities)

Foundation/Divine Sojourn: gain +1 faith, +1 culture in capital for each city settled.

For my part, I actually like the God(dess) of X consistency of the current pantheons, so I don't see much reason to change it.

To that end, I would use this pantheon idea, but I would change it slightly:
God of the City
2 in each City following your pantheon

This pantheon directly compares to God-King, which gives 1 in the capital and 1 in the capital for every 5 citizens in empire following this pantheon. So it needs to be stronger and have more up-front bonuses since it doesn't scale with city-size like God King does. It also feels like it should be more individualized to the city,doesn't it? Hence why I gave it localized yields.

I called it God of the City, because it reminds me of Sumerian/Greek/Canaanite religion, where each city had a patron god (Rome's::Hercules, Athens::Athena, Tyre::Melqart, Jerusalem::Yahweh, etc.)

Reincarnation: On expending Great Person, gain GPP of that type in the Holy City. (a flat 10, scaling with era?)

Love this. Just a straight refund on expended GPs. Can't think of how to improve this idea, it just comes down to however much GPPs is the appropriate level. I would guess it's closer to 30 scaling with era.

 

[kenneth1221]

oh god I'm getting into an internet 'argument' over the finer nuances of the word Mana.

apparently it doesn’t though? Mana is a subheading in the anthropology of religion article in Wikipedia; a taxonomic English term for stored/innate/housed spiritual energy, encompassing specific examples like Orenda and Kami. I guess we have Gygax to thank for this contribution to anthropology.

I still think it's about as specific as Defender of the Faith or Crusader Spirit. It could refer to a lot of practices, but Mana is recognizably either Polynesian or from gaming. But I will stress that I don't have a problem with adding that flavor anymore. Part of my problem with the name is that wrapping all of the concepts into one smoothes out whatever nuance might exist between them flavorwise and I wouldn't necessarily want the inclusion of Mana to be a justification for not including Kami, if that makes sense. I'm not a theologian, so I can't say whether that would actually be a problem. Again, that's ultimately inconsequential.

My views on balance are that these are worth making into a modmod and playtesting before dismissing as unbalanceable -- the biggest offenders will sort themselves out. Again, my suggestions have mostly been grounded in flavor.

Glad people don't mind the Reincarnation idea! Although on further thought, GPP refund in holy city would work best if it was an Enhancer. If it was a follower belief, it would have to be in the 'nearest city' or 'city that produced the GP'.

 

[Voremonger]

This is true for many existing beliefs, like the ones that give yields on expending great people or capturing cities.

I agree that the current version of Hero Worship is relatively unbalanced between strategies because the number of Cities you capture varies very strongly.
However, this does not mean that we should add more beliefs like it.
Also, with the current version of Hero Worship there are at least actions in the game that you could theoretically take to get the benefits of capturing Cities and you always get the full +5 bonus from Holy Sites.
If you did not take Authority in the beginning and have to take a Founder Belief that revolves around Great Generals you're just screwed no matter what you do and I think that would make the game unnecessarily frustrating.

I would argue that a founder belief that revolves around GPs is at least somewhat useful for any player.
How many GPs you get varies by strategy but it varies much less than the number of Great Generals you get.