Why so few beliefs?

[pineappledan]

Progress + Pyramids and you can perform a farm in 4 turns. So literally trading 1 gold for 2.5 faith and 1.25 science.

Worker improvement rate bonus has been moved back to terracotta army

For the sweat lodge to be good it needs another effect. Currently we have buildings that boost culture, science, food, and gold. One for WLTKD, one for military strength, pagodas (they are their own thing), and finally Stupas, which are either for tourism or giving yourself a handicap because they game is too easy, I'm currently not sure which is true. They all give happiness or faith in some form.

Could maybe break down / off stupas, since they represent 2 unique yields. Churches and Mandir are kinda the GP buildings; One protects from assassination and 1 boosts GWs.
The Dar-e Mehr is sort of the Faith battery building. It has a bit of Culture, but it's mainly focused on Faith generation, which is unique, and I thought it was a pretty apt bonus considering Zoroastrianism was the first monotheistic religion and left deep cultural and religious impressions on nearby regions

At this point, I do think you are giving 5HP heal in city pretty short shrift. If we add a bonus to camps/plantations to the sweat lodge, I think its power is quite on-par. With the science and healing focus, it looks like a solid, more consistent pick next to Orders.

Yea the trickster god will only work if you can ensure you only get credit for each tile one time (or maybe each improvement?). Otherwise you can just build a fort, get the yields, then start a farm/village to remove the fort, then replace the fort.

The specific point was to make a pantheon that rewards lots of chops and feature clears, so we definitely want to ensure that the yields aren't restricted to 1 instance per tile.

I don't really see improving the same tile over and over as an exploit. That's just using your workers poorly no matter how many yields you get you're always better off moving your workers and actually improving terrain. The only time this could be a sensible choice is if your borders have totally run out of empty space.

If your average improvement takes 5 turns, you don't build roads, and you never lose turns walking, it would be 2 faith and 1 science per worker. In my current game I was pretty aggressive with workers (progress and I built a worker before settler), I have 5, so that's optimistically 10 faith and 5 science per turn, which is too low on faith to get a religion, and the side-benefits are low too.

I appreciate the breakdown. And thanks for the notes @hokath. How about this?:

Pantheon - Trickster God
20Faith and 8Science when a you complete a non-road Improvement or remove a feature. (does not scale with era)
Workers gain +25% improvement rate and ignore Terrain.

(Founder) - Divine Revelation
Unlocks Holy Archives wonder (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)

(Follower) - Reincarnation
When you expend a Great Person, gain 25GPPs of the same type in your Capital, scaling with era.

(Follower) - Communalism

25Food, Faith, and Production on completion of an internal trade routes to/from this City, scaling with Era.
+3 Production if City has a Specialist.​

(Follower) - Sweat Lodges

Allows you to purchase Sweat Lodges with Faith​

Spoiler Sweat Lodge :

Sweat Lodge
200 cost
2Faith, 3Science
+25% Religious pressure and -20% Religious Resistance in this City
+1 Great Work of Art slot
-1 Distress in this city
Units stationed in this city Heal 5 HP, regardless of what action they take
1Science to Camps and Plantations

(Follower) - Dar-e Mehr

Allows you to purchase Dar-e Mehr with Faith​

Spoiler Sweat Lodge :

Dar-e Mehr
200 cost
3Faith, 2Culture
+30% Religious pressure and -15% Religious Resistance in this City
+1 Great Work of Art slot
-1 Boredom in this city
10% Culture converted to Faith in this City

(Enhancer) - Liturgical Language
+1% Tourism modifier for each Follower and +5% Tourism modifier for each Great Work/Artifact in a target civilization's city (Max of +25% for each).

​

(Reformation) - Orthodoxy (current orthodoxy belief renamed to Ecumenism) -

Courthouses, Constabularies, and Police Stations gain +3Culture and +2Faith and can be purchased with Faith
Foreign Great Prophets suffer attrition damage in your territory and +50% Attrition rate​

 

[CrazyG]

I don't really see improving the same tile over and over as an exploit. That's just using your workers poorly no matter how many yields you get you're always better off moving your workers and actually improving terrain.

It is clearly an exploit. A fort takes 3 turns to complete with worker bonuses (maybe just 2 if you get pyramids and progress and this pantheon), then one turn to remove it via farm. Its 5 faith and 2 science per turn, at the price of a worker. So its basically a 5 faith 2 science building for 80 hammers and 1 gold maintenance, that you can build multiple times if you have tiles available.

At this point, I do think you are giving 5HP heal in city pretty short shrift. If we add a bonus to camps/plantations to the sweat lodge, I think its power is quite on-par. With the science and healing focus, it looks like a solid, more consistent pick next to Orders.

"In the city" means in the city tile itself, or in land/sea tiles owned by the city?

+1% Tourism modifier for each Follower

This needs a cap on it.

 

[pineappledan]

"In the city" means in the city tile itself, or in land/sea tiles owned by the city?

Same code as Hospital, so in the city proper

It is clearly an exploit. A fort takes 3 turns to complete with worker bonuses (maybe just 2 if you get pyramids and progress and this pantheon), then one turn to remove it via farm.

You only get points for completing a build action, so you don't get points for removing previous tile improvements, only completing their replacement. Forts are unlocked in late classical, so this won't help you found. At that point you've just got 2-3 workers in some corner of your empire removing/replacing the same tile over and over when they could be used to improve unimproved tiles? Like I said, maybe technically an exploit, but the yields wouldn't scale with era and you would have to get a lot more yields for it than just 208 to make it worth using a worker in medieval to improve the same tile over and over. If it's an exploit it hardly seems like one worth actually doing, especially for the micro involved.

This needs a cap on it.

You already get 25% modifier for shared religious majority, so maybe a cap of 25% for each?

 

[CrazyG]

Same code as Hospital, so in the city proper

Then no, I'm not underestimating it. I regularly go entire games without a hospital's extra healing activating at all, and even when it activates, it doesn't matter. I bet you could remove it from hospitals secretly and it would be like a month before anyone even noticed it was a gone.

You only get points for completing a build action, so you don't get points for removing previous tile improvements, only completing their replacement. Forts are unlocked in late classical, so this won't help you found. At that point you've just got 2-3 workers in some corner of your empire removing/replacing the same tile over and over when they could be used to improve unimproved tiles? Like I said, maybe technically an exploit, but the yields wouldn't scale with era and you would have to get a lot more yields for it than just 208 to make it worth using a worker in medieval to improve the same tile over and over. If it's an exploit it hardly seems like one worth actually doing, especially for the micro involved.

I can tell you really like the design here, but this is an exploit, it needs addressing.
80 hammers
1 gold maintenance (I think it scales to 2 eventually, but still)
5 faith
2 science

That's an amazing building, a higher priority than temples in many situations. The fact that its actually a worker is even better, because if you need to rush to improve another tile, you can, then you go back to the exploit. It requires two clicks every 4 turns, that level of micro isn't a problem. It is totally worth a worker's time in medieval era (because you just build extra workers).

 

[JamesNinelives]

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

Sorry, I'm a bit late to respond. I think Filial Piety and other Confucian concepts would be great!

I guess for me Co-operation isn't really a 'general' belief, it's one that specifically rewards growth. It fits well with Goddess of Love in that sense. It's about people having inherent value - i.e. humanism - which is something that I connect to a lot. I don't mind changes, but I would be sad to see that aspect go. ITRs seem an odd way to express co-operation as well, seems to be that diverse and tolerant cultures would want more ETRs.

I would love to have a Trickster God or a God of Change/Transformation btw. Even a God of Seasons would be great.

Edit: I'm with CrazyG on the improvements bonus though, it does feel like that specific bonus would be exploitable. I think there's a lot of other things that would fit the theme. My crazy idea would be getting a different yield each turn per follower . Maybe even a random yield per follower, if that is possible!

 

[pineappledan]

That's an amazing building

I imagine most pantheons would make amazing buildings. That's a complete red herring. By your own math it's barely enough faith to be competitive to found. Maybe someone has the tolerance for micro to have 20 workers cycling improvements on tiles instead of just using all their workers to improve unimproved terrain. This isn't a hole worth patching up.

You're obsessing over a stage of the game where you could potentially have multiple yields in the hundreds pouring in from GPs and TRs, this is such hilarious small potatoes. And no, there is no way to mark a tile so that you can't get a bonus off it again. Even if there were, we are talking about yields on par with god of the expanse, which gets the yields for just claiming tiles.

 

[hokath]

The code for the pantheon also doesn't exist atm. We should keep to existing tables, not just for efficiency but also for design.
pineappledan, you seem to really like this idea, but to challenge your earlier comment, "I think that fulfills an actual need in-game right now for a pantheon that you choose if you have a lot of forest/jungle plantations or marshes that you want to clear. This pantheon could make heavy chop starts feel like less of a handicap." I really don't think that the solution to this problem should be a pantheon, it will replace one thing that people don't like with another, namely that they lose their choice of pantheon (or worse, it has already been taken).

As a minor point, I do think Reincarnation yields should be in the holy city and not in the capital. E.g. Tibet (Lhasa) within China

On sweat lodge healing: I would stress my own experience, that the healing effect seems to be worth a lot more earlier in the game. When you have very few total units, getting them back into the fight is worth so much. Having said that +5 is probably too low. +10 is good I think.

In your new enhancer suggestion: a 25 or (is it a total of 50?!) percent tourism boost seems completely insane. What was the reasoning behind these numbers?
Also how does this suggestion address CrazyG's very good point about the lack of GP enhancers. I mentioned great works, but your suggestion uses other people's great works, which is no good.

 

[kenneth1221]

If Reincarnation yields points in the Holy City, then it's no use as a follower belief for non-founding civs. A Holy-City Reincarnation would be better off as an Enhancer.

 

[pineappledan]

In your new enhancer suggestion: a 25 or (is it a total of 50?!) percent tourism boost seems completely insane. What was the reasoning behind these numbers?

Perhaps you are thinking I was proposing a % tourism on empire modifier? I'm proposing a target tourism modifier specific to each foreign civ. In a standard 8 player game, you would need to convert 175 foreign citizens (25 in each empire), and trade away 35 of your own GW/Artifacts.

I suggested that amount because it's consistent with other modifiers that work the same:
Open Borders, a Trade Route, and Sharing a Religion all give 25%Tourism modifier

• Artistry increases Open Borders modifier to 40%
• Statecraft increases Trade Route modifier to 40%
• Fealty increases Shared Religion modifier to 50%

Passports resolution by itself gives +50%
Converting 25 citizens and giving away 5GWs to a single civ is a lot harder to accomplish than any of those other modifiers, and other civs can easilly counterplay it with inquisitors. Someone with >25citizens probably already has your religion as majority anyways, so they were in the bag to begin with.
I think the power level on 25/50%tourism modifier is a perfectly reasonable amount. I would go so far as to say it's a bit too modest, considering how much needs to be invested to get it going.

As a minor point, I do think Reincarnation yields should be in the holy city and not in the capital. E.g. Tibet (Lhasa) within China

As @kenneth said, this isn't becoming of a Follower belief, because not everyone has a Holy City. In fact, if the points could go back to the GP's origin city, that would be ideal, but I'm not sure if the game saves a city's origin in a way that we could extract. Otherwise it would be a cruel joke to get a bunch of GWAM points in your capital when you built your guilds elsewhere.

pineappledan, you seem to really like this idea, but to challenge your earlier comment, "I think that fulfills an actual need in-game right now for a pantheon that you choose if you have a lot of forest/jungle plantations or marshes that you want to clear. This pantheon could make heavy chop starts feel like less of a handicap." I really don't think that the solution to this problem should be a pantheon, it will replace one thing that people don't like with another, namely that they lose their choice of pantheon (or worse, it has already been taken).

Short of just some flat bonus to cities or some such, all current pantheons cover all the buildings, they cover all the improvement types except ones not built on resources. There's other actions and events in game, but almost none of them are present from the start of the game. Pillaging is too rare, there's no embassies or emissaries or diplomatic options. You could maybe make a faith from exploration pantheon, but it would be incredibly difficult to balance. For all this other stuff we are also talking about new code, and this is easier to code than some other ones. There's already listeners and lua hooks for improvement completions, and even a CultureBoost table column which does a similar thing

If you don't manage to snag it then you would be in the same situation as most any other civ in a similar situation, like a coastal civ who couldn't get god of the sea. This isn't meant to 'fix' chop-heavy starts, or band-aid a problem; it's meant be be a unique pantheon niche. If people are looking to 'fix' chop-heavy starts then they need to fix it; @black213 started another thread about that.

And yeah, it think it's a good idea and I think these criticisms of its exploit potential are comically overblown.

On sweat lodge healing: I would stress my own experience, that the healing effect seems to be worth a lot more earlier in the game. When you have very few total units, getting them back into the fight is worth so much. Having said that +5 is probably too low. +10 is good I think.

5 to 10 hp per turn is not too huge a deal. Sure. I agree that it really is a noticeable boost in earlier eras, but also having your planes in the city heal 20HP per turn is incredibly good.

Also how does this suggestion address CrazyG's very good point about the lack of GP enhancers. I mentioned great works, but your suggestion uses other people's great works, which is no good.

To that point,
a) CrazyG or you or anyone is free to submit an idea for an enhancer belief. There's no reason why I should have to do everything just to be poopoo'd repeatedly.
b) It's strange that you and CrazyG want 2 enhancers that do the same thing as a pre-existing belief when there is also only 1 militaristic enhancer, only 1 that boosts GProphets, etc, and no enhancers that do a ton of other possibly interesting things.
c) Lots of GP-related beliefs already exist, and I honestly can't imagine what else you would do that wouldn't be repetitive or boring.

• 1 founder and 2 reformation beliefs give yields on GP expend
• 1 enhancer already boosts GP rate
• 1 follower belief boosts GW yields
• 1 follower prevents GP assassination
• 1 proposed follower belief refunds GPs on expend

 

[BiteInTheMark]

I imagine most pantheons would make amazing buildings. That's a complete red herring. By your own math it's barely enough faith to be competitive to found. Maybe someone has the tolerance for micro to have 20 workers cycling improvements on tiles instead of just using all their workers to improve unimproved terrain. This isn't a hole worth patching up.

You're obsessing over a stage of the game where you could potentially have multiple yields in the hundreds pouring in from GPs and TRs, this is such hilarious small potatoes. And no, there is no way to mark a tile so that you can't get a bonus off it again. Even if there were, we are talking about yields on par with god of the expanse, which gets the yields for just claiming tiles.

Two points which simply speaks against this pantheon:
1. I think AI will never be able to really understand this pantheon and use it to its full extend. The AI will simply stop improving tiles and with it getting any yields, while the human will permanently use idle workers to gain the yields
2. If you didnt want to lose a part of your faith income, you permanently have to use your worker. I really really like to manually manage my workers, even in a big empire, but Iam also happy, that workers can stay later on more and more idle. More and more attention of me is drained to military units and warfare. I really dont want to give 40 workers every 3 turns a new command to get faith.....

 

[LifeOfBrian]

Maybe this pantheon could work if it only gave the yields the first time you remove a feature and the first time you complete an improvement on that individual tile? So that would help prevent exploits and help make it more AI friendly?

 

[pineappledan]

There's no way to mark tiles like that.

 

[BiteInTheMark]

@pineappledan
How do you think about a diplomatic victory oriented pantheon or one, which has a reversed yield direction (gain yields based on faith output)

Another pantheon which comes to my mind would be:
God of Laughing:
Gain +1 for each 2 non-puppet cities you control
Gain +1 for every 2 total you generate

God of Peace:
+1 for every 10 CS of a city and +1 for each city with a garrison
Generation increased by +1% for each 5% less war weariness than 75%

 

[hokath]

If Reincarnation yields points in the Holy City, then it's no use as a follower belief for non-founding civs.

You make an excellent point! woops.

rade away 35 of your own GW/Artifacts.

Ah, I had not understood your suggestion correctly. I thought you meant that the more GWs they had they more % tourism, but you meant specifically GWs from the religion founder.
So this actually ticks all the boxes, sorry I must have come across as rather hostile, that wasn't the intention I was just bemused.

The fix for the trickster pantheon is to only allow it to trigger on removing a feature, I suppose.

I also like BiteInTheMark's
Gain +2 and +1 for each CS you have met, doubled with friends and trippled with allied status

 

[pineappledan]

God of Friendship:
Gain +2 and +1 for each CS you have met, doubled with friends and trippled with allied status
Trade routes to CS decrease decay of by 25%

I think it actually is a pretty decent idea (but I still prefer Trickster God)
I would call it "God of all Nations" (a reference to Isaiah). Ideally I would then just call God of All Creation simply "God of Creation"
It looks too powerful to me right now. Someone like Siam could get to 42 very fast and extremely easily.

Here's how I would change it:
God of All Nations
1Gold and 1Faith for each CS you have met, up to 10, doubled/tripled for Friends/Allies.
Killing Barbarians and completing City-State Quests grants +10 Influence with all City-States.

So lower the reward overall. 1 lucky CS quest would mean 6 faith per turn for X turns, and feel even more random than religious CS already are. Make it really easy to get a bit of influence with everyone, but lots of decay.

 

[CrazyG]

a) CrazyG or you or anyone is free to submit an idea for an enhancer belief. There's no reason why I should have to do everything just to be poopoo'd repeatedly.
b) It's strange that you and CrazyG want 2 enhancers that do the same thing as a pre-existing belief when there is also only 1 militaristic enhancer, only 1 that boosts

I literally supported several of your ideas in this thread. Can you please learn to take criticism? Sorry dude but we would have the balance of like civ 5 on launch if we just added the first drafts of your ideas without these discussions.

a) Split iconography into 2 beliefs, one for the artists/musicians/writers, and another for the engineers/scientists/merchants.
b) There are pretty clear arguments for having some redundancy in religious beliefs. The enhancers used to be all about tiny buffs to religious spreading in some form and they got changed because no one cared what they choose. Things like weakening enemy great prophets are just extremely niche.
c) Yes but there is only once enhancer, and its clearly better than the other enhancers anytime you took tradition or artistry, so if you miss it its a big loss in power. Even zealotry isn't that essential to warmongers.

I also like BiteInTheMark's
Gain +2 and +1 for each CS you have met, doubled with friends and trippled with allied status

Let's put some numbers here. Last game , I had met 6 CS when I took my pantheon on turn 37. That's 12 faith instantly, by far the highest faith opening currently possible. If I was on a bigger continent, or I played on common scripts such as pangea or oval, those numbers get even higher.

 

[pineappledan]

Can you please learn to take criticism? Sorry dude but we would have the balance of like civ 5 on launch if we just added the first drafts of your ideas without these discussions.

Lead a horse to water, man. I don't know what you or Hokath want. If you want to propose something then propose it, but it feels like you're getting defensive because I'm not a mind-reader.

a) Split iconography into 2 beliefs, one for the artists/musicians/writers, and another for the engineers/scientists/merchants.

There. I've been told by enough other people in this thread that touching the current lineup of beliefs is off-limits. If you want to make an argument for splitting GWAM and GSEM then that sounds totally fair, but how was I to land on that on my own?

Yes but there is only once enhancer, and its clearly better than the other enhancers anytime you took tradition or artistry

If it is such a problem, sounds like more of an argument to rework Iconography away from being GP-related. If there's no GP-focused beliefs at that tier then there's nothing to fight about, and having clear best/2nd best options isn't good either.

If it's specifically Artistry and CVs that you're worried about then splitting them into GWAM/GSEM beliefs doesn't accomplish anything, because there would still only be 1 CV-related belief.


And yeah, I agree that the CS pantheon idea needs a cap. up to Maybe 10 CS met/friend/ally. With my proposal to cut it to just 1/ that's a max of 30

 

[BiteInTheMark]

God of All Nations
1Gold and 1Faith for each CS you have met, up to 10, doubled/tripled for Friends/Allies.
Killing Barbarians and completing City-State Quests grants +10 Influence with all City-States.

Let's put some numbers here. Last game , I had met 6 CS when I took my pantheon on turn 37. That's 12 faith instantly, by far the highest faith opening currently possible. If I was on a bigger continent, or I played on common scripts such as pangea or oval, those numbers get even higher.

Most people play on a standard map size with around 16 CS, so 16 faith would be the limit for the most games, which feels a bit low but I agree, this pantheon would be else too strong on a Pangae/Oval map.
How would be:
Gain +1 and +1 for each CS you have met, doubled/tripled for Friends/Allies
Completing a trade route to a CS or finishing a mission create 20, scaling with era and 10

a) Split iconography into 2 beliefs, one for the artists/musicians/writers, and another for the engineers/scientists/merchants.

I support that idea. Is a GPP discount technically possible? Would be better than adding the 5th or 6th GP birth rate modifier.
artists/musicians/writers could evolve around Culture/Tourism from GW and Wonders (Wonder GPP generation doubled?)
engineers/scientists/merchants could evolve around tile GPTI and science/production (for villages?)

 

[pineappledan]

Most people play on a standard map size with around 16 CS, so 16 faith would be the limit for the most games, which feels a bit low but I agree, this pantheon would be else too strong on a Pangae/Oval map.

That feels low? If you can get 12 faith per turn from your pantheon before founding I would say you're doing well. If you are on a pangea map that's guaranteed 10+ per turn, and with almost no setup.

 

[CrazyG]

Lead a horse to water, man. I don't know what you or Hokath want. If you want to propose something then propose it, but it feels like you're getting defensive because I'm not a mind-reader.

Its probably fair to assume most people on the forum want beliefs which are useful but not too strong or exploitable. I proposed number tweaks when number tweaks work, but sometimes they don't, sometimes an idea just needs to be dropped. Dan they are your ideas, and I don't really know what you want from them (from my point of view several of them would serve no purpose other than intentionally making the game harder). I explicitly said I don't really want another pantheon at all.

There. I've been told by enough other people in this thread that touching the current lineup of beliefs is off-limits. If you want to make an argument for splitting GWAM and GSEM then that sounds totally fair, but how was I to land on that on my own?

Honestly I think the current enhancers are iconography, zealotry, and fillers. I've suggested a nerf for iconography before, but was outvoted and when my ideas don't land I try not to respect that. Maybe if you agree with me (bite does too) we can push to change just that single existing belief.

Splitting it would address the issues. If means if you want a great person strategy you get two choices, so if you enhance second you always get one of them, and if you enhance later than that you still have a pretty good shot at one of them. Both would be useful for cultural victories (you need scientists and engineers to get wonders).

That feels low? If you can get 12 faith per turn from your pantheon before founding I would say you're doing fantastic. If you are on a pangea map that's guaranteed 10+ per turn, and with almost no setup.

The almost no set up is what concerns me.