Patriarch Authority events (and I think pious evnets) rarely happen now?

[nicechinos]

Yeah that too, culture conversion is vital to Russia, 25% cheaper culture conversion synergies perfectly with Russia's 3rd NI.

I don't think I could agree that spending precious diplo on culture conversion is vital. It's better for me to lose some tax and manpower than to be behind in diplo tech (ships, settler increases, trade efficiency). Russia has tremendous bonuses to manpower while AOW strongly favors trade over other sources of income which in turn makes maxing out production much more desirable (i.e. building constables instead of temples is beneficial; this Siberia-Kazan-Novgorod is not bad as well). Higher unrest from non-accepted culture is offset by high tolerance of true faith and PA.

 

[ChildeR]

I think they have an OK pace. I got 70% PA after two centuries of play, even picking the -5 option a couple of times.

If you could get to 100% early, most of the game would be spent just alternating between the +5 and -5 options. Since there is no downticking (like prestige) or regular enforced -events (like stability), they need to be rare.

 

[nicechinos]

I think they have an OK pace. I got 70% PA after two centuries of play, even picking the -5 option a couple of times.

If you could get to 100% early, most of the game would be spent just alternating between the +5 and -5 options. Since there is no downticking (like prestige) or regular enforced -events (like stability), they need to be rare.

" they need to be rare." I'd be ok with that, if zero PA had any bonuses as low piety has. For example + 2 heathen/ heretic tolerance at 0 PA scaling down all the way to 100. Couple of centuries is half of the game's timeline. That's not balanced compared with piety at all.

 

[Hamor]

" they need to be rare." I'd be ok with that, if zero PA had any bonuses as low piety has. For example + 2 heathen/ heretic tolerance at 0 PA scaling down all the way to 100. Couple of centuries is half of the game's timeline. That's not balanced compared with piety at all.

exactly what you said.

@ Childer you think its completely fair to get only 70% after 2 centuries of play when you can get 100% piety within 10 years of game start? lol?

 

[ChildeR]

exactly what you said.

@ Childer you think its completely fair to get only 70% after 2 centuries of play when you can get 100% piety within 10 years of game start? lol?

First, I don't think it *needs* to be fair. Different religions should work differently, and even one being weaker would not IMO be a problem. However, here the mechanics are different and neither is clearly better. With low piety you get bonuses – which direction you want to go depends and may vary during the game – whereas with high PA you only lose tax so that's almost always where you want it. The events are also completely different: which option in a piety event is otherwise better/worse varies and often you lose something if you want to move piety the way you want. In comparison, the PA events have much better bonuses (legitimacy, stability, monarch points vs. rarely some money or prestige).

The current situation is much better than piety and PA working similarly, since that would just be bland.

 

[G_Morgan]

Islam "nerf" makes sense to me. You could sit at 100 piety while keep DOWing Muslims all the time because there were so many events to freely decrease or increase it that the concept of "piety" in itself made no sense while there is an interesting dicotomy offered by the game mechanics. Orthodox, not so much as it's only driven by (annoying) events. As I read, it's good they added more modifiers than just +/-authority to make choices more significant. To br fair though, I simply used to stick at 0 authority all along because the bonuses aren't really good while -33% tax isn't appealing at all.

Money is just a number. -33% tax for +33% manpower? Where do I sign up?

 

[G_Morgan]

The logic is that they wanted to remove cheesy strategy of player staying at zero PA and receiving all these free bonuses every year.

They should remove the free bonuses then. What a daft reason to gimp the entire religion.

 

[nicechinos]

They should remove the free bonuses then. What a daft reason to gimp the entire religion.

I certainly agree with that. These bonuses seem very generic way to introduce "variety" into Orthodox mechanics. It heavily incentivises to take these bonuses every time because maxing PA takes centuries anyway. I'm somewhat surprised that people are gunning for these bonuses but to each his own.
For me it's a no brainer, I do not want any free stuff I want Orthodox bonuses as soon as possible. There are plenty of other way to increase stability (level 3 advisors), make money or increase legitimacy. But you have to invest tons of MPs to get the same benefits as manpower, missionary strength or unrest reduction.

 

[oblio-]

I haven't played an Orthodox country in 1.8, but if it takes 2 centuries to get high Patriarch Authority, something is broken IMO. No matter how great the events are.
I actually think that doing almost anything not-major in this game (think forming the HRE, conquering an entire continent, etc.) and waiting 2 centuries for it is unreasonable.
Even 1 century seems a bit long, 50 years should be more than enough.

After all, even National Focus has a 25 year cooldown. Not a 50 year or 100 year one.

 

[ChildeR]

It heavily incentivises to take these bonuses every time because maxing PA takes centuries anyway. I'm somewhat surprised that people are gunning for these bonuses but to each his own.
For me it's a no brainer, I do not want any free stuff I want Orthodox bonuses as soon as possible.

How is this a *bad* thing? There is an actual choice of what to do, as too few events have. You apparently always take the +5 PA, some people seem to stay at 0% and just pick the other goodies, I try to get to 100% but still take the stability when I need it.

 

[nicechinos]

How is this a *bad* thing? There is an actual choice of what to do, as too few events have. You apparently always take the +5 PA, some people seem to stay at 0% and just pick the other goodies, I try to get to 100% but still take the stability when I need it.

It's not a bad thing thing per se. The bad thing is how rare these events are. Oblio is very reasonable in his suggestion that if it takes more than 50 years to achieve max PA it may be broken.

 

[ChildeR]

I haven't played an Orthodox country in 1.8, but if it takes 2 centuries to get high Patriarch Authority, something is broken IMO. No matter how great the events are.
I actually think that doing almost anything not-major in this game (think forming the HRE, conquering an entire continent, etc.) and waiting 2 centuries for it is unreasonable.
Even 1 century seems a bit long, 50 years should be more than enough.

After all, even National Focus has a 25 year cooldown. Not a 50 year or 100 year one.

You can't compare 100% PA with National Focus. When you are halfway at 50% you already get half the benefits, while without a focus you have nothing. You can get a third of the benefits in less than a century and that's already -1 unrest, over 10% manpower bonus and more than a stability point's worth of conversion strength.

 

[panionios]

I can't fathom why anyone would want to stay at zero. 100 or nothing.

I can't fathom why anyone would want to go all the way to 100! Given that most (if not indeed all) go for the Religion Idea, and the manpower and unrest are just not enough to compensate for that huge income loss (though since 1.8 everyone seems to be making ridiculous amounts of money - hope they'll fix this).

 

[Schmoekoeksklok]

It's not a bad thing thing per se. The bad thing is how rare these events are. Oblio is very reasonable in his suggestion that if it takes more than 50 years to achieve max PA it may be broken.

You'd need 60 years if an event fired every pulse (and that is never going to happen). After those 60 years you'd then be able to get free stuff on half the events, and go back up to 100 with the other half of the events, giving you ~53 opportunities to get free stuff over the course of the game. I think that would be way too much. I guess you could scale back the free stuff to make that fair, but I quite like that it takes a long time to build up. You should be able to build it up if you focus on it though, and if that takes 420 years on average, that is definitely too much. 100 or even 200 would be fine by me though.

 

[ChildeR]

I can't fathom why anyone would want to go all the way to 100! Given that most (if not indeed all) go for the Religion Idea, and the manpower and unrest are just not enough to compensate for that huge income loss (though since 1.8 everyone seems to be making ridiculous amounts of money - hope they'll fix this).

I don't really see a point in 100% either, since it has diminishing returns, but the income loss is tiny. Taxes are often the smallest of your three main income sources and as a local modifier the additive stacking means that you usually lose around 20% of actual income even with the -33% modifier.

 

[oblio-]

You can't compare 100% PA with National Focus. When you are halfway at 50% you already get half the benefits, while without a focus you have nothing. You can get a third of the benefits in less than a century and that's already -1 unrest, over 10% manpower bonus and more than a stability point's worth of conversion strength.

True, but you also get half of the downsides, which include the reduced tax income as well as the good bonuses you'd get if you'd choose the other option while increasing PA.
Compared to other religions I think that Orthodox is still good - let's not forget Coptic, Buddhist, Confucian, Shinto, Animist, Totemist, Shamanist.
I will probably need to check in-game how conversions go with lower PA. The main thing is that Religious is still a good idea group anyway, so the change might not have a major impact except for the first century, anyway.

 

[nicechinos]

I can't fathom why anyone would want to go all the way to 100! Given that most (if not indeed all) go for the Religion Idea, and the manpower and unrest are just not enough to compensate for that huge income loss (though since 1.8 everyone seems to be making ridiculous amounts of money - hope they'll fix this).

Not all indeed. I do my conversions without religious.
Manpower alone is good enough to write-off taxes for me. Why would you want taxes with production? Build constables instead of temples and you will be golden.

 

[nicechinos]

You'd need 60 years if an event fired every pulse (and that is never going to happen). After those 60 years you'd then be able to get free stuff on half the events, and go back up to 100 with the other half of the events, giving you ~53 opportunities to get free stuff over the course of the game. I think that would be way too much. I guess you could scale back the free stuff to make that fair, but I quite like that it takes a long time to build up. You should be able to build it up if you focus on it though, and if that takes 420 years on average, that is definitely too much. 100 or even 200 would be fine by me though.

I don't like that free stuff anyway. It lacks the flavor (which piety has) and seemes very generic.

 

[nicechinos]

True, but you also get half of the downsides, which include the reduced tax income as well as the good bonuses you'd get if you'd choose the other option while increasing PA.
Compared to other religions I think that Orthodox is still good - let's not forget Coptic, Buddhist, Confucian, Shinto, Animist, Totemist, Shamanist.
I will probably need to check in-game how conversions go with lower PA. The main thing is that Religious is still a good idea group anyway, so the change might not have a major impact except for the first century, anyway.

Indeed so. Protestants have no flavor as well. Muslims are very OP. Those flexibility and bonuses at high/low end.

 

[panionios]

Not all indeed. I do my conversions without religious.
Manpower alone is good enough to write-off taxes for me. Why would you want taxes with production? Build constables instead of temples and you will be golden.

Well, yes, but then again, you forget to add up all the positive events you get by selecting to lower PA: Prestige, money, stability. But that's me. I always go for Religion and as for manpower I usually play Russia, so manpower is not an issue.