Right now: Restrict mortal initiates to just one job and switch to regular priests on worlds with high populations and the planetary administrator bonus building
For the future: Agree that the devs (custodian team?) ought to give this another look at them, in particular:
- The +1 from exalted priesthood doesn't stack well with death priests only getting 1 priest per temple per level (but if they had a high death priest equivalent, the bonus high death priests would more than make up for it, and would be cool anyway).
Regular Priests have 2 jobs per temple level, and provide base 4 unity. +1 exalted priesthood is 5.
Death Priests have 1 job per temple, and provide a base 3 unity,
and +3 unity when a sacrifice edict is active, even if it was just 1 pop sacrificed. +1 exalted priesthood is 7. (not counting edict effects).
Exalted Priest hood makes is a 1.4 pop efficiency advantage compared to a 1.5, but even with no exalted priesthood Death Priests have a 1.2 efficiency over Exalted Priesthood priests.
Given that the main reason to build temples empire-wide is for the building effect (planet-wide spiritualist attraction), not the job itself, this is honestly a better deal.
- The +1 from Ring buildings again benefits regular priests more. Might be nice if this gave something extra to death priests during a sacrifice or to mortal initiates?
Exalted Priesthood Rings is still a 1.33 efficiency advantage to the Death Priests, and by this point in the mid/late game sacrifice edicts have to be considered for any meaningful comparison. Even a non-exalted death priest 6, which is nominally on par with the double-boosted Exalted Planetary ring, is realistically well ahead if it's using anything but the Bounty edict. Either a 10%+ from the unity edict, or a roughly 3.6% buff from +10 happiness empire wide to all jobs, including but not limited to unity.
- The growth bonus from mortal initiates needs to scale as well as the other bonus. There needs to be more incentive to sacrifice more initiates, especially in terms of getting those pops back.
By the mid-game when the above matters, pop growth stops being the majority of your natural growth anyway. Sacrificies should come from the same sources as most mid/late game growth: conquest, abduction, or the market.
While you can always buff Harmony more, happiness buffing is already pretty good. It's a direct buff to stability through planetary approval, where every 1 happiness increase on average is .6 stability, with every .6 stability over 50 being .6 boost to all econ, so even the minimum 10 happiness is vaguely 6 stability/3.6 econ buff. The fact that happiness is also a ethic-cohesion mechanic that will help pops get out of the truly massive unhappy-non-state-faction modifiers is a separate stability/unity buff.
- Potentially the sacrifice options want to be looked at again too? I find I rarely use the happiness one and basically never use the mineral one. Maybe if it were 10% worker output (so it would also boost the output of mortal initiates).
The energy/mineral Bounty is especially for MegaCorps, who want to be using branch offices for mining consortiums to improve their empire pop efficiency. This one also gives +1 to the zombie assembly empire wide, meaning on a modest 10 planet empire you're getting +10 pop assembly a month for 5 years for a single pop.
The Harmony edict is by far the best mid/late game sacrifice, as it's a minimum 3.6% buff to all your jobs, of all types. 10% unity vs 3.6% science/alloys/unity/worker jobs is no joke.
- There needs to be a pop up when you don't have a sacrifice edict running
Now that one I can agree with.