Religious Bonuses Elimination Thread

[Soranya]

This game is built around warfare, a point trivially seen when evaluating which state forces the player to make meaningful decisions more often: war or peace.

Buddhism, by its nature, forces you to underexpand. The incentive to mix/balance up play isn't bad conceptually, but the current implementation in practice makes it hands down the least viable religion in the world, the kind of thing where you have to play poorly on purpose to avoid being harmed by your faith, or disable DLC to make it simply mediocre rather than actively harmful. No other faith shares that shackle.

It is but you dont have to play it that way - you very well can play a Trade nation with trade posts (as in only one or two provinces outside of your home trade node e.g.) aswell.
Or you try to expand only via diplomacy and never coring your self
and and and
this game maybe built around warfare, but it is a sandbox, therefor juding flexibility for different situations vs strong warfare bonus is not as clear as many make it seem.
(Competitive MP not counted, but as most people dont play MP it should not matter for them but only for those who play actuall MP)

TLDR:
Depending on your personal set goal and playstyle different bonuses are more or less appealing.

 

[Stolen Rutters]

I think the problem is that about a third of the people in this thread are rating on the actual viability of the religion in question in a competitive format, and about two thirds are rating on the basis of "it's different / funky / not common enough / Poland stronk / don't like the icon" etc.

Ok, so you are saying in a game with 25 players, Catholic is the first choice for them all once they get in position to choose.

p.s. I am not disagreeing, since I like playing Catholic whenever I'm not playing up north in Reformed-land. (Remember, reformed is fun. ) I have never played multiplayer so I would like to know why. I am guessing you mentioned it obliquely somewhere in the past 36 pages, but I can't find it just yet.

edit up to page 20... So far, colonization buffs, Treaty of Tordesillas, papal influence bonuses (you can increase this by making the Pope like you), and from being Christian... extra missionaries, personal unions, Defender of the Faith, and royal marriages...

 

[Phibs]

Wow, all this papist salt.

 

[quicksabre]

Depending on your personal set goal and playstyle different bonuses are more or less appealing.

Which is why this is a 'showdown' and not peer-reviewed papers. It's meant to be fun. If we wanted to figure out which in-game religions are really strongest, we should set up a formal debate and a panel of 'experts' representing a variety of different play styles (competitive multiplayer, achievement hunters, role players, and perhaps newbies.). People can argue, that's part of the fun, but ultimately it's a game, not a definitive power ranking.

So on that note, I'll vote up Hindu and down Shia because I love role playing in sandboxes, and Hindu's flexible bonuses are stronger for my playstyle than Shia. I still don't have Common Sense so no comment on Protestant.

Protestant: 16
Shia: 5 (-2)
Hindu: 12 (+1)

ELIMINATED
4. Catholic
5. Reformed
6. Sunni
7. Orthodox
8. Nahuatl
9. Inti
10. Norse
11. Tengri
12. Mayan
13. Ibadi
14. Sikh
15. Coptic
16. Zoroastrian
17. Shinto
18. Jewish
19. Vajrayana
20. Theravada
21. Confucian
22. Mahayana
23. Pagan

 

[yerm]

There were a number of criteria given. I followed them exactly, voted my easily most-played religion (currently protestant) down EVERY vote because of its glaring issues, and was called out for it by name. Meanwhile, people are up and down voting based on arguments of not playing optimally, pure ease of use, availability and/or the nations associated with them, etc.

In a complete vacuum, the potentially best religion (curia controller OR emperor of HRE is alone enough to cement this position) will not finish first, and the religion currently in last is unquestionably superior to ones above it. I'm MUCH happier with the outcome here than the government thread, which was a shitshow, but let's not pretend this isn't still a bit of a weighted popularity contest after all. If nothing else, hopefully people can leave this thread more educated on how much better Pagan is than they thought, why Buddhism sucks, etc.

 

[wingzero890]

Ok, so you are saying in a game with 25 players, Catholic is the first choice for them all once they get in position to choose.

p.s. I am not disagreeing, since I like playing Catholic whenever I'm not playing up north in Reformed-land. (Remember, reformed is fun. ) I have never played multiplayer so I would like to know why. I am guessing you mentioned it obliquely somewhere in the past 36 pages, but I can't find it just yet.

edit up to page 6... So far, colonization buffs (ToT, I guess) bonuses from the Pope liking you, extra missionaries (actually pages 34 and 35), personal unions, and royal marriages...

Most people immediately switch from Catholic to Protestant and Reformed in the games I play in.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

It is but you dont have to play it that way - you very well can play a Trade nation with trade posts (as in only one or two provinces outside of your home trade node e.g.) aswell.
Or you try to expand only via diplomacy and never coring your self
and and and
this game maybe built around warfare, but it is a sandbox, therefor juding flexibility for different situations vs strong warfare bonus is not as clear as many make it seem.
(Competitive MP not counted, but as most people dont play MP it should not matter for them but only for those who play actuall MP)

TLDR:
Depending on your personal set goal and playstyle different bonuses are more or less appealing.

You CAN do all kinds of things, including nothing, just speed 5 until you lose. That can be defined as a "playstyle" just like any other. If you find yourself thinking that sitting on speed 5 until you lose sounds ridiculous, try to catch yourself in realizing that you told me something similar a moment ago; that making obviously weaker choices is about "playstyle" as a justification for a borked religion mechanic.

What we're interested in is the mechanic/choice/interaction/tradeoff. Being shoehorned into taking a heavy penalty for what is (regardless of that penalty) still putting you in a much stronger position is vexing. I am occasionally asked by friends why I don't play "a trade nation".

The answer is that to play a "trade nation", all I'd have to do is pick idea groups more centered on money, and then arbitrarily cut off my expansion. What gameplay does the player get in turn for making this choice, to arbitrarily cut off expansion?

Yeah. Nothing. And that's what Buddhism encourages, extra nothing. You can ignore that encouragement and eat your penalty, but that doesn't mean it's a good or even mediocre religion. The fact that the religion is actively harmful to the player nation, and that its benefit is nowhere near the opportunity cost needed to attain it (in fact it's not even particularly strong at perfect Karma, compared to better faiths), leaves Buddhism as the abject cellar dweller, easily the worst faith in the game.

As a "trade nation" you can make a case for raking in gobs of cash, fronting a few subsidized vassals/marches for inflated troop numbers (I've had a march at #5 in the world in FL), and storing monarch points until you have administrative efficiency. That's the kind of approach that can give you 3/3/3 advisors, the most/largest CNs and full FL before 1600 with Mutapa...and you're still not actively penalized by your religion, even if that religion is animist. But you still keep expanding then, or else you do nothing/make 1-2 decisions per year then nothing.

Ok, so you are saying in a game with 25 players, Catholic is the first choice for them all once they get in position to choose.

It depends where you put them.

 

[solidprice]

Protestant: 16
Shia: 6
Hindu: 12


ELIMINATED
4. Catholic
5. Reformed
6. Sunni
7. Orthodox
8. Nahuatl
9. Inti
10. Norse
11. Tengri
12. Mayan
13. Ibadi
14. Sikh
15. Coptic
16. Zoroastrian
17. Shinto
18. Jewish
19. Vajrayana
20. Theravada
21. Confucian
22. Mahayana
23. Pagan

 

[Soranya]

You CAN do all kinds of things, including nothing, just speed 5 until you lose. That can be defined as a "playstyle" just like any other. If you find yourself thinking that sitting on speed 5 until you lose sounds ridiculous, try to catch yourself in realizing that you told me something similar a moment ago; that making obviously weaker choices is about "playstyle" as a justification for a borked religion mechanic.

All i am saying is that what obvious for you isnot necesaary objectively obvious.

What we're interested in is the mechanic/choice/interaction/tradeoff. Being shoehorned into taking a heavy penalty for what is (regardless of that penalty) still putting you in a much stronger position is vexing.

I am occasionally asked by friends why I don't play "a trade nation".
The answer is that to play a "trade nation", all I'd have to do is pick idea groups more centered on money, and then arbitrarily cut off my expansion. What gameplay does the player get in turn for making this choice, to arbitrarily cut off expansion?

Again, you gain nothing out of it, spontanously the following scenarios would be interesting to me:
Play a ROTW trade nation and try to compete with the europeans for the trade ports and trade revenue without blobbing and therefor beeing unbeatable for the ai.
Play as Genoa and after solidating your trade empire dont use any regular armies but Mercenaries only to fight off your ever growing (AI) neigbours:
Fun with that:
You create a challenging situation that needs a different approach then the most common gameplay.
The challenge is:
When to stop "expanding" how to set up your trade empire with as view provinces as possible and still be strong enough to defend it.

This list could probably grow endlessly from here, but simply said, i wished you and some other people would accept that their play style and their perception of "good" or "most powerfull" or "ultimate game goal" is not necessarily the only one. When accepting that the consequence is that "the best" religion as many other things in the game lie in the eye of the beholder.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

So far, "trade empire" = "deliberate or non-deliberate underexpansion", with some house rules put in place to constrain choices.

But what do you *do* in the interim time, when not expanding? What choices are you making, and how often on a per-year basis are you making those choices? You can get to #1 in score with 50 provinces or 500, but once you're at 50, if you stop you're largely doing little other than pressing a button as monarch points become available. The planning is done, the choices pre-made at that stage.

What you're arguing is a red herring anyway. Is the best argument in favor of a religion really "if you play poorly on purpose as part of variant/challenge play then it's not as bad as before"? Really? That's what we're resorting to in "favor" of Buddhism?

 

[Stolen Rutters]

It depends where you put them.

Thanks, I see getting many of these Catholic benefits require you to play in Europe. I got tired going through pages and stopped at page 20, but it seems like the papal influence is the biggest thing.

In a competitive game, Defender of the Faith can NOT be counted on unless all the other players jump religions in the Reformation. Only one state can be Curia controller at a time.

So you are counting on most players moving to other religions? And being nice to the pope.

edit - and people coming in late to the party, though it looks like Protestant or Hindu will take this elimination thread at the end, a few players have stated Catholic is unequivocally better if playing min-maxed, expanding as fast as the game will allow, in a competitive game. I suspect this is true, and I am trying to get a detailed picture why, but nobody has laid it out in one place, just scattered bonuses mentioned over multiple pages...

edit2 - and it looks like the best bonuses are restricted to Europe. and if you want the Curia you will be competing with other Catholics over it, so your optimal path depends on most other human players leaving for Protestant and Reformed.

and final edit - I played this game since release, always in single player, but the rules change so often I can't keep track of what is the "best" game play. (Like how many royal marriages are worth going over diplo limit now that a diplo limit exists, how many points of aggressive expansion is too much, and from this thread, when would it be worth it to always stay Catholic...)

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Thanks, I see getting many of these Catholic benefits require you to play in Europe. I got tired going through pages and stopped at page 20, but it seems like the papal influence is the biggest thing.

In a competitive game, Defender of the Faith can NOT be counted on unless all the other players jump religions in the Reformation. Only one state can be Curia controller at a time.

So you are counting on most players moving to other religions? And being nice to the pope.

Catholic is quite strong even if you are *never* curia controller, and DotF takes a dive in MP for most faiths (other than maybe Shia, Coptic if allowed, Orthodox and Ibadi, which are sufficiently rare/off region). To get Catholic benefits of +3 stab, +1 diprep, and mercantilism means you need enough territory in Europe for 7 cardinals, religious ideas (not a bad pick in MP, due to its policies), and not to be in a reformation tornado center region. This means I'd probably stay Catholic as Spain, Portugal, France, maybe England (depends who switches), and Italian nations, and situationally as others if the reformation doesn't hit me too much.

The only ROTW nation that is both 1) viable and 2) can go Catholic is Japan, but unlike SP Japan can't easily get European holdings in MP in most cases so it's not great there. A lot of MP games don't allow for nations like Mutapa, but since their buff maybe you could make a case for them, though they're generally best off going Sunni.

 

[Path]

From a straight power playing PoW, if you're picking a European tag that is capable of becoming HRE Catholicism is probably the strongest. Short of picking the Ottomans it's hard to see a credible alternative to quick WCs by revoking ASAP, and that's a lot easier if you gun for the imperial seat right off the bat (and then you need to be Catholic). Republics (other than Dutch Republic) benefit from the easy stability, so Catholicism is also good for those.

If you can't go down the HRE route Catholicism loses a lot of its lustre, since expansion in Europe is arguably easier if you can employ Deus Vult to good effect (this is also true if, like me, you prefer to play European tags w/o relying on the empire, since that makes an already easy game even easier), making the heresies more appealing, even if Catholicism is never actually bad. Even RotW can get a lot of mileage out of it by farming points through conversions, although there are few ones where the opportunity cost for switching can really be justified (and taking "European" land in Anatolia or eastern Europe). I'd still take Protestantism over Catholicism if I'm not going for the empire or playing a republic (and even then I'd at least consider it).

Any kind of decent expansion will require you to do a lot of converting (or wasting an admin slot on humanism for convenience, which'll also end up costing you a lot of bird mana), and that means the Abrahamic religions beat everything else simply by having access to strategic modifiers the others don't get. Grossly unfair, but that's how it is--3 missionaries, with Rome, is just not good enough. This is why Coptic and Ibadi are better than Hinduism (although non-roleplayers'd likely switch out of Ibadi to another islamic faith--Coptic's potentially worth it for Deus Vult, though), despite having poor bonuses and no flavour worth mentioning. As for Buddhism, my experience with Ceylon has put me firmly in the ABB camp--Anything But Buddhist. Being penalized by your religion for playing the game takes the cake. They could at least reduce the negative karma you get for declaring "justifiable" wars (especially religious ones) to give you a chance to avoid the near-permanent -10% discipline hit.

MP is a different story entirely, obviously. Catholicism there can be problematic to stick with if you're likely to get hit hard by the reformation, and conversion strength/numbers aren't nearly as important there. The Islamic faiths become a lot more attrative, too.

OT: What's with the fascination with mercantilism from some pro-Catholicism posters? It's ultimately a trade bonus, and money isn't exactly a limiting factor--ironically, the tags best suited to stack mercantilism (Catholic Merchant Republics) are among the ones that need it the least.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Mercantilism is the dump stat for 200 PI, which is why I mention it. I consider it a credible counter-weight comment against the supposed great trade benefits of reformed etc, but it's the thing I use Catholic for last out of the typical options. Money IS an object, at the start of the game.

 

[Path]

Mercantilism is the dump stat for 200 PI, which is why I mention it. I consider it a credible counter-weight comment against the supposed great trade benefits of reformed etc, but it's the thing I use Catholic for last out of the typical options. Money IS an object, at the start of the game.

Yes, but by the time you can afford to throw away 100 points on mercantilism, it's questionable if you really need it. Better than letting the points go to waste, though. The trade bonus is one reason I don't rate Reformed the way I do Protestantism and Catholicism, because the only truly great bonus is the stability one.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Yeah stability is nice to run, the -unrest is nice but the extra diprep is delicious, similar to how you just buy that when it runs out using PI .

 

[Fluffy_Fishy]

I'm surprised this is still going, the others finished the final few really quickly.

 

[net.split]

The answer is that to play a "trade nation", all I'd have to do is pick idea groups more centered on money, and then arbitrarily cut off my expansion. What gameplay does the player get in turn for making this choice, to arbitrarily cut off expansion?

Yeah. Nothing. And that's what Buddhism encourages, extra nothing. You can ignore that encouragement and eat your penalty, but that doesn't mean it's a good or even mediocre religion. The fact that the religion is actively harmful to the player nation, and that its benefit is nowhere near the opportunity cost needed to attain it (in fact it's not even particularly strong at perfect Karma, compared to better faiths), leaves Buddhism as the abject cellar dweller, easily the worst faith in the game.

As a "trade nation" you can make a case for raking in gobs of cash, fronting a few subsidized vassals/marches for inflated troop numbers (I've had a march at #5 in the world in FL), and storing monarch points until you have administrative efficiency. That's the kind of approach that can give you 3/3/3 advisors, the most/largest CNs and full FL before 1600 with Mutapa...and you're still not actively penalized by your religion, even if that religion is animist. But you still keep expanding then, or else you do nothing/make 1-2 decisions per year then nothing.

It's worth noting that Buddhism's Karma feature comes packaged with Development, with which it's actually fairly synergistic. Spend your MPs on developing more than conquering (you can conquer some, just don't throw all your MPs at it). As a reward you get better diplomacy and better troops for when you are fighting.

The main issue with this (disregarding particular issues with the development system itself, mostly just to keep the conversation more focused on the religion) is that the typical Buddhist nation is not well-positioned to be a development powerhouse. All of them have to deal with poor tech groups, robbing crucial MPs until it's way too late in the game to matter, and most of them have unfavorable terrain on top of this. Development is only close to cost-effective in perfect terrain with bonuses rather than penalties. Buddhism doesn't have a packaged development cost bonus either, though there's a common event that both gives Karma and grants a localized, temporary 5% dev cost bonus.

 

[quicksabre]

So far, "trade empire" = "deliberate or non-deliberate underexpansion", with some house rules put in place to constrain choices.

But what do you *do* in the interim time, when not expanding? What choices are you making, and how often on a per-year basis are you making those choices? You can get to #1 in score with 50 provinces or 500, but once you're at 50, if you stop you're largely doing little other than pressing a button as monarch points become available. The planning is done, the choices pre-made at that stage.

What you're arguing is a red herring anyway. Is the best argument in favor of a religion really "if you play poorly on purpose as part of variant/challenge play then it's not as bad as before"? Really? That's what we're resorting to in "favor" of Buddhism?

If you were playing this game with a child, you wouldn't have to crush them every time. That would be boring for both parties. You can, however, arbitrarily limit yourself and try to play optimally within those constraints. You could take a much weaker nation, but if you didn't want to do that you could apply certain limits. That is what the above poster meant by playstyle. There is nothing inherently wrong with this, especially since this game is already deliberately asymmetrical. Why can't you deliberately limit yourself against the AI and have fun playing optimally within those constraints?

As for what to do when you're done expanding, your argument above is silly. There is little to do in this game between wars, but wars don't have to be about expanding (even if that would be 'optimal' in an objective sense). You can try to release nations, fix borders, win trade disputes, sink enemy trade fleets, etc. And as an added bonus, every war isn't a cakewalk.

And finally, you don't have to attack me for playing suboptimally. I find ridiculous expansion boring and tedious and I don't like to play that way (I did one WC as an Indian minor in EU3 and I never care to do another).

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Why can't you deliberately limit yourself against the AI and have fun playing optimally within those constraints?

You can, but it doesn't hold up as an argument in favor of a trash tier religion, unless you're saying that the game needs a cherry tapping option to accomplish that.

As war type, any war you declare adds negative karma, and to get it back you have to spend points.