I'd originally reported this as a bug, but it might be intentional design with unintentional consequences (and still some bugs, see second post), so I've moved it to the General forum, and I'm sharing my experience with being snowballed in Faith.
In this first post, I look at why it happens (worded as a bug report)
In my second post, I try to stop it using every trick available to us, including picking every religious faction I can, building every religious building I can, cutting trade, invading neighbours, and building Faith protecting wonders. It didn't work.
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Problem: When an empire's territory is converted to the religion of another empire, it stops producing all Faith for the owning empire's state religion. Its base Faith value, holy sites, faith-generating districts, tenets, and everything else cease to work.
Expected Behaviour: Faith generating districts and tenets should still function in territories that have been converted to another empire's religion. They should strengthen your faith's defenses against encroachment, but also serve to bring "domestic heathens" back to the faith. ?
Why this is bad: This leads to an unstoppable snowballing of religion through luck and a little bit of an early lead. The system begins to run out of control without any player input, and leads a lack of control over a major part of the game.
In most games I've played so far, my religion has dominated all nearby empires without me trying anything. In the latest game, a foreign religion has come to dominate my territories despite everything I've invested in stopping it. I chose the Teutons in the medieval era, hoping that their Kaiserdom Emblematic Quarter, with its unparalleled Faith-generating powers, would slow the growth of the invading religion and bring my own people back to the faith, but they didn't seem to be working. Once I looked closer at the numbers to learn the details of how Faith worked did I realise why: Most of my religious districts were actually not working because I was putting them in territories that had already been converted; those that were generating faith were left with just not enough. All of the Kaiserdoms, all of the Holy Sites — everything that I put into my empire to slow the spread of my neighbours — were disabled!
Below are images taken of one of my last religious holdouts (my Islam vs. their Nubian Polytheism).
1. In the first image, we can see 1130 of 3204 Faith Impact on the highlighted territory is coming from Islam, with 152 coming from a territory that's going to convert in the next turn. (The territory that's about to convert is my capital, so I know it's going to hurt). We can also see, in the oval on the left, four holy sites that I'd created, doing nothing because their territories have converted.
2. In the second image, after my capital converts, we can see that now only 978 of the only 3052 Faith Impact on the highlighted territory is coming from Islam. The 152 Faith Impact from my capital has vanished entirely, its Kaiserdoms fallen silent like so many other holy sites and religious districts elsewhere in my empire, no longer contributing in any way to keeping my empire's faith alive.
I've filed this as a bug because I expect this is undesired behaviour. If this is desired, can it be rethought? It always leading to runaway growth of one religion at the expense of others, and it takes what could be interesting and compelling choices out of the players' and AIs' hands.
Update: A day after my first post, above, I've done the following to attempt to slow the spread of Nubian Polytheism (NP) in my territory:
As the Teutons, I built Kaiserdoms in every territory for ~30 Faith per territory.
I advanced to the Ottomans and built Sultan Camii in every territory for another ~30 faith per territory.
I built Saint Basil's Cathedral nearest to the "religious front" for an additional 170+ faith in the territory where it could do the most use.
I built the Tōdai-Ji to slow the spread of foreign religion in my territoties. 20% does not feel like enough.
I cut all trade with all empires practicing NP.
I declared war on my neighbouring NP-following empire (formerly a vassal of the Nubians themselves) hoping to seize their vassalage to prevent their territories from spreading NP (and maybe eventually spread my own).
The war went well; I took three cities and five territories from them in war concessions, though didn't have the war support to vassalize them. I then built Sultan Camii in all of their territories. Again, these don't spread my faith at all because each of these territories practice NP, but I'm hopeful they'll help me push back and start my own snowball, if it can be done.
All of this resulted in me barely getting my religion practiced in half of my capital city again (the city that converted to NP in my first post), and slowing, slightly, the takeover of NP into my territory. I believe I've done almost everything that anyone could possibly do to increase my faith and deny NP into my borders, and have no control over the snowballing of faith.
Potential Bug: Capturing nearby hostile territories to prevent them from influencing my territories seems to allow new territories even further away to influence mine, allowing territories even deeper in the Nubians' empire to become treated as "closer" to influence my own. Screenshots at bottom of post.
Possible suggestions to fix this:
When a territory falls to another religion, still allow it to spread some of the State Religion's faith; even at 66% or 50%, perhaps. A player dedicated to putting holy sites or faith districts in contested/converted areas could reclaim the faith.
Allow for civics or diplomacy to resist the spread of foreign religions. Religious Hostility's faith bonus can't stand against a snowballing religion, and Start Inquisition and Banish Population don't actually help you turn away foreign religions. There is a civic to Block Sphere of Influence (and Aesthete cultures can re-assert culture), but we have nothing for Faith.
Provide an ability for "faith bomb" like the "Aesthete bomb" to force state religion back into a converted territory (at risk of it re-converting again).
Reduce the "reach" of faith from four territories to a lower number, and especially correct the potential bug where "lost" territories are skipped over without costing distance. At least let those be treated as a neutral zone to buffer the spread of faith, instead of exposing us to the influence of even deeper territories.
It looks like there's a huge amount of "faith from Tenet" going on where Tier 4 religions generate 275 faith per territory from Tenet alone, while a Tier 2 faith generates 145. Again, because impact leads to converts and converts lead to tenets, this just causes more snowballing. Please reduce these numbers so Holy Sites and faith EQs can make a difference.
Once the territory turns to a foreign religion, own my holy sites, kaiserdoms, camii, etc. stop spreading faith. Shouldn't they contribute something, even at 2/3 or 1/2 strength, to keep the faithful? Also, an unmanned outpost in the middle of the desert creates comparable Faith to a territory of my city, populated by people and with two religious Emblematic Districts.
One of my territories, still in my empire and 100% my cultural influence, now receives zero faith from the state religion because it's not on a 'conversion border' anymore. Shouldn't my state religion retain some impact, and through my dedicated actions have the potential to reassert itself?
Possible Bug: Territories are supposed to be influenced by faith up to four territories away. But when I conquer or possess nearby territories that belong to a foreign religion, they don't seem to count for distance in that chain, allowing that chain of four territories to start even further away!
I agree. In fact, I would argue that even if YOU convert your religion, holy sites you built for your original religion should continue to exert pressure for your original religion. You should have to raze them if you want them to stop converting people. Additionally, there really should be much larger religious minorities possible in the game. It should never be the case that literally every person in the entire world believes in the same faith. There should almost always be a few holdout minorities in every territory.
One point on the 4 away, trade routes also spread religion (and influence). I think it is reasonable that a territory would only spread the religion it has to other territories. However, the faith of EQ etc in the territory that has been flipped should continue to apply internally to help flip. As mentioned the far bigger problem is the tenet pressure where pressure from territory A gets stronger when territory B gets flipped.
Really good analysis and I hope the devs look into this. The world should not always end in one faith. There should be a mix.
It might be a coding issue where whatever religion a province is that is what the faith supports regardless of what it originally was - or it could be that they are simply reset to 0 as your analysis seems to show.
In order for us to fully investigate and correctly pin point this issue we need the following:
- Any saves you think may help show the problem. Your saves are by default located:
o PC: \Users\[username]\Documents\Humankind\Save Files
o Mac: This is hidden in the Libraries folder. You will need to do an internet search to find specific steps for your OS. Once the libraries folder is revealed, they are in /library/ application support/humankind/Save Files
Thank you very much for taking the time to send us this extensive report.
Hi Tyor, thank you very much for looking into this! Here are some saves from the turns when I tried to hold back the foreign religion, including those from some above screenshots.
This has been much improved, at the very least, by the tweaks (fixes?) to the basic Tenets not growing exponentially. An outpost in an empire of 40 territories no longer generates 200+ faith.
As soon as I reloaded my above games in the new Faith system as of this past weekend's patch, the combined Kaiserdom and Camii in my empire pushed the borders of my faith again.
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