I think religion's base mechanics are good; spreading it and choosing tenets works nicely. Of course, tenet effects could be balanced, though it would be interesting if some tenets came with both positives and negatives. This might at least give us players some tradeoff to think about when picking tenets.

For example:

- Abstain from Intoxicants: +10 Industry and +10 Food, but -5 Stability (no alcohol means better work and healthier people, but potentially unhappier ones too)

- Seek Wisdom: +10 Science, but -5 Industry and -5 Food (more time spent meditating might mean less time on industry or farming)

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Syncretism (blending multiple religions) would be an interesting addition too; if I have 7 pops following my state religion and 2 pops following a foreign religion, those 2 pops should also grant me FIMS modifications based on that foreign religion's tenets. If that foreign religion grants +1 Money but -1 Industry per religious pop, then my 2 foreign-religion pops should modify my overall FIMS by +2 Money and -2 Industry. (Also, those foreign-religion pops might trigger some version of an osmosis event due to an exchange of ideas.)

This way I might be more open to hosting foreign religions if their effects line up with my plans, or I may try to get rid of them if their maluses (-2 Industry in this case) outweigh the benefits. This at least gives us another decision point - whether or not to push for our own religion. (It may also make sense to have a Stability hit for regions with more foreign religions - so you might opt to push for your state religion specifically to keep your stability intact.) 

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Finally, there aren't any negatives as your religion levels up, so you always get the same (not too interesting) gameplay "decision":
More religion == Better.

Relatedly, this means that I would never pick either of the two Irreligion civics (why would I throw away all the bonuses I currently get from my religion?).

Those civics should bring some benefit that's large enough to warrant throwing away your religion. Or perhaps if state and foreign religions accrued more maluses as they grew, you might pick an Irreligion civic to lose your religion and shut down all religious maluses (at the cost of losing any positives from those religions).

Ok, so here we are with plenty of new Victor feedback. I'd like to first say that HK is surely shaping up to be a fantastic game, and this OpenDev already shown a great deal of improvement over the Lucy build. I'll focus this report on the issues I found, but this by no way means HK isn't a good or fun game, just that I'm pointing to what can be made better before release. I'll also try to not discuss bugs like the various graphical glitches or the fact that many Early Modern Emblematic Quarters could be built in multiples per territory since by now I assume you're well aware of those. I'll try (key word here is try) to present suggestions to each issue, but of course, my knowledge of civics, technologies and cultures is limited by the scope of the opendevs revealed so far. So, without further ado, lets dive in:

- Religion

- Issue: Bonuses with the "per follower per holy site" rule are too strong and dominate the religious meta. They wield thousands of FIMSI and can make a culture ignore a district type yet still dominate on its category, say researching all EM techs by turn 120 without ever being a scientist culture or building even a single Research District. That, coupled with the increased importance of pops mentioned above, make them game-breaking. Solution:  Change those tenets from "per follower per holy site" to "per state religion follower"

- Issue: The religion tenets are quite imbalanced and give little to no thought on their selection other than "which FIMSI/Stab do I need the most". Not to mention the very overpowered tenets like the +5 stab per follower and the plethora of unbalanced "give bonuses per follower per holysite". While I understand that Religion is not one of the core game systems and that it is probably going to be expanded upon on future DLCs, the current system fails to provide the options for customizing the religion in a way that better mesh with your actions outside of the religious battlefield. I think the religion subsystem can be greatly expanded by reworking the tenet's effects and open different avenues and strategies while retaining the same base mechanics and effects. Solution: Change the following aspects of the religion system. Intended direction, in general, is to make the religious tenets fall into 3 "general" categories: Missionary, Builders, and Isolationists. "Missionary"-type tenets will generally either help the empire to spread its religion or reward the player as they accrue followers; "Builder"-type tenets will reward the player for building holy sites; and "Isolationist"-type tenets will help the player defend against other religions and gain bonuses focused on its faith generation. So, without further ado, the following lines will detail the new suggested tenets:

1) General change: All quarters that generate faith (be it holy sites per se, faith wonders, and EQs that generate faith) will be counted as "holy sites" and will gain the "per holy site" bonuses

2) Tier 1 Tenets: No change. They're fine as is.

3) Tier 2 Tenets: +1 Holy Site, plus either:a) +10 influence per holy site;  b) +10 stability per holy site; c) -50% time to convert other religions; d) +100% time to be converted by other religions; e) +3 faith per trade route; f) +1 faith per religious follower on all cities. These tenets either buff the holy site of builder-type religions or help you with faith generation to convert and/or resist other religions.

4) Tier 3 Tenets: +1 Holy Site, plus either: a) +2 Food per state religion follower on capital; b) +2 Industry per state religion follower on capital; c) +2 Money per state religion follower on capital; d) +2 Science per state religion follower on capital; e) +2 Holy Sites; f) +2 combat strength. This tier helps you gain more FIMS using your followers or help other religions to either gain more Holy Sites or a combat strength. 

5) Tier 4 Tenets: +1 Holy Site, plus either: a) +10% money per correligionist state; b) +10% science per correligionist state; c) +10% influence per correligionist state; d) +1 stability per faith produced in city for all cities. This last tier is the capstone, greatly increasing your money/science/influence if you manage to have several correligionist states or helping a isolationist/builder-type focused religion to turn their faith incomes into stability.

This is a post in a series of connected posts about the Victor Opendev. You can find the posts discussing other topics below:

Economy: https://www.games2gether.com/amplitude-studios/humankind/forums/210-victor-opendev/threads/39499-feedback-economy-and-game-pace?page=3#post-315472

Naval & Air: https://www.games2gether.com/amplitude-studios/humankind/forums/210-victor-opendev/threads/39509-feedback-naval-gameplay?page=1#post-315474

Diplomacy: https://www.games2gether.com/amplitude-studios/humankind/forums/210-victor-opendev/threads/39502-feedback-diplomacy?page=2#post-315476

Combat & Land Armies: https://www.games2gether.com/amplitude-studios/humankind/forums/210-victor-opendev/threads/39501-feedback-combat?page=2#post-315477

Civics: https://www.games2gether.com/amplitude-studios/humankind/forums/210-victor-opendev/threads/39508-feedback-civics?page=1#post-315478

Cultures: https://www.games2gether.com/amplitude-studios/humankind/forums/210-victor-opendev/threads/39500-feedback-cultures?page=2#post-315479

Independent Peoples: https://www.games2gether.com/amplitude-studios/humankind/forums/210-victor-opendev/threads/39526-feedback-independent-people?page=1#post-315481

The-Cat-o-Nine-Tales wrote:

Please let us know what you think about religion in the Victor OpenDev!

I like the mechanical concept of making Religion something Players can use to cover a productional weakness of their empire, along with the concept of Religion still being a competitive race even in the situation where all the world follows a single religion, and the complete reliance of trade routes for religious pressure to spread is a fascinating concept that has potential for this game.

I mainly play on Humankind difficulty, so I haven't exactly been experiencing all the amazing snowballing with religious tenets people here seem to be experiencing. But I do acknowledge that min/maxing religion can be quite potent, especially if you focus on cultures that have unique districts which produces faith. However, since I was playing on humankind difficulty, the only snowballing I ever saw was when I specifically took a religious culture, like the tuetons, and focused on building all the religious emblematic quarters and maximizing their faith output in order to break through the High Difficulty A.Is that were putting up a pretty decent fight beforehand, And after that my Empire's religious swept across like a wave--which I think I'm okay with, as I needed commit to a religious culture to achieve that.

But I'll list some things I wanna see from Religion:

1. A tooltip, on the religion view, that shows total amount of resources produce by each religion.
2. A tooltip, on religion view, that shows total amount of resources produce by each tenet of a religion.
3. A tooltip, on religion view, that shows the distance penalty regions receive in spreading their religious influence.
4. More competitive mechanics for when a single religion has taken over the world. Because Religious leader stops mattering the moment you get the tenets that you want. I'm spitballing, but maybe there could be a sort of religious schism mechanic that naturally flows into the gameplay when multiple players end up following a single religion, and begin competing for Religious leader. From here specialized grievances can appear where the religious leader begins hemorrhaging influence as their leading religion splits apart. Something neat on that level... point being to keep the religion screen mattering well into the late game as a competing sport.

I had a number [5] about making there be more push and pull from religion effecting other aspect of gameplay outside of numbers, but I can't quite put into words what that would be besides some vague thoughts on Empire influence and Empire Religious influence being in a tug of war, so I'll leave that out.

The fact that picking Separation of Church and state just deletes the religion aspect from the player's gameplay and doesn't provide an interesting substitute for the player to pay attention to as a replacement kinda feels jarring. I can't quite think of what would be cool and fun to see from secularism, but as it is now... being a button that just permanently turns off religious grievences for the player, along with the player's ability to be effected by the religious influence battle... idunno.

After playing through the game a few times, including a run on the hardest difficulty, I come to the conclusion that religion is one of the mechanics that needs the most work. It feels very incomplete and not really part of the game. It doesn't interact with the fame system, which seems odd, and doesn't really provide unique bonuses or interactions. It spits our a ton of resources but you could increase yields on tiles and remove religion entirely and the game would be more or less the same.

Positive:

- From a mechanics standpoint religion feels worthwhile to pursue. In fact as a whole the mechanic feels overpowered, which I will touch on in the negatives section, but that does make it  feel good to have a strong religion.

- Its easy to use. The interface does not make it particularly clear how religion spreads but its easy to understand that buildng more faith structures equals more followers.

Step 1 Build holy site

Step 2 ????

Step 3 Profit

Negative:

- From the very beginning the religious choices are boring. You get 2 choices to start Shamanism flavor with extra spicy influence or Polytheism flavor with a bigger scoop of god points. These two are not enough and I hope these choices are expanded in the main game so that you at least get as many as your religious upgrade decisions or maybe even culture choices. I personally would love to see some choices that reward well planned expansion. Like bonus influence if built next to a mountain or similar things rather than the generic FIDSI and Stab variations. On a side note I did not discover that I could reskin my religion until I was 4 games in. That seems like a choice that should have been made clear upon founding my religion. Also I feel like I should be able to name my new faith and then pick a skin for my holy sites rather than have them tied to specific religions. Though I can see how that might offend some people.

-Also, the final choice in the religious tree feels very anticlimactic. You spend all the early game spreading religion in order to finally get bonuses to help your religion spread faster. It seems like there should be more choices after so maybe those are planned but please don't leave it as is.

-Religion FIDSI gains are massively overpowered. End of opendev, presumably the late midgame or early endgame, holy sites generate more FIDSI than almost anything else in the game. By turn 134 on humankind difficulty I was generating 3575 science across 4 cities and of that about 55% (1960) was coming from my 8 holy sites. This is on top of the other bonuses that holy sites provide. Even wonder bonuses, excepting maybe the lighthouse for early overseas expansion, pale in comparison to having another holy site. In fact quickly found myself only picking holy site wonders because of how good the bonus is.

-The religion mechanic as a whole feels pretty boring actually. It doesn't seem to serve any purpose other than to grant extra FIDSI or Stab and functionally has no interaction beyond building holy sites and some civ specific districts. Faith isn't even a spendable resource like influence its just a kind of barometer to tell you which direction religion is spreading. I would love to see more faith interaction in the game. Maybe things like faith units or the ability to collect and spend faith depending on your civic choices. As it stands religion feels more like an effective way to gain resources rather than a separate mechanic.

-The Irreligion civic choice should not change your state religion. I can accept taking this choice unlocking the option to have no state religion but the decision to change the state religion should go in the religion tab. It really bothers me when I have extra civic points to look at a civic I cannot take in the tree.

Too many UI pages for religion alone: all levels of tenets should be displayed on a single page

Tenets should have a more engaging icon to show their effect: This is one area where Troy TW had refined ideas (UI design for religion). There already seem to be some images behind the tenets but are blurred out even when activated

Spreading of religion is easy and not many ways the player can influence it. e.g.: some infra could provide buffs or debuffs to ceartant religion types for example

Most UI icons of the various religions are not visible in front of the backdrop: their color and contours are too weak

Final religious civic seems to disable the entire religion mechanic no matter which option is chosen and can be forced upon the player in mid-game by cultural synergy

The other thing about religion is you can usually ignore it if you're careful about it. When your find out which religion has chosen stability, pick that one, and then pick the civic that the "state religion adds influence." So now some other player has to waste time building their religion sites and you don't meanwhile their religion reinforces your nation's influence on itself and gains stability. Then trade with that player as much as possible followed up by an offer to be in an alliance. :D