Religions?

[Atlas]

A Great Prophet at Divine Right? You must be kidding, right? There's a reason why there aren't any Prophets on the tech tree: no freebie shrines. Founding a new religion AND getting an instant shrine for it (or another self-founded religion of your choice) would be ridiculously powerful.

I kid not dear Sir . Prophets are the most common Great Person (try and avoid them and you still get the suckers), putting one at Divine Right would not be that bad. I guess my qualm with Divine Right is the cost of the tech- I don't research the thing since the wonders not very powerful and Islam just founds too late. It is an extremely expensive tech at a time of other and more useful expensive techs. My qualm with the cost is its effect on the AI-the AI loves this tech b/c there is a religion on it. The religion loving AIs all research this tech when they should be researching education and b/c they beeline to the thing it is too expensive for them to get decent trade value out of it-the AI gets suckered by researching the thing. However, after all that I will now say that I think you are right . There should not be free shrines. A better solution is-

To balance Divine Right, the correct thing to do would be to give it a regular civic/unit/building so that it did not immediately become useless when the religion and 2 wonders are taken.

This is a much better solution. Some sort of happiness generating building here would be nice. As uberfish said the return on investment is poor for DR.

[darrelljs]

A Great Prophet at Divine Right? You must be kidding, right? There's a reason why there aren't any Prophets on the tech tree: no freebie shrines. Founding a new religion AND getting an instant shrine for it (or another self-founded religion of your choice) would be ridiculously powerful.

I kid you not! As I said, I think DR is late enough in the game for a GP not to be unbalanced, it is the only religious tech you can say that about. And, um, I think it might be a bit hard to found a religion after discovering DR

Besides, there's already two wonders at Divine Right: Spiral Minaret and Versailles. Two wonders and a religion aren't enough to make this an attractive tech? Can't say I agree with that logic...

Maybe I'm in the minority, but I almost never build Versailles in a game that is competitive. Spiral Minaret has its uses for sure, but they are niche. And Islam is rarely useful in my games, except for that one strange exception.

Darrell

P.S. Good to see you back, what's the deal with your website?

Darrell

[darrelljs]

However, it's already a tech that rewards the first discoverer far more than anyone else because all it enables is one-time-only bonuses, and giving out a free prophet in addition just makes that worse. To balance Divine Right, the correct thing to do would be to give it a regular civic/unit/building so that it did not immediately become useless when the religion and 2 wonders are taken.

Well, you can add a GP and remove something else. Let it keep the religion, let it keep the Spiral Minaret and add the Prophet. Put Versailles with Monarchy or something earlier in the tree?

Darrell

[Raven_Lore]

the wonder is not really useful, there are only so many cities that you ca build temples, monataries and other things inside. Scienctific Method eliminates monastaries so there are only temples and academies. if you had 15 cities with all temples, that would only be 15 gold.....I would rather have stonehedge....easy to build early culture pop....early Priest....btw i think if you get to islam, it's really hard to get a priest as it gets mixed with all the other GPP. I have never had a game where i had islam with a shrine.....just too late

[Atlas]

I have never had a game where i had islam with a shrine.....just too late

I have had games where the Islam shrine is built, but only a few. Here is the thing Buddhism-Mahabodi, Hindusim- Kashi Visanwathi, Judaism-Temple of Solomon, Confucianism- Kong Mio, Christianity- Church of the Nativity, and Taoism- Dai Mio, but for the life of me I can't remember the name of the Islam shrine because I have seen it so few times.

Part of the issue here is map size, most games are played on Standard and smaller maps. If everybody played on huge maps it might make Islam a touch more viable, but adopting it would still isolate you diplomatically so it still would not be a great move. It just comes too late and is tied to an overly expensive tech.

[Dantski]

but for the life of me I can't remember the name of the Islam shrine because I have seen it so few times.

In case you were still trying to think of it, its the Masjid-al-Haram (excuse any spelling errors).