Apostolic Palace - Determines outcome of game

[Common Sensei]

Originally posted by dac
I dunno, I think the AP is most imbalanced when there is NOT a hegemonic religion in the game. If you own the AP, and are the only "Full" member, and you make sure all your cities have your state religion, you have a lot of votes. If nobody else has your state religion as their state religion, yet they have one or two cities with the AP religion in them, they are members with very few votes.

So, I'm becoming far more careful about how I spread my religion after I build the AP, I want to win all the votes.

I tend to agree with this. The cheapest win I ever had was when the other civs either already had the religion spread to them (but in negligible fashion since they had their own), or were very receptive to Open Borders so that I could have one missionary each for the remaining ones to spread that religion. A few turns after the last one and the Diplomatic Victory option comes up, which was easily winnable.

[Arrian]

[Rockoon]

I think a good idea would be to require that for the win vote to come up, the religion has to be #1 on the followings board...

..that is to say its ok if its only 33% as long as none of the other religions has more than 33%

but even 75% wouldnt be good enough if another religion has 76%

..

An even better solution might be to remove the win vote entirely and replace it be a Permanent Alliance vote or something.. so that the game may continue

[Common Sensei]

Perhaps Free Religion should allow the "Abstain" option to protect you from being forced to participate in a passed Apostolic referendum, acting as a defiance without the happiness penalty, or just remove the happiness penalty from defying Apostolic resolutions. As a balance, it could remove the hammer bonus from the religious buildings for the Apostolic religion. It'd be like what State Property is to corporations.

This would make Shwedagon Paya a counter to the Apostolic Palace.

[dac]

So, how's about getting one of the master Civ players to see just how fast they can get an AP win to demonstrate how cheesy this is.

I'll try this, but I'm in the running for the Worlds Slowest Civ Player award, so I don't think I'll have the answer any time soon.

[Indalecio]

I just experimented with Apostolic Palace the other night, well tried building, though I got beaten to the punch. I've got a couple of questions.

1)What determines whether or not you can be elected for residency or not?

2)Can the apostolic palace ever switch religions? Say if the one who built it switched state religions?

[MikeH]

1) You either have to have built it, or have a state religion that matches the religion of the palace.

2) No.

[Saurus]

AP in many cases almost makes you immortal.
The only civlizations who hold power during votes, are those who share your state religion, thus they in the main are your friends! YOu can mostly count on them voting in favor of your proposals. Should someone attack you for instance, you will in almost all cases be able to block the war ... and repeat this forever.

AP is a nice addition but, as has been pointed out several times, too powerful on a pangea-map and this is not a good thing for those players who likes to play on a pangea, such as myself.

[Palpster]

Agreed, it's too powerful on Pangaea maps....and most of the time not useful enough on anything containing multiple continents/islands, although I guess you could make it work there if you really wanted to, after all sending out a galley with a missionary isn't THAT hard.....convert one city each just like you would on Pangaea. I usually can't be bothered though, maybe I'll try it some time.