No no…I am not talking about actual heresy in our own world…I mean the tech Heresy.
I strongly think that this tech ought to be unequivocally removed from the Monastery tech tree, on grounds that it makes the tech Faith, too obsolete. It is also unjust that Heresy is also CHEAPER than Faith with the former being 1000 Gold cost, while the latter is 750 Food, 1000 Gold !
Moreover, the existence of Heresy makes the usage of Monks near useless, since all you are doing is killing off the enemy units instead of converting them onto your side. If Monks are robbed of the chance of converting, say enemy Knights, then you are better off spending that 100 Gold cost of a Monk instead on Archers or Spearmen or Knights yourself to fight the enemy knights.
4 Likes
That is the beauty of the tech, it is useful until the enemy has researched it
1 Like
Your monk may kill enemy paladin while your knight or crossbow will surely fail.
Faith is not useless when you have heresy it will make conversion longer which will give your unit more time to do some damage before he dies.
5 Likes
Anyway Faith could get at least slightly cheaper
3 Likes
Both could research Heresy. Both playing monks still… Why is it useless?
1 Like
the existance of heresy doesn’t make monks useless; the tech is extremely expensive and quite often it is more feasible to counter monks with scouts, archers etc espcially in early castle age. Even at during some of the later stages of the game a lot of people would prefer to save the gold for something else.
Also as a note Faith and Heresy accomplish different things
1 Like
I’m skeptical that you’ve done the math on Faith if you think these techs are similar enough that one makes the other obsolete. Conversion graphs look something like this:
Faith as you can see has 2 effects: It pushes back the time at which a conversion can occur (min) and will occur (max) and it lowers the probability of being converted. Implications of this:
- It increases the median conversion time from about 6 seconds after conversion to around 16.8 seconds.
- Faithless Cavalier/Paladin get converted 70-100% of the time depending on reaction times. Those same units with faith will only lose about 20-40% before being able to kill the monks.
- Scout-line without Faith all get converted by the maximum time of 12s. With faith only ~40% of any unit will be converted by that time. That is you can imagine a random 60% of your units as having better-than-scout conversion resistance.
- For shift-click conversions with theocracy, the timer resets every time a unit is converted and the remainder in the group move onto a new target. Faith dramatically lowers the effectiveness of this.
- Faith turns 2 monks on the same target into 1 monk (more or less) except the conversion time starts and ends later. Gives enough time for 1-3 extra attacks.
Some other notes:
- Faith stacks with Teutons team bonus and First Crusade
- Heresy’s marginal effect depends heavily on the units and numbers being converted. For most units, if you convert the ones in the middle of formation the surrounding units will nuke it very fast. This makes the marginal return on Heresy not great in some cases, or alternatively you get Heresy for free in some cases.
- Heresy is much more limited than Faith. Only 22 civs have Heresy but only 3 civs are missing Faith.
- Faith is not a readily apparent upgrade to the enemy. It’s super apparent if you task 5 or so monks to the same target because the conversion takes longer than you’d expect, but it’s very hard to detect if you task them individually.
So Heresy and Faith perform two very different tasks. Faith is primarily for allowing you to combat mass (20+) monks since without it doubled-up monks will convert 50% of units in the first conversion interval at 4.8s then hit 80% by 7.2s. Faith turns doubled-up monk effectively into single monks (as mentioned) except the start and end-point are delayed by 2 and 4 intervals respectively. Heresy is to prevent converted units from killing other units, mostly relating to interactions with seige such as stopping knights from killing seige, stopping redemption, or stopping onager attacking grouped up friendlies.
The only way I can see to think Heresy makes Faith obsolete is to think that mass monks could never occur in game. Sure it’s rare but that doesn’t mean one tech makes the other obsolete. They perform different tasks.
3 Likes
11 monks, 20 hands, 29 teuts, square form, stand ground - conversions 100% of the time 
Never did like Heresy tho - better to just convert the unit back
Some civs have heresy without having faith and vice versa. So having these two techs allows to make civs differents when it comes to fighting monks. At best you could argue there aren’t enough civs that get heresy but no faith (only Bulgarians and Magyars) and not enough that lack both (only Tatars do in DE)
1 Like
OK so the cheaper castle-age tech Heresy makes the imperial Faith obsolete…
And the only way to fix this is to remove Heresy ?!
…
1 Like
age of the techs switched could be done and prices kept the same
I just played a game as Burmese where I got 67 conversions and I have to say it was extremely unsatisfying to see my enemies die instead of joining my side, and having the enemies joining your side is the entire point to wololoing. 
1 Like
No thanks leave it as it is.
Heresy is a big deal for stopping limited numbers of monks from crippling powerful pushes with important, core units to protect. Siege halb is the primary example where Heresy is not only important but mandatory, as if you lose one onager to a conversion you can very quickly lose your entire push as a result. Way better to have it die than have it turn around and kill another siege unit and set you back.
Faith is more important against mass monk, where it’s not so much that a single conversion changes the fight, but moreso over the aggregate, if the conversions come in too quickly you won’t be able to knock out monk numbers whether or not your units survive or die.
In that regard, the prices are fairly assigned. Mass monk is a much larger investment from a gold standpoint and you can counter that with Faith+LC, whereas a few monks with redemption used as a defense for a siege+halb push can have it’s threat heavily reduced by adding Heresy to prevent the siege they’d convert (or any knights for that matter) from sniping siege and blowing up the push. I don’t see what the problem is.
2 Likes
Two so and your formation is done
he has redemption against that. what is really going to kill his formation though is just getting to it.
Monks, TKs, and Hand Cannons? expensive. not to mention all the monk techs to let his monks do what they do.
Depends on how well micro is used - most if the time I retreat/reform/use other units to take down the siege onagers at the right times. It’s like fighting mangonels with archers but more preemptive - it’s easy to do with practice
Knowing when to retreat and advance is key,
That and sometimes conversions
What about modifying Heresy so that it gives your units -1 min/max conversion time. Then this tech becomes a tradeoff: your units wont get converted but they will die quicker.
What does such a change accomplish regarding improving the game dynamics/balance?
4 Likes
Its perfectly fine as it is.
1 Like
