Since CA have stated they'll be looking to rework cults next I thought it would be a good idea to put together all the issues with Cults and why they feel really weak currently in the game.

Issues:

1. Lack luster building effects:

All 4 Mono factions have 4 different buildings they can build when instilling a cult. Nearly all are weak effects that don't really do much to change the campaigns pace except for a few standout ones like Khorne's teleportation building. 

2. Too infrequent and RNG based:

Except for Slaanesh, the other 3 can't instill a cult through a hero action. They have to raise the corruption in a region and wait for an RNG roll to determine if they get a cult or not. All for the not so impressive effects it grants. All 4 should have a hero action to instill a cult in a province through a hero action.

3. AI Cannot Interact With Cults:

If they rework the cults to have more potent effects then the AI should have an ability to detect and destroy the cult rather than it being invincible.

Possible Solutions:

Easy Solution: Give the cult buildings better effects and enable the rest of the mono factions to instill a cult through a hero action.

The Rework I Hope For: I want cults to be a game changer where it would actually sometimes be more beneficial to you to NOT conquer the settlement where your cult resides and instead let it grow. 

1. Cults are tied to corruption:

Playing as one of the mono factions you will instill a cult with a hero action, which will have a long cooldown e.g. 15 turns and can only put one cult in a province, you will have buildings that go up to tier 5 but the main cult settlement building cannot be upgraded until corruption reaches a certain level. For example, 25 corruption to upgrade to tier 2 and then 50 for tier 3 so on. Depending on the tier of the main cult building the corruption will not decrease past a certain threshold e.g. if you have a tier 3 cult in a province corruption cannot be decreased past 50 unless the cult is destroyed. Of course, corruption will need to be reworked to be less affected by battles and be more affected by hero actions etc. There are some buildings, like the main settlement buildings, that give free corruption reduction. IMO that should be removed and the only way to reduce corruption in the province would be through the anti corruption specific building, technology, ancillaries, commandments and characters. The larger the settlement the more susceptible it is to corruption.

2. Unique building effects:

I want to have access to fun and cool buildings that, for example, make me give the settlement a stronger garrison or gives me an ancillary/item every couple of turns etc. At tier 5 you can have very potent buildings that can open a rift and summon a daemon army or gives you a low chance of turning a lord in the region into a daemon prince of the specific race you're playing as. Incentivize the player to keep the cults and to protect and grow them instead of it being outright better to just conquer the settlement itself.

3. How Other Factions Will Deal With Cults:

The non mono factions will need to use anti corrupting buildings, tech, ancillaries, commandments and characters to combat the cults and to stem their growth if they are already embedded. However, once you detect a cult you will then need to fight it to remove it completely as it will have it's own garrison and won't go down without a fight.

Let me know what you think about this and what you're hoping they do with cults. 

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kissmydairia#7307 wrote:
The larger the settlement the more susceptible it is to corruption.

This is my instinct too. But how to achieve it?

kissmydairia#7307 wrote:
Depending on the tier of the main cult building the corruption will not decrease past a certain threshold e.g. if you have a tier 3 cult in a province corruption cannot be decreased past 50 unless the cult is destroyed.

I agree it should be tied to tiers. Mono-God cults should be at least as comprehensive as Skaven Under-Empire buildings. My suggestion would be to have the number of secret building slots to mirror the number of public building slots, sans 1 or 2.

My concern, though, is that this is not quite how corruption works in the game at present. Once we say "corruption cannot be reduced under "x" amount" we've wrecked the present system. Corruption at present adjusts to 0% or 100% - what determines which is not the relative values of corruption/anticorruption, but rather which is stronger than the other. If cults reduce this window to 50% or 100%, this doesn't really solve the problem, as players still can't reduce it below 50% with their actions.

I believe adding an "absolute value" corruption system to replace the present "relative value" system is the best course. This would make a revamped cult system actually meaningful, because the corruption they would generate would compete directly with the anti-corruption buildings and other factors of the region, rather than becoming meaningless if one is greater than the other. In the latter case, cults will either continue to be meaningless or, in your suggested system, become too heavy-handed and arbitrary.

kissmydairia#7307 wrote:
If they rework the cults to have more potent effects then the AI should have an ability to detect and destroy the cult rather than it being invincible.

It should be "automated" by buildings, I think. That is, there should be a secrecy vs suspicion value that, when added together, results in a percentage chance every turn for that secret building's discovery. This should be balanced for gameplay fun: a Slaanesh player who builds low secrecy buildings first and builds towards stronger cults that protect each other.

But that also begs the question. Why, in the end, bother with cults, even ones with a fun design? I have everything I need for world conquest in my own settlements and armies. What, strategically speaking, do Cults give me that armies do not?

That's the unanswered question for Cults right now. In the lore, this question is answered as: the Four are competing against each other to dominate the mortal world. Cults, like armies, give you an edge over your Brothers because, frankly, Daemon armies cannot move out of the Wastes, and sometimes not even out of the Realm of Chaos. That's not the case in the game at present. In the lore, the Brothers fight for influence in the Realm and the Wastes with armies; for the most part, they fight for influence in the mortal world with Cults. 

If the world were big enough and dangerous enough, then a secondary "game" that hardly drains my resources, where I mess with the rest of the map I can't reach, in a game of Cult Monopoly with my Brothers, for real and material benefits as say, Ku'gath, - well, that might make a Cult system worth it. But the game is too small and too easy, and so a few armies can solve all my problems, and I have no need of Cults. 

CA needs to introduce a manifest need for Cults before it revises them.

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HighestandCo#9562 wrote:

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kissmydairia#7307 wrote:
The larger the settlement the more susceptible it is to corruption.

This is my instinct too. But how to achieve it?

kissmydairia#7307 wrote:
Depending on the tier of the main cult building the corruption will not decrease past a certain threshold e.g. if you have a tier 3 cult in a province corruption cannot be decreased past 50 unless the cult is destroyed.

I agree it should be tied to tiers. Mono-God cults should be at least as comprehensive as Skaven Under-Empire buildings. My suggestion would be to have the number of secret building slots to mirror the number of public building slots, sans 1 or 2.

My concern, though, is that this is not quite how corruption works in the game at present. Once we say "corruption cannot be reduced under "x" amount" we've wrecked the present system. Corruption at present adjusts to 0% or 100% - what determines which is not the relative values of corruption/anticorruption, but rather which is stronger than the other. If cults reduce this window to 50% or 100%, this doesn't really solve the problem, as players still can't reduce it below 50% with their actions.

I believe adding an "absolute value" corruption system to replace the present "relative value" system is the best course. This would make a revamped cult system actually meaningful, because the corruption they would generate would compete directly with the anti-corruption buildings and other factors of the region, rather than becoming meaningless if one is greater than the other. In the latter case, cults will either continue to be meaningless or, in your suggested system, become too heavy-handed and arbitrary.

kissmydairia#7307 wrote:
If they rework the cults to have more potent effects then the AI should have an ability to detect and destroy the cult rather than it being invincible.

It should be "automated" by buildings, I think. That is, there should be a secrecy vs suspicion value that, when added together, results in a percentage chance every turn for that secret building's discovery. This should be balanced for gameplay fun: a Slaanesh player who builds low secrecy buildings first and builds towards stronger cults that protect each other.

But that also begs the question. Why, in the end, bother with cults, even ones with a fun design? I have everything I need for world conquest in my own settlements and armies. What, strategically speaking, do Cults give me that armies do not?

That's the unanswered question for Cults right now. In the lore, this question is answered as: the Four are competing against each other to dominate the mortal world. Cults, like armies, give you an edge over your Brothers because, frankly, Daemon armies cannot move out of the Wastes, and sometimes not even out of the Realm of Chaos. That's not the case in the game at present. In the lore, the Brothers fight for influence in the Realm and the Wastes with armies; for the most part, they fight for influence in the mortal world with Cults. 

If the world were big enough and dangerous enough, then a secondary "game" that hardly drains my resources, where I mess with the rest of the map I can't reach, in a game of Cult Monopoly with my Brothers, for real and material benefits as say, Ku'gath, - well, that might make a Cult system worth it. But the game is too small and too easy, and so a few armies can solve all my problems, and I have no need of Cults. 

CA needs to introduce a manifest need for Cults before it revises them.

For the first point I think that when a settlement grows its main settlement building to a higher tier it should give ramping negative anti corruption effects. Like how food worked in other total war games where upgrading the settlement will cost more food to be consumed.

I actually thought corruption worked that way in WH3 and not 0% to 100% so your solution is great.

That really is a big problem in the game where it's so much easier and much more beneficial to outright conquer the enemies settlements instead of growing cults. I agree, there needs to be a manifest need for cults to be worth the hassle to the player. When WH3 was in the works I thought that was how the Great Game was going to work where you spread your corruption throughout the world and bring more mortals under your influence, but alas it turned out to just be an rng roll between the 4. Maybe, have cults be the only way to unlock mortal units from your roster? Although, I don't think people would much like that.

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HighestandCo#9562 wrote:

I agree it should be tied to tiers. Mono-God cults should be at least as comprehensive as Skaven Under-Empire buildings. My suggestion would be to have the number of secret building slots to mirror the number of public building slots, sans 1 or 2.

I don’t really agree with this. The Monogod races have many more mechanics than the Skaven do, for which the the Under-City mechanic is their main flashy mechanic. It also represents an entire sprawling underground city vs a cult within a city. 

Cults should be smaller but still meaningful to spread.

HighestandCo#9562 wrote:
My concern, though, is that this is not quite how corruption works in the game at present. Once we say "corruption cannot be reduced under "x" amount" we've wrecked the present system.

I wouldn’t say it wrecks the system. It would just be a minimum corruption in an area. The player and AI would have tools to remove the source instituting that minimum and then corruption would reduce normally again.

Personally I’ve long been a proponent of having corruption naturally introduce a minimum equal to the total amount of corruption production in a province. For example, if there are sources giving a total +8 Nurgle Corruption in a province, Nurgle Corruption would not reduce below 8. If a player wants to get rid of corruption totally from a province, then they have to remove the sources, whether that’s removing heroes in your border, or tackling an enemy spreading adjacent corruption, etc.

In this case, I think having Cults naturally produce some corruption (that potentially increases in tier) and instituting the proposed minimum would make them more potent tools for spreading corruption across the world (and subsequently building up manifestations). Possibly have them increase corruption in adjacent provinces as well if they get big enough.

The fast pace of the game coupled with corruption changes have made it it pointless to spam cults unless you are slannesh looking to seduce a LL.

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Passthechips#4366 wrote:

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HighestandCo#9562 wrote:

I agree it should be tied to tiers. Mono-God cults should be at least as comprehensive as Skaven Under-Empire buildings. My suggestion would be to have the number of secret building slots to mirror the number of public building slots, sans 1 or 2.

I don’t really agree with this. The Monogod races have many more mechanics than the Skaven do, for which the the Under-City mechanic is their main flashy mechanic. It also represents an entire sprawling underground city vs a cult within a city. 

Cults should be smaller but still meaningful to spread.

HighestandCo#9562 wrote:
My concern, though, is that this is not quite how corruption works in the game at present. Once we say "corruption cannot be reduced under "x" amount" we've wrecked the present system.

I wouldn’t say it wrecks the system. It would just be a minimum corruption in an area. The player and AI would have tools to remove the source instituting that minimum and then corruption would reduce normally again.

Personally I’ve long been a proponent of having corruption naturally introduce a minimum equal to the total amount of corruption production in a province. For example, if there are sources giving a total +8 Nurgle Corruption in a province, Nurgle Corruption would not reduce below 8. If a player wants to get rid of corruption totally from a province, then they have to remove the sources, whether that’s removing heroes in your border, or tackling an enemy spreading adjacent corruption, etc.

In this case, I think having Cults naturally produce some corruption (that potentially increases in tier) and instituting the proposed minimum would make them more potent tools for spreading corruption across the world (and subsequently building up manifestations). Possibly have them increase corruption in adjacent provinces as well if they get big enough.

I guess my point was that "minimum" corruption is the same as "absolute" corruption. If we say there's a minimum, we don't really mean it, as there has to be a way for the player to respond and reduce the minimum to 0. In other words, we're pretending this is a hard numbers system when if we look behind the curtain it's still the relative system. 

Talk of "minimum" corruption is an argument for a hard numbers system, because the minimum becomes the hard number. I just think it's sloppy and we might as well have a full-bore hard numbers system rather than a bandaid over on the misjudged relative value system.