Even with diminishing returns from faith buys and regular Elector spawns, and even if this strategy can only be used partially, it's worth considering and giving the Palatinate another chance.

This sounds like an interesting and unconventional civ. Going faith-heavy and picking your social policies wisely, to me, seems like an excellent way to get the most out of the Palatinate's Electors. Definitely a reason to grab the improved Piety tree mod and use faith heavily.

Grab faith, use electors to gain religious city states, which grant more faith. With Jesuit Education reformation belief, use faith to buy research buildings which also grant faith (and delicious science). With even more faith, grab more electors for more city-states. Some of those can be cultured CS, which help you grab Patronage faster, improving your hold on CS, their bonuses and giving you the occasional free Great Person as a gift.

Since Cultural Great People don't use the same pool as the merchants / engineers / scientists, you can also grab those to boost your culture for a victory like that... with FAITH, assuming you complete Aesthetics.

@ruhrgebietheld thanks for your input

I decided to give these guys another try. What I found is that on the right map, with just the right set of conditions, these guys can be plenty powerful. What it comes down to is whether or not you can maximize the amount of electors you wind up getting. If you only get a couple over the course of the game, the civ is massively underpowered. However, if you can get at least 7-8 of them throughout the game, the civ becomes quite powerful. The ideal conditions I discovered for achieving that is getting a start location that is on the coast and also has access to either stone or marble, so that the three early-game wonders that produce GM points are worth it to build in your capital. However, there also need to be sufficient land trading routes available from your starting location, in order to make it worth it to take the commerce tree. It took a lot of restarting to find such a location, but once I found one, these guys were quite powerful.

Heidelberg's a nice little town.

Lived there until the base closed down.

@Coolio_Castle28

Events and decisions is, very difficult to code unfortunately. Most mods can easily have support added, but with Events and Decisions you literally have to code a whole new mod to go along with it.

Maybe some day

Wow! I love your mod! Any way you could support events and decisions?

I really like most of your civs, but I wound up not being a fan of this one. The UA is solid, but the combination of the UU and UB are iffy. Having both a unique great person and a unique national wonder means you just don't get enough use out of your uniques overall. Great Merchants are arguably the least common great person you'll get (besides the great admiral and great general, since those are only generated through combat). Add that in with the fact that you can only build one of the UB, and by the end of the game you've wound up getting your uniques a whopping 3-4 times. That's just not enough. Heidelberg University makes complete sense, even though I'm usually of the opinion that if you make a unique national wonder you have to make it pretty much the single most overpowered building in the game, otherwise it's not worth enough, since you only get one. The elector would be better done as a non-great person UU though (although you'd then have to tone down its abilities).

@RuprechtIII We know, i myself am from palatinate, but we discussed this. We came to the conclusion that the visibility would be better.

OMG. Thats my home region ^^ But the emblem of Palatinate is an Golden Lion on a black field!
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wappen_der_Kurpfalz

Sounds good i will try this mod next time - tanks!
P.S. Heidelberg is one of the beautiful cities in german!

@Kumumps

That doesn't really help us at all

@Maquabra

Well, the 25% science only applies in the city in which it is built.

Quite interesting. A bit overpowered with faith from libraries, though.
An interesting unique unit. If an experienced player can help it, he won't produce a single great merchant, so great power of this unit is not so huge, all things considered.
Unique building, however, is extremely overpowered. 25% science bonus in cin's science center, especially when it has no prerequisites, is simply an end-game device. Cant imagine losing a game below deity with something like that.

OP as fuck

cool