Hi, i was thinking about religions of Middle-Earth and i don't think that every nation believes some gods. I thing Religions can't spread by Original Civ4 Rules.

I think that Religions only a loss of time. Alignments can do same job. Because, in Middle Earth, Civs doesn't believe something partially.

Alignments' names can be changed like;
-Way of Light (or Ilúvatar) [Good]
-The Neutral [Neutral]
-Way of Darkness (or Melkor) [Evil]

That sounds like an idea we could do.

I think we might use the same concepts as FFH2. I think the themes of the religions are very appropriate. They need tweeking to fit into the theme of LotR but the concepts are valid. I'll try to put some thoughts on each of them here:

Light of the Valar (Order in FFH2): the really "good" religion which prevents shadow spreading to these civs for example. The light of the valar is also a good name for this one
Runes of Aulë (Runes of Kilmorph in FFH2): the religion of the dwarves for the Valar who created them. Focused on money and mining. Neutral religion.
Fellowship of Leaves (don't know a better name): a neutral religion all about reverense with nature and living in harmonie with it. Could be religion of the Woodelves. Neutral religion (but more towards good than Runes)
Worship of the Shadow (Ashen Veil in FFH2): the religion which worships the shadow. Is an evil religion.

Three religions from FFH2 are not there: Empyrean and Octopus Overlords and Council of Esus (a good religion and a water evil religion and a sneaky evil religion). Maybe there are ideas how to fill the last three slots for religions (maybe something with worship of Illuvatar, the religion of Numenor as mentioned in the original thread. I concur that we shouldn't have missionaries but than we have to balance how fast the religion spreads or maybe find a way to still spread a religion in another way?

Overcouncil - Council of the Wises

Yep definitly, only available to good (and maybe neutral as well). Then something like council of shadows for the evil (and also neutral) civs, but with the shadow having a bigger vote in the council?

Yeah, Overcouncil = White Council or whatever it was called.

I don't know what other religions to have, it seems fine right now. Though I'm not entirely sure if the Good Men from the War of the Ring era fall under 'Light of the Valar' technically, maybe we can add something there.

I think missionaries of some kind should be OK during the beginning so you can get neutral civs on your side, but after that they should be gone. Having a state religion should automatically remove all non-state (or at least non-state-aligned) religions from all cities. Religion also should be carried by settlers.

My original idea was a little like alignment: light of aman represented the good influence of the Valar over elves, worship the darkness the corruption of Morgoth. For good men, we had Reverence for Eru, and later we agreed on other lesser good religions (one natural for sylvan elves, and one for dwarves). All religions were very hard to expand (the worship the darkness was the one that spread the most, and it was only 50% or 75% of the normal), and there were no missionaries. Elves and dwarves had civics that blocked other religions from their lands (even if they had no religion), like Theocracy, but men were susceptible to everything. Still, one thing I liked was that elves could still capture a Shadow city and have one city with Worship the Darkness - what would allow them to adopt it as state religion.
Having only Worshipt the Darkness and Light of Aman (good and evil) would work, too, perhaps with less racial-religious interaction and a civ's propension to adopt one of those (or none): like Númenor having 45% Light 45% Dark, Mordor having 95% Dark, Sindar having 70% Light, Rohan having 30% Light 20% Dark (the missing percentage should be no religion).

That's an interesting idea. Maybe we can somehow combine religion and alignment (not quite sure what that may mean).

Good ideas.

I had another idea.

Based on what has been said, I assume we are restricting Religion based on Alignment.

Perhaps we could have the religion automatically spread to each city as it is built. This way, we could eliminate the spread of religions that do not belong in the other civs. We could also eliminate the need for the Missionary Unit then.

Or do we want this as completely open and anything can happen?

his way, we could eliminate the spread of religions that do not belong in the other civs.
I don't think it would be the best way. Even if rare, sometimes it would be nice if a civ was corrupted or enlightened.

Yeah, based on other conversations I think we will allow that kind of thing to happen. Yours is a good idea. I think there were some conversations in the Civs thread about tying some of the likely hood into the alignments if I remember correctly. The religions wouldn't be completely determined by the alignments however.

Wait, you mean tying the likelihood of religion spread into the alignment value? I like the idea.

I also had the idea earlier that if we use the gradual alignment scheme, we could have random events and stuff pop up that force you to make choices that affect your alignment (`a la GalCiv2). We could have either that the events only affect alignment, effect both (like the ones from GalCiv2), or a mix.
In-game actions (like declaring war on a nation with Pleased or Friendly relations, or razing cities, or such) should also influence alignment, and if we can pull it off, the reverse should also be true for AI civs (alignment makes them more or less likely to backstab/raze/etc).

That sounds like a good idea T_F. Perhaps a bit too complex for the first release, but that depends on what the Modders think.

I would have to look at the broader alignment implementation first before I can tell what it can do out of the box and what we would have to alter. I like the idea though.

I've looked it up and the things that have a alingmentmodifier in them will be:
-events
-units
-buildings
-techs (which would mean we might have to split up some techs in a good and evil variant :( )
-civics
-religon

City razing affects alignment as well, as does whipping stuff.
All leaders have a starting value.


Not implemented as far as I can tell:
- attacking a civ you are pleased/friendly with
- having the AI act upon alignment (though maybe the AI allready acts upon alignment in FFH?)

Those last ones probably will be difficult to pull off. That one might be in FFH to a limited degree, but I haven't seen many razed cities at all by anyone.

For techs, I don't think it will end up as necessary to have variants of a tech. Like in FFH, you have some techs that research good things and other techs that research evil things without them necessarily being opposed or even related.

I will be leaving most of the discussion of Religion to others. I will probably only share this thought:

We might want to start with fewer Religions and add more later. Perhaps 1 Good, 1 Evil and 2 Neutral (1 for Dwarves, 1 for everyone else). That is what I would suggest as a start. Of course, it is up to you guys.

That's fine by me. I do like the broader allignment scheme for FFH2 that I suggested. Indeed Sengir, those things are the ones we can use out of the box although allignment for all events is maybe a little much for a first release (although we have to come up with a list anyway so why not).

Not all events need to have an alignment modifier (they just need the tag, but it can be empty as well).

My suggestion (Same as the Tech names I suggested):

- Light/Good: Light of Aman

- Dwarves: Teachings of Aulë

- Neutral: Guidance of the Valar

- Shadow/Evil: Corruption of Melkor

I like the names, but how exactly are we going to implement them? Will they be early on the techtree? Will only elves be able to tech Light of Aman (but able to spread to Neutral/Good civs). Melkor start with corruption of Melkor? How will they be spread? Only natural spread? We've talked about every new city starts with the state-religion in it, but are we allowing some missionary activity? Otherwise it will be hard for the other elves to obtain the religion allready founded by the first elven civ.

Religion is a hard question. I'm not sure they're even necessary though, mostly what they represent is represented by alignment already. Since we've already cut out religious buildings and stuff they're not going to be that important anyway, so maybe we should just get rid of them.

I'd have to check whether that would cause any problems, but it is an option indeed.

True, we could just attach the name to the Alignments to represent the religion. Religion in the Books was not as prevelant as we understand it today. Yes it was part of their lives, but people didn't seem to attend conntinuous religious services. Maybe something special on certain days, but not like our Modern world at all.

So I suppose we could drop it. Perhaps put it in with a modified version of the Dynamic Naming ability limited to Alignment/Religion only.

I like to keep the religion in, this gives us also another way to change allignment. We have to check what kind of buildings/units/heroes we want religions to provide (or maybe not that much actually but I would keep some kind of building per religion.

Perhaps not a Building (or maybe a Temple only), but Wonders defiinately. I have nothing against including Religions in the Game.

Yeah that was what I meant only a temple (but renamed to something else maybe) although even in Numenor they had an altar to Illuvator. And indeed, for wonders this also works well.

I'm also fine with religions. Temples sound good, wonders sound even better.

Suggestions for religions:
Worship of Eru (huge alignment bonus towards Good)
Vala Worship (medium alignment bonus towards Good) - represents people who think the Valar are gods themselves, should be easily replaceable with Eru
something about Aulë for dwarves may be separate or may fit under Vala Worship, it would work the same
---nothing for neutrals, though they should have some way to stop or slow other religions' spread
Some form of Melkor/Morgoth worship (huge alignment bonus towards Evil) - they called him Melkor at the end of Númenor I think

There should be no diplo penalty between civs with the Eru one or the Valar one, or at most a -1 from Eru toward Valar (none the other way), whereas there should be a medium-to-small penalty from any religious civ towards a Neutral civ with no religion (vice-versa is an option), a big enough penalty for the brink of war between Eru and Melkor, and maybe a slightly smaller penalty from Valar to Melkor (though either an equal penalty from Melkor to Valar as from Melkor to Eru, or slightly smaller).

That is fairly similar to what I posted at the top of this page. Good ideas. I'm not sure if there should be any penalty between any religions except with Melkor. Anything not Melkor should get a penalty, but no penalty between the others. They are the same group of gods after all.

True, I was just thinking a 'you don't worship Eru' or 'you don't worship right' penalty. I think the neutrals should still have a penalty towards them, since they don't worship anything.

Perhaps. It shouldn't be too high however.

I would keep the relation bonuses and minuses on religions relatively small, the biggest being a minus for having the evil religion. The religion should indeed make a significant change on the alignment scale.

Evil should probably also hate Good a lot for having the Good religions, but beyond that, yeah, keep religion diplo penalties small.

Yeah I agree, plus there is also already a penalty between civs with different allignment ("-1 you're good" or "-2 you're evil"). I posted somewhere a list of religions (about 5 I thinks). I'll see if I can find them again and put them in this discussion.

I was thinking on the subject of religions and I was thinking that there should be no "Holy City". The religion just exists, but no "Homeland" for it. This way, it eliminates the need for The Great Prophet again.

When you get a Religion, it should appear in your Capital First and then spread out from there.

I think we might use the same concepts as FFH2. I think the themes of the religions are very appropriate. They need tweeking to fit into the theme of LotR but the concepts are valid. I'll try to put some thoughts on each of them here:

Light of the Valar (Order in FFH2): the really "good" religion which prevents shadow spreading to these civs for example. The light of the valar is also a good name for this one
Runes of Aulë (Runes of Kilmorph in FFH2): the religion of the dwarves for the Valar who created them. Focused on money and mining. Neutral religion.
Fellowship of Leaves (don't know a better name): a neutral religion all about reverense with nature and living in harmonie with it. Could be religion of the Woodelves. Neutral religion (but more towards good than Runes)
Worship of the Shadow (Ashen Veil in FFH2): the religion which worships the shadow. Is an evil religion.

Three religions from FFH2 are not there: Empyrean and Octopus Overlords and Council of Esus (a good religion and a water evil religion and a sneaky evil religion). Maybe there are ideas how to fill the last three slots for religions (maybe something with worship of Illuvatar, the religion of Numenor as mentioned in the original thread. I concur that we shouldn't have missionaries but than we have to balance how fast the religion spreads or maybe find a way to still spread a religion in another way?

This is something I came up with a while back as a possible division of religions in Arda. Maybe we can have Worship of Eru as well so we have five. I agree about the holy city, maybe we can remove that.

A 5th Religion would be allright I guess.

Worship of Eru/Ilúvatar

I am kind of Partial towards only having 3 myself:

Light of the Valar
Runes of Aulë
Worship of the Shadow

This way you have Good vs. Evil in Arda, plus the Dwarves have their own. Men can thus choose to be Neutral (No Religion) or Good/Evil, siding one way or the other.

I am not against having more though of course.

I'm leaning towards three as well. I don't think more religions are really present in Arda. The reverence of nature topic can just as easily (or maybe better) be represented by a civic.

Also, I would have the Dwarven religion slightly towards good (very slightly).

I like those three as well. Agreed on Aulë one to Good, but again, slightly.

Okay that is fine with me. This is a fast way of finalizing discussions :).

:lol:

We can always try to implement more variety later if we chose.

So, Religions are finalized with three then. I will add it to the Finalized List.

So, how are we going to implement the spreading of religion. I think it should be enabled in some way, othersie you might just get an entire world of 1 Religion if it is founded too quickly.

We need to figue out a way to spread it to different cities intentionally, othersie you don't really have a choice in the matter and it can screw up your production based on religion.

Perhaps we could have an option available upon the Tech discovery you can then you can "Build" that particular Religion in your other cities. This way you can choose which Religion your Civ adhears to. Once you have built a Religion (Which you can only do if you adopt it) you cannot build another in that city. Also, if you Build a religion in that city, it expunges any other present religions.

That is just 1 idea. Let's her yours.

I like that idea to use the religion as a "building" that can only be build if you have a certain religion as a state religion. Once you founded one religion you can't found another. For the building of a "building religion" and removing all others and making that city have a religion upon building that "building" is not difficult. I know how to do it, it is in python so no problems there.
We do have to see how you can change religion if you want another one if you can never get two religions in a city.

Hmm, shouldn't it be possible for other civs to spread their religion to your cities (provided the cities do not have a religion allready)? Or are we keeping natural spreading in as well?

I was thinking of Natural Spreading as well, however, with the removal of the Monastary we need some way to allow people to Chose their religion and if they want to spread it in their cities.

That is what I was concerned about.

Hmmm.... I'm thinking something referencing Eru for the Good religion would be a better name than something referencing the Valar. I think it should reference the highest power that is revered, and pretty much any actual 'temple' that any Good civ built was to Eru, not any Vala.
Something like 'Eru Worship' or 'Worship of Eru' is good.

I like the idea of being able to 'build' a religion in your city.

I was thinking on how to spread Religion.

If we do put in the Temple, how about that you do not actually have the Religion until you build that Temple? (which is buildable upon Research of the relevant Religion). After you build the Temple (Which must be built in your Capital) you can convert to that Religion. Then the Religion begins to slowly passively spread in the world. You can however, upon converting to the Religion after building the First Temple, build Temples in all of your cities to Spread the Religion on your own without having to wait for the natural spreading of it. This way, we can eliminate the need for Missionaries and not have to worry about the Religion for some reason never spreading to some of your cities (that has happened to me).

* Note of why the First Temple should be built in your Capital. The reason I say this is because, the people of a Civilization usually followed the belief structure of its Ruling Classes. It was then spread thoughout the Empires by active movements started by them.

*Note regarding Temple building. I am not sure if we can code it in the way I have suggested (i.e. no active Religion until the First Temple being built and then spreading it by building other Temples). It is just an idea, and I will understand if it isn't possible, we can always come up with other ways of spreading it actively instead of passively. If you need other ideas let me know and I will post a few for you.

In regard to T_F's statements regarding Eru. We could rename it from Light of the Valar to Reverence of Eru Ilúvatar & The Valar.

Would it be possible to get more then one religion in a city?
Would it be possible to remove a religion from a city?
How would one switch from one state religion to another?
Would you loose your religion if your alignment drops from Good to Neutral or rises from Evil to Neutral?

Also:
Why have buildings instead of missionaries? Now you have to spent hammers in a new town to get the religion, otherwise you could spent them in an old town, doing it much quicker.

Also:
How can you spread the religion to other civs?

Right from the beginning, people didn't even want missionaries or buildings. What I offered was a compromise.

If you can think of another idea go right ahead and offer one. I'll be the first to admit that mine is not the most ideal. I also suggested including the Inquisitor which can only work within your own cities to remove a Religion.

And yes, I believe that if you are Evil you cannot be the Good Religion. If you are Good, you cannot be the Evil Religion. If you follow Aule you could be either Good/Neutral/Evil.

Spreading happens passively in that regard. Otherwise I don't know.

Like I said. It was earlier on when people were saying they didn't want buildings which ruled out the missionaries.

Another reason why I suggested dropping Religion as it really wasn't all that important in some ways.

Okay, here is another idea.

Religions:

You may choose 1 after researching the proper Tech (Religion) and having the Corresponding Alignment.

Good/Neutral - Light of the Valar (Or whatever we choose to name it)
Good/Neutral - Runes of Aule
Evil - Worship of the Shadow

You only get Diplo bonuses and penalties for having a religion. You get no other Bonuses or Buildings. Once you choose a Religion you may build Missionaries to spread it. However, if a Civ has a Permanent Alignment Restriction apon it, you cannot spread a Religion of another Alignment to it. If you choose a corresponding Religion your Alignment will change. Thus if you chose to Worship the Shadow, your Alignment automatically becomes Evil. If you chose 1 of the other two, then your Alignment will be eith Neutral or Good - your choice.

ie. Vanyar will always and only have Light of the Valar. Shadow Civs will always and only have Worship of the Shadow.

I was just asking questions to get the idea hammered out more completely, should have mentioned it in my post. Most questions apply to the new idea as well ;). The problem is, that I don't really have an idea myself of how to implement it, as it played such a minor role in Arda.

About the last idea: I like to have religion restricted to the alignment, but we don't have to implement changing the alignment of a civ when they adopt a religion (because they need to have the proper alignment before they can adopt it). Having the religion shift them more towards the ultimate good or evil (using broader alignment) is ok however.

Makes perfect sence. I overcomplicated the issue.

I want to pose a question for the group - if the only impact of religion is to impact diplomatic bonuses, is it worth implementing? Religions will have complexity to implement, and the 'law of parsimony' says that since we are designing a new game, with lots of stuff to worry about, does implementing a religious system only for a diplo bonus pass the work/reward trade-off? This result is especially true since we pretty much know how most Civ's will go anyway, should we just replace it with a Civ based diplo bonus?

Best wishes,

Breunor

You make another good argument to leave out Religions, at least in the first release. We will have Alignment modifiers still. Perhaps Religion should indeed be left until later. It would give us much more time to work out the system if we leave it until a later release.

What does everybody think?

I really don't know about the religions. Let me pose another question: when we don't implement the religions, how will we simulate the worship of the shadow and the spreading of that. As an example, what happened to the Numenoreans when they started falling under the shadow and building its temples.

Well let me come with a suggestion then:
How about drop the religions, except for the 'shadow-worshipping' (and rename Religion to shadow). Only the shadow-civs can research the tech, and they will be able to spread it with missionaries.(So you can only get it if you have OB with a Shadow civ or with a civ with 'shadow-worshipping' adopted). Shadow cities will start with the 'religion' when they are build.
If you have 'shadow-worshipping' in your city it will cause unhappiness, but you can purge it with a (expensive?) unit. Having 'shadow-worshipping' in a city also means that the Shadow has city visibility in that city (like in CIV vanilla).
If you have 'shadow-worshipping'in your city and have adopted it, you will receive bonusses, but there should be minusses as well (not sure exactly what this should entail).

Some things to clear stuff up:
- You need to be evil to adopt 'shadow-worshipping'
- You cannot build missionaries untill you have adopted 'shadow-worshipping'
- Only Shadow-civs can research the enabling tech.
- It will spread automatically to new cities from civs who have adopted 'shadow-worshipping', but will have to be spread by missionaries to existing cities and cities of civs who don't have adopted 'shadow-worshipping'.
- It can be purged by a unit which can only be build if you haven't adopted 'shadow-worshipping' and which needs a tech to be build.
- 'shadow-worshipping' in a city without adopting 'shadow-worshipping' as a 'religion' will cause unhappiness, so you can switch out of 'shadow-worshipping', but have to face a lot of unhappiness then.
- 'shadow-worshipping' gives you a big push on the evil slider, redeeming yourself by adopting no-state-religion will put you towards good again, but not as much as you went down upon adopting it in the first place.
- You automatically adopt no-state-religion if you become neutral while you have adopted 'shadow-worshipping'
- There should be civics that are available to anyone not running 'shadow-worshipping', to have some sort of balance mechanism for the benefits 'shadow-worshipping' provides.
- I would probably not have it impact diplo, other then affecting good/evil.

That's all I can think of for now.

Good suggestions. Maybe we could name the Unit to expell the Shadow: Light Bringer or something like that instead of Inquisitor.

When you get right down to it, unless you are a follower of Melkor/Morgoth or Sauron, then you do follow/believe in the rest of the Valar/Maiar/Eru. Just some are more closely attached to one over another, but there is no discord because of that. All are accepted as being equal. It is more the differences in the Politics/murder/etc. between kingdoms and if you follow the shadow or not as too why wars happen. It is not a Religious thing.

After all, most do not follow Sauron because he is a "God", but because they have the same goals as he does or are enslaved by him.

I really like the idea as you suggested it right now. We should however see how we implement the missionary type unit since the AI in general kinda spams missionaries. Maybe we can reduce how many the AI makes or do something else with it to avoid a whole world of shadow worship.
Also switching to no religion on becoming neutral might be problematic if you have no control on if you become neutral. Although I like the fact that you have to work to stay evil if you want to run the religion (maybe you have to stay with a certain civic because otherwise you move to neutral) which brings a nice dimension in it.

I think it will be pretty hard to get back to good after adopting 'shadow worshipping' as it should carry a evil modifier as well. So I think it will be more work to get to good then to stay evil. We should however make sure that it is clear which actions modify alignment.

I think for the missionary issue we could do this:

Missionary: National Unit: 1 Allowed

That would limit it enough (especially as the other cities of civs with the shadow religion get it automatically).
Also, I don't think a lot of civs will OB with Shadow easily, making spreading the shadow religion into these lands pretty hard.

That is true. Maybe we should also not allow spreading shadow to good?

I think that if Good civs have regular communications going with Shadow civs (which is what OB signifys in my book), they are running the risk of getting infected by it, so I'd not have an additional limit to it.

Oh yeah good point. Agreed

Yes, that is a good point.

So I just want to cinfirm a few things here before we really get into the implementation discussion.

#1: Is Religion in or not?

#2: Will we have a Religious Building (based on the idea I provided) or not if Religion is in?

#3: If Religion is in, then we will Allow the Missionary to be built, but only as a National Unit with a limit of 1 at a time being available?

#4: Should we limit the Missionary (If in) to only be built if you have the Religious Building in that city, otherwise you cannot build it?

Lets get these things decided. After all, there is no point in going into deep discussion of the Religions if we decide to not implement them. So, what do you guys think on these Topics?

#1: I like Sengir's idea of only including one religion: shadow
#2: We could have one sacrificial altar or temple of worship as a building
#3: You need that building to build the missionary, but national unit of only 1
#4: see #3.

I'm in favor of my own idea :D
#1: Only shadow
#2: have a sacrificial altar or something similar (only one building)
#3: A missionary, national unit of 1 sounds fine with me (though the name...)
#4: Yeah it should probably need the building.

1. Shadow only is a good idea
2. Sacrificial altar sounds great
3. Limited missionary (1 unit sounds good), and of course inquisitor-equivalents
4. Building is necessary

Sounds good to me.

I have updated the finalized Religions list to only include Worship of the Shadow.

no longer relevant