C2C - Religions discussions and ideas

Koshling said:

I like your ideas (this, the future civis, and the techs). However, right now I think the urgent thing we need to sort out is the religious dominance that occurs with a runaway leader in the early game, due to bunching, and tech leadership leading to religious dominance (closely lated but not entirely a single point).

Personally I like the ideas that aiandy floated, with some sort of religion points that build up over time (possibly influenced by buildings, civics, etc.), and must be spent to found a religion ( which would still have the tech pre req as now as well). Build up of religion points would be slowed by the presence of existing religions ( on a per city basis maybe?), and especially by ownership of holy cities. The religion points are a mechanic to prevent one player dominating a large proportion of all religions founded...

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I like a more generic religion approach where we sort of go with the Rapture and Faces of God ideas but get rid of real world religions. So that in the early periods your religion matches where you are and what you do. Sort of an extension of the generic culture idea. Then after philosophy the real major religions begin to form replacing the older ones. Buildings would obsolete or auto upgrade to the new religion. We get huge complaints if we have real world religions going obsolete rather than not being included at all.

Interesting concepts.

One way to bring some balance into the religious dominations we're seeing is to take away the free prophets and religion founding on achieving techs first and move to a system where, via divine prophets, we only generate prophets with standard GP pts earned on more common buildings. Along those lines, we could also include more GP pts towards other types on more common buildings as well to make it more imperative to focus our cities towards GP goals.

Along the same lines, I'm still thinking it hurts the game balance with all the bonuses given for being first to a tech - just makes the leader lead by a larger gap and increases the distinction in difficulty between the various toughness settings exponentially. I'd like to find a way to remove them all really.

Dancing Hoskuld said:

We get huge complaints if we have real world religions going obsolete rather than not being included at all.

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You get big complaints - from me! I like the flavour of the real religions!
although - or because - I am a strict atheist//agnostic//pantheist but anything near organized religion, so gimme a few turns of fun with them before I switch to secularism..

I don't know but has anybody ever used "intolerant"? I don't. Maybe give it improved organized religion stats (the church organizes even more for the extinction of non believers) and some diplomatic penalties vs civs with other religion.

The religious points is fine with me. Could be like in civ5 the policy points, as I understand? if you have 4 cites (C2C: temples/monasteries/...)you need more policy points than if you had only 3 cities for next policy (holy city/religious wonder buildable).

So if you have only a few temples/monasteries and are a small but very religous empire you had it easier to specialize on that than if you were a huge empire with many religions. You would be able to progress religiously too but not at a much faster rate than a small empire.

i have an idea of how religions would work:

does anyone remember the classic city building series (caeser 3,pharoh etc) remember how in those games you had to please the gods or the would destroy you?

no,than listen to my idea:

i think that gods of religions in c2c should be active i.e according to how much you invest in them(build religious buildings,offer them gifts of maybe units,gold or something)
they should reward you by perhaps give you money,more production and food gp points and other good things.
however if you don't, they will create disaters like desiese,kill civilians and at worst even destroy your cities!!!!

this idea would make religion more dynamic and more interesting, I thought that even maybe gods of diffrent religions would fight each other!!!

an expample would be: lets say i am a civ with a muslim religion and i conquer and convet a buhdist population, mabe the bhudaa will punish me for it and allah would do the same

this means that religion would be way more fun and complex this way

please review my idea i think it's really good

I greatly dislike your idea, because it adds too much..fantasy to the game. The idea itself is good, I just don´t want it in Civ.

anunknownman said:

however if you don't, they will create disasters like disease,kill civilians and at worst even destroy your cities!!!!

this idea would make religion more dynamic and more interesting, I thought that even maybe gods of different religions would fight each other!!!

an example would be: lets say i am a civ with a Muslim religion and i conquer and convert a Buddhist population, maybe the Buddha will punish me for it and Allah would do the same

this means that religion would be way more fun and complex this way

please review my idea i think it's really good

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This is really what happened(even nowadays people are starting to finally start to believe this again), its even in ancient scriptures but its only a "theory", cause no one had paper back then, and it was written in stone, but again its only now written by Ancient Alien Theorist.

Hah, now that would be a really Alternate Time-line. Please don't add anything derived from the AAT's... Regardless of if none, part, or all that they say is true there's nothing left to actually prove anything, no hi-tech tools, structures, weapons; and religions shouldn't have any physical power, mind power is plenty.

Cheers

Il Principe said:

I greatly dislike your idea, because it adds too much..fantasy to the game. The idea itself is good, I just don´t want it in Civ.

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thank you for liking it

but too much fantasy?
future eras aren't exactly historical you know....

Non-Historical and Fantasy are somewhat different. Sure, usually Sci-Fi is bunched together with Fantasy, and a high enough technology level can seem like magic, but it's still not the same.
Sci-Fi, and future eras, are things that could happen. Fantasy are things that could not happen.
What is and what isn't considered fantasy is different from person to person. A few will have a more open mind to extreme possibilities while a few others will be totally closed off to any deviation, and most are somewhere in between. It's a thin line to follow so the safest way would be that if in doubt then leave it out. Gods actually having power and doing stuff (or it being aliens posing as gods) is for me way over the line, in fact in my opinion there should be no doubt about leaving that out of the game.
If you are more open to that kind of things that's good. We all need to have different views and opinions to be able to meet at compromises.

Cheers

I've often considered making an AAT mod once the core has developed to a more stable point because I'm convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt of its truth. That said, its a very specific storyline that took place and it would be really difficult to make a generic inclusion of its influence on man's development that harmonizes in any way with the current scientifically accepted view of the emergence of mankind. Thus why it would require a 'modmod' altogether. Not all sources of mankind began at once in this model. In particular, the white man is a much younger breed. And the generation of religion wasn't really a development of advancing thought among men but of political shifts among the progenitor species.

Izzy founded 4-5 religions in Madrid (I have divine prophets enabled). What are the effects of DP?

My idea of how to create a "rise and fall" of religions:

It should be dictated by the player or AI. Upon founding a new religion, they might decide to convert to that religion. They should have an option to spread that religion to most of their big cities and get rid of that religions buildings.

There should also be a civic similar to Arabia's unique power in RFC to help with religion spread.

Mouthwash said:

Izzy founded 4-5 religions in Madrid (I have divine prophets enabled). What are the effects of DP?

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I did not write Divine Prophets but this is how it works I think

• The first to study a Religion Tech gets a free Great Prophet
• Said GP can spread any available to the city of your choice. This may be a religion that has already been founded or one of the ones you have the tech for. (Where you = the owner of the GP)

Mouthwash said:

My idea of how to create a "rise and fall" of religions:

It should be dictated by the player or AI. Upon founding a new religion, they might decide to convert to that religion. They should have an option to spread that religion to most of their big cities and get rid of that religions buildings.

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While that may work for monotheistic religions why should it for polytheistic religions? Most of the latter have just included other polytheistic and monotheistic religions into them. Look at Rome for a classic example or Hinduism for modern.

Dancing Hoskuld said:

While that may work for monotheistic religions why should it for polytheistic religions? Most of the latter have just included other polytheistic and monotheistic religions into them. Look at Rome for a classic example or Hinduism for modern.

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Why wouldn't it work for polytheistic religions? Christianity did the same thing as the Romans, adopting pagan traditions (like Christmas) for themselves. They didn't truly annihilate every part of pagan culture, just reformed it.

Mouthwash said:

Izzy founded 4-5 religions in Madrid (I have divine prophets enabled).
<snip>

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This can happen with DP on or off. And Will happen most of the time because of the groupings for religion giving techs in the Techtree. The New tech tree seems to make this even more possible than the old. And with the old techtree the Tech leader could found the Majority of the religions.

With the New Techtree in my current game at 1200BC I've already founded 7 religions with out Actually trying to, except for two. I did beeline for Tengri and Mono (Judaism). The others fell to me because of their placement in the tree.

Christianity did the same thing as the Romans, adopting pagan traditions (like Christmas) for themselves. They didn't truly annihilate every part of pagan culture, just reformed it.

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Actually you have that backwards. Emperor Constantine (circa ~ 300AD) incorporated Roman pagan rituals and holidays into Christianity. To reduce the conflict going on in the empire between Roman pagans and the growing Christians. Later Emperor Justinian (circa ~ 450AD) did even more merging. But it was not the Christians that took on these rites and rituals but the Roman society that tried to blend Christianity into their belief system. And out of this blending came the Holy Roman Empire from which Catholicism emerged and was the basis for.

JosEPh

JosEPh_II said:

This can happen with DP on or off. And Will happen most of the time because of the groupings for religion giving techs in the Techtree. The New tech tree seems to make this even more possible than the old. And with the old techtree the Tech leader could found the Majority of the religions.

With the New Techtree in my current game at 1200BC I've already founded 7 religions with out Actually trying to, except for two. I did beeline for Tengri and Mono (Judaism). The others fell to me because of their placement in the tree.


Actually you have that backwards. Emperor Constantine (circa ~ 300AD) incorporated Roman pagan rituals and holidays into Christianity. To reduce the conflict going on in the empire between Roman pagans and the growing Christians. Later Emperor Justinian (circa ~ 450AD) did even more merging. But it was not the Christians that took on these rites and rituals but the Roman society that tried to blend Christianity into their belief system. And out of this blending came the Holy Roman Empire from which Catholicism emerged and was the basis for.

JosEPh

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Are you using the SVN version, cause i thought that was way better now?

strategyonly said:

Are you using the SVN version, cause i thought that was way better now?

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I have to agree. before the latest tech tree I could easily get all the religions now I need to "fight" to get one of the four early ones. After that I can still get almost all of the rest.

@ SO,
Yeppers on the SVN. Although I have not updated since Sunday.

I missed the 1st 2 but got Ngai without realizing it. Then I beelined Tengri. After that I was trying to get to Tribalism as fast as possible and then from Tribal to Sed Life. (Which I did get to 1st) aAnd from the free tech I took Caste which gave Mesopot. Which in turn lead to Sac. Cult. which gave Naghalism. I then Beelined Mono and got it 1st. I then took Mathematics that gives Shinto. Then Meditation for Buddhism and Monasteries. 200 game years later I researched Code of Law 1st and got Confucianism. It's now 1149BC in my current game on the New Epic speed.

JosEPh

JosEPh_II said:

@ SO,
Yeppers on the SVN. Although I have not updated since Sunday.

I missed the 1st 2 but got Ngai without realizing it. Then I beelined Tengri. After that I was trying to get to Tribalism as fast as possible and then from Tribal to Sed Life. (Which I did get to 1st) aAnd from the free tech I took Caste which gave Mesopot. Which in turn lead to Sac. Cult. which gave Naghalism. I then Beelined Mono and got it 1st. I then took Mathematics that gives Shinto. Then Meditation for Buddhism and Monasteries. 200 game years later I researched Code of Law 1st and got Confucianism. It's now 1149BC in my current game on the New Epic speed.

JosEPh

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So you missed out on Druid and Shaman. If you beeline Tengri you are likely to get Ngai. However it does depend on your opponents. The Mongols also beeline Tengri and get there before me sometimes.

Sad thing is, I've got elephant, camel, and rhinoriders (don't know why I don't have giraffe but maybe cause I don't have horse Archer tech yet) But No horses!! And my AI neighbors won't trade me any! I have spotted a horse resource but it's gonna take my galleys some effort to get a settler there to claim it. Maybe I should just overrun Austaralia's Curtain (sp?)(closest AI neighbor) and take his 2 horse resources. Hmmm.....

JosEPh

The Intolerant civic could use some work. It has so many penalties associated with it that I have never once run it, even in games where I otherwise would. Perhaps tone down the revolt instability to only cause local revolt instability. Increase unhappiness due to non-state religions to make up for it. As it is, I usually avoid running Intolerance simply because my empire would fall apart the minute I try it.

Also, certain religions should probably not work with Intolerant. Most of the polytheistic religions tend to view other religions as simply "that city's God", as opposed to a heathen, evil belief system. Baha'i should definitely not allow intolerance, because one of it's central beliefs is that all religions are correct, in that they are how those people chose to interpret God.

I also realize that it's been discussed before, but what about splitting Christianity into Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and Protestantism? We already have all the graphics we need for those, and it makes perfect sense. We already have Mormonism as a seperate religion, even though it is /much/ smaller than the other branches of Christianity.

Lastly, You know how LDS buildings remove access to wine, tea, tobacco, and coffee? That should be expanded a bit. Both Islam and Baha'i do not allow their followers to drink alcohol. Baha'i also forbids the usage of pretty much any intoxicant, so they should remove access to the Drugs resource as well. Theoretically Islam also forbids the usage of intoxicants, but in practice, the smoking of hashish and opium has been widespread across the Islamic world for quite some time, while the prohibition against alcohol has actually been observed, for the most part.

Edit: A few more thoughts. How about moving Andeanism back to Calendar and toning down it's research bonuses? I've never thought of Andeanism as being a particularly scientific belief system, even if the Incas were surprisingly advanced given their isolation. One religion that I think could use research bonuses that is currently lacking it is Baha'i. One of the central beliefs of Baha'i is that Science and Religion must work together, for Religion without Science breeds superstition, and Science without Religion breeds materialism. This could help to beef up Baha'i and make it a more desirable religion to have as state religion. As it is, Baha'i comes into the game so late and provides bonuses that differ very little from other religions.

Also, how about some small military bonuses for Sikhism, like the ones for Shinto, Hellenism, Tengriism and Asatru? Sikhs have long been famed for the prowess of their warriors. The Sikh religion encourages a militant stand in the fight against evil, and to this end all Sikhs must carry a dagger at all times (Modern Sikhs usually wear a ceremonial dagger necklace that does not come out of it's sheath and could not be mistaken for a weapon). Perhaps it could grant +1 experience for it's buildings in the manner that Asatru does, with the difference that it wouldn't be limited to just melee units. This could make Sikhism a much more attractice choice, as right now it is a pretty lackluster religion, especially considering how late in the game it is founded.