What would you want changed with the religion system?

Alexander Boney

Alexander Boney

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Now, personally, I liked the religion system and how it worked, but there are some things I thought would have been good ideas:
1): Religious downsides/ atheist benefits:
The only side effect to religion as of yet is diplomatic penalties, and these are relatively minor on Prince(Preferred difficulty as of yet) anyway. This seems very minor, as religious clashes have started wars and caused major prejudice. Maybe a few penalties towards passive spread to already-religious cities? The other thing might be to allow de-conversion in the sense that flaws in the religious principles or scientific development might create atheists from religious citizens, and maybe making it so that religion is optional, and atheist citizens from a certain technological threshold produce 2:c5science: instead?
2): :c5faith:/:c5science: Incompatibility?
The thing I find a problem with is that science is technically evidence-based investigation and exploration, whilst faith is unjustified belief. Maybe an adjustable slider might help with this?
You can tell me your opinions. I might update the list occasionally.
 
I have a big rant somewhere inside me against the concept that religion excludes science, but I am a little pressed for time at the moment, so you get away with it :).

Some quick points:
- There was no society before the modern era that was not religious (and deeply so). This didn't prevent the world from making enormous scientific progress during the period.
- Some societies that were the most advanced of their time and place were theocracies or at least had a serious attachment to their state religion: the Arabs during the Islamic Golden Age, Tenochtitlan during its heyday...
- Even the Greeks and the Romans, who many people now seem to view as not really religious, actually were quite involved with their beliefs. We somehow now associate their gods and beliefs with stories and myths, but it was in fact an actual religion. Otherwise why would the Roman torture and kill all those Christian martyrs? Because they were offending the Roman gods, that's why. You can also see from other stories (like Alcibiades being accused of sacrilege) that the Greeks were similarly serious about not offending their gods.
- The myth of religion being against science comes from a simplified perspective of the "dark ages" and the Inquisition's role in it. The dark ages, in as much as they existed at all, were just a function of the Roman Empire's fall (with bonus darkness brought in by the Black Death). But technology continued to develop consistently. Consider how much better medieval caravels were when compared to Roman triremes, for instance.
- The Renaissance was religiously centered too, and also church funded in part. Renaissance era artists created a lot of religious work, but at the same time the cultural effervescence of the era also fueled scientific progress.

Be warned, this was the short version! :)

This is also not true:
Alexander Boney said:
religious clashes have started wars and caused major prejudice
Click to expand...

The overwhelming majority of wars - even the Crusades - were fought for resources, power or plunder. You will find it incredibly, incredibly difficult to find even a handful of examples for truly religious wars.
 
I've read about a very interesting option somewhere in the forum, where you could adopt beliefs, that gave negative modifiers to for example culture, science or gold. Then you could spread this religion to your opponents hindering them and causing diplomacy conflicts for doing so. Eventually the modifiers could be in the opponents' cities only, then it would really be OP, but fun.
 
The QC had many good points. The case of science vs. religion is complicated, although there are pretty indisputable cases of it in renaissance Italy as well as modern America. But not going into that discussion, from a gameplay perspective this is also a bad idea. I hated how in Civ4, some civs would always be hostile with you no matter what you did if you didn't adopt their religion. Realistic? Perhaps. Fun? Not so much.

Also, it's already pretty well established how currently, Piety is pretty much a no-option compared to Rationalism, simply because Science is so vital to any game style and victory condition, perhaps save cultural, but even to that. If we make the division between science and religion any wider, this will only emphasize this even more, which I think will be unhealthy for the game. If anything, we need to lessen the game in the sense that we need to make no-Rationalism less of a loser strategy if we want to retain the incompatibility between these two trees.
 
Now you can buy Great Scientists with your hard-earned Faith points, if you pick at least the Rationalism opener. Why even bother looking for "Religious downsides/atheist benefits" as you put it? Why not the other way round? The highly religious Middle Ages gave the world as many technological breakthroughs as modern, not-so-pious scientists (glasses, advanced architecture - enormous cathedrals with windows in place of walls for example - navigation instruments, new sailing ships, gunpowder weaponry, banking, universities, algebra, chemistry research - any one of us could go on). The whole concept of science vs. religion incompatibility is a modern concept, highly irrelevant in previous ages.

What is an important matter in Civ is how to make it balanced, not biased towards only picking Rationalism every game you play. Piety needs to be a feasible choice for most playstyles (as are other trees), and not the weakest tree out there. Seeing that we are getting new trees (Esthetics being the new cultural one, probably), we'll see most of the trees re-done and with new balance issues.
 
I liked the religious system a lot, but there are MANY little changes that i think would improve it.

First:
Expansion. Faith is still too limited. In harder difficulties, it may not influence your game in any way if you play a non-faith civilization.

1- Every civilization had it's beliefs. To apply that in-game, I think the palace should generate faith in a way that every civ would found a pantheon one time or another. Of course, in due time, some would succumb. (And of course, for that to work, we would need a lot more pantheons.)


Second:
Balance. Faith is unbalanced in many ways.

1 - It needs to be balanced between tall and wide empires, it's just unfair that wide empires have so many advantages with faith.
2 - Desert Folklore. It's broken. I happen to think every meta-faith belief should be extinguished. This way, faith related civilizations and policies would be made stronger. As it is now, a lucky village then choosing desert folklore and the Mongols (or any faith unrelated civ, for that matter) could become the game's most prominent holy rollers, and I don't think that's fair.


And theres a bunch of secondary things too.
I happen to think founder beliefs are too strong. Follower beliefs should be made stronger, IMO. I don't like faith buildings too... Cathedral, Mosques and Pagodas are just so much better than the other options it feels a bit unfair (for some reason, i like monasteries).

And i think that we should have policies or founder beliefs affecting how faith spreads. Like "national religion - Your religion spreads at double speed to your own cities, and at half speed to foreign ones" or something like that. Other options like this, affecting faith spreading (options that may preserve 'weak' religions in late game) are very interesting IMO.

And lastly, I do think atheism should be expressed. Like environmentalism in previous games, i think it should affect the late-game. But i really don't know how to work that.
 
I like the system as is. I'm sure it will get a small update to include the new mechanics, but the system is very well designed.

If any of the old systems need a long, hard glare...it's Espionage.
 
I hope Piety will get more religious and SCIENCE policies than before. Not less. Religion and Science were never really incompatible. And its not just Europe, Religion and Science went hand in hand in the Americas, Africa, Asia, SE Asia - and yes Europe too
 
I'd like to see more tension over religion in the early game. The AI has the ability to get quite angry at you for spreading your religion, but you telling them to not spread their religion usually doesn't stop them from running their missionaries and great prophets through your lands.

I wouldn't mind seeing DoWs based on religious conflicts have a varied diplomatic impact. For instance, another civ that follows your religion would receive a positive diplomatic boost from you going to war over your religion and the same opposite impacts to civs following the rival religion. Civs that follow religions that aren't involved stay the same. It is a small tweak, but could make for some interesting diplomatic situations early in the game.

bcaiko said:
If any of the old systems need a long, hard glare...it's Espionage.
Click to expand...

Agreed. Espionage could use an expansion of options. I wouldn't mind having choices like...

  • Sabotage Buildings (Add Extra Turns to Building)
  • Assassinate Specialists (Lower Population)
  • Spread Propaganda (Cause Small Amounts of Unhappiness)

If you wanted to get even more in depth, I'd love to see the spy as a movable unit on the map. The only units that can see spies would be another spy of the same or higher rank. Once your spy can see the enemy spy, all units can attack/destroy the spy as long as they are in range.

This would add a really cool element to the game without making it too in depth.
 
Imalich said:
I happen to think founder beliefs are too strong.
Click to expand...

From what I've seen, not many would agree with you. Follower beliefs are strong enough that some people advocate not creating a religion and just importing one. Personally I think the balance is about right.

Imalich said:
I don't like faith buildings too... Cathedral, Mosques and Pagodas are just so much better than the other options it feels a bit unfair (for some reason, i like monasteries).
Click to expand...

I believed the same at first, but not anymore. Most of the beliefs are pretty cool, it's just that some of them are more obviously good than others. Do try some of the others, you'll be surprised at how good they are and how much they change the game.
 
The QC said:
I have a big rant somewhere inside me against the concept that religion excludes science, but I am a little pressed for time at the moment, so you get away with it :).

Some quick points:
- There was no society before the modern era that was not religious (and deeply so). This didn't prevent the world from making enormous scientific progress during the period.
- Some societies that were the most advanced of their time and place were theocracies or at least had a serious attachment to their state religion: the Arabs during the Islamic Golden Age, Tenochtitlan during its heyday...
- Even the Greeks and the Romans, who many people now seem to view as not really religious, actually were quite involved with their beliefs. We somehow now associate their gods and beliefs with stories and myths, but it was in fact an actual religion. Otherwise why would the Roman torture and kill all those Christian martyrs? Because they were offending the Roman gods, that's why. You can also see from other stories (like Alcibiades being accused of sacrilege) that the Greeks were similarly serious about not offending their gods.
- The myth of religion being against science comes from a simplified perspective of the "dark ages" and the Inquisition's role in it. The dark ages, in as much as they existed at all, were just a function of the Roman Empire's fall (with bonus darkness brought in by the Black Death). But technology continued to develop consistently. Consider how much better medieval caravels were when compared to Roman triremes, for instance.
- The Renaissance was religiously centered too, and also church funded in part. Renaissance era artists created a lot of religious work, but at the same time the cultural effervescence of the era also fueled scientific progress.

Be warned, this was the short version! :)

This is also not true:


The overwhelming majority of wars - even the Crusades - were fought for resources, power or plunder. You will find it incredibly, incredibly difficult to find even a handful of examples for truly religious wars.
Click to expand...

This. Agreed completely. It is a big misconception that religion hinders science. Infact it helped scientific development. Had Arabs not accepted Islam, today mankind might not have technological progress it has made so far.
While we have some examples of inquisitions & executions of scientists by the church & so on, but that is just a small specific period of the whole world history aka The dark ages.

Sent from my HTC One V using Tapatalk 2
 
All I want is to be able to tell someone to stop sending prophets and missionaries into my territory before they start converting stuff. As much as I love walling off GPs with my units, it's kind of ridiculous. Beyond that I think the additional stuff they're adding into the game is enough for me to want religion to stay relatively as is.

edit: Oh, and I'd like a lesser diplo hit for declaring war on someone who refuses to stop sending missionaries/prophets after I've asked, or a more substantial hit on them.
 
It should be possible to remove a religion from the game without having to destroy the civilization. To this end, great prophets and missionaries shouldn't be able to convert a different religion's holy city, but religious pressure should still be able to pressure the holy city's religion into oblivion.

I would also create more religious buildings and allow each religion to choose one on top of other beliefs. A city that has that religion as a majority should be able to build it like a regular building.

I also hope that Piety is more...pious. For a religious-oriented policy tree, it feels underwhelming.

I hope Piety will get more religious and SCIENCE policies than before. Not less. Religion and Science were never really incompatible. And its not just Europe, Religion and Science went hand in hand in the Americas, Africa, Asia, SE Asia - and yes Europe too
Click to expand...

This is an argument that rationalism and piety should be both allowed at once, not that piety should do better for science.
 
I like it is just fine. It provides some nice minor bonuses, esp early game and it doesn't affect much if you ignore it. Using faith for GP is nice but not critical. This should stay the least important element compared to science, production, food, resources and culture.
 
Because religion was the least important element compared to all of those in human history.
 
I'd like to see a greater variety of founder beliefs. At the moment I feel there's an inconsistency between 'race to get the best belief' vs 'get the best belief for the target VC.'

As difficulty increases founding gets much, much harder (or more a case of luck), so often it's a race you're unlikely to win, or come close. It just seems a little not one thing or the other, imho.

I also think that if you fail to found a religion but wipe out a religious civ, capturing their capital, you should get the founder benefit. Perhaps only if your civ is something like 66% converted to the neighbouring religion.
 
The randomness

If you have 200 faith you should get a great prophet not a 50 % change it will happen or not...
You can get situations where you found you're pantheon earlier then the Ai and get 200 faith pretty quickly but still aren't able to get a religion just because it didn't spawn...

Watch madjin's beyond the momument episode : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JIAEwv44X8

Here you can see the problem in the game itself.


Olso the increasing cost of phanteons is a little bit silly to me because every single Ai will found a pantheon earlier then you


And how about fixing the beliefs now there are just beliefs no one picks because they are worthless
 
I like the system as is, and I think it is fairly balanced. The faith buildings (Pagoda) are counter-balanced by costing faith to build. Just building them in your initial few cities is enough faith that could have been spent on an extra great person. And forget about building them in all your cities in a huge, sprawling empire. The cost gets crazy high in later eras.

Desert Folklore is an exception, of course. It is widely agreed by many that it is just too much faith. Simple fix would be to limit it to Oasis. It would be on par with stone circles then.
 
Alexander Boney said:
This seems very minor, as religious clashes have started wars and caused major prejudice.
Click to expand...

The QC said:
The overwhelming majority of wars - even the Crusades - were fought for resources, power or plunder. You will find it incredibly, incredibly difficult to find even a handful of examples for truly religious wars.
Click to expand...

According to the Encyclopedia of Wars (a list/summary of every war known to have occurred in human history) only about 7% of wars have been fought over religion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_war
 
Babri said:
This. Agreed completely. It is a big misconception that religion hinders science. Infact it helped scientific development. Had Arabs not accepted Islam, today mankind might not have technological progress it has made so far.
While we have some examples of inquisitions & executions of scientists by the church & so on, but that is just a small specific period of the whole world history aka The dark ages.
Click to expand...

No, religion does hinder science. There are two reasons for this.

  1. If a scientific discovery is at odds with religious doctrine, then believers (especially preachers) have to somehow reconcile the two. Often, that means ignoring the science.
  2. Science and religion are fundamentally incompatible. I'm not claiming that you can't be a religious scientist because certainly there are many who were (and are) just that. But I am claiming that as scientific knowledge increases, religion becomes less relevant. Religion attempts to explain the world around us with ideas like "God did it" and "we'll never know because we aren't God". (I use God here to represent any god, not a specific one.) These ideas are precisely the opposite of science.

There are many, many, many examples of religious institutions holding back science and indeed that practice continues today. How often do we read about another school district throwing out evolution in favor of intelligent design? There are children's museums, books, movies, and websites dedicated to the idea that the Earth is 6,000 years old and that dinosaurs and humans co-existed. Stem cell research is still largely banned in the US and elsewhere because of religious beliefs. How could you possibly say that these sorts of things only occurred during the Dark Ages?!

The current Piety/Rationalism dynamic is a good one on paper. Any civilization can start with Piety. Some might choose to remain that way while others move toward Rationalism in later ages. In practice, though, this mechanic has a problem. Unlocking the Rationalism tree immediately turns off all of the Piety bonuses. That's harsh. Shouldn't there be a gradual transition?

As far as bonuses for atheism are concerned, I'm not sure that there should be any. There aren't many examples of truly atheist societies, so it's hard to say what sort of bonuses such a society should get. Plus, a player that doesn't take Piety and doesn't focus on religion will have other bonuses from Social Policies and will likely have a better chance to build early-game wonders or wage an early-game war since s/he won't be spending production on Shrines and Temples.

There are some other things that I don't like about the current religion system.

  1. It's too random. Some randomness is good, but too much randomness hinders strategy. There are many factors that contribute to this problem.
    • Faith Ruins. There ruins almost always guarantee a pantheon. I'm actually OK with these, though. A Pantheon isn't a religion and players still generally need to focus on Shrines, Temples, or Wonders to actually get a religion.
    • Faith-Generating Pantheons. These are a big problem. Desert Folklore, Religious Idols, and Stone Circles are the worst offenders because the additional Faith tends to be on tiles that you're be working anyway. Goddess of Festivals isn't quite as bad since Incense and Wine aren't usually fantastic tiles to work early. Dance of the Aurora avoids being too offensive by requiring you to work poor tiles to get a bonus. In all cases, however, these pantheons can create enormous amounts of Faith with (almost) no sacrifice. It's too easy to get a religion when you have Desert Folklore or Stone Circles.
    • Great Prophets. I've lost count of how many times I met the Faith threshold to generate a Great Prophet and went many turns without actually getting one. Working toward a religion and then not getting one because of bad luck isn't fun. If I put in the effort to generate enough Faith for a Great Prophet, then I should get a Great Prophet.
  2. It's very difficult to stop enemy Missionaries. Inquisitors work great, but they're expensive. I almost never have enough Faith to spend any on Inquisitors. Surrounding my cities with units on every tile is silly. Overall, I think that it's too easy to convert very religious cities (especially holy cities). I'd like to have a diplomatic option to tell opponents to stop sending Missionaries, too. Currently, that dialogue seems to only work in AI->Player mode.
  3. Religion is weak in the late game. I can see where the developers were going with this, but I don't like it. While transitioning away from religion and toward science makes a lot of sense for a civilization that's working toward a science victory, it makes much less sense for a civilization working on any other victory type. The game encourages players to give up Piety and embrace Rationalism by limiting when some bonuses work by era, by not providing any Faith-generating buildings in later eras, and by making Great Persons such an attractive option that spending Faith on more Missionaries, Great Prophets, or buildings is almost never a good idea.

Overall, though, the current system is pretty good. It's much better than the religion system in Civ IV. The diplomatic bonuses and penalties especially are much better.
 
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