dunkleosteus
Roman Pleb
I like the way Civ V handles religion compared to Civ IV, I think it's a step in the right direction. I think it can be expanded though, and I'd like to talk about an idea I had for how it could happen. Consider this a discussion of the design of a religion feature in a Civ-V-like game, not necessarily with the intention of attempting to implement this though.
The concept of pantheons is good, and the customization of religions is great. I feel that it could better reflect how faith and belief interact with each other and develop though, while adding more engaging gameplay and strategy.
To begin, I think pantheons should be founded based on the size of a city, not on the faith output. Humans are naturally curious and like answers to things they don't understand, and therefore developing a mythology is natural. There is evidence of relatively complex religious beliefs pre-dating the agricultural revolution. In this system, having enough people in one place allows superstition to grow into a recognizable belief for your people. I think size 3 is adequate for this.
Pantheons should be limited to a single city, and each city should be able to found it's own pantheon. This is important, and why removing the faith requirement for founding pantheons is important: you don't compete for pantheons and everyone can choose pantheons already picked by others.
Religions are founded when a civilization reaches a threshold number of pantheon followers across all cities. There is no limit to the number of religions that can be founded, but except under special circumstances (defined below) you cannot found a religion if any religion is present in your cities.
When you found a pantheon you are faced with two options: to unite the beliefs of your people or to declare one true faith. Uniting the beliefs of your people founds a new religion with all the pantheons founded in each of your cities, so that any city following that religion gets the benefit of them all. Declaring one true faith selects only the pantheon of the founding city but allows the founder to select 3 additional beliefs from a separate list of traditions (note: this is not the list of pantheons), which would otherwise be harder to acquire.
These traditions are important: rather than the worldly beliefs of your people such as of the gods and the universe, they are in respect to how your people worship and follow your religion.
Examples of traditions would include: Funerary Rites, Asceticism, Prayer, Charity, Meditation, Story Telling, Festivals, etc.
Traditions can also be negative, such as Ritual Sacrifice, Human Sacrifice, Fanaticism, etc.
Over time and as more citizens start to follow your religion, new traditions will be randomly selected and added to your religion. Empires that are happy are more likely to acquire positive traditions and empires that are unhappy are more likely to acquire negative traditions. Traditions are weighted differently so that human sacrifice (one of the worst traditions) is unlikely to get whereas prayer (a very useful tradition) is easy (but not guaranteed). When a religion acquires prayer, they may select a religious building from a list.
Every negative tradition reduces the rate at which your religion spreads and cause excess unhappiness along with a number of other penalties, with positive traditions doing the reverse.
If enough negative traditions are accumulated, the dissatisfaction with the religion by its followers will be great enough that the religion needs to change. At this point it becomes a race between other civilizations following the religion and the religious founder. If other civilizations can accumulate enough faith first, they are able to break away from the religion by founding their own religion. All of their citizens that follow the parent religion immediately convert to the new religion. Negative traditions can be eliminated but all other beliefs and traditions are maintained, however the new religion's founder gets the benefits of founding a religion and the religion will acquire beliefs separately from that point forward.
If the original religion's founder get enough faith before this, they are able to reform their religion and eliminate all negative traits and stop other civilizations from splitting off.
The context: the idea behind this was to try to be able to recreate real world historical events in the religion system. The two options when founding a religion, to unite the pantheons or declare one true faith are intended to represent how polytheistic religions develop: specifically in the greek islands, many city states worshiped a patron god but collectively their pantheon contained all of the gods. In this sense, your religion can contain many gods rather than a single one. The second option reflects how the Abrahamic religions began, by rejecting the deities of neighbouring states, "Thou shall have no other gods before me."
The ability to split or reform your religion as negative traditions accumulate is designed to represent the events that led up to the protestant split from the catholic church and the subsequent catholic reformation that attempted to eradicate all the corruption from the catholic church.
I don't know a lot about religions in other parts of the world, so if anyone has any ideas about how more religions could be represented that would be great. Also, feedback is appreciated.
The concept of pantheons is good, and the customization of religions is great. I feel that it could better reflect how faith and belief interact with each other and develop though, while adding more engaging gameplay and strategy.
To begin, I think pantheons should be founded based on the size of a city, not on the faith output. Humans are naturally curious and like answers to things they don't understand, and therefore developing a mythology is natural. There is evidence of relatively complex religious beliefs pre-dating the agricultural revolution. In this system, having enough people in one place allows superstition to grow into a recognizable belief for your people. I think size 3 is adequate for this.
Pantheons should be limited to a single city, and each city should be able to found it's own pantheon. This is important, and why removing the faith requirement for founding pantheons is important: you don't compete for pantheons and everyone can choose pantheons already picked by others.
Religions are founded when a civilization reaches a threshold number of pantheon followers across all cities. There is no limit to the number of religions that can be founded, but except under special circumstances (defined below) you cannot found a religion if any religion is present in your cities.
When you found a pantheon you are faced with two options: to unite the beliefs of your people or to declare one true faith. Uniting the beliefs of your people founds a new religion with all the pantheons founded in each of your cities, so that any city following that religion gets the benefit of them all. Declaring one true faith selects only the pantheon of the founding city but allows the founder to select 3 additional beliefs from a separate list of traditions (note: this is not the list of pantheons), which would otherwise be harder to acquire.
These traditions are important: rather than the worldly beliefs of your people such as of the gods and the universe, they are in respect to how your people worship and follow your religion.
Examples of traditions would include: Funerary Rites, Asceticism, Prayer, Charity, Meditation, Story Telling, Festivals, etc.
Traditions can also be negative, such as Ritual Sacrifice, Human Sacrifice, Fanaticism, etc.
Over time and as more citizens start to follow your religion, new traditions will be randomly selected and added to your religion. Empires that are happy are more likely to acquire positive traditions and empires that are unhappy are more likely to acquire negative traditions. Traditions are weighted differently so that human sacrifice (one of the worst traditions) is unlikely to get whereas prayer (a very useful tradition) is easy (but not guaranteed). When a religion acquires prayer, they may select a religious building from a list.
Every negative tradition reduces the rate at which your religion spreads and cause excess unhappiness along with a number of other penalties, with positive traditions doing the reverse.
If enough negative traditions are accumulated, the dissatisfaction with the religion by its followers will be great enough that the religion needs to change. At this point it becomes a race between other civilizations following the religion and the religious founder. If other civilizations can accumulate enough faith first, they are able to break away from the religion by founding their own religion. All of their citizens that follow the parent religion immediately convert to the new religion. Negative traditions can be eliminated but all other beliefs and traditions are maintained, however the new religion's founder gets the benefits of founding a religion and the religion will acquire beliefs separately from that point forward.
If the original religion's founder get enough faith before this, they are able to reform their religion and eliminate all negative traits and stop other civilizations from splitting off.
The context: the idea behind this was to try to be able to recreate real world historical events in the religion system. The two options when founding a religion, to unite the pantheons or declare one true faith are intended to represent how polytheistic religions develop: specifically in the greek islands, many city states worshiped a patron god but collectively their pantheon contained all of the gods. In this sense, your religion can contain many gods rather than a single one. The second option reflects how the Abrahamic religions began, by rejecting the deities of neighbouring states, "Thou shall have no other gods before me."
The ability to split or reform your religion as negative traditions accumulate is designed to represent the events that led up to the protestant split from the catholic church and the subsequent catholic reformation that attempted to eradicate all the corruption from the catholic church.
I don't know a lot about religions in other parts of the world, so if anyone has any ideas about how more religions could be represented that would be great. Also, feedback is appreciated.
