Example: Tithe. +1 gold for each 4 followers of this religion. If you get Tithe, then you can finance your army on the influx of gold from spreading your religion. (Which, flavor-wise, I love - you've effectively created a crusading army.) I'd thought some beliefs could increase faith (something needs to be the faith generator to keep the religion going), but we'd focus primarily on cross-feature gameplay benefits that make most beliefs of a similar power to Tithe.
Yeah, I agree. We have to be careful reinventing the wheel all the way, though - Civ 5 is a pretty good game, IMO. Probably really easy to mess up the balance... This will require, of course, tons of play testing.
I'm a bit unclear on this one, because cultural and diplomatic victories seem quite distinct in my mind. We've got a similar sort of divide as CiV. The flavor of Prestige (rather than tourism) layered on top of new Great Work types (Prophecies, etc, that you listed) based on GPs and some wonders, are the primary drivers of the cultural victory.
I think I was being unclear before. All I was trying to state is that there's game-mechanical blur between these concepts in base civ, and this will be preserved in our game. For instance, accumulating culture gives you social policies and ideologies, which really have little to do with culture, and actually aid your diplomatic victory.
I think having the three ideologies as channeling outlook meshes well with the structure of the victories and also gives us more to do with social policies. If we shift the form of governance into social policies, then we can create the differences you outline here
Cool. It will be very fun to help come up with this stuff.
However, I think there is a lot of great content here (I'm not quoting the list for brevity, but there are entries that immediately remind me of those nations). WoT devotes a lot of time to this and it would be remiss to skip over it entirely. I'm not sure if it's something that should come up in text - DoM screens, Civilopedia entries, and custom diplomacy responses - rather than gameplay though.
I was trying to throw out as many ideas as possible, because I didn't feel 100% about any of them. But yes, if we can figure out a way to bring in some of this stuff elsewhere in the game (especially the more iconic ones) it would be good flavor. Also, what is DoM? Am I being dumb?
Here I'll go through a few of the 'religious beliefs' you mentioned (picking from sections 2 and 3) with what I was thinking regarding the beliefs' effects, and how they fit into the flavor/with other combinations. I think the actual names could go to religions and then corresponding beliefs give those religions whatever bonuses. (You could make a "Light" religion that is benefited more by siding with the Shadow, if you want.)
I think I was being unclear, I wasn't presenting beliefs, but possible RELIGIONS - or rather, replacements for the concept of religions. I still worry that there aren't enough valid religions to fill out the game, so I looked for an alternate, "customs" or something.
You may have totally got that, already, but I wanted to make sure.
I totally get that mosques go with Taoism in Civ 5 and stuff, but the difference is that (thankfully) in real life, there isn't a clear Good and Bad religion, and stuff. Having a "Darkfriend" religious option, in particular, just seems to be really weird. First of all, there aren't really any darkfriend civs in-universe - just darkfriends within it. So, that eliminates a few of the potentially viable ones.
Additionally, "Light" is so generic as to seem almost useless. There don't seem to be enough clear variations of that light-following "religion" the WoT world seems to follow. And the others (Way of the Leaf, Ji'e'toh) aren't really religions, but sets of customs and philosophies - those peoples still, I think, follow the "Light" religion, whatever that means. Even the Way of the Light is really just a doctrine, much like, say, a political treatise or something like that in our world. So it feels a little weird to me to mix a few sort-of-religions with other sorts of philosophies.
I guess what I'd like to know is: What would your list of Religions be, given the proposals made here and floating around before? I think coming up with beliefs for them (or whatever we call them) will be doable, if a bit tricky, but in order to do that, we will need to know what the big options are - even if those are merely "coloristic" and aren't married to specific beliefs. For me, that's the big sticking point - can we create a list that feels right? Than the beliefs will come, IMO. There's a few here, but I'm curious what the whole list would be.
I'm thinking along the lines of the religion being called "Way of the Light" (or just "Light") and the belief being "Bane of Shadow" or something along those lines.
Combat bonus against Shadowspawn and gain faith when you kill their units.
This is a faith generator that has a potentially very relevant gameplay effect as well. (If you start near the Blight you'll be fighting Shadowspawn for most of the game.) But what if the Last Battle rolls around and you decide to side with the Shadow?
OK, so brief semi-relevant rant/stream of consciousness before I answer your thoughts: so I was planning on saying more on this later (and still will), but I'll ask right here - what do you think about there being a "darkfriend" mechanic *before* the last battle approaches. The idea of turning good or bad at the end for the LB is cool, but I'm not sure it really reflects the way the darkfriends work in the books.
Maybe I'm overthinking it, but what do you think about a mechanic where a civ can do things to before the LB's select-light-or-dark that somewhat pre-determines which side you're on? What I'm nervous about with the current LB design is that many people will do it as a simple value/odds judgement, based on the civs left in the game, etc. What if it weren't that simple? What we want is crazy betrayals, surprises, and/or epic whole-world alliances to fight the dark.
In the books (spoiler), Shara fights for the dark one. They do so because, apparently, a Chosen infiltrated them and became their messiah. Not possible to represent here, but I'm reminded about the way things often work with darkfriends in general: 1) They want something, 2) they are promised that thing, 3) later, they are called upon to return the favor. Sort of like the Godfather.
So what if, throughout the game, your civ coould make choices, privately, that gave you certain bonuses (or just *changes*, even if they aren't actually bonuses) by selling out the dark one, or whatever. Later, come time for the LB... you might not really have a choice, will you? You've sold yourself through and through. The Sharan people didn't stand a chance really - for some reason, their civ was primed to be taken over by a chosen.
How this could manifest itself... well, having darkfriend influence with the Ajahs, for one. Having an espionage system that has spies and diplomats, but also darkfriends who do terrible things for you (assassinations, etc.) But, again, you pay the price in that you become the vassal of the dark one.
Anyways, just an initial "ping" to see your thoughts on something like that. Would not be simple to balance, I'm sure. Anyways, I have more thoughts on this kind of stuff that i will approach later.
Regarding your Way of Light beliefs, I think they are mostly fine. I think a Child of the Light unit might make an interesting faith-puchase-only unit. Like a swordman or something, but also grants faith when killing shadowspawn or something. REally, though, the Children are usually used to combat Darkfriends and channelers, not shadowspawn (amadicia is really rather far from the blight) - depending on the darkfriend system we develop (if any), they could tie in with that.
Additionally, what if its like a combat-ready missionary? Probably too weird.
Other things that tie to the children... Well, their inquisitors would be the Hand of the Light, which would be perhaps better (and more terrible) than normal ones?
Again, though, all of this depends on whether or not we need Amadicia's UA or UU to be Children related. This is, to me, a huge issue, as the Children have taken up residence there for something like a thousand years.
So the religion to pick from could be called Ji'e'Toh, but I see multiple separable beliefs:
"Gai'shain" -
"Fulfilling toh" -
"Spit in Sightblinder's Eye" - Sacrifice a unit that can channel saidin in exchange for an in place faith (and culture or prestige?) bonus. (Should probably do either/both of only in your territory/in the Blight to prevent sacrificing channeling units when they're going to die anyway in a war.)
Interesting beliefs, definitely. As implied before, I'm a bit uncomfortable with ji'e'toh as a religion, per se, but i'd have to see what the other religions are to determine if it fits. I reserve judgement for now.
As far as gai'shain, I think it would have to work with other civs that have that religion, since that's kind of the point of ji'e'toh. Only the Shaido break this tenant (I'm assuming you aren't setting up the Shaido as a separate civ, since that seems a bit more era-focused than you're aiming for). The problem of course is that the way the diplo system works (by my understanding), you're supposedly less likely to go to war with similar religions, yes? So this might not come up, much.
Additionally, could be a super-worker purchased with Faith, yes?
I think, considering what 'toh' is int he books, it might be best for it to revolve around righting some wrong you've committed. Kind of odd, but, say, if you attacked them or something, or did something that the diplo system says makes people mad, you could somehow right the wrong and gain faith or culture or happiness. Not continuing to settle near them, that kind of thing. Again, kinda weird.
The sightblinder's eye thing is cool, BUT, I would say that it kind of has to come back to bite the forces of the light in the end, yes? I mean, that's what happened in the books (the male Aiel were "turned" and fought against the forces of light). Again, I have more developed thoughts on the Shadow and such that I'll work on after I'm thought more about it.
I think the Aiel customs also maybe cry for something like the Aztec UA - faith or culture after kills (or capturing or w/e).
Again, "Way of the Leaf" as the religion name, something like "Peaceful Wanderers" as the belief name.
A happiness bonus makes sense, but one thing about the tinkers is that they *won't* go to war. It's hard to imagine a religion doing this (as opposed to a UA or something), but really, a city that is all Leafy shouldn't be able to produce units, or should have unhappiness when doing so. That would really suck as a Belief, though.
I'm not sure what the mechanics would be, but flavor-wise, a belief that centers around searching for the "Song" might be cool, too.
Gain faith and possibly capture Dragonsworn combat units when you kill them. (This is the kind of early game religion accelerant that can help a warmongering civ by bolstering their army at the same time. It's proved underwhelming as a UA on Suleiman and Bismarck, but I think as a religious belief (which are often drastically much less powerful than UAs) it should be much more appropriate.)
Again, this will be part of a larger e-mail I'll write later, but I'm not quite sold on the Dragonsworn=barbs thing. To me, it's very era dependent. Masema did his thing for about a year, and then got killed. True, there are false dragons that arrive with armies, but that's a much bigger deal, and much rarer (this is a thing that should definitely happen). Furthermore, in the last battle, the dragonsworn are totally the good guys (as in, all of Rand's armies).
In short, I don't love the idea of barbarians=dragonsworn. I think they could be, sometimes, but shouldn't always be. More on this later.
Making Dragonsworn into something more meaningful obviously throws this religion into question a bit
I had been thinking of this as the Cairhienin UA as well, but I've yet to come up with a good way to apply a "diplo bonus" to the game in a meaningful way. Their effectiveness with manipulating Ajah influence could be increased, but that feels kind of boring for a UA. Maybe there's room for a belief like this.
Yeah, I'm not sold on this as a religion. I think Cairhien's UA should involve this somehow, because its such a big deal in the book, but it could be merely some *enhancement* of the Game of houses mechanic already present elsewhere. Will think on this.
I could pick out more and come up with some more beliefs, but I'm interested in some feedback first.
What do you think of the beliefs I've outlined above? Does that kind of approach change your mind about using Ji'e'toh and such as 'religions'? (We can rebrand "religions" and "faith" in the same way as turning "tourism" into "prestige".)
I'd say start top-level. If you have a good idea, say what your Religions list is. Then we can formulate a few beliefs per religion.
In general your approach is good. I think we should almost consider creating a set of religions with a set of beliefs that would work together to form that religion in "real life," and then let the player mix and match them. That way somebody could actually create a "real" Ji'e'toh' civ if they wanted, but wouldn't have to (like the "Cha Faile" who adopted random tenants of Ji'e'toh).
I think this kind of thing is a great reason to extract some of the flavor from the more developed civs in the series and making them more general systems that are part of core gameplay. .......That means civs like Arafel (I'm not sure if they're a full civ yet) won't feel under-flavored when you play them.
Yeah, we'll see, when push comes to shove, how hard it is to come up with flavorful stuff for most of the civs in the Universe. Ideally the flavor can be spread well enough, but ultimately it's going to come down to the uniques. Nobody would ever play Murandy just for flavor, since they're kidn of non-actors in the books, but they will if they are a good, fun civ!
I'm trying to get through the "mechanical" and higher level ideas I have before I try to jump in the UUs and UAs. Seems like kind of a big task, and I'd hate to suggest a bunch of stuff that we then end up using as other mechanics.