Ideas on How to add Religion to Civ 3

Does anyone know what the Eastern Orthodox crusader should be?

ShiroKobbure said:

Does anyone know what the Eastern Orthodox crusader should be?

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Maybe Hajduk, a Balkan freedom fighter - there's a unit for it too. While not exactly religious unit, they were all from Christian Orthodox countries under Muslim(Ottoman) domination.

With respect to the Eastern Orthodox church, you could use something like a Byzantine cataphract, a Russian boyar, or a Balkan mountaineer. The Eastern Orthodox church never really got into the crusade mentality, since they were always at war with the Muslims.

With respects to some religions, such as the Muslim, religious tolerance is not exactly a strong point. I am not sure what you would do with something like the Aztec religion, as that would not readily lead to being widely accepted, since most people like to keep their hearts inside of their chests.

The Spanish Conquistador could be viewed as having some religious motive, as embodied in the famous comment as their motivation was "God, Gold, and Glory."

Shiro, your suggestions for some "religious" units intrigue me. I would made some of this. Have you some more references? I need more pics for Rabbi and the first pic of your post dont'work and I neet it. Thanks.

If you want to get into warrior saddhus (Indian warrior "monks") I can post images for you to work with.

As to East Asia - these gentlemen seem to show up a lot in wuxia films. I'm not sure what the Chinese name for them would be. I know that historically at least 3 of them made epic journeys from China to India and back. I'd really like to see such a unit with both attack & settler animations. For founding those silk road cities that grew up around pilgrimage sites.

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timerover51 said:

With respects to some religions, such as the Muslim, religious tolerance is not exactly a strong point."

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Not always the case. For example, prior to the Crusades the Muslim rulers of the Holy Land were relatively tolerant of Jews and Christians. Sure they had to pay some extra taxes but they weren't slaughtered like the Crusaders did to the Jewish and Muslim inhabitants of Jeruslem when they first took it. Also I believe that under Ottoman rule there was tolerance of different religions in the Holy Land, though I could be wrong on that point.

Many, perhaps all, religions are guilty of intolerance at certain stages of their history, for example the persecution of heretics by Christians in the Middle Ages.

timerover51 said:

I am not sure what you would do with something like the Aztec religion, as that would not readily lead to being widely accepted, since most people like to keep their hearts inside of their chests.

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Yet a religion that's central ritual involves the (sometimes literal) consumption of the fleash and blood of God spreads like wild fire. As long as you or you friends and family weren't the ones getting your heart ripped out it probably wasn't so bad.

Religion is often spreed at the point of a sword. Axtec beliefs could be spreed in this manner just as Christianity and Islam were. We are talking about religious military units afterall. Unfortunately I know very little about Mesoamerican Religions so can't really comment on what their unit could be.

nick0515 said:

TE= Not always the case. For example, prior to the Crusades the Muslim rulers of the Holy Land were relatively tolerant of Jews and Christians. Sure they had to pay some extra taxes but they weren't slaughtered like the Crusaders did to the Jewish and Muslim inhabitants of Jeruslem when they first took it. Also I believe that under Ottoman rule there was tolerance of different religions in the Holy Land, though I could be wrong on that point.

Many, perhaps all, religions are guilty of intolerance at certain stages of their history, for example the persecution of heretics by Christians in the Middle Ages.

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Indeed the Albigensian Crusade (most notable for the true origin of the quote, "Kill them all, let God sort them out - and said by a bishop, too) seemed determined to destroy a thriving enclave of a truly religiously mixed society - Muslims; Christieans; Jews - and was the only Crusade ever proclaimed in Europe (Teutonic Knights excepted).

nick0515 said:

Yet a religion that's central ritual involves the (sometimes literal) consumption of the fleash and blood of God spreads like wild fire. As long as you or you friends and family weren't the ones getting your heart ripped out it probably wasn't so bad.

Religion is often spreed at the point of a sword. Aztec beliefs could be spread in this manner just as Christianity and Islam were. We are talking about religious military units afterall. Unfortunately I know very little about Mesoamerican Religions so can't really comment on what their unit could be.

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Yes, as a wise man once put it, "How can you work with a people for whom murder is prayer?"

I agree that they would probably have spread their Ball Courts and sacrificial rituals by force. My questions are would they ever have taken on the Andean Civs or expanded across the great desert into North America? Or, if they conquered the Mayans, would they learn to build boats and conquer the Caribe?

- & FYI there are many MesoAmerican units floating around, all roughly divided between peasants and "knightly orders" - Jaguar warriors, Eagle warriors, etc.

Happ New Year! ,

Oz

Ozymandias said:

Indeed the Albigensian Crusade (most notable for the true origin of the quote, "Kill them all, let God sort them out - and said by a bishop, too) seemed determined to destroy a thriving enclave of a truly religiously mixed society - Muslims; Christieans; Jews - and was the only Crusade ever proclaimed in Europe (Teutonic Knights excepted).

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I must add that the "kill them all" quotation was supposedly said not by a bishop but by Arnaud Amaury, the abbot of Citeaux, and it's at best apocryphal (the only source is Caesarius of Heisterbach, who although a careful historian did include a lot of spurious material, though he usually tried to indicate when he thought it inauthentic). Also, there were certainly other crusades within Europe - for example, there was more than one against the Waldenses.

Plotinus said:

Also, there were certainly other crusades within Europe

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And, arguably, the Templars.

Great thread. Lot of good ideas here. I noticed that there are a lot of religious units in stephs cossack conversions, particularly N. America shamans and meso american shamans. I think there's a nice russian monk there that would make a good orthadox greek also.

To bring this slightly back to the topic at hand - Shiro, what exactly are you looking for, religious wise? Obviously you're wanting each religion to have a certain warrior/paladin/crusader-type class - but what more do you want beyond that (if anything more at all)?

wolf_brother said:

To bring this slightly back to the topic at hand - Shiro, what exactly are you looking for, religious wise? Obviously you're wanting each religion to have a certain warrior/paladin/crusader-type class - but what more do you want beyond that (if anything more at all)?

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I just want to gather ideas on how we can add religion in Civ 3
Right now, thanks to everyone who has posted here, I have thought about having in my own mod:
Civ specific Religious techs to allow the building of religious churches that will spawn monks, that can convert other units.
And I will also have a tech "Crusade" which will allow the civs to build crusader units, if they have religious resources.

But, Im still open to more ideas.

Zen Monk and Rabbi

Looks nice, I'll be using it for my mod

Those two units look great! Keep up the good work!

Are you planning to make Priest units for the ancient era (Romans, Greeks, Persians) etc? Or just for the middle ages?

A Muslim Imam is a must I think. We have lots of Christian monks and priests thanks to Plotinus but I don't believe we have any Muslim religious non-military units (I say this because Imams are not priests, as I understand it Islam as no clerical hierarchy).

Some African/Coptic Christian priests/monks would be a nice addition to the unit pool also.

It would seem that two distinct religious unit types are being discussed here. That is, priest/monk units and military religious or 'crusader' units. Crusader units such as a Knights Templar would be used basically like any other military unit in Civ, it seems to me. Priest units, however, could be used in a number of ways. They could be used to enslave other 'convert' units which can be sacrificed for culture as Steph is planning to do. Another possible use could be as an invisible 'spy' type unit.

Personally I'd like to see as many priest/monk units and religious military units as possible. Both types of units add a lot of flavour to the game and help to create a sense of religion in Civ along with techs and improvements.

ShiroKobbure said:

Zen Monk and Rabbi

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Those look fantastic, I would definitely use them.

Something I forgot to tell: my monks have hidden nationality. So they can "convert" ennemy in their own territory...
To defend against hit, you can attack them of course, or use assassin.

Steph said:

Something I forgot to tell: my monks have hidden nationality. So they can "convert" ennemy in their own territory...
To defend against hit, you can attack them of course, or use assassin.

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That is an interesting way of using them Steph. Do you find the AI targeting them more? With HN units I always found the AI really goes after them.

Of course the AI doesn't like them... So you may have to protect them with regular units... but the AI doesn't like you to wander in his realm with armed forces...
But they are also very useful to convert the ennemy units inside your territory. Aren't you tired of seeing the AI send escorted settlers to settle right in the middle of your kingdom? Well, just convert them before they finish crossing!

In fact, it's hard to use the monks agressively, as they are hunted by the AI, but they are efficient to defend against "peaceful invasion"

True that is always an ongoing problem with the AI it is very interesting how the programmers made some "cheats" for the AI to use that the human cannot.