Religion- Building, Holy War & Taxing

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Greek Stud

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Im really excited about the religion aspect. Im sure most of you can expect that Im most interested in spreading Hellenistic Paganism or Byzantine Orthodoxy.

I think relgions should be free roaming. Possibly playable. The only time when a religion has territorial borderlines is when a Civilization makes the religion its government. They can also break away from the religion at their choosing, like if you get greedy. If you play as a religious leader, you start at a specific building: Temple. Recruiting and influencing units and towns, some of their taxable money is diverted towards your religion. Depending on how popular you are to a town, the govt can support you or send troops after you. With your money, you can buy units and buy land and pay to build more temples. Temples can be upgraded to your a Special Building unit (Mosque, Church, Jewish Temple, Monastary). High popularity opens up Wonder Buildings that you can purchase. You can place Holy Warrior units over buildings to prevent governments from burning your Temples. If you are popular and not killed quickly, citizens can revolt agaist their country/civ. If a religion captures a town/city/metropolis with their Holy Warriors, they should have the ability to tranverse into a playable civ that either goes on as a Religious State or you can change your Constitution (a screen I've suggested that affects your citizen's beliefs). The Monasteries of Tibet and Nepal would be cool to see on your Map. Or the Mesopotamia conflict surrounded by the Temple of Solomon, Pyramids of Giza, Hanging Gardens.

Relgions:
Animism
Coptic
Buddism
Confussious
Jewish
Sunni
Shi'ite
Roman Catholic
Eastern Orthodox
Protestant
Anglican
Wicca
Voo Doo
Paganism
Hindu
Bloody Cults

You have a religious reputation, like Civ reputation. Historical allies and enemies. And your religion should be able to change its Philosophy over time. After writting this post it sounds like a good feature, but is probably better as not being a major feature. eh, who knows.
 
Maybe you could also have something like the Inquisition. (5 citizens have been killed: happiness is decreased, religion strength is increased, ect.)
 
I would agree that increasing the role of religion in CivIV would be cool.

It's one aspect of Age of Empires that I liked, the fact that I could take priests and convert the AI's troops or workers. It adds a very interesting element to the game.

Seems to make sense to add it when you think that the AI will all of a sudden claim one of your cities because the citizens apparently think they will fair better under a different government. If cities can switch allegiance, shouldn't religion play a role in the game as well?
 
Greek Stud has the best idea about religion I've seen because of its flexibility and accuracy.

(If I'm reading correctly.) Players either choose to play as a Civilization, or as a Religion. This allows a Religion and a Civilization to cooperate, or compete.

Rather, it's pretty historically inaccurate to have all religion to be state-controlled. Most of the interesting things that religion does transcends the state.

Still, what we're talking about is implementing a game within a game. The Civilizations found the cities, while you found a Religion within those cities and "piggyback" on waves of expansion to get your religion out there. Sometimes you're cooperating with a Civ, until you get greedy, at which point you try to exert influence over his empire, in order to keep your religion expanding. You really are playing a seperate game from the Civs, and because of that I have a hard time believing the developers are going this route.

And man, I'd love to figure out how to gradually modify a religious philosophy over time, but they haven't even modelled how a political philosophy can change over time. As much as I love this idea, it seems like a whole game's worth of work for the developers.
 
With multiple religions that can possibly exist within a city/empire, and even with governments hopefully being able to go a theocratic route, I'd like to see the ability to levy DIFFERENT tax amounts on the religions existing in my empire. Real-world example: Islam taxed Judeaism and Christianity, but tolerated it to a certain extent; Judeo-Christian countries rarely, if ever, tolerated an Islamic presence, until relatively recently.

Along with that I'd like to see a major update to the economic structure, with more than just a basic Tax/Science/Entertainment. If you tax a certain religion to death, it gives you a certain amount of control to try to get it to leave your empire... or maybe result in an uprising... either way, that sounds like fun to me!
 
Well if apply this concept into more features. I could have an fascism govern by goal and then act to all civs have this kind of government. If my language is sanscrit I start act to all civs spokes sanscrit. A playable non-state religion don't figure out to me. The game is called civilization not religion. But who knows.

Greek Stud
We could add Totemism.
 
But if all religions are state controlled, what's even the difference between religion and state? Why seperate the two at all?

You declare the wars, you destroy the units, you build the wonders... who cares if you swap from longbowmen to religious longbowmen, or war to holy war, or from secular pyramids to spiritual pyramids? They still do the same thing. Religion was an important factor in history BECAUSE it was a non-state actor. Take that away, and it's pretty much more of the same stuff (wonders, units, and wars). That's why I prefer Greek Stud's suggestion, as ambitious as it is.

The other features that are being suggested like seperate taxes, or acts that affect different parts of your empire... these are features that are genuinely something new. But I point out that Civ is a game that doesn't even let you tax seperate ethnicities. All your people are the same in Civ. They don't have social class. They don't even have a political affiliation -- they never complain about your form of government.

Breaking your population down into different groups (rich/poor, black/white, communist/fascist, eastern/western) is a much more ambitious feature than the wonders/units/wars model of religion. But it's also more interesting.
 
dh_epic:

I'm thinking the breakdown of your population is what the "civics" feature is all about.

I'm also hoping that the religions are fluid, and have nothing to do with the state at all (unless you become a theocratic gov't). It would also be cool if religions could overwhelm a city, and have a "religious capital" a la the Vatican City (which is its own nation). Also, the major religious figureheads could become a separate voice that you hear from each turn or so -- "The Pope decrees an outlaw to human sacrifice. Do we comply?" Emperor: "Umm, we worship the Sun and the Sun demands Blood... No, we do not comply." ... DING ... relations with the Pope and his religion just got dinged, possibly causing unrest in your empire.

I think religion can work as a non-state concept, with an 'area of control' that can affect any or all of the civs within its grasp. AND we can choose whether or not our gov't respects said religion. Very interesting, I think.
 
I definitely like that, Darwin. Religion as something automatic that you don't directly control -- you only choose whether to bend to its will, or fight it, or perhaps redirect it if you're lucky.

But again, we're talking about a game where your people are all the same, and you have direct control over pretty much everything. It would have to make big advancements to get there. But if it did, I'd be pleased.

Still, I'd say "no thanks" to a war/wonders/units model of religion. Even "religious flipping" isn't that compelling when you already have culture flipping.
 
dh_epic:

And if religions can modify themselves over time, or switch from Major status to Minor status, and then become popular again (think many pagan religions), that would really add SOOOOOOOOO much more to the game.
 
People who think of religious conflict as a conflict between two states with different religions will always disappoint me with their lack of vision and understanding.

Religion is definitely a moving target in real life. That's where the interesting conflicts come from. Between people within a religion -- what do we all believe in; can we agree; do we need to change? Between two religions WITHIN a state -- what do we demand of our government? Even between two states with the same religion -- which one of us has the favor of the pope; if we fight you, will we lose his favor? The reality is to do all these, you need to have non-player-controlled religion.
 
Perhaps, to factor in the fact that people in the same nation can have different faiths, each citizen has its personal faith, indicated by a symbol next to the pophead; in order to determine the religious makeup of the nation, whenever your state religion changes, the individual religions of the people change slowly to reflect slow conversion. This has no effect on macro, and its slightly off topic, but dh_epic has the idea of factions, and this might be a way to factor in religious factions and their relative strength in the nation.

Also, there should be an option to totally separate Church from State; this would allow religions to flow freely through the people to account for religious freedom.
 
In fact, religion is a non-state and transnational actor, even theocratic governments reflect a tremendous relion influence. What I disagree is religion be human played.
 
Greek Stud said:
Im really excited about the religion aspect. Im sure most of you can expect that Im most interested in spreading Hellenistic Paganism or Byzantine Orthodoxy.

I think relgions should be free roaming. Possibly playable. The only time when a religion has territorial borderlines is when a Civilization makes the religion its government. They can also break away from the religion at their choosing, like if you get greedy. If you play as a religious leader, you start at a specific building: Temple. Recruiting and influencing units and towns, some of their taxable money is diverted towards your religion. Depending on how popular you are to a town, the govt can support you or send troops after you. With your money, you can buy units and buy land and pay to build more temples. Temples can be upgraded to your a Special Building unit (Mosque, Church, Jewish Temple, Monastary). High popularity opens up Wonder Buildings that you can purchase. You can place Holy Warrior units over buildings to prevent governments from burning your Temples. If you are popular and not killed quickly, citizens can revolt agaist their country/civ. If a religion captures a town/city/metropolis with their Holy Warriors, they should have the ability to tranverse into a playable civ that either goes on as a Religious State or you can change your Constitution (a screen I've suggested that affects your citizen's beliefs). The Monasteries of Tibet and Nepal would be cool to see on your Map. Or the Mesopotamia conflict surrounded by the Temple of Solomon, Pyramids of Giza, Hanging Gardens.

Relgions:
Animism
Coptic
Buddism
Confussious
Jewish
Sunni
Shi'ite
Roman Catholic
Eastern Orthodox
Protestant
Anglican
Wicca
Voo Doo
Paganism
Hindu
Bloody Cults

You have a religious reputation, like Civ reputation. Historical allies and enemies. And your religion should be able to change its Philosophy over time. After writting this post it sounds like a good feature, but is probably better as not being a major feature. eh, who knows.
Click to expand...

Where's Islam? It has over 1 billion belivers
 
Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims (after Jewish, before Roman Catholic). Although there are other Muslim sects left out. The same is true of the various Christian faiths, though. The list isn't a big deal so much as the idea itself.
 
hey wow! I didnt expect so much response. thanks for the compliments and I like a lot of your ideas.

Totetism sounds awesome, Id build those poles on everyone's territory! haha In my religions class at Univ they grouped it with Animism even though it is a step past in progression.

Yea Islams there, Im pretty sure Sunni and Shi'ite function like Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox. They are the first in Islam and other sects came from them.

I forgot Shamanism, very important, Koreans will be very mad at me. Course other countries had this too. Malaysia, Madagascar, Native Americans.
 
Actually, according to the National Geographic Society, the largest religions in Korea are Buddhism, Confucianism, and (!) Christianity (that idiot Moon made a lot of converts!).
 
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