Founding a religion should be different

I was just thinking about the way religion is built in the game. After some games it feels strange to me that the founding of a religion is tied to the tech tree. For instance, there have been situations where I didn't research a certain tech, just because I didn't feel like founding yet another religion. (I know that's silly in gameplay terms, but it takes part of the fun out of a game if you control a lot of religions.) The concept kind of works, but it doesn't feel very elegant.

Why not tie the religion founding to Great Prophets instead? This seems more logical, maybe more historically correct even. There is a step involved between getting a general philosophical idea and getting people to follow it.
In actual gameplay, it would also represent a real trade-off and a conscious effort (hire specialists to get religion early) and lower the chance of concentrating religions in one hand. It would work like this: First prophet in the game founds Buddhism, second founds Hinduism, etc. You should ALSO need a certain tech to found the religion, but it would take more effort that way.

Of course, you would have to include several ways to get some GPP early, maybe the obelisk could give you some or spiritual civs start with them (or even get a prophet for free when the necessary tech is discovered by them first, this would mix both concepts for more complexity)

After you get your holy city, you're able to build the shrine. With hammers. (After all, Jesus didn't build St.Peter's basilica, other people did. Much later. It also came with a cost.

i like your general idea. i think it is silly that techs are tied into the founding of a faith. considering all religions are homogonized, the tech that founds a particular faith is not really tied to said faith in gameplay terms. if you are going to add faith to the tech tree, then religions should have appropriate +/- modifiers tied into the specific tech and civ that founds it. the economic and cultural gains are a fine idea, but not totally practical and realistic.

in an effort to be pc, i feel think firaxis has totally missed the mark on the affects of religion. the handbook says 'we are game designers, not theologians' (77) and i think they should practice what they are preaching. religion (just like everything else in life) isn't always pretty, so why pretend that it is?

Yeah, I'm not a fan of a huge amount of additional complexity though.

But that would be something even I could mod: Give a sad face for every religion in the city. You then have to build a religious building (temple comes to mind) to turn the sad face into a happy hardworking citizen.
A lot of religions could also be harmful for diplomatic relations: If you're in a - say - christian theocracy but also have Buddhists in your cities, Buddhist leaders could consider the people of their faith as oppressed. (additional negative points).

There's yet another idea I've been toying around with. What if you could use a Great Prophet to "reform" an existing religion - say again Christianity - a la Luther, i.e. split it in two. All christian cities in your state would take the new religion (or perhaps only some of them). Protestantism would come with bigger benefits (commerce?), but by reforming you'd heighten the risk to piss off the leaders who stay catholic. (If you choose to turn it into your state religion, of course.)

I like those ideas. What I would say, though, is that instead of having the first prophet found buddhism, the second hinduism, and so on, you could have a little dialogue box pop up where you could pick the religion you wanted to found. It wouldn't make any gameplay difference to the game, and it would allow someone playing, say, the Arabs to found Islam even if they got the first Prophet. I know when I'm playing I'll often try to delay founding a religion until I have the one I want for my civ (at least when I'm playing on a level where I can afford to wait).

It might even be possible to add in preferred religions with that, so that Spain will pick Christianity if it's available, China either confucianism or Taoism, and so on.

While the Great Prophet idea is interesting, there has to be some other way as well. Unless you're philosophical or industrious, you're not really generating GPPs until much later in the game and since there are so many benefits to religions, especially to starting them, that would seriously overpower those two traits.

As way around this would be to have some formula based on food + production + gold + culture = % chance of generating a Great Prophet. That way, no matter what strategy you're using, you still have a chance at it. This would, of course, go down as the game progresses so that everyone isn't spitting out a Prophet every turn at later levels.

@ Reveilled:
Nice.
However, the arabs should have to wait a bit until a necessary tech is developed. (Could be a bit earlier, of course, but Islam and Christianity both sort of descend from Judaism. I said SORT OF!)

On a personal note: Confucianism is not a religion and should be replaced by something for the native american civs. More fun. Winged serpents!
See here: http://www.crystalinks.com/aztecgods.html

@petey:
That's true. I don't really think that you have to found a religion to do well (It gives you money in the long run, but you're late with other important techs. Bad idea on higher difficulties.), but you should have a shot at getting one if you choose to do so. Maybe have a cheap building that generates GPPs? Or maybe not every religion has to be founded by a prophet, though most were in history. (Example: You can found Hinduism by researching a tech, but of course you need a Buddha for Buddhism.)

Mmmm you can keep the religions tied to techs, but then you should be able to found only one religion. After all since most religions are created relatively early in the game, why would you want to create say Buddhism if all or most of your people are already Hinduists...?
I like the idea of tying the founding of a religion with a Great Prohpet, but then I'd still say limit each civilization to be able to found one religion and no more. If you want more, you'd have to conquer other player's holy cities...

I fail to see why you can't or shouldn't found two or more religions. The romans did found Christianity (well, they didn't, but in game terms they got themselves a prophet) in addition to their roman/greek parthenon. Also Buddhism and Hinduism both originated in India.

The problem with the religion implementation is that cities either have a certain religion or they don't. It would be nice to have at least three levels of any religion per city (Majority, minor, none) with some number crunching in the background (like the greatly improved culture system, which gives percentages of nationality for every tile).

You could then have sliders to endorse/oppress any given religion or leave it alone, which would have some, but not total influence on these numbers and open up a lot of exciting opportunities for diplomacy.
(Oops, I didn't want to go that far initially. That's obviously difficult to implement with the current engine.)

sounds like you guys want to add a lot of micromanagement to me.

i like the idea of great prophets founding religions a lot, it makes more sense and it gives another reason why they are useful. as far as solving the problem for nations that dont produce GPP early... what about throwing a few in random goody huts?

Nah, I hate micromanagement. But I think that you should get something to do with your religions in later (post-medieval) game. (A simple high-level control that you can leave alone without doing much harm or the Reformation idea I proposed earlier. Remember that Reformation could get you your own religion even if you miss out on them early.)

I'd like to be able to play as a ruthless Mongol leader who oppresses every religion (and piss the other leaders off in the process), or develop (as opposed to just get automatically) a multireligious civ with different faiths not bashing their heads in constantly.

I see an additional problem with generating GPPs for religion founders: after founding a religion, you'll want to get rid of your prophet GPPs to get Great Scientists or Artists. (Although that's fine perhaps for balance. By going for a religion you lower your possiblities for other Great People later.)

After some thought I lean to the compromise that you get a Great Prophet automatically when you get the necessary tech (first) for the three early religions. (On the other hand, we're then stuck again with the silly race to Meditation / Polytheism, which gets more boring with every game.)

You can then choose to either found a religion or simply add them to your city for production and culture (or whatever they do). Hopefully some AIs will prefer founding a religion, others will not. Even when you can't program that, at least YOU are left with a choice.

The Great Prophet idea is excellent, here is how I would like to see it work:

Every city generates one point of Great Prophet for every population point every turn. Size 6 city generates 6 GPP every turn.

First Great Prophet costs 100, second costs 200, etceteras.

You could then allow players to choose which religion they want to found (The whole point of this game is ALTERNATE history.) or you could require religions to be founded in a certain order but allow players to "park" their Great Prophet until their desired religion is next in line. Heck, if I manage to monopolize Great Prophet production, I could deny religion to the whole world.

The city where you expend your Great Prophet would become the Holy City for that Religion. Extra bonuses if it is also the Holy City of another religion, but only for the player who controls it (Lots of fighting over Jerusalem throughout history)

And finally ... There should be a chance of a religion splitting:
Christian splits into Catholic/Protestant
Islam splits into Shia/Sunni
Similar event for other religions
When this happens there should either be a civil war in the owning culture, or if more than one culture has Christian as their state religion (for example) you keep one (Catholic or Protestant) and the other culture takes the the one you refuse. It then becomes your mortal enemy. - OR - your largest non-capital city revolts and becomes Protestantland, sending missionaries to all other cities trying to convert those cities as well.

Of course, I like chaos.

Splitting religions is a good idea, but it shouldn't happen on its own. I brought that up in the 3rd post. Some of the fiercest wars in history have been fought between different flavours of the same faith. (I suspect there were other motives in play as well in these wars, of course)
It should take a Great Prophet to spl... errr reform a religion. Of course, there's no reason for reforming a religion EXCEPT if you haven't got your own already and need the money. Perhaps not every faith should be able to split, though, to avoid a flood of religions.

Good points Melkus. If the Romans found Christianity, you could use your Great Prophet to found Protestantism and force Rome into Catholicism by default. Protestantism is instantly founded in every city where there is Christianity, basically piggy-backing on Rome's work. Rome gets an additional -6 diplomacy toward you, you damn heretic!

I know you should be able to do this for Islam and Christianity. I am not familiar enough with the other religions to know if they ever had such schisims.

I dont know if anyone mentioned this... but how about this: Instead of automatically founding a religion by researching its specific tech, you get the ability to build that religion's temple with that tech. Once you build a number of temples ( say 3 or 5) you become the founder of that religion. I know its kinda backwards but it would work in the context of the game.

Well... the temple idea would make interesting gameplay. But from a logical point of view it doesn't make much sense to me. Why build temples for a religion that doesn't exist?
Maybe if you need to build ONE temple (or make one, only one, Great Prophet buildable as a unit)... That seems possible.

Well building temples for a nonexistent religion is not entirely true.. What you do basically is build temples for a religion, and once you have your temples you are the dominant nation with that religion, and so are its 'founder'. Same thing happened with Christianity really which originated in Israel out of Judaism, yet Rome became Christendom's holy city after the Roman Empire changed its state religion to Christianity. For Catholicism this still holds true, so I can see the merit in that.
Only problem is: it still does not solve the tech tree race to be able to actually BUILD those temples... LOL

Yes - the holy city placement should probably depend on where the first temple or a similar building is built. The founding city would obviously get a headstart on that.
but no - you should still need a prophet first. No Jesus, no Christianity, no temples. (If you actually believe in the whole story, of course. Seen from that angle, it becomes a matter of taste, really. If you prefer to say that societal forces create certain belief systems, I wouldn't argue with that.)
Besides I like the idea that you can avoid or delay a religion by deleting Prophets.

A bit of tech racing will always be involved. A bunch of Mammoth-hunting stone age guys (exaggerated) won't invent a complicated idea like Taoism.

i would say, create a great prophet and give him the function that missionary's have, but give it to him multiple times (say 3, so he can convert 3 citys). And when he converted people in 3 citys, you can build a temple (because your prophet has followers, and your prophets has ideas=>religion) and then be the founder of the religion and the first city with the temple (added in as a small (cheap) wonder) is the holy city of the religion.

I like the reformation idea, these would be the reformed Christian faiths?

Christianity: Roman Catholicism, Protestantism, Angelicanism, Calvinism, Deistism

That good?