Idea for Religions

It seems that in Civilization IV, religions are mostly a minor diplomatic tool with several benefits on the side. While it certainly helps to have or even better, found one, the difference seems somewhat minor. I was thinking about having an overhaul of religions for Civilization V:

Pagan Beliefs
All civilizations start with a religion. This would be their own form of Paganism. With this Pagan Religion, they can still build temples, run religious civics, etc., but they can not build monasteries or missionaries, and their religion can not spread.

Religious Adherence
Religions would have a adherence bar, similar to the nationality bar already present in Civilization IV. This would start out for all cities being 100% Pagan. When a religion spreads to the city naturally, it becomes 10% [Religion]. When a Missionary spreads a religion, it becomes 25% [Religion], and when a religion is founded in that city, it becomes 50% [Religion].

Building Temples, Monasteries, Cathedrals and especially Shrines will increase the amount of influence a religion has in that city. The more religious buildings you build of that religion, the more people will slowly convert. Sending additional Missionaries to a city that already has that religion will increase the amount of people that follow it. Inquisitors(new unit) would reduce the amount of people that follow other religions.

When a religion has a large majority of followers in a city, the people will want that religion as the State Religion. If you are running a different State Religion, you risk the possibility of Rebellion. If two or more religions are competing for dominance, you will face civil unrest, but no rebellions.

In addition, after the discovery of Scientific Method, Atheism will start to spread in your cities. Running secular civics will increase the spread of Atheism, while running religious civics will slow it down. The more Atheism spreads in your cities, the more people will demand a switch to secular civics and an end to religion's influence on the government.

Religious Resources
The founder of a religion can declare certain resources as either Taboo or Holy. Taboo resources grant no health/happiness benefit to the people in the city that follow that religion, and can not be used at all if the the religion that declared the resource Taboo is the state religion. However, Taboo resources will grant additional culture to the city. For example, if the leader of Buddhism declared Iron the metal of evil, then no Buddhist civilizations could make units that require Iron or gain production bonuses from it.

Holy resources grant additional benefits to the city. If a resource is declared Holy, it will grant an additional happiness bonus to the city, regardless if the resource is a luxury, health or strategic resource.

Not bad ideas, and I would also like to see religion become more dynamic and interesting in the game.

One thing I'd like to point out though: I read through Soren Jorgesen's development blog on Civ4, and he said that cities initially used to have percentages of religions (like you want), but scrapped this for the crrent system during the process. I don't know Firaxis' reason(s) for doing so, but it was probably very good (in their eyes), as it meant throwing a lot of work away. Let's just hope this reason doesn't hold true for Civ5.

Your ideas of taboos and holy resources is pretty original though. Maybe you need some drawback to counterbalance the good effects of declaring a resource holy? Oh, and in the current happiness/health system, your idea on taboos won't work as intended. If a pig can give +1 to a Christian in a city, it will give to all of the city, including any Muslims living there.

Having talked with many of the Firaxians, a lot of game play ideas were tried and then thrown out during the development of Civ 4. One of the primary reasons is that they are too complex or that they take too much fiddling with minutia for the player to gain a small benefit.

As Sid says, who is having fun? The designer, the AI (or its programmer) or the player? If it is not the player, then it needs redesigned.

Onionsoilder said:

Religious Adherence[/B]
Religions would have a adherence bar, similar to the nationality bar already present in Civilization IV. This would start out for all cities being 100% Pagan. When a religion spreads to the city naturally, it becomes 10% [Religion]. When a Missionary spreads a religion, it becomes 25% [Religion], and when a religion is founded in that city, it becomes 50% [Religion].

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Why represent it with an extra mechanic rather than giving each citizen a religious affiliation.

When a religion has a large majority of followers in a city, the people will want that religion as the State Religion. If you are running a different State Religion, you risk the possibility of Rebellion. If two or more religions are competing for dominance, you will face civil unrest, but no rebellions.

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That works so long as you have a later government tyope in which variety of religions gives you bonuses.

Religious Resources
The founder of a religion can declare certain resources as either Taboo or Holy. Taboo resources grant no health/happiness benefit to the people in the city that follow that religion, and can not be used at all if the the religion that declared the resource Taboo is the state religion. However, Taboo resources will grant additional culture to the city. For example, if the leader of Buddhism declared Iron the metal of evil, then no Buddhist civilizations could make units that require Iron or gain production bonuses from it.

Holy resources grant additional benefits to the city. If a resource is declared Holy, it will grant an additional happiness bonus to the city, regardless if the resource is a luxury, health or strategic resource.

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That notion I like a lot.

All interesting ideas. I especially like the holy and taboo resources idea.

Here's another idea: make the founding of a new religion require both the tech. and a great prophet. When you found the religion, you get the shrine built automatically there. This would:
1. Allow you to choose which city you want as the holy city.
2. Make the race for the early religions more fair and competitive. I'm tired of always predictably hearing the Buddhist chanting on turn 23 or whatever, game after game.

To make this viable, there would need to be a building in the early game that could give great prophet points. Let's say...monuments allow you to run 1 priest specialist, as well as giving +1 culture per turn (and whatever other effects the special UB types of monuments give). (Perhaps increase the cost of monuments slightly to compensate for the added effect).

I love the idea about Pagan religions. It is really unfair how if you dont have an early lead on religions, you remain culturally deficient until a. someone spreads it or b. you found one.

The whole business of taboo/holy resources screams "abuse me!" If I found Judaism and I'm the only Jewish civ without Pigs, I could just say "Pigs are taboo!" and that's that. Similarly, if I had Corn and no other Jewish civs had Corn, I could say "Corn is holy!" and now all the other Jewish leaders would come flocking to get my Corn. Or, if the only other Jewish civ is Genghis and I declare Horses taboo, I've just denied him his UU (and probably increased my security to boot)!

This strikes me as rather absurd. Not only is it highly unrealistic, it gives too much power to one civ, even if you limit things to one Holy and one Taboo resource.

Well, maybe the holy/taboo resources could be re-worked a little. Maybe you need to control the shrine to declare a resource, and when you declare a vote is taken by all nations with that religion(similar to the AP)

Still seems kinda artificial to me. I'd rather it be left out entirely.

I dont know if its present in civ4, but you should be able to declare X of cities "holy", which gives them culture/trade boosts, but also increased problems related to higher population (perhaps higher running costs).

Walkin said:

I dont know if its present in civ4, but you should be able to declare X of cities "holy", which gives them culture/trade boosts, but also increased problems related to higher population (perhaps higher running costs).

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In the current system, the city at which a religion is founded is that religion's Holy City. It gets a +4 culture bonus and it is the only city at which you can build that religion's Shrine (which gives you +1 for every city with that religion, whether or not it's in your empire).

I definetly like the idea of religion playing a larger role in the game. But the religous resources I don't see how they could be worked into the game. Maybe you can have it based off real world religions, for example. Muslims can't eat pork

buffalo6542 said:

I definetly like the idea of religion playing a larger role in the game. But the religous resources I don't see how they could be worked into the game. Maybe you can have it based off real world religions, for example. Muslims can't eat pork

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1. How will you make sure that every religion has a similar restriction?
2. How will you balance these restrictions?
3. We don't know how much of religious restrictions are cultural, and how much are really essential to the religion. Hence the total absence of religious features in CivIV: it avoids those issues entirely.

Civ IV does not allow religious civics to include causing negative happiness for non state religions. In fact, there is little disadvantage at all to having as many religions as possible. The founder gets money and can see your cities better. You get more Temples for happiness and culture, more monasteries for research and culture. There should be friction when you have religions together in the same place. Now there are some mods in which the presence of a religion leaves you open to magical attacks, and there are plenty of advantages to having a state religion, but state religions in Civ IV are not that intolerant, they merely suffer the disadvantage of not getting more religion spreading, not of actually having many religions that cause discord. Also maybe it should be possible to steal a religion, actually send a spy or something to go learn about a religion and bring back that knowledge, becoming a missionary. Now, this bypasses the rather elegant fact that to get all these valuable religions you have to have open borders that open you up to spies, but still.

Tholish said:

Civ IV does not allow religious civics to include causing negative happiness for non state religions.

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I'm not sure what you mean by 'does not allow'. None of the vanilla civics have this penalty, but it would take like 10 seconds for me to mod a civic so it does.

As someone explained, and experiment verifies, it doesn't work if any other civic in the same Civic Option has state religions. You get a huge POSITIVE happiness if you put a negative number in there. So, Organized Religion can't have -1 happiness for non state religions, it comes out to +186,000 happiness per non state religion. But Vassalage COULD have a penalty for non state rels, since it is not in the religions Civic Option. Try it and see.

Anyway, I agree that the AMOUNT of a religion should be reflected, with measures similar to what you suggest. This would provide fertile ground for fun. Sure, simplificaiton is better than unecessary micromanagement, but as long as we are tracking the percent of nationality of EACH AND EVERY SINGLE TILE, can't we track how many adherents of each religion there are in each CITY? It wouldn't have to be a slider, it could be by population points, a little numeral when you roll over the rel icon on the bar under the city. Non committed are easier to convert. The first successful missionary converts one non committed. Religious buildings tend to to spread the rel to more people. New population from growth starts uncommitted. Population points that already have religions have a much smaller probability of conversion. When population is lost, which religion would they be? Hmm...ruler would decide, but the lost population would turn into automated missionaries. And what about when a religion declines as proportion of a city. Do its rel buildings stop having any effect? How can you get +2 happiness from a Cathedral of a rel that has only one believer of that rel? It could be you can build one temple for each pop of a rel, and it makes that pop happy, but a Cathedral makes all pop of that rel in the city happy.

This wouldn't be unecessary micromanagement, it would be something that would be fun for the player to mess with, rather than the player just being along for the ride. But it should follow that standard stuff that's already set up, population points, rather than introducing new stuff like analog bars.