C2C - Religions discussions and ideas

[AIAndy]

Originally Posted by BlueGenie

Though does the brain really support this? We don't really know what the effects would be after x amount of years on memory, logic, deduction, mental state, and so on, so although we might be able to keep the body alive there might very well be reasons in our complex brain that don't allow for it to continue ad infinitum.

Cheers

Correct. We don't know enough about the brain yet to answer that question.

[Il Principe]

Although we have no clue waht would ahppen to personality and mental capazity in the long run i think it is save to say that memory would be a problem sooner or later because we run out of space. Or neurons to connect.
This might be cirmcumventend with "brain machine interfaces" so we could link to external memory storagebanks.. but then again we could simply become cypborgs and save usthe whole cloning business.

[JosEPh_II]

Originally Posted by DRJ

The debate about the facts is in fact the debate about legitamizing new mechanics or keeping old ones. So the more background arguments are out there the better and more accurate the game will be simulated. Of course in most cases there are new mechanism that give in to the facts both sides state as important. Only thing is that Joseph is a bit alone with is religious position so he gets more aroused over the matter.

Imho the discussion should always go deep so yeah the 'offtopic' often is the base layer for better evaluated decisions resulting in better gameplay due to more realism (Joseph would probably disagree here :P).

Isn't this my "role" here?

JosEPh

[Hydromancerx]

Originally Posted by BlueGenie

Though does the brain really support this? We don't really know what the effects would be after x amount of years on memory, logic, deduction, mental state, and so on, so although we might be able to keep the body alive there might very well be reasons in our complex brain that don't allow for it to continue ad infinitum.

Cheers

That's an interesting point. On the Discovery Channel show "Curiosity" in the episode "Can you live forever?", Mythbuster Adam Savage hosted and pretended that he was a person who lived for ever. The show documents his journey from mortal to immortal using real science and plausible science fiction.

Near the end his brain basiclly got "full" and he could not store any more memories. Thus he used like a "cloud drive" to store is memories on external servers. That way he could save his core memories in his real brain and his axillary memories on a computer.

Which brings up another question about what would happen if he forgot those memories. Would he still be him or would it be if we just did not remember something? Likewise what if you gave fake memories or memories from other people? Total Recall anyone?

Some cool science fiction to think about.

[Faustmouse]

Fact is, that scientists at this time dont even know why we grow older. There must be several things that work together, but as mentioned before, there is no need to get old from a biological point of view (except maybe for the evolution thing...)

But even if you COULD live forever, I heard the average age would be still not endless but around 1000 years.. Thats because every people statistically have a deadly accident all 1000 years. With automated traffic and such this would be definitly increased, but I dont think deadly accidents will ever be completly avoided...

[AIAndy]

Originally Posted by Hydromancerx

That's an interesting point. On the Discovery Channel show "Curiosity" in the episode "Can you live forever?", Mythbuster Adam Savage hosted and pretended that he was a person who lived for ever. The show documents his journey from mortal to immortal using real science and plausible science fiction.

Near the end his brain basiclly got "full" and he could not store any more memories. Thus he used like a "cloud drive" to store is memories on external servers. That way he could save his core memories in his real brain and his axillary memories on a computer.

Which brings up another question about what would happen if he forgot those memories. Would he still be him or would it be if we just did not remember something? Likewise what if you gave fake memories or memories from other people? Total Recall anyone?

Some cool science fiction to think about.

How accurate do you think your memories actually are?
People like to think of their memories as facts but they hardly are. Your older memories get colored by your newer experiences, similar memories meld and others are forgotten.
That is something most often seen at court, when eyewitness stories change over time.

[strategyonly]

When i founded the Nagi religion, i never got the pop-up informing me, that i founded it, all the others so far have??(glitch?)

[Hydromancerx]

Originally Posted by AIAndy

How accurate do you think your memories actually are?
People like to think of their memories as facts but they hardly are. Your older memories get colored by your newer experiences, similar memories meld and others are forgotten.
That is something most often seen at court, when eyewitness stories change over time.

True. But if they were on some sort of artificial memory storage then your memories would be recalled as if it just happened. You would be able to recall what socks you were wearing on April 4th 200 years ago.

[Il Principe]

Originally Posted by Hydromancerx

True. But if they were on some sort of artificial memory storage then your memories would be recalled as if it just happened. You would be able to recall what socks you were wearing on April 4th 200 years ago.

Which would lead to quite interesting psycholoical conflicts i would say. Because our psyche is used to remember things in a subjective way like AiAndy said. In some cases this is probably not important ( like: Were your socks on the 2nd of April 2003 red, blue or green?)
But if you were victim to something terrible( nearly fatal accident, torture, rape...), and could remember evry last detail just as it was you might not be able to deal with it.
To a certain extend this already aplies to far less severy stuff already. Let´s say a fight with a friend or partner that is viewed a bit different in retrospect.
It miht also make for an interesting reform of the legalsystem. Instead of hearing witnesses you simply download a copy of the relevant memory stretch.

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Originally Posted by strategyonly

When i founded the Nagi religion, i never got the pop-up informing me, that i founded it, all the others so far have??(glitch?)

There are a number of religions that do not have a founding movie. Ngai is one such.

[Koshling]

Originally Posted by Il Principe

Which would lead to quite interesting psycholoical conflicts i would say. Because our psyche is used to remember things in a subjective way like AiAndy said. In some cases this is probably not important ( like: Were your socks on the 2nd of April 2003 red, blue or green?)
But if you were victim to something terrible( nearly fatal accident, torture, rape...), and could remember evry last detail just as it was you might not be able to deal with it.
To a certain extend this already aplies to far less severy stuff already. Let´s say a fight with a friend or partner that is viewed a bit different in retrospect.
It miht also make for an interesting reform of the legalsystem. Instead of hearing witnesses you simply download a copy of the relevant memory stretch.

It would also allow you to edit, and perhaps have different deliberate levels of storage that required concious 'unlocking'.

Once technology goes this far however, you're opening up the ability to edit the makeup of the mind itself really, and you cease to be human [at least to the perceptions of an unmodified human] rather quickly I think (and I make no value judgements about that one way or the other, just that it's waht would/will happen)

[Thunderbrd]

I was reviewing some coding regarding what the ai chooses to do about spreading religions.

Right now, from what I can see (this level of coding is really complex and in some places mindboggling to the point of a headache for me but I think I sorted it out to some extent) the current coding tells the ai only to spread their state religion and/or any religion that they have a holy city for, unless they are going for a cultural victory, in which case, I think it wants to spread more religions though I'm not entirely sure where that plays in and if it still does.

Coding some improvements here is pretty much beyond me but I'd like to suggest a few routines for the ai to consider:

What it boils down to is that, as I see it, there are three valid strategies for the ai here and perhaps they could be determined largely by the personality of the leader.

1) Religion Friendly: Seek to spread all religions to all cities so as to take full advantage of all religious buildings and remain as religiously adaptable as possible so as to be minimally impacted by giving in to requests and demands from other players to abruptly switch religions. (I often play very much like this myself and I think it's one of the main reasons I tear away from the ai players in development during the middle ages while struggling to keep up until then.)

2) Religiously Faithful: Pretty much as we have them now. Promote only the state religion and those they have holy cities for. Otherwise remain fairly apathetic towards other faiths. This helps to streamline building projects and leaves a bit more time for troop building so can be stronger for those that desire quantity over quality battle strategies.

3) Religiously Hostile: Such a leader should favor the Intolerant civic and seek to establish a Religious victory if that's at all an option. This leader would seek only to promote one religion they found and nothing more. If they don't found a religion, they choose one to promote and then get aggressively hostile towards the Holy City owner, plotting to take over the city of their religion's birth at nearly any cost. They will build inquisitors and seek to remove all other influences from their own cities, even if Religious victory isn't an option. This could be a pretty powerful villain style AI but could probably use some help in the forms of some buildings on each religion that are only accessible under the Intolerant Civic to balance out how much they lose from the elimination of other religious benefits (I would lean towards military benefits over research benefits as I would say under this style of leadership, research should be slow but the forces it provides should be quite strong and capable of utilizing self-sacrificing strategies.) This style of leader would seek to knock down any civilization that puts emphasis on research over power as they would see those as the ultimate threats to their control over the minds of their people.

Once these strategy definitions can be identified in the coding, I can enhance some of the decision-making elements of Divine Prophets as well.

[Hydromancerx]

@Thunderbrd

What about Religious Phobic? Strategyonly said he wanted to add a 3rd negative trait to the civs. One of which was Anti-Clerical. Which would be civs that just don't like or do well with a region. You can see his 3rd Trait topic here.

[Thunderbrd]

Sounds valid to me if we have a leader that takes penalties with religions. Such a leader should be capable of building inquisitors and utilize them regardless of civic then.

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Great so if they don't found their favorite religion they ignore it. So what is the point of favorite religion then?

[Thunderbrd]

I'm not sure if the leaders are programmed to adopt their favorite religion if its available, or if they will prefer to adopt a religion they found themselves as a priority for state religion. This could be looked over as well. Strategically, it'd be better for them to adopt one they've founded if they missed out on their fav, which they WILL found both on DP and without as their highest priority.

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Originally Posted by Thunderbrd

I'm not sure if the leaders are programmed to adopt their favorite religion if its available, or if they will prefer to adopt a religion they found themselves as a priority for state religion. This could be looked over as well. Strategically, it'd be better for them to adopt one they've founded if they missed out on their fav, which they WILL found both on DP and without as their highest priority.

The_J's Real Favorite Religion mod gives the favorite religion to a nation when it is founded but what you say of the code means that it is not necessary because they wont switch to it any way.

What happens when they don't found any religion?

Edit btw, many people complain that only the early religions exist in games and that no one (AI) switches from them. I have not found that to be the case in my test games. Admittidly I have not gotten far past Music in my tests but there are a fair spread of nations with each religion up to that point.

[JosEPh_II]

Originally Posted by Dancing Hoskuld

<snip>

Edit btw, many people complain that only the early religions exist in games and that no one (AI) switches from them. I have not found that to be the case in my test games. Admittidly I have not gotten far past Music in my tests but there are a fair spread of nations with each religion up to that point.

As Religion Is a Major part of how I play, the religions Do(did) get spread around.

But!... the recent tech tree additions has caused a bit more clustering.

I feel to combat the clustering, that it needs to be considered to make the Religion one off from the Tech that would normally give it. The "one off" tech, out side the normal path ( could be a dead end tech) would actually give it once that one is researched. This way everyone (player and AI) would have to make a choice to actually get the religion. (Step "off the path" to claim the prize.)

Then from that point it can be determined which "clusters" are still easy pickings for the tech leader and these clustered separated even further.

Does Vokarya (sp) have his updated techtree available?

JosEPh

[Thunderbrd]

I haven't really reviewed the coding regarding how AI nations select their state religion, just how they choose to spread religion, so its hard to give you an answer to that question DH. I believe diplomacy factors are weighed out against favorite religion against self-founded religion as all three are valid reasons and in play I've seen the ai using elements of all three motives to determine their state religion. If you spread enough of your religion early enough into an opponent's territory to the point that it gains the greatest persuasion, generally the ai seems to select that religion for its state religion. When they found a religion of their own, they often try to spread it so that ends up putting it as the priority for state religion. How favorite religion plays into that is hard to say without looking directly at the codes that determine the choice for state religion.

Obviously, a little coding to get the ai to care a bit more to spread their 'favorite religion' would lead to them more commonly selecting that religion as a priority. Keep in mind that on Divine Prophets, they will seek to found their favorite religion and that will most likely naturally lead to them declaring it as a state religion down the line. I may have found a tweak that could have been getting in the way of them actually doing so as I've been reviewing and tweaking some of the DP codes to make it work better for non-choose religion play.

[Il Principe]

Originally Posted by Dancing Hoskuld

Edit btw, many people complain that only the early religions exist in games and that no one (AI) switches from them. I have not found that to be the case in my test games. Admittidly I have not gotten far past Music in my tests but there are a fair spread of nations with each religion up to that point.

My current game is nearing the end of the industrial era and I got several reliions spread all over the world. One by my own missionaries but some others by the AI. The "old" relgions are actually dwindling a bit during this game, making way for the newer ones ( where state relgions are concerned )