Religion in Civ 4 again!!

[Eigenvector]

I was thinking about the reasons religion was included in Civ 4. Presumably the developers put religion and its aspects into the game to introduce the effects religions have on cultures and their interactions.

However, and this is just my observation, during play religion is treated as a separate resource - an item to obtain or trade and barter just like oil or cattle or grain. It may be that the developers intended this effect - but I like to think that they would have prefered the treatment to have been different, more realistic.

For instance, right from the start cultures beeline for the techs needed to obtain Hinduism, or Buddhism. Being the first one to found a religion is a huge boost to your economy and success of your civilization. But that's not really how it works in life. In reality religions are entities that are wholly uncontrollable from the standpoint of a leader or ruler - one could say that historically religion has played more a role in disrupting a culture than helping it and its formation has been relatively random.

Again, this is just me thinking out loud, and I'm not sure how it would have been done for playability sake, but I personally would have preferred to have religion be a random event in your civilization (given the appropriate tech of course) and to tone down the monetary and production effects it has on your culture. Yes you might have founded Taoism, but that doesn't mean you should be able to pump out legions of Taoist shock troops to go brutalize your neighbors - even if you do have a state religion. People's beliefs don't work that way. But anyway, just my thoughts.

 

[Willem]

...but that doesn't mean you should be able to pump out legions of Taoist shock troops to go brutalize your neighbors - even if you do have a state religion. People's beliefs don't work that way.

Too bad they didn't know that during the Spanish Inquisition, it might have saved many people from being burned at the stake.

 

[ShaLouZa]

For instance, right from the start cultures beeline for the techs needed to obtain Hinduism, or Buddhism. Being the first one to found a religion is a huge boost to your economy and success of your civilization. But that's not really how it works in life. In reality religions are entities that are wholly uncontrollable from the standpoint of a leader or ruler - one could say that historically religion has played more a role in disrupting a culture than helping it and its formation has been relatively random.

I must disagree here. IMO, religions like others significant changes of the mind depend on circumstances, and appear when the ideas are evolving. Sure, the name of the leader and the exact date of his apparition are random, but the ideas he spreads are not. If Jesus hasn't appeared to spread the idea of brothership with the poors, another bearded dude (no offense to christians) would have ten or fifty years later : the time was just right, and the social circumstances were tending to that. Same goes for every religion.

Manking has evolved from paganism to polytheism along with the evolution of language and the ability to use more sophisticated concepts. Monotheism appeared with political centralisation, and so on. The game is IMHO quite accurate by tying religion to "scientifical" evolution.

For the disruption against formation of societies, it's true in the short term (ie the Roman Empire converting to christianism caused political troubles). But on the long term it ever favorated the union of people, sometimes by military power, sometimes by culturally bounding people. Then again, I think the game is quite accurate on the dpilomatic and social effects of religion.

Anyway, it's just a game, you can't expect a total accuracy. But Civ IV did good enough for me on that point.

 

[Eigenvector]

I don't believe you arguments stand up to historical evidence.

The idea that monotheism came from Political Centralization doesn't stand when you look at the history of India or China or Egypt.

My basic beefs are with the implementation and use of religion in Civ4, not necessarily with the development. Again, to re-iterate my point, religion is used as a specific resource to obtain - which isn't how it works in life. People don't specifically research religions for specific purposes like they research better weapons or better agriculture. Religion tends to form spontaneously on its own as a result of cultural movements.

And maybe this is the reason why it was introduced, perhaps the developers expected us to use it to whip up the masses in a cynical war of domination as it has been historically used by political leaders. Maybe that was the point in introducing religion into the game. That's kind of disheartening, but accurate maybe??

 

[Willem]

People don't specifically research religions for specific purposes like they research better weapons or better agriculture.

But they do interpret and manipulate it in order to justify their own agenda. There's not really a big difference between the two.

 

[Eigenvector]

But they do interpret and manipulate it in order to justify their own agenda. There's not really a big difference between the two.

Oh no no, there's a huge difference, one is cause the other is effect. But see my last point a couple posts up.

 

[Vonreuter]

Well, just look at the expansion of the Muslim Empire. They really did "churn out" those shock troops that eventually took control all of Middle East and North Africa...

Also, think about the Christian Crusades. Religion was a real troop magnet for the leaders of the crusades...

Many Mesoamerican cultures depended on religion to provide them with a constant flux of warriors and sacrifices...

The promise of Paradise "churns out" suicide bombers as we speak...

Can it not thus be justified that you can indeed get a slight production bonus?

I don't think anybody can deny the fact that religions have a huge effect on culture. Look at the Western world and see how much Christianity has affected its culture, no matter how much it would look like the Western Civ has just changed back to Paganism.

 

[Patriarch]

That point is that for gameplay reasons, the player is given much more control over religion than leaders in history have. Players should be able to be directly responsible for their success/failure in a game, and having random events occur causes imbalances.

 

[ElJojo]

I think what you suggest would require a rethinking of the game. Civ is about controlling parameters of your civ, including uncontrollables ones. Look at science for exemple. Sure, in the 20th government grants fund to research.
Ok, but do you think the egyptians had a think-tank to think about the wheel
'You know guys we're looking for something different of square and triangle"
A lot of things you can "research" could not be researched based on governments/leadership input.
It could be nice if things went the other way, as someone suggested on these boards. Instead of researching BW and then discoering Copper, you find copper and from then you have a chance each turn to discover BW.
But then that would quite a different game.
Back to religion, every civ should have some kind of religion, at least before liberalism, I mean, there's never been a civ without religion.
And then there's the difference between beliefs and religion. Religion is the organisation which embodies the beliefs and as an organisation it seeks power, hence the money and the soldiers. Beliefs is something else...

 

[Monker]

But that's not really how it works in life. In reality religions are entities that are wholly uncontrollable from the standpoint of a leader or ruler ...

There's a lot of decisions you make in civ that a leader or ruler wouldn't make in real life. If you were a king, why would you start the revolution for representation? As a ruler how would you make your people research pottery, and how would you know that doing so would allow you to build cottages, helping your commerce?

At a certain point realism has to be sacrificed for gameplay. Having to weigh your options and make decisions is what makes strategy games interesting. I wouldn't want there to be any uncontrollable, random gameplay features in a civ game. Being in complete control of your civilization is the whole point of the game. That's why it's fun.

Edit: And two people beat me to it...

 

[ShaLouZa]

I don't believe you arguments stand up to historical evidence.

The idea that monotheism came from Political Centralization doesn't stand when you look at the history of India or China or Egypt.

Egypt : political centralisation, birth of monotheism (Aton).
India : leaded by a bunch of maharadjas, polytheist.
China : huu... not sure about this one. How does Confucianism work ? And Taoism ?
Israel : one people, one leader, one God.
Rome : monolithic empire, switching from strong representation to more influent leaders while building the empire, and from polytheism to monotheism in the same time. Meanwhile, all the surrounding "civilisations" in North Europa stayed polytheists until christianism kicked in, spreading from Rome. And then what happened ? Political centralisation, tribes uniting to form nations.
Arab empire : one day came Mahomet, he took a bunch of polytheist tribes, converted them to monotheism and united them in an empire that conquered almost the whole the Mediteranean area in 3 centurys.

By political centralisation I mean strong centralisation in fact, not just "let's call that guy our leader and keep going". There are others factors, for sure, and the social ones are the most relevant. But if you think that religion is random, how do you explain that every culture on the planet has gone trough the same religious evolutions along with the same social and political evolutions ?

Except of course if you see there the Mighty Hand Of [insert a god name here], in which case I give up.


Concerning the gameplay : ok, having this religion bounded to this technic everytime is unrealistic. Ok they could appear randomly when the circumstances are good. But historically you ever had paganism before polytheism, and polytheism before monotheism, state religion before freedom of cult (and the great wars of religion in Europe won't deny me here I think). And religion has always been a political, social and diplomatical tool, even now (Great Satan versus the Axe of Evil, round three).

Besides, religion was somehow a resource : people were praying for better collects, more food, more gold or being able to kick the unbeliever's butt. A god was actually like a mine of wootness in the sky (or wherever) : if you had a better god that the neighbour, it was all good for you. It was feeding the soul instead of the stomach, that's the only difference.

So I maintain that the game is quite accurate, in the limits of reasonability. It's not the only way they could have worked things up, it might not be the better one, but it's a good one.

 

[Illusion13]

It seems that if you discover a religion and form a state religion, the other Civs will always have a negative diplo point towards you for having an "evil" religion... I hate that.

And I always beeline to Confucianism cause it doesnt seem possible to ever get Buddhism >.>

 

[ShaLouZa]

If you don't have mysticism at the start, search it and go for polytheism instead of meditation : every religious AI goes for Bouddhism, so you'll be able to catch Hinduism most of the time. And once you have it, spread it to your neighbours asap ! But if you go for a religious game, you'd better catch up judaism and confucianism as well, so your neighbours won't found it and flip to it.

The later religions are less dangerous, you'll already have spreaded yours and won't see all your neighbours convert to a new religion. Besides, you'll be able to go for free religion before the things get really dangerous for you.

 

[Eigenvector]

Right there, that is exactly why I have some concerns about the way religion is implemented - your post is exactly the issue to me. You speak about it as a physical object to acquire and present a logical predictable path to obtain it.

NOTE: I'm not persecuting you here, just using you as my example.

However, don't get me wrong, I believe I understand the implementation and why it had to be the way it was. I'm pretty hard-headed, but I comprehend - even if I don't like it. I'm waxing philosophical here because that was one of my minors in college - philosophy and religion.

 

[Gaspar~]

Right there, that is exactly why I have some concerns about the way religion is implemented - your post is exactly the issue to me. You speak about it as a physical object to acquire and present a logical predictable path to obtain it.

Its an oversimplification, but its not altogether unrealistic. Many leaders thoughout history have manipulated religion to fuel their desires. Sure an easy case is modern America where its not a 'founding' situation, but something like Christianity in Rome - That's pretty much exactly like it. You can say discovering a tech isn't a way to do it, but lots of things come from discovering a tech that don't necessarily follow, its a game mechanic that you can make work logically without too much trouble if you think on it. Christianity from Theology is no worse than United Nations from Mass Media, or broadcast towers from the Eiffel Tower and if you take the knee-jerk reaction to the fact that its religion out of it, its really better, because at least the progression is much more straight-line.

The implementation of Religion in the game is oft frustrating to me, its impossible to work around it til the late game, and sometimes I'd rather just play a game where Religion was not the number one factor in things. I can't complain though, because the reality is in the history of the world, for a large portion of cultures, Religion really was the number one driver of their history, be it simply by the way it developed or by the way it was engineered by their leader... which is pretty much exactly the way it works in CIV.

 

[Willem]

I think things that are predictable in reality should not be random in a history simulation game and things that were unpredictable should be portrayed as somewhat random.

It's not a history simulation game, it's a history strategy game. To quote Soren Johnson:

"Our use of history was largely as setting - the game is not intended to be an accurate historical simulation."

I've been dying to use that one.