WIP: Culture and religion (advice needed)

[Zefyrinus]

I'm in the middle of making a mod that replaces governments with religions. I've also added some new civs. Here's a list of all civs in the game and what religion they start out with:
Rome - Greco-Roman Polytheism
Egypt - Egyptian Polytheism
Macedon - Greco-Roman Polytheism
Assyria - Ashurism
Prussia - North-European Paganism
Han Empire - Shenism
Anglo-Saxons - North-European Paganism
Yamato - Shintoism
Maurya - Hinduism
Sassanids - Zoroastrianism
Aztecs - Mesoamerican Polytheism
Mali - Ancestor Worship
Iñupiat - Shamanism
Mongols - Tengriism
Vikings - North-European Paganism
Gaul - North-European Paganism
Arabia - Semitic Polytheism
Carthage - Semitic Polytheism
Ayutthaya - Hinduism
Kushans - Zoroastrianism
Israel - Semitic Polytheism
Sápmi - Shamanism
Inca - Andean Polytheism
Maya - Mesoamerican Polytheism

None of the starter religions are tradable except for zoroastrianism. The researchable religions are:
Confucianism
Daoism (not tradeable and only researchable by the Han Chinese)
Jainism (not tradeable and has Hinduism as prerequisite)
Buddhism (has Hinduism as prerequisite)
Judaism
Christianity
Islam
Atheism
Secularism

Anarchy is replaced by "Religious Turmoil", and that brings me to my first question:

1. What symbol should I have in the civilopedia instead of the standard anarchy icon?

2. How should the tech tree for the Abrahamic religions look like? First I tried to do this:

Monotheism -> Judaism* -> Christianity
                       -> Islam†

*Untradable.
†Not required for era advancement.

But then most of the AIs would just stick to Judaism and not even bother researching Islam. Flavors didn't help much.

Then I tried this:

Semitic Polytheism* -> Judaism -> Christianity -> Islam†
Monotheism          ->

(Unfortunately I forgot to uncheck the "Not Tradeable" box when I tested the game so everyone would just use Confucianism unless they could research Judaism.) Anyhow, it turned out that you could advance to the medieval era without Judaism and Christianity if you couldn't research them.

So my question is manyfold: what should the prerequisites for Judaism and Islam be, and which techs should not be required for era advancement, and which should be untradeable; taking into consideration that it should encourage the AI to stick to specific religions depending on which civ it is? The reason why I first made Judaism untradeable is because it's not a missionary religion and they don't have a lot of converts, so only the Israeli ought to really have it. But then when I made it have Semitic Polytheism as a prerequisite, it needed to be tradeable for anyone to get Christianity or Islam. At first I made Islam only have Judaism as a prerequisite, to encourage the AIs to research either that or Christiany depending on their flavor setting. But on the other hand it would be more realistic if it had Christianity as it's prerequisite.

3. Should Confucianism have Shenism as a prerequisite, so that only the Han Chinese can research it, but then trade it to others? I already made Daoism only researchable by them, but untradeable because even though there are daoists in other countries, it's never been the major religion anywhere but China. Confucianism on the other hand is tradeable because it was once adopted as the state religion in Japan...

4. Now to something completely else. I've replaced the Colosseum with "Arena". The ancient era still has the standard graphics, I've given the medieval era the industrial/modern standard graphics, and for the modern era I've given it the Shea baseball stadium graphics that're in the download center. But what should an industrial arena look like? I'm thinking like something like 1800-1950; what did arena's look like back then? Is there any particular arena or stadium in real life from that era that I could use as reference (and with that I mean actually steal)?

 

[Zefyrinus]

Oh, and another question:

5. All the temples and churches etc can only be built during a certain religion (government), so when you change religion all the religious improvements and wonders of the old religion disappear. And that makes Atheism and Secularism problematic, because they don't have religious buildings. Atheism (which bans all religions) corresponds to Communism in the normal game, so maybe it doesn't matter because it's not supposed to be a good government. But Secularism (which basically in this mod means that everyone can have whatever religion they want, but the government won't build these buildings for the people) corresponds to Democracy, which people might wanna have. So what could Secularism have instead of temples? I was cynically thinking "maybe a shopping mall", but that's essentially the same thing as the marketplace, and it doesn't make sense why you couldn't build malls if you have any other religion.

 

[LMR]

Maybe instead of churches secularism could build 'culture centres', which theoretically may cover multiple religions and promote tolerance

 

[timerover51]

Start Israel with Judaism > Christianity

Arabia starts with Semitic Polytheism > Islam

 

[Plotinus]

I'm very tired of saying it, but atheism isn't a religion, it's a doctrine which may or may not form part of a religion. It's no more or less a religion than theism is.

If you want a system which bans all religions, you shouldn't call that atheism - or indeed communism. Most communist countries sought to control religions, not ban them. As far as I know, the only country which actually banned religion was Albania under Hoxha.

There's no reason why Judaism shouldn't be tradeable. Think of it not as converting people in the other civ, but as representing migration of Jews there. Thus, when another civ acquires Judaism from a trading partner, that means that Jewish communities have appeared in its cities.

 

[Ozymandias]

I know (hope ) Plotinus will (once again) provide the correct/current term, but the Hebrews actually began as monolatrists (worshipping one God before all others, as stated in the Commandments).

So: Polytheism -> Monolatrism -> Monotheism {Christianity, Islam} &
Polytheism -> Monotheism {Mithraism, etc.}

AFAIK monolatrism was/is unique to Judaism (although the early - I forget the name - Egyptian monotheism might have been as well )

Rather than "Atheism" perhaps "Religious Pluralism"? A generic "Temple Complex" or whatever could suffice as their religious happiness improvement (Either that or just make them all Scientologists )

Best,

Oz

 

[nick0515]

Given Plotinus' point perhaps you should scrap 'Atheism' as a govt because there aren't many examples of societies where Relgion has been completely banned and that isn't what Atheism is anyway. If you see it as a 'bad' govt why have it?

If you removed Israel from the mod then Judaism could just be an empty-tech leading to Islam and Christianity. It doesn't make much sense to me having an Israeli civ as they didn't exist for most of the time period covered in most epic games. Still it's your mod so include who you want. You could do what MEM does and have a synagogue building be able to be built by any civ with the Judaism tech to represent that Jewish communities existed in many different countries.

Cheers,

Nick

 

[timerover51]

There's no reason why Judaism shouldn't be tradeable. Think of it not as converting people in the other civ, but as representing migration of Jews there. Thus, when another civ acquires Judaism from a trading partner, that means that Jewish communities have appeared in its cities.

I see no reason why Judaism should not be tradeable either. There are references in both the New Testament and also some of the ancient historians of Gentiles following the Judiac creed, without becoming full Jews. The niece of my sister-in-law just converted to Judaism. I would view Christianity as tradeable as well, considering how widely it has spread.

As for Israel not existing for most of the time period covered by epic games, most of the nations covered in the game do not exist in actual historical terms for more than a short period of time. The only nation that can claim to have existed the entire period is Egypt. Most of the rest is the standard game, or the ones mentioned in the mod have lasted less than a thousand years.

 

[nick0515]

As for Israel not existing for most of the time period covered by epic games, most of the nations covered in the game do not exist in actual historical terms for more than a short period of time. The only nation that can claim to have existed the entire period is Egypt. Most of the rest is the standard game, or the ones mentioned in the mod have lasted less than a thousand years.

True. I should have elaborated more perhaps. I like to think of civs evolving in an epic game. Romans end up as Italians etc (And this is now literally possible with Stephs game monitor). In this sense it doesn't work very well for Israel. Jewish Kingdoms existed but then they stopped existing for nearly two thousand years. Apart from the Kingdom of Jerusalem the region was ruled as part of other large empires (Roman/Byzantine/various Islamic empires) for the entire time. So how could a unit line go? Ancient Jewish units, Roman units, Byzantine units, Arab units, crusader units, Ottoman units, modern Israeli units. It's a bit of a mess isn't it?

However, the same case can also probably be made for many other civs. I should check the list again. Other ancient civs that disappeared and can't be imagined to evolve into other civs should also be removed/replaced in my opinion. The Hittites for example. I would also argue against including more recent nations that have no real historical, cultural or geographic continuity with the past. Eg Austria, Australia, New Zealand etc etc.

In most cases there will I guess have to be some big shifts in culture for unit lines. Eg Legionaries being replaced by Germanic Lombard units, But Israel would just have far too many shifts.

It's not a very precise approach to what civs to include but it makes more sense to me than just having a random assortment of Ancient, medieval and modern civs included.

Of course if a mod just has largely generic unit and building lines with little or no flavour included then it becomes less of an issue.

Lastly, if you don’t mind a little anachronism in your mod then this approach is entirely redundant.

Cheers,

Nick

EDIT: Re-Judaism not being a missionary religion: While that may be the case there are examples of other peoples taking up the Religion. Eg the Khazars.

 

[Zefyrinus]

I know that atheism (nor secularism) are religions, but they group together with the religions because they affect how the society works and what can be built. Of course, in most countries in the real that have a state religion, religious structures of any religion can be built, but it's impossible to add that much realism into this game. And even though atheism as a "state religion" is really rare in reality, meh I'm not striving for 100% realism. The reason why I included it is because the AI might use it (maybe; I need to do more testing). Anyhow, there are some good points to it, like high unit support.

OK, I can buy the reason why Judaism should be tradeable, but it has been the major religion for very few people, and now I came up with another solution: Make Judaism available only to Israel, Christianity to some civs and Islam to others, and all three just have Monotheism as a prerequisite (besides the placeholder techs which I use for steering who should research what).

 

[Zefyrinus]

If anyone cares, I now have this thing up for testing: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=394542.