Alternates to Judaism - MODCOMP

[fearuin]

It has been argued (rightly, I think) that Judaism it's not a proselitistic faith (it doesn't seek for new believers), it doesn't make much sense to have it. If we add the fact that most games, Greece, Persia, Rome and Egypt (and Babilonia in Warlords, I guess) choose this religion as SR, things go all weird.

So we have to think on some alternative to Judaism . We need a religion that fills the gap on the eastern mediterraneum and middle east until Arabians come and spread Islam on the area by de force.

Here are the ideas:

1.- mitsho's idea: zoroastrianism. This is good for Babilonia and Persia. Maybe for Greece, also. But it seems to me that Zoroastrian Rome or Egypt are as weird as Jewish.

2.- My idea: Christian Orthodoxy. Orthodoxy will be founded for the first civ to discover Alphabet, but will be auto-funded in Jerusalem by 1 AD if anyone didn't before. As most of the times, Greece it's the first to discover Alphabet, the holy city will be Greek (which makes sense, as Constantinople was the holy city of Orthodoxy until 1453 when it fell under Turks hands). It's not impossible to the other civs to have it, what it's good, because I don't like too much determinism. And the most important: for a good time, most of the mediterrnean civs will remain pagan (what it's histporically accurate), and after the historical foundation of Christianism, they will start to convert to the religion that still today is dominant on the area (with the exception of Egypt, Persia and Babylon which are muslim, but in our world they fell under Arabian rule, so if in RFC happened the same, they will be muslim anyway).
Christianity's auto-foundation (now should be called Catholicism) will be delayed to the Orthodox schism, which happened on 1054 (so year 1050 will be good), and will be done on Rome, of course. Obviously, there's a lot of possibilities to be discovered earlier, but it will be done either by Rome (they beeline for Theology, most of the times), or by France, Spain, England or Germany. As I said, I don't like determinism, but if the result should be most of the times accurate to history. In any case, Catholicism will cover most of western europe, and Orthodoxy, the eastern.

There's only problem. There's some risk for hinduism/buddhism to spread into Persia/Babylon. But this already happens, and never lasts for too long. But now one of these religions (or both) will have more time to spread into middle east, so we may have a Buddhist Persia more than once. Accordingly to this, we can just reduce the spreading rate of Indian religions a bit, and everything should be OK.

What do you think? Do you have any better ideas? Would you modify one of these ones?

 

[El_Chimpo]

Personally I'm all for Zoroastrianism as it was extremely important and influential historically and appears to be much easier to work into Rhye's. The Catholicism idea relies on Catholicism being spread throughout the west via missionaries as most of the Mediterranean and central Europe would be Orthodox through your method. Catholicism wasn't something that just spread out of Rome in 1050 it was always there the split between east and west became official in the 11th century. The only way the Orthodox thing could work is to suddenly convert half of Christianity to Orthodox and the other half into Catholicism in 1050 but I don't think thats possible given Civ 4's limitations. So I vote for Zoroastrianism, it would be cool to see Persia not Jewish for a change .

 

[Lord Apolon]

I agree with Zoroastrianism. It remained a fairly significant religion until the 600s or so at least, and still has a small number of followers today.

The Christian schism idea is simply too complicated and there are too many different ways to do it.. and then there's Protestantism.. and if you do that you ought to model the schisms in other religions too... so it seems much more sensible to me just to replace Judaism with Zoroastrianism.

 

[captain beaver]

I would prefer Christian Orthodoxy but, you shouldn't change the founding date for Catholicism. Otherwise, there is a risk of having a hard time converting anyone to that religion since everyone in Europe will probably be Orthodox by that time.
However, you should also look back to the thread that talked about this issue. People had come up with a nice solution to encourage AIs not to switch to the first religion that comes to their city (Buddist France for example or Confucianist Russia).

 

[SadoMacho]

My time is very short now, and I prefer to concentrate on a different thing instead of espanding embassies.
The last thing I want to do is schisms. I can't however promise I'll do that in time; in case, you'll just get a minor patch containing just fixes and refinements

Rhye is working on shism, so I would go for zoroastrianism, but I would wait for a while until you see Rhye's ideas.

 

[kairob]

I do like the idea of zoroastrianism, but how about having orthadoxy spawning in constantinople if not olready thier and renaming christianity to catholocismand starting that of at rome, if not got already, and then the schism I always assumed would be for prodistantism? just throwing ideas around, I dont mind if no one likes it

 

[Edungeon]

Rhye is working in schisms, so I prefer Zoroastrionism.

And Catholic Holy City in Rome! XD

 

[sdLeo]

I like the idea of the Orthodox being in (for purely selfish reasons)... But, how the heck do we implement a schism??? Between 33AD (the official date for the founding of Christianity, btw) and 1054, while there were two increasingly different approaches to Christianity, there was only one Orthodox Catholic church - i.e. the church pre-schism wasn't catholic or orthodox, it was both...

And, who split from who? There are at least two different accounts of that story...

I also think that if we're gonna split Christianity, the Protestants cannot be ignored.

Splitting Christianity is a tad complicated IMO, as much as I would LOVE to see the Orthodox in the game...

 

[Whitefire]

Why just Christianity? Everyone should be aware of the sects of Islam. I don't now if the same applies to Hinduism, Buddhism, etc.

 

[biggamer132]

I'm voting for Zoroastrianism, and here are my reasons:

1. Historical influence: Under the Achaemenid empire, the Jews of Babylon were greatly influenced by Zoroastrian concepts of heaven and hell, demons, etc. Through Judaism, those concepts later spread to Christianity and Islam, which (and this is the last time I checked) are the two most followed religions on the planet.

2. Having Zoroastrianism as the predominant religion of the Middle East, at least as far as Persia/Babylon go, would be more historically accurate than having a religion like Orthodox Christianity 500 years before Christ. It was the state religion of Persia, and therefore the regions under Persian control, until the rise of Islam.

 

[kairob]

Ok, Zoroastrianism seems like the best choice

 

[mitsho]

Well, I'm honoured to be named as the father of the idea, but I'm not And I nevertheless want to add some "Bewares" that were also in my original idea (but not written down..)

• UHVI: Persia must still be able to fulfill their UHV which basically means that if you remove Judaism, you have to have another Religion of the same time (Zoro...) or change the UHV.
• UHVII: Arabia has a similar problem, but here for the Shrines also Orthodoxy can be the solution. But the more you spam the region with religions the more difficult it becomes for them to spread Islam to 40%.
• Schisms: As said before, it doesn't make sense to base a system on something that might get changed. Although it is everything else than probable that Rhye will add in a Schism-system soon (see newest version).
• Gameview: The Religion page has afaik only place for one more religion/are the adequate graphics?

That's why I proposed adding Zoroastrianism in without removing Judaism if you want it. Judaism isn't totally unrealistic and it's already perfectly balanced into the game. Christianity on the other hand works perfectly too. If you add Orthodoxy and Catholicism, where do you stay with Protestantism which would mean one too many religion? How do you make sure that Christians like each other more than Muslims? Does only Christianity deserve "sects"? Don't we have enough religions already?

I would thus opt most likely to keep the situation as it is. Add in Zoroastrianism at most.

But in any case, weigh your additions carefully before spamming the world with religions

mick

 

[kairob]

Juedaism is NOT balanced perfectly with the game, I suggest swapping it for zoroastrianism

 

[Talkie_Toaster]

Zoroastrianism, we could be getting schisms and, even if we're not, it wouldn't be fair on all the other religions just to have Christianity split into two.

 

[mitsho]

Juedaism is NOT balanced perfectly with the game, I suggest swapping it for zoroastrianism

So what is not balanced perfectly into the game? I agree that it could be swapped with Zoroastrianism and we would still have mostly the same game though. However this has one negative. It makes the Arabian UHV again harder to impossible (The Zoro Holy City will probably be Parsa, a major distraction from the expansion path of the Arabs).

mick

 

[Talkie_Toaster]

It's balanced as far as gameplay goes, but accuracy's right out the window. When did you last see a Jewish missionary? =P

 

[mitsho]

It's balanced as far as gameplay goes, but accuracy's right out the window. When did you last see a Jewish missionary? =P

I wasn't talking of something else?!?

 

[Talkie_Toaster]

.........what?

 

[mitsho]

I wasn't talking of something else than balance of gameplay. I never ever said one word about accuracy.

mick

 

[Tboy]

Replace Judaism with Zoroastrianism, since if Rhye gets schisms working, there'll be no need for orthodoxy.

The orthodoxy is, however, a good idea.