Lately I've been seeing some threads on this forum discussing bringing back religion into Civ5. I bought Civ5 a few months after its launch and it is the first Civ I've ever played. I have tried cIV but after playing Civ5 first the squares and stacking turned me off, but I've read up some stuff about cIV and it seems that there was a lot of cool stuff in it that made the game deeper that they left out of Civ5 - one of these things being religion.
From what I've gathered, religions in cIV offered major diplomatic benefits between two civs that shared the same religion, as well as increasing happiness and gold. I've read that a good number of people on this forum thought that religions played too big a role in diplomacy and that making lots of missionaries was tedious, but i think we can all agree that Civ5 could really use something to make diplomacy more predictable and would allow long-term alliances to be more common.
My idea is a small change to the Social Policy system that would play a similar diplomatic role to religions in cIV. Basically, of all of the Social Policies that a civ has opened, each civ would pick one policy to emphasize, which would be the defining aspect of that civ's culture. Having the same Emphasized Policy as an AI would make a strong positive modifier, "We have cultural ties to their empire!" while having two contrasting Emphasized Policies (like Piety and Rationalism) would create a negative modifier. Requesting another civ to change their Emphasized Policy could be via trading and demanding. (I'll change to your policy if you give me your spices.)
In order to promote sticking to one Emphasized Policy (like not having someone open Tradition just to get the diplomatic benefit with a certian AI and them never picking a single policy from it) and not constantly switching between different Emphasized Policies, extra bonuses would be given to the player for each policy in their Emphasized Policy tree that is unlocked. For example, Rationalism might give +2 science per turn for each policy in its tree unlocked, and Order might give +1 happiness per for each policy in its tree unlocked. These bonuses would be beneficial, but not necessarily game changing. Also, there would be some sort of penalty for changing Emphasized Policies, where the civ would go into "Social Disorder" for a few turns and their bonuses from social policies would be reduced or taken away altogether.
I think this idea would be a small change to the overall gameplay of Civ5 that would help diplomacy and make the AI less unpredictable and violent without having to re-balance the game with completely new religion mechanics.
So any thoughts on this idea?
EDIT: I realized there are 7 religions in cIV and 10 policies in Civ5, so maybe it would be better if Order, Autocracy, and Freedom couldn't be emphasized, as you unlock them late in the game and they are very similar to Tradition, Liberty, and Honor.
From what I've gathered, religions in cIV offered major diplomatic benefits between two civs that shared the same religion, as well as increasing happiness and gold. I've read that a good number of people on this forum thought that religions played too big a role in diplomacy and that making lots of missionaries was tedious, but i think we can all agree that Civ5 could really use something to make diplomacy more predictable and would allow long-term alliances to be more common.
My idea is a small change to the Social Policy system that would play a similar diplomatic role to religions in cIV. Basically, of all of the Social Policies that a civ has opened, each civ would pick one policy to emphasize, which would be the defining aspect of that civ's culture. Having the same Emphasized Policy as an AI would make a strong positive modifier, "We have cultural ties to their empire!" while having two contrasting Emphasized Policies (like Piety and Rationalism) would create a negative modifier. Requesting another civ to change their Emphasized Policy could be via trading and demanding. (I'll change to your policy if you give me your spices.)
In order to promote sticking to one Emphasized Policy (like not having someone open Tradition just to get the diplomatic benefit with a certian AI and them never picking a single policy from it) and not constantly switching between different Emphasized Policies, extra bonuses would be given to the player for each policy in their Emphasized Policy tree that is unlocked. For example, Rationalism might give +2 science per turn for each policy in its tree unlocked, and Order might give +1 happiness per for each policy in its tree unlocked. These bonuses would be beneficial, but not necessarily game changing. Also, there would be some sort of penalty for changing Emphasized Policies, where the civ would go into "Social Disorder" for a few turns and their bonuses from social policies would be reduced or taken away altogether.
I think this idea would be a small change to the overall gameplay of Civ5 that would help diplomacy and make the AI less unpredictable and violent without having to re-balance the game with completely new religion mechanics.
So any thoughts on this idea?
EDIT: I realized there are 7 religions in cIV and 10 policies in Civ5, so maybe it would be better if Order, Autocracy, and Freedom couldn't be emphasized, as you unlock them late in the game and they are very similar to Tradition, Liberty, and Honor.
