Bye-Bye Religions?

Should religions be removed from CivV?

  • Yes

    Votes: 34 6.8%
  • No

    Votes: 387 77.4%
  • Put it in an expansion pack

    Votes: 47 9.4%
  • I don't care

    Votes: 32 6.4%

  • Total voters
    500
It is impressive of how you are able to sum up your intellectual superiority over Albert Schweitzer in one single word.
I stand by what I said. That included a sentence after that single word. I son't think the woes of the first half of the 20th century were due to materialism or a lack of ethics. Religion wasn't the only belief that led people to commit atrocities. It, like others (communism for instance), was often abused internally more than externally.

As for Isabel, she didn't treat muslims and jews similarly. She sent jews away very early while initially she let muslims have freedom of religion. Only pressures led her to change her ways with regards to muslims, so I say she was more anti-jew than anti-muslim. I don't think this is depicted at all in Civ IV, because the game lacks purging a religion, forced conversions and inquisition (unless you play with some mods). In the game, she could only be fighting muslims outside her kingdom, not inside. The unmodded game can't represent what she did at all in my opinion.
 
If religions happen to be included there are many things they can do to expand it. They should allow purging/inquisition against religions if you want to clear them from your cities. currently there is no reason to get rid of a religion because it allows for more happiness due to everyone being able to worship what they want to worship, but they should in addition to this add a higher percentage of a revolt due to religious strife. This would be similar to the slave revolt possibility when in slavery. It would lead to judging whether the increased riot rate would is worth the extra :D. Also the fighting between faith issue could be resolved by the AP excommunicating a civ from the religion. This would automatically revert the attacking civ into a revolt to no state if the vote succeeds. Since your vote would still count you could turn the tables and make whoever you were attacking excommunicated. it would be like if you were rome and attacking greece it would be a resolution to excommunicate rome/greece/abstain. but this is all assuming similarities to civ4 mechanics.

Also I think someone said that it is a hassle to spread your own religion and the hammers invested into missionaries is immense, but this is fairly realistic. Spreading a religion isn't easy. The early christian church was persecuted often but it eventually spread throughout europe.
 
The issue is that internal strife caused by religions, and strife caused by variants of religions between civs, are both missing in Civ IV.

True. My wife comes from a part of Germany that was torn apart by the 30 Years War, almost depopulated, and there is nothing like that in Civ IV.

And it would be hard to put in, because, and this is what we keep running up against, different religions have different characteristics. And you can't put them in without having the PC crowd throwing a fit.

So what they, or rather some very fearless modder, would have to do is create a list of characteristics like

MISSIONARIES: Christianity, Islam, Buddhism YES; Hinduism, Judaism, Taoism NO.
RELIGIOUS WARS: Christianity, Islam, Hinduism YES; Judaism, Buddhism, Taoism NO.
VIOLENT SCHISMS: Christianity, Islam YES; Judaism, Buddhism, Taoism NO

You get the picture (left out Conf because I don't know squat about it). Then, you'd have to make individual characteristics for each religion, stuff like "gets along with other faiths" (Buddhism), "hates faith X" (Islam -> Judaism), "gets along with faith Y" (Hinduism -> Buddhism).

And if people haven't, uh, stoned you yet, they'll start to gripe that Muslem countries used to be tolerant of Jews and Christians, or that Christians didn't used to tolerate Jews, and all hell will break loose (assuming your religion has a hell, grin). You'd have to include developments like the moderation of Christianity through Liberalism and the rise of intolerant forms of Islam. By now, you're risking your own personal Fatwa.

So I don't see realistic religion coming, either. But even the half-assed system we have with Civ IV added enormously to the feeling of the game IMHO. Just removing it completely seems like taking the easy way out.
 
I don't think religions are going to disappear. They will just be less prominent.

As someone mentioned before, in cIV they are mainly vehicles to create blocs among the civs in the game.

I think maybe they'll allow the player to choose a religion after researching a certain tech. You could aquire other religions somehow from other Civs or through teching.

Other Civs wouldn't be too upset if you had a different religion than them generally. Perhaps you'll have a civic (or whatever the new system is going to be) where you can have tolerance levels. If you are not tolerant to a certain religion then that could create friction with other Civs.

I hope they do have religions in their somehow. At least so modders can have an easier time like with the FFH series.
 
I don't think religions are going to disappear. They will just be less prominent.

They have actually said that religions will be removed in order for better diplomacy, its a known fact, look at the beginning of this thread for further details.

:) 400th POST!! :)
 
Well in my humble opinion I think religion was a great feature of Civ 4. In history religion has shaped whole civilizations and to remove it from a game as epic as Civ would be a mistake.
 
I hope religions stay in civ5.
In every civilization religion is very important.
And i like the way it was in civ4. religion was important in many aspects of the game, just like in real life. And that made civ4 more interresting. Its not just diplomacy but also econemy and your people get happy with religion! I just hope they kick out the new espionage system. and give back the original religion system wich could be used for espionage also!

Things to improve the relgion aspect: More multiplayer options/features for civs with the same religion.
 
Yes, I believe religion should be removed. While it did have an impact in history, I believe that having a basic temple and cathedral that provides a culture booth is better than having seven versions of the same thing. I say, take religion out!
 
Keep it but change it. Make religions give different benefits, units, maybe even civics ala FFH, make favorite religion tags in Leaderhead infos or whatever the new file is called much more influential on them than it was, and maybe even make them work towards founding or adopting their favorite religion.
 
Keep it but change it. Make religions give different benefits, units, maybe even civics ala FFH, make favorite religion tags in Leaderhead infos or whatever the new file is called much more influential on them than it was, and maybe even make them work towards founding or adopting their favorite religion.

Civilization stated they would never make any differences in-game between different religions, and all religions would provide the same benefits. They would not make differences between different religions in-game, should a change be misinterpreted as bias or racism. As Firaxis stated in the Civ4 manual, "...we are game designers, not theologians." The last thing they need is getting sued for Civ5.
 
if they do end up putting religions in a later expansion then i think they should expand religions. Like making each religion have unique properties.
 
Never happen. Religions will never be differentiated in game by Fireaxis. It creates too many potential problems.
 
I really liked the way religion was implemented in Civ IV. It helped to provide a reason for the AI to love / hate you that made real world sense. It was a nice minigame within and outside of your borders. It was a nice sort of 'roleplay' type addition.

One thing I really disliked about it was that the AI seemed a little too obsessed with religion a little too often. The other detractor to the religion system was that you almost HAD to get a religion to be successful, which really shouldn't be the case.

It's sad to see it go. It sure does smell like corporate political correctness influencing a game design decision, but that is simply baseless speculation on my part so please take it as such. Why remove a feature that was really popular? I hope it at least makes a return in some kind of abstract cultural form.
 
religions must be expanded the current ones are almost useless except in diplomacy. If they aren't expanded leave them there useless.
 
OK, my $0.02 cents worth.

1) As rumours go, I think this one is incredibly weak-given that its based off of a translation which leaves it sounding very vague. I'll wait for something official-in English-before I start worrying about Religion being gone!

2) I think it should be possible to customize religions w/o upsetting the PC brigade. As long as religions don't fall into stereotypes, & are instead defined by the Civilization which adopts it, then there's no cause to get upset. Like the idea of having The Native Americans conquer Europe-Civ V religions could also be about "rewriting history". Imagine a world with Militant Bhuddism, or Hinduism generating "Shylocks" ;)! My point is that religious traits should come about due to ingame decisions, not inherent stereotypes!

Aussie.
 
I agree. My feeling about what was said is that religions in civ V would not have the huge influence they have in Civ IV diplomacy, not that they would not be there. If that is what they do, I'm perfectly OK with that. Religions in Civ IV had a tremendous influence in the diplomacy and not always in the better way ( those Budhism/Hinduism mega-blocks , for a quick example ). Given that it looks that Civ V land adquiring will not be culture based, religion is not needed to get early culture as well ( well , and also takes the gridlock on the upper number of religions that the game can have without making culture wins ridiculously easy ... ) , so i can see regilion there, but with diferent functions or simply as fluff.
 
They have actually said that religions will be removed in order for better diplomacy, its a known fact, look at the beginning of this thread for further details.

:) 400th POST!! :)

Where did they say it. I still have yet for anybody to point me to official proof of this. (word directly from Firaxis).

OK, my $0.02 cents worth.

1) As rumours go, I think this one is incredibly weak-given that its based off of a translation which leaves it sounding very vague. I'll wait for something official-in English-before I start worrying about Religion being gone!

2) I think it should be possible to customize religions w/o upsetting the PC brigade. As long as religions don't fall into stereotypes, & are instead defined by the Civilization which adopts it, then there's no cause to get upset. Like the idea of having The Native Americans conquer Europe-Civ V religions could also be about "rewriting history". Imagine a world with Militant Bhuddism, or Hinduism generating "Shylocks" ;)! My point is that religious traits should come about due to ingame decisions, not inherent stereotypes!

Aussie.

Amen to that!

1st, translations from foreign subsidiaries to the developers (i.e. a European branch of Take-Two in this case) have been known to be wrong many times before due to mistranslation or miscommunication between companies.

I also agree with your second point, Aussie!
 
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