C2C - Religions discussions and ideas

i disagree that atheism should be chosen as a "religion" in the game. atheism I suspect was a term that was created bye Christians to say that atheists were religious and that atheism is a religion. this is not true about atheists. atheists do not follow any religion or have churches, temples. mosks, ect... making atheism a religion is ridiculous, atheists will not ever be religious like being balled is hair color. I suggest you have a option to choose to not have religion in the future eras for your civ and to put atheism in another category instiad of the religions in the game.

Wouldn't you think, just maybe, we've had this discussion before?! :rolleyes: Maybe even more than once! You're just a little late for the dance is all friend.

JosEPh
 
I'm still a strong proponent of removing Atheism as a civic and including it, instead, as a religion (as choosing to believe in nothing is still a choice among the selection of religious choices.) This will become more apparent why when the Ideas project manifests further.

@DH: Such non-theist belief systems would be rather interesting to spend more time studying I'd think. Even the Hindus believe that the Brahman really isn't a deity with any given opinion and can't even really be interacted with without the Atman being the interact-able 'face' of the Brahman (thus being the God Atman-Brahman.) (True Hindus feel free to contradict me if my readings have taught me incorrectly on this in any way.) I found this outlook rather intriguing as the sum total of all that is and is not in the omniverse must really have very little in the way of 'personal' motive except perhaps to stretch the imagination further and further to find more and more to manifest.

You need to differentiate between Athiests and Agnostics.

Athiests - do not believe in a god or devil or an afterlife, etc. in any form. We have no soul - when we die that is it. Blank screen.

Agnostics - do not believe in current religious beliefs. But they do not completly deny the possible existance of a deity etc. - they have just not found it, are unsure.


Don't know how it works in C2C, but maybe your current Athiest religion should be changed to Agnosticism.

Then introduce something else for Athiests. If you keep it as a religious choice (a non religion) - it should not have any special buildings etc. It tends to be a personal choice - rather than a conversion.

As for the religious penalties being applied, if severe that is wrong. Neither Athiests nor Agnostics would do that. They respect other peoples believes. They just choose not to follow them. (Maybe a small drop in some incomes - gold/culture etc. representing fewer believers. As I said earlier - I do not yet know how this works in C2C.)

IMO, you are confusing religious penalties, with those applied by the Communist parties from the 1900s onwards. They were neither real Athiests or Agnostics, but political Communists who happened (or chose to believe - for self advancement in Athiesm.) They just wanted to stop what they thought would may become a rallying point (the church) for the oppressed people. So they tried to crush it.
 
You need to differentiate between Athiests and Agnostics.

Athiests - do not believe in a god or devil or an afterlife, etc. in any form. We have no soul - when we die that is it. Blank screen.

Agnostics - do not believe in current religious beliefs. But they do not completly deny the possible existance of a deity etc. - they are unsure.


Don't know how it works in C2C, but maybe your current Athiest religion should be changed to Agnosticism.

Then introduce something else for Athiests. If you keep it as a religious choice (a non religion) - it should not have any special buildings etc. It tends to be a personal choice - rather than a conversion.

As for the religious penalties being applied that is wrong. Neither Athiests nor Agnostics would do that. They respect other peoples believes. They just choose not to follow them.

You are confusing this with the Communist parties from the 1900s onwards. They were neither Athiests or Agnostics - they just wanted to crush what they thought would be a rallying point for the oppressed people - the church. So they tried to crush it.
Naw... I just didn't go into the usual detail about my perspective which pretty much correlates to everything you added there. Yes, an ANTI-Religious civic may be in order regardless and just for that reason. And I do also want Agnosticism as a religion as well. I've argued for both for some time now but haven't had the impetus to truly push for that yet.

Once the Ideas project is in place, again, it will be shown why it's more necessary. To reflect the %s of people in cities and nations in total, that primarily believe in particular ways. Atheism is a belief set and is thus a religion among other religions, even though it is defined as the absence of religions. If you take 10 people and 3 of them are Atheist and are thus NOT of any other religious opinion then 30% are Atheist. The only way to accurately reflect this kind of population breakdown would be to have Atheism as a religion. The same thinking follows for Agnosticism which I'm just as quick to point out the apt observations you made on that subject.
 
I like the idea to add Atheism like a normal religion in Civ4. Atheism is belive. Belive that god dont exist. There is no evidence for existence of god and there is no evidence to not existence of god :)
 
please listen guys and one person got the atheist thing right here, they are correct. atheist do not have a "balief" or believe that there is no god/gods/diety/dieties, they just lack a belief or do not believe in any deities/gods. they also do not have there own religion in the real world and would pobably never make there own. once a atheist balieves that there is no god and founds a religion, in my honest view, they are religious and no longer a atheist.

I have an idea, why don't we make athiest civic or whatever a option or mod mod/different version if no one can come to an agreement and how does the atheism and or atheist civic work in the game, what does it do?
 
@Civ4newbie,
Please let this go. We know what an atheist does and does not beleive. We have had multiple discussion, to the point that it got personal and mean. Moderator action occurred too. The current state is the consensus of those discussions.

So I'm asking you Please stop pushing this. We have been down this path before and do Not want to go down it again.

JosEPh
 
@Civ4newbie,
Please let this go. We know what an atheist does and does not beleive. We have had multiple discussion, to the point that it got personal and mean. Moderator action occurred too. The current state is the consensus of those discussions.

So I'm asking you Please stop pushing this. We have been down this path before and do Not want to go down it again.

JosEPh

um, I don't really know what your refering to. I do not mean to be mean or piss anyone off here, I was not being perosnal at all despite possibly seeming that way to people who read my posts. I was mentioning what I said for the game purposes only. if this is going to cause problems then I will stop but please consider at least making it a option or mod mod to not have atheism/atheist state a religion.

perhaps just not meantion atheism and/or agnosticism in the game but have a way in the game to choose to not have any religion for your civs state at some point in the modern era or future eras like what happens in the late part of the game in the future mod. old religions in the future mod become obsolete and die away the older they get if my memory is right in that mod. that mod contains future religions such as nilhilism, new age and a religion based on computers or virtual reality.

are there any future religions in the caveman to cosmos mod? perhaps for the first future era before the galactic age?
 
Actually I don't understand why atheism should be lifted from civics into a religion. But if it is it should be called something more imaginative than atheism though. Atheism is a personal statement of non-belief in a god, but not all religions have gods to disbelieve in anyway. Calling atheism or agnosticism a religion is like calling theism, pantheism or deism a religion. A religion requires a little more than to merely designate a specific point of view about a single concept that several world religions doesn't recognize in the first place.

There are you know real movements that are atheistic you could use. Objectivism, secular humanism, satanism e.t.c. depending on what kind of atheism you have in mind. Ancient history has a few secular philosophies aswell, confucianism for example, which happened to become one of the 7 religions in bts.
 
Dancing Hoskuld wrote in another thread (*):

"I am trying to come up with a way to evolve your own religion and thus remove the current names religions from the game."

(*) http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=13307149&postcount=73

I think that would be a very bad idea, as it would remove a lot of immersion from the game.

In its basics, a turn-based strategy game is about statistics and numbers.

Foodbuilding1 increases food production by 2 units while foodbuilding2 increases food production by another 2 units. You start with access to militaryunit1 which has 2 combat strength. Then you research weapontech2 which allows you to build militaryunit2 which has 3 combat strength etc.

While these stats and numbers are important, they are also bland and boring. The strength of the Civilization game series is its immersion in world history and real life. Instead of foodbuilding1,2 and 3 we have cheese makers, beer brewers and butcheries.

A band of cavemen with primitive spears attacking a dangerous wild mammoth sounds a lot more exciting than combatunit6 attacking animalunit12 with a 56% chance of success.

Movies about the Roman Empire have given glamour to the swordsman unit, while mounted knights and tanks have their own coolness from various movies.

I'd like to extend this to religions: everybody has ideas, opinions, about major world religions. From Christianity with its impressive cathedrals and witch burnings, to the bloodthirsty jihadists of Islam, to the meditating monks of Buddhism, to the public human sacrifices of the Aztecs, everybody has some imagery, and probably emotions (positive or negative) about the various world religions, and this adds a lot of spice to the game.

Throwing this out and replacing it by a do-it-yourself religious system where you can choose between religious direction A (+5% tech) or religious direction B (+5% combat strength of units) may perhaps deepen the strategic part of the game but would also be an immense loss of immersion.

Whatever you do, please keep the historical religions in the game for their immersion.
 
Dancing Hoskuld wrote in another thread (*):

"I am trying to come up with a way to evolve your own religion and thus remove the current names religions from the game."

(*) http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=13307149&postcount=73

I think that would be a very bad idea, as it would remove a lot of immersion from the game.

Throwing this out and replacing it by a do-it-yourself religious system where you can choose between religious direction A (+5% tech) or religious direction B (+5% combat strength of units) may perhaps deepen the strategic part of the game but would also be an immense loss of immersion.

Whatever you do, please keep the historical religions in the game for their immersion.

I agree with this point of view. Not only with religions, but with civilizations etc. as well.

If you go down the path of (choose your own unknown civs and religions etc. [ not real world ones]) IMHO you will loose a lot of followers.

A lot of players want to play with civs etc. they know. Not make up fictional names.

If you do eventually decide to do this - please keep two versions of C2C.

One based on the current version (existing civs, religions etc.) and one on the unknown and invented world.
 
The plan for civs does not involve making them up by any means. It just involves being able to select which culture embodies the nation. This then can change as time goes on which could also lead to the massive shattering of nations at the times of these great adjustments.
 
Evolving does not mean you get religion6 - although at the start many will have South American X when I come up with a suitable name for X.

You will evolve your religions and along the way if you meet the requirements you will be able to change its name to an appropriate religion. For example: you will probably need a "Book of Abraham" and "The Ten Commandments" as well as contact with someone who has Judaism before you can even think of calling your religion Christian or Islam.

Have you seen Xynth's ideas in History Rewritten with religious tenets? Certain tenets are restricted to certain religions. I want to go the other way and say that you cant be religion X if you don't adopt tenets a, c and f.

This way I can get all the religions of Earth into the game rather than just the few we have now.
 
I did review that link the other day. I found much of it interesting but I'd like us to keep prophet generation as it is because to make a national pool as he's doing there would step on another project to come and it's probably not terribly necessary to the system anyhow given the great weight we have towards prophets anyhow.

Otherwise I found many of the ideas quite interesting... still think it would be best to keep it all under the shell of a gameoption though as the religious setup we have now is one of the greater strengths of the mod, particularly to the player who understands vanilla religions and is considering playing the mod from that perspective. Breaking that down would be dismantling one of our great accomplishments so should not be dismantled entirely to make way for the possibility to play under the new system concept, even if it will be as cool as I think it will be.
 
I think that in the current game, it is way too easy to have multiple religions in the same city. A religion gets its influence from a claim on the Truth. A competing religion with its own claim on the Truth is therefore automatically an existential threat to all other religions. At best this leads to non-violent coexistence in separate communities while hiding mutual disapproval behind politeness, at worst this leads to violence and genocide. Also, history shows that tension between two sects within the same religion can be at least as violent as tension between different religions, even though that may seem illogical from a neutral point of view.

And this extends into the 21st century: just turn on the TV to watch the latest round of sectarian or inter-religious violence in the Middle East.

There is also the exploit where a smart player collects 15-20 religions (often by beelining for the founding techs) to boost his research. As many religions have a building that gives +10% research, building all of those in his science cities, allows this player to get a massive boost in research speed (more than double). Aside from being imbalanced, it is also a-historical.

Some civics have penalties for having more than one (non-state) religions in a city, usually a minor boost in unhappiness, but as religions each give additional happiness-producing buildings, this is not a great penalty.

So I think I have made a good case for adding "religious tension" as a source of instability (per the revolutions mod). Having only one religion in a city should have no effect on stability, if it is the state religion it should even have a positive effect on stability (priests and ruler keeping each other in power). However, as the number of religions in a city grows, religious tension will add instability (perhaps multiplied by a factor based on civics), making it very dangerous to stack many religions in the same city.

In addition to normal revolts from the revolutions mod, a city with high instability due to religious tension should have a chance to suffer a religious revolt. The city goes into anarchy for a couple of turns. In addition to this, one religion (X) may become the losers of the revolt, and one of the following things may happen to it:

-one or more buildings of religion X get destroyed by followers of other religions.
-followers of religion X are massacred or converted. The religion gets removed from the city and all buildings of that religion get destroyed.
-followers of religion X flee to another city (perhaps in a neighbouring civilization). The religion gets removed from the revolting city and all buildings of that religion get destroyed. If the religion doesn't already exist in the city the followers fled to, the other city gains religion X.

If you look at the world today, you'll notice that many of the old religions that used to have a lot of influence, no longer have followers today. Memories of older religions may still exist as culture but there is hardly anyone left (if any) that still follows Kemetism, Canaanism or Druidism.

Islam eradicated Zoroastrianism, and Christianity eradicated most of the older religions in Europe and the Americas. The only people Christianity had real problems converting were muslims. While Islam got removed from Spain after the reconquista, other attempts to convert muslims to Christianity had little success. Russia tried hard to convert its muslim Tatar population to Christianity but was mostly unsuccessful. During the late colonial era, European Christian powers conquered many islamic countries but not much conversion happened.

It is obvious that Islam, which is newer than Christianity, has much staying power as a religion. Nevertheless, a black racist (*) Islamic group in the USA called "Nation of Islam" (NOI) officially converted to Scientology in 2010, declaring L.Ron Hubbard "the only good white person".

(*) NOI believes that black people are created by Allah while white people are a perverted, evil race artificially created by an evil scientist.

A way to simulate the above history is to give religions competing power based on their age: the newer a religion, the more likely it is to compete away older religions during a religious revolt. This can be done simply on the basis of its founding date in number of game turns. The more game turns before its founding, the more "compete strength" a religion has during a religious revolt. This compete strength is modified by factors like is it the state religion, what religious buildings are present, or is it the Holy City.

This system doesn't explain the survival of Judaism though. Over the centuries, Jews have been attacked and massacred so many times it is a miracle Jews still exist. Perhaps give Judaism a higher chance to flee if they lose during a religious revolt? Jews are known for migrating a lot over the centuries.

SCHISMS

The most successful religions today (by number of followers) are Christianity and Islam. Being relatively new religions, they would have lots of competing power in the above system and also have lots of powerful wonders. Thus, they would be very coveted by players as these religions are stronger than the others. To balance this out, Islam and Christianity have schisms. As soon as certain conditions are met (I'm thinking of certain techs researched and a minimum number of cities with the faith) a schism happens. Islam gets split into Sunni Islam and Shia Islam. Christianity first gets split into Catholicism and Orthodox, later Catholicism gets split into Catholicism and Protestantism (which consists of Lutherianism, Calvinism and others), and later Mormonism splits off Protestantism. After the schism, these split-offs are considered separate religions but allow for the same religious buildings. I.e. a city with either or both Protestants and/or Catholics can still build only one Christian cathedral. Schisms happen on a per-city base. On the event of the catholic-protestant schism, some Catholic cities stay Catholic, others gain both Catholicism and Protestantism. However, having two schisms of the same religion in a city is very bad for stability, especially for a period after the schism happens. This would simulate the many bloody European religious civil wars during the renaissance era, and would end when every city was either Catholic or Protestant.
 
I'm surprised that Freemasonry is not included as a religion. It is centuries old, has many lodges all over the world, and countless powerful politicians and heads-of-state have been followers of it, from several USA presidents to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who turned the remnants of the Ottoman Empire (Islamic Kaliphate) into secular modern Turkey. You could say that Freemasonry is the unofficial state religion of many officially "secular" states.

Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Freemasons
how much political influence freemasonry has had over the centuries. ctrl-F for "president".

There is also the legend of the Illuminati, who according to conspiracy fanatics, are the secret leaders of Freemasonry, worship Lucifer, and are de facto the rulers of the world.

In game terms, having a Masonic Lodge in your city should give political bonuses, perhaps a significant bonus to stability (per the revolutions mod). And some way to get synergy from having secular civics.
 
I'm surprised that Freemasonry is not included as a religion. It is centuries old, has many lodges all over the world, and countless powerful politicians and heads-of-state have been followers of it, from US presidents to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who turned the remnants of the Ottoman Empire (Islamic Kaliphate) into secular modern Turkey. You could say that Freemasonry is the unofficial state religion of many officially "secular" states.

Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Freemasons
how much political influence freemasonry has had over the centuries. ctrl-F for "president".

There is also the legend of the Illuminati, who according to conspiracy fanatics, are the secret leaders of Freemasonry, worship Lucifer, and are de facto the rulers of the world.

In game terms, having a Masonic Lodge in your city should give political bonuses, perhaps a significant bonus to stability (per the revolutions mod). And some way to get synergy from having secular civics.
You're well read. I'll give you that. But you've got a bit more to learn to be illuminated my friend. You're on the right track though. I must balk a bit at the Illuminati being mentioned as a 'legend'. But I admit I too am still fact checking a great deal of what I know and cannot claim to know anything for sure.

I would not introduce these as religions because they do not conflict with other religions within the individual. Meaning you can be of any religion and be a Freemason though there is the one requirement to have a belief, any belief, in a higher power (much like AA right? :lol:) The worship of Lucifer (Baphomet (sp?) I believe is more accurate) is probably not the best way to label what's being venerated in some circles there (not all circles either mind you, and not just a 'leader sect') but rather I like to think of him as 'Enki'. Anyhow, it's terribly complex for the uninitiated to piece together an understanding of and terms like Lucifer are great ways to bring up deep fears that may not be entirely well founded in this case.

And while the influences of secret societies on the world is a project I do hold dear as a future concept, they should not be so trivialized as to throw them into the pool of existing dynamics. The soon to be worked on 'Ideas' project may be able to provide a good launchpad for a dynamic to cover them though.

Some of the religious tension ideas are interesting. I agree events could add to the picture beyond just revolution factors if playing on Rev. But I think we need to get clear on what direction religions will be developed into before looking further into that one.
 
Your comments are fine for some monotheist religions but polytheistic religions tend to merge in the beliefs of other polytheistic religions and even sometimes take in what is a monotheistic religion and make it just another God in the pantheon.

Even with monotheist religions conflict happens mostly when they are derived from the same set of woks/history and disagree on the details. "We worship the same God, you are just doing it wrong."

Edit I did try and add the non-secret society Masons at one stage but it did not work well. I did not want it to be like the other religions. Basically it was implemented that it was "founded" by someone at Guilds by building a Great Wonder. Once someone built the Great Wonder anyone could build the National Wonder in their nation (the founder nation gets this national wonder for free). The national Wonder allows you to build a Mason Guild Master who can then build a Mason Hall in any city using up the unit. The AI did understand this. The problem was how to implement the various things I wanted. Having the Masons in your nation should improve relations with other nations with Masons. They should decrease new knowledge but increase the retention of the old and as you say should reduce Rev sentiment if Rev is on.
 
I just posted a really long message about my views on religion, Atheism, Agnosticism, and the split of popular religions like Christianity. The forums logged me out and all of my post was deleted. If you would like to hear what I had to say, please say so here and I will repost it. It was a huge post and I put a lot of thought and work into it and was heartbroken when it was lost. I'm not willing to go through all that work again unless someone wants to hear it if I'm just going to get logged out and lose the work again.
 
I just posted a really long message about my views on religion, Atheism, Agnosticism, and the split of popular religions like Christianity. The forums logged me out and all of my post was deleted. If you would like to hear what I had to say, please say so here and I will repost it. It was a huge post and I put a lot of thought and work into it and was heartbroken when it was lost. I'm not willing to go through all that work again unless someone wants to hear it if I'm just going to get logged out and lose the work again.

That happens a lot of the time. I have had the same problem, over a number of years.

For a large post, I would recommend doing it off-line, then copy/post it.

Typinig a long message on-line can easly be lost. (Not sure how). May be a time-out problem. Take too long and you are disconected.
 
That happens a lot of the time. I have had the same problem, over a nunber of years.

For a large post, I would recommend doing it off line, then copy/post it. i

Thanks Harrier, I will do that. It is a one time post that I think might do some good. It brings up some points that I haven't noticed anyone else mention here. I have some more free time today and I'll see if I can collect my thoughts into one consolidated post again. I just wish I still had the old post.
 
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