So yesterday I was playing civ 6 with some friends and one of them conquered a ai neighbour and took all their cities. My friend had no religion but the conquered ai did and he asked if he could claim the religion, obviously the answer was no, but I thought about it a bit and came up with a few suggestions for a religious update.
Holy city switching (peaceful option)
So in Civilization 6 there a set number of prophets that you can generate depending on amounts of civilizations in the game, once all of them has been recruited it is impossible to found another religion. It makes sense, because we don't want too many religions in the game and there are not enough religion abilities for everyone. However that leaves the unfortunate few that maybe had a bad start or focused on something else without a religion in some cases.
My suggestion to change this is by enabling another Great person after all the prophets have been recruited. Not sure what to call them yet but let's go with "religious leader" for now. Their ability is simple, once you recruit one you can use his ability to suggest a new holy city for a religion. So let's say Rome founded Catholicism in Rome and spreads their religion to the majority of France and Germany. Germany then gets a Religious leader great person and activates it in Berlin, and by doing so they activates a diplomatic emergency where all the Civilizations that has a majority of their cities converted to Catholicism to vote whether to accept this new holy city or not. In this case it would mean that Rome, France and Germany has to vote yes or no. If Germany wins, Berlin will be the new holy city for Catholicism and Germany will get all the Religion bonuses that are only applied to the owner, such as tithe.
The issue with this would be the potential punishment that a civilization can get from spreading their own religion with the chance of losing it. To combat this I suggest that Rome would by default get three free votes in the emergency before they have to spend diplomatic favor and that civilizations that own a religion get 1 diplomatic favor per turn from their Holy city. There should also be a founding ability that disables Holy city switching for that Religion in addition to giving like 4+ faith per turn in your holy city or something like that.
An alternative for the three free votes for the original holy city could be that if the owner of the religion get a religious leader they can spend it on their own holy city and for everytime they do that they get an additional free vote in the event of a holy city switch emergency. Another option is that they can pay faith for more votes.
Holy City Conquering (War option)
This is somewhat similar to Holy city switching however instead of Germany activating their "Religious leader" in Berlin, let's say they conquered Rome and activated their leader in Rome (the current holy city) instead. This would again activate a religious emergency but this time it would only be between Rome and Germany and it is as if Rome relinquishes their hold the holy city/ lets them have to pope or however you want to lore it.
Alternatively all majority civilizations still get to vote but Rome won't have their free votes anymore.
(If Germany does not have the majority of their cities already converted to Catholicism they can not activate their religious leader in Rome.)
(If Rome gets deleted they won't be able to vote but other civilizations with a majority of the religion can still vote, if there are no other civilization then the Religion switches ownership instantly.)
Religious Claims (alternative system)
This is a different system from the ones above. Not gonna lie, I thought this up as I wrote the two options above, it will probably be a mess idea wise and text wise (you have been warned)
This is just a system idea that I am hoping that other civ fans or the developers at the Civ team can tinker with themselves and make an even better system.
Instead of the emergency happening right away when activating a religious leader, the leader will place a "religious claim" on the city. By default a Holy City starts with 2 "religious claims" once founded and they can get another 3 to a maximum of 5 claims by either competing with all civilizations in the great people list for "religious leaders" or you can buy leaders separately for faith in a city following that religion, these will specific for the religion that the city followed and can only place claims for that religion.
Some various ways to go about a Holy city switch here is by either only being able to start a religious switch emergency if you have equal or above the claims of the original holy city, or that depending or claim ratio the original owner gets more free votes if they have more claims or less votes if they have less claims. <-- (kinda conflicts with a later proposal)
By having a religious claim you automatically get a casus belli on the current owner of the religion. When declaring a war with this Casus belli a unique peace option will appear in the peace screen. Just like when you cede a city after it has been conquered you also get the option to cede the religion "ownership". Let's say it is Rome and Germany again, Germany declares the war after having a placed a claim in Berlin, then Rome can sign a peace where they cede their claims in their holy city and Germany gets the ownership of the religion and Berling becomes the holy city. Let's say Germany activated one "religious leader" in Berlin and then wins the war they would get 1 additional claim for becoming a Holy city so a total of 2 claims, while Rome would have their claims reduced to 1. But at the same time France had 3 claims and they can now start an emergency to make their city the capital the Holy city. To counter this we can have a system that a Holy city switch can only happen once every "so many turns" or that all claims are reduced to 1 below the switched city's claim? Or just keep it as is and have Rome be the stupid one for declaring the war with just one war.
I've lost all my brain power at this point so I'll end the post here. Please write below what you think of this system and if it should/could be implemented. Thanks for reading!
Moderator Action: Poll deleted. This is not an appropriate use of a poll. Browd
Holy city switching (peaceful option)
So in Civilization 6 there a set number of prophets that you can generate depending on amounts of civilizations in the game, once all of them has been recruited it is impossible to found another religion. It makes sense, because we don't want too many religions in the game and there are not enough religion abilities for everyone. However that leaves the unfortunate few that maybe had a bad start or focused on something else without a religion in some cases.
My suggestion to change this is by enabling another Great person after all the prophets have been recruited. Not sure what to call them yet but let's go with "religious leader" for now. Their ability is simple, once you recruit one you can use his ability to suggest a new holy city for a religion. So let's say Rome founded Catholicism in Rome and spreads their religion to the majority of France and Germany. Germany then gets a Religious leader great person and activates it in Berlin, and by doing so they activates a diplomatic emergency where all the Civilizations that has a majority of their cities converted to Catholicism to vote whether to accept this new holy city or not. In this case it would mean that Rome, France and Germany has to vote yes or no. If Germany wins, Berlin will be the new holy city for Catholicism and Germany will get all the Religion bonuses that are only applied to the owner, such as tithe.
The issue with this would be the potential punishment that a civilization can get from spreading their own religion with the chance of losing it. To combat this I suggest that Rome would by default get three free votes in the emergency before they have to spend diplomatic favor and that civilizations that own a religion get 1 diplomatic favor per turn from their Holy city. There should also be a founding ability that disables Holy city switching for that Religion in addition to giving like 4+ faith per turn in your holy city or something like that.
An alternative for the three free votes for the original holy city could be that if the owner of the religion get a religious leader they can spend it on their own holy city and for everytime they do that they get an additional free vote in the event of a holy city switch emergency. Another option is that they can pay faith for more votes.
Holy City Conquering (War option)
This is somewhat similar to Holy city switching however instead of Germany activating their "Religious leader" in Berlin, let's say they conquered Rome and activated their leader in Rome (the current holy city) instead. This would again activate a religious emergency but this time it would only be between Rome and Germany and it is as if Rome relinquishes their hold the holy city/ lets them have to pope or however you want to lore it.
Alternatively all majority civilizations still get to vote but Rome won't have their free votes anymore.
(If Germany does not have the majority of their cities already converted to Catholicism they can not activate their religious leader in Rome.)
(If Rome gets deleted they won't be able to vote but other civilizations with a majority of the religion can still vote, if there are no other civilization then the Religion switches ownership instantly.)
Religious Claims (alternative system)
This is a different system from the ones above. Not gonna lie, I thought this up as I wrote the two options above, it will probably be a mess idea wise and text wise (you have been warned)
This is just a system idea that I am hoping that other civ fans or the developers at the Civ team can tinker with themselves and make an even better system.
Instead of the emergency happening right away when activating a religious leader, the leader will place a "religious claim" on the city. By default a Holy City starts with 2 "religious claims" once founded and they can get another 3 to a maximum of 5 claims by either competing with all civilizations in the great people list for "religious leaders" or you can buy leaders separately for faith in a city following that religion, these will specific for the religion that the city followed and can only place claims for that religion.
Some various ways to go about a Holy city switch here is by either only being able to start a religious switch emergency if you have equal or above the claims of the original holy city, or that depending or claim ratio the original owner gets more free votes if they have more claims or less votes if they have less claims. <-- (kinda conflicts with a later proposal)
By having a religious claim you automatically get a casus belli on the current owner of the religion. When declaring a war with this Casus belli a unique peace option will appear in the peace screen. Just like when you cede a city after it has been conquered you also get the option to cede the religion "ownership". Let's say it is Rome and Germany again, Germany declares the war after having a placed a claim in Berlin, then Rome can sign a peace where they cede their claims in their holy city and Germany gets the ownership of the religion and Berling becomes the holy city. Let's say Germany activated one "religious leader" in Berlin and then wins the war they would get 1 additional claim for becoming a Holy city so a total of 2 claims, while Rome would have their claims reduced to 1. But at the same time France had 3 claims and they can now start an emergency to make their city the capital the Holy city. To counter this we can have a system that a Holy city switch can only happen once every "so many turns" or that all claims are reduced to 1 below the switched city's claim? Or just keep it as is and have Rome be the stupid one for declaring the war with just one war.
I've lost all my brain power at this point so I'll end the post here. Please write below what you think of this system and if it should/could be implemented. Thanks for reading!
Moderator Action: Poll deleted. This is not an appropriate use of a poll. Browd
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