[NFP] Civilization VI: Possible New Civilizations Thread

[Eagle Pursuit]

Didn't the Vox Populi Celts have a selection of unique super-pantheons to choose from? A focus on folk-religion could follow that example.

A syncretism mechanic might take away your ability to found a religion, but you could have the unique pantheons that also alter the follower beliefs of religions that other civs spread to you in predetermined ways.

 

[Txomin]

Aside from whether or not it's fitting for one civ or another, an ability that grants the owner a unique set of beliefs to choose from would be pretty fun from a gameplay perspective. Has a builtin reason to play a civ more than once to try out the different beliefs.

 

[Zaarin]

To get more academic I would argue the category of religion only became relevant within that space of time- the term in East Asia emerges through the Japanese translation of Dutch texts. Jesuits often struggled to work out what was acceptable for their new converts to carry on practicing and what was heretical. How you could represent a meaningful distinction between Confucianism, Daoism and Buddhism in a meaningful way in game is beyond me, let alone movements into neo-confucianism, so-called religious Daoism and all the schools of Buddhism. Paradox also seems to handle this badly. I think some people like to believe an anachronistic shinto defines Japaneseness, especially in the cuter way it is portrayed in the modern day.

I'd agree that you're right in East Asia, but not in the West, where the Roman Empire saw the competition among Christianity, Judaism, various Christian and Jewish heresies, Neoplatonism, Gnosticism, Manichaeism, Zoroastrianism, and the mystery cults followed by the intense and violent competition between Christianity and Islam. Europe and the Middle East were definitely conscious of the distinctions among competing religions from a much earlier period. However, by the Medieval period there is definitely a very strong sense of "cuius regio, eius religio" -- "whose realm, his religion" -- long before that phrase was codified during the Protestant Reformation; e.g., religion was a societal choice, not a personal one. (Though even then you have not only Jewish minorities but also "heretical" minorities like the Lollards, the Waldensians, and so forth. The Cathars and Hussites don't count because they had official regional support--they more or less conformed to cuius regio, eius religio.)

Aside from whether or not it's fitting for one civ or another, an ability that grants the owner a unique set of beliefs to choose from would be pretty fun from a gameplay perspective. Has a builtin reason to play a civ more than once to try out the different beliefs.

On the one hand, I hate the exclusive beliefs; many religions hold many similar doctrines. That being said, it would be a fun game mechanic.

 

[Lord Lakely]

Re: religion: I believe tenets should be religion-specific to a certain degree - but that also creates a problem because not all religions will be created equally.

For me the following should be pre-defined for every religion:
- the founder belief (pre-determined fixed for every religion)
- the worship building (also fixed for every religion. some religions, like christianity can have different worship buildings)

Additionally, would suggest giving religions a wide range of tenets to pick from, some of which overlap between the religions themselves (a sort of semi-inclusivity of course), allowing players to customize their religion to their needs. It would also give a purpose for late-game Prophets: recruit them and expend to add extra tenets. The maximum amount of tenets per religion should definitely be higher than four and while you may divide these tenetis into categories such as Founder/Follower/Worship/Enhancer, the combination should be less rigid than "One of Each, that's it"

Structurally, religions SHOULD, to a certain degree evolve from their founder civ's pantheon: The pantheons should be fewer in number and should be split earlier into monotheism and polytheism, preferably around the time you research Astrology or Mysticism. Polytheists get a different patron deity in every city, while monotheism get ONE patron deity in every city, but the effects are (slightly) more powerful. Of course this choice affects which religion they can found, with Polytheists being locked into Hinduism, Buddhism, Eastern Zen and Tengrii, while Monotheists are forced to choose between Islam, Christianity, Judaism and Zoroastrianism. Each major religion can be further split into denominations (e.g: Christianity into , Protestantism, Catholicism and Orthodoxy) with overlapping core tenets but differing addititive tenets.

And finally, each major religion has a different hook steering them (mildly) towards a certain path: in very, very rough patches i would suggest:

Judaism: benefits from having followers in foreign cities, all followers resist conversion, but as a drawback has very weak religious units.
Catholicism: Strong active conversion (stronger Missionaries/Inquisitors), bonuses from having many followers in their cities (but fewer from foreign cities)
Islam: Strong passive conversion (Pressure) and religious tourism, bonuses from having many followers in foreign cities (but fewer in their own cities)
Zoroastrianism: Tenets start off as weaker but get gradually stronger as time passes. The religion is stronger during Golden Ages and weaker during dark ages. Tenets provide Era Score, Faith Economy and Loyalty benefits.

Hinduism: Has a stronger interaction with its environment, specifically resources (such as cattle), cheaper religious units.
Buddhism: enhanced pantheon effects based on the time after pantheon selection, extra policy slots/cards, have exclusive access to Warrior Monks.
Eastern Zen: Religious units enhance nearby armies and great people, followers are more content, gains free eureka's (or experience) from the religion.
Tengrii: an anti-religion. Doesn't convert, but instead spends faith to synchronize with other religions (requires 1 foreign follower in an owned tengrii majority city, cost goes down per follower), sharing RV with them, while simultaneously accessing their core beliefs. Can swap out tenets at will based. Cannot be rooted out by inquisitors post synchronization. Wins RV if every other religion has been synchronized with the Tengrii faith.

This ofc lacks some nuance but it's just a base idea. The devs of Civ 7 should look at what made the world religions work irl (and what attracts new followers to them to this very day) and use that as a blueprint for their tenets.

Ugh I should've saved this for Ideas & Suggestions, but whatever. Religion could be so much more than what it currently is. Civ 6's religious system is shallow and infantile. At least it's no longer superfluous after it was enhanced last spring.

 

[Zaarin]

Zoroastrianism: Tenets start off as weaker but get gradually stronger as time passes.

Considering that Zoroastrianism once dominated Mesopotamia, Greater Persia, and Central Asia but is now limited to a minority ethnoreligious population in India and a very small scattered minority in Iran, Central Asia, and India (and the diasporas of those two groups) this seems inverted to me.

Religion could be so much more than what it currently is. Civ 6's religious system is shallow and infantile.

100% this.

 

[Sirimiri]

I'd agree that you're right in East Asia, but not in the West, where the Roman Empire saw the competition among Christianity, Judaism, various Christian and Jewish heresies, Neoplatonism, Gnosticism, Manichaeism, Zoroastrianism, and the mystery cults followed by the intense and violent competition between Christianity and Islam. Europe and the Middle East were definitely conscious of the distinctions among competing religions from a much earlier period. However, by the Medieval period there is definitely a very strong sense of "cuius regio, eius religio" -- "whose realm, his religion" -- long before that phrase was codified during the Protestant Reformation; e.g., religion was a societal choice, not a personal one. (Though even then you have not only Jewish minorities but also "heretical" minorities like the Lollards, the Waldensians, and so forth. The Cathars and Hussites don't count because they had official regional support--they more or less conformed to cuius regio, eius religio.)

I'm not the most informed on the majority of 'the West' as my studies are limited by area for the most part so what I know is patchy at best. For Spanish culture in particular the distinction between religion and culture is limited as conversion depended on both practice and belief. There are proponents of the idea that Islam (Talal Asad) and Judaism (Daniel Boyarin) are not able to neatly fit into definitions of religion outside of comparison with Protestantism. To me this makes more sense in some contexts than others, and is definitely clearer in an East Asian context.

The baggage we have from the recontextualising of so many traditions into religion is that our previous biases inform what is and isn't religion in colonial contexts, most of which is informed through pop culture and present day needs e.g. tax exemptions lead Sikhs in the UK to be classed as religious while in France Sikhs say their five Ks are cultural to get around secular dress laws.

In terms of what I would like to see in terms of civs and religion, I think a better representation of diversity would be good- some religions/traditions are necessarily older/younger. If we went down a categories path based on pantheon belief a monotheistic polytheistic divide doesn't work historically- there is a lot of atheism and nontheism and changes in belief and practice. A world religions approach would be disappointing although not out of keeping with a Eurocentric approach to civ. I'd just like a system that approaches the layers of belief and cultural spread that makes including Voodoo, Shinto, Orisha worship (currently with more followers than Judaism based on some estimates) and Confucianism make sense.

 

[Thenewwwguy]

Re: religion: I believe tenets should be religion-specific to a certain degree - but that also creates a problem because not all religions will be created equally.

For me the following should be pre-defined for every religion:
- the founder belief (pre-determined fixed for every religion)
- the worship building (also fixed for every religion. some religions, like christianity can have different worship buildings)

Additionally, would suggest giving religions a wide range of tenets to pick from, some of which overlap between the religions themselves (a sort of semi-inclusivity of course), allowing players to customize their religion to their needs. It would also give a purpose for late-game Prophets: recruit them and expend to add extra tenets. The maximum amount of tenets per religion should definitely be higher than four and while you may divide these tenetis into categories such as Founder/Follower/Worship/Enhancer, the combination should be less rigid than "One of Each, that's it"

Structurally, religions SHOULD, to a certain degree evolve from their founder civ's pantheon: The pantheons should be fewer in number and should be split earlier into monotheism and polytheism, preferably around the time research Astrology or Mysticism. Polytheists get a different patron deity in every city, while monotheism get ONE patron deity in every city, but the effects are (slightly) more powerful. Of course this choice affects which religion they can found, with Polytheists being locked into Hinduism, Buddhism, Eastern Zen and Tengrii, while Monotheists are forced to choose between Islam, Christianity, Judaism and Zoroastrianism. Each major religion can be further split into denominations (e.g: into , Catholicism and Orthodoxy) with overlapping core tenets but differing addititive tenets.

And finally, each major religion has a different hook and handle steering them (mildly) towards a certain path: in very, very rough patches i would suggest:

Judaism: benefits from having followers in foreign cities, all followers resist conversion, but as a drawback has very weak religious units.
Catholicism: Strong active conversion (stronger Missionaries/Inquisitors), bonuses from having many followers in their cities (but fewer from foreign cities)
Islam: Strong passive conversion (Pressure) and religious tourism, bonuses from having many followers in foreign cities (but fewer in their own cities)
Zoroastrianism: Tenets start off as weaker but get gradually stronger as time passes. The religion is stronger during Golden Ages and weaker during dark ages. Tenets provide Era Score, Faith Economy and Loyalty benefits.

Hinduism: Has a stronger interaction with its environment, specifically resources (such as cattle), cheaper religious units.
Buddhism: enhanced pantheon effects based on the time after pantheon selection, extra policy slots/cards, have exclusive access to Warrior Monks.
Eastern Zen: Religious units enhance nearby armies and great people, followers are more content, gains free eureka's (or experience) from the religion.
Tengrii: an anti-religion. Doesn't convert, but instead spends faith to synchronize with other religions (requires 1 foreign follower in an owned tengrii majority city, cost goes down per follower), sharing RV with them, while simultaneously accessing their core beliefs. Can swap out tenets at will based. Cannot be rooted out by inquisitors post synchronization. Wins RV if every other religion has been synchronized with the Tengrii faith.

This ofc lacks some nuance but it's just a base idea. The devs of Civ 7 should look at what made the world religions work irl (and what attracts new followers to them to this very day) and use that as a blueprint for their tenets.

Ugh I should've saved this for Ideas & Suggestions, but whatever. Religion could be so much more than what it currently is. Civ 6's religious system is shallow and infantile. At least it's no longer superfluous after it was enhanced last spring.

getting to choose religion but the religion has predetermined tenets makes so much more sense than religions being valuable in name only

 

[Zaarin]

For Spanish culture in particular the distinction between religion and culture is limited as conversion depended on both practice and belief.

I'd argue the contrary: Spain was hyper-aware of religion from long contact with Jews and Muslims. This is why Protestantism never gained headway in Spain: the Spanish Catholic Church was militant, vigilant, semi-independent from Rome, and had already gone through vigorous reforms (making it virtually impervious to the accusations of corruption and decadence that the Church was so vulnerable to in Central Europe). Yes, being Spanish meant being Catholic (even moriscos and conversos were distrusted), but Spain was hyper-aware of religious differences--to the extent that the Jesuits got intermittently persecuted as heretics, as did the mystics and future saints Teresa of Álvila and John of the Cross.

There are proponents of the idea that Islam (Talal Asad) and Judaism (Daniel Boyarin) are not able to neatly fit into definitions of religion outside of comparison with Protestantism.

Then I'd be curious to know what their definition of a "religion" is, given that Islam and Judaism have a deity, have prescribed morality, have soteriology, have cosmogony and eschatology, debatably have an afterlife (debatably because that's not true of all forms of Judaism), and in the case of Islam vigorously seeks converts (Judaism's openness to converts depends on the sect, but it doesn't seek them). No matter how narrowly one defines religion, I can't imagine any definition that doesn't include Islam and Judaism.

The baggage we have from the recontextualising of so many traditions into religion is that our previous biases inform what is and isn't religion in colonial contexts

I think the most useful definition of religion, and as far as I know the usual one in anthropology, is one that includes any spiritual or belief system.

 

[Xandinho]

Maybe religion should work similar to government in that you could unlock cards and exchange cards over the course of the game? It would be a way to adapt your religion to circumstances. Obviously, some traits of your religion would be immutable.

 

[Zaarin]

Maybe religion should work similar to government in that you could unlock cards and exchange cards over the course of the game? It would be a way to adapt your religion to circumstances. Obviously, some traits of your religion would be immutable.

I think this is a good idea. Religion changes over both time and space. This also sounds like it could open up interesting new options like state religions, syncretism, reformations, and heresies--e.g., certain cards are considered "heretical" and lead to condemnation from coreligionists if adopted.

 

[Sirimiri]

I'd argue the contrary: Spain was hyper-aware of religion from long contact with Jews and Muslims. This is why Protestantism never gained headway in Spain: the Spanish Catholic Church was militant, vigilant, semi-independent from Rome, and had already gone through vigorous reforms (making it virtually impervious to the accusations of corruption and decadence that the Church was so vulnerable to in Central Europe). Yes, being Spanish meant being Catholic (even moriscos and conversos were distrusted), but Spain was hyper-aware of religious differences--to the extent that the Jesuits got intermittently persecuted as heretics, as did the mystics and future saints Teresa of Álvila and John of the Cross.


Then I'd be curious to know what their definition of a "religion" is, given that Islam and Judaism have a deity, have prescribed morality, have soteriology, have cosmogony and eschatology, debatably have an afterlife (debatably because that's not true of all forms of Judaism), and in the case of Islam vigorously seeks converts (Judaism's openness to converts depends on the sect, but it doesn't seek them). No matter how narrowly one defines religion, I can't imagine any definition that doesn't include Islam and Judaism.


I think the most useful definition of religion, and as far as I know the usual one in anthropology, is one that includes any spiritual or belief system.

I think the main difference in the post-colonial model of religion as category is that rather than trying to argue how much a tradition looks like religion as Western culture/academia sees it, the category is considered from the view of the tradition first. When you compare Judaism or Islam using a model which is basically Christianity you aren't working out what a thing called religion that is separate to some other concept, but rather how much like Christianity something is. This is what lead to attempts to describe world religions and a 'multifaith' model when orthopraxy is much more important in Indian 'religious' traditions. The Jewish and Muslim positions are a little more forced; Boyarin is Orthodox and sees Judaism as much closer to an ethnicity than a religion, and thus the beliefs in afterlife, prescribed morality and salvation are as much an ethnic tradition as any other. To quote Asad: “there cannot be a universal definition of religion not only because its constituent elements and relationships are historically specific, but because that definition is itself the historical product of discursive processes.” Which model of 'religion' you use depends on what your purposes are, where you are studying and how you are studying it. For me between East Asia and Latin America the European model isn't always a great fit.

Back in game, I would add that one interesting way of building a civ either as part of what makes them unique or in improving an overall religion system would be to have options for different kinds of tradition e.g. animism/totemism/nature religion, shamanism, pantheism, philosophies and our good old religions for want of a better word. If Shinto could emerge later based on whatever the initial belief choices made were (animism in some form) as a rejection/differentiation from the current majority belief/tradition it would be much closer to the actual process of its creation. Korea could differentiate itself with a form of shamanism, although the differences between animism and shamanism and the historicity of the ideas is debatable. This would all depends on the way civ wants to go. I'd be happier with choice of religion or philosophy or whatever we want to call this tied somewhat to the civ you pick, but I know it's fun to invent an anachronistic religion. It's also going to be hard to make a religious victory without world 'salvation' as the final goal. This could be baked in though- Confucian scholarship and Daoist internal alchemy would help in science but not help you convert the world, likewise with insular cultures being resistant to tourism/conversion and others syncretising so as to not be fully eliminated.

 

[Lord Lakely]

Considering that Zoroastrianism once dominated Mesopotamia, Greater Persia, and Central Asia but is now limited to a minority ethnoreligious population in India and a very small scattered minority in Iran, Central Asia, and India (and the diasporas of those two groups) this seems inverted to me.

The inverse could work for me as well (Strong beliefs upon founding, poor scalability), but I wouldn't want to underpower any of the religions, given how sensy the subject is.

Maybe religion should work similar to government in that you could unlock cards and exchange cards over the course of the game? It would be a way to adapt your religion to circumstances. Obviously, some traits of your religion would be immutable.

That could work. Governments/Governors should be reinvented anyway (read: merged, with the Governors repping "ministers" which can enact specific decrees based on their portfolio (finances, defence, foreign affairs, etc)).

However, if we were to implement a Policy Card system for religious tnets, tenet swapping should be restricted to only a handful of circumstances.(you would need to have earned a prophet, the owner of the Holy City can veto changes, and non-founders forcing religious reforms causes them to split into a denomination, etc). The owner of the Holy City should have fewer restrictions than converted civs in making the religion work.

Then with regards to adaptations: Religious tenets should enable a certain amount of scalability, but from a strategic perspective, this scalability should approach a wider spectrum. Some tenets have short-term benefits, others get more powerful over time. Some benefit your economy but weaken the religion, others strengthen the religion but penalize certain yields. Some scale with the amount of converted cities or the amount of followers, while others don't care about those thing, providing reliable, fixed benefits. Adaptiveness should be an options, but the key would be to provide a large variety of available tenets per religion (including a few generic ones everyone gets access to).

Furthermore, with most of the world going secular nowadays, there should be late-game benefits for transitioning from religious to irreligious as well.

 

[sweetbrown89]

Uh...I think India’s Dharma was supposed to be the least complicated incorporation of religious syncretism...?

 

[Andrew Johnson [FXS]]

Really happy to see Asad quoted around here. Asad has written a number of things, but really the key point here is a bit what @Sirimiri is saying - the practice of religion often is overlooked in favor of a focus on doctrine or belief. Asad studies Christianity, Islam, and secularism and tries to problematize the ways that categories of religion have been taken for granted (and secularism).

The issue here is this - with Asad, and with a lot of the other interesting and nuanced discussion about the line between religion and culture, "animism" and organized religion, we get really fascinating ways of looking and rethinking how we see religion.

But what to do about the game? This is a non-rhetorical question. There's many elements that one could think we could bring into a game - a papacy or other religious leader external to states, religious languages (e.g. Sanskrit, Latin, Old Slavonic), syncretism, animism, but at the end of the day these are going to get condensed into bonuses/maluses. In essence the problem is this: culture, religion, politics, etc., are clearly more nuanced than the kinds of categorizations that political scientists have made. But to put these things into a game, even one that, like the Paradox titles, seeks to be more of a simulation and less of a "game", is really difficult.

It's a challenge that I find really fascinating, and is part of the reason why I'm excited to be working for Firaxis, but it would be impossible to do in a way that would be faithful to the reality. I am reading these suggestions with great interest, though.

 

[agonistes]

Really happy to see Asad quoted around here. Asad has written a number of things, but really the key point here is a bit what @Sirimiri is saying - the practice of religion often is overlooked in favor of a focus on doctrine or belief. Asad studies Christianity, Islam, and secularism and tries to problematize the ways that categories of religion have been taken for granted (and secularism).

The issue here is this - with Asad, and with a lot of the other interesting and nuanced discussion about the line between religion and culture, "animism" and organized religion, we get really fascinating ways of looking and rethinking how we see religion.

But what to do about the game? This is a non-rhetorical question. There's many elements that one could think we could bring into a game - a papacy or other religious leader external to states, religious languages (e.g. Sanskrit, Latin, Old Slavonic), syncretism, animism, but at the end of the day these are going to get condensed into bonuses/maluses. In essence the problem is this: culture, religion, politics, etc., are clearly more nuanced than the kinds of categorizations that political scientists have made. But to put these things into a game, even one that, like the Paradox titles, seeks to be more of a simulation and less of a "game", is really difficult.

It's a challenge that I find really fascinating, and is part of the reason why I'm excited to be working for Firaxis, but it would be impossible to do in a way that would be faithful to the reality. I am reading these suggestions with great interest, though.

Well, just don’t tie abilities to any particular religion. Horrible idea. Then you are being shoeboxed into a particular religion if you favor a particular ability, or, you are saddled with an ability that blows because for flavor you want a particular religion.

Either way its immersion breaking probability is high, because people’s views on what religion should have which beliefs are all over the place.

Keep the game as sandboxy as possible.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

Well, just don’t tie abilities to any particular religion. Horrible idea. Then you are being shoeboxed into a particular religion if you favor a particular ability, or, you are saddled with an ability that blows because for flavor you want a particular religion.

Either way its immersion breaking probability is high, because people’s views on what religion should have which beliefs are all over the place.

Keep the game as sandboxy as possible.

That's one thing I like about the religion system. It's that I can found the religion of the crab god that allows people to worship in a mosque with faithful warrior monks defending them.

Because who wants only boring faith from crabs?

 

[AaronTBD]

One more thing about Vietnam, If one of the Trung Sisters (probably Trung Trac) was leader, would the other one be a unique governor like Ibrahim Pasha with Suleman?

 

[SMcM]

One more thing about Vietnam, If one of the Trung Sisters (probably Trung Trac) was leader, would the other one be a unique governor like Ibrahim Pasha with Suleman?

I suppose that's a possibility, of course unless someone here has inside information no one is gonna be able to confirm that though (or even confirm if Trung sisters are in the game).

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

One more thing about Vietnam, If one of the Trung Sisters (probably Trung Trac) was leader, would the other one be a unique governor like Ibrahim Pasha with Suleman?

I'm under the impression that none of the new civs will require the expansions to play so I don't see any unique governor happening.
There is a leader who requires R&F but that looks like it will be Kublai Khan for him to lead Mongolia.

 

[Arianrhod]

There's many elements that one could think we could bring into a game - a papacy or other religious leader external to states, religious languages (e.g. Sanskrit, Latin, Old Slavonic), syncretism, animism, but at the end of the day these are going to get condensed into bonuses/maluses.

There's a third thing that's neither a bonus nor a malus, and that's flavor, which I would not underestimate. Even now, the 'icon' you choose for religion is totally arbitrary, but people will still choose particular icons for appropriateness, humor, favoritism, or something else. It's not all that different from how people might prefer to play as a weaker Civ with less useful bonuses just because the weaker Civ represents something they find more interesting, or because they have better music/colors; as an example, if I were provided with Korea and Babylon, I would almost always choose Babylon even if Korea was 100% better outside of super niche situations.

There are already plenty of mechanics in the game that exist almost exclusively for flavor, like the ability to name units or the "feature names" on the map that one of the expansions added. I don't think it would inherently be wrong for some aspects of religion to be left as that, if there was no way to make them feel like an interesting mechanic.