Colonialist Legacies: Histories of the New World | Colonial + Pre-Colonial civs

[turingmachine]

2) All Civ religions are evangelical in nature -- that is, they want other people to join their religion. Again, (historical) Judaism is not. It's actually a lot more exclusivist, believing that Jews are God's true people and that Judaism should be kept pure, not spread to other nations. Similarly, it is extremely hard for people to join Wakan Tanka. You have to jump through a lot of hoops and prove yourself to be worthy before members will even tell you about it.

The Anangu religion (or religionless) model was meant to bring in some other models of religion than just Pantheon -- Missionaries.

Wouldn't that more accurately be accomplished by not allowing the civ be able to build missionaries or preventing their religion from spreading to foreign cities instead of preventing them founding a religion?

 

[LastSword]

Aww, Neirai, it is all fine to make "very-special" civ. After all, Venice is an official civ with "very-unique" city-acquiring model. However, I would go with some unique gameplay behind "Cannot do sth". Greater part of UA and one UC should probably be involved (like in Venice).

Though I must admit that your reasoning is not convincing me at all. I don't see why the Anangu should be religionless.

 

[Tomatekh]

All Civ religions are pantheon-based. But not all historical religions were. Judaism (I'm going to use this one a lot) is intensely monotheistic, and therefore doesn't have a pantheon.

The real problem is that pantheon was always a poor choice to name the idea of early religion in game. Besides the fact that many of the official religions (Hindu, Shinto) are polytheistic and therefore continue to be pantheons even after you found a religion, many of the pantheon beliefs (Oral Tradition, Stone Circles) have nothing to do with pantheons. Something like cult or cultic beliefs (in the academic sense not the modern fringe religious movement sense) would have been a more accurate term to use to express the idea of early vs organized religion. So I wouldn't really hold something not fitting the definition of a pantheon as that big of a deal in terms of gameplay mechanics.

Also, Judaism grew out of the same Afro-Asiatic tradition as Canaanite religion and there's archeological stuff bearing descriptions like Yahweh and his consort (the goddess) Asherah, etc. So, before Judaism became Judaism, it was likely polytheistic, which is the same as founding Judaism in game after establishing a pantheon earlier. That, and even monotheistic religions often continue to have hierarchies of divine beings. Depending on how strictly you define the word, stuff like named angels or a cult of saints can easily be viewed as "pantheons".

 

[TPangolin]

Either including Religion or removing the option for the Anangu is more than fine by me - both sides have extremely reasonable arguments if you remove that odd tangent into "belittling". I have to reitera

It might be worth it to talk about the actual gameplay side of it.

Whilst keeping Religion gives you the maximum amount of choice, you have to consider that the Faith and Golden Age bonus traits if we decided to go down this path will at most be "Pantheon-tier".

If we are to get rid of the option to have Religion, the Faith and Golden Age bonus traits will be bumped up to "Religion-tier". This means that without founding one, you otherwise have traits in the Ancient era, equivalent to that of a Religion. This is also more helpful on higher difficulties, where a Religion is more difficult to obtain.

 

[Hoop Thrower]

To be honest, I'm fine with Pantheon tier bonus, extra fast border expansion ain't thaaat important to really be worth being a replacement of religion.

The extra Golden Age counter is also nifty, but in the end, not that big of a deal really, I'd feel much more happy with having those options weakened, while still having the option to found my own religion.

Edit: I actually think the Border expansion mechanic is actually worser than More Civs's Mexico one, which just naturally expands borders faster, this one needs to rely on Faith per turn which, while potentially being able to give an extra edge, in practice takes a good while to start mounting up to a good number. The UA is really balanced, even without the lack of religion.

Of course, gaining extra golden age points from claiming tiles is what gives the real advantage here (do you gain a huge amount of points when founding cities?), but if it's done with, say, 1 Golden Age point per tile then it shouldn't be much of a problem, in theory...

 

[TPangolin]

The alternative is to elaborate further on what Scapegrace proposed - i.e Keep the lack of religion, but have Great Prophets do something else.

 

[Natan35]

The alternative is to elaborate further on what Scapegrace proposed - i.e Keep the lack of religion, but have Great Prophets do something else.

Well, the question is, how well would that fit them?

 

[TPangolin]

There's two ways of designing Civs:

1. Thoroughly Researching and coming up with a concept and playstyle based on what you've found
2. Coming up with benefits and a playstyle first, then doing research to see how we can err.... shoehorn it altogether.

I'll leave it up to your imagination as to what you think we do here.

 

[JFD]

There's two ways of designing Civs:

1. Thoroughly Researching and coming up with a concept and playstyle based on what you've found
2. Coming up with benefits and a playstyle first, then doing research to see how we can err.... shoehorn it altogether.

For you maybe

 

[Civitar]

Perhaps a unit that drains one spread religion use per turn spent next to a Missionary of another religion?

There's your new Great Prophet ability...

 

[TPangolin]

For you maybe

I was being kinda facetious, but it's scary how close to accurate it is

 

[OrderofOlav]

I'm in for a new Venice, removing something to gain something unique which makes it worth playing. That said:''Muh desert benefits!'' maybe I seem too dead set on this but nobody actually reacted on that idea so I dunno if its good or not :I
So uhm... extra yield from desert tiles in cities with your pantheon? And then maybe the ability for the priests you are going to keep getting to spread that said pantheon?
Or some other desert folklore variant, which can either be nice when you are to late to choose it or both work together nicely.

Whatever is going to happen with this Civ, if you can't found a religion, what will happen to the prophet? I never actually not used my first prophet to found a religion (unlike the AI ) so I don't actually know the mechanic when you don't, does their cost go up? Or do you just get a free prophet every few turns? Are holy sites a thing in Aboriginal culture, because then I foresee allot of them (if they don't get another use).

 

[Natan35]

I'm in for a new Venice, removing something to gain something unique which makes it worth playing. That said:''Muh desert benefits!'' maybe I seem too dead set on this but nobody actually reacted on that idea so I dunno if its good or not :I
So uhm... extra yield from desert tiles in cities with your pantheon? And then maybe the ability for the priests you are going to keep getting to spread that said pantheon?
Or some other desert folklore variant, which can either be nice when you are to late to choose it or both work together nicely.

Whatever is going to happen with this Civ, if you can't found a religion, what will happen to the prophet? I never actually not used my first prophet to found a religion (unlike the AI ) so I don't actually know the mechanic when you don't, does their cost go up? Or do you just get a free prophet every few turns? Are holy sites a thing in Aboriginal culture, because then I foresee allot of them (if they don't get another use).

Never mind...oops.

 

[shaglio]

Here's a silly little idea: You are able to found a Religion, but instead of choosing a Founder Belief, 2 Follower beliefs, and an Enhancer Belief, instead you tack on more Pantheon beliefs (having a total of 5 when all is said and done). Optional: maybe add a new religion name that is automatically chosen when you found (Tribalism or something), so they don't end up with Judaism or Christianity, etc. Now whether or not that's codable is another issue.

 

[bouncymischa]

Whatever is going to happen with this Civ, if you can't found a religion, what will happen to the prophet? I never actually not used my first prophet to found a religion (unlike the AI ) so I don't actually know the mechanic when you don't, does their cost go up? Or do you just get a free prophet every few turns? Are holy sites a thing in Aboriginal culture, because then I foresee allot of them (if they don't get another use).

Hmmm, I wonder if a Great Prophet can spread a Pantheon? I've never tried that.

But if nothing else, you could always use the Great Prophet to make a Holy Site, and it would be amusing to slip in a unique Holy Site replacement that way. (I'm not entirely sure what a holy site to the Anangu would look like, but I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be a marble dome. Maybe some kind of natural formation with the glowing light would work? It'd be fun to try and make, at least.)

At any rate, I'm pretty sure the cost of future GPs goes up once you spawn one, no matter what you do with him.

 

[shaglio]

Hmmm, I wonder if a Great Prophet can spread a Pantheon? I've never tried that.

Does the "Spread Religion" option even show up if you haven't founded a religion yet? I've never paid attention to that before.

 

[Hoop Thrower]

I like the idea of using your "religion" to choose a bunch of Pantheon Beliefs... the question would be: Is that even possible?

 

[bouncymischa]

I like the idea of using your "religion" to choose a bunch of Pantheon Beliefs... the question would be: Is that even possible?

I think it would be -- from what I recall of past discussions regarding modding religion, you can use Lua functions to add extra beliefs onto a religion, although there was some debate whether or not these would be carried over to a founded religion. If the Anangu can't found a religion, though, that makes that issue moot.

 

[TPangolin]

It's worth considering that the original idea was already extremely high concept and was pretty complex. If you want see something sooner rather than later, you might want to tone down these really high concept suggestions. If you're happy to wait for the longest time, then that's fine too.

 

[OrderofOlav]

I can wait until eternity for a good Civ , as it seems there are plenty of other Civs more popular I don't really see a tight deadline being necessary for now. But I'm not the one behind the wheel so maybe I should just slowly back off with my opinions.

Spoiler :