Dev Diaries: More Religion

[Hightower]

I do think there's some risk of Catholicism being founded oddly late, though. The Byzantines don't usually research Divine Right, and the other AIs are pretty far behind, so the first Euro with Divine Right is usually Portugal (who spawn with it).

 

[Doc_Strangelove]

It does feel like we're heading for including the Israelites as a civilization.

It would be hard to implement them, I think. They would get tossed around between the Egyptians, Babylonians (Sumerian?), Carthaginians and later on Rome West and East - Just as history told us. The only thing I could see happening is to let the British Mandate of Palestine and later on Israel emerge in the area, but that would be very late-game, no?

beating Arabia to Divine Right takes a concentrated effort that the AI will virtually never accomplish

I've seen China doing this countless times, when playing on Emperor.
One time even Rome. Rome was on steroids in that game, tho... They would stop for nothing.

All that aside, I have something to say, too:
I would be very fond of including Shinto as a local religion. It would go perfectly with Buddhism (see Zen-Buddhism etc.) and could even serve as an extended gameplay mechanic.
Here's what I'm thinking: If a potential aggressor comes by and annexes the Japanese islands and does not take immediate action to purge Shinto from the captures cities they're gonna have a bad time. Massive loss of stability, unhappiness, revolts something along those lines is what I'm thinking.

It would make sense, too, no? Due to their extremely strong culture, the Japanese spirit must be broken first, to come even close to ruling them.

 

[Leoreth]

Where did anyone say that Israel might be included. My silence on the matter was not in no way meaningful but rather an oversight: let me be as clear as always that I don't think either ancient nor modern Israel would work on this scale of a map.

(On the other hand, you can totally count my silence on Shintoism as a tacit acknowledgment that I set up the local religion rules partially with it in mind. But is talking in parentheticals quiet enough to still count as silence? Does this self-referential comment validate or invalidate the previous implied statement? The answer is yes.)

 

[ales_]

In my opinion, ancient Israel would be an interesting OCC civ for a human player but it's your mod and it's for you to decide.

 

[Hightower]

I'm not some kind of huge advocate of ancient Israel (and definitely don't think modern Israel is appropriate (though probably more appropriate than Canada...)). That said, I don't really see any reason why it would be harder to represent than, say, Babylon, which is also an OCC in 90% of human player games, or other small early-game civs like Egypt, Harappa or the Maya. Building or conquering cities isn't the only interesting thing for a civilization to do. Also feels weird/wrong to have a religion represented that does not have any civilization for which its adoption is historical, which to my understanding was the main argument for removing Judaism and replacing it with Zoroastrianism to begin with.

 

[Leoreth]

Not really, Judaism was replaced with Protestantism.

 

[Panopticon]

There was no argument for replacing Judaism with Protestantism except that I didn't have the skills to add a religion instead of replacing one. I would have just as happily removed Confucianism.

 

[citis]

Orthodoxy was founded in indi Jerusalem, then I collapsed the macedonian empire and catholicism was founded. However, in this scenario catholicism represents one of the many denominations of ealry christian years, like manicheanism or mithidratism etc.

I don't like this scenario, cause right now there is no christian civ, well except Ethiopia.