How do you see the new 'concept' of Religion changing the game?

[Waiguo_Chaoren]

@King Alexander

I agree with the sentiment, especially the stuff about medieval Christianity being bad, very very bad, however...

Religion can exist in the game without any particular one being bad or good- Muslims are only bad in the Christian imagination, and vice versa. What is true is that religion has been a major influence in human history, and i am glad it is being given a more central role in the game- after all, religions have outlasted most "nations" (eg. no one can argue that the modern "English" are the same nation as the "Anglo Saxons", or the "Britons"). Maybe the game should be called "Religion" and we should be arguing about the inclusion of nations as province-type elements.

 

[CivCube]

I think the game would take a sour turn if religion were to implemented tactically. There would be more arguing than rejoicing over the concept of having your own idea of God placed in such a selfish manner as bonuses to your troops.

No, it feels to me that Firaxis wants to use religion to add a new dimension to what is rather paltry at the moment: diplomacy. Say the computer has sent out missionaries to spread the word of Vishnu (for example) and they may have strayed too far into your territory. You may ask to remove them from your land, but you will have to be wily. After all, he may grow more angry with you and become pushy in negotiations. Not only will you have to be a charming and powerful leader in diplomacy, you will also have to be more considering of opponents' religions.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Its actually funny because, at the moment I'm working on a Civ3 mod which makes religion a much more prominant part of the game. Although I'm avoiding specific names for religions, I have 3 major 'religion paths' each effected by flavour and 'resource access'.
For instance, path one is 'Gnostic Dominated', and features polytheism and Eastern religious beliefs.
The second path is dominated by 'Spiritualism', and features The two main forms of Monotheism (early and late), as well as Theology, Orthodoxy and Reformist (though these latter 'techs could be picked up without first getting monotheism!)
The third path doesn't require any 'religious resource, and features nature cults, ancestor worship, Animism and Blood-Cults.
Please note, though, that I'm still in progress on this mod, so don't know how it will work in practice, but I hope to see each civ pursuing a slightly different 'religious pathway' based on a combination of their culture and access to 'Spiritualism' and/or Gnosticism. I'm not sure how the AI will take to it but, when I played a quick game of my mod-just to check out some new additions-and I found myself on a continent with only 'Gnosticism' available. Because of this, I chose to become a polytheist society, and avoided monotheism altogether. Of course, the way I had it set up, if I obtained 'spiritualism' later in the game, I could always 'convert' to Late Monotheism and build some Mosques !
Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that, if I could make religion work, albiet in a rudimentary fashion, with only civ3 tools available to me, then imagine what could be achieved with civ4, where religion will actually have a proper place!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[CivCube]

If Firaxis takes Aussie's route, how should they make sure it doesn't become another Space Race like in SMAC?

 

[Punkymonkey]

I was going to post what Aussie_Lurker is working on. What a coincidence! I think the abstraction of religion would be the best approach as opposed to specific religions. That will help mulitplayer games not because a haven for hate, we just have enough hate on the internet to also have it in games. Abstract religious concepts have less, not totally absent of, controversy and easier to implement. If they want to make religion part of the game it has to have serious effects of military expasion. If you are polythesitic, you are more accepting of other religions and have an easier time of assimilating foreign nationals. If you are monothestic you have a harder time assimilating but get other bonuses instead such as crusader units or something that have high attack. It should work like a gov't but have more of an impact on your civ because gov'ts come and go but religion usually stays the same. So your religious choice might greatly affect early game selection of gov'ts(early orthodox will not allow you to be a republic or something) but in modern times it will have less affect

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

What do you mean about a 'Space Race' CivCube? What I've done is given each religious tech a 'flavour', so that a civ of the appropriate culture is MORE likely to pursue those techs over others. The resource access issue is the other deciding factor of what religious techs a civ pursues.
Also, I'm not advocating that FIraxis takes my approach-all I'm saying is that even with the fairly rudimentary 'religion model' that Civ3 offers, I have been able to mod religion in such a way as to make it more part of the overall game! For instance, you have religious units capable of 'converting' workers and settlers to your cause, you might be able to 'trade Gnosticism' or 'Spiritualism' to distant civs (Spreading the Word), and you have numerous improvements, Governments and Great and Small Wonders associated with each religion tech! Also, none of the religious techs is a prerequisite for that age, so you could pursue outright atheism if you wanted-though you'd deny yourself happiness in the process.
So, if I could do all of this, think how much BETTER religion can be in Civ4!!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[CivCube]

Whoops, sorry about that Aussie_Lurker, I thought you were talking about something else. I thought you had a spiritual evolution in mind like in SMAC.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

No offense taken CivCube. My main aim with the mod was to prevent the situation of all civs becoming Monotheistic by the late Middle Ages. I found the notion just a little, well, offensive-given the fact that around 50% of the real worlds population DO NOT fit this stereotype. In fact, I would have to say that the two single BIGGEST religions are Buddhism and Hinduism-NOT Judaism, Islam or Christianity!
I'm also adapting the flavour system to governments as well, thus hopefully preventing the Republic/Monarchy, Democracy/Communism duopoly that currently plagues the game. I'm introducing a WHOLE lot of new Government types, and giving each one a particular cultural flavour-just to nudge certain civs in certain diections, without coralling them entirely. Hopefully, when its finished, we will see a much more diverse combination of governments and religions.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[mitsho]

I am strongly against calling the religions 'monotheism','polytheism' and so on. We also don't call Fascism 'government where the citizens are treated like ****'. It's the flair of civilization that you can build what has been acheived in the real world. It's fun to build the Art of War in London and the sixtin chapel in Bejing. So let me also fight islam america with my christian China. Let me do it. I want it, and I'm sure that many other players want that too.

However, you have to avoid offense to anybody by giving bonusses for several religions. But there are some things, that could be influenced by your religion:

• tolerance-fanatism --> contributes to aggression level (therefore the agg. Lev. changes through the ages, which is more realistic.
• Diplomacy. I don’t have to talk on this any more…
• Culture, every religion gives the same amount of culture, but if you influence/are influenced by another religion/civ you get a bonus/malus
• Spreading of the religion goes alone, you have no direct influence in it. But building temples can strengthen it.

mfG mitsho

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

First of all, if they WERE to give all of the religions their PROPER name, I certainly wouldn't object but, if they do keep it general, there is nothing stopping players from going into the editor and adding new religions, or editing existing ones, and giving them all of their proper names!
I do agree that social engineering factors should determine issues of religious tolerance and/or militarism and have argued for this extensively in other threads! Here is an interesting thought though. If you have two civs with an identical culture/religion group, then should they get a bonus to cultural/religious conversions and the like.
For instance, lets say you have France and Germany, both of whom are of the West European culture group AND are Orthodox Monotheists. What I'm thinking is that, if they are neighbours, then both of these civs might get a bonus to RESISTING conversions (cultural or religious) by either non-monotheistic civs or even non-Western European Monotheists (like those 'accursed' Russians ). Also, it should give a bonus to diplomatic agreements between those two nations, as they share a common faith. Of course, if Germany later changes to Reformist Monotheism (as they did in real life) then all of these bonuses are lost!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[GoodGame]

Religions should be cultural polarities unowned by any civ. Your cities should even be able to pick individual religions, with the selection being by a variant type of relgious city improvement (temple/cathedral). It should even be possible to have multiple religions, one type dominant in each city.

Civ's would then relate not (or less so) on born cultural group, and more on religious group, with them reacting to each other on religious similarity. The first civ to discover the religion (by Wonder or tech tree), gains the most benefit for that religious polarity--perhaps dominating it in the diplomatic circles.

It'd also be risky to have competing religions in your civ (e.g. perfect way to introduce civil war), but there'd be some balance of benefits in it.

It'd even be possible to have the civ that invented all of the world's religions (by building all those Wonders), as a kind of Culture/Diplomatic Victory.


They'd probably have to add the Religious Victory option (although I can imagine the negative newspaper controversy now...)

 

[Synergy67]

It seems to me that religion should be treated as a very strong cultural component in Civ 4, as well as having specific advantages and disadvantages upon commerce, production, happiness, growth, military function, etc. Cultures with the same or similar religions would be MUCH friendlier and more helpful to one another and likely to grant ROP’s, MPP’s, etc. They would also be much more inclined to align against common religious adversaries.

We can’t underestimate the effect of religion on culture and upon wars throughout history. It’s huge, and Civ 4 would do well to make it of very significant effect. Maybe religions should not be selected, but develop naturally depending on your nation selected, its tech and culture researched and built over a long time, as well as the cultural influences of your neighbors. If you are surrounded by many muslim nations, it should be likely that your own culture would shift towards muslim religion. It could even be percentage of cultural religious impact by population over time. 75% of my population has become Christian at a certain point, so I get 75% of a 15% increase in worker productivity due to the strong Christian work ethic. If I want to try to alter this, I would have to do something to promote a different religious dominant culture in my nation, like increasing my Christian cultural strength by building cathedrals, etc. If I wanted to become more Muslim and reap the benefits of Muslim culture, I would build a mosque instead. You could even in the future raze a religious structure in one or all of your cities to shift your dominant national religion, but would face the wrath of your people for some time, or diminished population in your cities (some Muslims would leave, not unlike starving out the foreign nationals in a captured city to reduce protesters).

I have to admit due to the way religions spread and grow despite the actions of governments and planning, I think certain kinds of nations should gravitate naturally to their appropriate religions or mix of them. “Industrious nations” might be the ones slated to become more Christianized whereas “Militant” nations might become Muslim or Communistic. This is a tricky one to figure out how it might or how it should work. I will look forward, with crossed fingers, to how the developers of Civ 4 work it out.

 

[brokengambler]

I wanted to make a few quick points

first I wanted to point out each of the original 16 civilization's religions:

China: Mainly Confucianism, also Taoist and Buddhist influences
Japan: Mainly Shinto, also Buddhist Influences
Indian: Hindu, barely any buddhist influences, later some muslim influences
Persian: Zoroastrian
Babylonian: Babylonian polytheism
Egyptian: Egyptian Pantheism
Greece: Greek Pantheism
Aztec: Aztec Pantheism
Iroquois: Spiritualism
Zulu: Zulu pantheism
Greek: Greek Pantheism
Roman: Greek Pantheism, later switching to Christianity
French: Christianity
English: Christianity
Russian: Christianity
German: Christianity
America: Christianity

Note every culture has a different religion except for the cultures that rose out of the wreckage of the roman empire (or in America's case the wreckage of the British Empire), you can say that Persia and Babylon became Islamic, but I think its more accurate to say the Arabs overran them. By and large religion has always been a cultural marker, and people only change religion when they are integrated into an empire. The conversion rates from evangelicalism are largely negligable when you're looking at an economically successful culture (which would include all the cultures in Civ except for things with the marker of "minor tribe").

My second point is that the concept of monotheistic and polytheistic is largely a false concept. Islamic people often think of Christianity as polytheistic (the trinity, Jesus is part God, all that nonsense), and Islamic people arn't all that innocent themselves (The Devil and legions of angels in the relion), there aren't really any God's in Buddhism, and in anything one would usually call "polytheistic" its questionable how much the personification of a god is based on later western interpretations of it. In shinto for instance if a tree looks nice it obviously has a spirit in it, that doesn't neccesarily mean it has personaility, that's just largely what western people assume who have grown up with the concept that all religion is about a higher being. Anyways I always thought Civilization was very backwards on this one point (especially in making Monotheism more advanced than Polytheism), and I think any use of religions in the game has the threat of being even more backwards.

I do agree with making Religion specific traits, and I think they can all be done cheerfully, it would be something like a civ specific trait that wouldn't be shared with 4-6 other civ's. Confucianism makes a big deal about maintaining traditional culture, which is arguably why the Chinese culture has stayed together and dominant through 30 or so dynasties often led by foreigners, the thing often specific about Judaic based religions is their singular ability to inspire abundant loyalty, Greek religion has been said to have inspired that philisophic culture of Plato.

Largely though I think the most sensible way to use it would be as a form of cultural assimilation (which is what it was used for in Civ III), that's obviously not how they're going to use it, and I really can't imagine anything good coming as a result.

 

[dh_epic]

brokengambler, a few notes.

First off, I agree with you that the tech tree is a little "bigotted" to see monotheism as the key advancement over polytheism. I'm not sure what the answer is to resolving this one, or if it even direly needs to be resolved. But food for thought is that even the original Hebrews believed in multiple Gods -- they just believed that Yahweh was the one who watched over them in spite of all other Gods.

I did put together a thread where I talked about some problems I have with religion. My problems are a bit more general than yours, though. But like you, I think religion COULD be good, but worry that religion will simply be used as a "topic" to sell the game, as opposed to a source of new gameplay. Religion will permit new buildings and so forth, but ultimately be a one dimensional cartoon that doesn't change gameplay.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=113385

I would say, though, what would be better is culture-spreading more than religion-spreading. This would be something that could apply as much to the modern age as it does to the middle ages as it does to even the ancient age, when men were considered Gods, and organized religion was synonymous with a state.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=102134

 

[Loppan Torkel]

But food for thought is that even the original Hebrews believed in multiple Gods -- they just believed that Yahweh was the one who watched over them in spite of all other Gods.

Would you like to explain this a bit further? I had the notion that the Hebrews were to be considered the descendants of Abraham, Isac and Jacob, or do they go further back? Anyway from Abraham the descendants would have to be considered monotheistics. There might be heretics among them and there might be a belief that other gods exist, but as their worship and beliefsystem is targeted towards one god only they can't be considered polytheists imo. Your post seems to indicate that.

 

[dh_epic]

There's a difference between monotheism -- the belief that only one exists -- and what the Jews had initially -- worship of one god, even if they acknowledge the existance of multiple Gods. The original Jews acknowledged the Egyptian Gods, for example, but saw Yahweh as THEIR God, the one who cared about them. It eventually evolved into monotheism, that there are no other Gods but Yahweh, and they stopped calling him by Yahweh and just started calling him God.

Probably the most important social development of Judaism wasn't the "one God" thing.

If I could point to two things, one would be the fact that they rejected the idea of visual representation of God. Some people suspect this is one aspect that made the religion more effective in propogating itself -- because an abstract God was more adaptable than a highly detailed God with characteristics from other living things.

The second would be that they phrased religion as a contract with God. Up until then, religion was often tied to specific beings on Earth claiming to be God or wishing that they were God. What's good? What Pharaoh likes. What's evil? What Pharoah hates. But Yahweh offered people a contract: if you do X, then I will do Y. If you follow these rules, then God will protect you. And this propogated through the spinoffs of Christianity and even Islam. Islam phrases it wonderfully: "If you take one step towards God, he will take two towards you. If you come to Him walking, He will come to you running." I know it's easy to take it for granted today, but for the first few thousand years of humanity, God was seen as a tyrant who could do whatever he wanted.

Religious historians tend to stir up contraversy among religious folks, because there's a tendency to see religion as an unwavering thing that has been that way since the beginning of time. Even the monotheists (Jews, Christians, Muslims) now see monotheism as the original religion of man, which was eventually distorted by others and their false Gods. This is another "winners write the history" thing, even if careful study and discussion suggests more to the picture.

 

[Loppan Torkel]

It's difficult to come to any conclusion in this matter. Judaism as a religion today is monotheistic. The Jews as a people is closely connected to Judaism. Judaism stretches back long before it was written down. I think the only comprehensive source for the start of Judaism, with Abraham by the promise or Moses by the law, is the Bible. I believe the time you're talking about would be the 400 years of captivity in Egypt right before Moses, right?
Anyway, was it Judaism they practised if they worshipped other gods? Did the religion even exist or were they perhaps heretics? Were the gods equal, or could the rest of the gods be regarded as lesser beings like saints, angels or demons that could be worshipped?
The subject isn't as easy as it seems, there are too many unknown factors to come to a certain conclusion.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Truth is that, even after the Israelites settled in Israel (after their captivity in Egypt) practice of Monotheism was more something practiced amongst those in the larger towns and cities-with those in rural areas retaining their worship of House Deities and the like. It wasn't until their time in Babylon that the Hebrews finally fell in together under a single monotheistic faith, and it was at this time that Hebrew scholars actually sat down and put on paper the bible stories. I confess that I am now a little vague on the details but, if you can, check out 'The Kingdom of David', its a brilliant series on the stories of the Israelites and how their faith came to be.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[dh_epic]

There *are* historians who take up this kind of thing. The King James Bible isn't the only written record. I don't claim to be an authority, but there are people who devote decades of research to these kinds of topics, and often come to conclusions that go against "conventional wisdom".

But yes, before Yahweh was the one and only God, he was the God of the Israelites. At least, that's what many historians believe. There are many other "surprises" in history that aren't given enough attention, either.

 

[Dida]

- after all, religions have outlasted most "nations" (eg. no one can argue that the modern "English" are the same nation as the "Anglo Saxons", or the "Britons"). Maybe the game should be called "Religion" and we should be arguing about the inclusion of nations as province-type elements.

That is not true. Not all religion outlast nations. The Roman paganism did not outlast the roman empire. And China, being the oldest continuous civilization in the world has outlasted many religions. Considering that Christianity is only 2k years old and is showing considerable sign of decay in recent years, there is strong indication that China might yet outlast Christianity.