How would you like to see religion changed, if at all?

[sonicmyst]

I am not a fan of religion system since Civ VI. It is tedious whack a mole of competing beliefs. I wish they just make it passive and completely rework the missionaries.

1. Incorporate religious spread in Merchants (if we need to remove the missionary micromanagement of conversion)
2. Give Merchants a random chance for a religious relic if the target location has a religion established.
3. Conquering a city gives a chance to find a relic.
4. Treasure fleets can have a chance to find a relic.
5. Specialists placed on a district with a temple gives a chance to find a relic.

I know so many RNGs here but at least I wont have to deal with missionaries running around the map with conversion charges and straining my eyes to find urban and rural districts to convert.

 

[Melkus]

There's an enhancer belief that makes trade routes convert your targets (and can trigger a relic depending on the first belief you took), it's fun to play around with.

Still think the system in Civ7 is too (board)gamey and unrooted from what religion actually is for my taste, but the actual gameplay has more nuances to discover if you give it a chance.

 

[Tanel]

Culture path in both Exploration and Modern is indeed the weakest currently. Both essentially come down to rushing a civic, then buying a building and a punch of units that you send out over the map.

 

[UWHabs]

Culture path in both Exploration and Modern is indeed the weakest currently. Both essentially come down to rushing a civic, then buying a building and a punch of units that you send out over the map.

Yeah, I think that's the disappointing part. Especially since you can simply buy explorers/missionaries, the only reason to build temples or museums is just for display slots. Sure, there's a few free relics in the culture tree when you get later, so there is a reason to opt for that, but it's still so dependant on reliquary beliefs, and moreso that you can't convert opponent capitals, you're limited in where you can even fight for religion.

 

[Mr Jon of Cheam]

Having not played it yet, the thing I find most odd is the decision to remove builders/workers, but depend more on missionary micromanagement. I'm a fan of the decision to remove builders, but even I will point out that at least the play around builder units was more interesting and felt integrated with the core game of Civ. Missionaries are a unit I would choose to remove before even removing builders.

Agreed. And didn't everyone hate missionary spam in VI?! I'm sure that complaint was almost universal, Ed and co can't have missed it, can they?

 

[kaspergm]

I am not a fan of religion system since Civ VI. It is tedious whack a mole of competing beliefs. I wish they just make it passive and completely rework the missionaries.

1. Incorporate religious spread in Merchants (if we need to remove the missionary micromanagement of conversion)
2. Give Merchants a random chance for a religious relic if the target location has a religion established.
3. Conquering a city gives a chance to find a relic.
4. Treasure fleets can have a chance to find a relic.
5. Specialists placed on a district with a temple gives a chance to find a relic.

I know so many RNGs here but at least I wont have to deal with missionaries running around the map with conversion charges and straining my eyes to find urban and rural districts to convert.

Most of these - particularly #2, #4 and #5 - are big NO-NO's for me. This is imo. exactly the opposite direction of how things need to go. Civ should be a strategy game, and you should be rewarded by the game actions you take, not have the game progression controlled by random benefits that just happen upon you through a random dice roll.

#1 I'm all for, but this should not be the major method of spreading religion. Having a trade route should increase religious pressure, but we don't want traders to be the main method of active spread. Traders are traders and should not double-up as religious units (it's bad enough how they made them double-up as road-builders). #3 is fine, I suppose, although I'm hard pressed to see the logic in it. Maybe if you re-conquer a city that was converted by another civ ...

 

[Feyd Rautha]

I like the bones, but the big change that needs to occur is the ability to "execute heretics" when you're at war with a civ. Yes, a missionary could still sneak through, but I have a big issue with having no way to combat enemy progression even if I want to. In principle, I disagree with the choice to have no reason for local faith (other than some policy options), but that's just how it is I guess

 

[stealth_nsk]

I'm trying to grasp the ideas once more. The big problem with the religion since at least Civ5 (I haven't played Civ4 for a long time, so I don't remember how it was there) is what it's boring. Regardless of whether there's natural spread, trade route spread or just missionaries; could religious units attack each other directly or only by competing for cities; the results are always the same. Moving units without tactical decisions is not fun and there aren't many strategic decisions to do. Unless there's solution how to make playing with religion interesting, you can't "fix" it.

And so far I haven't seen any solution.

Civ7 at least gives some good things:

1. The first belief defines how you get your relics and that's really interesting and important strategic decision. Whether it's right or wrong depends on the execution. In my last game I took a legacy which gives piety immediately, so I made a stake and took the belief which gives codices on capital conversion. This decision is risky, because if AI will found their religion in capital (which they often do), I'd unable to convert them, but I thought I have enough time and I was right.
2. You could totally ignore the part with spreading your religion or could enjoy benefits from it. That's strategic decision as well. Ability to keep religion bonuses in modern age adds on top of this.
3. Religious crisis is cool.

 

[ThichN]

Btw, sorry if someone mentioned this already, but I just discovered in my new game a religion attribute that allows your merchants to convert foreign cities immediately. It has made playing with religion extremely fun for me.