Well, I've been playing a lot of Civ4 lately and time and time again I find the implementation of religion to be... slightly confusing.
I feel that religion and corporations mechanics could be swapped - Religions would only be founded by Great People, and Corporations could be founded by techs, although there's not much need for that change.
Basically, my idea would be that all Civs would begin with a 'religion' - Paganism - to reflect the lack of religion. The religious buildings for Paganism would provide culture points and the ability to make priest specialists or something along those lines in order to make a Great Prophet who would found a religion of choice, the religious wonder AND the religious Holy City in that city.
The purpose behind this would be to stop the early game religion-rush that gives powerful political influence to those who spread their religion early and to make religions slightly more valuable to work towards instead of something you 'just acquire'.
There's a lot of other changes I have considered, but the general idea is that by implementing Paganism, you can reflect the difficulty of converting non-believers through a default religion that would oppose you and you would have to work on converting them to your beliefs.
My question is - how realistic is this idea? Can you force a city to have a base religion when built, so as to not need Pagan missionaries? I suspect the AI would also have issues with this... but generally I think an overhaul of the religion system would help a lot.
I could expand upon my ideas if there are any Civ4 modders who think it would be something they'd be interested in looking at.
I feel that religion and corporations mechanics could be swapped - Religions would only be founded by Great People, and Corporations could be founded by techs, although there's not much need for that change.
Basically, my idea would be that all Civs would begin with a 'religion' - Paganism - to reflect the lack of religion. The religious buildings for Paganism would provide culture points and the ability to make priest specialists or something along those lines in order to make a Great Prophet who would found a religion of choice, the religious wonder AND the religious Holy City in that city.
The purpose behind this would be to stop the early game religion-rush that gives powerful political influence to those who spread their religion early and to make religions slightly more valuable to work towards instead of something you 'just acquire'.
There's a lot of other changes I have considered, but the general idea is that by implementing Paganism, you can reflect the difficulty of converting non-believers through a default religion that would oppose you and you would have to work on converting them to your beliefs.
My question is - how realistic is this idea? Can you force a city to have a base religion when built, so as to not need Pagan missionaries? I suspect the AI would also have issues with this... but generally I think an overhaul of the religion system would help a lot.
I could expand upon my ideas if there are any Civ4 modders who think it would be something they'd be interested in looking at.
