It seems like that would be a fairly simple option to have as a setting. One of my favorite ways to play is on larger maps but with a few civs less than the default (especially with new barbs mode), which makes exploration much more interesting. But the downside is that the number of religions remains the default, which eliminates the early game decisionmaking about the opportunity cost of going for a religion or not. It also seems like it would be fun to do a normal game but with only two religions, waging a grand battle for the souls of the populace across the lands.
Is there a gameplay reason for not being able to adjust the number of religions?
- Thread starter Vargas1
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Archon_Wing
Vote for me or die
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I mean, it's been 4 years and the game can't even remember your settings normally unless you use that save setting that takes even more effort than just manually adjusting things.
The entire custom game settings are somewhat lacking as a whole.
The entire custom game settings are somewhat lacking as a whole.
King of Prussia
Warlord
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The number of religions is based on map size if memory serves.
I personally hate the race to get a religion, followed by slow down after. The pacing isnt fun, not to mention the AI cheats. I find the combo to be limiting the options i have.
I hope in Civ 7, they add in options for not founding a religion but instead following one. Allowing someone who didnt found one a way to eventually break off or modify the one they are following. It would make religion less binary, and give you something to care about without needing to found your own religion.
I personally hate the race to get a religion, followed by slow down after. The pacing isnt fun, not to mention the AI cheats. I find the combo to be limiting the options i have.
I hope in Civ 7, they add in options for not founding a religion but instead following one. Allowing someone who didnt found one a way to eventually break off or modify the one they are following. It would make religion less binary, and give you something to care about without needing to found your own religion.
Some mod I use allows selecting the number of religions, probably Religion Enhanced. I routinely set the number of religions to just two or three, which feels much more satisfying than half the civs in the game having their own; I turn off religious victory anyway.
kaspergm
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Not sure it's true that AI cheats (how?), but I agree otherwise very much with your post. The whole concept around founding - and reforming, from Civ5 - a religion needs to be reworked. If there is a hard cap on number of "original" religions, and I'm not even sure such a cap should exist, there should be an option to reform an existing religion to make your own branch - like how Catholicism was reformed to create Protestantism. Obviously this should have major diplomatic repercussions. You should also have an option to declare a state religion, and if you adopt someone else's religion as your state religion, obviously that should give a strong diplomatic boost.
I also strongly dislike how in Civ6, once you found your own religion, all cities with a holy site just get their religion wiped and automatically converted to your new religion. This is both nonsense from a realism perspective and bad from a gameplay perspective because it actually rewards you from saving your prophet and waiting to found until all your cities has a holy site (the only exception being if you can found as #1 or #2 and get one of the very strong founder beliefs, but that almost never happens on higher difficulty, and even then, often you'll be just as well if not better off by picking work ethics, which the AI never takes). What it should rather be is that once another religion is present in your country, founding and spreading your own should be hard work and cause displeasure/civil unrest for a while.
YES. This drives me nuts. Honestly the best option would be to have the AI vary the follower beliefs they choose (it's annoying to almost never get Feed the World, which is a fun belief, but to always get Work Ethic if you get a religion on standard size). But short of that, I absolutely agree that there should be a drawback to waiting to found your religion, not a benefit. If not going for a religious victory, I either found a religion early enough that I only have a handful of cities (so easy enough to convert them to my religion) or I wait until I have holy sites spread across my empire, which makes little sense thematically but is the right gameplay choice.
Socrates99
Bottoms up!
I like the opposite. Everybody gets a religion. Some get stamped out some don't.
For me, lowering the number of religions is the only way to simulate the kind of religious blocs that formed in real history.
Socrates99
Bottoms up!
Historically those blocs supplanted other religions through conquest or proselytizing. It's the race for slots that feels jarring to me.
Historically most of those religions were "also-rans" in their place of origin and weren't government sponsored until much later in their existence. There's not really much you can do about that, especially since the AI won't spread someone else's religion. For Civ7, religion needs to be scrapped and rethought from the ground up; for Civ6, one makes do with what's given.
Jeppetto
King
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My fear with player not having control over Religion is that it sounds like heavy RNG factor.
If RNG must be present, I'd prefer "role-playing" style, where two or three different ideas emerge and you choose one of them which would shape your Religion in some way.
If RNG must be present, I'd prefer "role-playing" style, where two or three different ideas emerge and you choose one of them which would shape your Religion in some way.
I'd like to see Firaxis take some hefty inspiration from CK3's religion system, which I think is brilliant. I think it's no more RNG than playing the map in general: I'd see religion as something the player reacts to rather than acts upon. I think creating religions is a lot of fun, and I think there's still room for that in the realm of heresies, schisms, and reformations--but I think religions should originate on a sub-civilization level and spread (initially) by grassroots rather than deliberate state-sponsored evangelism. (This is one area where Civ5 was noticeably superior to Civ6: passive spread was much more potent in Civ5.)
Jeppetto
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I'd want the player to simply have at least some agency. I'd go for compromise that its default features would be random but Apostle could Reform it to exchange existing Belief (random one) for chosen one.
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To answer the OP question I would say, Arabia’s ability requires a limit.
There is also some design elements around getting an early religion rather than founding a country wide one in the 1880’s and also seems based around being a precursor of enlightenment... it’s a early game thing so rush for it if you want it.
So adjusting it can be done but equally you should not just allow everyone and that’s probably the crux of a lack of in game start options.
There is also some design elements around getting an early religion rather than founding a country wide one in the 1880’s and also seems based around being a precursor of enlightenment... it’s a early game thing so rush for it if you want it.
So adjusting it can be done but equally you should not just allow everyone and that’s probably the crux of a lack of in game start options.
aieeegrunt
Emperor
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Taking the Scripture belief kind of does this
I don't think they "cheat." I think a lot of players think they cheat because they, intelligently (a rarity for the AI), run projects to beat the player to a prophet, and the player isn't checking the progress screen often enough. They just figure, "I'm 12 points ahead of the second-placed guy and making 3 points per turn vs. their 1, so I got this in the bag." Then the AI run 2 projects in 6 turns due to deity AI production bonuses, which is not cheating, and the player is dumbfounded.
I did have one particular game where I am confused in how I was beaten and very suspect of the incident. Unfortunately, I wiped my HoF and saved finished files when NFP came out and this was before that, so I don't have a save or any proof. To paint the picture a little, I was playing as a civ (THE civ) whose abilities grant the option for first religion (Peter). I guess you could say I was the one cheating because I wanted to try out a particular strategy and set the map setting to cold and re-rolled until I started in a fat tundra strip which could have not just the capital but 6 or 7 cities whose territory was predominantly tundra. (the experiment was to gauge just how effective faith was in supplementing a tourism victory - spoiler - very effective.) The problem was the lack of food in tundra meant that cities couldn't grow past 4 or 5 pop and getting the extra faith from working more tiles was the centerpiece to the strategy, so Feed the World was necessary. So I bee-lined a religion to the Nth degree, Astronomy first tech and luckily was boosted (Matt's Tilapia wonder, an underrated one.) Once I got to size 3, I opted for halting growth to work the highest production tiles to get the lavra asap, then ran two projects. I'm checking the progress screen every turn and no one else even has a HS yet, so it's just a matter of beating Stonehenge. I cringed when I heard the wonder notification, but it was just someone making Great Bath. 1 turn away and still no one is even generating a single prophet point. I get my religion but the era score was wrong. I checked the great people screen, still no one was generating any prophet points. I checked the previously recruited screen and sure enough, an unmet player got a great prophet. Luckily enough, they chose Choral Music, so I went ahead and got my belief and had a great game. Oddly enough, about 15 turns later Stonehenge was built. I loaded an auto save on the turn that they got the first great prophet, and it was the same turn that Great Bath went. I later find that the player that made the wonder was not the same player who got the first great prophet. So is there some Deity-specific bonus where rarely (this hasn't happened since, although I did have a similar experience when I was racing for GS Zheng Heng and someone got him first, who wasn't generating any GS points) when one Deity AI gets a great person when another Deity AI builds a wonder? Maybe if they were racing for that wonder and lost to another Deity AI they are compensated? Because if they didn't build Stonehenge (it popped later) and they weren't generating any prophet points meaning they didn't have the district to run the project, and after later meeting them there was no way they accumulated the gold to buy them and didn't have a faith generating pantheon, how else could they have gotten the great person?
As for the OP, the reason you can't adjust the number of religions is so that there is competition over getting a religion, and there will be winners and losers, though often the losers didn't want or try for one anyways. Your option of lowering the number of players circumvents this, which I know wasn't your intention but is a side effect. I guess it would make sense if number of religions was based on number of civs rather than make size, but it's probably too late that anyone at FX would do anything about it.
As for alternates, I never liked the Great Prophet format - it's strange that every other great person you get more of if you have the most points per turn in that category, which gives you benefits in that category and forms strategy. But with prophets, the first one you get gives you a prophet and then while your faith accumulation is still pumping, your great prophet point accumulation is discarded? Why not do it like they did in previous games where the first player to X faith (or great prophet points) get to found a religion by being granted a saint or caliph or whatever, a "founder" unit, and then great prophets function like the other great people, where this great prophet makes your theater square adjacency provide faith as well and that great prophet makes your shrines produce gold equal to their faith output? I guess they may be weary of offending by tying this bonus to a religious historical figure like Laozi or Jesus, so just make up names. Joe Bob Briggs founded this religion and Clint Howard founded that one.
Not effectively enough to be worth investing in.
aieeegrunt
Emperor
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I didn’t play much Civ 5 so I’ll take your word for it
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