Keep Religion in Civ V?

[Aussie_Lurker]

We're hearing a lot of rumours that religion won't be re-appearing in Civ V. Now I hope that this rumour is totally untrue, but I'm curious about what other people here think. Should it be removed? Should it be retained, unchanged, from Civ 4? Should it be retained, but modified-(if yes, how)?
Remember that we *know* people from Firaxis & 2K visit this site, & value our opinion, so I think this is a discussion worth having.
For my part, I'd like religion maintained, but with some modification. I'd like to see greater emphasis on the vast array of pre-Christian polytheistic faiths from Europe, Africa & South/Central America. I'd also like to see religions change over time-in response to your nations social policies (think Civics)-& have them possibly generate schisms. Hope that makes sense

 

[civ editor11]

They must be expanded to become more realistic if they stay the same they're useless. I want to be able to create a more customized religions with effects on your civ not just making you happy with another civ.

 

[Auncien]

Yes but I would like to see some changes:

1) Religion should not be the #1 factor in diplomacy as it so often is in Civ IV.
2) They need to represent more of the world's religions, not for some political correctness reason, but simply for the coolness factor.
3) The founding of a religion should come about in a multitude of ways. It should not only be tied to technology research (i.e. great prophets would found one or perhaps a random event could cause the people to begin worshiping something / someone etc.)

4) When you read 'city states,' who else thought VATICAN? I mean seriously, think of the potential there...

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Yeah, I see where you're coming from. For me I want religions to be less.....static. If you get a religion from another nation, but your social policies diverge after that, then I'd like to see your version of that religion eventually differ from the original-to the point where you can even break away & form a *new* Sect (like Protestantism breaking away from Catholicism). I'd also like to see religious leaders play a greater role in the policies of your nation (i.e. non-state actors). I liked religions in Civ4, but definitely felt they could be improved upon!

Aussie.

 

[NA00]

I think religion should be retained, but modified.

- I would like to see religion have even more of a diplomatic/ military effect in the game to represent religious crusades, etc... at least early on in the game. I would like this to fade away to some degree towards the modern ages, as it presently does with the adoption of Free Religion Civic.

A much more secondary, and less important, modification I would like to see would be for religions to be founded in the appropriate civs, or at least as close as possible. For example, I do not want buddhism being founded in America or France. Or Hinduism being founded in Spain, etc... This is not really very important to me, but I would value the aspect of realism this would bring.

So i guess in a way I would enjoy somewhat 'static' religiouns. At least in terms of which countries were likely to adopt which religion. However, I am not a fan of absolute realism all the time, so there should be some flexibility.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

I confess that I don't care much about who founds a religion, but there should be more to founding religions than just getting the tech. You should have to develop a national pantheon in the earliest part of the game &-if you have the combination of tech & underlying religious development-then you should get a chance to found the appropriate religion (i.e. there should still be a tech component to it, but also a degree of pre-existing spiritualism as determined by what religious buildings you construct & your social policies, amongst other things).

 

[Earthling]

Actually voted wrong in poll - at least, to fully explain. I don't want to introduce "real-world differences" between religions like "Muslims can't have pigs." In that sense the religions mechanics wise should be similar. People can mod stuff if they want.

But the system as a whole definitely needs to change. The AI behavior about religion, how it ties into tech (so two earliest religions dominate) etc... could all be improved upon. Oh and the Apostolic Palace is utterly awful in Civ4 imo - though fixable if they removed/fixed how the victory and voting and all work and made all religions able to have similar religious councils.

 

[NA00]

I confess that I don't care much about who founds a religion, but there should be more to founding religions than just getting the tech. You should have to develop a national pantheon in the earliest part of the game &-if you have the combination of tech & underlying religious development-then you should get a chance to found the appropriate religion (i.e. there should still be a tech component to it, but also a degree of pre-existing spiritualism as determined by what religious buildings you construct & your social policies, amongst other things).

That is a really good idea. I hope something like that would/could be incorporated.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Well I can't speak for Civ V, but I'm in the process of implementing such a thing in CivIV-a reappearance of the True Prophets Mod (sorry, shameless self-promotion there ).

 

[cybrxkhan]

What I always imagined in my mind was that religions could "evolve" based on the player's choices. For example, if a player wanted to make his religion violent and full of hype about holy war, then he could do so. I guess it'd sort of be like a combination between the civics and technologies. Personally I feel that ideally that'd make the religions unique, but not offensive, since any religion could be anything depending on the player's choices. It could also be pretty interesting for alternative history purposes - what if Buddhism developed a doctrine of holy war, which it waged against the pacifistic Christians and Muslims? That kind of thing.

The only problem is that it could be rather complicated to implement, since unlike civics, which applies to only one civilization at a time, religious 'changes' could apply to a whole swath of religions.

 

[NA00]

Well I can't speak for Civ V, but I'm in the process of implementing such a thing in CivIV-a reappearance of the True Prophets Mod (sorry, shameless self-promotion there ).

No problem , still sounds like a cool idea. It should make a pretty good mod.

 

[SJSerio]

Yes, but they should make changes...

• They should expand how they are founded (AussieLurker had a good idea above with developing a pantheon). Maybe some religions should be linked or chained. In order to found one Christianity, for example, you need to have Judaism in your borders.
  
• There should be more available. Not just the current big ones, but historical ones too. Although many of the obsolete religions are now considered myths, they were just as important to the people that followed them as Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, etc, is to people today. If there would be limits to the number available due to map size, that is understandable, but the largest maps should allow for all available religions (again, more than 7... at least 10)
  
• In order to adopt a religion as a state religion, the religion should be present in the capital city. This would prevent a civ from immediately adopting the first religion to pop into its borders and be more believable. After all, how can the leader convert to a religion if he/she is not exposed to it personally?
  
• Better adherance to Favorite Religion by Leaders

I don't care too much about diversifying the religions (other than aesthetically, like in Civ IV... temples, missionaries, Shrines, etc). I just want to see expansion and more believable.

 

[Commander Bello]

I want to have religions kept, yet in a modified way.

First, I think the founding of a religion by exploring a tech is nonsense.
It could be a combination of research and culture, instead. Even better, early "religious" buildings like shrines, monuments for ancient gods and the like could give you some kind of "religious" culture (counting to the normal culture as well), and after meeting a certain threshold your nation would found the next religion.

Second, I would like religions to have different "consequences" or "attitudes". There could be religions which give you advantages in the field of military, or science, and so on.
Since I understand that such settings are hard for a company to bring to the market (say hello to political correctness), in the "out of the box" version the religions would still be of the same values, but could be changed in the respective xml-files.

Third, if your nation becomes either extremely weak or extremely powerful and rich, there would be the chance to have to face schisms (spelling?). Just to illustrate the frustration of people with their gods in case of being very poor or of having become bold and corrupt (think of the church in medieval times).

 

[Bahmo]

Keep but change. My opinion is elaborated in the other thread.

 

[AlpsStranger]

We'll see. I am giving them the benefit of the doubt here. If they removed explicit religion it was quite likely for a good reason. I imagine that they just "designed them out" unintentionally at some point and decided not to leave a pointless vestigial organ in the game. I do not want each successive Civilization game to get more and more cluttered.

Sometimes you just gotta take that mechanic out back and put two between its eyes. That's likely what happened here.

 

[dexters]

I voted keep but change but am indifferent if its gone entirely.

Religion is not an essential element in Civilization games. Though the way it was implemented in 4, made it pretty darned important in the gameplay, since it modified so many things.

They can still keep it in Civ 5 as a random element affected by player actions. But because it will pop by chance, I would assume its effects would naturally have to be minimized to the point of being a good bonus. That said, the bonus can still be good enough for players to follow a particular social policy path, but not essentially being required as it is in Civ4.

 

[_hero_]

From the sources of this rumor I take away that religion will no longer impact diplomacy. That doesn't mean it won't be in the game at all. It might not, but I think at the very least it should remain a part of the culture system.

 

[Tholish]

I don't think it would hurt to take religion out of the main release, as long as mechanisms were there to mod or expand it back in. This relieves Firaxis of the responsiblity of having to think about and PC religion. Let modders paint the picture, you just provide the canvas.

Its not near as important an issue as the tactical combat on the strategic screen. However, I'd like to see population levels less abstract, ie actually representing population not these small logarithmic integers. And then having some way to define portions of the population that have ____characteristic. One of which can be religion.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

OK, so this might seem out of left field, but this might be a good way for you to differentiate between religions without offending sensibilities.
-for the sake of argument, lets say one of the "Social Policy" settings are 'Values', namely the core values of your civilization (e.g. Survival, Faith, Power, Wealth, Liberty, Knowledge, Tolerance, Asceticism, Nationalism). The values of your civilization at the time you found a religion would dictate the nature of the religion & the benefits it would confer to cities which have that religion-both within & without your civilization.
So as a case in point, if Knowledge was your core value, & you found Judaism, then all Jewish cities might get a bonus of +2 beakers & +1 happiness from libraries & universities.
Jewish religious buildings might also have bonuses related to knowledge.
However, if you switch values to-say-Power, then you risk a schism breaking out, especially if the new value is antithetical to that of your religion. The longer you adhere to the new value, the more likely you'll be asked if you want to change the value of your religion. Whether you do or not, it could lead to an outbreak of religious civil war, & a possible diplomatic falling out with all those civs who currently adhere to the existing version of the faith.
So lets say you switch to Power as your core value. After several turns you're asked if you want this to be the new Tenet of your religion. If you say yes, then you lose the knowledge bonuses, & instead gain bonuses to military production & experience (after 1 turn of anarchy), but there is a chance that some of your Jewish cities might break away & either (a) join an existing Civilization or (b) form their own civilization.
Hope that makes sense.

Aussie.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

I disagree about religion not being an important part of civ games. True it wasn't important up until Civ IV, but that has always been a major *failing* in my view. Civ IV made a good effort at bringing it in, but I felt it lacked sufficient depth-particularly outside of the 7 "major" religions.

Aussie.