Keep Religion in Civ V?

[Ztaesek]

I enjoyed religions, but they ultimately became an early game must have, not matter the civ or leader. As a game mechanic, either having founded your own and spreading it, or joining a neighbors and spreading their religion always created a nice barrier and usually have a city specifically focus on that task.

-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.

Aussie_Lurker, I'd take this a slightly different direction depending on other game mechanics (that's always the trouble with limited knowledge of other changes). Using core values like you have laid out, let us create a system based more on in game choices and less on technology progression. This would allow a backwards civilization found a religion.

At map generation, each religion type would have its combination of values randomized within a preset range (hopefully exposed to the mod community). As you play, like you've stated above, your civs values increase. Once the values are reached, a group of your citizens founds a religion. Afterwards, the state can decide how to utilize it. This would lead to some interesting experiences, as your opponents' actions could push your people to found a religion that wasn't expected as your reaction to threats or unexpected overtures of peace or trade.

Whatever the implementation, I'd like the civs' Culture and social policies to have more influence in the spread of the religions and less on nationalist units. Random rolls to convert a population was always a little undesirable. Again, social policies could help here.

 

[The_J]

Nearly all the suggestions here are pretty good imho .

What I always imagined in my mind was that religions could "evolve" based on the player's choices.

A RPG system for religions would be pretty cool.
But every civ would have to customize it's religion by itself...or maybe not... difficutl.

 

[WeaselSlapper]

I do like the idea of religion being in the game but the implementation defiantly needs to be changed. I agree that the founding of religion shouldn't be tied to technological development. Personally I would like to see each country have a Unique Religion like they have a unique building and that religion gets founded once that civilization reaches a certain amount of culture, and then the user should be able to choose where it's founded. Where I see the challenge for this approach is coming up with a different religion for each country and what happens when two leaders from the same country are playing in the same game.

Religions should spread like they do in Civ IV, but the fact that you need Monasteries to build missionaries and the fact that Monasteries obsolete really annoys me. The city that founds the religion should be able to build missionaries throughout the course of the game without a Monastery.

 

[Pakhawaj]

I think it would be cool if the development of religions was tied to cultural output, great person points and the era one is currently in, with later eras having less chance of seeing a unique religion.
I think religious buildings such as temples and such should still be discovered via technologies though... I'm not so sure how that would work.
Having religions evolving depending on player output sounds too confusing to me, I wouldn't like it if I wanted a warlike religion but ended up with a financial religion or something like that, I might be tempted to restart.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

OK, so I've thought about this a bit further & this is what I'm thinking:

-assuming yields & commerces are the same, then introduce a new commerce-"Belief". Religious Buildings & Religious Techs boost "Belief", as do priest specialists & certain social policies.

-as a city's Belief increases, there is an increasing chance that one of the "Major" religions will appear in that city. A Great Prophet 'sacrificed' in the city raises that chance to 100%.

-when a religion gets founded in a city, you get a pop-up screen with a random selection of *all* the available religions for you to choose. The era you're in might have some impact on the selection, but ultimately any could turn up (think Choose Religion Option from BtS).

-your values/social policies at the time of founding a religion will dictate the character of that religion, & the bonuses the religion provides in your cities. So if you select Christianity at a time when you're running a wealth oriented society, then it will be Mercantile in nature-with obvious commerce related benefits from the religion & its associated buildings.

-if you fundamentally change your values/social policies, then cities containing a high Belief (& your State Religion) have an increasing chance of generating a schism. Your choice then is either to re-embrace your former values/social policy, or to form a new, break away sect of the faith (which will result in these cities breaking away).

-once you have a "Major" religion in your empire, then you will get frequent requests from the religious authorities asking to boost belief (with the chance dependent on your current social policies). This could work in a similar fashion to Events in BtS, where you have multiple choices on how to deal with these requests-with each choice carrying their own combination of benefits & penalties.

Anyway, just a thought.

Aussie.

 

[cybrxkhan]

^I remember Johny Smith was trying something like that in his Rapture mod, where there was "Spiritual Commerce" or something like that.

 

[moscaverde]

I like religions to be in the game, but with some minor or not controled by the player impact. In real life you don't see Russia asking Sudan to change its religion. That feature in the game always felt strange.

 

[grant2004]

I'd like to see the spread of religions change a bit. It doesn't make sense that religions don't decay in Civ 4. Clearly religions have come and gone in the real world. There should be a way for a religion to enter into decay and disaper from cities, or be replaced by a rising religion.

Maybe a religion would decay if the host civ didn't build enough religious buildings for it, if they lost a war against a rival religious power, of if there were some kind of hostile civics enacted.

Having religions decay would allow late founded religions to compete with early founded ones. In most of my games Islam Christianity and Taoism only spread to significant parts of the world in rare cases where a civ is issolated and doesn't get an early religion.

 

[the343danny]

Im going to assume the banana option was "I dont care"

Religion in civ was only good for diplomacy or roleplaying imo

 

[Gedemo]

1 - During milleniums, the major religions were shamanism, animism, Earth mother or ancestor cults...I always found it strange to begin with buddhism&meditation..

2- War between Catholic and Protestant were very bloody and important in Europe, orthodoxy covers eastern europe and Russia...so the different parts of christianity and schism have a great influence

3- What about azteks, mayas, sioux, incan, zulu??? They didn't wait euopeans or asians to have their own religion or cult


More religions please!!!!!

 

[lostcause]

The problem I had with religion in Civ4 was that it was cool, but cool wasn't good enough. There were times where I felt it was broken or annoying, especially with diplomacy and religion spread. If they impimented many of the ideas from this thread in Civ5, I'd be happy.

Also, I want people to worship Zeus in 2048, that's not too much to ask is it?

 

[Pangur Bán]

I don't want the number of religions increased, as seven is quite a lot. I would like Zoroastrianism though. So what if it's no big deal now ... it's certainly more important than Judaism for the ancient and early medieval periods (and at least, unlike Judaism, some leaders in the game were adherents!).

They should slow the spread before the classical/medieval eras. The late religions like Christianity and Islam were the big religions after all. I hate the fact that if you don't select "Choose religions", most games end up dominated by Buddhist and Hindu Europeans (esp. when Justinian or Isabella are in the game).

 

[climat]

All I want to have is a system of schism.

 

[SJSerio]

Also, I want people to worship Zeus in 2048, that's not too much to ask is it?

No it's not! I am 100% with you. After all, part of the fun of Civ is seeing what the world could be like if things in history played out a little differently. If Constantine never converted to Christianity, could we end up having temples to Jupiter/Zues, etc dotting the European and American landscapes?

 

[Onagan]

1) make the number of religions dependent from number of starting civilizations/map size. (the number of required theatre for the Globe Theatre are already linked to the map size)

2) Only one religion can be found by a single civilization, for example the first 4 out of 7 civilization that discover the tech Religion found a religion.

3) Give the religion a name connected to the Civilization, for example the "German Myths" or "American Belief", don't use Islam, Judaism and Buddhism. The first Religion founded could then be better/stronger then the second one.

 

[SJSerio]

1) make the number of religions dependent from number of starting civilizations/map size. (the number of required theatre for the Globe Theatre are already linked to the map size)

2) Only one religion can be found by a single civilization, for example the first 4 out of 7 civilization that discover the tech Religion found a religion.

3) Give the religion a name connected to the Civilization, for example the "German Myths" or "American Belief", don't use Islam, Judaism and Buddhism. The first Religion founded could then be better/stronger then the second one.

I agree with 1 and 3. Not so sure about 2. Though with 3, maybe the name of the religion could better be done as Americanism, Germanism, etc. (or something like that). I wouldn't base it on techs but certain techs would decide what type of religion it is... polytheistic, monotheistic, or philosophical.

 

[Onagan]

I agree with 1 and 3. Not so sure about 2. Though with 3, maybe the name of the religion could better be done as Americanism, Germanism, etc. (or something like that). I wouldn't base it on techs but certain techs would decide what type of religion it is... polytheistic, monotheistic, or philosophical.

2 has the advantage of less or more a equally chance of spreading to other cities/civilizations instead of 2 civilization owning them together and having only 2 dominant religions.

The name you propose would also do, as would Sidhism of onemoreturnism. It doesn't really matter, the companies have fake names, let the religions have fake names as well.

 

[SJSerio]

The name you propose would also do, as would Sidhism of onemoreturnism. It doesn't really matter, the companies have fake names, let the religions have fake names as well.

...or let the players name them.

 

[Gaga1111]

Well I think that it would be great to:
Include Zoroastranism(not sure about the spelling) and some other ancient religions.
I also like the religion changing with your values but only in your nation not everywhere in the world.
If you controlled the holy city you could ask to begin a crusade/jihad style conquest of the infidels.You should also make old religions and minor religions in your empire get replaced with newer and /or more major ones.There should always be the choose religion option on but the AI leaders should choose it depending on some values (Isabella founding christanity rather then hinduism)And for the end you should built the Grand temple of the religion to found it.(for example temple of solomon for judaism).
EDIT:I just saw my post and forgot to write that one or two of those new features would be great not that all should be present.

 

[Tronicoz]

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...

agree with that