Limited religions - good or bad?

[Starwars]

I always found the "religion race" to be a pretty wonky mechanic. I get that they want religion to be part of the competitive gameplay but how do you guys like it?

I think I'd like it more if you could always found a religion but maybe make it so that the number of Great Prophet points needed to get one dramatically increases if you're not among the first. So you'd still get one, it'd just take a lot longer.

Even though faith is a very useful currency, it's still a pretty sucky feeling if you do go for an early Holy Site with the intent to get a Religion but just miss out on it because you happen to get a Normal Age and some other Civs get Golden Ages and can get the thing where they get a lot of Prophet points.

 

[OmegaDestroyer]

Bad. I think it's absurd that the world can only handle X amount of religions. Why not give everyone a chance? I cannot see it really hurting anything.

 

[iammaxhailme]

I think everyone should be able to form a religion, but you get pressure bonuses for having an older religion. This should even out if a new religion lasts a while, though.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

I'd find it more interesting if religions were something that were founded by the game. Then you decide which to adopt and promote, decide whether to choose a state religion (bonus to relations with matching civs, penalties to civs with other state religions), etc. Two religions in the Ancient Era, two in the Classical era, then maybe one per era thereafter, depending on map size. Each with a selection of bonuses to having that faith in your city, as the dominant faith in your city, or the dominant faith in your civ.

Once you become aware of a religion, you either promote it internally or try to stamp it out based on your assessment of whether you want it's bonuses or you want good (or bad) relations with your neighbours based on their beliefs.

Religious victory can work as it does now, except that the civ that converts the most cities to the world's dominant religion gets the win.

 

[Mr_PeaCH]

For years I had basically ignored trying to found a religion unless it fell into my lap somehow because of the limitation. This mod is a gamechanger:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1178185727

Raises the number of religions that can be founded to between 12 and 16 and some other features. Now I just settle in and get to found a religion of my own in due time. Often there can be a good reason to found a religion later in the game after you have multiple Holy sites and lots of Faith, etc and do a sort of religious 'blitz'.

I don't think the pace of founding religion was very well thought out in the base game. For example, it is very hard to generate enough Great Prophet points early on and the Wonders which tend to grant Great Prophet points don't come until well after all religions are founded in the base game.

 

[PhilBowles]

Civ VI has a bunch of issues relating to importing the Civ V system wholesale - limited numbers of religions hadn't occurred to me as being one until you mentioned it, but Civ V religion was much more meaningful to general gameplay and racing to them was more important. In Civ VI I agree it seems unnecessary.

The practical issue, of course, is that the system as designed has exactly enough beliefs to support the maximum number of religions available on Huge - allowing more religions means they'd need to add more beliefs, but this doesn't seem a huge bottleneck. As it is, the good beliefs drop off very quickly so there's not much benefit beyond era score and being able to go for things that trigger off religion (religious victory and some Wonders) to getting a late religion.

I like the suggestion of religion as something external to the civs (perhaps they could spawn in religious city states), but if they went that route they'd need more generic religions akin to those in Civ IV rather than the present system of tailored beliefs.

Religious victory should simply be removed. It was added as a sop to all the Civ V players requesting it, but it's clear by now that Firaxis wasn't able to develop a version that plays well for Civ VI and it actively has to be disabled on the smallest maps (sure, no one plays dual and the game isn't balanced around it, but it's far too easy for the civ that gets religion first to suppress the other's holy city and win within a very short timeframe).

My big bugbear with the system is the nature of the Great Prophets. They need GP points that rapidly become useless, Holy Sites are of limited use partly as a result, and things that logically should assist progress towards a religion - including high faith generation and founding a pantheon - do nothing to advance progress towards a religion. In that Civ VI may have departed too far from Civ V: extra prophets - not apostles - could be used to unlock beliefs instead of apostles, as in Civ V. Possibly certain prophets should have specific beliefs only available from getting that prophet - in that they could make GPs work much like other Great People, with a larger number that remain available throughout the game (and with assorted latter-day sects and cults they could have prophets representing eras well into the Industrial age, though more recent ones may be difficult).

 

[Archon_Wing]

It's fine but there are too little atm.

 

[gallowsCalibrator]

Religion is a big mechanic I'd like to see reworked in some way. It's a little weird how it feels less impactful and meaningful than it did in 5, yet the devs also tried to make it more important via the introduction of a religious victory, too.

Especially after the introduction of diplomatic wins, I'm a little unsure on religious victories at this point. At any rate, perhaps making them more complicated than just converting everyone would be a good start. I'm also unsure about religious combat at this point too; I feel like it kinda fell on its face. Though I also don't quite have a suggestion on how to replace it, either, at least at the moment. <<;

 

[ZeroSuitSenpai]

I'm fine with religion being a competition, but I'd like it to have a greater reward. Yes, faith is good now, but you don't even need a religion to utilize faith. Just goddess of the harvest or earth goddess. I wish there was a larger benefit to spreading your religion to other civilizations.

 

[gallowsCalibrator]

I'm fine with religion being a competition, but I'd like it to have a greater reward. Yes, faith is good now, but you don't even need a religion to utilize faith. Just goddess of the harvest or earth goddess. I wish there was a larger benefit to spreading your religion to other civilizations.

Definitely agreed there! Though I imagine part of the issue might be a conflict / power-budget issue with religious victory; if a religion was beneficial to another path while also being a path to victory in its own right, that could be difficult to balance. Discounting that for a moment, there's a definite few ideas I can think of there; stuff like a belief to increase your tourism output to civilizations following your religion, or something that gives you diplomatic favor, things along those lines.

Hopefully that's something approaching coherent? Haven't had my coffee yet this morning. XP

 

[Amrunril]

The game's limited number of religions does seem artificial, but it serves an important gameplay purpose by making sure that every game will include civs that don't found religions. For founding civs, this means there are large areas to proselytize where you (probably) won't be actively resisted. For non founding civs, it means interesting choices about whether to favor one foreign religion over another (though this dynamic worked better in Civ V, since in Civ VI most follower beliefs only affect cities with holy sites).

 

[kaspergm]

Overall it seem unnecessary, and I agree that if they want a limit, there are currently too few. The religious war mechanism of Civ6 has effectively removed the need for a limit, because it's quite easy to eradicate a foreign religion with a focused approach. The addition of a religious victory condition additionally emphasizes the problem of a limited number of religions.

I would mind it less if I could claim ownership of a foreign religion by conquering their holy city. There was a mod that did that for Civ5 and it was great.

A really missed opportunity from Civ5 (and also not in Civ6) is the opportunity to actually reform religions. I'm not talking about the silly reformation belief of Civ5, but taking a foreign religion and turning it into your own new religion. So if someone forms Catholicism, you could reform it into Protestantism by using a great prophet. This would actually add some meaning to a limit to religions, and it would add some interesting options for diplomatic aspects of religion.

 

[Stringer1313]

Good. There is already too much going on, and I do think you should have to fight for your religion. If everyone gets one, that just makes the fight less interesting.

Before introducing more and more complicated mechanics to religion, I think they should focus on IMPROVING the existing system such that religions are actually worth getting aside from religious victory. I think they should beef up the Founders' Benefit by like 5-fold. Right now, expending precious faith on missionaries is not worth it if not pursuing a religious victory, but they should make it more worth it.

 

[Zaarin]

Personally I think religions should not be founded by civilizations but rather adopted by them; civ's model of state-founded religions and mutually exclusive doctrines just isn't reflective of how religions actually work. State-sponsored or state-adopted religions could and should certainly be a thing--and it shouldn't have to be the majority religion in your civilization, either (see, for example, the early Islamic Empire where many of the subject peoples remained Christian, Jewish, Zoroastrian, or pagan). Overall I'd like to see religious victory cut or reworked, religion overhauled and made infinitely more nuanced, and religion divorced from civilization-level control. Realistically these are hopes for Civ7 not Civ6 at this point.

 

[PhilBowles]

I'm fine with religion being a competition, but I'd like it to have a greater reward. Yes, faith is good now, but you don't even need a religion to utilize faith. Just goddess of the harvest or earth goddess. I wish there was a larger benefit to spreading your religion to other civilizations.

Another area where they erred in departing from Civ V - in Civ V you had to have a religion to generate faith save with the occasional Wonder or Natural Wonder, as it was required for religious buildings. Faith is almost decoupled from religion in Civ VI - there are too many non-religious sources and too many non-religious uses for it.

 

[kaspergm]

Before introducing more and more complicated mechanics to religion, I think they should focus on IMPROVING the existing system such that religions are actually worth getting aside from religious victory. I think they should beef up the Founders' Benefit by like 5-fold. Right now, expending precious faith on missionaries is not worth it if not pursuing a religious victory, but they should make it more worth it.

I actually mostly disagree with this statement. I think getting a religion has quite good rewards, it will give you a good and steady income of gold and culture through beliefs like Tithe (gold from followers) and the amazing Choral Music (culture from religious buildings); if you're in tundra or desert, beliefs like Feed The World can be great (food from religious buildings), and of course having a religion will give you more incentive to build holy sites, which will massively boost your faith output.

The one big problem with religion imo. - and that is a really big problem - is that locking one of your very early district slots to the holy site will really set you back, because it will be at the expense of either building a campus, a theatre district or a commercial hub. Maybe they should make a rule that if you found a religion, your holy site will not count against your district limit - or just make holy sites not count against the limit in general, so as not to punish people even more if they lose the religion race.

 

[Myomoto]

Overall it seem unnecessary, and I agree that if they want a limit, there are currently too few. The religious war mechanism of Civ6 has effectively removed the need for a limit, because it's quite easy to eradicate a foreign religion with a focused approach. The addition of a religious victory condition additionally emphasizes the problem of a limited number of religions.

I would mind it less if I could claim ownership of a foreign religion by conquering their holy city. There was a mod that did that for Civ5 and it was great.

A really missed opportunity from Civ5 (and also not in Civ6) is the opportunity to actually reform religions. I'm not talking about the silly reformation belief of Civ5, but taking a foreign religion and turning it into your own new religion. So if someone forms Catholicism, you could reform it into Protestantism by using a great prophet. This would actually add some meaning to a limit to religions, and it would add some interesting options for diplomatic aspects of religion.

I would really like to see reformation/schism as a mechanic in later eras to introduce additional religions.

 

[Tech Osen]

I dislike how little say you have over it when you don’t found a religion yourself. Wish I could favor one party so they have an easier time converting my empire.
When I do found my own religion I'm mostly irritated by the lack of warnings when one of my cities has been converted.

 

[PhilBowles]

I actually mostly disagree with this statement. I think getting a religion has quite good rewards, it will give you a good and steady income of gold and culture through beliefs like Tithe (gold from followers) and the amazing Choral Music (culture from religious buildings); if you're in tundra or desert, beliefs like Feed The World can be great (food from religious buildings), and of course having a religion will give you more incentive to build holy sites, which will massively boost your faith output.

The one big problem with religion imo. - and that is a really big problem - is that locking one of your very early district slots to the holy site will really set you back, because it will be at the expense of either building a campus, a theatre district or a commercial hub. Maybe they should make a rule that if you found a religion, your holy site will not count against your district limit - or just make holy sites not count against the limit in general, so as not to punish people even more if they lose the religion race.

It might be simpler and more elegant just to introduce something else early that can generate Great Prophet points - say you get +1 a turn once you found a pantheon. That's not quite as good as a Holy Site since you can't get the extra point from the shrine, but it will usually be earlier and it won't demand any investment. AIs that aren't actively religion-focused can often be slow to found pantheons, so it's still a way for the player to get ahead - and a player who really wants to push for religion can still get an additional boost by building a Holy Site.

 

[Sostratus]

Possibly certain prophets should have specific beliefs only available from getting that prophet - in that they could make GPs work much like other Great People, with a larger number that remain available throughout the game

This is something I have wished they'd done since vanilla. Give me some other mechanic to start my religion and use prophets to grant bonuses like other GP do. Maybe allowing you to pick duplicate beliefs of other religions or a unique religious worship building or whatever. Tons of choices. Some of the options that are more theologians could act like civics versions of Great scientists or something. And how could we have a great person tree without an option to get the eureka for computers? /s