new religion suggestion

[brandt.jt]

i was thinking the other day there their needs to be a new religion added to the mix. the mormon religion. it is becoming a worldwide religion. it would need to include a holy city building (or whatever they are called) which could be the Salt Lake City Temple. this religion would be great to add to the already created Deseret Civilization mod.

thanks everyone

 

[Naokaukodem]

Mormonism is like Protestantism or Catholisism, it is Christianism, which is already in the game.

 

[Cereal Box]

It might be cool if they added denominations in the game. Something that would bother the other civs if you were a different denomination, but only a little bit.

 

[Flakdragon]

They should do scientology, that is world recognised!!

Nah, kidding, but seriously, they have covered all the major religions that we need, they need to diversify them a bit.

 

[Xanikk999]

Mormonism? Your kidding right?

They havent even covered zoroastroism or ANY POLYTHEISTIC religions.

Ask someone whos hindu, hinduism isnt really polytheistic.

 

[Red Door]

Mormonism is like Protestantism or Catholisism, it is Christianism, which is already in the game.

Wrong. Mormanism is not Christianity. They say they are, but they aren't. No Christian believes there is more than 1 god, and the Mormans believe their is a god for each planet.

 

[dh_epic]

^^^^^^^^^^^

And this is how religious wars get started, folks.

 

[EdmundYhee]

hinduism is founded in India

 

[Hadrean]

hinduism is founded in India

What does that have to do with this discussion??

 

[Naokaukodem]

Wrong. Mormanism is not Christianity. They say they are, but they aren't. No Christian believes there is more than 1 god, and the Mormans believe their is a god for each planet.

It is not particularly up to Mormons or Christians to determine if Mormonism is a part of Christiasnism. It is like that, that's all.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religions (Latter Day Saints)

And I don't know where you fished that they believe in one God per planet... ?

 

[sourboy]

Wrong. Mormanism is not Christianity. They say they are, but they aren't. No Christian believes there is more than 1 god, and the Mormans believe their is a god for each planet.

They may seem god-like to mormans, but the rest of us refer to them as aliens.

I agree, no new religions required.

 

[Ceritoglu]

I think Mormons themselves would be offended to be told that they believe in a completely different religion to Christianity.

However I do agree that splits within religions could be a very interesting gameplay addition. Christianity has Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox sects; Islam has Sunni, Shi'ite and Sufi sects; Judaism has Reform, Masorti and Haredi Orthodox sects - I'm sure other faiths have similar sects (sorry, I'm generally ignorant of religions outside the Abrahamic faiths). It could be very interesting to see religions develop over time.

Unfortunately I doubt Firaxis would be interested in developing the game in this manner since it might deviate from the entirely generic (and thus non-offensive) nature of religion in the game.

 

[Naokaukodem]

They may seem god-like to mormans, but the rest of us refer to them as aliens.

I agree, no new religions required.

LOL. Mormonism is just a religion very similar to Christianism. And again, no such fantasy aliens or planet gods beliefs...

 

[Lockesdonkey]

1. I'm not entirely sure how sects would work; and the REASON that there are seven religions, no more, no less, is because it was calibrated for game balance. Beta testers apparently tried more and fewer, but found that seven hit the right balance.

2. If sects are to be implemented, it would be VERY difficult:

Christianity has a GIGANTIC number of sects, which can (fortunately) be divided into groupings:

Catholic
Eastern Orthodox
Monophysite(ish) Orthodox (Coptic and Ethiopian churches)
Protestant
Mormon (the differences from Protestantism are sufficient for them to be separate from Protestantism)
On that note, Unitarianism might be included.
Arian Church (no, not Aryan, you idiot!)--A church deemed heretical in the early period, very popular with Germanic tribes before they started ruling over predominantly Catholic Romans.

Islam, on the other hand, has only a few:
Sunni: The overwhelming majority
Shiite: Strong
Sufi: A very small sect, influential only because the Sufis are great philosophers and the Islamic equivalent of monks

And now we get into weird stuff:
Wahhabis: These are the nutcases who run Saudi Arabia's religious police. While many classify Wahhabianism as a separate sect, Wahhabis are really just hyperradical Sunnis.
Kharijites: I'm not even going to TALK about these guys.


Judaism:
Has Reform, Conservative, Orthodox, Hasidic....But nothing to fight WARS about.

Hinduism: Each individual person has their own sect!

Buddhism: The generally accepted sects are Mahayana (universalist "Great Vehicle", popular in East Asia, and of which Zen is a susbsect); Hinayana ("Lesser Vehicle", an insulting term for a sect whose primary subsect, Theravada, is effectively the state religion of Thailand); and Vajrayana ("Diamond Vehicle", a traditionally royal sect, combining the other two, which I beleive was practiced by Asoka)

Taoism: It's more of a philosophy, so there's nothing really you can say...

Confucianism: Perhaps you can use the variants of Confucianism developed by each of Confucius' followers...

 

[dh_epic]

You could probably name 3 major sects for each religion, but to what end? The benefit of schisms and sects remains ellusive. Truthfully, religion isn't even that valuable.

Rememeber, religion has three main benefits:

1. creates diplomatic tensions between AI players (but not actual human players)
2. generates wealth for the founder
3. a way to unlock civics and happiness benefits

Sects would not affect #3 at all, since people will either go to the effort of having a consistent state religion or they won't. It won't change that choice.

As for #2, if sects were to generate wealth for the founder, it would just make everyone filthy rich, making the advantage of founding a religion irrelevent. Imagine a game where everyone has founded 2 or 3 sects.

So it's really only about #1. And if you're looking for more reasons to start wars, there are tons of ways to do that more effectively. Turn on "aggressive AI" -- there's your sects.

 

[Cereal Box]

Wrong. Mormanism is not Christianity. They say they are, but they aren't. No Christian believes there is more than 1 god, and the Mormans believe their is a god for each planet.

I have NEVER heard that. Besides, that logic is extremely flawed. Why not say Catholicism is not a Christian religion because no christians believe that anyone but God is infallable and Catholics believe the pope is infallable. Like it or not, Mormonism is no more different than any one denomination is with another.

 

[PMabey]

u cant have 2 many religions or every civ will found one

 

[Jaca]

u cant have 2 many religions or every civ will found one

Right. I was thinking that the number of religions in a game could depend on the map size. A polytheistic religion may be a good idea for a huge map then, where you could have eight religions. For smaller maps, some religions would be toggled off, and this could be random -- so before the game starts you don't know what religions will be toggled off, which could be interesting to alter game play a bit.

Just some thoughts.

Jaca

 

[Green Tico]

Having sects or divisions would be a challenge for programmers. Yet you'd have to keep in mind the enhanced diversity and gameplay. Think of the possibilities of what could be improved upon with what's already missing in Civ4W vanilla. We could add elements to remove other religions from your cities, ie an iquistor. A unit like this would maybe cause some unhappiness in your city in the short run but later improve efficiency of the city since everyone believes in the same god.
I also think that having religioius sects or divisions would add many dynamics to the game. We'd have to keep it relativly simple though. Christianity would only have 1 (maybe 2) different divisions which appear later in the game randomly either through tech development or some random event. So say you're hohumming along and BOOM no longer is Christianity one religion but now Protestants are demanding a separate path to salvation. Same could be said for Islam with 2 main divisions (Sunni/Shia).

Beyond the sectarian discussion, we do need to include other religions like Zoroastrianism which was HUGE in it's day. Maybe we can even replace it for Confucianism which is more of a philosophy than anything.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

I have NEVER heard that. Besides, that logic is extremely flawed. Why not say Catholicism is not a Christian religion because no christians believe that anyone but God is infallable and Catholics believe the pope is infallable. Like it or not, Mormonism is no more different than any one denomination is with another.

Leaving aside the question of Mormon=Christian or not (as that is flamebait)

Mormonism is far more different from any other Christian sects/denominations than they are from each other (Mormonism v. any Protestant denomination, Catholicism, or Orthodox are ALL greater than Protestant v. Catholic, Protestant v. Orthodox, or Orthodox v. Catholic) [assuming you take teachings that have comparable followings to Mormonism....as you can find a group of about 20 people that'll believe about anything, and say they're baptist, or Catholic, etc.]