November 7 livestream - religion

I really disliked civ6's religion system for its micromanagement, and I was definitely hoping for something more radically different, but at least they appear to have done a lot to make it less fiddly, and making it just one part of the ages is a plus...

That said, I wonder if with less missionary charges needed to convert a city, I wonder if it'll turn into whack-a-mole of not being easily able to defend your own civ's cities?

And do cities only check for religion at the end of the age? If so will a last minute religious push be the meta, when other civs have less time to undo your mass conversion?
 
"Unlock more Founder beliefs through gameplay"

Interesting - so you can have multiple founder beliefs it seems? But the founder beliefs are all bonuses from foreign settlements only. So if you go all in on spreading and enhancing your religion you can potentially reap some solid rewards, but if you found a religion but don't spread it outside your civ, it gives you nothing - versus Civ 6 where you could reap a lot of benefit.

It's a very different meta than 6. It doesn't really suit my playstyle, but tbd. It would be nice if there was some benefit to founding your own religion but not spreading it (or is there one that I'm missing).

With the number of things they've changed for 7, I can see why they went for a stripped down version of the 5/6 implementation rather than fully reinventing the wheel, but I was hoping for something more different.
 
With the number of things they've changed for 7, I can see why they went for a stripped down version of the 5/6 implementation rather than fully reinventing the wheel, but I was hoping for something more different.
Crossing my fingers religion gets revisited and rethought in an expansion...
 
I kind of sit back with a feeling that they kept the bad things but removed the good things from Civ6. Ok I know some of the religion spread spam has been reduced, but all the beliefs being tied to having your religion in other civs cities is a real nuisance.
While my overall feeling is more positive, I'm very disappointed to see both agendas and the gameyest possible take on religion return. :sad:
 
all the beliefs being tied to having your religion in other civs cities is a real nuisance.

Ah, but we all know, the primary influence of a religion is not that it shapes the culture and society of the people who follow that religion, its the benefits that followers from other nations send back to the people who first founded the religion. I mean, we all do know that, don't we? :mischief:
 
That said, I wonder if with less missionary charges needed to convert a city, I wonder if it'll turn into whack-a-mole of not being easily able to defend your own civ's cities?

Yeah, are there even any defensive options other than either relentlessly reconverting cities or excessive violence? Trying to spam missionaries and outproducing the AI is not going to be fun on higher difficulties.
 
I hope there's some kind of Missionary deterrent like an Inquisitor to park in a city to prevent it from being converted.
 
I wonder if it'll turn into whack-a-mole of not being easily able to defend your own civ's cities?

This is my concern as well. We can already see it in action on the stream when they were trying to get Barcelona back to their religion. This is the problem with tying it to a victory condition(s). But perhaps it won't be too bad if only your distant lands cities are being converted. I couldn't tell if any of their home continent cities were converted. It was always a pain in Civ 6 going through and making sure your cities didn't convert to another religion.

I don't mind losing the pantheon. I feel like religion should replace that anyways.

As for whether I'll be going for religion every game. I can actually see games where I don't bother to build a temple. Do we really need to go for every victory condition every age? Hardly seems necessary. In fact the victory conditions I like least as I like to sandbox my games and not really go for victory until the very end. It will be very gamey having to focus on specific things each age to just stay up with the AI civs.
 
Apparently, to this day, they haven’t managed to get the balance right on how to handle religion. Maybe we set our expectations too high, hoping for syncretisms and reforms?

I loved how religion worked in Civ5. I think that was the closest they’ve come to an ideal system. Religion was important and brought good benefits, but you didn’t feel pressured to found or spread it.
 
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I don't mind losing the pantheon. I feel like religion should replace that anyways.
I kind of liked it sticking around--I'm probably reading more into it than was actually thought through, but it felt like the way local religions colored the local practice of universal religions as they spread. E.g., Chinese Buddhism was highly colored by Taoism; old gods and heroes got rebranded as saints across Europe (most prominently in the case of St. Brigid in Ireland); American and African religions have colored Latin American Catholicism; etc.
 
This is my concern as well. We can already see it in action on the stream when they were trying to get Barcelona back to their religion. This is the problem with tying it to a victory condition(s). But perhaps it won't be too bad if only your distant lands cities are being converted. I couldn't tell if any of their home continent cities were converted. It was always a pain in Civ 6 going through and making sure your cities didn't convert to another religion.

I don't mind losing the pantheon. I feel like religion should replace that anyways.

As for whether I'll be going for religion every game. I can actually see games where I don't bother to build a temple. Do we really need to go for every victory condition every age? Hardly seems necessary. In fact the victory conditions I like least as I like to sandbox my games and not really go for victory until the very end. It will be very gamey having to focus on specific things each age to just stay up with the AI civs.
Yeah... I'm definitely curious how this one plays out in practice. Though since the legacy path is collecting relics maybe you won't always care as much if some of your cities get converted? Depends what ways you have to get relics...
 
Has anyone ever enjoyed using missionaries across any version of civilisation in series history ?

I found them okay in 4 as a way to get a religion to a city that already had a different religion in a city. Being unable to have a religion removed from a city is weirdly good because it means not having to constantly fend off enemy missionaries ? Run the theocracy civic to prevent foreign spread seemed good as well ?

Anything missionary related after that has just felt like a drag to deal with ……
 
Key point is, as far as I got from it (rewatch pending), livestream was not very clear on several things:

- how do relics are generated? We saw one come from piety civic and other from a narrative event, but these do not seem “active” mechanics (btw, we do not know much either of codexes in antiquity, and it seems they do not remain either in exploration)

- religion spread: we do know ony each city has two points and we move missionaries for conversion and defense, but I think we do not know how many “charges” (if that’s a thing in 7) takes to convert each point, or how defense is handled (¿lightning combat again or…?)

With this in mind (specially relics creation and handling), there is actually not clear strict requirement of having an own religion to play the cultural game. You might present it as well as (entering terrain og suggestions here - not assuming this will be the case)

-with your first temple, you have the option to choose a new religion or an existing religion founded by someone you met.
-founding religion works as shown in the stream (spread belief, founder belief benefiting from religion spread). You need and want to manage expansion of your religion against other. You should “protect” your holy city.
-adopting other religion would mean not being so involved in the religion expansion game, however
—you could get a specific follower belief for your civ, only applying to your own civ cities (that makes you want to expand/mantain religion your in territory)
—you will ver a relationship boost wit founder and other civs with the same religion (religious blocks in diplomacy)
—your should take into accont your spread “helps” founder civ (due to founder belief), but otherwise you might rely in founder’s more active role to spread religion to your civ and reap benefits of your specific follower belief.
—and of course you will have missionaries and all religious regalia necessary to participate in the cultural game.

Conversion of the holy city migtht be handled by this mechanic just by losing “founder” religion status and being prompted to adopt “follower” status for one of the religions present at your empire at that time.

Reliquary beliefs. And the Codexes are coming from Tech Masteries.

There does not seem to be any benefit to adopting someone's religion, nor for defending your own (other than having greater ease of summoning Missionaries to push your religion elsewhere). This is a fundamentally different system, so far.

This is the only area where the more I have heard, the less I have liked it.

I have concerns about

1) The Pantheons not surviving the eras
2) The same Religions every time, yes they said they were adding customs, but there are seriously more religions in the world you could have drawn from
3) those founder Beliefs only working in the Far Lands is everything I hoped the Far Lands would not be rolled into one mechanic

People are forgetting that Pantheons are Antiquity and the game is explicitly designed to allow single-Age games. If you were to start in Exploration, you would need to choose a Pantheon...when? At Advanced Start?

No, the Founder Beliefs only work in foreign civs, not just in Far Lands.


So far, I prefer everything I've seen about Religion in the new game, and every negative someone has pointed out is either a matter of preference or is based on assumptions of how the rest of the mechanic works from Civ6 that simply don't seem to be true, and yet everything is being said with such confident negativity. I would hate to make a game for this community, yeesh.
 
Not super excited by the religion mechanics as we've seen them in the live stream. Especially not since I liked developing a strong culture in previous games. But once I have the game in my hands, I think I'll pursue the scientific and economic objectives often instead and enjoy it.

I'm thinking/hoping that there might be a civ to be revealed yet that can get culture points in another way, just like Mongolia can get points in military.

But sending out religious units was the worst thing about religion in civ 6 to me. Religion was too good to pass out on, but I always picked the enhancer belief where religious units ignored terrain penalties to movement. It was awful without it. Maybe it will feel less so this time around though when there's less unit micro. Hopefully!
 
As for whether I'll be going for religion every game. I can actually see games where I don't bother to build a temple. Do we really need to go for every victory condition every age? Hardly seems necessary. In fact the victory conditions I like least as I like to sandbox my games and not really go for victory until the very end. It will be very gamey having to focus on specific things each age to just stay up with the AI civs.
If you don't get any progress towards the cultural legacy (i.e., no relics at all), you'll get a cultural dark age in the modern age - whatever that means.
 
This is my concern as well. We can already see it in action on the stream when they were trying to get Barcelona back to their religion. This is the problem with tying it to a victory condition(s). But perhaps it won't be too bad if only your distant lands cities are being converted. I couldn't tell if any of their home continent cities were converted. It was always a pain in Civ 6 going through and making sure your cities didn't convert to another religion.

I don't mind losing the pantheon. I feel like religion should replace that anyways.

As for whether I'll be going for religion every game. I can actually see games where I don't bother to build a temple. Do we really need to go for every victory condition every age? Hardly seems necessary. In fact the victory conditions I like least as I like to sandbox my games and not really go for victory until the very end. It will be very gamey having to focus on specific things each age to just stay up with the AI civs.
Well the temple is one of the happiness buildings., so you might want to build one anyways. But after you build it you could probably safely ignore your religion
I kind of liked it sticking around--I'm probably reading more into it than was actually thought through, but it felt like the way local religions colored the local practice of universal religions as they spread. E.g., Chinese Buddhism was highly colored by Taoism; old gods and heroes got rebranded as saints across Europe (most prominently in the case of St. Brigid in Ireland); American and African religions have colored Latin American Catholicism; etc.
Exactly…Flavoring.
(which is why it should affect Relics…they have yields…let one effectively be a ‘Pantheon Relic’ that mimics the Pantheons effect for the city it is in)
 
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