Proposal: Realistic religions mod. COMMENTS NEEDED.

[Emiraven]

- spread speed (so you can have some religions spread faster than others),
- culture, science and commerce modifiers for the holy city
- culture, science and commerce modifiers for any city with that religion
- culture, science and commerce modifiers for any city with that religion, when this is also a state religion.

Great stuff. Good find and good design by Firaxis. Anyone know if the AI look at these values when adopting/researching religions?


As for the broader religious mod discussion, I would suggest emphasizing bonuses based on the faith's *beliefs*, as opposed to its culture. Judaism doesn't encourage its adherents to be good bankers, that's just the culture/history that evolved around the faith.

 

[ShroudedMist]

I disagree Uty.

Personally, I think religion is far too simplistic actually as it stands currently in the game. It's a piece of the game which seems so plain despite there being something like 7(?) religions. Look at all the different wonders compared to the religions. Building a specific wonder confers upon you some kind of distinct upgrade or ability that is more or less unique from all the others. It inspires people to go after certain ones depending on their strategy. The various religions are all homogenous and just sort of the flavor of the week that spreads wherever along with all the others while giving no real distinction to the player for having founded that specific religion and not another one.

As for Emiraven's comments.

From a gameplay standpoint, I think it makes good sense to look at both the specific beliefs of a given religion and the specifics of the civilization and/or area that founded them. It gives you a broader spectrum of human history and accomplishment from which to come up with some distinctive mods. I think it's a missed opportunity to overlook some of the geographic and cultural distinctions.

To each their own though.

 

[Uty]

Adding some sort of positive modifier will not make things complex. It's introducing a hindrence to your civilization that will make gameplay confusing.

 

[Leonel]

That list there sounds good but I might have some suggestions you could use.

Judaism: Both disadvantages and advantages sound good

Islam: Disadvantage sounds good. However I recall Islam having a far different banking system in which it see's all resources as limited or something. So perhaps an increase in gold income as, the reasoning goes, people aren't having the bank take their businesses etc but still retain their businesses and keep making money.

Hinduism: Disadvantages sound good but perhaps an increased birthrate as an advantage perhaps?

Taoism/Confusionism: Not sure about those but some research in the matter should fix it.

Christianity: This one is hard as I want to remain unbiased yet am a Christian myself and know more about it than the other religions. I guess a good disadvantage may be a reduced income as it seems a lot of the homeless shelters I've seen are tended by Christian's etc that devote their time and money to the poor and homeless etc. However a good advantage may be that Christianity is easier to spread and, yes, cheaper missionaries.

Buddhism: A possible disadvantage could be a halved birthrate. But an advantage could be a doubled or whatever increase in science and culture.

And what ejdacanay said about older religions being harder to convert is spot on!

Also this may be an interesting link for you http://adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html incase you want to change the religions around as well.

That's my 2 cents. Hope you can get some use out of that.

 

[Adam7Eight]

At some point you need to take the gloves off and simply implement some uniqueness to each religion. It is one thing to have the expectation that all religions should be balanced such that no one religion, unless it is maybe one of the very first ones founded versus the last few, is superior to the others. It is quite another thing to once again take the standpoint that Firaxis chose to as far as not wanting to insult anyone of a specific religion. That is simply going right down the same road Firaxis did initially and needlessly shackles your hands from a design standpoint. It made good sense for the company producing the game but isn't all that necessary for the modding community.

We're talking about a game where the main point is to destroy other civilizations after all. If people are going to get offended over some religion mod then they should think more about the game as a whole itself. Yes, the bonuses shouldn't be so outrageously offensive that it's obvious they're designed to offend. However, a good religion mod is going to address the homogenous nature of religions as they currently stand and give them some flavor.

Let's face it. You make a religion worshipping cats and someone somewhere is going to get offended.

I agree 100%.

 

[pvc]

on a side note, i kinda would like to see religion unhooked from scientific discoveries, as this seems counterintuitive to me some times, and i really dont see why religion should be linked to a scientific discovery (i mean jesus or mohammed wasnt exactly what i call a 'scientific discovery'

i would prefer to see religion being founded by great profets (as was the case for most religions in RL IMHO).

also i would like to see way to get rid of other religions or make their spread slower. and have disadvantages of having multiple religions.
(imho it sucks that the more the better works for religions.)
maybe make temples and such have a disadvantage if the are other religions in the city (to avoid making this crippling maybe give temples the ability to negate this disadvantage for their specific religion? this would kinda model the religious envy, ie and a muslim/christian city if the mayor onlin build churches the muslims would be upset, but if he build both churches they would both be ok with it.)

 

[Dogzilla]

Posted by Emiraven:

"As for the broader religious mod discussion, I would suggest emphasizing bonuses based on the faith's *beliefs*, as opposed to its culture. Judaism doesn't encourage its adherents to be good bankers, that's just the culture/history that evolved around the faith."

Not really. Christianity and Islam both did not permit its adherants from lending money with interest (Usury), while Judaism had no such restriction. Thus Jews filled a natural void in the medieval economy, and I think it would be appropriate to give cities with a Jewish population a money (and productivity?) bonus, not because of a sterotype but realities that were a direct result of differences in beliefs.

 

[butlerj1982]

hi everyone,

as a practicing Taoist, i have a suggestion.

Our beliefs emphasize the unimportance of a senseless production for its own sake; that is, we devalue and place no emphasis upon "achievement" for the sake of recognition, etc... Further, we advocate a lifestyle free from artificial enhancement. Therefore, i would suggest that the Taoists have as a weakness a small production penalty but as a benefit an increase in happiness.

Also, it seems like if you are going to adopt these you would have to mod something to give you more control of your religions... some sort of inquisitor.

-John

 

[Plankhead]

Maybe while we're at it, we could add some new religions as part of the mod. Sikhism and Baha'i Faith were two that I was surprised to see absent.

 

[abbamouse]

A lot of these are good suggestions. I agree with the posters that pointed out that the Judaism/commerce stereotype is based upon a particular confluence of historical events, not the religion itself. Remember that despite living in the crossroads of the Middle East, ancient Israel was not noticably more prosperous than its neightbors. Levantine commerce was not dominated by Jews, but rather by Egyptians, Greeks, Phoenicians, and Romans at different points. The association of banking with Jews came about during the late middle ages, as the product of increasing commerce throughout Europe, AND the need for capital accumulation to fund increasingly centralized states, AND and the Church (in pre-Reformation Western Europe, that meant the Catholic Church) banning usury (i.e. charging interest) by Christians, AND the segregation of Jews into certain "undesirable" professions by Christian rulers. Interestingly, Judaism also prohibited charging interest to Jews, but since the demand for banking was driven by Christian rulers (remember, they could have prohibited EVERYONE from charging interest but chose not to) that didn't seriously impede commerce. Had the Jews been politically and numerically dominant, they would never have become associated with banking.

Note that similar circumstances existed in the Islamic world, where usury was (and often still is) prohibited. However, Jews did not become associated with banking in the Muslim world because Muslim rulers didn't carve out an exception for them the way that Christian rulers did. The Reformation in Europe substantially undermined the power of Jewish banking enterprises because the rules against usury were gradually relaxed -- first in Protestant areas, then in Catholic ones. The result was banking once again became diverse (although some of the old banking houses remained, of course).

So: No Jewish commerce bonus. It's not an element of the faith, but a historical accident that only seems to have occurred in one place for a limited period of time.

 

[Wyz_sub10]

A lot of these are good suggestions. I agree with the posters that pointed out that the Judaism/commerce stereotype is based upon a particular confluence of historical events, not the religion itself...So: No Jewish commerce bonus. It's not an element of the faith, but a historical accident that only seems to have occurred in one place for a limited period of time.

Right. Neither the Chrisitian or Muslim faiths believed in "moneylending". That's why financial organizations were largely associated with Jews - their religion did not have a prohibition on this.

Adding some sort of positive modifier will not make things complex. It's introducing a hindrence to your civilization that will make gameplay confusing.

Well, most of us agree that religions are currently too vanilla. But my other issue is that they are so universally positive. I mean, having a state religion should have some considerable consequences - like oppression, to some degree.

Second, there should be some effect on science and discovery. In Civ2 Fundamentalism resulted in a lower max research rate. I'd like to see something duplicated here.

I'm an atheist so I'm not big on religion, as you might imagine. But I'd like to see religion have the most influence re: advancement in the earlier eras and taper off as time progresses. State religions the modern, global eras should have more severe impacts even if they continue to provide significant bonuses.

on a side note, i kinda would like to see religion unhooked from scientific discoveries, as this seems counterintuitive to me some times, and i really dont see why religion should be linked to a scientific discovery (i mean jesus or mohammed wasnt exactly what i call a 'scientific discovery'

Good point, but it's hard to do it otherwise. Besides, when you look at a lot of 'techs', they are not all scientific discoveries. Many techs, even modern ones, are ideas. So it's not incompatible to link religion to an idea.

 

[maxpublic]

If you're looking for a greater deal of realism concerning religion, I'd suggest two changes:

- eliminate Judaism. Judaism has never been a major religion; the number of adherents is small in comparison to the others - tiny, in fact. The only reason anyone other than Jews and a few scholars know about it is because Jesus was a Jew, and, of course, that bit of unpleasantness with the Germans in the last century. There are, for example, approximately 300 million people in Africa practicing a form of polytheism, compared to 14.5 million jews world-wide (the highest of estimates), yet this and all other forms of polytheism except Hinduism are discounted in favor of Judaism. Seems like nothing more than political correctness to me.

- Confucianism is not and has never been a religion. Classing it as one is just plain silly. It would make more sense to wrap it into Buddhism, as there's a great deal of overlap between those who practice Buddhism and those who follow the teachings of Confucianism. Confucianism is more properly a philosophy than anything else.

If you eliminate these two religions (the tiny minority and the non-religion) that would give you two easy slots to fill with religions that 'might have been', or with polytheistic religions practiced today which are largely ignored by the Western world. You could, for example, class the various African brands of polytheism as 'Animism' (not really correct, but it'll do) and allow nations to adopt that instead of being stuck with what we're already familiar with.

Addendum: this isn't meant as a slam to Jews or Judaism. But classing Judaism (a non-missionary religion if there ever was one) as a 'major' in the same breath as Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, or Buddhism doesn't make any sense. It'd be far more accurate if Judaism was a specific culture or even a nation in the game since the religion is tied to a singular group of people who aren't at all interested in spreading it to non-Jews. Judaism by its very nature isn't viral like the others, which is why it has so very few converts.

Max

 

[abbamouse]

Well as I mentioned in my latest edit I do want to drop Confucianism or perhaps replace it with a Confucian/Taoist hybrid, since the two were often both accepted as true by the same individuals.

As for Judaism, comparing it to "polytheism" would be as misleading as comparing a polytheistic religion to "monotheism" (i.e. a huge number of different faiths). Which particular non-Hindu polytheistic faith has more adherents than Judaism? There may well be one, but I don't know it.

I think that eventually I'll replace Confucianism with Zoroastrianism, which will add another polytheistic faith to the game, albeit one that has largely vanished in the modern age.

Of course, all of this business about adding religions is premature since I don't have the art skills to do it. I'll need to wait for others to produce the necessary art while I work on modding the existing religions in the meantime.

 

[maxpublic]

Which particular non-Hindu polytheistic faith has more adherents than Judaism? There may well be one, but I don't know it.

Funny, but I gave you an example of just that in my post above. More than 300 million Africans practice a form of polytheism. Simply because most folks in the west don't know dick about Africa doesn't mean that these religious practices don't exist.

If in fact you mean that there needs to be a single identifiable 'brand' of that polytheism, I'd submit that the same could be said of Christianity - which encompasses more than 1,500 separate churches world-wide. In fact, there are *more* variations in Christianity than there are in what I loosely termed African Animism.

Or, if you're inclined to discount Africa, I'd point out that nearly 400 million Chinese practice a non-Taoist non-Buddhist form of religion that's a cross between animism, polytheism, and ancestor worship.

Both of these religions have far more adherents than Judaism, and affect the daily lives of many times more people. And that only covers modern religions, not older polytheistic religions which may very well have survived into the modern era if the people that practiced them weren't forcibly conquered and converted. But for the actions of one half-mad Roman emperor Christianity would be nothing more than a minor footnote in the history books, and we'd all be worshipping Jupiter, or Odin, or Ra instead.

And there's still the most telling mark against Judaism: while a religion, it also encompasses a very specific subset of people, the vast majority of whom are born into it. Judaism is *not* a missionary religion and never has been, and in any realistic sense it would never have spread across the world like it does in unmodded Civ 4. No way, no how. Judaism the religion is inextricably tied with the culture and heritage of a singular people, and has been for thousands of years. You can't take the Jew out of Judaism, so to speak.

I suggested using the slots otherwise reserved for Confucianism and Judaism for something different so that a player isn't 'stuck' with only the religions that happened to make it big and hang around until the modern era. You could, for example, brand one religion "The Old Gods", giving the player a non-Hindu polytheistic choice, which he might gleefully then try to spread around the world, wiping out all those blaspheming upstart monotheists. Or "The Elder Gods", if you have a penchant for Lovecraft and general madness. ;-)

Max

 

[Gaddow]

Christianity and Islam could add some sort of military benefit (perhaps and extra experience point or two) under Organized Religion and Theocracy (The Crusades, The Islamic conquest of the Middle East, North Africa and much of Spain).

 

[LouLong]

Some nice ideas.

However if I can add my 2 cents :

Judaism : as most people already mentionned, Jews have no specific relationship with banking "by nature". It is more the circumstances that made them move towards banking. On the other hand I really think they should have a science or litteracy bonus. Jews had until the XIXth century and by far the highest rate of literacy (by comparions to the Chrisitans or Muslims among whom they lived) and albeit some research went to mystical fields such as the Kabbal, they contributed a lot to research. That actually helped them a lot in banking since they could read/write/do basic arithmetics.

About hindus, I am not sure about the cows. Indeed they usually don't eat the cows because they are sacred but some studies showed that it might be a huge benefit as opposed to what was previsouly thought. They provide a lot of milk and... fuel (through their dejections). So lesser food maybe but I think they still should have a bonus.

Animism should also be a religion, the first one probably. It is still common in many areas.

Confucianism could have cheaper courthouses.

 

[Dom Pedro II]

Reminds me how I was looking through the table in the back of the manual and saw that Labratory gave a +2 happy if Judaism was the state religion and I was like WHOA! And then I realized I was reading the effects for "Jewish Synagogue" immediately above it

I like the idea of Islam spreading more rapidly for the simple fact that it almost never seems to become dominant due to its rather late arrival in the game. Seems to sort of even out the odds for its late appearance.

Also, I think a Crusader unit and its Islamic counterpart (Jihadi?) both of which can act in a combat role and also to convert people. Maybe only available under Theocracy and in cities of that faith?

People seem to be singling out Christianity and Islam from the others, so I figure it makes good sense that these two should get special units.

 

[Imagiro]

Just looking through this thread you see a lot of generalities that aren't true (get to these in a second) and the reasons why Firaxis didn't include things.. how do you go about determining these things?

Now for generalities that are untrue.. There are some things being said that don't apply always so how can you state that things are a single way when they might not always?

For example.. Judaism

The whole. Jews don't convert is a fairly modern thing. For a really indepth reading..

http://www.convert.org/judaism.htm (IT's actually a reprinting from Judaism (a magazine) not from the site itself).

But to wrap it up essentially.. Jewish conversion did exist. There are numerous examples of anger in the Roman empire and even an evangelical quote towards their efficacy. However, because the Roman empire and Jews were opposed, with the destruction of the second temple and the diaspora Jews were penalized with death both to converts and to those who prostelyzed. So fear of punishment has stopped Jews from spreading Monotheism.


A really interesting relatively modern example of this is the Khazar people.
http://www.khazaria.com/

The Khazar empire was an Eastern European area. At some point in the Khazar history their king converted to Judaism. It's a fairly new area of study as not much was known about them (the empire was wiped out by the growing Rus (Russian) empire).

So.. you can't quite define a religion only by it's modern antecedants.



Now including Animism is not really possible. All the religions (and confucism) have had massive sweeping effects on the history of the world. They are beyond ideas of individual tribes, they are accepted outside of the borders. They each have central tenents and ideas that are acknowledged no matter how far different each individual subsection is from each other.

I'm sure you can find examples of similiarity in Animistic and Shaministic proceedings.. but you'll be hard pressed to find a unifying principle between all of them. So while they have lots of numbers, they have no unifying principles among them.

Additionally.. Mysticism could be considered to encompass Animism and other primative religions.

An interesting footnote is that the religions of the Aztec and Incan empires was also very powerful, but only within their empires. Same with Greek Mythology..

 

[Dom Pedro II]

An interesting footnote is that the religions of the Aztec and Incan empires was also very powerful, but only within their empires. Same with Greek Mythology..

I also don't think it would be a bad idea to make civ-specific religions for civilizations such as the Aztecs, Incas, etc. From what I've read though, more than seven religions tends to be a little unweildy, so they might have to be restricted somehow to only that civilization... or at the very least, only able to spread to similar civilizations. For example, the Inca could adopt the Aztec religion, but nobody else will.

 

[Imagiro]

I also don't think it would be a bad idea to make civ-specific religions for civilizations such as the Aztecs, Incas, etc. From what I've read though, more than seven religions tends to be a little unweildy, so they might have to be restricted somehow to only that civilization... or at the very least, only able to spread to similar civilizations. For example, the Inca could adopt the Aztec religion, but nobody else will.

I think the idea is that your culture starts with a religion of this sort.. and then goes on to found a religion that is independant of your civilization.

Though in gameplay terms 7 is already pretty strong too many more and then religion is fairly debased and you can just pick it up any ol' time instead of it being necessary to race to found at least 1.