Proposal: Realistic religions mod. COMMENTS NEEDED.

[maxpublic]

I think King Mississippi had it right, something I pointed out in a different thread. Because a number of the gamers here have strong feelings about religion X, they'll be highly inclined to argue over what qualities are assigned to that religion (either positive or negative). King M's approach was to make seven different kinds of religions, which solves a number of problems - not the least of which is allowing a culture to retain it's own religion without suddenly and miraculously adopting a completely foreign faith after discovering a particular technology. This avoids the potential arguments just waiting to erupt and also is much more realistic than a ludicrous instant conversion to a god that the culture would never realistically worship unless the conversion were backed by force.

It also avoids some the disturbing stereotypes that are starting to crop up on the forum.

Max

 

[Master Kodama]

I respectfulyl disagree with the latter comments made by "Master Kodoma" above - specically that (a). "the modern Muslim world's people and nations are heavily in favor of strict fundamentalist theocracy" and that (b). "intolerance caused by Christian Theocracy is no longer an issue."

I would say that Christian - as well as Jewish- theocratic intolerance is absolutely "an issue" of premier importance on the world scene today, and that while Christian and Jewish theocratic intolerance enjoys a wide degree of support among its "people and nations", there is an enormous degree of public revolt against "strict fundamentalist theocracy" in the modern Msulim world - especially since so many of those "strict fundamenalist theocratic" regimes are created, armed, funded, endorsed and imposed upon "the modern Muslim world" against their will by intolerant Christian and Jewish theocrats.



On a less boring note, I don't like the proposals made re Buddhism's advtanges in the initial post - I think this would be more historically apt:

BUDDHISM:
ADVANTAGE - an additional culture bonus for every additional OTHER religion present in the same city. Additionally, barbarians attacking a city with Buddhism present run a 25% chance of "converting" - i.e., becoming fighters for that city.

Actually, it's funny but I agree with most everything you've said here. I think you're reading implications in what I was saying -- very understandably -- that I wasn't intending to make. I'll try to be more clear next time, but I have a tendancy to ramble so I'm always trying to rein myself in. Allow me to elucidate:

"One of the problems in the modern Muslim World is that people and nations are heavily in favor of strict, fundamentalist theocracy..." Maybe I should have said SOME people and nations? There is a population of Muslims, mostly Shiites and extremists, who, for whatever reason, favor a fundamentalist regime -- otherwise such regimes wouldn't exist.

"Similarly, what was once the heavily theocratic Christian world has now become largely" -- but I do not claim completely -- "the realm free religion and expression, meaning that the intolerance caused by Christian theocracy is no longer an issue" -- in those countries/regions which I am implicating. I did not mean it is not an issue anywhere period. Certainly problematic people and problematic attitudes exist, more in some places than others, but that's pretty much ALWAYS going to be true.

However, I think that a lot of the current fundamentalist regimes were instigated more for political reasons than religious ones -- for instance, America aided the Taliban because it was the Cold War and the US government was legitimately scared ****less of the spread of Communism (not that that's an excuse). Then there's Iran, who wanted to nationalize their oil-fields (oh no!), if I recall correctly, so a similar political overturn was... er, helped along. These are political motives, not religious ones. But I'd rather not argue the fine-points -- you are probably considering things I'm not, just as I'm probably thinking along lines you're not. There are going to be people who claim religious reasons for things, or rail against some group or another for believing something different, but I believe IMHO that major world events are based largely (there's that word again) on political motivations, that may or may not have religious undertones, overtones, implications, or excuses. Clever politicians use religion to their advantage, appeasing or aiding or persecuting certain groups because it furthers their aims by enhancing their power and influence.

So after that giant chunk o' text, something more ON TOPIC: I also agree that Buddhism should have an advantage based on having multiple religions within a city.

 

[cckerberos]

Confucian Academy could provide +25% science (it is an academy after all) or it could be used to train civil servants and thus lower maintenance in cities where its built..

Given Confucianism's extremely backward-looking attitude towards learning and the purpose of the academies to prepare students for civil service examinations, the 2nd is a much better idea. What with the role Confucianism played in preventing "Western" science in China, Korea, and Japan, having it give a bonus to science would be a bit perverse.

(also, although unrelated to the OP, I would suggest that Confucian not be removed. While not a religion, it certainly was an organized belief system that included rituals, which seems close enough to let it slide.)

 

[maxpublic]

also, although unrelated to the OP, I would suggest that Confucian not be removed. While not a religion, it certainly was an organized belief system that included rituals, which seems close enough to let it slide.)

You could say the same of many environmentalists, whose beliefs are more in accord with ancient animism than any rational ecological views. And while Confucianism is inherently cautious with all new developments (social order and stability being the key words in the philosophy), environmental extremists take it one step farther by claiming just about all progress is evil and will result in the ultimate destruction of a sinning mankind at the hands of a vengeful Gaia. Category 7, baby!

Max

 

[Skedastic]

Our cities aren't defined by the religious affiliations of the majority of citizens.

Every U.S. city is predominately Christian; when there is no variation in religious affiliations remarks like the one above are meaningless.

Where the 'happiness' comes in is that without that option - if, for instance, some form of christianity were to become the state religion - everyone who wasn't christian, or the 'right kind' of christian, would become very, very unhappy.

This is an argument that religious freedoms under the law leads to more social "happiness" than authoritarian theocracy. Which is a very defensible argument, but also irrelevant to the particular game mechanics under discussion in this thread. Other things being equal, do more religions in the same place tend to increase happiness? Casual empiricism -- taking particular note of the atrocities regularly committed by one religious group against geographically local neighbours of another religion -- suggests otherwise.

Historically, multiple religions co-existing peacefully in one place is not a stable equilibrium. One religion tends to drive out others; either peacefully by conversion or... not so peacefully. It is only very recently in modern, secular, wealthy societies with firmly established political rights that religions co-exist relatively peacefully. And even within that group the U.S. is not a particularly good example, as the U.S. is an extreme outlier in the Western world in terms of religious beliefs:

The extreme religious right is a tiny minority of Americans, less than 3 million people in a nation of 285 million.

This is an unassailable remark because "extreme" is undefined. Roughly one in four U.S. adults self-identifies as a fundamentalist Christian, and almost 90% of fundamentalist Christians vote Republican. Under any reasonable definition of "extreme religious right," all of those people are "extreme religious right." Which places the number at somewhere above 50 million. These people share the same religion with most of their countrymen but even this divide -within- a religion, much less across religions, creates conflict ("unhappiness"). The rest of the world, and almost half of Americans, simply look on in horror and wonder when the U.S. president advocates teaching Creationism in public school science classes, for example.

Getting back to the game: The rules that simply translate more religion and particularly more religions into more happiness are poor. They are historically inaccurate and, far worse, add no fun to gameplay because they imply no tradeoffs to having more religion: It's simply always better to have more religions in your empire. Suppose instead that, for example, having more religions increased happiness but decreased production (or vice versa if you prefer). Then you'd have to decide whether you wanted to make that tradeoff, just like you have to decide whether increasing your science rate is worth the gold that could be turned into other stuff that benefits your empire.

 

[Ad Hominem]

Historically, multiple religions co-existing peacefully in one place is not a stable equilibrium. One religion tends to drive out others; either peacefully by conversion or... not so peacefully. It is only very recently in modern, secular, wealthy societies with firmly established political rights that religions co-exist relatively peacefully. And even within that group the U.S. is not a particularly good example, as the U.S. is an extreme outlier in the Western world in terms of religious beliefs:

I beg to differ. Only the three apocalyptic religions have been seeking exclusivity and (two of them) favored conversion of "the heathen" so much. I am talking about Judaism (exclusivity in a given time/space is essential for Judaism, as it is integrated with the history of the specific people of Israel) and the two offspring-sechts or Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The latter are the first religions in the history of mankind that created so much sorrow and pain... destruction of every previous installment and replacing it with theirs, complete control over every aspect of the believer's lives etc. etc.

So, truth is that still the Christian and Islam religions are precisely those that cannot coexist peacefully (be it with eachother or with the rest, non-apocalyptic faiths). On the contrary, the "pagani" (what a stupid term...) favored absolute religious tolerance, at least in the Greek world, and everybody could believe whatever they wished.

Bottom line: Religious intolerance is not an "ancient" phenomeno, its rise coincides with the rise of Christianism and (consequently) of the Islam.

 

[dh_epic]

It's very telling that nobody can intellectually agree what a religious trait should be. It's very hard to find an objectively true statement that summarizes a religion: "they are against education -- no FOR education -- okay neutral on education, but then X should suffer a full out penalty to education compared to these guys -- no they invented this that and the other -- well then they are more warlike -- no that's only a few people -- but then they're more passionate and should receive a production bonus -- no theyre not that hardworking"...

With absolutely NO built-in differences between real life religions, can you really say that you're making the game more "realistic"?

Again, if you REALLY want to make religions more realistic... extend the religious civics column. Because every religion's history and lessons are so diverse, it really matters how you wield it.

 

[Skedastic]

I beg to differ. Only the three apocalyptic religions have been seeking exclusivity and (two of them) favored conversion of "the heathen" so much.

Conversion by force is only type of conversion. Religions also grow or collapse because people choose to convert, or young people adopt a different religion than their parents. Multiple religions have tended to be unstable both because of often violent tension and because one religion tends to eventually dominate through choice.

One way to make religion in Civ 4 more realistic is to model that process: religion could "flip" cities much like culture, and only one religion within a city could be the major religion. The religious buildings constructed for now-minority religions would have lesser effects. The player could strategically spread his religion to other Civs to cause religious dissent.

 

[cckerberos]

You could say the same of many environmentalists, whose beliefs are more in accord with ancient animism than any rational ecological views. And while Confucianism is inherently cautious with all new developments (social order and stability being the key words in the philosophy), environmental extremists take it one step farther by claiming just about all progress is evil and will result in the ultimate destruction of a sinning mankind at the hands of a vengeful Gaia. Category 7, baby!

Max

While I guess you could make a comparison between extreme environmentalism and Confucianism, extreme environmentalism has never become the national creed of a state, while Confucianism has. The two are orders of magnitude apart in terms of historical influence. Also, I don't believe that environmentalism has the sort of formal rituals the way State Confucianism did.

 

[cckerberos]

Animism is akin to "shamanism," "monotheism," "polytheism," etc. in that it it is a group of may different belief systems that share only one trait. I'm open to including an animist religion, but which one?

I liked the suggestion someone made about aminism being the religion that all the civs start off with in the beginning (although perhaps it should come with Mysticism...). If an aminist religion were to be included, I'd suggest that Shinto is probably the most influential and numerous of any individual creed. However, aminist religions don't really have any of the attributes shown by the "religions" in Civ IV, so included one on an equal fitting would be a bit strange.

Thinking about all this makes me think how cool it would be if the names of each religion were modified based on the civ discovering it... i.e, Romans wouldn't get Hinduism, they would get Roman paganism (not sure of a one word name for the religion), etc. I'm not sure if that's possible to mod, though.

 

[Scipio Africanu]

I think this is a very interesting, but difficult idea. the funny thing is, Firaxis made the religion system the way they did to avoid these exact arguments you all have been having. Simply put, it is difficult to make a system of religion in Civ4 that doesn't either conform to the real world state of religion (which very often elevates one or few major religions over the others, which is quite offensive to some) or modifies the religion to be inaccurate of to its real world counterpart. Firaxis obviously chose the latter of the two, because we all know PR (public relations for the lamen) and what happens when you offend some. You make less money, and more enemies. Anyways, keep up the good work, this has turned into a very interesting discussion, hopefully it will have an equally interesting conclusion.

 

[abbamouse]

I understand the desire to simply throw up one's hands and say "all religions are the same." But they aren't. It IS offensive to treat them the same. Wineries shouldn't play the same role in a Muslim civilization that they play in a Christian one. Pigs shouldn't play the same role in Islamic societies as they do in Buddhist ones. And Hindus shouldn't be shown feeding on cows!

Just because the subject of religious difference is full of prejudice and emotion doesn't mean we should duck the question. It's one thing to say that some religions are more or less associated with generally recognized "goods" like education, happiness, peace, justice, and smiling little children than others. That's incorrect and not terribly realistic. It's quite another thing to point out that religions have differences -- that they avoid certain foods or have different mechanisms of spread, for example.

Yes, there is internal difference. I'm sure there somewhere on this planet, there are some Hindus that love burgers, some Christians that love Marilyn Manson, and some Muslims that love a good pork chop. But just because there are exceptions here and there doesn't mean that no difference exists. Otherwise, you are saying that I could accurately call YOU a Hindu, a Taoist, a Christian, a Muslim, etc and I would be absolutely right, since after all there are no real differences between them. That's absurd.

I don't believe that any country or civilization's people are better than any other's. But just because they aren't better or worse doesn't mean there are no differences. If there were no differences we would all worship and dress and talk and vote the same exact way. We don't.

 

[Rabbit_Alex]

I think this is a good idea. As long as people are fundamentalists (of any faith) they shouldn't be offended.

 

[dh_epic]

There are way more exceptions than you think. And when there's that many exceptions, you stop calling it an exception and essentially create a new rule.

THAT'S the problem.

 

[Ralendil]

Conversion by force is only type of conversion. Religions also grow or collapse because people choose to convert, or young people adopt a different religion than their parents. Multiple religions have tended to be unstable both because of often violent tension and because one religion tends to eventually dominate through choice.

One way to make religion in Civ 4 more realistic is to model that process: religion could "flip" cities much like culture, and only one religion within a city could be the major religion. The religious buildings constructed for now-minority religions would have lesser effects. The player could strategically spread his religion to other Civs to cause religious dissent.

The religion in civ4 should work like in Medieval Total war.
You should have an unrest due to the religion, and the religion should prosper or be eliminated from a city...

 

[wooga]

I think we're going to keep coming back to the need for a basic template, as Wyz_sub10 proposed, which will allow people to easily mod in whatever specific penalties/bonuses they want.

I think that there should be a separate screen during world selection, where you set your religion preferences. From a bank of 12+ religions, you pick which ones you want to allow in your game. For each religion, you can toggle various benefits/penalties, including:
- science rate increase/decrease
- decreased war weariness
- increase/decrease to disease
- elimination of benefits for certain resources (i.e., pigs, cows)
- prohibition on certain civics (i.e., universal suffrage, freedom of religion)
- tension with other religions (between neighboring civs)
- Religious unrest (having too many religions in your city prior to freedom of religion)
- lack of missionary units
- increased great people rate

Rather than having to individually set all these options each time, you could load a "profile", including the default CIV profile of the stock religions with no attributes. Once someone creates this template mod, civfanatics members could create their own "religion profiles" that could be debated for historical accuracy and downloaded.

In other words, lets establish that religions can practically be modded before getting into the debate as to whether Islamic countries should be able to build wineries.

Incidentally, I want to have substantial differences between religions, such as eliminating the missionary for Judaism. This would reflect the historical minority status of Judaism. Judaism would then get some kick ass benefits to balance it out (huge science bonus or something). The end result would be that if you want to play a "one city challenge" game, Judaism would be the optimal religion. In most other situations however, Judaism would be difficult to play with. Bottom line: the choice of which particular religions to adopt/spread should be a strategic one which has substantial consequences on how you will play that particular game.

 

[spu00trb]

The main problem in my eyes is that there is no way to remove it once it has spread. Much of the historical conflict between religions has been based on the fact that one does not tolerate the other but in Civ 4 world although your civilisations religion can be set and you can be engaged in a huge religious war against civilisation X your cities will be busy follwing religion x with little or no penalty and no way for you to get involved.

This makes religion abstract and vague, what is needed is positive and negative consequences for following or not following the beliefs of your people and ways to influence those beliefs.

Firstly what is needed is an inquisitor unit which can only be built in a city with a religion and all that religions buildings, this inquisitor unit would have a twofold purpose. An inquisitor fortified in a city prevents a missionary from being able to spread his religion and an inquisitor can consume himself to drive another religion from a city you own. The inquisitor cannot prevent the natural spread of religion, and so this means you cannot simply stop all religious spread with an inquisitor in each city and then sit back and ignore it.

Secondly we need a way of making religion important all the time, rather than just during war. Perhaps your people could suffer increased war exhaustion against a nation with the same faith, but hugely decreased war exhaustion if the eneamy was of a different faith but held your holy city. In my opinion this should also be a large source of tension.

Thirdly we need a way to encourage single religions, right now all the advantages are for multiple religions since they give more temples. I think that if you are at war with a nation that has another religion all your cities with that religion should suffer increased maintenance as your people become suspiscious of each other. Also being at war with another religion that is not your state main religion should cause all temples in your empire of that religion to lose their happiness increase effect.

This is all just brainstorming but right now religion is too free and easy, there is no tension between them other than between nations, your biggest challenge should be managing your own people.

 

[dh_epic]

The problem is even making a statement like "Judaism is a minority religion with no missionaries" is to overgeneralize its history and conceal other facts. The ancient kingdoms of Israel and Judah were not without attempts to convert new people. The fact that Judaism became a minority faith is a product of circumstance and not a foundational pillar of Judaism.

Of course there are differences in the religions. But the problem is these differences don't manifest themselves in the foundation of the religion, but in its evolution and implementation (and further evolution after its implementation).

Religious civics would be a much more realistic way to express religious differences.

For example: Differentiate between Organized Religion and simply letting religious values permeate a society naturally. Differentiate between Theocracy and a more vicious, expansionist approach. Differentiate between Pacifism and an overall concern for the welfare of your community. Having 10 religious civics instead of 5 could be very cool.

 

[Zakar]

We need religious unique units - if this is possible, and maybe only If this is your "state religon"

Islam - Mudjahedan
Christian - Crusader
Buddist - Sho Lin Monk - (early spy?)
Judaism - Banker j/k

I'm not really sure for all of them, just an idea that poped into my head.

 

[wooga]

The problem is even making a statement like "Judaism is a minority religion with no missionaries" is to overgeneralize its history and conceal other facts. The ancient kingdoms of Israel and Judah were not without attempts to convert new people. The fact that Judaism became a minority faith is a product of circumstance and not a foundational pillar of Judaism.

I'd argue that the total lack of any textual emphasis on evangelism and being the "chosen people" kind of eliminated an emphasis on missionary jews. I disagree with your "product of circumstance" point. At any rate, the fact that conversions occasionally occurred is already represented in the game by the ability of religions to slowly spread without missionaries.

Plus, if you want to go with foundational issues, then Islam would _have_ to be tied to violence (as Mohammed himself led religious raids).

I think the idea of expanded religious civics is fine, but by itself it is unrealistic. It would still make Buddhism and Islam completely identical, with differences only appearing based on how you "implemented" the two through the selection of various civics. This ignores the fact that Buddhism and Islam are fundamentally different religions that should have different attributes tied to the religion itself.

I find the notion, implied by firaxis, that "all religions are fundamentally the same" to be both condescending and uneducated.