realistically, what can be done with religion?

[adrifranchise]

just a question that’s come up while i was playing. religion tends to feel like a spammy religious whack a mole.

build missionary > send to town > convert > send back to city that just got converted to another religion > rinse and repeat

what is a viable way for religion to be introduced as a mechanic? what features do you believe are needed? how can you streamline the missionary micromanagement while still making it impactful like the commanders?

just curious to see others thoughts

 

[Cymsdale]

Better UI indication of which have already been converted once. There is not a lot of incentive to reconvert unless you focus on policies related to religion in which case you've basically signed up to play the spam game.

 

[ehecatzin]

I would like to see passive religious pressure and "religious defense". If I have a lot of relics, religious buildings and civics, certain cities should be able to withstand the missionary spam. In that same regard, if I have invested a lot into my religion I should be able to push past a certain threshold and convert an enemy holy city. (just capturing it should make it possible)

religion really feels half implemented right now, you spam missionaries, get your relics, and forget about it until the crisis, if It's the religious one, you spam again to keep your religion up. They tried to simplify religion but kept the spam.

 

[Wabnosa]

They can make the wack a mole, less by requiring +1 charge if the town has a temple, +1 charge if the town has a relic.

 

[ydejin]

I’m like a limit to the number that each Civ can have on the board. Same with explorers. I know the increased cost of each is meant to provide a soft cap, but it’s clearly not high enough and a hard cap might work better.

Maybe have some sort of “recharge” cost instead of having us build new missionaries and send back across the map. And maybe have some sort of defensive capability where we can park them somewhere and have them automatically “defend” a city.

The current system is just tedious.

 

[theadder]

Get rid of the missionaries and manual spread of religion. It’s so tedious that I never do anything with it. It should be a background process that the game runs.

 

[ehecatzin]

They can make the wack a mole, less by requiring +1 charge if the town has a temple, +1 charge if the town has a relic.

+1 to holy city and they loose the immunity. it would certainly make religious civs being able to push into non religious easier. I would add to it, make it so that conquered cities work just like they do now, 2 charges for urban and rural. It could open a militaristic/religious gameplan where you conquer a civ up to the holy city, wipe out a religion, and give back what you don't want.

 

[wesplaysciv]

I'd probably give this comment for almost all the mechanics but I'd have it interact more with other paths, and across ages, e.g. (I'm sure others have more creative ideas)

• From previous age: does anything to do with altars or pantheons carry over? Maybe more altars built can give a benefit to religion startup somehow?
• In exploration: yield benefit to following your own religion, even stronger in distant lands? Speed/movement boost for treasure fleets if following own religion?
• To next age: artifacts from cities following your own religion counts more?

Then in general, most importantly need more reasons to convert cities beyond the relic bonus, and definitely more reason to convert your own cities.

I'm sure this isn't the final form but clicking to move units that have no movement restrictions really is pointless, they should abstract it away like spies if they are going to do that. But I'm sure they are thinking of adding more that the units can do, more unit types?

Would like passive pressure, also with trade.

Need diplomatic actions/denouncing religious conversion. Other ways to defend.

Something more special about holy cities, currently all they are is just a city that is proclaimed to be your holy city and can't be converted?

 

[Mudkip1001]

Whatever they do, please let other holy cities be converted/razed etc... it makes a lot of the first beliefs options so pointless...
and add someway to kill missionaries, or close the country ala Japan... some way to stop the AI from sending me an endless wave of missonaries.

Making it too Passive is going to make it irrelevant I think, and there needs to be consequences and returns on investment reflecting from religion all the way up to the Modern and 4th Age... the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is continuing, and a consequence of what happened decades and centuries before...

 

[bladex1200]

Get rid of the missionaries and manual spread of religion. It’s so tedious that I never do anything with it. It should be a background process that the game runs.

Agreed. Missionaries should be an extremely limited way to spread religion, possibly make them very expensive and with a unit cap as a costly way to force religious spread across to distant lands (with alternatives in the form of the religious tenets already-present in the game or a narrative event or policy card to force distant land conversion) or in other countries (with accompanying diplomatic malus if the other country has already adapted their own religion).

Domestic religion spread should be passive once you adopt a religion based on pressure from religious buildings, policies, narratives, relics, etc. These should also provide passive religious defense as per what Wabnosa is suggesting:

They can make the wack a mole, less by requiring +1 charge if the town has a temple, +1 charge if the town has a relic.

The ideal outcome here should be that if you don't go into religion, other civs should be able to fight over converting your cities (since you're unlikely to be building any religious infrastructure yourself). Playing the religious game should require significant investment if you want to "win" abroad (to reap the benefits of foreign conversion e.g. tithing, etc), but not if you're just trying to use its domestic benefits. If you do go into religion, it should be fairly easy to keep your own cities converted as long as you invest in the proper infrastructure. Religious wars should be far more common, which would be the case if converting other folks had a diplomatic malus.

 

[Zigs]

Random idea, maybe make faith a currency again but have it work like diplomacy and loyalty? Spend faith to convert other cities, towns, IPs or reinforce your own settlements? It's the unit spam that makes this so tedious to me.

Some options like:
Create faith holiday in your Civ: Reinforce your settlements and add +faith per turn
Denounce other religion: Hinder faith generation for another Civ, add your faith pressure to their settlements. Worsen relationship.
Pilgrimage: Add faith boost for your Civ every celebration (generation per turn and pressure defense)
Holy War: Similar to Civ 6, allows you to start a war with another Civ giving you war favor and adding faith/happiness for each settlement you conquer

Government/Civic options can add a faith bonus, some allowing freedom of religion adding more happiness at the cost of lower faith defense, or only allowing your faith at the cost of some happiness.

Maybe add some balancing with tech where certain tech buildings may hurt faith generation? I think this would separate culture-focused Civs from tech-focused

Basically get rid of the units all together and make it an extra diplomacy or even Civic/Tech system. I will say it's a positive step away from how Civ 6 handled it, especially tourism (thank god we don't have to hear the multiple rock bands playing every damn turn lol)

Not a rock-solid idea, just a concept I thought would make it more interesting

 

[bladex1200]

Random idea, maybe make faith a currency again but have it work like diplomacy and loyalty? Spend faith to convert other cities, towns, IPs or reinforce your own settlements? It's the unit spam that makes this so tedious to me.

Some options like:
Create faith holiday in your Civ: Reinforce your settlements and add +faith per turn
Denounce other religion: Hinder faith generation for another Civ, add your faith pressure to their settlements. Worsen relationship.
Pilgrimage: Add faith boost for your Civ every celebration (generation per turn and pressure defense)
Holy War: Similar to Civ 6, allows you to start a war with another Civ giving you war favor and adding faith/happiness for each settlement you conquer

Government/Civic options can add a faith bonus, some allowing freedom of religion adding more happiness at the cost of lower faith defense, or only allowing your faith at the cost of some happiness.

Maybe add some balancing with tech where certain tech buildings may hurt faith generation? I think this would separate culture-focused Civs from tech-focused

Basically get rid of the units all together and make it an extra diplomacy or even Civic/Tech system. I will say it's a positive step away from how Civ 6 handled it, especially tourism (thank god we don't have to hear the multiple rock bands playing every damn turn lol)

Not a rock-solid idea, just a concept I thought would make it more interesting

I do like this idea, actually, just changing faith into a resource and doing conversions directly that way the way that influence is used right now for city-states and endeavors. If anything, you could even play with policy cards or general mechanics that allow for faith-specific alternatives to influence-spending (e.g. spend a higher raw value of faith, which would be easier to get in a religious empire, on religious ceremonies and holy site visits to boost standing with city states or as a replacement for influence in endeavors PROVIDED THAT the other civ has your faith as a majority in their lands OR has a tenet that allows for interfaith dialogue/religious tolerance).

 

[Zigs]

I do like this idea, actually, just changing faith into a resource and doing conversions directly that way the way that influence is used right now for city-states and endeavors. If anything, you could even play with policy cards or general mechanics that allow for faith-specific alternatives to influence-spending (e.g. spend a higher raw value of faith, which would be easier to get in a religious empire, on religious ceremonies and holy site visits to boost standing with city states or as a replacement for influence in endeavors PROVIDED THAT the other civ has your faith as a majority in their lands OR has a tenet that allows for interfaith dialogue/religious tolerance).

Exactly, this would be much more engaging than just spawn a missionary and click the convert button on the right tiles...

 

[evonannoredars]

I hope they rework religion, but I don't think a religion yield is a good idea. With food, gold, production, culture, science, influence and happiness, there's enough yield types to crowd tiles already without an eighth one in the mix.

 

[Zigs]

I hope they rework religion, but I don't think a religion yield is a good idea. With food, gold, production, culture, science, influence and happiness, there's enough yield types to crowd tiles already without an eighth one in the mix.

Good point, would add even more convolution

 

[bladex1200]

I hope they rework religion, but I don't think a religion yield is a good idea. With food, gold, production, culture, science, influence and happiness, there's enough yield types to crowd tiles already without an eighth one in the mix.

I mean instead we have tiles crowded with religious units running around the map. If the issue is the UI is bad, the UI should be revamped rather than sacrificing the gameplay.

 

[marius_kaparius]

Religion needs a rework to the level of what they did with Influence. I'd actually consider Religion just another means of generating Influence but targeted inward instead of outward. Maybe both?

If I'm being really wacky I'd say that religious developments should actually be outside of your control and something everyone needs to react to.

 

[evonannoredars]

I mean instead we have tiles crowded with religious units running around the map. If the issue is the UI is bad, the UI should be revamped rather than sacrificing the gameplay.

The UI when it comes to representing yields on a tile is fine. It's an issue of there's plenty of yield types already, it'd be better to tie existing yields (especially influence, which already exists to combine a lot of similar systems) into religion rather than adding an eighth yield.

 

[Cymsdale]

Whatever they do, please let other holy cities be converted/razed etc... it makes a lot of the first beliefs options so pointless...

Ugh yes... Oh hey, two relics for converting capitals sounds pretty good. Oh your capitals and holy cities are all the same? Cool... cool cool cool...

 

[ehecatzin]

Ugh yes... Oh hey, two relics for converting capitals sounds pretty good. Oh your capitals and holy cities are all the same? Cool... cool cool cool...

this one I choose in my first playthrough, it was infuriating to see the holy city immunity.