Religion gone from Civ V is a Blessing

[Kruelgor]

Religion gone from Civ V is a Blessing.

But religion is not gone from Civ 5. In addition to the religious buildings and wonders, there is also the Piety social policies.

What you mean is religion has been removed from diplomacy and cultural expansion which I agree, that is a very good thing.

There's no reason to give a diplomatic bonus to nations of the same broad religion, because they historically have a rich history of slaughtering one another due to the numerous sects and denominations that are found within the broad religions. Protestants vs Catholics for example, Shia and Sunni another one.

 

[skallben]

Maybe religion in cIV had it flaws but I think it is a far too important factor in history to just leave out. Even if realism has to surrender to gameplay in many areas, it is a game that essentially is about history. Religion as philosophy, as insitutions, as powerbases have been profoundly impacting our history. Just because the mechanics might not have been perfect in cIV there is no reason why religion should not have a place in CiV. I wouldnt be surprised if we get a new incarnation of religions in a DLC/expansion.

 

[Kruelgor]

Maybe religion in cIV had it flaws but I think it is a far too important factor in history to just leave out.

Again, religion is not left out of Civ 5. Religious buildings, wonders, and Piety social policies.

 

[KopOut]

There are so many different strategies to take in this game, you can explore endless possibilities for game completion, but there will always be people who dont like the new game, stuck in their old ways kind of people, glad i'm getting my moneys worth.

I think what you are missing is that having so many different strategies that we can explore for game completion is NOT the sign of a good strategy game. That is the sign of a good sandbox game.

A good strategy game should only present you with 1 or 2 ways to win in each game.

Where is the strategy, if no matter what happens in game I can just keep on going with my culture win or my conquest win or my science win etc?

People are bored with this game because it is too easy and involves little or no strategy, just implementation of your choice of a few painfully obvious "strategies" that require little thought and seem like work while you are implementing them. We are not bored because we don't understand the game or find it difficult.

 

[zonk]

But religion is not gone from Civ 5. In addition to the religious buildings and wonders, there is also the Piety social policies.

What you mean is religion has been removed from diplomacy and cultural expansion which I agree, that is a very good thing.

There's no reason to give a diplomatic bonus to nations of the same broad religion, because they historically have a rich history of slaughtering one another due to the numerous sects and denominations that are found within the broad religions. Protestants vs Catholics for example, Shia and Sunni another one.

That's a reason to enhance and add depth to religion, not remove it.

Sometimes I am a warmongerer, sometimes diplomatic, cultural, etc...I do them all, and they are all different strategies. Thats what makes this game great. The problem is everybody wants the same game with additional features, basically a CIV IV upgrade. This happens everytime a new game is introduced to the series. My advice is go back to IV, they already have your money so it doesnt matter and Civ V will never be Civ IV, luckily.

I would say that if you are "sometimes" a warmonger, you're a warmonger... Even warmongers win culture victories or science victories.

Try avoid war - I mean really and truly trying to stay out of wars - and just playing for cultural or science victories for a week...

 

[Kruelgor]

That's a reason to enhance and add depth to religion, not remove it.

Religion usually isn't the deciding factor in governmental decisions. Sometimes it has been, but most often it's for other reasons.

 

[CornPlanter]

I think what you are missing is that having so many different strategies that we can explore for game completion is NOT the sign of a good strategy game. That is the sign of a good sandbox game.

It can also be the sign of a need to go a difficulty level up The problem with Civ5 is we are running out of difficulty levels for that already It's been less than a month since release and good players already do Deity. Casual players like me still play on Immortal.

That's a reason to enhance and add depth to religion, not remove it.

You cannot have everything. Devs got limited time and resources after all. Even with no religions (in a sense you understand it) the game was released unfinished. I'd rather wish them to finish what we already have and only after that work on a new, deep and nice religions implementation.

There's no reason to give a diplomatic bonus to nations of the same broad religion, because they historically have a rich history of slaughtering one another due to the numerous sects and denominations that are found within the broad religions.

Now, wait. Just because some leaders didn't give a damn about religions doesn't mean religions were not important to politics. And by the way you said it yourself: Catholics fighting Protestants, etc., that's technically two different religions for the purposes of politics. Defining others as heretics was the way to go, because you couldn't fight your own religion that easily. Diplomacy affected by religions would be nice, just not as strongly as in Civ4, it went over the top there, I agree.

But before they add religions to diplomacy, I want them to fix it...

 

[zonk]

Religion usually isn't the deciding factor in governmental decisions. Sometimes it has been, but most often it's for other reasons.

Are you saying in the game or in reality? I don't generally care about the whole 'realism' debates -- but in western society that's completely untrue. Essentially from the end of the classical age up until a few generations before the industrial age (say, around the time of the American/French revolution) -- religion was THE primary driver of both governments and diplomacy. Nations were created and collapsed based on it, virtually all warfare at minimum used it as an excuse, if not truly believed it as a mover. Less true in the eastern world - where the predominant religions never developed evangelical traditions/never really became 'convert or die' paradigms. The sole western exception might be Judaism, which likewise doesn't really have a evangelical aspect.

But like I said - 'realism' isn't the reason I think the decision to remove it was a poor one.... I think it was a poor decision because it left the non-warmonger a lot less to do.

 

[zonk]

You cannot have everything. Devs got limited time and resources after all. Even with no religions (in a sense you understand it) the game was released unfinished. I'd rather wish them to finish what we already have and only after that work on a new, deep and nice religions implementation.

And the focus seems to have been on the war aspects... which is what makes V a failure for me.

Even if they "finish" the war aspects left unfinished -- the skeletal aspects for non-war aspects just aren't there to flesh out. Maybe an expansion adds them, but I'm just not seeing how.

 

[Gath]

Fine tune?

How can irrevocable choices presented in "one leads only to the next" be considered "fine tuning"?

If you want to say it forces more forethought - OK (I'd say it forces forethought for just your first 4 or 5 games... then you learn the synergies and it becomes automatic 'wait for the next pop', but that's another discussion). You want to say it makes decisions more consequential than civic flip-flopping - OK (I'd respond that the answer wasn't to eliminate civics, the answer was to make changes more consequential... which could have EASILY been done by adding SPs TO civics - and providing cultural bonuses for keeping a civic longer and culture point hits for switching).

That's the opposite of fine-tuning.

I agree, social policies are stupid. They don't feel like any kind of actual civilization style government or choice. I miss the old civics and governments. The anarchy was a good price to pay for changing the government. SMAC did it really well also.

 

[Paw]

its new, its better, and yes its different.

New doesn't necessarily mean better.

You seem to be one of those who assumes just because something is newer it automatically must be better.

 

[zonk]

New doesn't necessarily mean better.

You seem to be one of those who assumes just because something is newer it automatically must be better.

Where's my New Coke, darn it

 

[MRM]

Try avoid war - I mean really and truly trying to stay out of wars - and just playing for cultural or science victories for a week...

Unfortunaly that is too easy too. You can win any victorycondition, the AI won`t even try to win. You just have to defend yourselve, and when you have an own island/continent the AI is too incompetent to invade you anyway .... But as far as I noticed, the AI did not declear war on my, just because I m close to a victorycondition.

I had tight space races in older civ versions. In Civ 5 the AI did so far build the apollo project at best, but then fail to build any spaceship parts, even if they have a big technological lead.

 

[HiroHito]

The best thing they could have done to Civ V over IV is getting rid of religion. They incorporated it into the social policies, which is exactly what they should have done. Civ V smashes the competition of any other Civ game, and I HAVE been playing them since the first. If your having trouble adjusting and think its "dumbed down" you may need to buy a strategy guide. This is not Civ IV.2, its Civ V, its new, its better, and yes its different.

oh yea buy a strategy guide, another 30 $ investement for this fail of a game lol !

 

[JLoZeppeli]

But religion is not gone from Civ 5. In addition to the religious buildings and wonders, there is also the Piety social policies.

What you mean is religion has been removed from diplomacy and cultural expansion which I agree, that is a very good thing.

There's no reason to give a diplomatic bonus to nations of the same broad religion, because they historically have a rich history of slaughtering one another due to the numerous sects and denominations that are found within the broad religions. Protestants vs Catholics for example, Shia and Sunni another one.

When i think of religion from Civ IV i think of a feature flawed in many ways, but a feature worth of an overhaul to be better implemented... Piety and building cover generic aspect of religions, when we all know very well that they are an important part of history.

I think of a solution as well, to be honest. Religion by leaders, so some leaders will share religion and be more friendly than others, but from the start of a game... Maybe it will be a social to regulate the bonus from spreading a single religion or not, but i will like eventually a spreading religion if possible... I'm interested by my profession as an ancient roman archeologist, specialized in religion matters...

 

[SlothMD]

For a builder/dove player -- the removal of religion, absent an equally rich replacement, is a gamebreaker.

I call BS. Religion in IV was horrendously broken, really only fixed via the Revolution Mod which prohibited you from starting multiple holy cities and penalized you for running too many religions.

 

[ohioastronomy]

Again, religion is not left out of Civ 5. Religious buildings, wonders, and Piety social policies.

It's abstracted to such an extreme that it might as well have been left out. Religion as something which affected your relations with other nations has been completely removed. So if you like something which looks like a simulation , or you like a tactic for impacting your diplomacy, there is a loss that wasn't replaced with anything.

 

[SlothMD]

You seem to be one of those who assumes just because something is newer it automatically must be better.

Argument from novelty and argument from tradition are both logical fallacies.

 

[ohioastronomy]

You're treading on dangerous ground when you rejoice about taking something away that other people liked. There isn't one "right" way to play a game like this. If they had removed religion and replaced it with something interesting for builder-types I suspect that folks would have been happier. It's just lifeless withe current setup - they might as well have called them "blue victory", "purple victory", and "gold victory" instead of spaceship, culture, and diplomacy, and have you build stuff of the appropriate color. You might as well go full starcraft style and have you upgrade existing buildings instead of adding new ones (upgrade your library to a university)

 

[zonk]

I call BS. Religion in IV was horrendously broken, really only fixed via the Revolution Mod which prohibited you from starting multiple holy cities and penalized you for running too many religions.

Broken because...?

What you say does nothing to rebut my fundamental point -- it was a significant part of gameplay for those that spent a small part of their game at war. The 'replacements' in V are significantly scaled down, simplified, and yes -- I'll say it -- dumbed down.

Gotta call BS on your BS call.