Religion propositions for a simple fix

PiR

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This is a call for ideas for a simple fix to religion.
Currently I find it immersive breaking to have religion founded by anyone, anytime. It doesn't ressemble at all history, unlike Civ IV RFC where variations could happen, but most of the time the same happened: Hindouism & Boudism in India, Judaism in Jerusalem, Taoism & Confucianism in China, Christianity in Rome, Islam in Arabia.

I think AI have biases implemented already in Civ V, e.g. Spain will choose Catholicism if available.
So maybe a simple solution could be to gift a Prophet to a civ at a certain time, if the civ exists, and if the religion has not been founded yet. Of course, only for AI, the player would have to work for it!
The list of religions for Civ V can be found here: https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Religion_(Civ5)#Religions
My proposal would be:
  • 1500 BC: Jacob to Israel (Jerusalem) for Judaism
  • 500 BC: Siddhartha Gautama to India (Delhi) for Bouddhism
  • 500 BC: Confucius to China (Beijing) for Confucianism
  • 200 BC: Shinto to Japan (Kyoto) for Shinto
  • 100 AD: Jesus Christ to Romans (Rome) for Catholicism - or if Rome possesses Jerusalem, in Jerusalem
  • 610 AD: Muhammad to Arabia (Makkah) for Islam
  • 1054: Michael I Cerularius to Byzantium (Constantinople) for Eastern Orthodoxy
The rest could be "up to the game to decide", or it could be scripted, or some religions could be removed/renamed.

EDIT: actually we don't care how the prophets are named, as the AI should immediately use them, the player won't even see them.
 
@PiR not a bad idea at all. However it would not prevent Greece from founding Islam in 200BC or other similar aberrations. I would prevent great prophet from appearing at all besides these scripting appearances you mentioned. We would need to add another one to the Germans for protestantism and we are good in my opinion.
 
I agree with the immersion-breaking sentiment 100%. An alternative from preventing the spawn of non-scripted prophets is to force the AI to create holy sites with them. I would also argue in favour of having religion spread a bit more quickly, too, especially those that spawn a bit later (by giving extra missionaries, or something, idk)
 
i dont want to solely rely on scripts. It would take away most of the fun. But let's say, make it easier for things to develop in a certain way. Like in all other aspects of the mod. How can we discourage the Greeks from founding Islam?
 
The issue:

Anyone accumulating 400 can found a religion. And sometimes you start a Spain game and a lot of religions are still available. So you rush towards a prophet (was possible through civics, but although through wonders) and then you found a religion in 800 AD, and you spread Bouddhism in Europe. That's not really historical :)


My prophet proposal:

There are many ways to fix this, but the risk to program something complex would be to introduce bugs and a lot of development time. My proposal to give prophets for free is because then the AI can do whatever with them, leaving a room for chance. I'm hoping Civ V biases will take their place to make sure a civ founds an appropriate religion, when it is still available.


How can we discourage the Greeks from founding Islam?
The easiest to program would be increasing the difficulty to obtain a prophet for all players (increasing the number of faith required, removing free prophet from civics and wonders, etc.) but I don't like this option.

I think Civ V has a bias pre-programmed in the base game so that Greeks, when founding a religion, will by default choose Eastern Orthodoxy, if it is available. So the question would be why has someone else founded it before?

We have to remember that religion in Civ V and VI is a competition from the start of the game. It's not like in Civ IV where you will found a religion later because it is linked to a later tech. It is natural for all religions to emerge quickly in Civ V and VI, because each player ideally wants to found one to get the founder bonuses.

I would prevent great prophet from appearing at all besides these scripting appearances you mentioned.

I think we still need a randomness in the game so that something ahistorically might happen sometimes, but not be the norm. Like, seeing Japan colonialize the Americas instead of a European power once in a while is fun. But only if it's less than 20% I would say.

We still need great prophets for enhancing religions and expanding religions (much more effective than missionnaries).


An alternative from preventing the spawn of non-scripted prophets is to force the AI to create holy sites with them.
I don't understand this one?


I would also argue in favour of having religion spread a bit more quickly, too, especially those that spawn a bit later (by giving extra missionaries, or something, idk)
Yes I agree, maybe also in later eras natural spread chance could be increased via a game variable.


We would need to add another one to the Germans for protestantism and we are good in my opinion.
I was thinking that by 1530 AD it would be naturally founded already by another player, so that a free prophet would not be necessary. But you are right, for better immersion, it might be better to have a lock on this one too. I don't know how difficult a tech prerequisite is to implement, I'm not very familiar with the Civ V API and I find the documentation more than light for developers (to be polite :))
 
What if we will 'attach' max religions limit to eras? From the start it will be equal f.e. 2, so most ancient civs (India, Babylon, Egypt ...) will compete with each other to create two religions. When some civ will reach 'classical' era, limit will increase for it to 4. So, later civs (Greek, Romans, Persians...) or ancient one (if they reach new era earlier) will be able to create new ones. And so on in futher eras.

We will have more control over religion creation in appropriate time and place (variation of Christianity most likely will be created by Romans or/and Greeks only when they reach classical era, Islam will be founded only when someone reach medieval and so on), and at the same time such a system will have some fluctuations.

Specific limit values for eras are arguable, but seems like core idea able to solve part of the problem.
 
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Does it solve who founds that?

My proposal to grand free prophets was to have a solution very easy to program, so that we can quickly move on to other features and let Rhye finally release a v1. :)
 
Does it solve who founds that?

My proposal to grand free prophets was to have a solution very easy to program, so that we can quickly move on to other features and let Rhye finally release a v1. :)
Partially yes - there is a less chance to some ancient civ to create Christianity before Greeks and Romans (because there will be only two religions for them unless they are really high-tech and reach eras before newer civs are appear). That's only example, same with rest of the religions.

But yes, it just an idea, i dont know how difficult it will be to implement.
 
I don't understand this one?
This was in response to the "Greece founding Islam in 200BC" which could possibly be fixed by forcing the AI to use those prophets to make their special improvement rather than founding a religion.

More broadly, while I would agree with removing Great Prophets from being obtained by policies (I don't think that's possible anymore with the policy changes anyway) and possibly also by removing Hagia Sophia's great prophet, I actually doubt the AI often founds religions that way anyway.

If religions are spawned too quickly, a way *could* be to make a requirement to have the first prophet construct a holy site, and the second one can then found a religion if you have a worked holy site in the city. Or simply make great prophets require more faith.

Another thing that could be done is adding more religion names and symbols, and adding a "back up" religion for the AI to create. That way, if (to stay on the Greece example) they try to found a religion, but Orthodoxy is already taken, they will then prioritise a new "Hellenism" religion. Since this discussion is mostly around immersion, that could solve the AI spawning nonsensical religions (Greece with Islam, or Spain with Buddhism, or whatever).

Granted, having never made a Civ 5 mod, I don't know how easy those things are to implement.
 
If there already is a way to force AI players to pick a religion or at least limit it's choic - European civ would always chose a Christian faith, Middle Eastern Islamic etc. Then it would help then if we had more denominations for popular religions, so Protestantism for Christians (or even Lutheranism, Reformed and Anglican if we need to have even more), Shia for Islam etc. This would prevent such immersion breaking situations like medieval Spain funding Buddhism for example. Another thing is I would switch around some minor (by contemporary adherents numbers) faiths like Tengrism for Kemetism and lock it for Egypt.

I believe such change would already improve immersion a lot, but it would still of course leave a lot of room for randomness and could have quite ahistorical results.

Responding to OP - I would push founding date for Judaism AT LEAST up by 500 years, both for gameplay reasons - such early date would make whole world Jewish with how religion works in this game, and historical - before Iron Age Isrealites were most likely following canaanite politeism, it was around 1000 BCE that we start to get evidence for monolatristic Yahwism so it's earliest reasonable date for founding. If we would like to be pedantic then it should be much later still seeing how Torah has been composed around 500 BCE while Rabbinic Judaism only came to be sometime around 500 CE.

As for general idea, I like it and would combine it with adding more denominations that allow history-appropriet choice for gameplay founded religions. This should both give some changes between runs but also some familiarity with real history.
 
Could there be a religion booster for civs / minor civs bordering a civ with one existing religion? I find it zesty that IRL we have India and West Asia as "Holy Lands". I don't ever get an interest in going on a crusade in Civilization, ever
 
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