Religions discussion thread

[onedreamer]

First, it has already been discussed that ancient religions were always tied to certain peoples or cultural groups: the Romans had Jupiter's pantheon, the Greeks had Zeus' pantheon and so on. For every ancient polytheistic religion, there are no historical examples of religions spreading to another culture and becoming its dominant religion.

although I like your idea about cultures, I disagree with this statement. First off, it would be like saying that "God" and "Deus" are different gods. They are the same God called with different names in different languages. There is no Jupiter or Zeus pantheon, they are exactly the same with different names. The "stories" of the Gods were also the same... Now, other polytheistic religions had Gods with different stories, but the main figures are present in any polytheistic pantheon: the God of universe, of sun, of fertility, of war, of fire, etc.
For this exact reason I think we shouldn't be talking of different polytheistic religions, it is in essence just one and that is why no ancient polytheistic religion spread to other cultures already adopting a polytheistic religion: because they were essentialy the same there would be no reason for this to happen.

 

[Leoreth]

It is theorized that all classical pantheons (even the Celitc, Mesopotamian, Egyptian ...) have derived from the same Indo-European proto-pantheon. So there are of course many similarities, but they're still not the same gods with different names: Hermes and Mercury are different, for example: while the former was seen as god of travelers and shepherds, the latter was rather a god of trade and commerce.

What the Romans and Greeks of course did, was to identify some of their gods with the other's (because it was obvious to do so in many cases). They tried to do that across the whole Mediterranean, but it became more ridiculous the farther its region as away from Greece (the Ptolemys tried to identify Ra with Zeus, which doesn't work for various reasons, the Seleucids even claimed Ahura Mazda = Zeus ...).

But your point stands, the Greek and Roman pantheons are so similar, that it would be a necessary abstraction to set them equal. That was one of the reasons I actually started to think that using cultures would make more sense here. Because Greek and Roman cultures are different, and their difference was important throughout the Roman Empire and had effects deep into the Middle Ages.

 

[Rathaus]

After looking at Leoreth's suggestion, I decided I would make a very rough prototype of the culture system just to test it out. At the moment, it's programmed in Python. However, if this system gains approval, it's best if my additions were scrapped and were later re-written into C++ because I feel the code isn't very efficient.

List of things added:
-State religion/culture spreads when a city is settled
-Constructing buildings in a city has a 25% chance of removing any foreign cultures and adding your culture into the city.
-No holy city for any culture (except Christianity ofc). Instead, when a civilization is born, only their very first city settled automatically has culture spread to it. If the civilization adopts that as the state culture, then any cities settled later will also receive that culture.

The default names are (still!) being used for the religions, so below is each culture with their corresponding civilizations. I also took the lazy option and moved all religions up the tech tree to Stealth so they are never founded manually.

Egyptian Culture (currently Buddhism) - Egypt
Greek Culture (Islam) - Sparta, Athens, Macedonia
Mesopotamian Culture (Hinduism) - Carthage, Phoenicia, Babylonia, Hittites
Judaism - Israel
Persian Culture (Confucianism) - Persia
Roman Culture (Taoism) - Rome, Etruria(temporary)
Christianity is unchanged.

As there are only 7 slots, I didn't have enough space to add in Celtic/Germanic culture.
If you want to make any changes to the code, all of the code I've added is under onCityBuilt and onBuildingBuilt on CvRFCEventHandler.py, so feel free to make any changes. Only files changed are: CVRFCEventHandler.py and CIV4ReligionInfo.xml.

EDIT: Fixed to show correct %

 

[Arkaeyn]

This is great! I'll start plugging and playing soon. May be able to put it in the next version.

 

[Rathaus]

Good to hear. Tell me what you think of it. At the moment, Persia occasionally decides to follow Mesopotamian culture since they flip their cities at spawn, but this can be fixed later so all cities that are flipped convert to Persian culture on spawn.

 

[Cethegus]

I think that would only be appropriate. Should that be default for all flips?

 

[Rathaus]

Yeah, it would be better for Rhye to add that in though since I'm not fully sure how to go about it.

 

[Rod]

I agree with that idea,

I like the concept of defining cultures rather than religions. However I would incorporate a civic "Religion" where you could define the parameters of worship,e.g. Polytheism, Monotheism etc.

 

[Rathaus]

I don't know, it seems like it would be hard to simulate the rise of Christianity if religion were mainly in the civics.

 

[fdgsgds]

What about Roman Polytheism? It isn't extremely different from Greek Polytheism, and I'm not sure if it's such a good idea. But, if it wasn't in then wouldn't they end up worshipping Greek gods most of the time? Maybe Greek and Roman Polytheism can be represented as one.

 

[Krzowwh]

Judaism and Zoroastrianism should have holy cities.

 

[Steb]

I kinda agree with fdgsgds. Also, what culture are the Byzantines? Greek or Roman? Having a Greco-Roman culture would solve the dilemma (if you consider there is one). And it would allow for a Celtic/Etruscan culture (I have the feeling those two are similar, but I may be completely wrong). On the other hand, having 5 civs with the same culture is perhaps a bit much.

 

[Rathaus]

After doing some thinking, I realise now Rod's suggestion is a good one. Christianity as a "culture" could be removed so there is just Egyptian Culture, Greek Culture, Mesopotamian Culture, Israelite Culture, Persian Culture, Roman Culture, etc. Religions can instead be represented by civics, Polytheism, Monotheism; etc. Monotheism as a civic could be available after a certain technology. Perhaps, Israel can have it earlier than other civilizations due to its UP or starting techs.

After a certain year, and provided the technology for monotheism has been discovered, there could be random events that create buildings (Christian Dwelling?) that give +3? unhappiness and some instability when the civic Polytheism is running. This forces civilizations to switch to Monotheism and upon doing so, they may suffer a stability hit (to help Rome collapse). Under monotheism, the polytheistic temples will provide no benefits.

Byzantines, I imagine, would be Roman since they did call themselves the "Roman Empire" as well use their language and their system of government. Although, the option to switch back to Greek would always be there (just like what happened in real life, the Byzantine Empire adopted greek customs) We could make a separate culture for them though; the Byzantine culture. This would make the Western Roman Empire and Eastern Roman Empire more separate. I don't think we should use a generic Greco-Roman culture though; there are too many differences between the two cultures.

 

[Arkaeyn]

Especially if we tie culture to certain unit creation - like Greek to Hoplites.

Removing "religion" totally is bound to be controversial, and not a decision to be made lightly. Many, many people see the birth of Christ and the spread of Christianity as some of the most important events in human history.

Particularly with the timeframe of the mod - the 600CE end makes it difficult to ignore Xtianity.

 

[Rathaus]

We could focus a little more on the Monotheism civic and expand it so it is 3 civics instead for it, Judaism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism, with each limited to only certain cultures. I imagine some events for flavour could also be added in.

However, you're right, it's something that should only be implemented if enough people agree on it.

 

[The Turk]

as I bystander, I can only half heatedly accept it, I like the idea, but I was just wondering how would the cultures spread? Would they spread like normal religions? Because then what happens is that you might have some civ's culture in a totally random city.

 

[Rathaus]

It was mentioned a bit earlier in the thread.

But conquered cities keep their culture and get an angry face for every present culture as long as your "state culture" isn't present as well. Each time you construct a building in this city, there is a chance that your "state culture" is spread to this city (the smaller the city, the higher the chance). This represents efforts of the conquerors to establish their way of life.

So, to answer your question, culture wouldn't spread like normal religions.

 

[Ekolite]

I love the idea of cultures, but I do think that the spread of Christianity needs to be shown. How about have the spread of Christianity done through corporations? I don't see how else Corporations can really be used during the time period. Perhaps you could have Judaisim and Zoroastrianism too.

Perhaps certain civics could then modify the effects that the corporation has. For example, ordinarilly it would provide a small penalty, but with monotheisim that would change to +1 , and perhaps some gold or so on.

This way you get Cultures and Religions, and the Religions not included (various Pantheons) can just be assumed to be worshipped in civs under polythesism with the appropriate culture. For example, Rome under polythesism, even with some amount of Christianity present, has the Roman Pantheon as a state religion, Rome under Monothesism will still retain a roman culture, but now with Christianity as a state relgion.

 

[Arkaeyn]

If we're using cultures to build units, the most historically accurate way for them to spread would be via military victories. When everyone realized that Roman-style swordsmen were winning all the battles, they starting building Roman-style units. Likewise hoplites a few hundred years earlier.

Also corporations are a valid possibility.

 

[Cethegus]

Also corporations are a valid possibility.

Will preserving the Christian populace in your realm cost you some upkeep cost then?