Religions

[Sifaus]

Hi, i was thinking about religions of Middle-Earth and i don't think that every nation believes some gods. I thing Religions can't spread by Original Civ4 Rules.

I think that Religions only a loss of time. Alignments can do same job. Because, in Middle Earth, Civs doesn't believe something partially.

Alignments' names can be changed like;
-Way of Light (or Ilúvatar) [Good]
-The Neutral [Neutral]
-Way of Darkness (or Melkor) [Evil]

 

[xmen510]

That sounds like an idea we could do.

 

[Berenthor]

I think we might use the same concepts as FFH2. I think the themes of the religions are very appropriate. They need tweeking to fit into the theme of LotR but the concepts are valid. I'll try to put some thoughts on each of them here:

• Light of the Valar (Order in FFH2): the really "good" religion which prevents shadow spreading to these civs for example. The light of the valar is also a good name for this one
• Runes of Aulë (Runes of Kilmorph in FFH2): the religion of the dwarves for the Valar who created them. Focused on money and mining. Neutral religion.
• Fellowship of Leaves (don't know a better name): a neutral religion all about reverense with nature and living in harmonie with it. Could be religion of the Woodelves. Neutral religion (but more towards good than Runes)
• Worship of the Shadow (Ashen Veil in FFH2): the religion which worships the shadow. Is an evil religion.

Three religions from FFH2 are not there: Empyrean and Octopus Overlords and Council of Esus (a good religion and a water evil religion and a sneaky evil religion). Maybe there are ideas how to fill the last three slots for religions (maybe something with worship of Illuvatar, the religion of Numenor as mentioned in the original thread. I concur that we shouldn't have missionaries but than we have to balance how fast the religion spreads or maybe find a way to still spread a religion in another way?

 

[thomas.berubeg]

Overcouncil - Council of the Wises

 

[Berenthor]

Yep definitly, only available to good (and maybe neutral as well). Then something like council of shadows for the evil (and also neutral) civs, but with the shadow having a bigger vote in the council?

 

[T_F]

Yeah, Overcouncil = White Council or whatever it was called.

I don't know what other religions to have, it seems fine right now. Though I'm not entirely sure if the Good Men from the War of the Ring era fall under 'Light of the Valar' technically, maybe we can add something there.

I think missionaries of some kind should be OK during the beginning so you can get neutral civs on your side, but after that they should be gone. Having a state religion should automatically remove all non-state (or at least non-state-aligned) religions from all cities. Religion also should be carried by settlers.

 

[Elda King]

My original idea was a little like alignment: light of aman represented the good influence of the Valar over elves, worship the darkness the corruption of Morgoth. For good men, we had Reverence for Eru, and later we agreed on other lesser good religions (one natural for sylvan elves, and one for dwarves). All religions were very hard to expand (the worship the darkness was the one that spread the most, and it was only 50% or 75% of the normal), and there were no missionaries. Elves and dwarves had civics that blocked other religions from their lands (even if they had no religion), like Theocracy, but men were susceptible to everything. Still, one thing I liked was that elves could still capture a Shadow city and have one city with Worship the Darkness - what would allow them to adopt it as state religion.
Having only Worshipt the Darkness and Light of Aman (good and evil) would work, too, perhaps with less racial-religious interaction and a civ's propension to adopt one of those (or none): like Númenor having 45% Light 45% Dark, Mordor having 95% Dark, Sindar having 70% Light, Rohan having 30% Light 20% Dark (the missing percentage should be no religion).

 

[T_F]

That's an interesting idea. Maybe we can somehow combine religion and alignment (not quite sure what that may mean).

 

[xmen510]

Good ideas.

 

[xmen510]

I had another idea.

Based on what has been said, I assume we are restricting Religion based on Alignment.

Perhaps we could have the religion automatically spread to each city as it is built. This way, we could eliminate the spread of religions that do not belong in the other civs. We could also eliminate the need for the Missionary Unit then.

Or do we want this as completely open and anything can happen?

 

[Elda King]

his way, we could eliminate the spread of religions that do not belong in the other civs.

I don't think it would be the best way. Even if rare, sometimes it would be nice if a civ was corrupted or enlightened.

 

[xmen510]

Yeah, based on other conversations I think we will allow that kind of thing to happen. Yours is a good idea. I think there were some conversations in the Civs thread about tying some of the likely hood into the alignments if I remember correctly. The religions wouldn't be completely determined by the alignments however.

 

[T_F]

Wait, you mean tying the likelihood of religion spread into the alignment value? I like the idea.

I also had the idea earlier that if we use the gradual alignment scheme, we could have random events and stuff pop up that force you to make choices that affect your alignment (`a la GalCiv2). We could have either that the events only affect alignment, effect both (like the ones from GalCiv2), or a mix.
In-game actions (like declaring war on a nation with Pleased or Friendly relations, or razing cities, or such) should also influence alignment, and if we can pull it off, the reverse should also be true for AI civs (alignment makes them more or less likely to backstab/raze/etc).

 

[xmen510]

That sounds like a good idea T_F. Perhaps a bit too complex for the first release, but that depends on what the Modders think.

 

[Sengir]

I would have to look at the broader alignment implementation first before I can tell what it can do out of the box and what we would have to alter. I like the idea though.

 

[Sengir]

I've looked it up and the things that have a alingmentmodifier in them will be:
-events
-units
-buildings
-techs (which would mean we might have to split up some techs in a good and evil variant )
-civics
-religon

City razing affects alignment as well, as does whipping stuff.
All leaders have a starting value.


Not implemented as far as I can tell:
- attacking a civ you are pleased/friendly with
- having the AI act upon alignment (though maybe the AI allready acts upon alignment in FFH?)

 

[T_F]

Those last ones probably will be difficult to pull off. That one might be in FFH to a limited degree, but I haven't seen many razed cities at all by anyone.

For techs, I don't think it will end up as necessary to have variants of a tech. Like in FFH, you have some techs that research good things and other techs that research evil things without them necessarily being opposed or even related.

 

[xmen510]

I will be leaving most of the discussion of Religion to others. I will probably only share this thought:

We might want to start with fewer Religions and add more later. Perhaps 1 Good, 1 Evil and 2 Neutral (1 for Dwarves, 1 for everyone else). That is what I would suggest as a start. Of course, it is up to you guys.

 

[Berenthor]

That's fine by me. I do like the broader allignment scheme for FFH2 that I suggested. Indeed Sengir, those things are the ones we can use out of the box although allignment for all events is maybe a little much for a first release (although we have to come up with a list anyway so why not).

 

[Sengir]

Not all events need to have an alignment modifier (they just need the tag, but it can be empty as well).