Religions

I like the names, but how exactly are we going to implement them? Will they be early on the techtree? Will only elves be able to tech Light of Aman (but able to spread to Neutral/Good civs). Melkor start with corruption of Melkor? How will they be spread? Only natural spread? We've talked about every new city starts with the state-religion in it, but are we allowing some missionary activity? Otherwise it will be hard for the other elves to obtain the religion allready founded by the first elven civ.
 
Religion is a hard question. I'm not sure they're even necessary though, mostly what they represent is represented by alignment already. Since we've already cut out religious buildings and stuff they're not going to be that important anyway, so maybe we should just get rid of them.
 
I'd have to check whether that would cause any problems, but it is an option indeed.
 
True, we could just attach the name to the Alignments to represent the religion. Religion in the Books was not as prevelant as we understand it today. Yes it was part of their lives, but people didn't seem to attend conntinuous religious services. Maybe something special on certain days, but not like our Modern world at all.

So I suppose we could drop it. Perhaps put it in with a modified version of the Dynamic Naming ability limited to Alignment/Religion only.
 
I'm also fine with religions. Temples sound good, wonders sound even better.

Suggestions for religions:
Worship of Eru (huge alignment bonus towards Good)
Vala Worship (medium alignment bonus towards Good) - represents people who think the Valar are gods themselves, should be easily replaceable with Eru
something about Aulë for dwarves may be separate or may fit under Vala Worship, it would work the same
---nothing for neutrals, though they should have some way to stop or slow other religions' spread
Some form of Melkor/Morgoth worship (huge alignment bonus towards Evil) - they called him Melkor at the end of Númenor I think

There should be no diplo penalty between civs with the Eru one or the Valar one, or at most a -1 from Eru toward Valar (none the other way), whereas there should be a medium-to-small penalty from any religious civ towards a Neutral civ with no religion (vice-versa is an option), a big enough penalty for the brink of war between Eru and Melkor, and maybe a slightly smaller penalty from Valar to Melkor (though either an equal penalty from Melkor to Valar as from Melkor to Eru, or slightly smaller).
 
That is fairly similar to what I posted at the top of this page. Good ideas. I'm not sure if there should be any penalty between any religions except with Melkor. Anything not Melkor should get a penalty, but no penalty between the others. They are the same group of gods after all.
 
True, I was just thinking a 'you don't worship Eru' or 'you don't worship right' penalty. I think the neutrals should still have a penalty towards them, since they don't worship anything.
 
I would keep the relation bonuses and minuses on religions relatively small, the biggest being a minus for having the evil religion. The religion should indeed make a significant change on the alignment scale.
 
Evil should probably also hate Good a lot for having the Good religions, but beyond that, yeah, keep religion diplo penalties small.
 
I was thinking on the subject of religions and I was thinking that there should be no "Holy City". The religion just exists, but no "Homeland" for it. This way, it eliminates the need for The Great Prophet again.

When you get a Religion, it should appear in your Capital First and then spread out from there.
 
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?

This is something I came up with a while back as a possible division of religions in Arda. Maybe we can have Worship of Eru as well so we have five. I agree about the holy city, maybe we can remove that.
 
A 5th Religion would be allright I guess.

Worship of Eru/Ilúvatar

I am kind of Partial towards only having 3 myself:

Light of the Valar
Runes of Aulë
Worship of the Shadow

This way you have Good vs. Evil in Arda, plus the Dwarves have their own. Men can thus choose to be Neutral (No Religion) or Good/Evil, siding one way or the other.

I am not against having more though of course.
 
I'm leaning towards three as well. I don't think more religions are really present in Arda. The reverence of nature topic can just as easily (or maybe better) be represented by a civic.

Also, I would have the Dwarven religion slightly towards good (very slightly).
 
I like those three as well. Agreed on Aulë one to Good, but again, slightly.
 
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