Well that happened a few times in history - the Seljuk Turks for instance took over the Muslim Caliphate from the arabs.
"Religious Victory"?
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Well that happened a few times in history - the Seljuk Turks for instance took over the Muslim Caliphate from the arabs.
Mustakrakish
Deity
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What's wrong with having religious whatever victory and limited amount of religions to be founded? You plan on religious victory, you go for it. You didn't get it? Well you better focus on a different victory then. What is the problem? How do you fight it if you don't have a religion? Simple, you take the holy city. As simple as it gets.
It would be a big departure in that you're locked out of a victory condition really early.
This doesn't happen with any of the other VCs. You can still be the first to build the spaceship even if you're the last to leave the ancient era. You can conquer the world even if you wait until Artillery to have your first war. Even with culture, civs don't really start getting much in the way of tourism until later in the game.
Whereas the way religion works in civ 5, you could pretty easily be locked out of founding a religion midway through the classical era. To have a shot at it, you'd basically have to decide to go for it from the very beginning.
I suspect that if there's a religious victory option, then there is some way for a Civ who got started on that path midway through the game to catch up, though I don't know what that would be.
This doesn't happen with any of the other VCs. You can still be the first to build the spaceship even if you're the last to leave the ancient era. You can conquer the world even if you wait until Artillery to have your first war. Even with culture, civs don't really start getting much in the way of tourism until later in the game.
Whereas the way religion works in civ 5, you could pretty easily be locked out of founding a religion midway through the classical era. To have a shot at it, you'd basically have to decide to go for it from the very beginning.
I suspect that if there's a religious victory option, then there is some way for a Civ who got started on that path midway through the game to catch up, though I don't know what that would be.
Mustakrakish
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I don's see a problem with that. Let there be an "early decision" victory, you still have other victories and still can participate in the manner of denying a victory. I hate the notion of everything always being available to you even if you didn't do anything for it. And it makes sense for it to be an early decision and earliest possible victory (+domination of course).
But I'm not sure how it would work to begin with. Simply having say 80% of population following your religion and controlling the holy city seems boring on its own. Depending on the map, rolled civs and other conditions simply spreading it all over may be either really easy, but extremely tedious or really hard and extremely tedious, which makes for a very boring VC. Out of ideas here.
One thing I know I want crusades. A justified war to take holy cities. Say if it is controlled by a civ that follows other religion (conquered the city). BTW I wonder if there'll be a tooltip list or something in diplo screen, showing available justifications, maybe we can even hopefully choose the reason. Wishful thinking, knowing firaxis UI habits, there will be justifications but no real and sensible way to see and choose one.
But I'm not sure how it would work to begin with. Simply having say 80% of population following your religion and controlling the holy city seems boring on its own. Depending on the map, rolled civs and other conditions simply spreading it all over may be either really easy, but extremely tedious or really hard and extremely tedious, which makes for a very boring VC. Out of ideas here.
One thing I know I want crusades. A justified war to take holy cities. Say if it is controlled by a civ that follows other religion (conquered the city). BTW I wonder if there'll be a tooltip list or something in diplo screen, showing available justifications, maybe we can even hopefully choose the reason. Wishful thinking, knowing firaxis UI habits, there will be justifications but no real and sensible way to see and choose one.
EgyptRaider
Warlord
This is extremely short-sighted. Religion is still one of the most important and influential ideas in history.
That secularism has prevailed today has a lot of historical reasons, the domination of the West at the core of it, but games like Civ are there as well to show that if a fanatic religious nation would somehow have gotten so far to spread its religion to every corner of the world all the whilst maintaining direct control of its variant of the Holy See it would be in many ways the leader of the world and the standard for which the level of civilization would be tested against (which in the Civ games is basically the idea behind every sort of victory).
TheMeInTeam
If A implies B...
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Civ 4 TAP wins were some of the most broken nonsense to ever make it into a final civ release. It's reasonable to block that out of memory, if you can do so.
"Having a lot of territory" is good from ones own perspective, similar to having a lot of people believe the same thing as you. In practice both military and religious domination of the world would be pretty damaging, and "you got served" culture wins are a little silly in principle, same with "diplomatic". These were always somewhat arbitrary cut lines for winning in the game sense.
Religious as a VC bothered me too initially but the more I thought about it, the more I realized basically any non-conquest victory is pretty arbitrary and just there to give multiple different ways to win.
To those dismissing a religious victory have you not seen the maps that ISIS published showing the proposed Caliphate. This includes half of Africa, Spain, Eastern Europe, Israel (obviously), mid-east and central asia...
If they ever got their way and had the means to do so, they'd extend their control over as much of the world as they could - the attacks in Paris are evidence enough.
Now there is nothing new about ISIS - it's the same ideology that the unified Saracen tribes had when they burst out of Arabia and attacked the Roman and Persian Empires.
In Islamic Eschatology there was a belief that Constantinople had to be conquered to bring about the end times.
Islam was the first world religion that took holy war or jihad as a type of founder belief so there is certainly scope for a religious victory in the game on this premise.
However christianity also has an objective to convert the nations of the world - generally through peaceful conversion although the crusaders did attack pagans and orthodox christians and then there is the conquest of the New World so there are presumably many ways to initiate a religious war.
One question is though, should there be less religions then civilisations? It always seemed a bit of an artificial aspect of the game to cut the number of religions to (0.5 x the number of civs) + 1 or something thereabouts... Maybe you should be able to found a religion up until the renaissance era?
Also should pantheon beliefs end after the first civ reaches its Enhancement?
If they ever got their way and had the means to do so, they'd extend their control over as much of the world as they could - the attacks in Paris are evidence enough.
Now there is nothing new about ISIS - it's the same ideology that the unified Saracen tribes had when they burst out of Arabia and attacked the Roman and Persian Empires.
In Islamic Eschatology there was a belief that Constantinople had to be conquered to bring about the end times.
Islam was the first world religion that took holy war or jihad as a type of founder belief so there is certainly scope for a religious victory in the game on this premise.
However christianity also has an objective to convert the nations of the world - generally through peaceful conversion although the crusaders did attack pagans and orthodox christians and then there is the conquest of the New World so there are presumably many ways to initiate a religious war.
One question is though, should there be less religions then civilisations? It always seemed a bit of an artificial aspect of the game to cut the number of religions to (0.5 x the number of civs) + 1 or something thereabouts... Maybe you should be able to found a religion up until the renaissance era?
Also should pantheon beliefs end after the first civ reaches its Enhancement?
darkace77450
Emperor
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I've always thought a Religious Victory should be easier in the early-to-mid game, then become increasingly harder to achieve as Civs start steamrolling towards Science Victories. Perhaps Science could be a defense against Religion in the same way Culture is a defense against Tourism? Recognizing such a system would probably be a nightmare to balance, it would best mirror humanities growth from worshiping the moon to walking on it.
kul
Prince
I think making science the direct opposite of religion is a very crude, black and white view of it. It would be better if they can stand alone on their own, but there should be some policies/beliefs/laws between those two that could buff or debuff each other.
If anything, while Science Victory shows you travel to outer space, and Domination/Culture Victory implies heavily that you are now superior by showing you thay slideshow thingy, it would be exciting to make winning Religious Victory shows your cities glowing and your citizen floating as Rapture happened
If anything, while Science Victory shows you travel to outer space, and Domination/Culture Victory implies heavily that you are now superior by showing you thay slideshow thingy, it would be exciting to make winning Religious Victory shows your cities glowing and your citizen floating as Rapture happened
Plus Ultra
Conquistador
All VC must be balanced to be achievable at around the same time, from a gameplay perspective.
That would make sense only if we see Religion as deterrent to learning/science. I think that is not alywas the case, in Europe/US we sometimes forget that the concept of religion is broader than we think.
I would rather see the evolution from paganism to a structured belief system, leaving science to do it's own thing.
Of course, I do agree culture, science and religion need to have some ties to each other. I would expect you will need some amount of each to achieve any victory condition. Some ideas:
-Secularism: Reduces faith generation, increases
science generation. Reduces the spread of every religion to cities of your empire.-Religious pluralism: Increases
culture generation. Increases the spread of other religions to the cities of your empire.-State religion: Increases
faith generation, reduces the spread of other religions to your cities. Allows you to build units/districts/buildings with faith.Last, but not least, different victories in Civ are a way to allow different aproaches to empire-building. They do not mirror, nor try to, real world victory conditions. If sending a spaceship to alpha centauri or having a dominant culture award a victory, I see no reason why spreading you religion by peaceful or violent means, to every empire in the world, should not.
Not necessarily. Civ IV had different "early" and "late" diplomatic victories (Apostolic Palace vs. United Nations), and various forms of Conquest victories can be achieved either early or late.
KrikkitTwo
Immortal
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Well I think there is a difference between "when it is achievable" and "when it is achievable in a competitive game"....
Especially with a victory like Science, that can't be resisted by other civs (unlike all others... build culture, get CS allies, defend your capital)
stealth_nsk
Deity
As far as I know, a lot of people disabled the religious victory in Civ4 and timing is a good part of reason for this. Conquest victory timing is impossible to balance, yes, but I don't remember any civ game where with more or less normal settings AI was able to eradicate all other AIs early. And if player conquests too early, that's probably problems with difficulty level.
I disabled all the diplomacy victory conditions in Civ IV because they were random and stupid, not because of the timing. 
stealth_nsk
Deity
I disabled all the diplomacy victory conditions in Civ IV because they were random and stupid, not because of the timing.
Being able to win or loose early is part of being "random".
Plus Ultra
Conquistador
Civ IV diplomatic victory shouldn't be an example of a well balanced VC and we all know it Arioch.
I don't think you will disagree with my claim that having all VC be achievable around the same time, or with the same amount of effort/resources would be ideal. I know this is not always the case for Civ, and a real nightmare to balance. I do expect them to at least try, and avoid creating, by design, VC conditions that can be achieved much earlier than others.
That goes without saying. All the diplomacy victories in every version of Civilization were crap. It's embarrassing to say that Civ V's was the least crappy, as it had nothing to do with diplomacy but at least you could clearly see how many votes you needed and (to a certain extent) who was going to vote for what. and you could do something about it. The problem in Civ IV was that it was a black box; you had no way of knowing how the vote would go and no way to influence it.
I think the early Apostolic Council victory would have been fine if it there had been tools like Civ V's that allowed the player to see it coming and work to either achieve or block it.
It all depends on how the victory is achieved. If it's a "fill up the bar" kind of victory, then of course you don't want the game always ending early. But if it's an "opposed objective" victory like military conquest, then there's no reason it has to wait until the last age of the game.
4X games should end when they're over (that is, when you're dominating), and not force you to slog through later eras if there's nothing left to do but punch End Turn over and over. It's best when there's at least one victory condition triggered by a steamroll (such as a council vote based on population as in MOO2, or a true "domination" victory reachable by 2/3 pop/territory or something similar as in previous Civs) so that you can put the AI out of its misery... if you so choose. Steamrolling can be fun up to a point, but it's good to have a mercy clause.
But back to the point: if the religious victory is a kind of opposed objective, like wiping out all the other religions and establishing world theocracy, then I don't think it's a problem if it can be achieved somewhat earlier than most. (And, since religion fades with time, it seems that earlier is the only way such a victory should realistically be achievable.)
Plus Ultra
Conquistador
I see your point.
I agree that "completion time" is not the correct measurement criteria to compare opposed vs "fill up the bar" objetives. Hard to argue with that.
That's why I said "achievable around the same time, or with the same amount of effort/resources". Bear with me, I know "effort" is hardly a valid measurement criteria, and resources needed for opposed victories vary greatly between games due to... well, the opposition, but you get what I mean.
Maybe a Religious victory could be something like creating a Great Person called the Messiah. Obviously, its going to require a lot of preconditions before he can be born like having X amount of Great Prophets before hand and spreading religion to 100% of the world.
Perhaps, the can use policy cards like blasphemy laws and moving to order ideology which inhibits Religious victory.
Perhaps, the can use policy cards like blasphemy laws and moving to order ideology which inhibits Religious victory.
