Suggestions and Requests
- Thread starter Leoreth
- Start date
I have some plans for religion that I want to include in this version, including:
- a persecutor unit
- changing religion spread to make it less randomized
- tying religion spread more to geography instead of only civilization
- standardizing the mechanisms of founding religions (no idea how though?)
- making schisms more realistic
- changing how shrines work
Fresol
Angry Halfling in Green
- Joined
- Jun 19, 2011
- Messages
- 2,283
Good to hear! So the founding religions stuff excepted, do you have detailed plans already for the other changes?
More or less. Currently civs already have spread modifiers tied to them, I want to reduce their impact and instead also associate spread modifiers with regions. This is especially important for independent civs which cannot favor any religion, and would allow me to allow religions to rapidly spread where intended without having it everywhere.
Instead of random spreads I am thinking about having a concrete spread score for every religion per city. If the score exceeds a threshold, the religion appears in the city. The score could increase with the number of religions inside a city, making it harder to spread further religions. The idea is to modify the score with everything that currently increases spread chances, such as religion buildings and shrine in the vicinity, and trade with cities of a religion. There could also be a base decay so that religions that are not supported disappear again.
Missionaries would then just add a large amount of spread score with their mission, so there is no "fail and the missionary is wasted" situation anymore.
I could also use this score to determine majority and minority religions in cities, which might have interesting applications elsewhere.
Persecutors would basically work like you suggested.
Schisms kind of belong to the founding religion category, so I'm not sure about them either. The goal is to make them seem less like special cases and more similar to the way the other religions are founded.
Not sure about shrines either. There's a long term plan that won't get implemented in this version though. My goal is to reduce the economic advantages controlling the shrine brings, and replace it with some other advantage.
Instead of random spreads I am thinking about having a concrete spread score for every religion per city. If the score exceeds a threshold, the religion appears in the city. The score could increase with the number of religions inside a city, making it harder to spread further religions. The idea is to modify the score with everything that currently increases spread chances, such as religion buildings and shrine in the vicinity, and trade with cities of a religion. There could also be a base decay so that religions that are not supported disappear again.
Missionaries would then just add a large amount of spread score with their mission, so there is no "fail and the missionary is wasted" situation anymore.
I could also use this score to determine majority and minority religions in cities, which might have interesting applications elsewhere.
Persecutors would basically work like you suggested.
Schisms kind of belong to the founding religion category, so I'm not sure about them either. The goal is to make them seem less like special cases and more similar to the way the other religions are founded.
Not sure about shrines either. There's a long term plan that won't get implemented in this version though. My goal is to reduce the economic advantages controlling the shrine brings, and replace it with some other advantage.
No it is not after all Classic wonders are built and obsoleted. But I guess that what game wants to do: old Gods replaced by global religions. My biggest issue here is that if Maya, Inca or Aztek survives it makes little sense them to become Christians or any other Old World religion.
need my speed
Rex Omnium Imperarium
What is 'strong', what is 'weak' - and what is 'religious organisation', actually?
ozqar
King
I know Leoreth has said he's planning (at some point) to change the current religious system, so I'm just gonna say this now and see what other people have to say about it as well.
In my opinion, and as calad has said, if and when the Aztec, Maya, or Inca avoid the conquest, it would make most sense for those civs not to lose their native religions. There's no reason to assume that independent states of any of these civs would've adopted Catholicism, just as (someone may argue) there is no reason to assume that they would've not.
However, for many of the Indigenous peoples in Latin America, the religion they practice a mixture of Catholicism with their native religions, not actual ("Church-approved and dictated") Catholicism. Sometimes, the Catholic part is a mere façade and the religion is basically unchanged from what it was previous to the conquest. This leads me to favor the view that, if evangelization hadn't been supported by military force, it would've not been (as) successful and that any modern Aztec, Mayan or Incan civ would be more likely to hold to its traditional beliefs. I know basically nothing about Congo's history, but I would expect a similar situation (and if it's any guide, unless I'm mistaken, many of the descendants of the Yoruba people of Western Africa, after they were brought to the Americas as slaves and became evangelized, developed a Christian-looking form of the Yoruba religion, which we call Voodoo).
I strongly oppose the view that some religions (the belief system itself) are more important than others, while I accept that some religious institutions are better organized than others, but this is something that should be represented by the civics system. I think that either all religions (really all of them, including the so called "Pagan religions" which should be renamed at the very least to "Native" or "Indigenous") should offer the exact same advantages, or they should all offer distinct and balanced advantages (which I would prefer in the long term, since it requires more work, but offers more flavor and choices).
Anyway, thoughts on this?
In my opinion, and as calad has said, if and when the Aztec, Maya, or Inca avoid the conquest, it would make most sense for those civs not to lose their native religions. There's no reason to assume that independent states of any of these civs would've adopted Catholicism, just as (someone may argue) there is no reason to assume that they would've not.
However, for many of the Indigenous peoples in Latin America, the religion they practice a mixture of Catholicism with their native religions, not actual ("Church-approved and dictated") Catholicism. Sometimes, the Catholic part is a mere façade and the religion is basically unchanged from what it was previous to the conquest. This leads me to favor the view that, if evangelization hadn't been supported by military force, it would've not been (as) successful and that any modern Aztec, Mayan or Incan civ would be more likely to hold to its traditional beliefs. I know basically nothing about Congo's history, but I would expect a similar situation (and if it's any guide, unless I'm mistaken, many of the descendants of the Yoruba people of Western Africa, after they were brought to the Americas as slaves and became evangelized, developed a Christian-looking form of the Yoruba religion, which we call Voodoo).
I strongly oppose the view that some religions (the belief system itself) are more important than others, while I accept that some religious institutions are better organized than others, but this is something that should be represented by the civics system. I think that either all religions (really all of them, including the so called "Pagan religions" which should be renamed at the very least to "Native" or "Indigenous") should offer the exact same advantages, or they should all offer distinct and balanced advantages (which I would prefer in the long term, since it requires more work, but offers more flavor and choices).
Anyway, thoughts on this?
DC123456789
Deity
Kongo converted to Catholicism not long after contact with the Portuguese, but centuries before they actually made an attempt to conquer it.
LacsiraxAriscal
Below Settler
Yeah, I'm for buffing late game Pantheon, and encouraging it in some places - could even remove Buddhist monks for early Japan and encourage pantheon representing Shinto?
Tomorrow's Dawn
Heroes Never Die
Buddhism has been the dominant religion of Japan for much of its history.
(Not counting Confucianism as a religion, but that has historically been the most dominant force in Japan for most of its history)
While you're right that in modern times, from its modernization onwards, there is certainly a modern resurgence of Shinto in Japan,
removing Buddhist monks is not how we should go about it, to reflect Japan's status as largely a Buddhist civilization for most of its history.
LacsiraxAriscal
Below Settler
Oh fair enough. I don't know enough about religious Japanese history, just aware there was a Meiji-backed revival of it (so now I think about it, that would require Shinto to be the secondary faith already)
Actually Japan is a huge mixture of Buddhism, Confucianism and local traditions. They have kind of Mandate of Heaven (Emperor) but locals worships their ancient Gods (Animism) or Buddha. Basically they have the highest religious authority who kind of does not do anything unlike Pope. Thats why Japan should also prefer Pantheon and have s special Shinto temple.
Japans religion should be a good example how they adopt foreign influence into their religion while maintaining domestic characteristic. Had Azteks and other New World religions survived I would believe to see similar development.
Japans religion should be a good example how they adopt foreign influence into their religion while maintaining domestic characteristic. Had Azteks and other New World religions survived I would believe to see similar development.
strijder20
Wallowing in irony
On the same subject, it'd be nice to see some bonus for religious syncretism too. Maybe this could be done by pegging possible religion-specific effects to the temples instead of the state religion. The effect of this would be that you could sacrifice stability in order to gain other benefits.
Tomorrow's Dawn
Heroes Never Die
I apologize for not making myself clear, but you do know I'm talking about State Religion right, and not the syncreticism that is common to East Asian cultures, which I acknowledge?
Ordinary people practicing a wide mix of traditions is completely different from having a state-sponsored endorsement of a religion, which we can represent in the game with a civilization running a favored/endorsed religion.
If we compare IRL terms to in-game terms, Buddhism has been for the most part, the only endorsed religion apart from Shinto, which is mostly relegated to the modern day.
On another note, even though Confucianism isn't a "religion" (and I should really bring this up in the Overhaul thread but), it is certainly the most defining influence on Japanese culture between the four (counting Taoist influence as well) and I'd argue that we should increase Japan's odds of adopting Confucianism as State "Religion". It might help with their tech trading problems so long as we correctly make Corea do the same as well.
I do agree with you there. I too, see no reason why Catholicism/Protestantism is spread even when they are failed to be conquered.
To suggest that the Aztec religion centered around the teotl was inherently weaker in organization is I think, baseless.
As ozqar has posited, the defining difference in why Catholicism succeeded was because it was backed by stronger military force.
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