To Civ IV developers, please please be careful with this 'missionaries' thing...

[Superkrest]

we have all wanted religion to be part of the game for soooo long now...sure it may not be crazy accurate...what in civ has been..but its here..and its an alright portrayal...not great..but alright. damn the names....since not only do certain religions not send missionaries...budhists for example do not rule england...which they may in this game..so just have fun with it...if you can get over the name...like it was said before..change it...

 

[Furius]

1. If I refuse to have a 'state' religion, then what? Do I HAVE to pick one?

I don't think so... I suspect there is a default belief sort of thng, plus, if you get the technology first but refuse to follow it I suspect it will be practiced by your people but not recognised as 'official religion of [Your civ],' although, one screenshot depicting Hinduism being discovered in China gave the impression that you could tell your people to stop it and they would...

. If I slaughter the little buggers the minute their "holier than thou" feet cross my borders, do I risk war with their homeland?

If you do not have an "Open Borders Treaty" (ie Right of Passage) then for them to enter your territory at all would be a declaration of war on their part. If you have opened your borders then it is really your fault when they convert your people.

 

[spicytimothy]

I agree with what Djarum Kretek suggests...

Yes it's true part of the fun of the game is that u can change history in the game... but the word "change" itself implies that there was a accepted original blueprint. Without it there wouldn't be "change"...

What makes this game so fun for people, including those that believe in "changing history", is that the game starts out LIKE THE REAL WORLD as MUCH as possible, THEN the player can "change" history... it's the sense of power from being able to "change" the world

If we have, for example, Confucian/Taoist missionaries, then we're not changing history, history is changed for us. In other words, we might as well be playing games that have civs like Elfs, Humans, Uruks... or whteva...

isn't there any other way we may play with religion? Here are some that I thought of...

1. After the first civ successfully researched Religion, no other civ may (which is true in real life same religions don't spring up in differnet places)... and the only way these civs can get the religion is by getting it from the civ that invented it.

2. Build religion related improvements in cities close to borders... so the cities of the other civs can get affected by it.

2.1 Wonders/small wonders of religion's location. if the wonders are built close to other civs, that should increase the religion's influence.

3. Cities that do trade are slowly exposed to religion, then just like flipping allegience in Civ3, the weaker cultured city would convert. (Distance can play a role in this) Cities of the same civ can also be religiously strengthened by trading with more cities under the same religion.

3.1 Seafaring trade to an inferior city would automatically bring religion over, and the speed of convertion will be quicker.

4. Wonders/small wonders would serve as catalysts, and create Age of Religion. Each religion should have 1 great wonder and maybe 2 small wonders, so other nations that was gifted the religion by the origianl inventor might be able to build influence of its own, and big empires can have more wonders on different borders

4.1 Small wonders would expire in industrial/moderm epoches, while great wonders stay effective.

5. In modern times religion becomes city-specific. While Civ can maintain state religion and cities that believe in that religion gets happiness/health bonus, other cities can b of other religions. (which would serve to remind the player that they might b in danger of losing that city)

6. Religious Leaders. For example, once a Daoist civ gets Lao Zi, u can have him rush a religious wonder, set up a religious mecca (which can b somewhere far from capital for various bonus to neighboring cities like the Forbidden Palace does for corruption), or send to friendly nation's capital and instanting convert the other civ.

 

[Furius]

# 1 is already in place.
# 2 I like a lot.
# 3 I don't like this... A city shouldn't be always all one religion... It ought to have a minority of other religions. (Jews in christian Europe, Zoroastrians in Muslim Persia for historical examples). Although I do like the idea of pop heads in the city changing religion.
# 4 What does this Age of Religion do? Please elaborate.
# 5 For reasons stated in 3 I don't like this so much...
# 6 I like this idea quite a bit, especially the 'religuous mecca' (!) part. I don't like the bit of instantly converting friendly civs both because it should be up to the player to chose their official religion and for reasons stated in 3...

 

[spicytimothy]

# 4 What does this Age of Religion do? Please elaborate.

Well for starters, religious improvements can be built faster/cheaper duing the AoR... or wonders that are built during this time have double effects, or simply allow all religious improvements to get a bonus.

 

[fishlore]

I just pray, pun intended, that religion can be toggled on and off. I'm not sold on the implementation of this religion system as it stands. Of course I haven't seen it in action yet and as a result I'll defer my final opinion until I do. Judging by the previews though this single aspect, if not an option, will prevent me from even considering this game.

From the sound of it from the IGN article you have to have open borders in order to trade. That would then force the religion aspect of the game upon the player. Personally I would have simply avoided the religion aspect of gameplay if an option didn't exist to turn it off. As it stands now there is no way to "play around" the religion part since trading will hopefully be as important here as it was in part 3. I guess I'll just have to wait and see how it plays out. *crosses fingers*

 

[KrikkitTwo]

I wouldn't be surprised if they did make it an option just like civ specific-traits are an option in Civ3 (another thing that caused significant uproar)...Of course Culture wasn't an option in Civ 3 so I'm not sure if Religion will rate at that level of importance... and it might, having its own dedicated set of Civics options.

From what I can tell there are three fears
1. Bad naming..that can be fixed (although there is a degree of conflict between easy understandability ie differently named things doing the same thing, and proper names)

2. Inaccurate representation... (the problem of Jews/Confucians proseletyzing) that's needed to solve problem 3.. all religions need to be equal otherwise you run into #3 being more severe

3. Inability to play as one would want.. (players may complain at being forced to run a Christian state or a non religious state)... With religion this is a more serious concern than things like government or civ, because people are more strongly for or against Confucianism than Democracy or the Indians However, because they made all religions the same the only problem should be a religious v. a nonreligious state, ie balancing Civics options... I'd imagine as long as a non-religious and religious civics options are a balanced strategy overall (especially by the industrial age or later) then there shouldn't be too much of a problem.

It seems that Open borders would only be an issue if religion threatened you, it seem that this would actually be a penalty for Religious governments as they are the ones who need to protect their people from foreign missionaries, to prevent their power base from crumbling, a nonReligious government might be missing out on some bonuses, but probably wouldn't have the extreme problems that a Religious one would from foreign conversions.

 

[J-S]

Djarum Kretek:

Excellent post. I too have my doubts about this whole 'religion' thing they want to implement... a couple of ideas:

· Don't include 'prefabricated' religions.. I would just keep generic references to religions, such as 'polytheism', 'monotheism', 'atheism'... and others to suit for example confucianism (I'm not versed on the subject, so I'll stop there). Or, you could also include random events that 'create' a new religion (as in the death of a very important prophet in some random city), having this religion sweep through your cities without you controlling it (the Romans did not build pagan 'missionaries' to counter christian ones... to simplify, christians just started to mingle in Rome, obtaining important political posts, until one day they where majority). And, these random religions could have random effects. Say for example, a +1 to happiness -1 to wealth (christians could not recuperate interests from loans); or a +1 to unit morale -1 to culture, etc, etc.
To wrap it up, religion just happened, nobody decided wich or where. What was decided was what to do with it (example, call for crusades, or put every political threat to the stake).

· Eliminate the whole 'missionaries' concept. The idea of having cities 'produce' missionaries like millitary units, and moving them like armies on the map simply makes me want to modd these right out right away.