[R&F] What can you do if you don’t found a religion?

[acluewithout]

If you fail to found a Religion, there are still plenty of things you can do with faith. But there is very little you can do with religion. I think that is a missed opportunity.

I’ve seen some people suggest you should be able to ‘steal’ religions. I think that’s a terrible idea: it would completely cut across how religion currently works.

Instead, I’d like to see something like this:

- There should still be a cap on the number of Religions based on Map size. But, subject to that, players should be able to recruit prophets throughout the game. For players who founded a religion, these further prophets would let them evangelise to get new beliefs or start inquisitions (instead of doing that through apostles). For everyone else who didn’t found a religion, or players that have max beliefs etc., prophets should provide bonuses like other great people. That would give religious buildings a lot more use throughout the game.

- If you havent founded a religion, there should be a way to deliberately adopt another civ’s religion as your ‘dominant’ religion without lots of faff. Perhaps it could be via a ‘reformation project’ which converts that city to that religion and makes it like a mini-holy city. You could then spread your dominant religion (ie another players religion) to the rest of your cities.

- If you haven’t founded a religion, you should get to choose your own kind of ‘founder belief’ (from a separate list of beliefs) which you can then tie to whatever religion you’ve decided to adopt as your majority religion. Your civ (and your civ only) would then get the benefit of this belief when your cities followed your chosen dominant religion.

So, on the last two points, an example would be this:

- Rome founds catholicism. England misses out on founding a religion.

- England runs the ‘reformation’ project in London, and creates ‘Church of England’. London is now the holy city for this religion.

- England spreads its CoE religion to its own cities from London via apostles etc.

- England chooses a ‘reformation belief’, which provides England with some bonus to each of its own cities following its religion. eg England chooses a reformation belief which provides additional loyalty to cities where CoE is the dominant religion. Other beliefs might be additional science or culture yields from citizens, or additional loyalty, or resistance to war weariness, or holy sites provide additional bonuses. Whatever.

- England’s cities which follow CoE also get the benefits of the other beliefs which Catholicism provides (ie the original religion).

- For the purposes of religious pressure to other civs, and determining religious victory, England’s ‘CoE’ counts as Catholicism. So, by adopting CoE, England runs the risk of helping Rome get a religious victory.

 

[Jarms48]

- There should still be a cap on the number of Religions based on Map size. But, subject to that, players should be able to recruit prophets throughout the game. For players who founded a religion, these further prophets would let them evangelise to get new beliefs or start inquisitions (instead of doing that through apostles). For everyone else who didn’t found a religion, or players that have max beliefs etc., prophets should provide bonuses like other great people. That would give religious buildings a lot more use throughout the game.

Complete agree with this. Currently after all prophets have been taken GPP for prophets are just useless.

- If you haven't founded a religion, there should be a way to deliberately adopt another civ’s religion as your ‘dominant’ religion without lots of faff. Perhaps it could be via a ‘reformation project’ which converts that city to that religion and makes it like a mini-holy city. You could then spread your dominant religion (ie another players religion) to the rest of your cities.

- If you haven’t founded a religion, you should get to choose your own kind of ‘founder belief’ (from a separate list of beliefs) which you can then tie to whatever religion you’ve decided to adopt as your majority religion. Your civ (and your civ only) would then get the benefit of this belief when your cities followed your chosen dominant religion.

I'd prefer the option to steal someone else's religion with a great prophet. If you conqueror their holy city and send one of your own great prophets the option of reformation lets you adopt / assimilate that religion as your own. You would then get the beliefs screen appear and you can either choose a reformation belief - if none was chosen already, or change it to one that's still available. You would then continue the rest of the game as if it was your founding religion. The same works for the player it was stolen from, they can recapture the holy city and bring their religion back.

 

[dunkleosteus]

Plenty of religions have been founded out of existing religious substrates or beliefs. Judaism can sort of be considered the basis of the Abrahamic beliefs. Christianity developed as an off-shoot of Judaism which then itself split into multiple denominations such as the Eastern Orthodox and Catholic faiths. In the 600s, Islam also developed out of the Abrahamic faiths. Later, Protestantism came about in response to disagreement with the practices of Catholicism.

I think the religious game would be more interesting and appealing if you had to maintain your influence on civs you'd already converted. You would get bonuses from all those people but if you weren't careful, you could lose control of them and they would get the opportunity to found their own religions, automatically converting all of their cities.

I also think the "founder" of a religion shouldn't get special treatment just for founding a religion. I think the "owner" of the religion should be whichever civ controls the holy city and has adopted the religion (if the founding civ loses the holy city to another civ whom does not follow their religion, the founder stays as the owner of the religion). If the holy city is "captured" by another civ that follows your religion, THEY become the owner of the religion. If the holy is converted to another religion, a NEW holy city is created based on the city which meets the following criteria: follows the religion in question, is owned by a civ that follows the religion in question, and [either: has the more individual followers of this religion than any other city or has the highest religious pressure for this religion]. That city is able to stay as the holy city for the religion unless the founding city is able to both follow the religion and be owned by a civ that follows the religion.

Even though Christianity was founded in the middle East, today the Religious authority on Catholicism is Rome. Rome is the modern Holy City of Christianity. Jerusalem is still a very important site and may get bonus tourism from its status but it is not the the location of the seat of religious authority: that became Rome during the time of the Roman Empire and later the Papal States.