Why I think religion is broken in CIV

[scottrycroft]

Actually, I don't think so.

The supposed differences between religions are much more a product of political, historical and social factors than what it says on page 12 of X holy book. And those factors are not consistant within the time period Civ deals with, and of course, they would be totally different in the new history you create with Civ.

Ummm... not so much. Different religions are very different in beliefs. Just because political/social leaders have used all religions for personal/national gain doesn't mean the religions are the same.

A good question would be whether religion starts political/social/cultural trends or whether it just latches on or is latched on to an existing trend/movement. I imagine it varies throughout history, hence why Firaxis thought to make it generic in Civ4. It can have an effect on diplomacy, but is usually just used by the player to get more monasteries and/or happy citizens .

 

[Dreef]

First time poster, long time Civ player.

They wimped on religion. Norse mythology, Valhalla or Odins hall. Warriors that were slain in glorious combat go to party and train for Ragnarok. Clearly a belief system that is warrior oriented.

The fact is that Christians, Jews, and Muslims could be lumped together into the same religous group within CIV, there is no need to differentiate them. Focus on some different religions instead of focusing on the three Abrahamic religions that technically believe in the same God(capital G).

Make the Big-3 the least tolerant(diplomatically, seriously who wants to be told they are going to hell/not going to heaven) religious group with some large happiness modifier.

There is room for this and much less room for insulting people if we stop focusing on what makes Islam and Christianity different and instead focus on how different that belief system is to Athena and Odin. Wheres the Nature worshiping? Imagine a modern society that felt that Nature itself was divine, there must be some large +health -production modifier in that.

Yeah, not going to happen but thats how I feel.

 

[eg577]

I really like PekkaM's point: Just from a pure game theoretic standpoint, making the AI care about other players trading with his enemy will improve that AI's performance. However, the way the AI cares so much about what other player's religion is hurting its performance. If the AI is going to care about religion, religion must actually matter in the game.

I do not like the arguement that the AI should care about religion just so religion has a bigger effect; I don't derive more enjoyment from a fighting a self-stupified opponent who is intentionally not trying to win as much as he could just because doing so affects the game.

 

[sfuller]

I could, after all, be wrong.

I like to start short posted: it starts the hamster wheel. My point is that the game simulates religion just fine: it is "physically" ineffectual without the state driving it. There are no moving pieces in a religious organization. The state owns those. If you, the player, wishes to pretend that the religion is influencing your decisions, you are free to.

Do you think that a *Jihad/Crusade/Insert Holy War Since It's The Clearest Example But Oversimplifies The Issue* would be carried out if it didn't support the state from which it originiated? Think simply: I don't know about anyone else, but I play Civ4 "nasty, brutish, and short". Catch my drift?

If anything could be "fixed", the advisor should pipe up and tell you to "slay the heathens" or "liquidate the idol worshippers" (even in your own cities).

What you would do with that kind of input is up to you, like in III when the military advisor told you to kill, kill, kill. There's a very good discussion to be had here about the role of religion in the real world, and I'd like to continue that now that we're done with the how the game handles it. (hijack)

 

[PekkaM]

I really like PekkaM's point: Just from a pure game theoretic standpoint, making the AI care about other players trading with his enemy will improve that AI's performance. However, the way the AI cares so much about what other player's religion is hurting its performance. If the AI is going to care about religion, religion must actually matter in the game.

I do not like the arguement that the AI should care about religion just so religion has a bigger effect; I don't derive more enjoyment from a fighting a self-stupified opponent who is intentionally not trying to win as much as he could just because doing so affects the game.

Thank you for being maybe the fist one to get my point. Artificial dumbing of a CIV is exactly what bothers me "Hey, let's all switch to hereditary rule because that's what we Mongolians used to like when we existed in the real world" even though game year is 2000

AI refusing to convert even for some gold and then doing it on their own turn for free is just same idiocy. Not converting because they "shouldn't" even when it's the best idea is just stupid.

 

[Danielos]

I understand that Firaxis was nervous about adding religion to the game, since it could affect sale or PR if some religion was "misinterpreted" according to followers of that specific religion. They even had a disclaimer in the manual.

However, giving all religions the exact same effect is cowardly, ahistorical and boring. They gave different traits to different civilizations and different governments (Civ 1-3), so of course they should give different religions different positive and negative effects to make them more interesting. And atheism should also be an option.

 

[warpus]

I understand that Firaxis was nervous about adding religion to the game, since it could affect sale or PR if some religion was "misinterpreted" according to followers of that specific religion. They even had a disclaimer in the manual.

However, giving all religions the exact same effect is cowardly, ahistorical and boring. They gave different traits to different civilizations and different governments (Civ 1-3), so of course they should give different religions different positive and negative effects to make them more interesting. And atheism should also be an option.

is this really the reason why religions were left as undeveloped as they are? do they have the same problem with people complaining about civilization traits that are specific to say.. france, or spain?

in my opinion the reason that religions are all treated equally is mostly because they didn't have the time to fully explore the possibilities.. it would have been really easy to make the game extremely unbalanced by giving christianity a powerful unit, for example. so maybe they just didn't have the time to develop religion further and to test the different possibilities? the current system is simple, but it works.

one thing i do not like is that it is pretty much beneficial to have as many religions in your cities as possible. i think it would have been cool if cities w/ 2 religions that do not like eachother would be more prone to unhappiness. how would you know if 2 religions don't like eachother? look at the civs w/ the holy cities for each and the relations between them. it would also have been neat to see each religion's influence in each city - say 40% for islam, or something.

i think it should also be possible to lower a religion's influence in a city you own.

 

[karadoc]

I really like the way Civ4 does religion. I wouldn't have it any other way.

 

[HalfBadger]

Were the developers too wussy to implement any actual effect for having different religion? We have wars, slavery, facism, razing cities, nukes... why not some random terror(/ism) or civil unrest on areas close to other religion? Face it, that's what happening and at least to my knowledge, every Euro/Middle East religion has done some brutal things at time or another.

So you want the Christian religion to have some sort of aggressive trait, because of the Crusades that happend hundreds of year ago and only a few ppl participated in/supported?

Or would Christianity get a compassionated trait, for all the compassionate self-sacrificing they do for others?

Sure some ppl have done some brutal things under the name of a religion, however often times it's not for religious reasons.

As well as some ppl have done extremly compassionate, nice, loving things in the name of a religion.

Why do ppl always focus on the violence like the crusades and terrorism, which are supposedly done for religious reasons and not bring up the more positive viewed traits?

Also probably mentioned, one of the problems with pinpointing traits for a religion compared to say a civilization/country, is religion is more intangible, because it's not dictated by genetics or geography.

For example this week I could convert to Hinduism, then next week Judaism, then Christianity, then Islam etc, however I couldn't suddenly become Chinese, Aztec, Russian, Scandinavian, etc.

Religions usually have a varity interpretations of their teachings, for example with Christians, some ppl believe all Christians believe the world was created in 7 days. When actually God rested on the 6th, so some Christians would say the 6 days, however God created the heavens and the earth on the first day, so technically it's 1 day. However some don't believe that 1 "God" day, is the same as one of our days.

 

[PekkaM]

So you want the Christian religion to have some sort of aggressive trait, because of the Crusades that happend hundreds of year ago and only a few ppl participated in/supported?

Or would Christianity get a compassionated trait, for all the compassionate self-sacrificing they do for others?

Well, Mongols want hereditary rule even if the year is 2000 so why not have crusades or abortion clinic bombing as a "Christian type of terrorism"? It's a game, not a replay of reality.

On more serious note: As I said, I'm not for predefined different aspects of different religion. I want your neighbour having a different religion to actually matter in game, not just be a minus. Point being, the only effect of religion is that somebody likes you or not, it's the only such thing not having any real effect. Thus for human player it's a non factor.

Example of what I'd like to see:

My Hindu city close to border of Genghis Khan who happens to have Judaism as his state religion. I get random unrest in my border city, could be like normal riot but not generated by culture but religion (as in Northern Ireland). Could be bombing of random improvement in city or terrain (Tim McWeigh was a religious white supremacist loon, right?). Could be reduction in population (Crusade or which hunt or whatever). Whatever. Just to make the different religion actually matter.

Bottom line: No specific traits attached to religions. Problems caused by religion1 != religion2

 

[giffy]

I would rather have the option to choose a flavor within a religion and have it really matter. For instance
Theocratic: Non-State religions cause unrest, but wars against non-believers cause happiness. Perhaps you could even have inquisitions to purge your cities of rival religions.
Tolerant. Basically the opposite of theocratic
There could also be schools that give bonus to knowledge but harm military, or that benefit health at the expense of knowledge. Or even a fundamentalism option that would allow for terrorist attacks and give a huge boon to military but would damage relations with all civs even those of the same religion.
I think this would make religion more then just a way to affect diplomacy and make money and instead it would be as important as city government.

It just doesn’t seem possible to assign traits to religions. For example you can say Buddhism is tolerant and compassionate, but there are examples of Buddhist violence, and at times even Tibet was a rather oppressive theocracy. Same with Christianity. There are examples of compassion (red cross) and of violence (the crusades). Not to mention the flame wars and controversies that would result from categorizing various religions. I would rather be able to choose the flavor of religion that I have and have it affect my civ in a profound way.

 

[sfuller]

I just want to purge my cities of infidels until I get theocracy. I'd be willing to kill the population to do it.

 

[El Santo]

I think religions should continue to just be labels. Religion like someone posted previously is simply a tool. Granted real world religions have real world effects, but where does one draw the line between religion or way of life or belief in God?

I think the character of real world religions is greatly characterized by the history they were formed under, or that they have lived through. That I believe in God, Allah, The Prince, The Emperor or whatever, doesn't influence my behaviour/attitudes at all compared to the situation under which the particular religion was taught to me. Compare for example a catholic in Ireland vs a catholic in Colombia.

Under a lighter note, the coolest looking missionary units in the game are by far the bhudist one & the muslim one, Jewish one comes third. I usually forget the confucionist are there because they dress in green, so it's like boom your city is confucionist & you're like, wha? I didn't even see it.

 

[El Santo]

Inquisitions could be useful.
It could be a special option when you have certain, civic combinations, say...
hereditary rule/police state/slavery/nationhood/stateproperty

coupled with one of

theocracy/organized religion

Then all your non-state-religion-having cities would experience turns of unhappiness until they're thouroughly purged (bhhm I hate that word).
An AI with the purged religions should also hate you a little more.

Having mulitple religions in one city gives a considerable boost to science in the early/middle game where monasteries are still kicking.

This however would pose great problems with a player having more than one holy city, like last game where I had 3.

 

[Mmmm Butter]

On more serious note: As I said, I'm not for predefined different aspects of different religion. I want your neighbour having a different religion to actually matter in game, not just be a minus. Point being, the only effect of religion is that somebody likes you or not, it's the only such thing not having any real effect. Thus for human player it's a non factor.

You're right, it's pretty silly for the AI to be upset about religious differences when they don't really make an actual difference elsewhere in the game, since they're all identical like. But there is the idea of being a religion's founder giving you line of sight in all cities with that religion. So if you're the founder of, say, hinduism, it's logical that you'd want all the other civs to adopt that as a state religion, because that'd mean they'd want to spread it to all their cities, which would give you that line of sight bonus. But, yeah, if I'm not the founder of a religion, it doesn't make a difference to me what the other civ's state religion is. Maybe a good fix would be to make the bad relations thing, "sway of a heathen religion", only happen if that AI civ is the founder of its state religion, that way there'd actually be a decent reason for it, gameplay-wise. And, maybe is this already part of how it works? Because I've seen sometimes there's a -2 for different state religion, and sometimes -4, maybe it's an extra 2 when that AI civ founded its state religion? At least, I think I've seen a -2, but I could be wrong, maybe they're always -4.

 

[PekkaM]

...

I think the amount of penalty dependes on leaders personality, not who founded religion. The other thing I noted on your post is that you find AI spreading their state religion to their cities. I actually have encountered this only once or twice and at a late part of game. It seems they are usually too busy building military etc. so I spread it for them.

 

[MRM]

I think the amount of penalty dependes on leaders personality, not who founded religion. The other thing I noted on your post is that you find AI spreading their state religion to their cities. I actually have encountered this only once or twice and at a late part of game. It seems they are usually too busy building military etc. so I spread it for them.

AFAIK personality is one point the other is how long you have different religions ( it seems to increase over time )

But what would be cool is if they could implement some reason for a holy war. For example if you have the holy city of a religion that is not your state religion but the state religion of other civs that this would give you an extra penalty until their holy city is freed ...

 

[El Santo]

I think it definitely increases over time, I was playing a game where I got Kublai to convert in the early game to budhism, & the bonus went up to +5 (this was on noble). Louis founded taoism, & the penalty was initially only -1, by the end of the game it was -5 as well.

 

[jerry247]

i only got to the first page...

but when was the last time gandhi nuked someone? since when did the incas build rockets? religion works well i think and i like that the ai starts wars (jihads or crusades) over it.

they made it simple because thats the way it worked. like culture in civ 3. now culture is more advanced. wait for an expansion (wow, idea idea religious exp!) or civ 5...

 

[joethreeblah]

I think almost everyone ignored the main point of the OP here which is a good one.

When implementing artificial emotions for the AI, there need to be palpable reasons for the things that they "care" about, in order to make it realistic. If I'm playing a nine player game, with 4 other humans, and 4 AI's, the AI's should behave, as near to possible, as the humans.

It's good that they get angry if you nuke them, or give oil to their enemy.

But for the religious and civic aspect, there needs to be incentive in having the same religion as another civ, besides you care because they care.

Maybe like +1 trade routes to civs with same religions. Or something. ANYTHING. For the AI to be a good player, it needs to care about things that help it meet an objective, IE winning.

As it is, they may fight a war, and finally you convert to the same religion as them. And what have they gained?

They dislike you because of your religion, so they won't take your oil in exchange for money. And they need it. This puts them at a disadvantage.

There needs to be a mechanism that causes harm between two different religions and/or benefits to the opposite.

Perhaps 3 unhappy citizens for trading with a heathen state?