The Civ4 Religions

[Nikolai]

Religion part is ~19 pages long. I suggest you download the file yourself and see. I'll see through it afterwards if I get time and check if there is something specific on stats, don't remember off hand.

[Brent]

The religion stats that would be easiest to imagine would at least be percieved as one being superior over another. One would at least be percieved as being more enlightened than another. I am talking about each player's interpretation of the out of the box effects. The stats could be liberal versus conservative, and I suppose some of the same Traits assigned to Civs in Civ3. And there could be organized versus unorganized. Would we want various gods that actually intervene on the behalf of their followers? Would you be able to tangibly take the role of a god and control a religion instead of a civ, but the civs would still be there? Or be an earthly leader of a religion instead of a god?

Maybe there could be equal advantages to sharing a religion with other civs, equal to embracing or accepting multiple ones within your civ. Maybe whether you shared a religion or whether you accepted more than one would be about the deepest religion would get in the game.

I think the most tangible effects maybe at most should be unique units. I think this would be more politically correct than Traits like in Civ3. If anything.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by DRoseDARs
Another option would be to emulate the way religion was handled in Europa Universalis II (I never had the first game). If I recall correctly, special traits were never given to individual religions, instead it was a matter of either cohesiveness of religion or tolerable levels of instability between multiple religions.

Er, no, there are special traits in EU2 - Catholics get more diplos, Counter Reform Catholics can insist on conversion in a peace treaty, Protestants get financial advantages, etc. Which then conflicts with the cohesiveness/instability effect (IE I want Protestant for the ducats, but i dont want rebellions in my mainly Catholic provinces - what should I do?)

Not sure id like that in a Civ game though - for the same reasons i dont like national traits in a civ game either.

[lord of the mark]

BTW Judaism should be just one religion - Kabbalah is just mysticism, its not a seperate denomonation - the whole denominational thing only really shows up for J in the industrial age, and even then isnt as clear cut as for Christianity. And really, J isnt a big enough player in history as a state religion to justify more than one slot.

[joncnunn]

You left out Methodists, Lutherns, Presbetryans, Church of Christ and there's several varities of Baptists.

There is even Non-Denominational Christians. (Multiple varities)

How to tell your methodist neighbor apart from your southern baptist neighbor: Your methodist neighbor will say hello to you at the liquor store.

Under Judaism, the largest group is Reform Judism [two kinds]. Orthodox and the like are only about 10%.

Under Islam / Muslim, the major group you left out is Wanabism. [sp?] They seem to be the closest thing under Islam / Muslim to Church of Christ under Christainity. (Wanabism historicaly taught [and still does] that they are the only "true muslims" and Church of Christ historically taught [started discontinuing that in the late 60s thru mid 70s] that they were the only "true Christians".

It's no surprize that in the US that David Kerish was from a splinter group (a few times over) from Church of Christ and that in Saudi Arabia that Ben Laden formed Al-kada from Wanabis.

In the game, for the epic version of Civ IV relgions, if they splinter Chrtistanity at all it will be between Catholism, Protestanism, and perhaps Ortothdox.

Protestants in the US can't tell Orthodox very much apart from Catholics other than Orthodox celebarating Easter (and consequently Palm Sunday, Muady Thrusday, and Good Friday) at a different time than us. (Usally, but not always one week later.)
And also the Greek Orthodox churches tend to on a fairly regular basis invite the public to Greek style meals.

Can't see the epic game splintering Judaism.

Can't see the epic game splintering Islam either. A version of the Middle ages would.

Originally posted by DRoseDARs
The thing about Eastern philosophies is it's hard to seperate them. In Asian cultures, people don't necessarily identify themselves as Taoist, or Confuscian, or Buddhist as they tend to overlap, particularly in China. Indeed, it's hard for non-Christian to tell the different Christian sects apart. So perhaps having Major->Minor classifications would correctly be the way to go. Civs would fall into either just one or multiple Major Catagories, which would have the effects, while in the demographics we would see the Minor catagory breakdown.

6 Major catagories with included Minor catagories I can think off:
Christianity-
-Roman Catholic
-Greek Orthodox
-Protestant
-Anglican
-Baptist
-Mormon
-Evangelical etc.
Judaism-
-Orthodox
-Kabbalah etc
Islam-
-Sunni
-Shia
-Sufi etc
Hindu-
-etc
Eastern-
-Confuscian
-Shinto
-Taoist
-Buddhism etc
Indigenous-
-etc

Giving the Minor catagories unique effects might complicate gameplay too much, and more ominously would likely be offensive to someone somewhere at sometime.

[Brent]

I've heard Madonna follows Kabbalah as if it is a distinct religion, but I agree that if such categorization is justified it is not significant enough for the game.

This is about rewriting history, so maybe things don't have to be quite like the real world: Christian denominations can be treated as less connected to each other than in reality, we don't necessarily have to wory so much about how numerous the followers are as how distinct the denominations are. Thus could be an excuse for differentiating between orthodox/ conservative/ liberal/ reform Judaism. Or is this exactly the sort of political correctness problems we need to worry about?

What do a few Poly Protestants think about whether they should be lumped together or separated into Anglican, Baptist, Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, etc? Is there a need to distinguish between different types of Baptists? Would we want the game to recognize some Christians as being nondenominational with others getting more specific?

Do you think scenarios would really get more detailed with religion than the epic game?

Are we straying too far from what's actually relevant to the game?

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Brent
I've heard Madonna follows Kabbalah as if it is a distinct religion, but I agree that if such categorization is justified it is not significant enough for the game.

This is about rewriting history, so maybe things don't have to be quite like the real world: Christian denominations can be treated as less connected to each other than in reality, we don't necessarily have to wory so much about how numerous the followers are as how distinct the denominations are. Thus could be an excuse for differentiating between orthodox/ conservative/ liberal/ reform Judaism. Or is this exactly the sort of political correctness problems we need to worry about?

What do a few Poly Protestants think about whether they should be lumped together or separated into Anglican, Baptist, Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, etc? Is there a need to distinguish between different types of Baptists? Would we want the game to recognize some Christians as being nondenominational with others getting more specific?

Do you think scenarios would really get more detailed with religion than the epic game?

Are we straying too far from what's actually relevant to the game?

Ya well Madonnas a flake. Selling Kabbalah as a distinct religion is just good marketing, by people trying to make bucks off Kabballah. You might as well call Santa Claus worship a branch of Christianity. Feh!

As for Reform,C, and O - no theyre NOT that distinct.

[Maniac]

Originally posted by Nikolai
I'd like the religions to not be real life religions, but rather have random names, random stats etc. In essence, I'd like something like proposed in the old List.

Turywenzo lives!

[joncnunn]

I'm a Methodist and used to be a Southern Baptist, in the epic game, the Protestants should be lumped together. My dad was also in the US Navy.

Now if some makes a 1500 - 1700 europe scenario in Civ 4, then there might be a need to make Luthern [Northern Germany + Sweeden offical religion], Angelian [offical religion of England], and Calvinism [offical relgion of Scotland] all distinct. (But if focus is on Exploration and conquest of Americas that degree would be overkill.)

Originally posted by Brent

What do a few Poly Protestants think about whether they should be lumped together or separated into Anglican, Baptist, Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, etc? Is there a need to distinguish between different types of Baptists? Would we want the game to recognize some Christians as being nondenominational with others getting more specific?

Do you think scenarios would really get more detailed with religion than the epic game?

Are we straying too far from what's actually relevant to the game?

[Brent]

Well that actually somehow makes it sound to me like maybe the epic game really should have separate denominations for England and for the Vikings.

[Elda king]

Religions of course will be somelike the governments, and will allow different city improvments. All the religions should have culture bonus, but some should have: Sacrifice for culture bonus (Indigenous or ancient ones); Economical bonuses/penalties (Protestantism/Eastern); Science bonuses/penalties (Catholicism/Islamism); Resistance to culture flip/nationality change (Judaism); Religious (in)tolerance happiness bonus/penalties (Budhism, Eastern, Polytheism/Catholicism, Islamism).
And religion diplomacy rate (Low for Catholicism-Islamism, High for Catholicism-Catholicism, for example).

[Brent]

Yeah, I guess I forgot about wonders and city improvements. Some of your bonuses and penalties sound relatively good. I would think that when there is a schism, the two sides would get along poorly at first and reconcile after some time. Maybe if there are two successive related schisms, the halves of the second one would still get along better with each other than with the other half of the earlier split. Maybe toward the end of the game religions in general would automatically get fairly friendly?

Maybe more than one completely different religion model should be available out of the box, and other aspects of the game too, or at least make sure you can make such changes yourself (likely), maybe the main point of expansions this time around would be swapping model modules/ giving such detailed new options.

[Addled Platypus]

Would the idea of atheists/non denominational be a choice as well..?

[Brent]

It certainly should. I certainly hope it's at least possible in the late game, and there's no reason it shouldn't be in the early game either. Like diplomacy, combat, technology, or any other model, it should be possible to turn religion off alltogether when you want to.

[TechWins]

Originally posted by Platypus Rex
Would the idea of atheists/non denominational be a choice as well..?

That could include the most shunned religion in diplomacy but allow for the best scientific research.