Civ 4 religion - preview info and speculation

[curtsibling]

The religion thing seems to affect neighbouring enemy cities too.

They might envy a happy city because of it's religion, or so I recall reading.

I reckon the unhappiness and turmoil of adopting a new religion may
be more heavy than we think...This is wishful thinking to a certain degree.

[GAZ082]

If the civ starts with a 'religion', would get the +1 in happiness without having done a discover. I think that discovering Ceromial Burial or something like that would trigger an ancient type of religion like, dont know, Paganism perhaps. But Paganism is a christian or other religion view of this kind of ancient practice.

[Gen. Atkinson]

How about this:

All civs start with no religion.
As soon as a certain type of technology is researched, i.e. Ceremonial Burial> animsim this represents tribal beliefs
Polytheism> Pantheon of Gods, this then covers all those societies with multiple Deities, including Hinduism.
Monotheism> Christianity, Islam, Judaism, or Create your own.
And the final religion based on all others: Aethiesm, representing that the government of that particular nation has decided to be Officially Aethiest, this does not mean repression of religion, but a tolerance of all. This way you get an equal spread of religions thoughout the country, and causes no transition riots.

With each religion you can assine a Holy City ( Vatican, Mecca, Jerusalem, etc,) much like a capitol (and can be the capitol as well if you choose) where that religion eminated from. This means that there would be 5 Holy Cities in the wolrd, as animism, would not need one,
and aetheism would not have one for obvious reasons.

You could also have a new leader type, much in the same way as Generals and Scientists, called Religous Leader, who on appearance can either complete a city improvement like the others, or increase religious influence of a peticular religion in any city (including enemies).

Just a thought.

[GAZ082]

Aye, dont know if the Religion Capital will have something to do with the game mechanics, but it's defacto when a civ discovers a tech that triggers a religion. Perhaps there are not 'holy cities' but in your imagination, but heck would be cool if there are peregrinations to holy cities or the religion capital would have a culture bonus.

Edit: perhaps a Relgion Capital would have specific improvements or wonders like Mecca for Islam, or Sixtine Chapel for catholics.

[Gen. Atkinson]

I don't know if it would be feasable, but how about two types of borders.
One showing national borders, and one showing religious boundaries, and the ability to toggle between them.
This then leads to maybe, for example, different religions declaring war on each other, as apose to nations, and these holy wars would run by the religion.
But then again that might be too difficult to simulate.

But the borders idea is worth atry.

[GAZ082]

A religion map like EU or CK. Nice, but not a must.

[Fake Boris]

Sounds ordinary.

[Max Sinister]

Confucianism would be a good choice.

I wonder whether there'll be other options - f.e. declaring tolerance for all religions (if you want to attract persecuted people with knowledge or money), or, the opposite, crusades.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Maniac

Personally I wouldn't like Judaism and Sikhism as one of the seven religions. They have a too limited geographical spread and followers to be one of the 'big seven'.

The problem being that without Judaism you don't get Christianity or Islam.

Sikhism has aspects of Islam and Hinduism, and despite recent history, and chauvinist Hindu attempts to portray Sikhism as being simply a variant of Hinduism (as was done with Buddhism by implying the Buddha was an avatar of Vishnu) most Sikh conflicts were with Muslim powers.

Although Sikhism's 'homeland' is in the Punjab, there are non-Indian converts to Sikhism, and gurdwaras the world over.

Hinduism wasn't restricted to India either, as it spread to South East Asia (the Khmer Empire) and the Indonesian archipelago (the Srivijaya Empire).