Suggestion: Downside to Religious Diversity

[Amarsir]

In CIV 4 we're talking about STATE Religion and I would guess most of us have never experienced that.

That's an excellent point and one I hadn't really thought about until you mentioned it. It is very hard to relate to the idea of a State religion. Since it's such a foreign concept to me, it feels odd even that 4 out of 5 civics require it. And yet it does make perfect sense in historical context.

Regarding a different religion as a nonsense cult describes already a very open mindset, so in the "Free Religion" civic that would be the idea.

Here I have to disagree with you though. I would say it's a very closed mindset. Or at least I'm not sure we're agreeing on whose point of view we're talking about. Let's separate out the reaction of the people from the reaction of the government, so we create a kind of 2x2 matrix.

Suppose a town in the wilderness, pretty much keeps to themselves. Everyone worships a big tree in the center, as did every generation before them. It makes sense that the tree god makes stuff happen, and they never considered otherwise. But one day, a guy wanders into town and says "No no, god isn't that tree, it's the sun!"

The people can either 1) all decide he's crazy, from some cult, no sane person would believe him. 2) some people say "hmm, that's a convincing point. ok, I believe you."
The town leader can either A) chase him out of town and say anyone who believes that nonsense is insane and will be punished. B) tell the people "well, make up your own mind." (or C) adopt it and force the tree-believers out, but that's basically an unlikely version of A).

Now how I see this in Civ4 is that 1&2 are whether a religion spreads to a town, while A&B are the civic and choice of state religion. Now you're correct, with option A2 there are definite happiness consequences. But that's only if the religion catches on and there's still a state religion. If the people choose option 1, it really doesn't matter whether the gov't chooses A or B, since there's no one to persecute.

So what I'm saying is that I wouldn't understand a punishment in Civ4 for only having one religion symbol over a town, because all that means is that people don't want another religion. However, if a 2nd religion catches on, I'm all for having punishments associated with Theocracy and all the other non-Free Religion civics.

I think we largely agree in principle, but wanted to clarify my position.

(Oh and yes I did edit my previous post considerably to answer the OP.)

[Sgt_Serge]

Good points Amasir!

I agree... we are agreeing...

And I think there's more to that. The game designers brought in a good idea but didn't go into much detail about it. Sure there's the political side of things, you can offend quite a lot of people and exactly the ones who then protest in front of your office or worse. And then there's the question of how much detail can be added and the game is still playable.

On the one hand they could have differentiated between "Missionary Religions" which send out missionaries (morale boost) but also burn witches and believers of other religions and cults which would e.g. reduce morale again or slow down production, and non-missionary religions which would have a lower morale boost but also less downside, such as some Asian religions.

Also they could have added things like an "Era of Missionaries" where the people expect the founder of an religion to spread it and units like the Missionaries can either run further or are not stopped at foreign borders etc. Later this could be followed by the "Era of Manifestation" (or so) where cities without temples actually get a disadvantage. And finally you could get the "Era of Organization" where you could get elections of a High Priest (Pope for most Christians) and his/her city of origin would get a morale boost.

There could be historical events such as Martin Luther's work. etc.

Ah... I see great things coming for CIV 5...

[dearmad]

The rebellion mod by Trip makes diversity not as great as it once was...

[Byelotsar]

Originally posted by Sgt_Serge
Good points Amasir!

I agree... we are agreeing...

And I think there's more to that. The game designers brought in a good idea but didn't go into much detail about it. Sure there's the political side of things, you can offend quite a lot of people and exactly the ones who then protest in front of your office or worse. And then there's the question of how much detail can be added and the game is still playable.

On the one hand they could have differentiated between "Missionary Religions" which send out missionaries (morale boost) but also burn witches and believers of other religions and cults which would e.g. reduce morale again or slow down production, and non-missionary religions which would have a lower morale boost but also less downside, such as some Asian religions.

Also they could have added things like an "Era of Missionaries" where the people expect the founder of an religion to spread it and units like the Missionaries can either run further or are not stopped at foreign borders etc. Later this could be followed by the "Era of Manifestation" (or so) where cities without temples actually get a disadvantage. And finally you could get the "Era of Organization" where you could get elections of a High Priest (Pope for most Christians) and his/her city of origin would get a morale boost.

There could be historical events such as Martin Luther's work. etc.

Ah... I see great things coming for CIV 5...

Great things coming for Civ 5? Heck, if ideas like this catch on with the right people, they could be great things for Civ 4! All it takes is one or more people with the skills and desire to mod such things into the game, whether it's done by Firaxis or the fan community.

As you mentioned, there'd probably have to be the "Era of Reformation", when people become increasingly unhappy with Theocratic states (or something similar) and then perhaps later the "Era of Enlightenment" when there's a reduction in the effect of religions... and so on. I guess the major problem with this is that there's the risk of making religions far too complex. Some people might like that, but personally I like how simple religions are right now. They're important, but I don't have to spend all my time trying to keep up with them.

[Bhruic]

I have to admit, this is an area that has bothered me as well. Personally, what I'd like to see is that until you get Free Religion, a city can only have one religion. Basically, it's the "city religion" in the same way that there's a "state religion". That doesn't mean everyone in the city follows it, but it's the major religion.

Cities without religions would be handled in the same way they are now - the first religion to show up (either via trade routes, or missionary) becomes the founding city religion. After that, it changes to a system of religious 'pressure'. Basically, religion would become sort of like culture. Every trade route for a religion would weight the city towards that religion. Missionaries would cause a greater weighting, but it would be a one time thing (much like great artists). Imposing a state religion would cause a empire wide weighting towards a particular religion.

Some things to account for:
Say you start as Buddhism in a city, so build the Buddhist temple. Then the city switches to Islam because of a missionary who comes to spread the word. The Buddhist temple would still exist, but it would cease to give any bonuses to the city. The city could now build an Islamic temple, which would give bonuses. If outside pressure forced the city to revert to Buddhism, the Islamic temple would cease to have any effect, and the Buddhist temple would start functioning again.

Obviously building temples, etc in a city would make the city more resistent to outside influences. Again, I would make the comparison to culture, where the higher the internal culture, the less influence external culture has. The same would be true here. Founding cities would be extremely difficult to 'flip' (which would cause difficulties if you found more than one religion, which is something that is too beneficial now, imo).

Religious Freedom would stop this system, and basically function the way it does now. Personally, I would remove the extra bonuses that Religious Freedom currently gets, because they wouldn't be necessary - the benefit of having multiple religious buildings functioning in a city would be their own reward.

You would actually have to worry about fighting Religious wars instead of just military ones. Currently, if another empire is sending missionaries to your cities, that's a good thing for you. Sure, they may get some money and visibility out of it, but you get extra temples, so it works out. With this system, having another empire impose their religion on your city means the city stops being your religion. And that means you lose the bonuses for that city. Suddenly religious tolerance is anything but!

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As much as I like this system, I'm guessing it's probably too advanced for simple modding to work. And I doubt that it's something that would make it into a patch. Hopefully Firaxis will consider it for the (almost inevitable) expansion pack.

Bh