Belated religions

[Strategist83]

Islam was founded around 660 AD. In my games, it is rarely founded till ~1000 AD. In the same way, christianity mostly does not show up till ~300 AD (at which time it was becoming the state religion of the Roman empire).

Do others experience the founding date of religions being likewise belated, or are my games an exception?

[xxFlukexx]

Civ4 is not a history simulator.

[Zoid]

In Civ 3 you could have battleships in the middle ages and nuke everyone else in early victorian age. No very historic but very fun

[Strategist83]

No, Civ is no history simulator. But if you look at the placement of techs you will find it is indeed trying to resemble one. Or did they just happen to get all the religions in correct order by chance?

[Zoid]

Well, where´s the fun of a game where the tech progress rate is set from the beginning? Civ is all about making history yourself, using already discovered techs. Otherwise it´s just a fancy history animation with limited interaction...

[Willem]

Originally posted by Strategist83
No, Civ is no history simulator. But if you look at the placement of techs you will find it is indeed trying to resemble one. Or did they just happen to get all the religions in correct order by chance?

Buddhism isn't in the correct order. It's an offshoot of Hinduism and was started at about the same time as Christianity. But the game has it as one of the earliest religions.

[Zoid]

No it wasn´t. Buddhism predates christianity with a good 500 years. But it should be third after hinduism and judaism though. And contemporary with taoism and confucianism.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Dr Zoidberg
No it wasn´t. Buddhism predates christianity with a good 500 years.

I admit I'm no expert on the timeline, but it certainly followed Hinduism. I thought I'd read somewhere they formed at about the same time. At any rate, Buddhism is to Hinduism what Christianity is to Judaism, so it certainly shouldn't be one of the first in the game, historically speaking.

[Xineoph]

Very true...

Maybe Mysticism should lead to Polytheism and Monotheism then?

We can put organized religion with buddhism under meditation i suppose.

[Blake]

The fundamentals of Buddhism are little like Hindusm though, I don't think there's any particular reason why they couldn't be founded idependently. For one Buddhism is basically Atheist and Hinduism is Polytheist. Altough that statement wont be correct depending on interpretion and specific variants of religions selected for comparison .

I find the order of religions and the associated techs and civics extremely satisfactory.

The thing is so very much is up to interpretion, like Taoism is really frigging old but only really gained it's identity due to religions like Buddhism.

In any case, people could argue about this all day and everyone would be arguing about different things because the whole thing is so complex, multi-faceted and open to extremes of interpretation. Firaxis did what's good for gameplay and doesn't cause suspenion of disbelief problems for the layman.

[joncnunn]

Re: Belated religions

In my just finished game, I founded Christainty in 1 AD.
Close enough to historic.

Any tech can be early or late in Civ IV, and that most definately includes the religion techs.

Originally posted by Strategist83
Islam was founded around 660 AD. In my games, it is rarely founded till ~1000 AD. In the same way, christianity mostly does not show up till ~300 AD (at which time it was becoming the state religion of the Roman empire).

Do others experience the founding date of religions being likewise belated, or are my games an exception?

[Badtz Maru]

Originally posted by Blake
The fundamentals of Buddhism are little like Hindusm though, I don't think there's any particular reason why they couldn't be founded idependently. For one Buddhism is basically Atheist and Hinduism is Polytheist. Altough that statement wont be correct depending on interpretion and specific variants of religions selected for comparison .

I find the order of religions and the associated techs and civics extremely satisfactory.

The thing is so very much is up to interpretion, like Taoism is really frigging old but only really gained it's identity due to religions like Buddhism.

In any case, people could argue about this all day and everyone would be arguing about different things because the whole thing is so complex, multi-faceted and open to extremes of interpretation. Firaxis did what's good for gameplay and doesn't cause suspenion of disbelief problems for the layman.

Taoism as a religion is not old. A lot of it is based on some philosophical texts which were written by Lao-tse around the 5th century BC, but the religion was founded around 140 AD by a guy who said that Lao-Tse appeared to him and gave him some new messages about how the world was about to have an era of peace, and some stuff about how to be immortal. Most historians don't believe that Lao-Tse actually returned from death to appear to Zhang Daoling, so Lao-Tse cannot be considered the founder of Taoism any more than Moses could be considered the founder of Christianity.

The historical order would be Hinduism-Judaism-Confucianism-Buddhism-Christianity-Taoism-Islam.

[Nacht]

Re: Belated religions

Originally posted by Strategist83
Islam was founded around 660 AD. In my games, it is rarely founded till ~1000 AD. In the same way, christianity mostly does not show up till ~300 AD (at which time it was becoming the state religion of the Roman empire).

Do others experience the founding date of religions being likewise belated, or are my games an exception?

In game terms, 1000AD/660AD and 300AD/0AD are not that far apart. I would say your game pretty accurate mirrored history.

[Axxaer]

Originally posted by Blake
Buddhism is basically Atheist

That would be a very tenuous use of the word 'Atheist'.

Buddhists believe that there was/is no creator god, but their beliefs do not deny the existence of other god/s. Therefore, there are many different offshoots of Buddhism which incorporate various deities. Of course this means that there are at least some Atheist Buddhists, but not all are.

[Blake]

That's why I said "basically". In any case the point is Buddhism does not require god or gods (or another way of putting it, doesn't require worshiping gods, but I agree Aethist is absolutely the wrong word. It's more like an entirely different usage of the word "God". However from the perspective of any god-fearing individual, aethist will work). As such it is correctely not on the Polytheism/Monotheism line. The same with Conf and Tao. But having these on completely different braches of the tech tree inevitably leads to time-line problems, at least for those playing Civ4 as a historic rather than what if game.

From a "what if" perspective I feel the most questionable connection is Hindusim -> Juadism. The gameplay works great though.