special units

[fed1943]

I am not sure if these powerful unities unbalance (or no) the game;but,if they go on,then they should be disbanded when,if,the civ leaves that state religion.
Best regards,

[Arbarbonif]

Originally posted by fed1943
I am not sure if these powerful unities unbalance (or no) the game;but,if they go on,then they should be disbanded when,if,the civ leaves that state religion.
Best regards,

Or become barbarians.

"We have been abandoned by our leaders, death to EVERYONE!!!"

[johnmcd]

Originally posted by Arbarbonif


Or become barbarians.

"We have been abandoned by our leaders, death to EVERYONE!!!"

Cool! Maybe in that case they should just spawn in very religious cities once in a while when you are in whatever civic allows it, slow in Organised, fast in Theocracy or whatever, with no disband command either.

[MasterDave]

Crusaders and Mojahadeen make sense, but it would be hard to come up for an archetype unit for the other religions without getting silly?

Buddhism- Shoulin Monks?? These guys only go back a few hundred years in history, and never participated in any kind of organized military units.

Hinduism - Uh.... we already have war elephants, so I am drawing a blank on this one.

Judaism - There is really no Jewish military tradition from before modern times. The MaCabees under Jericho were little more than Warriors in Civ terms, and nobody outside of Hebrew school has heard of them.

Confusionism- Again, there is no military tradition in this religion that I am aware of.

Taoism- Same thing.

I think it would be hard to come up with credible units that are not a huge stretch on the believability curve, or are within the bounds of political correctness. One has to be extremely careful about any sort of depiction of Mohammed or Moslems these days.

[Unimatrix11]

Okay how about this then: Only Christians and Muslims have a special unit and it is not stronger than the normal one, BUT if you conquer a city with them, that city takes over that religion and abandones all the others that might have been in that city before... - both units should be special knights, with normal knights still avaiable of course... Hammer cost and building requirements (city improvements and civic required to build them) should be tweaked towards balance... this way earlier religions could be pushed back and replaced with the later ones...

[MasterDave]

Originally posted by Unimatrix11
Okay how about this then: Only Christians and Muslims have a special unit and it is not stronger than the normal one, BUT if you conquer a city with them, that city takes over that religion and abandones all the others that might have been in that city before... - both units should be special knights, with normal knights still avaiable of course... Hammer cost and building requirements (city improvements and civic required to build them) should be tweaked towards balance... this way earlier religions could be pushed back and replaced with the later ones...

Now this idea gives some religions gameplay advantages over the rest, and opens another can of worms. I think that a better way to implement a crusade in game would be trhough a wonder, similar to what happened in Civ3 with King Richard's Crusade, that generates Crusader units every few turns until a tech makes it obsolete.

Unimatrix's idea could be partially used, and having those crusaders add their nation's state religion to any city they conquer, as if they were missionaries as well as military units. I think that removing existing religions from a city is not realistic at all and is almost unheard of in history short of mass migrations that took years or genocides. I do like the idea of crusaders that are on the map going "ronin" (barbarian) if the player who controls them changes religions, goes free religion (free religion would inherently be anti-crusader), or agnostic.

Another idea to help the later-founded religions spread would simply be to increase the number of free missionaries you get upon founding. Perhaps Christians and Confusians get one missionary, Taoists get two, and Islam gets three since Divine right is so expensive to research compared with the others. Perhaps a simple tweak to the code linking the spread of a religion to its cost to research would do the trick also, and allowing all religions to spread into a city with previous religion a little bit more easily.

[Axxaer]

I think one problem here is that most of these religions are, in theory, non-violent. This means that some may/will not have been involved in such bloody events as the crusades. I think that this is a good idea, but have a military unit based on religion, even if they are all equally powerful, would, for want of a better phrase, bite off yet another can of eggs before they're hatched.

[Unimatrix11]

well i dont think that religions vanishing from a city is that unrealisitic... i mean islam must have replaced something in the near and middle east (zarathustra ? i dunno) and india once was buddhist... okay both might still exist, but they are not that important (in the area) anymore... Also protestantism replaced cathoilicism in northern europe. It simply bothers me that religions in civ just keep piling up and there is no way to get rid off them... In my opinion if you have a state religion, all the other religions should have a negative effect (at least under strict religious civics) and the player should be struggling and have some means to get rid off them. I mean dont you think, too, that it is kinda funny to have maybe four religions in a city and get 10% extra science for each monastary and +1 happy face for each temple ? Under free religion (and maybe pacifism) that is okay, but for a theocracy the effect of diversity should be negative and for organized religion only one bonus should count (MHO).

Now back to the thread topic: I still think that those (muslim and christian) crusaders would be a good idea, since those religions come late and have spread mostly through conquest. Just make those crusaders expensive enough (in hammers, upkeep and prerequisites to build - maybe a wonder, maybe only in holy city - whatever seems to balance it) and make them absolete (loosing their religious effects) with the discovery of scientific method (or some other tech maybe).

And also i am for a unit that fights other religions... the use of those might influence the diplomatic effects of empires having different religion... for example: if a, say, hindu empire uses their 'inquisitors' to wipe out, say, buddhism of cities a lot, then hindu and buddhist empires would really start to hate each other. How about that ?

[ben04]

I don't think that it's a good idea to add advantages to one religion. Some people might get offended.

I personally also dislike the fact that Buddisme and Hinduisme are discovered so early in the gam making every other religion pretty much useless.

I think that meditation should not always found buddisme but should found one religion. Perhaps make it more likly that for example the Germans found Christianisme than Taoisme, but if Christianisme is already taken then Taoisme will also do. This would add a bit more of historical accurancy and would give every religion an equal chance to spread.

[LordShiva]

I think we've found a winner for the "Thread with the Most Spelling Mistakes" contest...

[proviisori]

[SIZE=1]

Confusionism- Again, there is no military tradition in this religion that I am aware of.

well... the Samurai code, Bushido, used many consepts from Confucianism as well as from Shintoism.

but... we have that UU allready.

[Unimatrix11]

I dont see why someone would get offended by the christian/muslim crusaders - after all these religions could still spread peacefully. If you are, say, a devoted christian you would aim for christianity anyways, and if you think that a intolerant/crusading spread is inapropriate for the lore of Jesus, then you could still spread it peacefully. If you fail to found christianity, then you would simply missed your chance and had to deal with what others make out of it...

And about the political-correctness issues in general: What did you guys make out of the fundamentalists in Civ2 ? How many of you did not link them with modern islam fundamentalists or christian crusaders ? But okayokay include an option to turn crusaders off, for god's sake ;-)

[Axxaer]

Originally posted by LordShiva
I think we've found a winner for the "Thread with the Most Spelling Mistakes" contest...

Wya t orouin teh!!

[Ray Radlein]

Perhaps the special abilities (and names) of these special units could be less military, and more missionary, in nature. That way, rather than trying to come up with a military tradition to link to Judaism (and how about the Irgun for that, anyway? Or the Haganah -- the unit could look like Dr. Ruth in camo fatigues), you could use "Talmudic Scholar" or "Kabbalic Mystic" as your special unit. These units could have Special Unit (missionary, spy, etc.) type abilities, rather than military unit style abilities.

Either each religion could have different types of special units with their own individual types of abilities -- resulting in additional strategic decisions regarding which religions to emphasize at specific points of your culture's development -- or perhaps each religion could have each type of special unit: one for partisan fighting (Crusaders, Muhajadeen, Shaolin, etc.), one for "cultural warfare" (Jesuit, Taldmudic Scholar, Sufi Mystic, etc.), and one for "wetworks" (Hashishiyyin, Inquisitor, Ninja, perhaps, etc.).

It could be interesting to have units whose abilities included things like lowering the effectiveness of other temples, lessening the chances of other Great Prophets, or "de-specializing" priests of other religions.

[Axxaer]

Originally posted by Ray Radlein
Perhaps the special abilities (and names) of these special units could be less military, and more missionary, in nature.

Perhaps even something as simple as when they capture a city they spread their religion there? Might have to add something else to make them worthwhile, but that certainly would be a bonus for most people.