Dietary Restrictions and other non-ofensive religious differences

[Badtz Maru]

It's understandable why the religions are effectively identical in CivIV, and it can be difficult thinking of ways to make them different that cannot be read as offensive as most of these ideas are not based so much on the religion itself as stereotypes about it's adherents (i.e. Muslims being fanatical warriors, Hindus having high populations, etc.). I have thought of a few ways that game mechanics could be changed to reflect the realities of religions without offending anyone, however.

Dietary restrictions are often clearly codified in the holy texts of religions, when present, and I don't see how anyone could take offense at reducing the benefits of pigs and crabs if your state religion is Judaism, or nerfing wine for Muslims. Hindus could get the production bonus from cows but not the food bonus.

The drawback is that these restrictions would serve as penalties and there are no balancing factors to make up for it. Judaism would be especially hard hit, being restricted from two kinds of sea resource and one grain along with the pig restriction. Islam is allowed corn, but they would lose a happiness resource instead. Hindus have it relatively easy, being forbidden only cows. I propose that we balance this by giving Judaism a large finance bonus and cheaper media buildings/wonders, Islam could have some mean camel riders in the older eras and a suicide bomber in more modern ones, and Hindus could get money from the new 7-11 improvement whenever another civilization starts building them.

[Urban Ranger]

Don't just add extra complications for its own sake. The game is not supposed to be realistic.

[DaShi]

Yes, and Judaism is the only religion that can mine diamonds. Christians get attack penalties against lions. And Taoists receive no cultural borders.

[johnmcd]

I think it's meant as a joke.

[Dauphin]

I'd hope so.

Suicide bombing muslims and 7-11 Hindus. Non-offensive stereotypes to be sure.

[Blake]

Started reasonably ended amusingly .

[rjmatsleepers]

Originally posted by DaShi
Yes, Christians get attack penalties against lions.

[iapetus556]

This probably wouldn't be appropriate for the core game, but could be interesting if allowed for scenarios, or if it was easily moddable:

If certain religions had prefered civics, such that using the "wrong" civic would cause Unhappiness among your citizens of that religion.

The main reason I thought of this was not so much for use with the standard religions, but so that major, international ideologies (E.g. Communism, Liberalism, etc) could be modeled using the religion rules. (E.g. Liberals favour Emancipation, Communists favour State Property, etc)

[Badtz Maru]

I thought some more about this...Buddhist missionaries should be able to fight pretty effectively. Taoists should get bonuses vs. vampires. I also like the Christians and lions thing...they should also have happiness penalties every 7 turns if they don't have access to fish. Confucians should suffer penalties if they don't arrange their cities by the principles of feng shui.

[Qwertqwert]

Would the AI look at the differences and let them be refelcted in their choice of religion? In every game I play Jewidasium (or however that's spelt) and Budahasim (or however that's spelt) are always the dominant religions. But if I made it so that if you are eigher one of those religions, you can't ever reashearch anything, and you can't use bonuses, and you can't controll more than 1 city, would they still go with those religions?

Oh, and I'm Hindu and I'm not really offended by the 7-11 thing. I thought it was funny. People that are so easially offended deserve to be offended.

[LzPrst]

People that are so easially offended deserve to be offended.

some people may find that offensive
kidding, but I disagree, people who are so easily offended should get their own country, on the moon.

anyway, give christians a special trait called forced conversion where they can kill\convert citizens of other religions whenever they conquer a city

also, quite seriously though, there should be some form of sectarian violence\trouble included, there should be tensions from several religions being in a city. (for RL reference check out northern ireland, sudan, israel\palestine, sri lanka, the philipines etc etc).

[FireWalkWithMe]

How about primarily heterosexual and homosexual nations? Hetero could have higher population growth, whereas homosexual could have higher culture spread. Primarily bisexual cultures would be hated by everyone, but have a huge happiness bonus.

[FireWalkWithMe]

Oh and the Mailnese would have increased income and could trade sports/music stars. And white civilzations could research a special tech named Appropriation and steal culture points from other civilzations.

[Son of David]

Well first of all, let me just point out that Muslims retain the same dietary restrictions as Jews so Muslims would also have to forgo pigs and crabs.

FireWalkWithMe - you should be ashamed of slandering white people like that.

[Badtz Maru]

Originally posted by Son of David
Well first of all, let me just point out that Muslims retain the same dietary restrictions as Jews so Muslims would also have to forgo pigs and crabs.

FireWalkWithMe - you should be ashamed of slandering white people like that.

Actually, Muslim dietary restrictions are not as strict as Jewish ones, there's a lot of things Muslims can eat that Jews can't, though I don't know enough about the Muslim dietary laws to give any examples off the top of my head. I know it's acceptable for a Muslim to buy meat from a kosher butcher but the reverse is not true.