Religions - Towards a better, non-politically correct Civ

[Bkeela]

I would like to see Judaism eliminated as a religion. It is just wrong seeing the star of David represented like it is comparable to the other great faiths of the world. Judaism is really just a ghetto faith that developed after Christianity. Anyway, Islam and Christianity represent monotheism sufficiently well. I would most like to see Egyptian religions or the classical Greek and Roman religions come into their own.

[Mr Justice]

nice post blake,

but i dont agree with crusaders removing religions (tho religious buildings might be fair game).

i'm fairly sure that has never been accomplished anywhere in the world (forced i mean).

tho i accept that their are many straegic implecations of such a unit, it effectively opens up a new theater of "religious warfare" where the object might be to remove a religion from a particular region/landmass.
(for purposes of denying gold /happiness/culture)
certainly attempts at removing religions should cause atleast massive happyness penities and posibly rebellion in the city. only reason it shouldnt would be that if only a small percentage of the city pop actually followed that religion, but to work that out would require civ to be able to work that out.

very politically correct statement there bkeela,
but our personal opinions on the religions are meaningless, its what the followers of the religion think is what is important.

i still dont really see the benifit in giving religion specific bonuses, there is no real equivilent in RL imo. its how the religion is interpretated by the followers.

[Badtz Maru]

Originally posted by TheProvost
It did occur to me, though, that a nation could 'control' a religion's path. I'm not quite sure how it would work, but let's say you own the holy city (shrine) and some percentage of world belief (and/or declared it state religion). You could perhaps indoctrinate that religion with some specific benefit... say militarism or trade or happiness. That would then affect every civ using that religion as the state religion and obviously only in cities with that religion present. I'm thinking maybe it would cost gold and take a certain number of turns to be imposed (possibly also some anarchy) and would only last a certain amount of time before it would 'wear off' and have to be let lapse or renewed. Another option would be some kind of espionage where a civ can try to create a schism and eliminate a bonus in an enemy's chosen religion.

Anyway, that's kind of up in the air and vague, but strikes me as a decent approach, neatly side-stepping both the non-PC and technically invalid nature of pre-assigned religious bonuses.

I've given the idea a lot of thought myself (as evidenced by my recent, much less serious, thread on the topic), and I think this is one of the best ideas I've seen yet. It not only allows you to differentiate the religions without offending anyone, but it models how religions change over time and gives a benefit to founding late religions (as you can customize them to give your nation benefits you want). It also reflects how strictly ethnic traditions can be assimilated into a religion, at least temporarily - as an example, see how many Muslim women in non-Arab parts of the world wear traditional Arab dress when the Koran states only that women must be dressed 'modestly' and Muhammad is said to have chastised men who force their women to wear a veil when travelling among those who don't, because it's a way of drawing attention to your woman and the modesty requirement was supposed to do the opposite. An Arab-specific cultural trait is seen as being part of Islam when it technically isn't, but it still has influence on nations that have that religion (see also female circumcision).

I'd think that the benefits a founder could give a religion should also be balanced by negatives in at least some cases, here's where my ideas regarding dietary restrictions could come into play. A civilization might want to give their religion a cultural bonus, but in exchange they have to choose a health resource that would not benefit cities with that religion. One could also use these negatives strategically - is your co-religionist neighbor's maritime empire getting too populous and powerful? Time to introduce a dietary restriction on seafood.

I think also that the control of a religion should not always go to the founding civilization - for a real world example, see how Buddhism is associated with Chinese and other East Asian cultures despite being founded in India. I think that if another country has twice as many followers of a religion than the founder, they should assume control of the religion and be able to adjust it's bonuses/drawbacks (make that three or four times if the founder has built a shrine).

These factors would make religion a lot more interesting and useful, and lead to a lot of new strategies to playing. Some religions you would want to spread to all of your cities, some you'd probably prefer to be isolated in certain cities, some you'd want to share with other civilizations, some you wouldn't. You'd see religions become more and less useful as their control shifted and their purposes changed (i.e. a player might found an early religion and make it useful, but after it's spread to a bunch of other civilizations and the player has founded a new religion, they might make it more bad than good). The only problem I see is this would require some major reworking of the AI.

[Strategist83]

Blake, your new unit should rather be called 'inquisitor'.

[dmac]

I think the biggest problem with religion in Civ 4 is that you can only benefit by having more of them in your cities. This is totally contrary to real history where different faiths in a geographic area have been a serious cause of violence, war, etc.

I'm not sure how exactly that could be worked into the game, but maybe there should be an unhappiness penalty for having a non-state religion in your cities, especially if that city doesn't even have your state religion (i.e. in a city you just captured). This penalty could disappear when you adopt free religion. Also maybe you could remove the religion (maybe with a "crusader") except you would lose some population in the city at the same time.

Anyway I think it's kind of silly to have four different religions in a city in 1000 AD with all different temples, mosques, cathedrals, and so on with everyone being happy and holding hands even if the state religion is christianity, for example. In reality there would be inquisitions all over the place before that happened

[Snotty]

Theres a huge penelty in multiple religions if you do not have the holy city for them all, in that the enemy can see that city, and theres nothing you can do about it (bar war of conquest to take the offending religions holy city)

[gdijedi7]

How about assigning religion to units also?

This exists, sort of, already: Theocracy gets +2 experience for units built in a city with the State Religion.

But what if you had a Christian Marine unit, and a Muslim Marine unit? You were attacking a Christian country, so your Christian unit would get a penalty, while your Muslim unit might get a bonus.

[OssomTossom]

Originally posted by Mr Justice
nice post blake,

but i dont agree with crusaders removing religions (tho religious buildings might be fair game).

i'm fairly sure that has never been accomplished anywhere in the world (forced i mean).

Well, maybe the crusaders never managed to remove any religions from some given area (although the Spanish Reconquista could be considered a crusade, and they removed Muslims from Spain, didn't they?) but Christians did manage to eradicate various pagan religions, both in Rome and e.g. here in Iceland. I think German crusaders also managed to destroy the pagan religions in the Baltic states.

So, even if from a gameplay point of view, removing a religion from a city is generally a bad idea - two monasteries give more research %-bonus than one, two temples create more happy faces than one as well as allowing for more Priests, and they all add to the culture that's produced in a city - I still would like to have some way of getting rid of religions. Maybe that should only be possible under Theocracy - each turn when you're running Theo, there's a chance that some non-state religion is removed from some city in your empire.

[Arrian]

Originally posted by Bkeela
I would like to see Judaism eliminated as a religion. It is just wrong seeing the star of David represented like it is comparable to the other great faiths of the world. Judaism is really just a ghetto faith that developed after Christianity. Anyway, Islam and Christianity represent monotheism sufficiently well. I would most like to see Egyptian religions or the classical Greek and Roman religions come into their own.

I assume this is some sort of bad joke.

-Arrian

[Mr Justice]

Christians did manage to eradicate various pagan religions

well i assume a difference between converting populations enmass willingly and converting populations enmass unwillingly.
ie uk is chirstian but theirs still druids in uk.

ofc i accept that some religions fell out of favour and were consigned to the great big bin of history.
my point was that removing a religion should not really be in a players power, but he should be able to influence it by setting up the correct circumstances.

such as

Maybe that should only be possible under Theocracy - each turn when you're running Theo, there's a chance that some non-state religion is removed from some city in your empire

[lemur866]

Ancient Egyptian, Hellenic, Roman, and other minor religions are modeled in the game as "paganism". So the way to eradicate paganism is simply to spread your named religion to the city.

[couerdelion]

Originally posted by Blake
Christianity: +1 culture per Christian building. Can train Crusaders.
Islam: +1 exp and -10% science per Islamic building. Can train Crusaders.

In terms of balance, Christianity has the weakest bonus, but can crusade. Islamic has the strongest bonus and can crusade, but also has a penalty, embracing Islam will stifle scientific progress.

Strategically, I reckon they’d be pretty fun.

So Christianity (and its monasteries) improve sciences while Islam's don't and the temples reduce them?? Strange then to see that Western Europe was so far behind the Moslem world by the time the Renaissance came about.

Maybe all those Islam states also had Academies and Libraries everywhere

[Yosho]

Originally posted by dmac
Anyway I think it's kind of silly to have four different religions in a city in 1000 AD with all different temples, mosques, cathedrals, and so on with everyone being happy and holding hands even if the state religion is christianity, for example. In reality there would be inquisitions all over the place before that happened

I don't think that's accurate. There are pleanty of times when different religions co-existed. In Islamic Spain, for example, there was also a good number of Christians and Jews living there, with their own temples, and they were never persecuted. In the far east, there really never were large scale religious wars until Islam got to India.

[Ijuin]

Originally posted by dmac
I think the biggest problem with religion in Civ 4 is that you can only benefit by having more of them in your cities. This is totally contrary to real history where different faiths in a geographic area have been a serious cause of violence, war, etc.

I'm not sure how exactly that could be worked into the game, but maybe there should be an unhappiness penalty for having a non-state religion in your cities, especially if that city doesn't even have your state religion (i.e. in a city you just captured). This penalty could disappear when you adopt free religion. Also maybe you could remove the religion (maybe with a "crusader") except you would lose some population in the city at the same time.

Anyway I think it's kind of silly to have four different religions in a city in 1000 AD with all different temples, mosques, cathedrals, and so on with everyone being happy and holding hands even if the state religion is christianity, for example. In reality there would be inquisitions all over the place before that happened

I would agree with that. How about under Theocracy, every non-state religion results in a -1 happiness penalty? There have been complaints that Theocracy is more powerful than Vassalage anyway (since it comes earlier and has lower maintenance), and this would balance it out more.

[OssomTossom]

Originally posted by lemur866
Ancient Egyptian, Hellenic, Roman, and other minor religions are modeled in the game as "paganism". So the way to eradicate paganism is simply to spread your named religion to the city.

These three you named could hardly be considered "minor" religions. If they had any number of adherents today, then we might well have seen "Egyptian religion" instead of, say, Hinduism. These were polytheistic religions with a fairly well-organized clergy, esp. the Egyptian one.

"Paganism" as described in the manual:

"Paganism" describes religions that believe in the holiness of all things around them - rocks, trees, animals, clouds and so forth - rather than in specific concepts or beings.

Sure, I'm no Egyptlogist, but as far as I know, the Egyptians of old believed in very specific beings. So did the Romans, the Greeks, the Norse, the Celts ... etc.