Religions - Towards a better, non-politically correct Civ

[Yuufo]

Hello,

This topic is about possible adds to that already great game! While reading a Sid Meier (or someone from the game staff) interview, I saw they decided not to affect special bonuses to religions, to prevent from being politically incorrect! So, that game has 7 equal religions. Some of them ar systematically used and get a world wide success, some others, like Islam or Taoism, don't get an audience, unlike in the real world. (I precise I am no Muslim )

In the middle ages, one doesn't go for religious techs like earlier in the game. Because you have already your religion, or you are infected with another. To introduce greater diversity, why not give religion-specific bonuses?

The question is now: which bonuses? Something linked on the specificities of these religions in the real world, I think. But I don't know the real religions enough to find appropriate bonuses (in fact I never used the word "religion" so often before ). And the bonuses should be better for late-game religions! Any ideas on the problem?

Maybe something about war for islam, GPP for taoism, culture for christians, gold for jews ? kidding, I don't know what would suit the game! Better ideas?

Yuufo

[Snotty]

I dont like having a foreign religion in my cities, so Ive turned later religions into major religions before

[Mr Justice]

i dont think differentiating between the religions is that usefull. all religions are usefull, especially as i beline for free religion generally.

as you know religion gives you shines when u own them (gold) and culture benifits(culture). culture affects the defence of cities (war/defence). also go for theorocy for war making benifit(war), pacificism gives GP bonus(GP), you get production bonuses from org religion (sheildS). with a religion you can build temples which help happiness(happy).
all in all all those bonuses you mentioned are there already plus some others, and freely available for any religion.

anyway specific religion bonuses would apply to civs who have a state religion, but for free religion you dont have any state religion so unless u improve that your throwing the religious government choices out of balance.

personally i think they made the correct decision, i dont see a difference in any of the religions (in the game ofc), with the late arriving religions there for the players who missed out on all the previous ones (to get his shine).

middle ages onwards i'll spead any religion that comes to me in my lands, unless i already got 3 of em.

aside, anyone ever have all 7 in a city?

[Schtix]

One thing I could see happening, although not exactly a problem, is just that religions would become a bit more like civics. You'd have Monty picking the "war religion," with Gandhi creating the "peace religion" and so fourth.

I would like to see very small bonuses to each religion however. Something that wouldn't compel a war-monger to adopt the religion just so it assists him in conquering other cultures, yet something that could prove fairly useful in the right situations.

And, the most religions I've seen in founded in a single city are four, but I'd love to see all 7 sometime.

[Yosho]

Well, one thing that would make sense would be for missionaries for the latest religions to be cheaper to build. It's historically accurate for Christianity and Islam to spread themselves more agressivly then buddhism, and that might make later religions more significant.

[joncnunn]

I've noticed that the further apart the empires are [and especally multiple land masses], the more significant having 7 religions in the game is since religions founded on the other land masses won't reach there pre-Astronomy.

[TheProvost]

This idea has come up a few times here, and I've never quite liked it. I mean, sure it's politically incorrect, but it's also a bit silly generally. I mean, every major religion had gone through major shifts in its focus. For example, Islam and Christianity - which is more militant? Why would you give culture to Christianity and not Islam or Confucianism, given the Muslim and Chinese empires? I realise you were joking around, but I think the underlying point is sound - no religion is consistent and monolithic, even if they try to portray themselves as such.

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.

So, can anyone tweak this to make it solid? I'm sure there's some gaping holes

[Yuufo]

Some religions don't pretend to be universal. For example, Judaïsm only concerns selected people. On the contrary, the Bible and the Coran tell believers to spread the religion to the extremities of the Earth.

=> Why not restrain the missionary unit to the later religions?

[Urban Ranger]

I think they way religions are handled is quite nice.

There are two things you need to remember, Civ is neither historical nor realistic. Thus, to modify an existing element you need to think in terms of the game. Most importantly, will that add to the fun factor? If not, such a change is best ignored as the additional complexity doesn't help.

[Ijuin]

I think that later religions should spread more easily than earlier religions--not overwhelmingly faster though. For example, Islam and Taoism might have only 50% of the failure probability for their missionaries compared to Hinduism, Buddhism, and Judaism, and Christianity and Confucianism might have 75% of the failure probability.

[laissez-faire]

I would agree that the current state of religions in-game works well - not perfect, but well. To attempt to add religion-specific bonuses to each would likely result in an over-weighting of one or two over the rest.

I would, however, like to see a slight adjustment to the way religions affect diplomacy. 1) It would be nice to have brotherhoods of the cloth receive a slightly stronger positive bonus in diplomacy, at least during the ancient period through the middle ages. 2) To attack another religion would have a negative bonus allocated to the attacking civ by all other "brothers". 3) A few more religions would also be nice to increase the value of the "brotherhood-of-the-cloth" bonus.

One of these new religions could be Scientology which founds when someone builds Hollywood.

[PaganPaulwhisky]

originally posted by laissez-faire
1) It would be nice to have brotherhoods of the cloth receive a slightly stronger positive bonus in diplomacy, at least during the ancient period through the middle ages. 2) To attack another religion would have a negative bonus allocated to the attacking civ by all other "brothers".

1) In my experience the positive bonus is quite large especially if the other civ is spiritual (I've had up to +11 for this). I think the positive bonus depends on the number of cities the rival civ has with your founded religion (though I'm not sure about this), which would explain the lower bonuses at the very beginning.

2) This already happens to some extent. If a group of civs shares your state religion then most likely they will be friends due to the positive religion effect on diplomacy. Therefore when you declare war on that civ, you will get the negative "you declared war on my friend" penalty. You also get hit with war weariness penalties for declaring on a "brother" civ. In my last game everyone next to me shared confucianism, which I founded and spread. I had to declare multiple times on several of these civs. The diplomatic and unhappiness penalties were quite severe. Basically, I went from having three pleased to friendly allies to two annoyed neighbors and one cautious neighbor who I wiped out. I did not even declare war on one of them, he just got mad at me for picking on the other two.

[Blake]

Here's how I would add new effects to religion, paying no heed to who will be grievously offended and focusing on strategic significance and balance.

Bonuses would be tied to the religious buildings and only work if matching the state religion, so on the most part significant investment is required.
Buddhism: Science, +1 per Buddhist building.
Hinduism: ? Happiness (for larger pop) or something? If happiness, then +1 happy for having both Temple and Monastery, another +1 for the cathedral building.
Judaism: Gold, +1 and +5% gold multiplier per Jewish building.
Confucianism: Less upkeep. -15%* city upkeep for each conf building.
Taoism: Great People. +15%* GPP for each Taoist building.
Christianity: +1 culture per Christian building. Can train Crusaders.
Islam: +1 exp and -10% science per Islamic building. Can train Crusaders.
* assuming unfavorable rounding. If fractional amounts can be tracked then reduce bonus.

Crusaders would be trainable with Theology, and only at cities with matching religion+state religion and perhaps Theocracy. They would be a missionary which can also fight, with the following stats:
5 attack, 2 move, 60 hammers (missionary/swordsmen are 40). Classified as melee.

The crusaders would have two abilities:
1) Spread religion. Unlike the missionary version, this would also remove one existing religion! 100% chance of success. State religions resist being removed to a degree.
2) Purge city. Only works on friendly cities which already have the state religion. Removes 1-2 religions and associated religious buildings.

Using these abilities on other civ’s cities or captured cities would result in diplomatic negatives "You are forcing your religion on our people", unless they have the religion as state religion. The option of using normal Missionaries would still be available.

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.

[Yuufo]

Great post Blake, even if the numbers may need to be improved! But I like these bonuses, and the Crusader unit (which should perhaps be strengthened... 7? And only 1 move.

[monkspider]

Great work Blake! It's really a pity that Firaxis didn't take a similar route. It would certainly make the question of which religion to follow even more intriguing.