The Decline of Islam

[CarnalCanaan]

I've always been a bit disappointed at the marginal role Islam ends up playing in Civ 4. I don't play a lot of games because I tend to play on huge maps, so I know I don't provide a statistically viable set of data. However, I have not seen Islam become a force in world politics since playing Warlords. I'm wondering if anyone else has noticed this problem or if there's been any reported change to the mechanics of religion-spread.

I know that religions tend to be founded by the AIs that tend to spread it aggressively (*ahem* Isabella...), but every Warlords game I've played so far has been dominated by Judaism.

Any other observations, subjective or objective?

[Prussia]

I think the religion spread system has been balanced out so that Islam can play a role in the game, however small. It helped, I agree, but not by much, I'm afraid.

The answer is simply this: Islam comes too late. By that time, everyone has a religion or has joined one for the benefits. It's only there for the the guys who didn't found one earlier, and were waiting for later to focus on religion.

It also helps balance out continent maps on MP (and SP), since most of the time there are religious wars on one continent, but the other is devoid of religion altogether, so Islam comes along and lets's that other continent join in the Holy War.

[UnOrthOdOx]

The earlier religions tend to have an advantage. Typically one or two end up being spread everywhere with the others not really spreading in my experience. Islam, being the last, is at an extreme disadvantage as whoever founds it probably has a more established religion and doesn't focus on spreading it much. And there seems to be little/no 'free' spreading if a city already has an established religion. So, without someone focusing on spreading it with missionaries (AI don't/wont unless its their state religion?) or being founded by an isolated civ, Islam is the odd man out.

There are those games where it is the only religion on another continent, and it becomes well spread as a result, but they are fewer than other religions.

[Destroyer]

Its just the way they come it in terms of tech.

Because its the last religion that is researched, and normally two or three civs tend to get all of the religions, it may get neglected.

In real life, both Chrisitan and Islam were spread very qiuckly across Asia Europe and Africa using missionaries, over hundreds of years - more so than any other religions.

Its difficult to replicate exactly what happened in a game of civ, but the same patterns occur in games because of the order in which tech get researched are often the same.

My solution would be to randomise the religions, as they are identical anyway.

[Will9]

I had a gamw when Islam played a very large role in the game. 6 religons were started on my continent and Islam was founded on the other and half the world's civs quickly became Muslims.

[MasterDave]

I like the idea of randomizing the founding of religions, tying them to the same 7 techs, but getting a different religion each time a civ is first to get a particular tech (e.g getting meditiation might randomly start Christianity or Taoism or a different religion). It would make each game feel less repetitive although, none of the game mechanics would change.

Barring that, Islam's problem is certainly its lateness in the tech tree (Taoism also suffers in most games for the same reason). Also, in multiplayer games, divine right tends to get passed over for more military techs, such as gunpowder, chemistry, etc. or the techs that lead up to liberalism. Divine right should come a bit earlier in the tech tree, and perhaps should cost less to research, making it a more appealing choice when it pops up.

[diemex]

I saw a game where only one city had islam (the founding city) and that city got razed before it had a chance to spread. Talk about tough... there was no way after that to re-introduce it. It was wiped out for the rest of the game.

[SirIlya]

Part of the problem is that in order to qualify to research Islam one must already possess the pre-cursors for several other religions. Which means that often Islam is developed by a civilization which already has one established.

As a possible solution, perhaps not all religions should be founded within the "religion" tech branch. Perhaps move Christianity and Islam out. Put Christianity somewhere in the technological/scientific branch and Islam in a military branch, perhaps. This would mean that these later religions would be likely to be founded by non-religious empires that might have a greater desire to spread those religions and which did not prioritize the religious tech branch.

Also, make the AI's more likely, if they found a religion, to switch to it and try to spread it. Historically both Islam and Christianity spread because of aggressive promulgation (both via missionaries as well as via military and cultural domination).

Another idea: scale the cost of missionaries based on the date of appearance. So Buddhist and Hindu missionaries would cost 1.25x, Confucians 1x, Taoist .8 and Christian and Muslims .5. This would sort of reflect the greater aggressiveness of the "apostolic" religions.

Also, perhaps slow down the automatic spread of religions quite a bit. So that fewer cities are seeded automatically outside the founding civilization unless it is spread intentionally via missionaries. This would mean that a civ might found a later religion and that religion would overcome the weakly established foreign religions.

[asleepathewheel]

Originally posted by Will9
I had a gamw when Islam played a very large role in the game. 6 religons were started on my continent and Islam was founded on the other and half the world's civs quickly became Muslims.

yeah, that's a pretty cool effect I've seen as well.

[Tattila the Hun]

Eh, could Islam be given the ability to automatically spread to cities which allready have a religion? Consider, that if a city allready has three religions, it would in real-life terms mean that the city is religiously tolerating, and would welcome another...

[Nugog]

Re: The Decline of Islam

Originally posted by CarnalCanaan
but every Warlords game I've played so far has been dominated by Judaism.

That is my experience in both Civ4 and Warlords.

I tend to play Pangea, Marathon, so it amy well have to do with when Monothesism is discovered on those settings, combined with open borders, close cultural borders ect.

But I always try and get it, as with a shrine it tends to provide lots of coin!

[LzPrst]

Civ4 religions are wuss-wimp-chicken religions. what do I mean? they are static. civ religions dont have ebb and sway, they merely come and stay. change this.

here is a few suggestions for powering up the late religions by weakening the early ones.

1. give religions a distance restriction based on the tech of the owner. for example, you cant spread a religion to a city that's further away than for example 5 squares until you develop printing press (suggestion only! other tech may be better). this would make early religions more regional (as they were).

2. the missionary cost would be very good. 1.25 for early, 1.0 for mid and 0.75/0.5 for late religions. brilliant.

3. add a nasty variant. if a missionary is successful there should be a chance that in addition to establishing his religion, he would remove one present religion. a missionary should be able to repeat missionize a city until only one religion remains, his own.

4. if a civ with a state religion captures a city there should be a chance that the state religion becomes automatically present.

5. put in a chance that if you have theocracy or organized religion civics non-state religions may die out. far higher chance in theocracy.

666. and finally, and most evil. forced conversion. when conquering a city with different religion from your state religion, you can choose to force convert the population, resulting in a population decline, some turns of oppression unhappiness and the removal of all/most other religions present and the establishment of your own. you could even use this on cities you conquer who already have your own religion, just to remove and crush the heathen infidels

risking the loss of gold\influence\information by losing followers will really add on to the religious wars thing. let the zealots roam across the land and lay their deathbringing words o'er the weakwilled populace

(and totally off the point, hinduism outdates buddhism, but due to the costs buddhism is almost always founded first. arrgh. swap the costs)

(and I am not thread-jacking. i think )

[couerdelion]

Perhaps the problem is that there are too many religions for anything but a huge map. With a large map, there are 9 civs present in a standard game, which makes it possible for all but two to have a holy city. Now assume that at least two civs are destroyed early and there’s one each. But by this time, religions have usually spread to all civs so it is at best a replacement religion for its own and more likely a second or third choice religion.

It would obviously be possible to tweak the missionaries too (eg make religions progressively cheaper to spread or gives progressively more free missionaries for the later religions)

So let’s say one of Judaism, Confucianism, Taoism get dropped and the following religions get free missionaries

Religions 1 and 2 (Budd and Hindu): 0 free missionaries
Religion 3: 0 or 1 free missionary
Religion 4: 1 or 2 free missionary
Religion 5: 2 or 3 free missionary
Religion 6: 3 or 4 free missionary

I guess, though, it may be possible to tweak the game variables to control the natural spread of religions. This way, later religions like Confucianism might not then spread like wildfire like it does in several of my games.

[Blaupanzer]

The later religions do spread more aggressively, albeit randomly, to cities that have no religion. However, these tend to be newly founded or captured barb cities, so the effect on the map is limited. I like the randomized religion idea, certain techs found a religion, but which one is determined by some algorithm applied at the time of the tech discovery.

Note: my experience has been that if another civ asks you to convert to their religion and you say yes, that religion shows up immediately in your capitol. (Okay, okay, I play a lot, and I was curious.)

[dregor]

The biggest thing working against it is that religions don't spread naturally to a city that already has a religion present in it, so the later ones (Islam, Taoism, even Christianity a lot of the time) don't get the advantage of natural spreading.

I'd personally like to unlink the religions from the techs they're on right now and make it a choice. For instance if you're the first to research Monotheism you'd get a choice of religions to found (Judaism, Christianity, Islam for example).