I was reading through the news and thinking about Pakistan and India's (and south asia vs. Arabia/Persian in general) history and how religion has shaped that part of the world more than anything. The idea of holy wars has been suggested before, but it could make Civ4 insanely more fun, I believe and should be explored further.
In order to implement this idea, I was thinking along the lines of having a civilization being able to produce military units that they could send to terrorize or wipe out religions in other cities or just take over or raze cities. However, these military units would not be part of that country's formal army, and no war would have to be declared. You could muster up a couple of allies and assault your heathen neighbor, or if they had your holy city, occupy it. This would obviously sour your relations with the country with the religion you attacked more (-7 our religions are at war) but you wouldn't have to declare war. If you chose to declare war at the same time, production of these military units could become cheaper.
Along these lines, (of course for PC reasons, this would never be implemented), but the later religions, such as Christianity and Islam especially, could have an advantage in producing these units so they could spread their religions faster (since Islam has little impact on the game but in history, it kinda has... just a tad).
And if you look around at the present day, this is almost exactly what happens. Saudi Arabia is the US' lover, except for the fact that it is actually the government that funds its holy warriors that attack by proxy. And throughout history, there is so much fighting out of any official gov'ts' hands, this could account for it. Possibly, these units could even just pop out of contentious cities from time to time as well (kinda like the Knights Templar wonder from CIV 3 conquests Middle Ages).
I think this would exponentially increase the level of fun of Civ, especially during the somewhat boring middle ages.
In order to implement this idea, I was thinking along the lines of having a civilization being able to produce military units that they could send to terrorize or wipe out religions in other cities or just take over or raze cities. However, these military units would not be part of that country's formal army, and no war would have to be declared. You could muster up a couple of allies and assault your heathen neighbor, or if they had your holy city, occupy it. This would obviously sour your relations with the country with the religion you attacked more (-7 our religions are at war) but you wouldn't have to declare war. If you chose to declare war at the same time, production of these military units could become cheaper.
Along these lines, (of course for PC reasons, this would never be implemented), but the later religions, such as Christianity and Islam especially, could have an advantage in producing these units so they could spread their religions faster (since Islam has little impact on the game but in history, it kinda has... just a tad).
And if you look around at the present day, this is almost exactly what happens. Saudi Arabia is the US' lover, except for the fact that it is actually the government that funds its holy warriors that attack by proxy. And throughout history, there is so much fighting out of any official gov'ts' hands, this could account for it. Possibly, these units could even just pop out of contentious cities from time to time as well (kinda like the Knights Templar wonder from CIV 3 conquests Middle Ages).
I think this would exponentially increase the level of fun of Civ, especially during the somewhat boring middle ages.
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