Imagine no religion...

[mijae]

My husband and I are both Civ nuts and atheists. We've found the addition of religion in Civ 4 to be a great idea, but a bit of a mixed bag. While we don't like religion, in real life we don't like slavery and war and conquest and all that either, which we do plenty of in this game. So that's not a problem. The problem for us is that among the many benefits religion gives, one of them is increase in scientific research! That's just going too far!

But rather than whine and gripe about our non-religious sensibilities, we're going to attempt a fun project to see what it would take to create a Civ world with no religion, and see how the rest of the game plays out after that. Here's what I think it's going to take...

A cooperative multiplayer approach. Player 1 is the "normal" player, player 2 the religious scapegoat. The scapegoat will pick a spiritual leader and beeline for the first religions, trying to get the first 3 founded in the first city. Meanwhile, Player 1 will scout out the scapegoat's location and leave a warrior right near that city.

After founding the first 3 religions and pumping out a couple settlers and workers, (maybe Christianity could get snuck in too, but that might be pushing it) the scapegoat builds a new city to survive just before Player 1 declares war and uses that nearby warrior to raze the super holy city to the ground. The scapegoat then rebuilds on the capital city's nice location and the war is ended, with the players working cooperatively again to get the scapegoat back on track to found the rest of the religions and repeat the razing process.

So the idea in a nutshell is to have the human players found all the religions, then raze the holy cities before they can spread anywhere.

Anyone tried this before with any success? Is there something I'm forgetting that would really screw up the plan?

[DrSpike]

Other than the fact it's nutso I don't see any problems.

FWIW I would probably class myself as atheist too, but religion is a part of history so it's inclusion in the game makes sense. Either way it's gameplay that is most important, and by removing religion you are removing important strategic choices.

The free religion choice (the one that improves research) is about whether it is worth giving up the benefits of the other religious civics (faster builds, more xp, more gp) for a small boost to research from giving up a state religion for an accommodating free society.

[proviisori]

Or easier way to do this...

Make the another civ like you did, use the worldbuilder to give it all the religious techs and thus he founds all the religions (maybe you'll have to do this one religion / turn, so there will not be any bugs).

After this, you just destroy the civ in worldbuilder (putting a barbarian lion to the city is fun way to do this).

and.. voila... no religions in the game. The whole world is thinking for themselves!!

[SebP]

I am atheist myself but there's something to be said for the speculation that the monotheistic religions helped spreading a less mystified view of the world, compared to pantheon style tribal religions with gods who throw lightning on a whim. Note that not having a religion in civ4 makes you not atheist, but pagan nature religion as i understand it. At least until philosophy is developed.

These religions may well have helped the formulation of scientific method. But my history knowledge is too limited to allow for more than baseless specualtion


Oh and i don't see why the plan wouldn't work. On noble, found all religions via priests in the capital. Then obliterate them all

[Will9]

Re: Imagine no religion...

Originally posted by mijae
My husband and I are both Civ nuts and atheists. We've found the addition of religion in Civ 4 to be a great idea, but a bit of a mixed bag. While we don't like religion, in real life we don't like slavery and war and conquest and all that either, which we do plenty of in this game. So that's not a problem. The problem for us is that among the many benefits religion gives, one of them is increase in scientific research! That's just going too far!

Think about it, what was the only estabalishment to educate people in the middle ages? The Church. When I read that I see a direct insult to anyone of any religon anywhere. It seems like you are saying that religon makes you backwards. The greatest minds of the middle ages were monks. The first European to discovery gunpowder was a monk. Sir Isaac Newton was a minister. The first universities were built by the church.

[proviisori]

Re: Re: Imagine no religion...

Originally posted by Will9
Think about it, what was the only estabalishment to educate people in the middle ages? The Church. When I read that I see a direct insult to anyone of any religon anywhere. It seems like you are saying that religon makes you backwards. The greatest minds of the middle ages were monks. The first European to discovery gunpowder was a monk. Sir Isaac Newton was a minister. The first universities were built by the church.

Keep your friends close, keep your enemies even closer.

Science is the #1 enemy of the church.

[MightyTiny]

Atheist here also. (Does civ4 attract an unusual proportion of atheists for some reason? )

It's the "free religion" option that gives the extra research - that, I think is entirely accurate! After all, a state with free religion is a secular state, that doesn't get it's science "guided" by a state religion. A secular state with free religion is, after all, what at least the great majority of atheists I know want, not an "atheistic" state (meaning a state where religions are discriminated against).

Also, monasteries used to be centers of learning, not only in religious matters, but in matters of the natural world... though at the time, the two weren't really viewed as that different. Religion surely also hindered the process of science at times.

The problem I see is that with the discovery of the scientific method your research may go down, because you loose the bonus from monasteries, and it isn't replaced with anything!

Um... the "scientific method"! Has there ever been an invention in the history of mankind more important, and more enabling for science andr research? There should be some benefit to research at least to offset the loss of monasteries with the discovery of the scientific method, methinks.

[MightyTiny]

Now that I think of it, couldn't a solution be that with the discovery of the scientific method, while monasteries would loose their science bonus, universities and observatories would gain +20% or maybe +25% research?

[DrSpike]

Not really necessary, you get boost to research around that time from free religion, and indirectly from rep and free market. At that stage you've recently built observatories too.

In short it's fine.

[LordShiva]

I wish we could disable/set a custom number of religions

[MightyTiny]

Originally posted by DrSpike
Not really necessary, you get boost to research around that time from free religion, and indirectly from rep and free market. At that stage you've recently built observatories too.

In short it's fine.

I know that it's pretty balanced as it is, but conceptually it's just horrible that while you get boosts to research around the same time you may research scientific method, getting the scientific method itself will LOWER reseach.

I think the bonus to "new" research facilities that replace the role of monasteries with scientific method would be appropriate - if that unbalances the game, then perhaps to offset that, later game tech costs could be increased a bit... so that essentially scientific method would become an attractive, important goal to achieve fast, rather than one to avoid reseaching as soon as you can, so as not to suffer a hit in reseach.

[SebP]

In an earlier discussion about this topic, someone said something along the lines that, i believe, scientific method was was good the way it is because it increases choices. The argument was scientific method as soon as possible or as late as possible (or something in between) was one of the most interesting choices in each game. On the one hand you lose research not only from monasteries but possibly from the great library too, on the other hand, the 3 techs it opens up are among the most powerful in the game.

I'm inclined to agree

[joncnunn]

Throwing in my two cents:

1. The "Free Religion" religous civic choice that boosts science by 10% also locks the civ to "No State Religion"

2. Monstaries only boost reserach by 10% each and only require that a religion(s) be present, not that it be the state religion. More over, they expire with discovery of scentific method (along with the Great Library wonder). This results in no new monstaries can be built post Sci Method and also that the existing ones can now only add culture and allow missonaries.

[snoopy369]

It is trivial to disable religions through a scenario mod. Give me twenty minutes and i'll have one up for you

Another simple option is to rename religion "philosophy" and give them new names ("Neorealism", "Socratian Dialogue" etc.)

[snoopy369]

Here is one such mod. It simply invalidates the religions' tech requirement (makes them require a tech you can't research). Religions will never appear if you play this mod.

Just unzip this to your /civ4/warlords/mods/ directory, then advanced-load mod-NoReligion.

This is for Warlords, it could easily be done for Civ4-Vanilla as well.

There's more stuff I tried to do (still in there), like create a temple replacement, but for some reason I can't get it to appear. I'm not sure why. If you can build an "Agora", that's the building I created.

Edit: I figured out my mistake, updated. Agora should appear (using the Taoist Temple art) and Collegium (using Taoist Cathedral art). There's no monastery, instead the above both give slight science boosts.

Great Prophets and Priests are also (in most instances) now called Great Philosophers and Philosophers.

There's no quick way to replace the Religious civics, so I suggest just not using them. They don't do much anyway, except for Pacifism or Free Religion. They could be invalidated in the same manner as the religions themselves if you wanted.