Some religions founded too late?

[wodan11]

Originally posted by TimeTraveler
I should probably mention that if founding a religion was to require getting a great prophet, it'd take a lot of work to found a religion at all. Unless monuments start increasing the great prophet rate a bit, or if there come available indigenous temples and whatnot, it'd take a wonder or Caste System for the first religion to be founded anywhere.

Good point. In addition to upping prophet GPP from some buildings or wonders, another way to "fix" it would be to grant a free great prophet here and there.

Wodan

[joncnunn]

I wouldn't want founding a religion tied to a Great Phophet for the simple reason that having a religion is very important to geting enough religious points to get a Great Phophet.

Also the wonder should have come few centuries after the tech allowed was invented; you can't store hammers as something else in Civ 4 to prestart a wonder.

[eris]

The first three religions do tend to dominate the game. The next three religions may or may not be a factor, but do so often enough to be interesting. In order to help them along, Firaxis gave those three religions a free Missionary, which helps. Even with the free Missionary, the seventh religion still gets lost in the shuffle. I have always thought that the seventh religion should come not only with a free Missionary, but an automatic Holy Shrine. This would give you immediate incentive to spread that religion for cash purposes and possibly give it some presence in the world. It is the simplest change I can think of and I do not think it would unbalance anything.

[LDiCesare]

One thing I've come to wonder is, what if some tech advances would be connected with multiple religions? But instead of the first discoverer getting both, it'd be where the first to discover founds one religion and the second to discover founds the other? For example, first to Monotheism founds Judaism and second to Monotheism founds... Zoroastrianism?

That's not very hard to mod (I've done it, I must still have the code somewhere if someone wants it but it's annoying as some C++ was required, which means a dll and compatibility issues with other mods using C++ unless you recompile everything yourself). It will not correct problems of religions arriving at a time different from its actual discovery, but may prevent some religions from happening later.
The best thing imo would be to have late religions be able to overcome older ones (crusade, jihad, whatever, but let them destroy other religions when they spread). For instance, when a religion spreads or when a spread check is made, a religion could replace an older one rather than come in addition. The probability of this occuring would be somehow tied to the difference between the founding dates of the religions.

[SlightlyMadman]

There was a point in the early development where religions were mutually exclusive, so a new religion's spread would wipe out the old one. It was removed for game balance reasons, but I think it could stand to be revisited now that we've had a chance to try some new mechanics with corporations.

What if certain religions competed with others, much like corps do (so spreading with a missionary would remove competing religions)? If the late religions were set up properly in the competitiveness, a good missionary push could still allow it to dominate. I think this could be interesting for game play purposes, as well as be a bit more historically accurate.

Buddhism<->Taoism
Hinduism<->Confucianism
Judaism<->Christianity<->Islam

They're obviously not perfectly historical matchings, and the three-way competition of the Jewish/Christian/Islamic faiths weakens them a bit, but it could be interesting. Maybe give Judaism a missionary and Islam 2, to balance it out.

You'd still be able to have 3 per city, which is still enough for Free Religion to be useful, and for a culture victory.

[WTBCzero]

Originally posted by SlightlyMadman
There was a point in the early development where religions were mutually exclusive, so a new religion's spread would wipe out the old one. It was removed for game balance reasons, but I think it could stand to be revisited now that we've had a chance to try some new mechanics with corporations.

What if certain religions competed with others, much like corps do (so spreading with a missionary would remove competing religions)? If the late religions were set up properly in the competitiveness, a good missionary push could still allow it to dominate. I think this could be interesting for game play purposes, as well as be a bit more historically accurate.

Buddhism<->Taoism
Hinduism<->Confucianism
Judaism<->Christianity<->Islam

They're obviously not perfectly historical matchings, and the three-way competition of the Jewish/Christian/Islamic faiths weakens them a bit, but it could be interesting. Maybe give Judaism a missionary and Islam 2, to balance it out.

You'd still be able to have 3 per city, which is still enough for Free Religion to be useful, and for a culture victory.

Trouble is, if your going for a culture victory, you'll be forced to have three religions that don't cancel each other (say, Taoism, Hinduism and Islam), which is not always possible.

[LDiCesare]

My proposal was a random deletion of older religions. It allows to keep all religions, but if you want to keep an old religion where it used to be, you may have to build a missionary to make sure you can spread it back after it's deleted by a new one, IF that happens.

[Unimatrix11]

Why random ? Why not have some kind of anti-missionary ? The Inquisitor - avaiable with either theocrathy or devine right. Rather the later, to give the one who founds islam a headstart on clearing out other religions. It would work pretty much like a missionary which removes any one religion (one action-button, with a crossed out religion-symbol for each religion in the city the inquisitor is in) and would cost like 1/4 more than a missionary...

I also like the prophet-founds-a religion idea... How about just giving hathepsut another UB and make hers the standard (the monument that allows for two - mabye make it one - priests) ?

EDIT: Also let´s have a limited number of religions in each city - anything between 1 and 4 would do for me... - cathedrals should just be expensive and require the appriate temple build in that city...

[LDiCesare]

Pronlem with inquisitors is: Why would you use them in the first place? On the other hand, an automatic religion spread could replace the religion in the target city, which means that the younger religion would spread by itself even if there's another religion in the city (it currently does not).
In fact, maybe allowing the automatic religion spread to cities which don't have a younger religion, rather than to cities which have zero religion, could be enough? But I think that, to make later religions worthwhile, I think more is needed than just that.

[Unimatrix11]

Well, yeah, the inquisitor makes little sense with unlimited numbers of religions per city, i guess... - but i´d like to see that changed anyway: How about 1 religion possible for each 5 population ?

Also with the prophet-founds-relgion-thing, i´d like the shrines to come for free.

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by LDiCesare
My proposal was a random deletion of older religions. It allows to keep all religions, but if you want to keep an old religion where it used to be, you may have to build a missionary to make sure you can spread it back after it's deleted by a new one, IF that happens.

That's quite simple btw, in python Look at the warlords scenario, hmm, the religions one... it does a similar thing (in its case, it allows you to remove a religion by spreading a new one). Similar concept (programmatically).

[jnh140]

A lot of the deeper religion mechanics people are discussing would make for great events; such as a violent and sadistic sect of buddhists splitting off to form their own rebel religion.

[SlipperyJim]

Originally posted by SlightlyMadman
What if certain religions competed with others, much like corps do (so spreading with a missionary would remove competing religions)? If the late religions were set up properly in the competitiveness, a good missionary push could still allow it to dominate. I think this could be interesting for game play purposes, as well as be a bit more historically accurate.

Buddhism<->Taoism
Hinduism<->Confucianism
Judaism<->Christianity<->Islam

I can't speak to the proposed competition between the Eastern religions, but I know that last point doesn't make any historical sense. For example, all three of the Abrahamic faiths are alive and well in Jerusalem....

Okay, yeah, they fight with each other a bit. Maybe a bit more than a bit. Still, my point is that Jerusalem is Jewish, Christian, and Muslim all at the same time.

[SlightlyMadman]

Originally posted by jnh140
A lot of the deeper religion mechanics people are discussing would make for great events; such as a violent and sadistic sect of buddhists splitting off to form their own rebel religion.

Actually, that's an amazingly simple idea. Just add a bunch of events that can remove religions from cities and/or add new ones en-masse. That way you don't have to screw with the current game mechanics or balance much at all.

[el_hefe]

You people really are missing the point of the latter three religions; delayed contact.

The only times where you will see the first three religions dominate the map is when playing on a large communal landmass or small archipelago map where all the civilizations can quickly and cheaply make contact with each other and, more importantly, where they can set up a large array of trade routes with each other as a result before Astronomy. For other maps like continents or even hemispheres with more than 10 players, it is rare that the first three religions will ever dominate more than 25% (assuming all other factors are equal) of the total population in the first 100-200 turns. The reason for this is because they simply cannot spread to unknown civilizations in large quantities because of the lack of trade.

Further, in a game where there are, say, 5 continents with two players on each, there are always going to be certain civs more likely to grab to easy religions whereas there will be others more likely to go into other branches. For the civs that do get religion before 3000BC, they will at most only heavily influence religiously 6 (3 of which being themselves) out of the ten total civs before Compass and Astronomy. And during that time, AIs (and the human) have the opportunity to research the advances for either Taoism, Christianity, or Islam to catch up on happiness/economic benefits denied by the first 3 already being acquired.

So, in actuality, the argument being made here that the latter religions are always made ‘obsolete’ by the first ones doesn't take into account the fact that there are other maps besides Pangaea.