RELIGION in Future Civilization Games

[Greetings]

Greetings.

I’ve been doing some thinking. I believe that Religion (aside from ceremonial burial, polytheism, monotheism, theology, temples, cathedrals, and religious Wonders) should somehow be incorporated into future Civilization games.

Religion, religious persecution, and religious fanaticism have had a MAJOR impact on the history of mankind. It dates back to the beginnings of civilization. The Egyptians enslaved Hebrews and forced them to build huge monuments. The Romans killed any Christian who tried to spread his faith. Christians and Muslims fought in the Crusades to gain control of the Holy Land. The Great Schism, which separated the Christian Church into the Roman Rite and Eastern Orthodox Rites, caused tension between the kingdoms of Medieval Europe. Panic spread throughout the world when the pope moved to Avignon, France, during the Great Western Schism, and Christians had to live with three men who claimed to be the Holy Father. The Protestant Reformation called for huge religious and political changes in dozens of different countries. Before the time of separation of church and state (and even now), entire nations are controlled by certain religions. Immigrants to the U.S. faced religious persecution for practicing their beliefs. A biology teacher, who taught his students Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, was arrested for not teaching the story of Creation. A man named Adolf Hitler ordered the murdering of over six million Jews during the Holocaust. Today, Muslims are being checked at airports because a few lunatics decided to become “martyrs.” The Pledge of Allegiance is being attacked for containing the word “God.” Palestinian extremists carry out suicide attacks on Israeli citizens.

These are just SOME of the effects religion has had on civilization. They are some of the more negative ones I could think of. Yes, a lot of good has come from religion, but a lot of evil has come from it also.

In future civilization games, I think the whole concept of religion should be included.

I understand some sort of religious government is being included in Conquests, but in my opinion, more needs to be done.

Does anyone agree? Are there any suggestions on ways to go about doing this? Feel free to share your ideas about this. Thanks, and good luck in your gaming.

[monkspider]

I have always wanted their to be selectable religions, in the same vein as governments, each with their respective bonuses.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

I don't know, but I reckon they could better incorporate religion, even in CivIII.
Here are some possible ideas:

1) Religious imporvements and wonders might have both a normal Culture value, but also a "Conversion Value". If your "conversion rate" is significantly higher than that of your neighbour, or vice versa, then there should be a percentage chance of citizens from that empire "converting" to the foreign civs nationality!! The chance would be based on the ratio of CR between the empires, relative cultural strengths, and distance (i.e. border cities would be more likely to convert to your religion!!) What is important is that, even if all of the citizens are of the new "nationality", the original Civ would retain control of that city!! It would, however, make future conquest of such cities MUCH easier to achieve.

2) Religious improvements would, however, carry a risk. Every new religious improvement in your empire would increase the likelihood of a "Schism", a random event which would cause the religious equivalent of either a "Culture Flip" or a Civil War-depending on the CR rating of the neghbouring empire. It would also depend on overall happiness, corruption levels and government type!! Whether a city breaks away would depend upon the number of religious improvements in that city, the happiness of your citizens, and the distance of your city from your "Religious Capital" (small wonder equivalent to a palace!)
Some religious tech discoveries and Wonders could, theoretically, increase or decrease the chance of a schism!! eg. discovery of Monotheism might cause your people, if they are already fairly unhappy or corrupt, to break away and form a new "monotheistic" civilization (like what happened with Mohamad and the Arabs/Persians!!)

3) Religious Buildings should be a prerequisite for certain "Religious Units"-like Crusaders, Holy Men and Missionaries. These could be units with low hp and Attack/defense strength who could, theoretically, go around capturing (read convert) foreign workers/settlers and even try and capture (read convert) undefended cities!!!

Well, there you have it, with only a little tweaking of the existing CivIII engine, you could very easily introduce Religion into the game!!!

Yours,
The_Aussie_Lurker.

[Azeem]

Incorporating actual religions could offend some people and it could easily become ugly. How about having you gradually "develop" a nameless religion (or you make up the name yourself) through certain tech advances?

For example, you start out with the basic "Polytheism". If you want to stay a "Polytheist" civilization, you modify it further by carefully choosing a certain research path. Say you research "Shamanism" and "Mysticism". This combination will then give you the "Oracle" wonder.

Religions experience various changes in their practice over time. I think a system such as this would reflect that.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

I totally agree with you Azeem, which is why my system for incorporating religion does note require any reference, at all, to existing religions!! The player can pretend it's whatever religion they like but, for game purposes, the religions would be "Generic"!
On another note, though, when you build an improvement like a temple or cathedral, which has a religious tech prerequisite, then it should probably obselete the effects of older improvements connected with older religious practices!! For instance, Romans are predmoninantly catholic today, so would not respond at all well to temples dedicated to a Polytheistic faith!!

Yours,
The_Aussie_Lurker.

[Dr. A. Cula]

I've been thinking about this issue for some time, so here are my ideas.

I think the main religions of this planet could be included in a future version of Civ, but all their characteristics should be modifiable and there should be space for people to implement their own religion. I'mm thinking something along the custom race design of MOO2, with bonuses and penalties.

There should be 4 basic types of religion: pagan, polytheistic, monotheistic and atheistic. Paganism is the original relgion, the only one present at start-up. It's followers can be easily converted to any other religion and don't get many bonuses/penalties. All other religions should have a chance of appearance that increases with the development of certain techs.

There should be an event for the appearance of each religion and any civ should have some sort of "oppresometer" to set up a tolerance level for each of them. Each empire would end up with citizens of different religions, each responding differently to city improvements, internal policies (religious tolerance) and maybe even external politics (if you have a peaceful deal with another civ that has a high oppresion level for a certain religion, your own citizens of that religion would not be too happy about it.). If you are too intolerant to the followers of a certain religion, but your next door neighbour loves them, any of your cities with a majority of citizens of that religion could revolt and/or switch sides, even if they are not on the border.

Each religion should appear in one place on a continent and the spread to every empire on that continent. Not all citizens of an empire should have the same religion, not even in the same city. Buidling some improvements should increase the chance of some of your citizens converting to a certain relgion. For instance, temples should increase the chance of your citizens converting to a polytheistic religion while keeping all "polytheists" contents, cathedrals should increase the chance of converting to a monotheistic religion while keeping all monotheists content, and colloseums should work the same way for atheists. If you build a temple in a city full of pagans, they should start converting to a polytheistic religion. The more tolerant you are towards it, the more conversions you should see. Monotheistic religions should work the same way, with one exception: if you oppress that religion too much, martyrs could appear in one or more of your cities, with the effect that you lose one citizen for each martyr contained in the event (random number), but a large (random) number of your citizens accros your empire would convert. Atheists should appear (for instance) after the discovery of communism and the chances should be greater in large cities with large number of unhappy people. Always the discontent should be the first to "convert", regardless of previous religion. You can't avoid the appearance of a religion by not researching a tech. If your neighbour has researsched it, then soon it would spread to you, too.

If you are intolerant of a relgion that is present in most of your cities (not necessarily a majority religion in every city, but has spread almost everywhere), you should experience empire-wide revolts, with an increased chance of civil war, when some of your cities leave your empire and either form a new Civ or join a more tolerant neighbour. If more than 50% of your citizens are of the same (non-pagan) religion you could declare a holy war/jihad against a neighbour that is intolerant of that religion, with the advantage of (greately) reduced war weariness even in democracy, plus citizens of the supported religion would not revolt for the duration of the war. But, if a minority of your citizens are of a religion that your neighbour suports, they would go in instant revolt, especially in a democracy. If you don't declare jihad, but go to war just because you felt like it, only the current war weariness mechanism should apply. Added bonus for jihad: if a city has more than 50% of it's citizens of your religion (that your enemy oppresses), you should get a production bonus for building military units, but none of the restrictions of mobilization. If you do declare mobilization on top of jihad, the bonuses should add up, with the penalty that the minorities who oppose the war (your neighbour's religion) would go into resistance mode. In a jihad, war weariness should kick in as soon as you have captured cities containing more than 50% of the citizens your neighbour oppresses. For instance, say your empire has a majority of monotheistic citizens (empire-wide) and a minority of polytheistic citizens. You show great support for monotheistic people and tolerate (but not oppress) polytheistic people. Your neighbour has a majority of polytheistic citizens and a minority of monotheistic citizens and has just passed a law to oppress monotheistic citizens. Then, you get the option of declaring jihad. If you do, your polytheistic citizens become unhappy (even if they were happy), while your unhappy monotheistic citizens become content. Any of your cities (above a certain size, maybe) with a majority of monotheistic citizens (probably most of them) would get a production bonus for building military units. If you declare mobilization, the bonuses would add up, but your plytheistic citizens would refuse to work. Supose now that most of the monotheistic subjects of your neighbour are grouped in a number of cities near the border. As soon as you capture enough of them to get more than 50% of his monotheistic subjects, you should be able to make peace with your neighbour and request a change in the oppression levels for the rest of his monotheistic citizens. The catch here would be that any city you capture would probably have a majority of polytheistic citizens that would go in instant resistance and you should not be able to qeull them until you make peace.

Another thing would be the ability to set up a holy city for a certain religion. If your empire has more than a percentage of the known world's followers of a certain (monotheistic, maybe also polytheistic) religion, you get the option of setting up a holy city for that religion. This could be a city with a large cultural value, or with all its citizens of that religion or maybe even a random city. If there are more candidate cities, you will be asked to choose. You could even establish a holy city that belongs to someone else, giving you a valid reason for jihad as long as your citizens of that religion are a majority. The same city could be a holy place for more than one religion, as long as they share some characteristics (think Jerusalem). The number of followers of one religion world-wide would determine when the holy city event appears. The civ that is asked to set up the holy city depends on the number of citizens of that religion in it's borders, though 2 or more civs could negotiate this. For instance, if 40% of the world's population follows the same religion, but only 15% of them are in you empire, with 5% more in your neighbour's empire, then you and your neighbour get to negotiate a holy city placement. Later, other civs could acknowledge it's existence, for the sake of their own citizens of that religion, with the bonus that those civs that acknowledge the same holy city would get bonuses for trading with each other and have a more relaxed attitude towards each other. If you and someone else negotiate a holy city deal and the other civs gets it, you can't declare jihad over it. You may capture it on a regular war, but it would be subject of separate negotiations at the end of the war. Also, your citizens who accept that holy city would become unhappy if you bombard it, unless you declared jihad on the infidels who keep it.

A variant of this would be to set it up as an independent civ (think Vatican). This civ would not be able to expand (no settlers) and would only build a limited number of medium defensive units. It would get a small amount of gpt (1 or 2) from every civ that acknowkledges it until that civ discovers communism (state donations to the church), and after that it's income would be boosted by the actual number of people of that religion world-wide (private donations), without any effect on the other empires. Some of this money would be spent on world-wide peaceful conversions (missionaries), while some of it would go into funding religious buildings in the empires that recognize that holy city, For instance, you could have deal with the holy city civ in which a temple or cathedral in one of your cities is rush-built (with money from the religious leader), and you pay it back in gpt or luxuries. The price would be higher than normal rush-building and would increase every time you officially ask for it. There should also be events where a temple/cathedral is paid for by the holy city civ at no cost to you, and these should work for every civ except those with a communist government with the result of improved relationship with the "infidels" (civs that don't acknowledge your holy city). Of course, the "infidels" may choose to demolish that temple/cathedral for money/shields, but in this case the relationship should deteriorate. Each civ may acknowledge more than one holy city, for each religion in it's empire, and may even revoke that acknowledgement (done automatically when switching to communism) with increased cost for re-acknowledgemnt (for instance, the religious leader could ask that you build 5 new cathedrals to prove you are no longer communist - you may even have to build new cities for this!).

Each religion would grant bonuses/penalties to it's followers, in the form of production, trade, culture or research.

A Fundamentalist government would increase these bonuses, while eliminating the penalties, with the usual research penalty. Fundamentalist governments would have the option of choosing a "state religion", that would increase bonuses and eliminate penalties for citizens of that religion, but it would not affect citizens of other religions, and it would even make them unhappy. Fundamentalist states would dislike Democracies (freedom of religion for the "infidels") and could be able to declare jihad on fundamentalist states of other religions, without the penalties for breaking treaties. A Communist government would have a "state religion" of atheism, the worst oppression on any other religion and the option to declare jihad on any fundamentalist state. Any civ that has entered the industrial age should only be able to declare jihad if in Fundamentalism.

A twist on Fundamentalist governments could that some techs could be flagged for "state religion". This means that a tech could be researched faster if you have the required "state religion". For instance, suppose that you havbe a choice between 2 techs, one of them flagged for a certain "state religion". If you're in Monarchy, you should be able to reasearch any of them in 10 turns. If you're in Demcracy, research time would be reduced to 8 turns. But, if you switch to Fundamentalism and pick the right "state religion", the research time for the flagged tech would be down to 5 turns, while for the unflagged tech would be 12 turns. However, if you pick another "state religion", research time for the flagged tech would be 14 turns (no research for the "infidel" tech). As a real life example, IIRC during the 1950s, cybernetic research was banned in Communist states, for being burgeois.

[Dr. A. Cula]

Forgot something: an independent "holy city" civ would have permanent RoP and MPP deals with everyone who acknowledges it. This could make things more interesting, when the "infidels" decide to get some of the gold hoarded in there, only to face another crusade.

[Hail Caesar!]

Originally posted by Dr. A. Cula
I've been thinking about this issue for some time, so here are my ideas.

I think the main religions of this planet could be included in a future version of Civ, but all their characteristics should be modifiable and there should be space for people to implement their own religion. I'mm thinking something along the custom race design of MOO2, with bonuses and penalties.

There should be 4 basic ........

As a real life example, IIRC during the 1950s, cybernetic research was banned in Communist states, for being burgeois.

I think someone has way too much free time!!

[Rhothaerill]

Don't dismiss Dr. A Cula's thoughts just because he took the time to think this up. There are a lot of good ideas in there. That's the whole thing with this thread is a way to make the game more in depth and realistic.

If all new ideas get shot down before they get discussed then we would have never have any new ideas.

EDIT: Don't mean to sound preachy about the last thought. It's a cliche, but it's true.

[Rhothaerill]

Okay now that I'm back on I'll finish my thoughts.

We KNOW that the programmers for this game want feedback and will use it to try and make the game better. This thread and many others just give them something more to think about when they are designing either an expansion or Civ4. Dr. A Cula gave an in-depth look into some of the possibilities and that's a very good thing.

My personal views on religion in Civ tend to follow the others. It is a good option to have and could give depth to the game, but I don't think any "real world" religions should be added. Religion is a senstive topic for most people (me included, though this isn't the forum for that) and including real world religions could create a backlash that no one wants.

[Agathon]

Incorporating Religion would be just inviting tons of emails complaining about why someone's (i.e. the one true) religion wasn't given its due.

[HazieDaVampire]

governments should also have some religion war spec, like, old governments should have wars of religion as a bonus, so the player gets good things from going to war with a civ which is of an enemy religion. The AI would also be more aggressive in the same manor.
New Governments shouldn't get that meny bonuses, because polititions try to not take this into account when going to war, but it mite make the citizens more happy.

[Azeem]

Originally posted by Agathon
Incorporating Religion would be just inviting tons of emails complaining about why someone's (i.e. the one true) religion wasn't given its due.

That's why religions should be nameless and completely customizeable as your civilization progresses through the ages.

[Flamegrape]

Re: RELIGION in Future Civilization Games

Originally posted by Greetings
The Egyptians enslaved Hebrews and forced them to build huge monuments.

That is very, very debateable. I don't subscribe to that belief. I think the egyptians themseles built their own pyramids.

[M. le Comte]

Since man exists, "sacred" does too. It was his first attempt to understand the world around him. "Sacred" is a characteristic of mankind. Sacred does not hurt by itself.

Religion is the established "sacred". It implies rituals, practices, hierarchy, authorities and so on. As far as this establishment remain within metaphysical concerns, it doesn't hurt neither.

The issue is that politicians have, since the beginning of History, tried to use religion to serve their personal or ideological goals. Some of them were good goals, some other, less good. That is not the point. However these men were not, after all, religious men. They were politicians.

Religion, as culture, or linguage, is a source of problems when men try to use it for a secularian purpose.
example: in Iran, there was no problem with modernity or western values until the 1970's. Moreover, Iran was an average developped country. But in those years, economics collapsed, and someone, named Khomeini, had the idea to accuse western values of being the cause of pauverty. Religion became a wonderful tool for him. Before, never had muslims in Iran been espacially intolerant against other religions.
example: one of the main reason why Venise (the french name for the city on the water in Italy, I don't know how to call it in english) helped crusaders during the XIIIth century was that they wanted Constantinople.
example: Liban (Lebanon) was a very stable country with three religions living together: muslims, christians and druzes. However, with the war in Palestine, terrorist organizations fled to Liban (Hezbollah). It made the local government collapse.
example: Golan is claimed by Israelis as a part of their Holy Land, and for this reason occupied. But Golan has also a wonderful interest: the country which controls Golan controls WATER.
last example: ponder over the fact that my country, France, still supported catholicism in african colonies during the 1930s, whereas Church and State have been separated since 1905. It was a way to strenghten... french teaching, that is to say integration, that is to say our domination.
...

I think religion should appear in civilization. But not in its "spirituality" dimension. We should not implement the "sacred" in a game where the final goal is political domination. It wouldn't respect people's and player's own spirituality.

However, religion as a political tool should be implemented, and with it the possibility for the player to use proselythism as a tool of militaristic and cultural domination.