RELIGION (ver1.0): Hosted by Stefu

[CormacMacArt]

I hate to pull a complete 180, but maybe having religion in civ is a bad idea. I have read what has been posted recently and it disturbs me. I for one, would not like Christianity and Judaism to be grouped with Islam. Hashem and Allah are nothing alike. And what about Hinduism? Is that monotheistic? It depends on who you ask, and still their god is nothing like mine. You say that I'm taking this too personal? No. I am looking at the judgements that you are making on each of the religions.
I think that there should be AI player religions that (according to their own agendas) help or hinder a civilization depending on that civ's attitude towards itself. That or the Civ II method. I have not heard of any other idea that would not get someone really ticked off.

[NotLikeTea]

I agree in that grouping religions only leads to hassles, and accomplishes little.

I do like the idea of religion existing, though. Look at history.. it was important. In Civ games, the only identifying factor for a citizen is their nationality at the moment. Greeks are greeks, russians are russians.

Religion could be a trancending factor. Religion A may encompass the Greeks and helf of your Russian civilization. The half with the same religion as the greeks would have a better attitude towards them. A war against the greeks would be frowned upon more by this segment of the population. Afterall, borders change all the time, but the people stay more or less the same.

If I conquer a civilization with anotgher religion, they would be under my control, but would retain this former identity, and a resentment towards me, which could be trouble...

All religion would do is allow me to adjust the amount of control I have over these feelings. A fundamnetalist government could increase feelings of anger towards alien religons, while a more accepting one would decrease internal strife.

[Aharon Ben Rav]

To respond to a few people, I chose to demonstrate religious categories rather than specific religions because it goes with the "rewrite history" connotation of Civ.

That's why the government type is called "Democratic," not "Congressional" or "Parliamentary." This is why the economic system in SMAC is "Planned" and "Free Market," not "Russian" or "American."

When you make suggestions, remember not to make them so confusing that they are undoable in the actual game. As I said before, it seems to be that 85% of the suggestions being made on these lists are simply way to complex to include in a game designed to be sold to the general public. Even adding two "sliding bars" for amount of faith, as suggested by MBrazier, is a bit too complex. Let's not even talk about these suggestions to have half your Civ be one religion, half of it be another, etc.

The idea is not for specific religious categories to be better than others any more than specific government types are better. Each has an advantage and a disadvantage. You choose what fits your empire-building strategy best.

As an added point, I would think upheaval costs for changing religion types should be much higher than to change government types.

Finally, I don't think this thread should become an argument about religious history, but to quickly respond to CormacMacArt, who states: "I for one, would not like Christianity and Judaism to be grouped with Islam. Hashem and Allah are nothing alike."

This is not a suprising statement coming from a self-described conservative Christian. The concept of "Judeo-Christian values" is put forward by political conservatives in this country who are looking to get Jews and Christians to agree on a set of principles and see Islam as a political enemy (which, at present, they are). However, these the three Western religions have much more in common with each other than they do with Hinduism or Bhuddism.

In fact, if you wanted to choose one to be "different" it would not be Islam, it would be Christianity. If you look both historically and in current teachings, Judaism and Islam have much more in common with each other than either has in common with Christianity. Neither Judaism or Islam is concerned with the concept of salvation as much as Christianity is, and the trinity concept can be troublesome for both. Both are primarily legal religions, with the Talmud and the Shar'ia, as opposed to the more faith-oriented Christianity which has no comparable legal code.

If anyone wants to discuss this elsewhere, feel free to contact me.

Aharon Ben Rav

[Ecce Homo]

My radical idea: RELIGION AS AN AI PLAYER

Imagine an AI player that is not a civ. It can negotiate with civs, build temples and other structures in their cities, collect tithes, use propaganda against enemies and even raise small armies!

Each civ would be able to make different "treaties" with religion civs (Promote to state religion, allow, tolerate or persecute).

Maybe even a human could play as a religious leader?

[CormacMacArt]

That was what I was trying to say. Thank you for saying it so concisly!

[Ecce Homo]

Yes Cormac, you wrote it - but I didn't read it! I just got this idea today and posted it, without knowing about your statement!

[delcuze2]

*** FIRST POST ON THIS TOPIC ****

This may seem an over simplification on the surface, but I think it may be a solution to avoid some of the ethical/moral problems we are struggling with here...


*** A PROPOSAL ***


If Civ III uses the "Social Engineering" model of SMAC, then the Real V.S. abstracted religious model could be side stepped.

Social Engineering should have a "Philosophy" section. In this SE section would be categories that yield the effects of religion with out having specific religions.

The SE sections would become available due to technological (read understanding of the universe) advances.

Your civlizations Philosophy setting would effect:

Diplomatic relations/options
Government types available
Speed of Research
Happiness Level of Citizens
Productivity of Citizens

*** WHY PHILOSOPHY INSTEAD OF RELIGION? ***

The purpose of a religion is an attempts to answer basic questions about the universe the people live in. Questions like:

- Why are we here?
- How did we get here?
- What happens when we die?
- How should we live together?

Some of these questions are answered or directed via political philosophy. For example:

- Tolerant societies are more apt to be
- republics than intolerant ones.

- Monarchys are more apt to support
- uniformity of world view.

Sometimes these questions are answered by technology that profoundly effect the way people in a civilization act:

- "My gosh the earth really does
- revolve around the Sun...
- Are we still god's chosen?"


Sometimes, exposure to other peoples philosophies changes our own:

- The Jewish religion did not develop
- Heaven and Hell until exposed to the
- Zorasterian in Babylon.

The philosopy of a civilization has a strong impact on how it deals with other civilizations. In other words, your world view effects how you see other people.

All of these things about world view and not necessarily about specific religions.

Therefore let us use meta-physics ...philosphy... as the controlling factor here and not religion.


*** SUMMARY *** (not all from my message)

1) There will be a backlash if religion is directly expressed in the game.

2) Religion has powerful effects on the course of civilizations

3) Perhaps Civ III should use components of philosophy (i.e. world view) to simulate religious effects and sidestep #1 while getting #2.


Other thoughts?


[This message has been edited by delcuze2 (edited May 26, 1999).]

[MBrazier]

A note to Giant Squid, and anyone else proposing to model real-world religions:

DON'T.

The Civilization games aren't meant to model the history of ideas, or the complexity of religious/philosophical controversy. They have always been restricted to economics and politics -- the developing of natural resources, the movements of goods, the manueverings of armies and diplomats. Putting real religions into Civ3 directly, and modeling the development of their doctrines, would create a highly complex system of the game, whose effect on the rest of the game would be unobvious (and therefore not much fun), and (very probably) offend a large number of potential customers. It's just not worth it.

I suggest that, if religion is modeled at all, that it not be controllable by the player. Every so often, as a random event, a new religion would appear in the game, starting at one tile and sweeping outward. Each civilization would then react to the religion as it reached them, deciding to (say) persecute it, tolerate it, or establish it as the state religion. These "official" religious attitudes would color diplomacy; if, for instance, the Chinese persecute the Roman state religion, the Romans will dislike the Chinese.

The sliding scales I mentioned before would be hidden from the players. The "faith" rating would control how quickly a religion spreads -- come to think of it, you'd need two separate ratings for that. Call them Evangelism and Conviction: the first rates readiness to convert others, the second rates resistance to being converted. Then you'd have a third rating for Tolerance, which controls the religion's attitude to state power; a low-Tolerance religion isn't happy unless it's a state cult (and creates unhappy citizens if it isn't?) while a high-Tolerance religion actively avoids state endorsements. Of course, all religions would object to being persecuted, and to any _other_ religion being made a state cult.

Why would a player want to establish a state religion, though? One idea: having an established religion allows you to build Missionary units. These units would have no ability to attack other units; all they would do is attempt to convert the tiles through which they pass. You would make these units to take advantage of religion's "side effects" -- to improve your reputation with another civilization, or to seed it with civil disorder arising from religious disputes.

The basic idea is simple: the rulers of nations and empires never have cared much about points of doctrine, therefore a player of Civilization shouldn't pay much attention to them either. Religious disputes have caused rioting and started wars, so it makes sense to model that in the game; and rulers have very often exploited that for political gain, so the player should have the option of doing the same.

[Giant Squid]

Sorry. just checked up on this for the first time.

I still say real world religions are the way to go. Having Zulus and Americans and other real civilizations just made the game better. If you wanted to do a WWII scenario, you could just change the Zulus to, say, Italians, and you'd be all set. I didn't see any Indians complaining that India was a prettybad civ (it was, I never saw it get anywhere in any of my games unless it was the human player) So, if you have a problem, you can go to rules.txt and change it. Think of how much better it is to switch from Democracy to Fundementalism than from Governemnt 6 to Government 4. I specifically made religions relatively well balanced (like the original government. Some don't spread as quickly because, well, Buddhists just like to do their own thing while Jehovah's Witnesses go convert everyone they can find. I don't think I misrepresented any relgions. I'm Jewish, and I don't have a problem with Judaism having a very low growth rate. It does in real life (Jews usually don't try to actively convert people) The only problem I could see is someone being mad if their religion was left off the list.

------------------
Invertebrates of the world, UNITE! Don't just be a bunch of spineless....ah....never mind
<=O=&gt=E

[NotLikeTea]

I stand by my desire for multiple "religions" in one civ, but drastically simplified.

This could be condensed. A captured city relates more closely to the original owner than to the new owner. This would decrease over time.

Results: Harder to win by total conquest. Liberating former territory would be easier. Possibility of internal strife.

I also think that this may be the simplest way of modelling the historic effect of religion/identity, with realistic results.

I don't think thast this is excessive... maybe mentioning it under "religion" was a bad idea, but this is just a place to throw ideas to the wind, and let Firaxis pick up what they like.

[HolyWarrior]

A reminder to all--the Religion forum has been updated--please send all new posts to Religion 1.1.

Thank you.

[paraclet]

There should be an option in Civ to allow a civilisation to grow without religion.An atheist but non communist choice where people can enjoy philosophy without the peoples opium of religion. In these civ theaters should replace temples, then sex shops, then birth control which really separate pleasure from reproduction.
And even in civ using religion, it should become obsolete after the discovery of birth control for the same reason.Churches are more and more empty at the door of the third millenium and more we explore space and make more scinetific discoveries more religion is becoming obsolete...

[yin26]

-=*MOVING THE THREAD UP*=-

[Stefu]

YYY-IIN! THERE IS A NEW THREE-EEAD! CLOSE THE OLD OO-OONE! THAA-AANK YOU!

Just shoot me an e-mail next time. It will be closed very quickly that way. **Yin**

<font size=1 color=444444>[This message has been edited by yin26 (edited June 14, 1999).]</font>