RELIGION 2.1 (Hosted by Stefu)

[Stefu]

This makes me feel so insignificant!

[Cartagia the Great]

Going with my ideas before, what if each 'class' of religions start out with some base abilities, which would be all posative(by which I mean, no religion would take things AWAY, but would just add differant posatives on to the empire.

Anyway, as time goes on, these would change. Paganism which might get, at first, +25 percent food production, +0 percent science, -10 percent corruption, and a 50 percent reduction of war unhappiness(unhappiness coming from the fact that your warrios keep getting slaughtered). Howe,ver over time, the Paganism in question might turn so that it ends up like this: +0 percent food production, +25 percent scientific research, +10 percent happiness and a 25 percent reduction of war unhappiness.

For these reasons, changing religions would not be, so much, upgrading, as it would be changing to something better suiting your nation. If your a war like civilization, at first PAganism might be grea,t allowing your population to grow quickly, and to turn out lots of units which could get killed with no bad affects. Over time, however, the religion might change to that favored by a more scientific, peaceful land, and Philosophical might suddenly change to something your war like nation would need.

Of course, your nation could try to to theocracy which would try to cement the religions ratings as they currently are, but there would be soem down sides to this as well, such as unhappiness by other religions in your nation. Just a few ideas, what do you think? this was, I bleive, mentioned before, but I thoughti 'd bring it back into discussion

[raingoon]

Stefu, et al --

Here's my idea for implementing religion into Civ III in a way that answers most of the issues people have raised on these boards, and also on the Firaxis boards. That is to say, with the benefit of reading every post that's come before, and incorporating/shamelessly stealing something from almost every other idea, I humbly offer the following synthesized solution... (posted in another form over on the Firaxis Social Engineering board).

I. Religion as Game Concept

1. Religion should be a game concept approximately the size and weight of Civ II's taxation and trade combined. It should not simply be one of many categories under the heading of "social engineering" for the player to fiddle with, plus or minus, as they try to manipulate their population. Rather, religion and population would be effectively synonymous.

2) Its main reasons for existing in the game are

a) to finally, once and for all, model the *huge* effect religion has had in shaping real world civilization within Civ III; and,

b) to add a level of strategy to gameplay that makes Civ III more authentic and fun and not just more of the same, slightly different.

Much has been said about how to incorporate religion, and let me just pause and say if I really had exactly the answer, I wouldn't bother putting it up here for discussion. Well, maybe I would. What I'm suggesting now is a simple, but fundamental core idea that I think can make many of the other ideas work and I'd like to hear what you guys have to say.

II. How it Would Look in the Game

1. There would be three religions.

2. These religions would have real world names. Taking the cue from earlier discussions, made-up names would probably add unwanted comedy to Civ III. On the other hand, choosing one sect may be too controversial for some, so I agree by default with those who have advocated the concept of beliefs. Monotheism, polytheism, animism, agnosticism -- names like these have been suggested. Personally, I would still prefer Judeo-Christian, Islamic, and Budhist (which worships at shrine and temple, for the person who asked). But I don't want to get into that debate. In the end it just isn't important to gameplay. So for now, we'll call them religions and think of them as beliefs.

3. Each religion would have a corresponding color. These colors would NOT be confused with Civ colors, and would only be seen if you opened up a city and saw it's religious makeup (some type of bar graph/pie chart), or filtered for it on the game map (e.g., hit the F1 key). In the field of Human Geography, it's really fascinating to compare real world political boundaries with religious boundaries -- Likewise, in the game, it would tell you a lot to be able to hit the F1 key and see that where your political border stops, religion X happens to encompass a large part of both your population and your neighbor's.

III. How Religion Would Spread

1. Each religon would behave like a virus. It would spread via unit to unit, or unit to city. Some have said they would want to have direct control over what religion their population chose. But the only reason to do that is because one religion had a bonus value greater than another, and again, that'll never fly. Actually, it would be more fun to try and shape the religious make-up of your society using the many tools at your disposal -- war, diplomacy, city improvements, Social Engineering modifiers, wonders, or scientific advances. By experimenting with certain inhibitors and enablers, religion would, in effect, be a mini-sim within the game.

2. Each religion would be incompatible with the others. Whenever two religions "met on the road," each would seek to dominate the other.

3. Each unit in the game would have its own religious affiliation. You would not need to know what it was, the AI would track it. As others have suggested, whenever two units with differing beliefs came into contact for whatever reason, a conflict would resolve immediately, based on each unit's evangelical/conviction ratings. The base values would be the same for all units. Again, religious affiliation would NOT modify these values in any way. However, the player could create a government type that improved one value or the other, and all units in that player's civ would then benefit. Its very simple, really. Basically, whenever two units came into contact a mini philosophical debate would be immediately resolved.

4. Units would also come into religious conflict when coming into contact with a city. Alright, this isn't *totally* worked out, but basically whenever a unit entered a city, that unit's belief would immediately be challenged by that portion of the population which held differing beliefs, each population unit belonging to one religion.

a. Population units would be about 1/5 the strength of a game unit, so that a city size five would be about an even match philosophically for a single unit.

b. Any population units with the same belief as the unit entering would lend their values to that unit. Every opposing religion in the city would then have its chance at converting the unit, or be converted.

c. Obviously the affects would be cumulative, and I'd be lying if I told you I knew how it would all work in practice, but I believe if you were playing the game, all social modifiers being equal, it would not be uncommon to see a small city experience dramatic and sudden shifts in beliefs, while larger established cities would change much more slowly.

d. ALL THE ABOVE IS HANDLED BY THE AI. You only see the results as the city's religion graph changes over time.

e. City's would not convert wholesale without a crusade (military conquest by units of like faith). Perhaps units in crusade could be immune to philosophical challenges along the way.

f. Any hypothetical missionary unit would simply have much larger evangelical and conviction values.

g. A city's beliefs would grow and change over time, and would be affected by the presence of certain city improvements, etc. For instance, building a shrine, a mosque, or a church might strengthen that religion you wanted to strengthen -- or have an even more dramatic effect.

h. Barring extreme measures (laws enacted) by the player, the population would be capable of sustaining all three religions in each city.

IV. Fodor's Guide to Your City's Religion

1. City's are the first places you'd notice religion in the game.

2. In the city window, a player would see that each population unit in a city subscribes to one of the three religions. Again, a city could have one, two or all three religions represented.

3. Each city can have only one religious identity. No matter how many religions are represented in a given city, the majority religion would always rule. In other words, if London was 35% Budhist, 33% Judeo-Christian, and 32% Islamic, then London would be considered a Budhist city.

4. While a player should be making decisions about which religions to promote and discourage, they would not receive any advantages if their population subscribed to X over Y. Rather, the bonus would come by managing to create a homogenized society consisting of all X religion, or a harmonious society consisting of X, Y and Z religions together -- a true feat -- or from the stability achieved with your neighbors by arranging compatible religious regions along your borders, in some combination of all three. The possibilities for penalties and bonuses are endless...

5. ?

V. Religious Regions

1. Using these rules, it's easy to see how over time, cities in close proximity to each other will eventually be dominated by the same religions. These would then form religious regions within your borders.

2. Larger civs are more likely to consist of more than one religious region. Smaller civs are more likely to be homogenous.

a. Depending on your strategy this could be good or bad. On the one hand, you may be Serbia -- clearly not socially engineered to hold differing regions together peacefully. On the other hand, regions like Kosovo would inevitably appear that tend to match up with the religion in its neighboring civ across the border, and thus add strategically to your military stability. And it might also increase the likelihood that Kosovo will split and join with its like-minded neighbor. Likewise, you might achieve a profound social structure and be the sudden beneficiary of an unstable neighbor, inheriting a like-minded religious region -- and a war with its former owner. All this would depend on new diplomacy rules concerning when two neighboring civs share the same beliefs.

3. On the game map, filtering would reveal religion by region in yours and others' civs.

4. ?

VI. Origin of Religions

1. I propose seeding the map with specific religion tiles at the beginning of the game. Your first non-aligned units will pass over one and adapt that religion as its own, taking it "from nature", as it were. It'll then proceed to spread that religion until it discovers one it deems superior (i.e., loses a religious challenge).

VII. Miscelaneous

1. What religion is given to newly created units? I guess they would subscribe to the dominant belief of the city in which they were created.

2. In the case of new units of population, the percentage they would be born believing in religion X, Y, or Z would be exactly equal to the percantage that religion X, Y, or Z was represented within that city.

3. ?


Well, there you have it. I hope I haven't offended anyone by incorporating an idea into this that they originated. I read everybody's post, but I didn't learn names. I only hope there is enough merit and fun in this idea for putting religion into Civ III that others (you guys) will comment on it, help me bang it out, or even incorporate some or all of it into your own.

-- C. Brooks

<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by raingoon (edited August 02, 1999).]</font>
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by raingoon (edited August 02, 1999).]</font>
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[MBrazier]

Raingoon, it looks good to me, mostly. A few comments...

1) Why limit the number of in-game religions to three? I think one religion per civ, plus or minus a bit, would be a more appropriate number -- a hard limit of three strikes me as too low for an Earth-size world.

2) The advantage of religious homogeneity is, obviously, civic peace; but what advantage would you give to your "harmonious" situation, with several religions present and none with a plurality? Real societies like that are definitely _not_ noted for civic peace.

I think what you're shooting for here is something similar to the "state religion" suggestion that, ahem, I made some time back. The player could pick one religion as his official state cult, in which case his best interests lay in spreading that religion and suppressing all others. Or he could opt out of the religious game by having no state religion -- a course you'd pick, probably, if your civilization already was split into several religious blocs, and bringing one to dominance would be too costly and time-consuming.

3) The notion of religious tiles as origin points doesn't quite fit with the rest of your system, based as it is on the meetings of units and cities. A better system, to my mind, would be an occasional "prophet" event, in which a random unit (or city dweller) spontaneously converts, and spends the next few turns energetically preaching The Word to everyone it meets (give it a sky-high Evangelism and Conversion during that time.)

[raingoon]

Setu

What do you think about city to city? In my post, I actually had included -- then deleted -- a "city to city" model for spreading religion, because I couldn't see concretely how it would work. As you suggested, perhaps like trade routes? Should there by cleric units that trade in a certain religion exactly the way caravans trade in a certain commodity in Civ II? Mbrazier has an idea for "prophet" units with high conversion abilities, although for a slightly different purpose.

Here, it would be a direct way you could try to stem the tide of one religion where the AI was having it spring up in a city where you didn't want it. But if the AI is to handle city to city religion "creep", then I'm pretty much out of my depth trying to guess how that would work. Any ideas? The "caravan" concept I do get -- it's simple, seems realistic, and would give the player that much more control.

[raingoon]

see below
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[raingoon]

Mbrazier

1) Why limit the number of in-game religions to three?

I'm open to a good argument for more. I offered some explanation in my original post, but here's another reason or two why I think three. First, it's that magic number -- think luxury/tax/science. In a closed system (like a city) you can't up one without dramatically lessening at least one of the other two. I'm theorizing here, but my guess is more than three would require very long games to homogenize the game map of an Earth-sized world. I'm sure religious conformity would become a new strategy and victory condition.

2) The advantage of religious homogeneity is, obviously, civic peace; but what advantage would you give to your "harmonious" situation, with several religions present and none with a plurality?

Of course modern American society has engineered itself socially to allow religious beliefs to live in harmony that in other parts of the world, they don't. But you make a good point for the game. Modern Jerusalem or Croatia are better examples of what the average civ would have to contend with. I guess the norm would be "civil unrest" unless laws were passed making citizens content -- instead of JS Bach's Wonder, now any civ could get the effect for accomplishing this. That's not a bonus, per se, but just the absence of a penalty that existed. In other words, it would just make things harder to have multiple religious regions in your civ, and be an incentive to homogenize.

I think what you're shooting for here is something similar to the "state religion" suggestion that, ahem, I made some time back.

The credit is all yours -- Although I'm not sure I agree that's what I'm shooting for.

The player could pick one religion as his official state cult, in which case his best interests lay in spreading that religion and suppressing all others. Or he could opt out of the religious game by having no state religion -- a course you'd pick, probably, if your civilization already was split into several religious blocs, and bringing one to dominance would be too costly and time-consuming.

Let me see what you think of this. Suppose each religion has a Holy City. This would be determined at some point in the game, a la the discovery of Philosophy in Civ II, where a world announcement is made declaring the largest city in each religion to be the Holy City for that religion. Now you can point and say "That is a religious state" residing within my borders." Is this your original "state religion" idea? I apologize if so, but humor me -- Now you have a negotiation situation. Because the head of each religion is now able to make demands, and the demand is always the same: "Go forth and spread the word, or else!" Or else those cities within your civ who belong to that religion will destablize until you do something. So now you're dealing with a "state religion" that is not synomymous with YOUR state. That's the main point I'd stress you don't want. CormacMacArt made this point on the Firaxis thread, I believe. Your negotiation would go like this:

a) Word comes out of Holy City insisting you increase their ranks via war or missionary zeal, ASAP or else. You do. Or...

b) You turn your back on the church's demands, Holy City then calls for a crusade against you to liberate it. Rival civs take arms where the religion exists (unfortunately for you these civs are naturally usually right next door). OR...

c) You pacify your Holy City and go on with your other strategy. Important that what you get out of this Holy City business, is that owning the Holy City would be a BIG happiness reward. Probably be what replaces JS Bach's cathedral. Of course, you can launch your own crusade to capture a Holy City from another civ.

[i]3) The notion of religious tiles as origin points doesn't quite fit with the rest of your system, based as it is on the meetings of units and cities.[\i]

Yes -- I like your way. Your way would ensure that religions would be spread equally in the beginning, allowing each religion a chance to catch on.

[Stefu]

Interesting... does it spread from one city to another? trade routes for example?

[MBrazier]

Raingoon:

1) The luxury/tax/science triple is something the player controls, so having only three options simplifies play. Religions, in this model, are mostly computer-controlled, which means keeping play simple isn't a concern.

Religious uniformity as a victory condition is certainly interesting, but I suggest that it _should_ be extremely difficult. After all, here on Earth we have four major religious bodies (Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism) plus several small pockets of other religions -- and that's after 6,000 years of contention!

2) "Let me see what you think of this. Suppose each religion has a Holy City. This would be determined at some point in the game, a la the discovery of Philosophy in Civ II, where a world announcement is made declaring the largest city in each religion to be the Holy City for that religion. Now you can point and say 'That is a religious state" residing within my borders.' Is this your original 'state religion' idea?"

No, it isn't, though it's a good idea -- in essence, the religions would appear as diplomatic players, equal to the civilization heads. Before explaining what I had in mind, let me add that historically the heads of religions have had many concerns beyond spreading the Word; they might, for example, try to make a peace between warring states.

What I had in mind, however, was the kind of church-state relations between the Greek Orthodox Church and the Byzantine Empire, or those between the Church of England and the English Crown in the 16th and 17th centuries. In short, an official state policy favoring one religion at the expense of all others; what the US Constitution calls an "establishment of religion".

Why would a Civ player want to do this? Well, in my original suggestion, picking a state religion made a small number of that religion's devotees content, _and_ created unrest in the other religions' devotees in the same proportion. A "religious" city improvement then multiplied both those effects. Under this system, as you can see, the more homogeneous your civilization was, the better -- if you had a state religion.

On the other hand, if you didn't pick a state religion, the religious beliefs of your citizens ceased to matter. You would quell unrest by the bread-and-circuses method -- high luxury rates, entertainers, Colosseum and Welfare Office improvements, etc.

Obviously all this is open to improvement (though this is where your own ideas are foggiest, I think?)

3) There's another advantage to the "prophet" idea you haven't considered: it can be used at any time of the game, so that new religions can pop up, or old ones suddenly revive, all throughout history.

4) A suggestion for city-on-city religious interaction: When the game is adjusting the religious balance in a city, have it count every N citizens in cities at the other end of a trade route as one citizen of the city itself.

[raingoon]

Mbrazier

1. Well, you've convinced me -- more than three religions wouldn't necessarily make the game too complex, but would definitely be more convincing historically. I was just concerned that religion not "take off" as this whole new game within a game suddenly. But you've addressed that. So true, it should be very hard to fully dominate a world religiously. It also implies you must officially represent that religion, which would underscore the need for a Holy City. Imagine getting near to dominating religiously, then someone captures your Holy City, declares state religion to finish converting their own cities and wins the game!

2. Also agree about the concept that religion is an AI diplomatic issue -- that is, just to reiterate, a religion is NOT a civ. It's a virus your civ catches and at some point you will have to deal with its needs. Very simple. Very true to history.

3. State Religions -- So this would show up as a social engineering choice, "Declare". Question, Do you have to have a Holy City to declare? Or can any civ declare a "state religion" so long as it's represented within its population sufficiently to warrant doing so?

4. But back to basics -- What does it take to suddenly find yourself negotiating with a religion? I suggested the emergence of a Holy City. You said declare a state religion.

Ah -- wait: Holy Cities are requisites for declaring a state religion. Maybe you intended that. So now, given there can be only one Holy City for each religion, then only one civ can have an official "state religion" of that type. So, say you achieve a Budhist Holy City and declare state religion. Now suddenly everybody in the game with large Budhist populations are in a more tenuous position. If you keep yourself in the church's good graces, you can get the church to make real demands on your enemies since the church would hold some sway over all Budhist population happiness in the game.

That just clicked for me, anyway.

[Maniac]

Hello Religion Threaders,

I have a question for you all.
Over at the SE/Government v2.1 thread we're having a large discussion about which effects the Religion Atheism should have.

I want it to have +2 Research, +2 Corruption, -2 Happiness.

Means faster research, less corruption and unhappier people.
This is also what was suggested in The List v1.
So I think most people agree with me, but now there are two others saying that Atheism should have a research penalty, -2 Research.

Now I am asking neutral people(=you) to decide what it should get.
What do you guys think?

[MBrazier]

Raingoon:

Since, we're obviously on much the same wavelength, I'll just address the points of disagreement; if I don't mention something, you can assume I like it.

I don't think it makes sense to turn "Holy Cities" into the prerequisite for religious establishment; if there are devotees of religion X within your borders, you can choose X as the state religion. But it _does_ make sense to use "holy cities" as the prerequisite for diplomatic interaction. That is, if a religion has chosen a capital city, it can then build embassies in the civilization capitals, have ambassadors requesting an audience, ask you for aid, threaten you with interdict, and anything else that the designers dream up. But if a religion has no capital (many real ones don't!) you can't deal with it through diplomacy.

One nice idea has just come to me, regarding "Holy Cities". Let's say that the Turywenzists' holy city is within your borders. If you decide to establish Turywenzism as your state religion, you are offered a new government option, Theocracy (you don't get this option if the Turywenzist holy city is outside your borders.) If you turn Theocrat, the holy city acts as a second capital, and all the "state religion" effects are doubled.

M@ni@c:

EEK! Giving real-world religions SE bonuses and penalties is a Very Bad Idea -- page back to the 1.x Religion threads for details, it was hashed out at length back then. In a nutshell, rating real religions in SE terms is equivalent to passing judgement on the actions and thoughts of those who belong to those religions; and that's just asking for trouble.

Raingoon and I are currently chopping out a system to simulate religious development in another way entirely; do you have any thoughts on our efforts?

[Maniac]

MBrazier

"EEK! Giving real-world religions SE bonuses and penalties is a Very Bad Idea"

I know that and I agree a 100% with that. But let me ask you this question. Since when is Atheism a real-world religion? These are the Religion SE choices I presented in the SE thread :

Animism : -2 Research
->Loose Polytheism : no positives and negatives
Strict Polytheism : +2 Support, +2 Urbanization
Loose Monotheism : +2 Culture, +1 Research, -2 Diplomacy
Strict Monotheism/Fundamentalism/Fascism : +2 Nationalism, +2 Morale, -2 Diplomacy
Multitheism/Religious Freedom : +2 Diplomacy, +1 Happiness, -2 Nationalism
Atheism : +2 Research, +2 Corruption, -2 Happiness

If you want to understand better the SE factors I used, I direct you to the SE thread.

As you can see there are no real-world religions in it at all. So starting racial wars etc is impossible.

BTW that -> means that Animism becomes obsolete after Loose Polytheism becomes available.

So, wonna give some thought about it?

PS : I noticed you are talking about Theocracy.
My Theocracy is +2 Happiness, +2 Taxes, -2 Research.

[raingoon]

Mbrazier

Don't wanna bore you, but, uh... agreed. Again, simpler's better. Just have a rule that a state religion can be declared at any time, so long as that religion is repped. Holy Cities as capitals, etc.

Pretty soon it'll be a good idea to go back and revise the original post to show the model in its revised state. Do you (and anyone else reading here) agree this is not too complicated? Everything I've read from Brian Reynolds, et al, underscores the obvious, which is no changes will be made in Civ III that upset the balance of what's already good about the game.

I think the most extreme element in terms of complexity is the concept of religion spreading on the game map on its own. It has a very "Civ" feel to it, I must say. I need to keep poking at that idea to see if it holds up for simplicity. Other opinions would sure help...

M@ni@c

I did as you said. I have now read all the SE 2.1 thread posts. Quite a lot of discussion. You and the others have really put in some thought. If I think of anything to add, I will...

As Mbrazier has said, we're hashing out a way to model religion in Civ III. It's not what you're suggesting. I invite you to take the time to read what's been posted here. For one, you'll find out why we are discussing religion apart from social engineering in the first place.

Since when is Atheism a real-world religion?

Trust me, you'll find many who argue with the values you want to ascribe to this and all beliefs. Apparently, you've found two already .

Check what's here. The current model (as it's been modified) shows how real-world religions *can* exist in the game, which everyone seems to want. I even went back into the archives and found this post from a long time ago:

There should be... different religions that can be chosen as national religion, and also things like Budisme and Taoisme(sic).

All these past posts tell me the majority of Civ players will like this way of implementing religion into the game. To paraphrase Brian Reynolds' own words, it's clearly taking a cool, historical concept and clearly showing how it could effect game play. Again, I'd like to see from others if my hunch is right.


<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by raingoon (edited August 05, 1999).]</font>

[raingoon]

Stefu

Can you say when and how this suggestion can be included in the revised wish list? Is that list another list entirely, or is it an evolution of the first one, as Firaxis seemed to suggest it should be?