RELIGION 2.1 (Hosted by Stefu)

[raingoon]

M@ni@c

I like your schism idea.

Also, I'm curious what definition of "prosection" you're referring to. You have been using it normally where most Americans, and I think English as well, would say "persecute." Just curious.

[raingoon]

Here are the sections on definition and prophets, newly revised. And a new section on "conversions." Have at it. I'll get the last one, diplomacy, up, after everyone's had a chance to comment on the rather important concept of conversions...

(Under Section I)
B. Defined.

Religion is a game element comparable to trade. Where trade deals with resources, religion deals with population.

1. Religions are synonymous with citizens. Each citizen has the ability to belong to one religion.
2. Each city is recognized as belonging to the religion practiced by the majority of its citizens.
3. Each religion shall have its own symbol.
4. No religion has greater or less numerical values than any other.
5. Religion names can be edited by the player, thus the AI can default to historical religions, including defunct religions.
6. At any time, there can be up to three more religions than there are civs. If there are ever four more than X civs, the smallest religion shall be eliminated and its members given to the second smallest religion.
7. Religions are visible in the game in three ways:
a. in the city screen by each member of the population holding a flag with its religious symbol on it. When the population gets too large for this to work, there will be a separate graphic showing the number of each citizen adhering to the religion.
b. as a map showing the current religious borders of the world, as determined by cities.
c. as a cleric unit representing both a specific civ and a specific religion.
d. on the main map, by the symbol of the majority religion appearing on the city flag next to the number of citizens.

II. Religious Concepts

A. Origins

Prophets begin to appear in the world almost immediately after the game begins. Religions will spread immediately thereafter. After that, new religions will appear through the centuries, some never growing more than a city or two, others becoming recognized world religions. Some that are eradicated will never be heard of again; others might enjoy a revival two thousand years later.

1. Prophets
a. all civs begin pagan and will experience the emergence of at least one prophet beginning with the second millenium of the game.
b. prophets are expert cleric units (see below) that are not assigned to a civ, like barbarian generals in Civ2.
c. prophets die 20 turns after their appearance.
d. prophets can appear at any time during the game.
e. Turywenzism begins with the announcement: "Turywenzo has begun preaching in London."
f. prophets can appear in any city.
g. upon appearing, prophets instantly convert one citizen; after that, conversion proceeds under the normal rules.
h. if a prophet is killed within the first ten turns, all non-aligned citizens within 15 squares immediately convert to the religion (martyrdom).
i. a religion can re-appear with a new prophet only after its religion has previously been eradicated.

B. Conversion

Each religion is incompatible with all others. Whenever two religions overlap "zones of influence," each will seek to dominate the other. The AI will handle the calculations, and keep track of the results. New conversions are noted in the population window of the appropriate city.

1. Evangelism & Conviction
a. Evangelism is the "attack" value of a religion.

• all religions begin with the same base value, 10.
• citizen units and clerics all have evangelism ratings.

b. Conviction is the "defense" value of a religion.

• all religions begin with the same conviction value, 15.
• citizen units and clerics all have conviction ratings.
• all things being equal, citizens should successfully defend against conversion attempts about 66% of the time.

2. Adjusting Conversion Ratings
a. You can increase (or in some cases decrease) your citizens' and clerics' conversion ratings by:

• donating money to a specific religion
• declaring a state religion
• hosting a holy city
• building a city improvement
• building a Wonder
• discovering a technological advance
• setting "Religion SE" factors; choices follow (leaving out the non-religious effects of same):

Animism : (start up) does not effect conversion
Religious Freedom : -2 conviction, -1 evangelism
Establishment : +2 evangelism
Fundamentalism : +2 conviction
Prosecution : +2 Evangelism

• 4 like believers in one city increases each of their values

3. Passive Conversion
a. "citizen to citizen" (within a city)

• calculations are made by "stacking" citizens together by religion and calculating once per turn.
• sample turn, citizen to citizen within a city:

Turywenzists in London start with an evangelist factor of 10. England has Turywenzism as the state religion, and tithes a set amount of money to that religion each turn, both of which increase the religion's base conversion factor to 15. The city of London has a cathedral (+.10 modifier), and 4 of its citizens are Turywenzists (+.33 modifier). This gives each Turywenzist in London an evangelist factor of 22. Each turn this factor is calculated against the conviction ratings of the 2 Londoners who are Yahoos who receive none of the modifiers, but whose higher base conviction ratings nevertheless prevent them from capitulating in one turn. Likewise, there is a much smaller chance they will convert a Turywenzist when the calculation is reversed.

b. "city to city"

• a city's dominant religion becomes its official religion for the purposes of city to city conversion.
• minority religions do not participate in converting, but do defend themselves when being converted.
• cities have a religious influence on all cities within an eight-tile radius.
• after inner city conversions are calculated, city to city is calculated.
• the dominant religion's effect lessens with distance, modifying the evangelist factor by a factor of 2 + distance divided by 10.
• all conversions outside the city are then calculated as if they were within the city.
• the effect is further weakened when the other city is an enemy civ.

c. passive conversion calculations are made once every five turns, or whenever a religion has enough money to begin a missionary campaign.
d. for every successful conversion, one unit from the losing religion converts.

4. Active Conversion
a. "missions"

• cleric units establish missions as caravans in Civ2 established trade routes.
• clerics represent the dominant religion of the city they were built in.
• clerics have very high evangelist/conviction ratings, roughly equal to a 5 stack of citizens.
• a cleric unit successfully establishing a mission brings that city into its home city's zone of influence; the new city is treated as if it resided on the furthest tile away from the home city.
• clerics disappear after they have attempted to establish a mission.
• mission success is calculated as a conversion between the cleric and the "stack" of all opposing religions in the city.
• clerics cannot establish missions within their city's zone of influence.

b. cleric to citizen conversions

• a cleric can be garrisoned in any friendly city, including its own.
• a garrisoned cleric attempts conversions once per turn, for 5 turns, then disappears.

5. Population Growth Expanding Religions
a. Any growth in population would be randomly assigned to one of the existing religions, with the probabilities weighted proportionate to the sects' conversion factors in that city.

<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by raingoon (edited August 19, 1999).]</font>

[Maniac]

Hello everyone, the problem with my Religion category is that you can’t have a state religion and a persecuted (it exists both, pUrsecuted doesn’t exist) religion at the same time.

Solution :

An independent religion screen where there’s a list of all the religions existing in your empire.
You have 3 opinions for every religion :
Established Church/State Religion
Tolerance
Persecution/Repression

Established Church : (+2 Eva), -2 Tax
You can have only one State Religion at a time.
Your State Religion gets +20% Evangelism only in your own empire.
For every 4 citizens belonging to your state religion you get an extra happy citizen.

Tolerance : no positives or negatives
That will probably the most common choice.

Repression : (+2 Police)
All citizens belonging to the persecuted religion get one lower happpiness rate.
Means happy becomes content, content unhappy and unhappy revolutionary.
The prosecuted religion gets –20% Evangelism and –20% Conviction (some people convert to avoid eg torture).
Worse relationship with civs having the prosecuted religion as state religion.
If your police rate is –2 Pol or higher, you get a +2 Pol against all prosecuted citizens. –3 Pol doesn’t get a bonus. Two reasons for that.

1) To difficult and unrealistic. With that I mean, if your police rate is –3 (= every unit beyond the first out of your or your allies’ territory causes one unhappy citizen) it would be too silly to make sure they get -1 Pol and don’t get that pacifism penalty of –3 Pol.

2) To simulate that prosecuting people under Free Market, Democracy and alike governments is difficult and not allowed by the public.

[raingoon]

M@ni@c

Couple things --

Under repression -- "Worse relationship with civs having the prosecuted religion as state religion."

Didn't understand -- Why would anyone declare a state religion and then persecute them?

Also, in my "Conversion" post for the religion model, I included a sample of SE choices from your discussions with Mbrazier to show how SE choices would effect conversion modifiers. But the more I look at it and your recent post, I think setting a state religion and choosing establishment under the SE menu seems redundant. Meaning, what does it mean to choose, "establishment" as my SE model? Is that a prerequisite for declaring a state religion? If so, that would make sense. Can you choose establishment and NOT select a state religion? Also, you seem to be able to choose "repression" and likewise maintain a state religion, which also makes sense, but there goes the establishment/prerequisite rule.

Confused...

[Maniac]

”Under repression -- "Worse relationship with civs having the prosecuted religion as state religion."
Didn't understand -- Why would anyone declare a state religion and then persecute them?”

No, you understood me wrong. If you want to persecute Turywenzism (while you of course have another state religion, persecuting and state religion are two distinct options, you can’t choose them both for the same religion), you will get bad diplomatic relationships with OTHER civilizations who did choose Turywenzism as their state religions.

Concerning the second part of your post, I think I explained it too shortly.
The Religion category disappears in the SE screen. Instead there comes an other new Religion screen with the things I explained in my previous post.

BTW, what is that establishment/prerequisite rule?

Another thing. There is no Religious Freedom option in my Religion screen I desribed.
So there could be a button “Declare Religious Freedom” and then all religions get the “tolerated” status.
There should be a bonus for that, cause otherwise having Religious Freedom is useless.
A small research bonus and perhaps a happiness bonus? The happiness bonus should be smaller than the State Religion happiness bonus of course.
+1 Happiness, +1 Research, -1 Nationalism?

[raingoon]

Thanks, I understand now. OTHER civs...

Prerequisite/establishment rule is not a rule. It was me speculating on what you meant. But clearly you do not mean one must first choose "establishment" as their religious attitude, THEN select a state religion. These are different options. But you see the similarity between the concepts? It's confusing. Maybe you were discussing this a while back and I didn't understand yet. Why can't state religion be a separate pop-up you get when you choose "establishment", one that lists the religions in your civ and asks you, "What religion would you like to establish as your state religion?" Am I missing why this can't be that simple?

[Maniac]

I don't understand your problem.
Religion isn't determined anymore in the real SE screen with the Government - Economy - Value - Structure - Army - Research categories.
The previous religion category in the SE screen could only affect the religious attitude towards religion in general. Very inaccurate. That's why I had the idea of an independent screen.

So there's no option of Establishment anymore in the SE screen.

Instead now there's an independent screen concerning every religion.

Now you can set a different attitude towards each specific religion.

You can only give one religion the state religion option.
All others can get a tolerated or a persecuted status.

So the one you give the state religion status is your state religion. It's as simply as that. I don't know why you don't understand me.

[will I]

Sorry it took so long to respond, but I'm home over the weekend and, with a two-year-old and a six-week-old, there's just not much time for chit-chat on the forums. Here are my thoughts on various comments. Rather than repost the monstrosity, I've gone back and edited my original post of 13 August to update it with some of these ideas.

Raingoon:

A.1.a. I would sub-title(1) just "Happiness" (and for the sake of simplicity, leave out the alternative models -- people can substitute and still see how it would work.) I'd like to keep it this way in response to BR's request that we be specific as to what we'd change in the current system.

But question -- how can we know who is the least happy citizen? Think I need to understand that before commenting further here. By "least happy citizen," I mean an unhappy citizen if there is one and a content citizen if there are no unhappy citizens.

A.3. Is this every turn? Just once? I don't know if I understand "during that period"? Sorry -- that was a typo.

B.2. are these choices exclusive? It seems you're saying one can choose a state religion and also repress at the same time. Which makes sense... Yes. Countries with established religions occasionally tolerate, or at least do not persecute, other religions. I think our religion proposal should reflect this. (Aside: My dictionary indicates that "persecute" is the only proper term to use for state-directed religious oppression. "Prosecute" refers to the state's legal attacks on people who have violated its laws.)

B.3 a. A persecuted religion's conversion factor is reduced by 10 percent for all conversion activities within the borders of the persecuting civ. Is 10 percent enough considering the cost of doing this? I guess it all depends on how often we have passive conversion. If we run passive conversion every year, 10 percent is a tremendous advantage. You've proposed that passive conversion be calculated every five years, in which case, a 25 percent bonus is probably appropriate. I've made the change.

The thrust of religion in terms of playing the game is choosing which one will be your state religion and trying to maximize the benefit of that. I tried to strike a balance between religious conformity and toleration, with some benefits to each. As M@ni@c pointed out, since each new religion causes one citizen to get a happiness boost, there's also a big advantage to having multiple religions, so it's not necessarily true that a state religion is always a good thing.

B.4 "a civ may de-establish their state religion..." In which case, it might be a better sub-point under state religions. Good point.

B.5.b. Regarding church councils, this is a new idea. Will it compete with any "U.N/ planetary type council"? Couldn't this be done better with the "Holy City" (capitol)? The Church Council idea evolved from my thoughts about what to do if two unfriendly civs had the same religion. If anyone else has ideas of how to resolve such problems, I'm ready to listen. As currently proposed, I think the Church Council would not conflict with a planetary council. The Church Council handles affairs solely for the religion, and would not have overlapping authority with a planetary council.

M@ni@c:

So if I get this right, every different relgion makes one unhappy person content? So the more different religions in a city, the happier? Then I totally loose the point of letting your citizens have the same religion. Clerics affect only citizens of their religion and would, in my thinking, cost money to maintain. Therefore, if there are multiple citizens of the same religion in a city, a cleric posted to that city would have a greater effect in increasing happiness. Also, establishing a state religion has a fairly large positive effect, and is only practical if there are multiple citizens of the same religion in each city.

o, there shouldn't be an Age of Faith. It's not because the Muslims have electronics, that they should believe less. If you want to simulate the loss of importance of religions, become Religious Freedom (don't have a State Religion) or become Atheism(Religion option please?). One of the things I liked about Civ2 was that the effects of city improvements could change over time so that there was never any one "right" way to build a city. I think have an Age of Faith would have the same effect. It would also reflect the historical truth that religion had a much greater effect on society in the past than it has in recent history.

I know Will you are against my SE Religion Category, but the loss of money by Established Church can simply be represented as -2 Taxes in my SE system. I think your religion SE category was a good start at handling religion, but that we've come up with a better system here. Therefore, I think that having a religion SE category would be pointlessly duplicative and complex.

No there are already enough unhappiness squelching city improvements in civ. I suggest one extra Happy citizen per four citizens. There is a lack of happiness creating things in civ. I considered this option, but worried that it would make it too easy to have "We love the ..." days early in the game. I'll keep it as is pending other comments.

1.5 content citizens become unhappy for each member of the persecuted religion, reflecting the unhappiness of the persecutees and their friends. " Don't make it too hard. Just say every prosecuted citizen gets one level lower happiness rate. Persecution potentially offers a big boost to any civ. I don't want to make it too easy. Also, I think that in reality, persecution usually caused unhappiness to citizens outside of the persecuted faith.

"The Church Council may expel a civ from the religion with the support of 75 percent of the votes." Give me one example of a religious leader forbidding people to follow his religion. Another option FOR YOU, not the Church Council, could be Schisma and form a new religion. I suppose we could call the option excommunication rather than expulsion. I agree with you that Schism should be an option, as long as there is an open religion slot. (Note that at any time, there is a limited number of religions.) I had hoped that the Church Council would allow such an action, and will revise it to do so.

I hope Clerics are not the only way to convert other civ's citizens. See Raingoon's post of 15 August.

If you want to persecute Turywenzism (while you of course have another state religion, persecuting and state religion are two distinct options, you can’t choose them both for the same religion), you will get bad diplomatic relationships with OTHER civilizations who did choose Turywenzism as their state religions. Agreed. I have changed the model accordingly.

<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by will (edited August 16, 1999).]</font>

[CormacMacArt]

raingoon - left a message for you at Firaxis/civiii/general/religion

[Maniac]

“Clerics affect only citizens of their religion and would, in my thinking, cost money to maintain. Therefore, if there are multiple citizens of the same religion in a city, a cleric posted to that city would have a greater effect in increasing happiness. Also, establishing a state religion has a fairly large positive effect, and is only practical if there are multiple citizens of the same religion in each city”

Now you have made it even less attractive to me to have a state religion.

”d. Any positive effects that other religions have on happiness are eliminated.

Delete that bonus of one less unhappy citizen per religion. Cause if it exists and state religion deletes the bonus, I won’t choose a state religion at all.

”One of the things I liked about Civ2 was that the effects of city improvements could change over time so that there was never any one "right" way to build a city. I think have an Age of Faith would have the same effect. It would also reflect the historical truth that religion had a much greater effect on society in the past than it has in recent history.”

You haven’t answered on what I said. It’s not because religions have smaller effects on the Christian American and European society that that’s true for all other societies and religions.
Again I say Religious Freedom represents it fine.

”I think your religion SE category was a good start at handling religion, but that we've come up with a better system here. Therefore, I think that having a religion SE category would be pointlessly duplicative and complex.”

Du-uh. The religion SE category doesn’t exist anymore. Read my religion screen posts.
A better system???? Deciding yourself the tithes is pointlessly complex if you can just represent it with –2 Tax.

”I considered this option, but worried that it would make it too easy to have "We love the ..." days early in the game. I'll keep it as is pending other comments.”

First, having 4 citizens of the same religion is quite a prestation in the early game. And if you are worried about pop booms in the early game, I eliminated 150 posts back or so on the SE thread the Growth bonus of Golden Ages (other name for We Love The Days).

“Persecution potentially offers a big boost to any civ. I don't want to make it too easy.”

A 25 % research penalty is HUGE. That alone is enough to make persecution a bad option. And having all persecuted citizens become revolutionaries is also huge, since you risk revolting cities that form another new civ.
BTW, I would eliminate that –2 Res since the prosecution only counts for a small part of the population.

Also, I think that in reality, persecution usually caused unhappiness to citizens outside of the persecuted faith.”

That’s what you think. The faithful christians weren’t unhappy that the protestants were persecuted.

”I suppose we could call the option excommunication rather than expulsion. I agree with you that Schism should be an option, as long as there is an open religion slot. (Note that at any time, there is a limited number of religions.) I had hoped that the Church Council would allow such an action, and will revise it to do so.”

You haven’t given me the example of expulsing. And actually I don’t like that Church Council idea at all. Raingoon’s ideas of holy cities are better.
As you describe it, it would be a meeting between civilizations and not between a religious leader and a civ.
Other civs forbidding a civ to have a state religion is impossible. And excommunication (and declaring a civ defender of the faith) is handled by the religious leader (so again Raingoon’s ideas) and not by other civs in a church council.

And about schisma. yea, you’re right the defender of the faith shouldn’t be able to schism.

I’ll try to rewrite part B.

B. Effect of government on religion: the Religion screen.

In this screen you can set the attitude of your civ towards all the religions existing in your civ.
The attitudes your civ can have are :

1.State Religion :

a) You can have only one religion as state religion. Means all other religions can only be tolerated or persecuted.
b) The state agrees to pay all expenses of the state religion, which takes the form of –2 Taxes.
c) For every 4 followers of the state religion in a city, one of them becomes a happy cititzen.
d) Your State Religion gets +20% Evangelism only in your own empire.
e) When you want to deestablish the state religion, just change it’s status to tolerated or persecuted.
When you have deestablished a state religion, you have the option to establish another one.
There will be a 3 year period of between choosing to deestablish and the actual deestablishment.
During that time, your civ will have the same negative effects as SE switching (see the SE/Government summary).

2.Tolerated

A religion that is tolerated has no special positive or negative effects.

3.Persecuted

a) A persecuted religion’s Evangelism and Conviction rate is reduced by 20%.
b) All citizens belonging to the persecuted religion get one lower happpiness rate.
Means happy becomes content, content unhappy and unhappy revolutionary.
c) If your police rate is –2 Police or higher, you get +2 Police against all prosecuted citizens.
d) If you persecute a religion, the diplomatic relationships with other civs that haven chosen it as their state religion, will worsen severely.

[b]4.Other matters in the religion screen.

There are some other things you can do in the religion screen.
The following buttons you can push.

Have Schisma

When you do this, there will be a schism with your state religion and you will form a new religion.
You won’t have interference anymore from the old religion’s leaders.
75% of the believers of your previous state religion will follow you in the new religion and are instantly converted.
25% of the believers will remain faithful to the new religions.
Having a schisma seperates you definitely from the old religion.

Declare Religious Freedom

All the religions’ status will be set on tolerated.
You can’t persecute religions anymore, nor can you have a state religion.
When doing this, you get a +1 Research bonus and a +1 Happiness bonus. You also get a –1 Nationalism penalty.
There will be an option to Repeal Religious Freedom. There will be a three turn switching period with the same negative effects as SE switching.

Enforce Atheism

a) When doing this, all the religions will get the Persecuted status.
b) All religions get –20% to Evangelism and Conviction in your empire.
c) The religions will slowly disappear. Every turn there will be a religious combat in every city.
The people who lost the ‘battle’ will loose their religious flag (see Section I, B. defined, point 7a).
d) The Atheist people will get +20% to their Conviction strength.
e) In your entire empire, for every 4 citizens, there will be one more unhappy.
f) In general, your entire empire gets +2 Police and –2 Research.
g) You can recall atheism at any time. However there will be a three turn switching period with the same negative effects as SE switching.
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by M@ni@c (edited August 16, 1999).]</font>

[Maniac]

will, concerning your post of 12:55.

There is NO SE Religion category anymore. Read the religion screen posts!!!!

Forget that SE crap of Establishment, Fundamentalism, Persecution and Religious Freedom.

To Raingoon :

About prophets. I find the idea of a citizen being a prophet better.
Otherwise, if it's just a special Cleric, I would just reconvert that citizen he converted when reaching a city. Then hasn't got enough power and has to be killed to reach something.
And about that martyrship, I would let him walk around alone for ten turns and then kill him when it can't cause harm anymore.

[raingoon]

Will

So, you garrisoned yourself at home for two turns? I hope your budding citizens were made content and/or happy. Congratulations!

Some quick responses --

Re church councils, I'll do the diplomacy section and see if I come up with an alternative way of addressing excommunication. I see some overlap there. I'm willing to keep discussing it.

Small point, and I'm a writer by trade so I tend to edit, but it might be clearer if you re-titled III.A.1. to something like "Making Citizens Happy", and *then* broke that down by system. This would be clearer at-a-glance. You may be sick of editing. Alternatively, with your permission I could do it when I paste your section into the final post. It's up to you.

I think it's good. We'll see if anyone comes up with anything else.

Regarding your notes on conversion:

II.B.4.a. ...I would suggest that... each religion may build a cleric, which can start in any city where the religion has a believer. The cost of a cleric would be equal to the gold value of the shields that a civ would use to make the cleric. Building a cleric would be an option of the religion's AI at the beginning. When the religion became large, a civ could also pay the religion to create a cleric and send it on a specific mission.

Evangelism then becomes largely a function of AI, and the prophet rule in effect already covers this in the beginning, doesn't it?

We also have "missions" and now "ministries", as your next point mentions. Which I think is good -- "missions" are foreign, and "ministries" are domestic.

Hmm... But giving a religion the ability to make their own clerics raises more questions. First of all, is paying for the cleric with money (religion produces it for you) better than paying for it with shields(you produce it yourself)? If the answer is yes...

Does a religion also stockpile its own gold? Or does a religion only acquire gold from civs? I personally think the latter, but maybe that's the crux of the issue.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe religions automatically drain what otherwise would be gold in your coffers. The amount would be proportionate to the number of believers in your civ. Otherwise, a religion could be readily controlled by simply refusing it money, which seems false.

Back to your original note, I do like that a cleric represents the city he was built in -- if only because it's just one step removed from the Civ2 trade caravan model when discussing foreign *missions.* It's easier to understand, and I think we should keep the rule consistent. But you have a point about making fledgling religions autonomous. I think we can help them without giving the AI religions too much power, or making it too confusing. I need some help there.

Currently we are tithing to religions to increase conversion ratings. Does this already, then, imply ministries?

Or maybe we have new subjects here for the outline, "Missions", "Ministries", and "Tithing."

And if we have ministries, I'd change your next suggestion slightly:

II.B.6 ministry.
a. a cleric may establish a ministry in any city within the boundaries of that civ, by garrisoning itself in that city.
b. a ministry increases the conviction factor for citizens of that religion by 50 percent, and has the effects on happiness detailed in section III.
c. when first established, the ministry attempts conversions once per turn; this ceases after five turns.
d. a ministry may be terminated by losing all its members, or by the civ falling in disfavor with that church, or by crusade (military conquer by a civ with an opposing state religion).

[will I]

M@ni@c:

Your rendering of the topic of "state religion" seems fair, although I disagree with your impression that their are too many options to eliminate unhappiness and not enough to generate happy citizens. At least the way I play, I find happy people easy to get -- it's the unhappy ones I have trouble with, especially early in the game. I'll keep the happiness effect of each religion as is, but keep my mind open for further discussion. I have taken the liberty of incorporating your suggestion in my proposal of 13 August.

However, I think you've missed the point on toleration and persecution. My goal was to give each option strengths and weaknesses so that reasonable players could choose any of them and still prosper. Your revisions have made toleration so unfavorable and persecution so favorable that both are no-brainers. Everyone will establish a state religion and persecute, unless they have a dicey diplomatic relation with someone important.

I also don't like the idea of describing the effects of religion in terms of the SE factors at this time. Those are still in flux, with about three or four contenting plans that I've seen, so I'd prefer not to make religion dependant on them.

I'll think about your points on atheism. However, given that we've decided that there will be no religion-specific effects, I don't really see the need to have a special category for lack of religion.

You haven't answered on what I said. It's not because religions have smaller effects on the Christian American and European society that that's true for all other societies and religions.
All right. Some examples. Organized religion in the form of Buddhism had a much greater effect in China before and during the T'ang then later. Buddhism in Japan was much more influential during the Heian era than afterward. Islam had a greater effect in almost all of the Islamic countries during the various caliphates -- when primary religious and political power were held by the same individual -- than in contemporary times. It seems to me that in almost all societies there were ages of faith that were terminated by other political ideas, and that it would be realistic to reflect this in the game.

Du-uh. The religion SE category doesn't exist anymore. Read my religion screen posts. I have been reading the SE thread, well, almost religiously. Please do give me the same credit that I give you -- of assuming that you are responding to my points in good faith. There have been occasions when I have thought some of your proposals ill-conceived and sometimes even silly. I have tried throughout to be civil.

I will also point out that your post of 15 August 1999, at 17:00 contains a heading on "religious," and has categries for "high priest," "theocracy," "fundamentalism," etc. Therefore, I think my impression that your SE system still contains a fairly sizable, and in my mind, redundant religious element is justified. Please let me know if there is a subtlety here that I'm missing.

The faithful christians weren't unhappy that the protestants were persecuted. "Happiness" as a game element does not reflect peoples' conscious glee, but their satisfaction with society. I will also point out that almost all marginalized people in Spain, and not just the formal targets of investigation, were demoralized by the Inquisition, and that much of England was made unhappy by the persecution of Protestants under Queen Mary.

You haven't given me the example of expulsing. Here we go:
During the Great Schism, all of the fragments of the Catholic Church expelled all of the adherents of the other fragments.
During the Reformation, Luther and all of his adherents (who wanted to change the church from within) were expelled.
In the modern era, the orthodox rabbinate of Israel has disenfranchised American Reform Judaism.
The Mahayana and Theravada strains of Buddhism each think that the other has entirely missed the point of the Buddha's teachings. However, since there's no church hierarchy, neither can expel the other.

Therefore, I think it's realistic to allow expulsion.

And actually I don't like that Church Council idea at all. Raingoon's ideas of holy cities are better. I agree with many of Raingoon's ideas. The problem with the holy city -- which Raingoon acknowledges -- is that it does not provide a means to resolve a dispute when two enemy civs belong to the same religion. He's said that he'll think about it, and I await his/her ideas.

Raingoon:

Evangelism then becomes largely a function of AI, and the prophet rule in effect aready covers this in the beginning, doesn't it? Most of my proposals are designed first to allow religions to survive without the patronage of a civ and second to maintain them as subsidiary players even after one or more civs adopt them. I think the first objective is necessary if religions are to grow in the beginning, and if new religions are to present a meaningful threat to the status quo later in the game. I think the second objective makes dealing with the religions more interesting than it would be if the immediately became appendages of the strongest civ that supported them. These concerns were the genesis of my giving religions the ability to have their own clerics.

I agree that we should think about how to determine how much money a religion needs, and where it will get that money. I may post a proposal tomorrow.

I like your proposal on ministries. However, we might want to consider two other options for terminating a ministry: attack by an enemy cleric or disbanding of the cleric by the civ that built it. Let me know what you think, and I'll edit my 13 August proposal accordingly.

[Maniac]

Raingoon :

"Re church councils, I'll do the diplomacy section and see if I come up with an alternative way of addressing excommunication. I see some overlap there. I'm willing to keep discussing it.

Small point, and I'm a writer by trade so I tend to edit, but it might be clearer if you re-titled III.A.1. to something like "Making Citizens Happy", and *then* broke that down by system. This would be clearer at-a-glance. You may be sick of editing. Alternatively, with your permission I could do it when I paste your section into the final post. It's up to you.

I think it's good. We'll see if anyone comes up with anything else."

Raingoon, I get the impression here you consider yourself as the thread master and summary writer of the Religion thread.
But you only include what YOU like in your 'final post'.
Let me remind you that the summary must hold the thoughts of ALL visitors and posters and not one option of one person. So if there's some dispute unfinished, the two options have to come both in the summary.

I hope you read this, thread master, whoever it may be (Stefu, NotLikeTea, Raingoon?).

[will I]

M@ni@c:

I missed one of your points, which is whether the current set of benefits/penalties to state religion make sense. As currently structured, early religious tolerance has a benefit in that each religion generates one extra step in happiness for one citizen, either from unhappy to content (my proposal) or from content to happy (your proposal). Thus, early tolerance a la Roman Empire has a big benefit. However, state religion has all the advantages in a larger empire. The player has a much wider range of options for interacting with the religion and with other players. The player can build and control clerics, whose ministries have their greatest effect when large numbers of people in each city are of the same religion. Finally, during the Age of Faith, which occupies much of game time, the effect of a state religion is increased still further.

Therefore, I think that under my proposal, tolerance and state religion are both valid choices. I lean toward perfectionism, so I suspect I'll spend much of the time in state religion. However, someone who likes hordes of small cities will probably go with toleration. I think that's the beauty of the system.