RELIGION 2.1 (Hosted by Stefu)

[Diodorus Sicilus]

You guys are putting one heck of a model together, so I'll just add a couple of things...
'Atheism' is not a religion, but a rejection of (traditional) Gods. The belief system that I think you are refering to is Humanism - the belief that man and his works are the measure of all things. This arose with the Rationalist philosophes of the 18th century, gathered speed with the apparent ability of science to explain everything in the 19th century, and led directly to the Fundamentalist reaction in the 20th century when it turned out to be an inadequate source of happiness and moral code for individuals.
The advantage of including it is that it can be precisely included as a result of an Advance (Rational Philosophy or Age of Reason), it provides a factor to erode traditional religious Happiness boosts (an extra problem for the player, if you will) and it leads to another Advance: Fundamentalism, with a whole new set of modifiers to the Social Engineering factors of a civ that adopts it - or has it adopted.
The USSR did have a religion: Communism, in which they believed passionately although there was no physical evidence of pure communism to be seen around them. Atheism was the policy of the State to counteract the affects of the traditional Eastern Orthodox religion, which was quite powerful and, according to Communist orthodoxy, reactionary.
Therefore, include Atheism as a State Policy of persecution of religions with negative happiness modifiers, and Humanism as a 'religion' or belief system that lowers Happiness but increases Research and slowly builds up points towards the establishment of the Fundamentalist 'backlash'.

[Maniac]

Will :

I suggest you just add an introduction in the "B. Effects of government on religion" part of the 'final post' explaining what we mean with the religion window/screen and what you can do in it.

"I think we increase our likelihood of being heard if we describe religion both in terms of the Civ2 system (in which concepts like +2 or +1 Hap are meaningless)"

What I suggested was also in SMAC and Civ2.
What I call the Happiness factor existed in Civ2, but it was determined by Corruption and in SMAC it was determined by your Efficiency rate. I can post the formulae if you want.

"In that case, I think we need a well-thought proposal for how religion would interact with the existing happiness system and religious improvements."

So my Happiness factor and the effects I give it, already exist. It's nothing new. The only thing I did, was seperating it from Corruption/Efficiency.

"and that a cathedral can be built only by a religion that has a state church."

Scroll to the end of my post to find a consensus.

"Perhaps we should propose that the temple have no effect by itself, but is necessary for religions to affect happiness,"

I would let them keep their effect of 2 content to have a way to keep your citizens happy early in the game when religions are rare.

"Religion screen. This should be the vehicle for both establishing religious policy and conducting religious diplomacy. It would have a button for "establish state religion" that would trigger a drop-down box indicating all available options (including "none") and a window indicating the answer. There would be another button for "proclaim religious freedom.""

Very good idea! "Proclaim religious freedom" doesn't even have to be an independent button. You can also put it in the "establish state religion" drop-down box, since you can never have a state religion if you proclaim state religion. But then you should rename the "establish state religion" button to something else.

"Finally, there would be a button for "persecute," which would trigger a drop-down box indicating the available options. The screen would show all religions subject to persecution."

But with drop-down boxes, you can only choose one thing.
How then can you choose to persecute two religions if you only have one drop-down box?
We are referring to the same, aren't we?
Eg that "Hop to: Select a Forum" box.

"Funding. I like your funding suggestion."

I thought you made that suggestion of one gold per believer some days ago...

"Using the Civ2 system, each believer would take tithes from the trade stream and deliver them to the religion."

I hope you don't mean take away from the city's trade, cause as I said to Raingoon that would be a disaster for your economy.
You should only have to pay money to your state religion, what is well represented by -2 Tax.

About what's done with the religion's money, ok to me what you suggest.

A martyrdom sliding scale is good to me.

"why don't we allow the civ that has the greatest number of believers in that religion to designate the holy city when the religion passes the percentage threshold."

But having a holy city in your territory IS dumb luck. It's not like the civ's leaders 'decide' that some city will become holy.
I stick with the first city where the religion appeared = holy city.

Diodorus :

I know athiesm isn't actually a religion(it's the opposite, but in game terms it is. You can better call it a belief.
BTW, I hope you don't mean all atheists are fundamentalists.

Back to Will :

If there is an Age of Faith when religions are more powerful, I insist that the Age of Faith is followed by an Age of Reason and then Atheism should be more powerful to make it possible to gain a reasonable amount of believers in the late game.

Differences

OK, let's say what I don't like.
Based on your August 13 14:24 post...

Your State Religion

->One on 4 believers made content.
->+10% Eva and Conv strength in own empire.
->Temple and Cathedral value doubled

My worries about it is that then state religions would be too good compared to religious freedom, especially if you can’t build a cathedral if you haven’t got a state religion.
So let’s search a consensus.

New State Religion

->One on 4 believers made happy (you know why)
->+20% Evangelism in your own empire.
->-2 Tax
->You can only build a Cathedral if you have a state religion. Under Religious Freedom or if you haven’t got a state religion they don’t need upkeep. Instead, they generate the an amount of gold equal to their normal upkeep cost (as in Civ2 Fundamentalism)

New Religious Freedom

->+ 1 or 2 SE Happiness
->+1 Research (or +2 if the Research category is deleted (read the SE thread))
->-20% Conviction
->Per religion existing in your city, one citizen is made content with a maximum of ¼ of the city population.

Analysis

Now the two options are more equal.
Under state religion you get one on 4 believers happy. Under religious freedom you get +1/2 Hap.
You can only build cathedrals under state religion. Under religious freedom you have one less unhappy per religion.

Persecution

Same as what I said in the 100th post on this thread.
I would only add a –20% Research penalty for the cities where there are people persecuted, so not a penalty for the entire empire.

[raingoon]

Mbrazier

BTW, you suggested earlier that maybe a religion's conviction values should decline over time (as a way of helping new religions get a foothold). Hopefully, the new prophet and martyrdom rules have done enough to assuage concerns?

[raingoon]

[M@ni@c}

Will's suggestion for funding through tithes was one gold piece per religion in a city. Not per believer. You interpreted it as one per believer -- is that what you prefer? The point is for a religion to eventually accumulate X+1 gold pieces, where X = total number of believers currently residing in that civ. This creates a ministry in the weakest city. Now, if I'm not mistaken, in your interpretation this would happen every two turns.

I hope you don't mean take away from the city's trade, cause as I said to Raingoon that would be a disaster for your economy.

Do you feel the same way if it is one gold piece per religion in a city? Personally, I lean toward your thin air suggestion. If the player wants to write a further check out of his own coffers that should be his business.

Will

Great idea for martyrdom. You'd never know just when it was safe to persecute. Perhaps this should be a randomly recurring event throughout the life of the religion, adding a calculated risk to persecuting at any time.

Why don't we allow the civ that has the greatest number of believers in that religion to designate the holy city when the religion passes the percentage threshold.

I think a compromise would be good here -- because it _would_ be better to give the player the ability to try to shape events in his or her favor. By shaping I mean either of two ways:

1) if holy city is established in city of origin, this would mean predicting its occurence by tracking total # of believers, and using military units to strengthen your hold on the city where you knew it would occur. The advantage of this is to suggest the spirit of the crusades that did exist, that is, the relationship between military and religion in the game.

Or,

2) if holy city is established in the city with the most believers, this would mean using population and religious forces to encourage growth in a city of your choosing, such that you try to beat any others vying to create the holy city in their own civ. This has the benefit of encouraging horse races.

Lastly,

3) if holy city is chosen by player with largest representation of that religion in his/her civ, we still have a horse race element -- on the civ level, region by region. This is simple and logical, which is good. But I think M@ni@c is right, there IS dumb luck involved, and it might not have as much drama in terms of game play.

Straw poll?

[Maniac]

Raingoon :

OK, we all agree on Will's tithing system?

"Do you feel the same way if it is one gold piece per religion in a city?"

Yes indeed I do. In the late game, one gold may mean nothing, but in the early game it's a lot. After all, it's the citizens paying, not the player. The player is only supposed to pay his state religion.

So we agree on thin air gold?

You know my opinion about holy cities...
I would love a crusade to Jerusalem.

Or perhaps every religion has a holy city, but if you choose a religion to your state religion, then your capital becomes the second holy city. To simulate Rome. Or would a second holy city be useless and unnecessary?

[Maniac]

Ignore this.
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by M@ni@c (edited August 18, 1999).]</font>

[raingoon]

I would love a crusade to Jerusalem.

I believe the current suggestion for crusades is basic -- if a holy city is captured and requires liberation, you are assumed to be on a crusade. Under diplomacy, it's been suggested, and I'm planning on including in the diplomacy section for discussion, that any holy city may request liberation from its current owner and call upon other faithful to lead a crusade. I want to try and incorporate Will's suggestion for a "Defender of the Faith" in the crusade rules. (I think it was Will's.)

Also, there could be a startup option, asking if the player wants real-world, historical religions.

I still think limiting the amount of noise coming from AI entities is best -- sort of a "holy cities are a privelege, not a right" philosophy.

I think in a state religion, you either have a holy city that is very happy with you, or there is no holy city to deal with diplomatically, but instead just the basic,usual requests for extra money and/or defense against encroaching religions. Again, still haven't done diplomacy yet, so the more ideas on these points, the easier it'll be for me ...

[MBrazier]

I said: "A suggestion for the interface, though. As the state religion must be unique, it still makes sense to put the control for it on the main SE screen. You can then have a sub-screen opening from SE, which lists all the known religions (except your state religion, if you have one) and has a flag by each for 'persecute/tolerate'."

M@ni@c said: "So then you only determine tolerate/persecute in the Religion window and determine your state religion in the SE window? What advantages has that?"

What matters, in my view, is separating "choose a state religion" from "choose how to treat the other religions". You don't want to create the impression that it's possible to have two state religions at once, since in fact it's not. Thus I suggest two controls, a dropdown to pick the state religion and a menu to set persecutions.

Putting the two controls on two different screens isn't, now that I think about it, a particularly good idea.

Will: "In that case, I think we need a well-thought proposal for how religion would interact with the existing happiness system and religious improvements. Perhaps we should propose that the temple have no effect by itself, but is necessary for religions to affect happiness, and that a cathedral can be built only by a religion that has a state church. Any thoughts?"

I've floated several proposals along that line before, but they don't quite fit with M@ni@c's scheme. I think having a state religion should be required for building _all_ religious improvements; you could maintain them during a period of religious freedom, but you couldn't build them.

A temple (I propose) moves citizens of the state religion towards happiness. That is, X% of the state religion's members move up from unhappy to content, or from content to happy, while the temple exists. A cathedral does the same thing, only more so -- 2 * X%, instead of X%. If we decide to scrap the unhappy/content/happy scheme, as Theben suggested, then a temple just improves the city happiness rating by (X * M / P), where M is the membership of the state religion and P is the total city population. Again, a cathedral does the same, only more so.

It's no longer necessary to make temples and cathdrals create unhappiness among citizens not of the state religion (as I suggested before) because persecution already does so.

[raingoon]

Okay, long post -- sorry. Diplomacy is still on the way. This is yet another revision of what we've already done. But I find it easier to keep re-posting the revisions as we make them, so we know where we've been. In this revision of Section II Religious Concepts, there's some major strides made. I've italicized all the changes for quick reference.

Also, I'm including ideas of my own that I had as I was writing, obviously. If there is a majority of voices opposing an idea of mine, or someone else's that I'm just not for, I'll defer to the majority and it will be reflected in the "final posting."

That said, here's Definition, Origins, and Conversions revisited... also a new Tithing section I'm including under II. Concepts.

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 represented on the game map by 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 Firaxis can choose to set the the AI to default to historical religions, defunct religions, or fictional religions, or whatever they deem most appropriate. The player could have the start-up option of choosing which religion “brands” he/she wanted in the game.
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 four 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. On the main map you will see the current religious borders of the world, as determined by cities, by filtering for it (e.g., hitting F1 key).
c. Cleric units visually represent both a specific civ (color) and a specific religion (symbol).
d. On the main map, the symbol of the majority religion appears on the city flag next to the number of citizens.

II. Religion Concepts

A. Origins

Once civs have had time to establish a foothold, prophets begin to appear. Religions spread immediately thereafter. 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 (citizens are non-aligned) and will experience the emergence of at least one prophet beginning with the second millenium of the game, but not before the discovery of religion.
b. A prophet is not a unit, but rather a newly born citizen in a given city’s population window, identified by his/her new religious symbol, with higher conversion values (20 evangelism, 25 conviction) than regular citizens (see conversion, below, for explanation of conversion values).
c. After their appearance prophets last for X turns, where X is randomly chosen from between 15 and 30, then convert back into regular citizens; their religious symbol remains.
d. After the prophet disappears from a city, the remaining citizens continue to benefit from the prophet’s greater conversion values for 20 more turns. This is to ensure fledgling religions will have a chance to develop.
e. Prophets can appear at any time during the game.
f. Turywenzism begins with the announcement: "Turywenzo has begun preaching in London."
g. Prophets can appear in any city.
h. Upon appearing, prophets instantly convert one citizen (other than themselves, of course); after that, conversion proceeds under the normal rules for citizen to citizen conversions (see, below).
i. If a government persecutes the new religion while the prophet is preaching, the prophet is considered martyred, the prophet disappears, leaving behind his/her bonus as described in rule “d” above, and all non-aligned citizens within 8 squares immediately convert to the new religion.
j. 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
a. All citizen units in the population window have evangelism values.
b. Evangelism is the "attack" value of a religion.
c. All religions begin with the same base evangelism value, 10.

2. Conviction
a. All citizen units in the population window have conviction values.
b. Conviction is the "defense" value of a religion.
c. All religions begin with the same base conviction value, 15.
d. The higher conviction rating is so that, all things being equal, citizens should successfully defend against conversion attempts about 66% of the time.

3. Adjusting Conversion Ratings
a. You can increase (or in some cases decrease) your citizens’ 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 your civ’s attitudes towards religion in the religion screen
• 4 like believers in one city increases each believer’s values by .25; thus, a 4 stack of 4 Yahoos at 10 evangelism each is worth 50.

4. Passive Conversions
a. “Citizen to citizen (inner city) conversions”

• calculations are made by “stacking” citizens together by religion and combining their values
• passive conversions are calculated once every five turns

A sample conversion turn within a city:

4 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 each Turywenzists citizen’s base evangelism value to 15. The city of London has a cathedral (+.10 modifier), and 4 of its citizens are Turywenzists (+.25 modifier each). This gives each Turywenzist in London an evangelist factor of 21 (rounding up), for a combined stack evangelism value of 84. This factor is calculated against the conviction ratings of the 2 Londoners who are Yahoos who receive none of the modifiers, but whose higher conviction ratings nevertheless combine to equal 30, increasing the odds they won’t capitulate in one turn. When the calculation is reversed, there is an even smaller chance the Yahoos combined evangelism rating of 20 will have any effect at all on the Turywenzist stack’s combined conviction rating after all the modifiers have been figured in.

For more discussion of modifiers and the religion screen, see section III below, “Effects of Religion.”

b. “City to city conversions“

• 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 conversions are calculated.
• the dominant religion’s effect on a tile lessens with distance, the distance factor expressed as (10-distance)/8. Thus, a city eight squares away has a factor of 25 percent.
• 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 conversions are calculated once every five turns.

d. For every successful conversion, one unit in the defending religion stack converts.

5. Active Conversions
a. “Missions”

• cleric units establish missions as caravans in Civ2 established trade routes; like caravans, clerics have no values themselves.
• [i]clerics represent the religion of the city they were built in (again, city religion being determined by the religion with the greatest number of believers in that city).
• missions can only be established outside your civ.
• a mission brings the foreign city into the home city’s zone of influence; the foreign city is now treated as if it resided 4 tiles away from the home city and follows the rules for city to city conversions until the mission is de-established.
• when first established, the mission automatically converts one citizen (preferring non-aligned citizens, if any), then attempts conversions once per turn for five turns; thereafter, conversion attempts proceed normally (city to city, once every five turns).
• clerics disappear after they have established one mission.
• like trade routes, missions are always successfully established.
• missions can only be de-established by purging the mission’s religion from that city (see “state religion” and “persecution” rules in Section III.

b. “Ministries”

• when a religion has accumulated X+1 gold pieces, where X = total number of believers throughout the world, the religion creates a ministry in the first city where the fewest number of its believers exist (but not fewer than one).
• when first established, the ministry automatically converts one citizen (preferring non-aligned citizens, if any).
• a ministry in a city increases the conviction factor for citizens of that religion by 50 percent, and has the effects on happiness detailed in section III.
• a ministry cannot be de-established except by purging the ministry’s religion from the city (see “state religion” and “persecution” rules in Section III.

6. Population growth expands religions
a. In the case of new citizens being born, the percentage chance they would be born believing in religion X, Y, or Z would be equal to the percentage that religion X, Y, and Z were represented within that city.

C. Tithing

Gold pieces are what religions use to fund ministries, their most powerful tool for expansion. All religious gold is understood to have come from “under citizen mattresses,” and not from the government coffers; it does not come from the trade stream.

1. Each turn, every city tithes one gold per religion represented, to the respective religion’s coffers.
a. Religious coffers are tracked by the AI.
b. The amount of gold a religion has can be seen in the religion screen, and only if that religion has a holy city (see Diplomacy, below).
2. Religions will ask for donations periodically, and in increasing amounts.
3. In a “state religion”, -2 tax automatically sends that amount of the government’s gold into that religion’s coffers.
4. When a religion has built ministries in all available cities it continues to collect tithes and build its coffers.
a. A religion can loan gold to the civ who possesses its holy city (see Diplomacy, holy cities, below).



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

[Maniac]

Questions to Raingoon :

Some things I don't understand...

"the dominant religion’s effect on a tile lessens with distance, modifying the evangelist factor by a factor of 2 + distance divided by 10."

Then it would be (City's Evangelism Strength) x (2 + distance) / 10.
That would increase the Evangelism factor over distance!
Are you sure it doesn't have to be [x10 / (2 + distance)] ?

"2. Religions will ask for donations periodically, and in increasing amounts."

You should be able to give extra money, but you shouldn't be forced, since it would be contradictious to give money to other religions if you have a state religion.

Diplomatic option : give money to a religion and with that money, he may start ministries in FOREIGN cities
(so not in your cities since that would interfere with your possible state religion). Then it could be useful to give money to religions by annoying another civs/religions trying to gain a majority in a city.

"a ministry in a city increases the conviction factor for citizens of that religion by 50 percent, and has the effects on happiness detailed in section III. "

Which effects?
Ig eg a ministry would make one unhappy citizen content and if every religion can install one ministry, it would again be very unbalancing.
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by M@ni@c (edited August 19, 1999).]</font>

[will I]

Raingoon:

As always, an impressive effort. Just a few suggestions:

Passive conversion. I think you may have gotten the formula from me, and I apologize -- M@ni@c is right. How about if the distance factor is expressed as (10-distance)/8. That way, a city eight squares away has a factor of 25 percent.

Martyrdom. Your effect extents only non-aligned citizens. However, once all citizens are religious (which I suspect would occur around 0 AD), martyrdom would have no effect. I suggest that martyrdom would result in five passive conversions with a +10 bonus to evangelism. That way, even after their is a majority religion, martyrdom would still be dangerous.

Missions. We have it set up so that a mission results in a city being treated as eight squares away for each passive conversion. But that would be a penalty if you sent a mission to a nearby city. I suggest instead that a mission have the effect of treating the target city as 4 squares away for the purposes of passive conversion.

Ministries. My intent in proposing ministries was that it would give civs a way to defend against conversion by enemies, which they don't have. I like your proposal, which gives the religion the power to generate its own missions. However, I think that calling this activity a "ministry" is too confusing. I would suggest instead that this be treated as a subset of missions (discussed in the next paragraph) and that we return to a modified version of the garrisoned cleric (discussed two paragraphs down) for defense against conversion.

Church-sponsored Missions. Each time a religion accumulates a quantity of gold equal to 10 + (# of believers), a neutral cleric (which works like a barbarian general in Civ2) is generated in the city with the highest evangelism factor that has an open mission slot. That cleric will attempt to establish a mission in the nearest city that has at least one believer and an open mission spot. (I'm assuming here that cities can only send three missions and receive three missions.)

Defensive use of clerics. I'd like to see some mechanism for a civ to use a cleric to defend a city that is beleagured by an opposing civ's religion or a new religion. We used to have a garrisoned cleric idea, and maybe we should resurrect it. However, I thought it was a bit too weak, so I would suggest that a garrisoned cleric would increase believers' conviction rates by 25 percent, and that the effect would continue indefinitely unless (1) the city is taken over, in which case the cleric dies or (2) the cleric is assassinated by a diplomat/spy. In addition, we could also allow the establishment of missions in friendly cities, which would also tend to decrease the effects of opposing clerics. What do you think?

Tithing. I will make one more pitch against the tithe-from-thin air concept. At almost every stage of the game in civ, each choice has positive and negative effects. There are never any sure things. However, as currently outlined, religion has a uniformly positive effect early in the game. I suppose there's a threat of negative effects in that the religion could start to demand action later in the game, or that a rival civ could capture your majority religion. But that's pretty far in the future. Therefore, what I'd do is take away the maintenance cost for religious improvements, and replace them with tithes. Thus, the temple wouldn't cost anything, but the religion(s) using it would. Any takers?

[raingoon]

Will

Tithing
Say again what you're suggesting for tithes? Are you saying in order to assuage the concerns expressed in M@ni@c's post on the subject of tithes, you would take the extra gold pieces currently being spent on religious improvements in Civ2 and get rid of them, and instead gold now would be going out from the city to each religion? Still, there is an awful big difference in the amounts, isn't there?

Defensive use of clerics.
I'd like to see some mechanism for a civ to use a cleric to defend a city that is beleagured by an opposing civ's religion or a new religion...
Two questions. First, do we already have a mechanism to defend a city against certain religions by declaring state religion and/or selectively persecuting?

Second, if we went back to garrisoning clerics, then it's not as simple as if clerics always behave liking caravans, which for some reason I prefer.

We could take your suggestion to do away with "ministries" and allow players to set up missions at home or abroad, same as trade. We could combine the effects currently listed in ministries with those in missions. If not 50% conviction bonus, then 25%, whichever is best. But in all cases the cleric enters, a citizen is automatically converted, a mission is established, and 5 consecutive conversion turns occur, afterwhich the conviction bonus is what remains by the mission. This is important, because in fact there are many ways to beef up the evangelism factors, I think, though that is still unknown. What about that?

Church-sponsored Missions. Each time a religion accumulates a quantity of gold equal to 10 + (# of believers), a neutral cleric (which works like a barbarian general in Civ2) is generated in the city with the highest evangelism factor that has an open mission slot. That cleric will attempt to establish a mission in the nearest city that has at least one believer and an open mission spot. (I'm assuming here that cities can only send three missions and receive three missions.)

a) 3 slots works for me too.
b) Can we have this automatically occur, and avoid wandering Clerics that can be killed? Or is that your point? I don't personally need to actually see them moving from one city to another.
c) Is it better to establish religious AI missions in the closest city w/ at least one believer? The suggestion that it be established in the _weakest_ city with at least one believer was to focus religious benefits where they were most needed to help religions get off the ground. Which is really better?

M@ni@c

Will answered one of your points and you had another, which I apologize, I have to cut short here. I'll continue when I get a chance later...

[raingoon]

M@ni@c

Addressing your points. Will answered the distance from city problem you had. I'll adjust that in my previous post.


"2. Religions will ask for donations periodically, and in increasing amounts."

You should be able to give extra money, but you shouldn't be forced, since it would be contradictious to give money to other religions if you have a state religion.

Agreed. I should clarify that. You are not forced to give any money.

Diplomatic option : give money to a religion and with that money, he may start ministries in FOREIGN cities ... not in your cities since that would interfere with your possible state religion). Then it could be useful to give money to religions by annoying another civs/religions trying to gain a majority in a city.

If we change the rule so that there are no "ministries," but just missions that are either civ founded or AI religion founded, the current tithing rule does cover this. BUT you're idea could provide for a diplomatic option allowing you to say WHICH city you wanted the religion to found a mission in, and the religion would reply, "Okay, glad to, if you can support us with a payment of X gold...?" Same as getting another civ to declare war on your enemy in Civ2. Does that sound right?

"a ministry in a city increases the conviction factor for citizens of that religion by 50 percent, and has the effects on happiness detailed in section III. "

Which effects? Ig eg a ministry would make one unhappy citizen content and if every religion can install one ministry, it would again be very unbalancing.

I'll defer to Will, on this. I was going off his previous post. Not to cop out, but in general, I've stayed out of the Effects specifics when doing Section II. Will?


So... Beginning to come together here? With the word that Firaxis has been programming since June 1, seems time is of the essence. I'd like to know how we're going to finally submit the religion ideas. M@ni@c, you expressed concern that the summary be inclusive of everyone's ideas. Are we leaving any out?

Naturally, I'm concerned about how our model here is going to be summarized. I'm a little close to it, but it seems to be satisfying most people's ideas in this thread. What I *really* like is the way it's becoming increasingly understandable in Civ2 terms. I think a solid summary tying it back to the Civ2 context is our best shot.

[MBrazier]

Raingoon:

On helping fledgling religions survive -- yes, I'd say you've solved that problem; in fact you may have done too much. But there's lots of ways to tweak the system if needed, and it looks sound to me.

On clerics, missions, and ministries -- given that now the sole purpose of a cleric is founding a mission, which in turn lets one city affect the religion of another; what's the point of associating clerics with religions? The effects you assigned to missions would be appropriate as side-effects of trade routes; as an independent tool they make no sense at all.

Your "ministry" is dead on for a proper mission, though. Mixing ideas together, I suggest the following for section II.B.5.b:

1) A civilization with a "state religion" (see section III for definition) may build a Cleric unit of the state religion. A cleric resembles a caravan unit; it cannot attack and ignores ZOC. When it enters a city it founds a mission from the state religion and disappears (just as a caravan creates a trade route and disappears.) Each city may only contain 3 missions.
2) When a religion has accumulated X+1 gold (where X is the total number of believers throughout the world) it sends a "neutral" cleric of its own, from a city where it is the majority religion to one where it is not. If the cleric arrives it founds a mission from its creator and vanishes, just as civ-controlled clerics do.
3) A mission converts one citizen when first founded automatically, and increases the Conviction rating for citizens of its religion by 50% of the base value as long as it remains in existence.
4) If the last remaining member of a religion in a city is converted away, any mission from that religion in the city is immediately disbanded and removed. This, and the destruction of the city, are the only things that can destroy a mission once founded.

Finally, I'd like to suggest a more radical reworking of II.B.4, "passive conversions".

The game calculates the Evangelism (Conviction) of a religion within a city by adding together: the Evan(Conv) of each member in the city; (1 - dist/10) * Evan(Conv) of each member in a city less than 10 squares away; and 1/2 * Evan(Conv) of each member in a city with a trade route to this city. If a religion has no members in a city, it is not attacked by other stacks.

I've removed the "official religion" aspect; if there are several religions in a city, all of them contribute to stacks in the neighboring cities. This complicates the intra-city conversion slightly, but it removes the need for a second city-on-city pass. It also means that fledgling religions have a shot at making converts outside their starting city, even when they haven't gained the majority of its citizens yet.

[raingoon]

Mbrazier

I'm sold on your suggestion. Very functional. Pretty much simplifies it right down... I'd like to get one thing clarified:

If the cleric arrives it founds a mission... -- Do you mean the religion's cleric can be killed along the way? If so, what should the penalty be, if any?

Perhaps this is where Will's suggestion for cleric to cleric assassination can come in. I.e., "Clerics can only be killed by other clerics. If the offended religion has a holy city, they may call for a holy war against the offending state religion.

Regarding the re-working of the II.B.4. formula for passive conversions, if that works and the result is what you say it is, then I'm definitely for it and I'll get all these changes into the post.