RELIGION v3.0 (no host)

[raingoon]

Wow -- what a great sounding book. Just ordered a copy from Amazon. Can't wait to read it.

[Theben]

Another thing about the book- and I don't know if it's intentional or not- is that it clearly demonstrates why Eurasians wound up as world conquerors, and not anyone from Africa, Australia, or the New World. And it does this in a highly scientific, non- racist manner. In fact, it has enough information in it that any racist willing to listen should change his/her mind and accept that the races are intellectually identical.
3 things to get you started:
-33 out of 56 of the world's best crops started in Europe and West Asia, as opposed to 11 in all of the Americas
-The continental axis as described above
-13 out 14 of the animal domesticates were in Eurasia, while only one of 14 was available in the Americas (and due to the north-South axis, the llama stayed in the Andes).
In a nutshell, the Eurasians got lucky.

As you can see, any one of these has great potential to cause widely varying tech/cultural gaps between societies. With all 3, the populations of the Americas/Africa/Australia didn't stand a chance (and these 3 weren't the only things against them!).

This whole thing has got me thinking (and I know I've strayed from Religion, but I'm good at that in real life too ). Right now the difference in the civ game levels involves giving the AI "cheats". Why not use the above to limit players? FE,

Chieftain level: You start out in a location very similar to the Fertile Cresent (ideal location for tech diffusion, many crop plants, many domesticable animals, including horses, east-west axis)...

to Diety level: A climate and/or continent very similar to Australia. Few crop plants, NO domesticable animals, complete isolation from other nations, so little chance for tech diffusion. Try winning that!

[Ruinexplorer]

That really is a good idea. I've always been interested in the development of civilization from an Archaeological perspective, rather than the more economic and strategic concerns of many others.

Diffusion of ideas is a constant in real history, and location and resources are extremely important to the degree and direction of societal development, and initial location could be a great way to
affect difficulty if done correctly.

Of course, all the Civ games assume the rather unlikely fact of a immortal and largely irremovable leader or at least guiding spirit, which would make even places like Australia less of a "hassle". Australia's great geological age (far older than most of the continents) means that it's resources should be appropriately scattered and/or reduced. Perhaps Civilization III should go back even further into the depths of time, with the players choosing the basis of their society, whether they have domesticated animals, learnt to work copper and so on.

I'm going even further off topic, so I'll get
back on (I'd like to discuss these ideas of location, diffusion and so on more later).
So on to religion. Using only real-world religions seems both foolish AND boring (quite an achievement!) and inevitably, some religions are better than others at motivating the populace and so should "realistically" have better scores. Christianity, for example, has been historically shown to be very good at getting converts, as it was, in its earlier years, at least, a "win-win" religion. 90% of it's competitors required effort and "special-ness" to get into "Heaven" (be Valhalla, Elysium, or whatever), whereas Christianity required only baptism and a quick repentance before death to gain entry. Futhermore, alot of "the old gods" could be worshipped as Saints (there was, for example, a St. Hercules), and a Mother Godess replacement was found in the Virgin Mary (some of whose shrines directly replaced those of older Mother Godesses, such as Demeter). Certainly it proved more immediately motivational to your average "dark ages" peasant than the rather random and changeable bunch of gods that had come before.

I do not believe that a computer game could accurately simulate the function of religion in society on any kind of level subtle enough to seperate out individual religions and I also do not believe that real world religions would be treated fairly if all were taken as individual and different religions.

General religion types would quite doable, starting with Shamanistic beliefs and going through Pantheism, Dualism, Monotheism, and so on to more unusual beliefs like Post-industrial Mysticism, Science-based Atheism/ Skepticism or even scary old Nazi-style Nationalistic/Racial pride religions and so on. Religion should add flavour, not merely be another technological commodity. It is also the case that two religious sects based on the same book could be completely and utterly different. Compare, for example, Sufi and Sh'iite (sp?) Islam, or the Quaker and dark-ages Catholic visions of Christianity, or Aztec Patheism with ancient Greek/Roman Pantheism.

It would be essential that it be possible for the player to build his own religions, or variants on existing ones. Not all religions should involve the Supernatural or much Irrational Belief either. As science progresses these could be toned down, leading to less superstition, techno-fear and so on, but the could also be toned up for other purposes. Fundamentalism and Ascetism would be great for Civs living on narrow margins but would screw trade and so on. If you can control societies' political choices you can certainly control their religious ones. It seems also possible that you could choose NOT to have a societal religion, or not to enforce said religion on those unwilling to have it. Many successful ancient empires ignored the religion of their subjects or were even favorable towards it. Even with modern Empires, missionaries have only had variable success.

In short, religion is an immensely complex subject, and one that tends to get people hot under the collar (especially if it's a "dog-collar"!), and I feel Civ III should stay the hell away from using SPECIFIC NAMED REAL-WORLD religions for a variety of reasons, not the least of them realism (many real religions are so utterly variable that they cannot be quantified), and instead go for "Generalised" religion TYPES, and allow these to be modified on various axes. You could always _decide_ that your religious model represented "Islam Circa 1300 CE" or whatever, maybe even naming it in-game, as it were.

Politics might follow a more "Alpha Centuari"-style model, with different choices combining to form an overall picture, and religion could do this too, or even be a number of factors on the same table.

------------------
"You're standing on my neck."

[raingoon]

Bumpity bump.

[raingoon]

Bumpity bumpity bump.

[civbuilder]

Some great ideas here. I personally really like the elevation of religions to such a high status in terms of gameplay. I really the the idea that individual religions work almost like empires, interatcing and attacking each other, and the civilisations. This would add a simple layer of depth, i personally like the way in which they would, to an extent, dictate the actions of civilisations. This might result in more wars and the way in which wars would have wide reaching effects on your standing, not just with your enemy but with various religions, is inspired, it would comprehensivly add to the game. Under the system with has been proposed, in which you can open diplomacy windows with the religion, might i add that it would be nice to be able to trade technologies through the religion (possibly for blessing instead of money) or ask the religion if it would be willing to divulge technologies which they have aquired from elsewhere (i assume religions would span several civilisations and so would perhaps become an informal way of communication, like the Cristian church in Medievil Europe).

Finally I think it would be good if you could actually choose to play as one of the religions (you have units, diplomacy, differnt - though still existant - forms of generating revenue and ways of declaring war). Obviously this could not be a default option, but it would be nice if the option existed somewhere within the game (an appropriate reward for claiming a particular victory perhaps?).

[raingoon]

Wow -- religion redux. Glad to see people still responding to this idea. Looks like CTP II will not be modeling religion (correct me if I'm wrong, here). So let's hope Firaxis is reading these boards.

Some good suggestions civbuilder. I was just reading about the Shroud of Turin and thinking another good idea might be "Religious Relics." Sort of like the treasure chests in "Age of Kingdoms" -- one for each religion that could be worth the support of that church, as well as perhaps money. Just somehow make it worth having, and therefore worth fighting over.

The more actual reasons you have to go to war -- as opposed to just vaguely wanting to dominate -- I say the better.

[civbuilder]

If religion is modelled then why do we still need the timeline runing BC to AD? This disection of time was simply due to one religion, others have thier own years. Perhaps the in game callendar should revolve aound a specific religious event in game time, or perhaps this would become too confusing?

Secondly although this is not strictly a religious matter it is a gripe of mine that most forum posters seem to think the game should run between the dates on the Christian callendar - c.3000 BC and c.2000 AD, i personally think this runs against the spirit of the game, if events had happened differently, say the Roman empire hadn't had fallen we might have reached the modern era by 1500 AD. Or in contrast what if someone had stopped the industrial revolution - we might have fallen into another dark age and not have reached 'modern civilisation' for another thousand years. It would be nice to see a more open ended time line (in a fictional civ 3000 might mean invention of muskateers not neccesarily 'inter-stella travel').

I should also point out that events such as tungusta happened in the ancient world - an ancient erruption of Kracatoa was believed to have helped bring down the Romans - Perhaps events like these could happen in civ3 possibly affecting religious convictions etc. (representing the explanation's as paranormal by the religions).

[Theben]

Avoiding the Religion conversation- since I never really got into it- to answer your question about the b.c.-a.d. thing: it is a familiar time break for most players, who can then judge how well they're doing by comparing their current standing vs. the timeline (FE, I have tanks in 1500 a.d.= I'm doing great while I have musketeers in 1920= I suck ). Personally I don't think it's that important to get too involved in.

[civbuilder]

You're probably right, its not that important and i suspect it would be confusing (no fixed time references) but all that i don't want is the game to automatically stop at 2000 or 2100 because 'thats futuristic', it needn't be, but this probably isn't the thread to discuse that in detail on and i was only trying to bring up the point that (lest some people forget) that we measure time from a religious event - not because someone decided in two thousand years we should have completed the space race.

I mentioned in my previous thread how events in the past could have been seen as miricals. I'd now like to expand on this concept to point out that bad freak events were seen as plagues and often made people lose faith in thier gods, i'd like to see in the next civ (if religion is modelled) some random events which can change the conviction (defencisve) and the other one (attacking) properties of the religions. This needn't be a plaugue makes everyone doubt thier gods, perhaps a plauge might make an ethnic religions followers think thier god has come to spite thier enemies (like the Jews in Egypt) i think this would be interesting.

[SOC]

My very first post. I can't believe I didn't find this site until now! All the things I missed... Nooooooooooooo! Anyway, I am simply impressed with the level of discussion and thoughts on the religion model. Great job! But, I have comments regarding two topics that weren’t carefully addressed in the list. I don't think it will matter now, but the discussion is interesting… perhaps it will help later CIVs or even wannabe Civ games! Oh well…

1. The model does not account for the fact that religion affects – often positively, as well as negatively – the direction, and depth of research in a civ and vice versa.
2. A religion consists of many attributes, some even contradictory; a religion cannot be simply “typed” as Monotheistic, Polytheistic, etc. It is more a question of dominant element versus lesser element.

Since each of them take a fair size, I will put them separately next page for clarity’s sake.

[SOC]

Religion and Science

My first point is this: religion affects modes of thought, and vice versa. In Civ terms, religions would help certain technology, but not the other.

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<img src="/images/blue1.gif" width=100% height=1>
</font> 5.49) One poster suggested that you could choose what religion you wanted in each city. Each religion would have a bonus (Polytheism would get +100% extra from temples, Monotheism +100% from churches, Atheism a double science bonus from universities and Religious Freedom gets +25% extra from all holy buildings and wonders). Then, it would spread like the v.2.0 model listed above.
<img src="/images/blue1.gif" width=100% height=1></font></td></tr></table></center>

It is simply not true that Atheism is the only “religion” that should give bonuses to research. Religions have had – and may even have now – an enormous influence in thinking and research.

Confucianism did not affect only industry and society; the research and philosophies of the Chinese civilization followed the Confucian (and Taoist and Buddhist) thinking. In the West, the rise of modern science owes a lot to Christianity. The works of great scientists like Kepler, Descartes, Pascal and Newton were greatly influenced by their faith, and their view of God (Newton, for example, seeing God, the Creator as a Divine watchmaker).
If say, a civilization with an Eastern religion developed modern technology before the West did, it would have developed differently; different technology discovered before, the other, more focus to one area of science than others, etc.

If one wishes to portray this, different religion should give bonuses to the rate of different technology, or if the multiple fields of research idea is used, it could affect different fields.
(I think the effects should be positive, since this would a) largely avoid heated arguments, b) the established religions around the world are very adaptive: they can incorporate views from new sciences without comprising their central tenets eg. "God creates new life through the process of Evolution" is an officially accepted doctrine in Catholicism).

[SOC]

I just had a thought. Is it okay for me to post multiple posts in a row like this? Argh.

Anyway. My second spiel, for those who will read it.

A religion consists of many attributes, some even contradictory; a religion cannot be simply “typed” as Monotheistic, Polytheistic, etc. It is more a question of dominant element versus lesser elements, and how they make up the whole.

For example, Hinduism is NOT polytheistic; it has also Monistic (Pantheistic) and Monotheistic elements in them. Buddhism has Atheistic, and Monistic – and in some cases, Monotheistic and Polytheistic elements. Religion can have other elements to a differing degree – some religions excelled in philosophy, ethics, others in mystical experiences, devotion to deities, etc.

So, to have religions (esp real ones) in the game, one probably should have each religion having multiple “elements” and display the importance of each numerically or something. Also…
a) Dominant trait will limit the numerical value of a competing trait.
b) Depending on the value of each element, religion can help modify SE effects AND research bonuses differently.
c) Initially, each religion will have either the same values – or at least have strengths in different areas that will add up to equal bonuses. (either that or be customizable) to avoid excessive debate.
d) If Social Engineering model for religion used, Dogma can be used to change these values. Otherwise, environment will change them.

For an illustration of my points, I will divide the elements in religion in to three areas; it’s too late to add to religion model now, but what the heck!

Religion type (here, dominance in one area will limit the other, but not completely)
1. Polytheistic 2. Atheistic 3. Pantheistic 4. Monotheistic.

Religion achievements (a better word?) (here, dominance in one do not limit the other. Eg. Why would philosophy limit the development of the rel’s devotional aspect?
1. Philosophical (how developed is its philosophical system?)
2. Mystical (The focus and depth of mediation, etc.)
3. Materialistic (as in how much importance, in research and in social life is given to the physical world : this may shock some, but Judaism/ Christianity would be classified as more materialistic of religions)
4. Devotional ( importance in personal relationship/worship of deity)

Religion’s structure
1.Priesthood – discussed in your list
2.Charity - how active is the religion in brining social justice, giving alms, etc.
3.Unity(?)
4.Tolerance

Religion type, I believe was addressed in the list, but I am arguing that a religion should not be one or the other, but have dominant, vs. lesser elements. Each, depending on numerical value give diff. Bonuses.

Religion Achievements : again, would give different SE bonuses – but also, affect rate of research for certain tech fields (philosophy for philosophy/social), Mystical for Psychology, Mathematics(?) Materialistic for Physics, Biology.

Religion Structure probably would affect the reputation of a religion – less tolerance, less rep, more ethical, better rep. Perhaps, also SE and research differences.

<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by SOC (edited November 01, 2000).]</font>
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by SOC (edited November 01, 2000).]</font>

[S. Kroeze]

Dear SOC,

Thank you for your intelligent contributions! I am also glad you choose this Forum to post your contributions. In general, intelligent discussion went on here.

For the moment I have nothing to add, only some questions:
Could you please explain more in detail how your ideas could influence the game?
What do you think of the idea of the Joker to give religions their own political agenda and their own AI, independent of the civilizations?
Do you have an opinion about the Eternal China Syndrome? You can find it here

Sincere regards,

S. Kroeze

[Ubersandwich]

Has anyone looked at the religion model for MOO III? It looks very interesting. Of course it is generic, only listing the attributes of the religion (naturalistic, tecnocratic, mystic e&) something like that seems workable for those of us who'd like more depth to the game without offending anyone of a specific faith. (i do not have the link to the MOO III site, but is on the Microprose site, I believe)