Civilization 5 Cultures/Religions (Zoroastrianism)

[Revolution Child]

In Civilization 4 we experienced that the only ways for two nations to come closer in a cultural way was through having the same state religion.

What's people ideas on how Civilization 5 can improve that?

And as I mentioned to a lady who works with 2K games can these guys add religion "Zoroastrianism" to the game?

Zoroastrianism is one of the oldest religions in the world and it is the official Persian religion. In Civ 4 you could have a great person "Zoroaster" born as a prophet but you couldn't research or find Zoroastrianism like you could with Christianity, Buddhism or Judaism.

What's your thoughts and ideas?

[Ziggyz]

I thought they kicked religion out?

[Adar_Zan'nh]

They got rid of religion, for one thing it caused too much ganging up on people and "holy wars".

I think you could consider city-states the new religion.

[Revolution Child]

I thought they kicked religion out?

Why did they kick religion out? It was the only thing that made one civilization a quick boost to the cultural system.

[Waphlez]

I believe there is a Piety branch under the social policies. It has religious elements, but religion as we know it from Civ 4 is gone I believe.

Honestly, I think they should have kept it. If they wanted to make less holy wars, simply reduce the diplomatic influence religion has.

[VainApocalypse]

Why did they kick religion out? It was the only thing that made one civilization a quick boost to the cultural system.

Because it made diplomacy stale and predictable.

[Revolution Child]

What's new in the game then? Is there anything to look forward to apart from the new graphics and leaders negotiation?

[EnigmaCode]

What's new in the game then? Is there anything to look forward to apart from the new graphics and leaders negotiation?

Whats new in Civ V:
hexes 1 Unit per Hex (1UpH) new uses for gold new strategic resources (no more copper) ranged units city states pacts units transform themselves into transports automatically management cost for roads new units (like the Giant Death Robot) new musical score new user interface art deco style for icons new game engine Steam integration new voice actor (Morgan Sheppard) empire-wide happiness strategic view ancient ruins natural wonders no religion and lots more stuff.

[SlickSlicer]

I am still a little upset about religion being taken out. I think they could have reworked it rather than removing it entirely. The main thing they should have done is reduce the bonus from having the city that starts a religion. I also think there should have been a way to make one of your cities a holy city regardless of whether your religion started there. This could be accomplished by completing certain wonders perhaps.

I dunno. It just feels weird knowing that Civ 5 won't have the feature seeing how prominent religions were in Civ 4. Tech racing to found a religion could sometimes be entertaining.

If they do include religion again, I would vouch not only for Zoroastrianism, but also for more obscure religions. I think some of the more notable polytheistic religions could be included as well as Sikhism, Zoroastrianism, Jainism and Shintoism. What bugs me most about the removal of religion is that they also removed great prophets, which included both significant religious and philosophical people. I thought they could have kept them in but just reworked them as well, even if religion was taken out.

[belomeclone]

I am still a little upset about religion being taken out. I think they could have reworked it rather than removing it entirely. The main thing they should have done is reduce the bonus from having the city that starts a religion. I also think there should have been a way to make one of your cities a holy city regardless of whether your religion started there. This could be accomplished by completing certain wonders perhaps.


The Civ V motto is "if it doesn't work, remove it because we don't want to try figuring it out"

[SlickSlicer]

The Civ V motto is "if it doesn't work, remove it because we don't want to try figuring it out"

I've generally tried to stray away from arguments about whether Civ 5 has been dumbed down, but I must admit that I agree with this statement. They did the same thing with espionage too, which I also found suspect. :(

[Revolution Child]

I Agree. They could've worked it really great and because it's called "Civilization" even vanished religions from thousands of years ago could be in the modern age of 2000 AD because you start the world again with your own strategy. Whether a religion stays or doesn't could be completely up to the player to go barbarian on the worshippers.


I am still a little upset about religion being taken out. I think they could have reworked it rather than removing it entirely. The main thing they should have done is reduce the bonus from having the city that starts a religion. I also think there should have been a way to make one of your cities a holy city regardless of whether your religion started there. This could be accomplished by completing certain wonders perhaps.

If they do include religion again, I would vouch not only for Zoroastrianism, but also for more obscure religions. I think some of the more notable polytheistic religions could be included as well as Sikhism, Zoroastrianism, Jainism and Shintoism. What bugs me most about the removal of religion is that they also removed great prophets, which included both significant religious and philosophical people. I thought they could have kept them in but just reworked them as well, even if religion was taken out.

[oblisk]

Who's to say religion/espianoge might not make it back in the expansion....

As for religion, my thoughts on brokenness

a) tying it to a techonology for founding caused too much of a need to tech rush.

b) Diplomacy
- Predictablility
-The fact that even though all of your city's have both hinduism and bhuddism, but your state religion is hindu, that bhuddist nation next to you will still declare war.
- You could game the system. (swapping religions back and forth with a spiritual civ, It was a great way to tech trade)

c) AI never torched holy cities, I mean come on, if you are going to war because of a religion, the main goal should be setting the holy city to ashes.

[Revolution Child]

Can any Admins tell us if religion is cancelled on Civ 5 or not?

[Revolution Child]

Well? Nothing?!

[EnigmaCode]

Can any Admins tell us if religion is cancelled on Civ 5 or not?

There is no religion in Civ V.

[SlickSlicer]

Well? Nothing?!

It is only mildly represented via a "piety" social tree.

Generally it plays no real role in the game. There probably aren't different religions either. I imagine piety just having things such as "Monasticism," "Theocracy," "Communal Worship," "Ascetism," etc. in it.

[Lord of the Isles]

I think relegion was broken in civ 4. Who knows how much it helps in Civ 5 though the piety tree. We just dont know yet.

i think no copper is far more suspect the copper and bronze age from 5500BC to 1300BC. And no one is quite sure when the copper age started it could have been even earlier then 5500BC.

[2K Greg]

Can any Admins tell us if religion is cancelled on Civ 5 or not?

Religion does not a feature in Civilization V like it was in Civilization 4. Civilization V doesn't pretend that religion doesn't exist; it's just not a thing that you found and spread like in Civ4.

[SamBC]

i think no copper is far more suspect the copper and bronze age from 5500BC to 1300BC. And no one is quite sure when the copper age started it could have been even earlier then 5500BC.
The fact that it's not a resource just suggests that it's considered sufficiently widely available to not need representation. After all, there's no management of wood, or flint for those warriors' clubs/spears/what-have-you.

[cristic]

...

tying it to a techonology for founding caused too much of a need to tech rush.



I totally agree, I found it so odd that a civ trying to get ahead in culture/diplomacy by making use of religion would have to tech rush to do so. Not only the founding, but the rest of the religion mechanic seemed forced, seemingly as just to get another marketing feature. I actually appreciate Civ 5 for cutting down some of the older cluttering features and focusing more on the core gameplay, like combat (which i've always felt was completely broken in all previous releases).

I also didn't like the huge diplomatic influence on other civs. Even when concerning realism it would seem that religion played more of a feudal role than anything else in medieval Europe. Back in the day I doubt that the general belief of the population mattered all that much as 'faith' was brutally imposed. To simulate the intricacies of the influence of 'religion' over politics in a game I think it would have to be a very dedicated game indeed, where the player would only focus on such things.

The new Piety tree is so much more attractive to me from a first glance as its keeping things clean, consistent and to the point.

[Revolution Child]

I suppose I'll have to agree with some of your comments above. Religion did always make you want to rush to be the founder of. And it did cause too much hassle. But what if there was religion in the game, but what reigion you come to find or how you come to find it would be a monopoly depending on which great persons are born in your cities?

(e.g. Zoroaster was born in Persepolis 3500 BC, You can have an option to either settle Zoroaster, build special building or most importantly influence Zoroastrianism to the people, and it slowly spreads. Eventually in time if that religion is not practised, say there was no Zoroastrian Temple built the religion dies.)

How does that sound?

[Revolution Child]

The way I look at this world and it's political orders is like a game of Chess.
Two sides "Black" & "White".
When I play the game I can move the king, the queen, the bishop, whatever and whether I win the game or lose all matters on my strategy and logic.

What I'm trying to say is, the king doesn't move by itself, neither does the queen, or the bishop, I'm the person looking at the Chess table making their moves.

The president (Obama) or The prime minister are not the people who run this world. The whole world is manipulated into this strategy of our daily lives but those who stand behind the curtain watching.

Those people don't answer to no one, don't have no identity, they are ghosts. We could walk past them everyday without noticing who they are.

[SlickSlicer]

I don't really agree with you guys. I think religion was implemented "Ok" in Civilization 4. Tech rushing forced players to be really competitive, which I actually think is good. It added to the strategy of the game because you had to balance in the early game between focusing on religion or focusing on more economic techs. In multiplayer, religion tech racing was pretty fun and often humorous or epic. The main problem with religion in civ 4, I felt, was that the AI always mass converted to Buddhism or Hinduism and sometimes Judaism. Christianity, Taoism, Confucianism and Islam (especially Christianity and Islam) almost never had any role in the game. Diplomacy was also tied way too much to religion.

I feel that the removal of religion removes a part of the strategy of the game, especially for multiplayer. If they could have found some way to balance religion when it came to dealing with the AI, I think that would have been better.

[Namaspamus]

I liked the feeling of "alternative history" it brought to the game (bouddhists Greeks, jewish Arabs, etc...) This should be modded very soon.

One thing I regretted in Civ IV was the fact that once a city had a religion, only a missionary could bring another one in even in freedom of cult. So in the late game I had to produce tons of missionaries to get as many religions as possible in every city, to get the happiness bonus (+2 by city with a temple if I remember)

If the diplomatic bonus/malus was so strong, it was (i think) because devs wanted them to put fire into the game with holy wars. Maybe city-states will do that now.


I also think there should have been a way to make one of your cities a holy city regardless of whether your religion started there. This could be accomplished by completing certain wonders perhaps.


Maybe a great prophet too. There could still be a maximum, like 3 holy cities by religion.


.
c) AI never torched holy cities, I mean come on, if you are going to war because of a religion, the main goal should be setting the holy city to ashes.

Razing a holy city made all civs really angry, worse than nukes. (never nuked a holy city though)

[slowtarget]

If the diplomatic bonus/malus was so strong, it was (i think) because devs wanted them to put fire into the game with holy wars. Maybe city-states will do that now.

I have to assume that's exactly what it's purpose was. In Civ2, the lack of intrinsically-enforced borders kept everyone on the edge of war and it was pretty easy to jump off that edge. Civ3 hardened the borders, but gave us resources to fight over. That worked, but large empires usually had all the resources they needed and tended to become more passive. It was only the mid-size aggressive civs that stirred things up.

Civ4 was similar, but with more abundant resources. The addition which stirred things up was religion, and its (overly) strong influence on civ attitudes tells me that the devs specifically set it up to cause wars. I can trade a dozen resources with Montezuma for two thousand years, but that gets thrown down the drain if I simply don't share his state religion? Yeah, that was totally added to cause wars. The only problem was that it really felt as artificial as it was.

The only other thing in the game that encouraged wars in the late game (when everyone started moving to "sectual freedom" --heh-- anyway) was the vassal system that ended up dragging large civs into wars because of their small, weak buddies. The City-States system in Civ5 seems to be an improved version of that. Without having a chance to play the game, it seems like a better and more historically supported way of encouraging wars.

With luck, this might open the game to re-introducing religion in an expansion/new-version as more of a flavor/bonus element to civilizations. I really liked having religion play a part in the world, I just thought that it played far too much of a part in triggering wars.

[Onandoga]

Religion should be implemented into the game, just not with as heavy an influence in diplomacy as it did in civ4. I think the devs were tryin to replicate scenarios caused by religious wars like the crusades and stuff like that, which is okay to a point. In civ4 it seemed like most wars were caused by religion...

[slowtarget]

I think the devs were tryin to replicate scenarios caused by religious wars like the crusades and stuff like that,

Except that the crusades were caused mostly by greed, not religion. Wars truly caused by religion are pretty rare past... oh, about the fall of Rome. Once civilizations started forming large governments, they only needed religion as an excuse to go to war, not a true driving force.

[xlstadal]

I think that the religions should be founded by a random event based if you have a certain technology. that would lessen up on the tech racing because the player is not guaranteed to found that religion. I think religion should be brought back in an expansion because it really helped with the culture output of cities as well as forming alliances with other civs. I think that if it kept the same bonus but lessened up on the negative impacts on relations with civs, then it would be much better than in Civ IV.