posted May 26, 1999 18:14             

This may seem an over simplification on the surface, but I think it may be a solution to avoid some of the ethical/moral problems we are struggling with here...

*** A PROPOSAL ***

If Civ III uses the "Social Engineering" model of SMAC, then the Real V.S. abstracted religious model could be side stepped.

Social Engineering should have a "Philosophy" section. In this SE section would be categories that yield the effects of religion with out having specific religions.

The SE sections would become available due to technological (read understanding of the universe) advances.

Your civlizations Philosophy setting would effect:

Diplomatic relations/options
Government types available
Speed of Research
Happiness Level of Citizens
Productivity of Citizens

*** WHY PHILOSOPHY INSTEAD OF RELIGION? ***

The purpose of a religion is an attempts to answer basic questions about the universe the people live in. Questions like:

- Why are we here?
- How did we get here?
- What happens when we die?
- How should we live together?

Some of these questions are answered or directed via political philosophy. For example:

- Tolerant societies are more apt to be
- republics than intolerant ones.

- Monarchys are more apt to support
- uniformity of world view.

Sometimes these questions are answered by technology that profoundly effect the way people in a civilization act:

- "My gosh the earth really does
- revolve around the Sun...
- Are we still god's chosen?"

Sometimes, exposure to other peoples philosophies changes our own:

- The Jewish religion did not develop
- Heaven and Hell until exposed to the
- Zorasterian in Babylon.

The philosopy of a civilization has a strong impact on how it deals with other civilizations. In other words, your world view effects how you see other people.

All of these things about world view and not necessarily about specific religions.

Therefore let us use meta-physics ...philosphy... as the controlling factor here and not religion.

*** SUMMARY *** (not all from my message)

1) There will be a backlash if religion is directly expressed in the game.

2) Religion has powerful effects on the course of civilizations

3) Perhaps Civ III should use components of philosophy (i.e. world view) to simulate religious effects and sidestep #1 while getting #2.

Other thoughts?

posted May 26, 1999 20:23                

DON'T.

The Civilization games aren't meant to model the history of ideas, or the complexity of religious/philosophical controversy. They have always been restricted to economics and politics -- the developing of natural resources, the movements of goods, the manueverings of armies and diplomats. Putting real religions into Civ3 directly, and modeling the development of their doctrines, would create a highly complex system of the game, whose effect on the rest of the game would be unobvious (and therefore not much fun), and (very probably) offend a large number of potential customers. It's just not worth it.

I suggest that, if religion is modeled at all, that it not be controllable by the player. Every so often, as a random event, a new religion would appear in the game, starting at one tile and sweeping outward. Each civilization would then react to the religion as it reached them, deciding to (say) persecute it, tolerate it, or establish it as the state religion. These "official" religious attitudes would color diplomacy; if, for instance, the Chinese persecute the Roman state religion, the Romans will dislike the Chinese.

The sliding scales I mentioned before would be hidden from the players. The "faith" rating would control how quickly a religion spreads -- come to think of it, you'd need two separate ratings for that. Call them Evangelism and Conviction: the first rates readiness to convert others, the second rates resistance to being converted. Then you'd have a third rating for Tolerance, which controls the religion's attitude to state power; a low-Tolerance religion isn't happy unless it's a state cult (and creates unhappy citizens if it isn't?) while a high-Tolerance religion actively avoids state endorsements. Of course, all religions would object to being persecuted, and to any _other_ religion being made a state cult.

Why would a player want to establish a state religion, though? One idea: having an established religion allows you to build Missionary units. These units would have no ability to attack other units; all they would do is attempt to convert the tiles through which they pass. You would make these units to take advantage of religion's "side effects" -- to improve your reputation with another civilization, or to seed it with civil disorder arising from religious disputes.

posted May 26, 1999 21:16                

I still say real world religions are the way to go. Having Zulus and Americans and other real civilizations just made the game better. If you wanted to do a WWII scenario, you could just change the Zulus to, say, Italians, and you'd be all set. I didn't see any Indians complaining that India was a prettybad civ (it was, I never saw it get anywhere in any of my games unless it was the human player) So, if you have a problem, you can go to rules.txt and change it. Think of how much better it is to switch from Democracy to Fundementalism than from Governemnt 6 to Government 4. I specifically made religions relatively well balanced (like the original government. Some don't spread as quickly because, well, Buddhists just like to do their own thing while Jehovah's Witnesses go convert everyone they can find. I don't think I misrepresented any relgions. I'm Jewish, and I don't have a problem with Judaism having a very low growth rate. It does in real life (Jews usually don't try to actively convert people) The only problem I could see is someone being mad if their religion was left off the list.

------------------
Invertebrates of the world, UNITE! Don't just be a bunch of spineless....ah....never mind
<=O=>)=E

posted May 27, 1999 07:32                

This could be condensed. A captured city relates more closely to the original owner than to the new owner. This would decrease over time.

Results: Harder to win by total conquest. Liberating former territory would be easier. Possibility of internal strife.

I also think that this may be the simplest way of modelling the historic effect of religion/identity, with realistic results.

posted June 04, 1999 07:30                

Just shoot me an e-mail next time. It will be closed very quickly that way. **Yin**