This way we won't have Arab (or Zulu!)Crusaders fighting against the English or French..

Also, each civ should have a country name.. This way, you would negotiate with Britain or declare war on, or denounce, Phoenicia, instead of The British and Phoenecians..
This name could change with change in govt. Russia could become the Soviet Union, India into the Republic of India etc..

Yes, yes.. There should be directories for each culture, and then each civ should assigned to a culture.. The 'culture' files should serve as the base, while if any modifications are needed, the data in the 'civ' files would be used.. The directory structure could be like this:-

\Civ3\Culture\European
\Civ3\Culture\EastAsian
\Civ3\Culture\African
etc.
and
Civ3\Civs\Romans

and so on..

But what's important is that the civ data should be different and should overrule the culture data if there is a conflict..
One more thing:- Firaxis better not try and make the Indian civ Chinese: Indian buildings do NOT look like Chinese pagodas..

However, I would like to issue a word of caution. If each civs units all look different then it may be hard to work out which units which (is that a Chinese Phalanx or Warriors?). This could be a good thing, and each civ could have a different range of units and a varying tech-tree.

The forced history point is a good one too, and one that I heartily agree with. I want to shape my own civ, not have it pre-defined to me.

quote: Firaxis will have to either bag the idea completely or not name the religions and have a percentage: 67% of your citizens are of the A faith, 20% are of the B faith, and 13% are of the C faith

I disagree with this approach. We are playing Civ, a game in which we are replaying the history of mankind, more or less. We have in the game real discoveries, government forms, units and so on. We have democracy, monarchy, philosophy, automobile, cavalry, etc. and not "A" goverment and "B" discoveries or "C" units. We should have real religions, too.

quote: I also dislike the "one civ - one religion" idea

How about one religion - many civs ?

And why shouldn't have an Arab civ Crusaders that look like muslim crusaders? You already have Crusaders that look like Crusaders! Just they are all the same. Why should we play reality just in some domains and fiction in others? And how could Firaxis decide what to make real and what fiction?

I have nothing against this - the only problem are the badly picked unit names, CivII was really messed in that respect. Come on, Cavalry?!? You have to be kidding.

quote: Arab (or Zulu!)Crusaders

So that's why the game should have different directories/rules files for each civ. So as well having civ-specific wonders (in another thread), the game can also have civ-specific units. The civ-specific units would probably not be different in specs to other units from other civs, but'll just have different names and graphix.

One more thing on recreating vs. reliving history.. I'm no history student but thanks to civ I'm interested in ancient/medieval history.. And at least to some extent, I'd like to see a resemblance between history and the course of events in the game.. Perhaps civs could have a natural tendency toward a partivular religion or something..

And historical accuracy isn't just confined to religion.. I would like to see historically accurate units and stuff too..

or will it go , with the soldiers of the towns it has "infested" and spread itself world-wide ? i think that this would also be a solution to the constant problem of Civs vanishing . even if your whole military is crushed and your city is conquered , your religion , and your cultures live on. during periods of crisis , a religion which is not closed-in-itself enough will split into a few religions . but in that religion menu you wont be able to change things drastically , coz as one said here before the religious proccesses take a whole lot of time .

P.S. communism and extreme ecologism are religions too , right ? oh boy , I haven't asked the question of " what is religion " , have I ?

But what I was talking about was diff. graphics and rules for the diff. civs..

Religion, well Communism there is no religion, but since true communism cannot be attained on a empirical(is this a word?) scale we'll use Stalinism as a guide. And think about it even if true communism was attained it's just waiting to become a stalinist police state. I mean you rely on the majority to make the decisions, well what's going to stop the majority from becoming a minority and ruling the people like slaves after all they were already used to the state making all the decisions.

Anyway Religion should only hinder relations if you have had bad relations for a long time.

Ok so say on first contact Asian Buddhianityists go on an Inquisition of the new world but are driven back, since the first contact was horrible that is seen as a religious attack or whatever and will sour relations later where if the first contact was peaceful and war erupted for non zealous matters relations wouldn't be permanetly stained.

Following good it gets a little deeper. Long periods of war between nations with mainly 1 type of religion can hurt the whole religions positions on one another bring the church to make states to have alliances. So the church if angered with another will beable to press you for alliances etc. Also after religious alliances are formed tearing them apart can be hard even if they seem to want to break apart.

Church's power

riot-Damage
protest-no damage, better support in countries with mass media
jihad-holy war
inquisition-ok no, no one will buy it if this is in.
repairs-need better name the church can help rebuild after natural disasters, will increase the number of converts from the diaster area

I cant think of any more. Holy war will give bonuses in recruits if the state decides to fight it or you can say no go. Also taxes and everything blow sky high but the church will want a total war. Scourched earth on those heretics.

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King Par4!!

fldmarshallpar4@icqmail.com

That said, I think that religion would be a great addition to the game. Religion played an instrumental role in the founding of empires, in the expansion goals of many civilizations, and in the collapse and deaths of countless others. Each religion has had a different impact on the civilization, making some civs passive and others militaristic.

I see no easy way for Firaxis to implement a civ3 religion system. Reducing a religious system into a few mathematical rules must be very difficult; however, Micropose and Firaxis have already reduced human civilization into those few mathematical rules and have done an excellent job.

If someone can be bothered finding a link to the old model (not too long), then that would be great. This comes up once a month, and I don't know where to point people.

Here we go again... I don't think that any names of religion should be mentioned in the game at all. It just doesn't seem neccessary to me. The game should be mainly civ vs civ not religion vs religion. If you want to do religion vs religion this should be done through gov types, eg fundamentalism.

And I also agree with these quotes:

quote: I like the ideas in this thread, but i just can't see Firaxis touching this idea with a 10-foot pole - it is too potentially controversial.

quote: I must say, religion is a touchy subject to some users. Since Firaxis wants to cater to the greatest number of buyers, they probably will not deliberately add a game element that could alienate gamers.

Christian Catholic Church Pope admitted this year that his religion makes mistakes in the past, procuring severe harm to other people.

I'm sure that if Firaxis will keep things so that there isn't a preset "bad" religion versus "good" religion, any complain will be really limited and easy to counteract.

Of course my vision of the world can be limited to Italian culture: I know there are some different ideas out there. Creation vs. Evolution isn't really a hot debate here today, when I saw at Dino forum lot of flames about it.

So, I still think that religion has been an important facet of world history to let it out, just limiting it to some research, city improvement and a "fundamentalist" goverment choice.
Of course it will have a role in the game if it will be part of a CIVilian agenda or something like that.