RELIGION 2.1 (Hosted by Stefu)

[will I]

This makes post #150, which rather appropriately is the combination of all the ideas we've had so far. There are still some concepts that need to be ironed out -- especially the Great Shrine -- but I think we're quite close. Since this is such a HUGE post (although it would be a baby on the SE thread), I won't repost again, and I beg the rest of you not to do so. Instead, I'll edit as need be.

Anyway, here goes . . .

THE GRAND CLOSE-TO-CONSENSUS RELIGION MODEL

I. Religion in Civ3

A. Why have it?

Religion is a fundamental force driving civilizations. The effects of religion permeate the history of nations, their borders, their wars and their treaties. Your ability to direct religion's impact is likewise varied. For the first time you will be able to identify your citizens individually by their beliefs, track the rise and fall of major religions, and affect the social mechanics that make your civilization grow and evolve over the centuries.

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

• Calculations are made by "stacking" citizens together by religion and combining their values.
• Passive conversions reflect the influence of the citizens in a city on their fellow citizens and the proportionately weaker influence of citizens in nearby cities.
• Passive conversions are calculated, on average, every five turns. The computer will randomize the interval between passive conversions so that players cannot boost evangelism/conviction factors the year before a scheduled passive conversion.
• Possible formula for calculating passive conversion:

The Evangelism (Conviction) of a religion within a city is the sum of: the Evan(Conv) of each member in the city; plus (1 - dist/10) * Evan(Conv) of each member of that religion in a city less than 10 squares away; plus 1/2 * Evan(Conv) of each member of that religion in a city that has a mission to the city. If a religion has no members in a city, it is not attacked by other stacks.

• Once the evangelism and conviction factors are calculated, the results are calculated like a battle between units of equal strength. If the evangelizing unit wins, one citizen of the opposing religion is converted.

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."

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

5. Active Conversions - "Missions"
a. Missions established by a player

• cleric units establish missions as caravans in Civ2 established trade routes; like caravans, clerics have no values themselves.
• 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.
• like caravans, clerics may be destroyed en route.
• 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. "Missions established by the religion

• when a religion has accumulated X+Y gold pieces, where X = total number of believers throughout the world and Y= a base factor determined through play testing, the religion creates a cleric in the city with the highest evangelism factor that has an available spot for a mission.
• the cleric then travels to a city selected by the religion based primarily on maximizing the number of conversions.
• clerics generated by a religion move like clerics built by a civ, and may be destroyed by a vigilant enemy.

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. Under religious freedom. 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. Donations. Religions will ask for donations periodically, and in increasing amounts.
3. Under a state religion. In a "state religion", the tithe paid by the government is automatically sent 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 that possesses its holy city (see Diplomacy, holy cities, below).

III. Effects of religion

The player will have several options with regard to each religion. He or she may choose to establish a church or allow religious freedom. Regardless of whethere there is religious freedom or an established church, the player may choose to persecute one or more religions.

A. Under religious freedom

1. Effect on happiness, using current system.
a. For each religion in a city, one unhappy citizen becomes content or, if there are no unhappy citizens, a content citizen becomes happy. This effect continues indefinitely, so that each religion present in a city adds step to the base happiness level of the city.
b. To keep religion from having too great a benefit, the happiness effects described in a will apply to no more than one out of every four citizens in a city. That is, if there are seven citizens and three religions, only two citizens may be made happy.

2. Effect on happiness under alternate systems. Several people have proposed systems under which happiness becomes a percentage factor for each city that affects the productivity, and is not an attribute of the citizens. Under such systems, the conversion of one citizen to a new religion would increase the overall happiness/productivity percentage. When one religion attained majority status in a city, one of that religion's citizens would gain a step in happiness.

3. Effect of religious freedom on conviction. Under religious freedom, the conviction rate for all citizens is 20 percent lower than it would otherwise be.

4. Effect of full toleration. In addition to the effects listed above, if the player does not persecute any religion for five turns in a row, the research output of the civ increases by 10 percent (under the Civ2 system) or the Research SE factor improves by +1. That effect ceases immediately when the civ begins persecuting.

B. Establishment of a state church.

1. General. Under this system, the state picks one church as its official religion. Establishing a state church does not imply or require persecution of any of the other religions within the civ's territory.

2. Effect on happiness
a. The effects on happiness described above under religious freedom cease.
b. Under the Civ2 system, in each city that has at least one citizen who belongs to the state religion, one unhappy citizen becomes content or, if there are no unhappy citizens, a content citizen becomes happy. Thereafter, a content citizen becomes happy for every four believers in each city or, if there are no content citizens, an unhappy citizen becomes content. If a different happiness/productivity system is adopted, proclamation of a state religion increases a city (or civilization) happiness/productivity level by a factor of 25 percent times the proportion of citizens who belong to the state religion.
c. An additional unhappy citizen becomes content if more than 50 percent of the citizens of a city are members of the established church. In alternate systems, there is a further increase in the happiness/productivity level.
d. Conquered cities take 20 fewer turns to assimilate.
e. The number of cities that can be built before the civ undergoes a happiness penalty increases.
f. Bribery becomes 25 percent cheaper.
g. Entertainers produce 20 percent more luxuries.
h. The established church's evangelism factor increases by 20 percent for all conversion activities within the borders of that civ.
i. Deestablishing the church. A civ may deestablish a church at any time. However, deestablishment shall result in a period of anarchy for one turn.

3. Tithes. A civ that has an established church must pay 20 percent of its total trade as tithes to the church. Under an alternate system, the civ gets –2 Tax..

4. Cathedral. Only a civ that has a state religion may build a Cathedral, which has the same effect as in Civ2. If the civ then converts to religious freedom, any cathedrals will generate an amount of gold proportionate to the number of citizens it would have made happy, to reflect the tourist revenue generated by the cathedral.

5. Multiple civs with the same state church.
a. A civ may establish a religion as its state church even if another civ has already made that religion its state church. In such cases, the religion will not take any action against either of the civs, and will remain neutral in any conflict between them.
b. If the religion has a holy city, one of the civs may request the excommunication of the of
the other civ's leader. The religion will demand a contribution related to the number of believers in the excommunicated civ and the religion's attitude toward the possessor of the hold city and the civ that it wishes to excommunicate.
c. A civ whose leader is excommunicated by a religion may no longer have that religion as its state religion. It may either convert to religious freedom (with the associated two turns of anarchy), deestablish the old religion and establish a new state religion, or declare a schism (see below) and adopt the new religion as its state religion.
d. When two civs have the same state religion, either of them may at any time declare a schism of the church. 75 percent of the citizens of the old church will convert to the new church, while 25 percent will remain faithful to the old.

D. Persecution.
Under this system, belonging to a persecuted religion is illegal. A government may persecute one or all religions.
1. A persecuted religion's conversion factor is reduced by 25 percent for all conversion activities within the borders of the persecuting civ.
2. In each city that contains members of the persecuted religion, one content citizens become unhappy for each member of the persecuted religion, and one happy citizen becomes content for each two members of the persecuted religion, reflecting the angst of innocents who are caught up in the persecution. (Under a revised happiness/productivity system, persecution results in a decrease in a city or civitlization happiness/productivity level by 25 percent times the proportion of citizens who are subject to persecution.) The city's the research output decreases by 25 percent to reflect the effect of intolerance.
3. Persecution has no positive effect other than those that result from the increase in the number of believers in other religions. If there is a state religion, the state religion is likely to be the chief beneficiary of persecution.
4. If a civ persecutes a religion, its reputation with any civ that has chosen that religion as it's state religion will worsen. Also the religious leader of the persecuted religion may ask a civ that has chosen that religion as it's state religion to begin a holy war/Jihad.

D. Religious improvements.

The types of religious improvements remain the same as in Civ1/2 and may be built by any civ that has obtained the necessary technologies. A temple is necessary to obtain the advantages of religion under a state of religious freedom. If a state religion is declared, the temple will make one unhappy citizen content.

IV. Religious diplomacy.

A. Major and minor religions
The diplomatic options available for interacting with a religion depend on the size of the religion.

1. Minor religions. All religions start as minor religions.

2. Major religion. A religion becomes a major religion when it has a number of adherents greater than the total number of citizens in the world divided by the starting number of civs. It remains a major religion even if an increase in world population or decrease in the number of adherents results in the religion's share of global population falling below 1/(starting number of civs).

3. Proclamation of the holy city. When a religion becomes a major religion, the city where that religion started is proclaimed the holy city of that religion. If that city has been destroyed, the extant city nearest to the founding city's location becomes the holy city.

4. Building a Great Shrine. Any city that has proclaimed a state religion may build a Great Shrine, which shall cost a number of resources equal to a wonder for that age. When the Great Shrine is complete, the holy city for the state religion is transferred to the city with the Great Shrine, which remains the holy city for that religion unless the city is destroyed. If that occurs, a new holy city can be proclaimed by building a Great Shrine in another city.

B. Diplomatic options for both major and minor religions.

1. Request a donation. Any religion may request a donation from any civ. If the religion has a large number of believers in that civ, or if the religion is the state religion of that civ, refusal to give the donation will have a negative effect on the religion's attitude toward that civ.

2. Voluntary donation. Any civ may give a donation to any religion. The donation will be treated as tithes and used to generate a ministry to a city chosen by the civ using the same formula it would use to determine the destination of a ministry generated by tithes. A player could use this system to prop up religions that another player is attempting to eliminate, or to subvert another player's state religion.

3. Request a ministry. Any civ may request a religion to send a ministry to one of its cities. The religion will charge an amount of gold equal to the cost of a ministry, and adjusted upward or downward depending on the religion's attitude toward the requesting civ and whether the religion is the state religion of that civ.

C. Additional diplomatic options for major religions.

1. A major religion may:

a. Request a civ to conduct a jihad against a civ that is persecuting the religion. The religion may offer to fund the jihad from its tithes. A religion will request a Jihad when (1) a civ is persecuting the religion, (2) a civ that does not have a substantial number of adherents to the religion has captured the holy city, or (3) a civ has a particularly bad reputation with the religion.

b. Request a civ to defend another civ from a jihad.

c. Request a civ to conduct a crusade to take control of the holy city from another civ.

d. Demand that a civ sign a treaty with another civ.

e. Ask to become the civ's state religion.

f. Failure to accede to these requests will hurt a civ's reputation with the religion. The effect will be greater if that religion is the state religion of the civ.

2. A civ may request a major religion to:

a. intervene in a war by demanding that its opponent sign a treaty.

b. pronounce a blessing, which would increase happiness in that civ for a fixed number of turns.

c. send a ministry to a city owned by another civ.

d. excommunicate another civ's leader if that civ has established the religion as its state religion. Excommunication makes all the followers of the religion that has excommunicated have one lower level in happiness.

e. repeal an excommunication of the civ's leader.

f. proclaim the civ defender of the faith. A civ may only request to be made the defender of the faith for its state religion. If it subsequently deestablishes the state religion, it ceases to be the defender of the faith. The defender of the faith pays half of the normal monetary cost for any of the actions it asks the religion to take. If the defender of the faith fails to comply with a request from the religion, it loses its status as defender of the faith and its reputation with the religion suffers greatly.

g. loan money to the civ.

h. the religion will charge the civ money for options a, b, c, d, and e, and interest for option f. The amount will depend on the civ's reputation with the religion, whether the religion is that civ's state religion, whether that civ possesses the religion's holy city, and whether the civ is the defender of the faith.
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by will (edited August 26, 1999).]</font>

[will I]

M@ni@c:
As you will see, I have adopted most of your suggestions, with the following exceptions

1. Happiness under state religion. Rather than simply state +2 Hap and refer to the SE thread, I've spelled out the +2 Hap as described in your SE post of 23 Aug., 16:27. I think this is consistent with our general goal of making the "under the current system" proposal free-standing and comprehensible without reference to other proposals. I'll add that I think the bribery and entertainment effects of +2 but Raingoon accepted the change, so I'm outvoted. On the question of whether the state religion makes unhappy people content or content people happy, I was concerned that your proposal made religion too unattractive, so I split the difference. Under this draft, the first citizen of the state religion makes one unhappy person content, and every fourth convert makes a content citizen happy. The religion becoming a majority makes an additional unhappy person content, so we have just about split the difference.
2. Happiness and persecution. Our discussions here have prompted me to do a little reading, which has reinforced my impression that persecution has historically hurt all members of society. During the Roman persecution of Christians and the Catholic persecution of various heresies, innocent orthodox believers were mistakenly persecuted and martyred. Moreover, I think that your proposal to have only the persecuted citizens become unhappy makes persecution too easy. I think Raingoon concurred in general on this point, so I've left it as is.
3. Great Shrine. This is obvious still a concept in progress. My goal was to make the holy city a little bit less of a matter of luck. I think this is historically accurate -- the Romans moved the center of Christianity from Antioch and Alexandria to Rome and Constantinople without destroying the shrines of Jerusalem. I also think that it would make the game more interesting, so that the lucky player who got the holy city couldn't just sit back.
4. Full toleration. On reflections, the beneficial effects of full toleration seemed to be too easy to get. Players could shuttle in and out of persecution without really suffering. Therefore, I propose making the toleration benefit more similar to the peace bonus to the Civ score -- one that is only earned through prolonged good behavior.
5. Time between passive conversions. I propose changing this for the reasons described in the text.

Thanks again for all of your comments.

[Maniac]

"This makes post #150, which rather appropriately is the combination of all the ideas we've had so far. There are still some concepts that need to be ironed out -- especially the Great Shrine -- but I think we're quite close. Since this is such a HUGE post (although it would be a baby on the SE thread), I won't repost again, and I beg the rest of you not to do so. Instead, I'll edit as need be."

No, Will, this is not the combination of all the ideas we've had so far. It's the combination of all the ideas we've had so far that you like.
I have read it carefully and you have again changed some things to your specs that Raingoon, MBrazier and me agreed on.
Since you have repeatedly shown you are not willing to reach a consensus (we are even getting further out of one as I will show) and me neither wants to consens on some things, I WILL repost the whole stuff to my specs if we don't agree.

A few things about Section I and II.

In II.B.3 you left out that SE - Nationalism also affects your Conviction strength. Because you are against it, does not mean it has to be excluded.

In II.B.5.a you must say that Clerics can also be expelled like diplomats in Civ2 as I proposed. Raingoon and MBrazier (I don't know about you) agreed on that, so it has to come in the final post.

And I am a little confused about II.B.5.b and II.C.
It seems that religions have two possibilities to spend their money : missions and ministries. But how can a religion ever establish a ministry if it always looses it's money (X+Y where X = number of followers) on establishing missionns.

I still disagree on the same points in Section III and IV. I have edited a few things in my word.doc containing section 3 and 4 but for the rest I stick to my points.
In this version you have even made religious freedom less powerful and state religion even more powerful as it was.
The only advantage for religious freedom is one content per religion. And there is even a maximum of 1/4 of the population! Taking in account that the Research bonus doesn't affect happiness and that there can't be built cathedrals, religious freedom is ALWAYS a bad choice and state religion is a supergood choice.
You even gave that +2 Happiness which is approximately equal to effects d, e, f and g to state religion while it belongs to religious freedom.
BTW Raingoon said explicitly on page 3 that he agreed on all the effects I gave to the state religion and religious freedom.

I'll be quiet about all the other bad things in section 3 and 4 because I already have said them before.

You are seriously biased. You told yourself 75 posts back in this religion thread that you were a perfectionist and wanted to make a state religion good for perfectionist civs.
I didn't say much although it was clear that your intention was to make state religion as good as possible for your own playing strategy. But now you have made it also good for large empires and you have made that religious freedom is never a good choice!
So I will NEVER agree with your version of the 'final post' since your ideas suck and are unbalanced and are biased.
You are not the right person to make the final post.

To the thread manager :

Who the **** are you and where the **** are you? NotlikeTea and Stefu haven't posted here for over a month, so I doubt they will make a summary.
If you don't appear and say you are still TM, I will send the official (so not Will's version where no one of us agrees with) version where Raingoon and possibly MBrazier (waiting on confirmation) totally agree with to YinShining.

M@ni@c

[Maniac]

THE GRAND RELIGION MODEL

I. Religion in Civ3

A. Why have it?

Religion is a fundamental force driving civilizations. The effects of religion permeate the history of nations, their borders, their wars and their treaties. Your ability to direct religion's impact is likewise varied. For the first time you will be able to identify your citizens individually by their beliefs, track the rise and fall of major religions, and affect the social mechanics that make your civilization grow and evolve over the centuries.

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. This makes sure that real-world religions can be used without legal problems. However MBrazier still wants that each religion has a different Evangelism and Conviction.
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 Turygrad."
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.

The higher conviction rating is so that, all things being equal, citizens should
successfully defend against conversion attempts about 60% of the time.

3. Adjusting Conversion Ratings
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.
• declaring religious freedom
• having a positive or negative SE Nationalism rate (see the SE thread).
• establishing a mission.

4. Passive Conversions

• Calculations are made by "stacking" citizens together by religion and combining their values.
• Passive conversions reflect the influence of the citizens in a city on their fellow citizens and the proportionately weaker influence of citizens in nearby cities.
• Passive conversions are calculated, on average, every five turns. The computer will randomize the interval between passive conversions so that players cannot boost evangelism/conviction factors the year before a scheduled passive conversion.
• Possible formula for calculating passive conversion:
  

  The Evangelism (Conviction) of a religion within a city is the sum of: the Evan(Conv) of each member in the city; plus (1 - dist/10) * Evan(Conv) of each member of that religion in a city less than 10 squares away; plus 1/2 * Evan(Conv) of each member of that religion in a city that has a mission to the city. If a religion has no members in a city, it is not attacked by other stacks.

• Once the evangelism and conviction factors are calculated, the results are calculated like a battle between units of equal strength. If the evangelizing unit wins, one citizen of the opposing religion is converted.

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 (+0.2 modifier) which increases each Turywenzists citizen's base evangelism value to 12. The city of London has a cathedral (+.10 modifier = 13). This gives each Turywenzist in London an evangelist factor of 13. And 4 of its citizens are Turywenzists (+.25 modifier each)., for a combined stack evangelism value of 65. 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."

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

5. Active Conversions - "Missions"

a. Missions established by a player

• 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.
• the player may only establishe missions outside his/her civ. The religion-AI may establish them everywhere.
• 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.
• 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.
• clerics disappear after they have established one mission.
• like trade routes, missions are always successfully established.
• like diplomats, clerics may be destroyed or expelled en route.
• 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.

b. Missions established by the religion

• The religion may send clerics from any city to any city; it ignores civ
  borders entirely. It prefers to start clerics from the city where its members'
  total Evangelism is highest, and send them to the city where its members' total
  Conviction is lowest. It also prefers to minimize the distance the cleric must
  travel. (The relative importance of these three preferences is not obvious.)
• In all other respects religion-owned clerics act like civ-owned ones.

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 missions, their most powerful tool for expansion.

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).
c. 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.

2. Donations : Religions will ask for donations periodically. However, you are totally free to neglect their wish.

3. Under a state religion, as an addition to point 1, the tithe paid by the government (20% of taxes) is automatically sent into that state religion's coffers.

4. When a religion has built missions in all available cities it continues to collect tithes and build its coffers.

A religion can loan gold to a civ (see Diplomacy, holy cities, below).

III. Effects of religion

The player will have several options with regard to each religion. He or she may choose to establish a state religion or allow religious freedom. Regardless of whether there is religious freedom or an state religion, the player may choose to persecute one or more religions.

A. Under religious freedom


1. Effect on happiness, using current system.

a. For each religion in a city, one unhappy citizen becomes content or, if there are no unhappy citizens, a content citizen becomes happy. This effect continues indefinitely, so that each religion present in a city adds step to the base happiness level of the city.
b. To keep religion from having too great a benefit, the happiness effects described in a. will apply to no more than one out of every four citizens in a city. That is, if there are seven citizens and three religions, only two citizens may be made happy. So the effects are rounded up.
c. Civilizations with religious freedom get a +2 Happiness bonus (see the SE thread for more about the Happiness SE factor).
d. Cathedrals can not be be built under religious freedom nor do they have any effect on population happiness. Already existing Cathedrals generate an amount of money equal to their normal upkeep cost to simulate tourism.
e. You can’t built Clerics under religious freedom.

2. Effect on happiness under alternate systems.

A few people have proposed systems under which happiness becomes a percentage factor for each city that affects the productivity, and is not an attribute of the citizens. Under such systems, the conversion of one citizen to a new religion would increase the overall happiness/productivity percentage.

3. Effect of religious freedom on conviction.

Under religious freedom, the conviction rate for all citizens is 20 percent lower than it would otherwise be.

4. Effect of full toleration.

In addition to the effects listed above, if the player is not persecuting any religion, the research output of the religion increases by 10 percent (under the Civ2 system) or the Research SE factor improves by +1.

B. Establishment of a state religion.

1.General.

Under this system, the state picks one religion as its official state religion. Establishing a state religion does not imply or require persecution of any of the other religions within the civ's territory.

2. Effect on happiness

a. The effects on happiness described above under religious freedom cease.
b. If there are four believers of the state religion in the same city, one of them becomes happy (as the bonus of the Peacekeepers in SMAC). If a different happiness/productivity system is adopted, proclamation of a state religion increases a city (or civilization) happiness/productivity level by a factor of 25 percent times the proportion of citizens who belong to the state religion. However there is disagreement if the bonus should be rounded up (1, 2 or 3 believers already make one happy) or down (only if there are 4 believers, there is a bonus).
c. An additional unhappy citizen becomes content if more than 50 percent of the citizens (= a majority) of a city are members of the state religion.
d. The state religion's evangelism factor increases by 20 percent for all conversion activities within the borders of that civ.
e. If your state religion has a majority in a city you just conquered, the city is immediately assumed assimilated. The normal assimilation process is just as in SMAC 50 turns of increased unhappiness.
f. If another civ declares war on you, all the citizens in his empire that follow your state religion get one lower happiness level.
g. Deestablishing the state religion. A civ may deestablish a state religion at any time. However, deestablishment shall result in a period of Anarchy (see SE thread) for one turn.

3. Tithes.

A civ that has an established church must pay 20 percent of its total taxes as tithes to the church. When using the SE factors, the civ gets –2 Tax.

4. Cathedral.

Only a civ that has a state religion may build Cathedrals, which has the same effect as in Civ2. That means 4 unhappy citizens are made content. When you discover the tech advance Rationalism, the Age of Faith ends and Cathedrals only make 3 citizens content.
A Cathedral also increases the state religion’s Evangelism strength with 10%.

5. Multiple civs with the same state church.

a. A civ may establish a religion as its state church even if another civ has already made that religion its state church. In such cases, the religion will not take any action against either of the civs, and will remain neutral in any conflict between them.
b. If the religion has a holy city, one of the civs may request the excommunication of the other civ’s leader (see Diplomacy). The religion will demand a contribution related to the number of believers in the excommunicated civ and the religion's attitude toward the civ that asks the excommunication and the civ that it wishes to excommunicate.

6. Schism

Civs may declare a schism in their state religion, even if they are the only civ having that religion as their state religion. This creates a new religion, to which 75% of the citizens belonging to the old religion will convert. The remaining 25% remain faithful to the old religion. Handy if you’re excommunicated or just tired of the religious leader’s demands.


C. Persecution.


Under this system, belonging to a persecuted religion is illegal. A government may persecute any number of religions.

1. A persecuted religion's conversion factor is reduced by 25 percent for all conversion activities within the borders of the persecuting civ.

2. There is disagreement about the unhappiness effects of persecution.
One says that 50% of the persecuted citizens should get a lower happiness level.
Another (me) says that simply all the persecuted citizens should get a lower happiness level (means happy citizens become content, content unhappy and unhappy very unhappy).
A thirth says that for every persecuted citizen, two citizens should get a lower happiness level.

3. I think a city's research output where there are persecuted citizens decreases by 25 percent to reflect the effect of intolerance.
MBrazier thinks that for every persecuted religion, you should get a –1 to the Research factor.
However I would find it inlogical that your whole empire suffers if you would eg just be persecuting a religion that has only members in one city.

4. Persecution has no positive effect other than those that result from the increase in the number of believers in other religions. If there is a state religion, the state religion is likely to be the chief beneficiary of persecution.

5. If a civ persecutes a religion, its reputation with any civ that has chosen that religion as it’s state religion will worsen. And its reputation with the religion itself will worsen even more.
Also the religious leader of the persecuted religion may ask a civ that has chosen that religion as it’s state religion to begin a holy war/Jihad.

D. Religious improvements.

The types of religious improvements remain the same as in Civ1/2 and may be built by any civ that has obtained the necessary technologies.
However instead of a Temple making a fix amount of people content, the new use should be that a Temple is necessary to reap the happiness benefits desribed under A.1.a. and B.2.b.

IV. Religious diplomacy.


A. Major and minor religions

The diplomatic options available for interacting with a religion depend on the size of the religion.

1. Minor religions.

All religions start as minor religions.

2. Major religion.

A religion becomes a major religion when it has a number of adherents greater than the total number of citizens in the world divided by the starting number of civs. It remains a major religion even if an increase in world population or decrease in the number of adherents results in the religion's share of global population falling below 1/(starting number of civs).

3. Holy Cities and Great Schrines

a. When a religion becomes a major religion, the city where that religion started is proclaimed the holy city of that religion. That means that that city gets an automatic Great Schrine.
b. If you control a religion's Great Shrine, and that religion is your state religion, all the citizens of that city are never unhappy (as Shakespeare’s Theatre) and their Evangelism gets a +20% bonus.
c. If you control a religion's Great Shrine and tolerate that religion, the tax output of that city is doubled to represent pilgrimage.
d. If you control a religion's Great Shrine and persecute that religion, there is no special effect besides the normal persecution penalties. If the last member of the religion in the city is converted, the Great Shrine is destroyed.
e. If a religion is eradicated from the world, the Great Schrine automatically disappears.
f. If the Great Schrine of a religion is destroyed (by destruction of the holy city or as mentioned in point d.), any civ that has that religion as it’s state religion may rebuild the Schrine in one of it’s own cities.
g. If the holy city is recaptured, the Schrine automatically reappears. This is the only time there can be two holy cities for one religion.

B. Diplomatic options for both major and minor religions.

1. Request a donation.

Any religion may request a donation from any civ. If the religion is the state religion of that civ, refusal to give the donation will have a negative effect on the religion's attitude toward that civ.

2. Voluntary donation.

Any civ may give a donation to any religion. The donation will be treated as tithes and used to generate a ministry to a city chosen by the civ. That city may also be a foreign city. So a player could use this system to prop up religions that another player is attempting to eliminate, or to subvert another player's state religion.
.

3. Request a mission.

Any civ may request a religion to send a ministry to one of its cities. The ministry will charge an amount of gold equal to the cost of a ministry, and adjusted upward or downward depending on the religion's attitude toward the requesting civ and whether the religion is the state religion of that civ.

C. Additional diplomatic options for major religions.


1. A major religion may:

a. Request a civ to conduct a jihad/holy war against another civ. The religion may offer to fund the jihad from it’s tithes. A religion will ask a Jihad when (1) that civ is persecuting the religion, or (2) a civ that does not have a substantial number of adherents to the religion has captured the holy city, or, (3) if that civ has repeatedly done things that harmed the religion’s attitude towards that civ.

b. Request a civ to defend another civ from a jihad.

c. Request a civ to conduct a crusade to take control of the holy city from another religion.

d. Demand that a civ sign a treaty with another civ.

e. Ask to become the civ’s state religion.

f. Failure to accede to these requests will hurt a civ's reputation with the religion. The effect will be greater if that religion is the state religion of the civ.

2. A civ may request a major religion to:

a. intervene in a war by demanding that its opponent sign a treaty.

b. pronounce a blessing, which would increase happiness in that civ for a fixed number of turns.

c. send a ministry to a city owned by another civ.

d. excommunicate another civ.’s leader if he has the religion as his state religion. Excommunication makes all the followers of the religion have decreased happiness (opposite effect of blessing).

e. Repeal the excommunication that the religious leader has done to him.

f. proclaim the civ defender of the faith. A civ may only request to be made the defender of the faith for it’s state religion. If it subsequently deestablishes the state religion, it ceases to be the defender of the faith. The defender of the faith pays half of the normal monetary cost for any of the actions it asks the religion to take. If the defender of the faith fails to comply with a request from the religion, it loses its status as defender of the faith and its reputation with the religion suffers greatly.

g. loan money to the civ.

h. the religion will charge the civ money for options a, b, c, d, e and f and interest for option g. The amount will depend on the civ's reputation with the religion, whether the religion is that civ's state religion, whether that civ possesses the religion's holy city, and whether the civ is the defender of the faith.

i. Declare a Schism.

Special thanks to : Raingoon, Mbrazier, Will and M@ni@c

Also :
Stefu, NotLikeTea, Willko, Mo, MBD, Crusher, Kmj, VaderTwo, evil conquerer, Ecce Homo, Trachmyr, Eggman, Lancer, Doc Dee, Diodorus Sicilus, Yin26, HolyWarrior, Michael Jeszenka, CormacMacArt, Bell, Aharon Ben Rav, Giant Squid, delcuze2, paraclet, Cartagia the Great, Chowlett, The Octopus, Saganaga Canoer, EnochF, Black Dragon, Kris Huysmans, Galen, Flavor Dave, Francis, Theben, Alexander’s Horse, Monk, Bigcivfan, Spartan 187, FinnishGuy, Iceman88888888, Harel, Jon Miller

<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by M@ni@c (edited August 28, 1999).]</font>

[Maniac]

No, Will (August 26, 16:09), you haven't adopted any of the proposed changes that matter.

+2 Happiness belongs to Religious Freedom!!!

I don't care about how many citizens that are made unhappy. Two per one persecuted is fine, but my proposal is simplier and therefore more likely to be accepted.

It should be possible to have two holy cities/Great Schrines at the same time to simulate that both Rome and Jerusalem are holy cities for christianity.

You are over and over lessening the effects of religious freedom. Now you have already minimized the Research bonus. Soon, if I let you continue your way, religious freedom will have no advantages at all.

Religious Freedom and State Religion don't have to be altered at all. Raingoon said that he agreed completely with my proposal, so you are outnumbered. Therefore I think I should continue the good work of Raingoon and write the 'final post' and not you.

[MBrazier]

Will:

If you want to express the consensus of the thread on a religious system, you'd darn well better read the whole thread more carefully. I can tell that for II.B.5, for instance, you just quoted verbatim from Raingoon's original version -- and that's wrong, because I raised strong objections to that section, proposing an alternate system, and Raingoon agreed with me. You will find all that in the same post that contained my conversion algorithm (the one you quoted verbatim in II.B.4).

In addition, there are several ideas scattered through your version that I don't remember seeing before, or being discussed. You're not supposed to put new ideas into a "consensus" proposal. With all due respect, please _don't_ try to summarize the whole thread yourself. I would rather Raingoon did it, or the official TM. (I'd try it myself, but I haven't the time.)

[Maniac]

MBrazier, I have changed missions. Is it all right now?
And II.B.3 says that holy cities affect the conversion strengths. Is that true or is that something of Will?
And what is your opinion of Great Schrines/Holy Cities? You'll have to say it quick, cause the summary is coming.

[MBrazier]

Herewith my own version of:

THE [NOT-SO-GRAND-AFTER-ALL] RELIGION MODEL

[Points where disputes still exist, to my knowledge, have been indicated by notes.]

I. Religion in Civ3

A. Why have it?

Religion is a fundamental force driving civilizations. The effects of religion permeate the history of nations, their borders, their wars and their treaties. Your ability to direct religion's impact is likewise varied. For the first time you will be able to identify your citizens individually by their beliefs, track the rise and fall of major religions, and affect the social mechanics that make your civilization grow and evolve over the centuries.

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.
c. Prophets can appear at any time during the game, and in any city.
d. The owner of a city where a prophet appears is told: "Turywenzo has begun preaching in Turygrad." (Turywenzo is the founder of Turywenzism, of course.)
e. 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).
f. 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.
g. While a prophet is preaching, and for 20 turns thereafter, his religion gets a bonus
of 10 to both Evangelism and Conversion. This raises the base values to 20 and 25, respectively. (See section B for a explanation of these ratings.) This is to ensure fledgling religions will have a chance to develop.
h. If a government persecutes the new religion while the prophet is preaching, the
prophet is considered martyred. He stops preaching (which starts the 20-turn period
mentioned in section g); and all non-aligned citizens within 8 squares immediately
convert to the new religion.
i. 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.

The higher conviction rating is so that, all things being equal, citizens should
successfully defend against conversion attempts about 60% of the time.

[Note: this writer still believes that religions' Evangelism and Conviction should
vary. No other poster on the thread agrees with him, though. ]

3. Adjusting Conversion Ratings
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.
declaring religious freedom
having a positive or negative SE Nationalism rate (see the SE thread).
establishing a mission.

4. Passive Conversions

Passive conversions reflect the influence of the citizens in a city on their fellow citizens and the proportionately weaker influence of citizens in nearby cities.
a. Passive conversions are calculated, on average, every five turns. The computer will randomize the interval between passive conversions so that players cannot boost evangelism/conviction factors the year before a scheduled passive conversion.
b. A religion's influence within a city is calculated by "stacking" citizens together by religion and totaling their religious values.

The Evangelism (Conviction) of a religion within a city is the sum of:
the Evan(Conv) of each member in the city, plus
(1 - dist/10) * Evan(Conv) of each member of that religion in a city less than 10 squares away, plus
1/2 * Evan(Conv) of each member of that religion in a city that has a trade route (or a mission) to the city.

c. Once the Evangelism and Conviction factors are calculated, each religion with influence in the city "attacks" each religion with members in the city. Attacks are resolved by the Civ I combat system, with Evangelism as the attack rating and Conviction as the defense rating. If an "attack" succeeds, one citizen of the defending religion converts to the attacking religion.
d. If a religion has influence in a city, but no actual members, other religions with influence in that city do not attack it there.

A sample conversion turn within a city:

quote:

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."

5. Active Conversions - "Missions"

a. Missions established by a player

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. A civilization may only establish missions in cities outside the civ.
3. Like diplomats, clerics may be destroyed or expelled en route.
4. 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.
5. 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.

b. Missions established by the religion

1. When a religion has accumulated X+D gold (where X is the total number of believers of that religion throughout the world, and D is a configuable parameter) it sends a "neutral" cleric of its own.
2. The religion may send clerics from any city to any city; it ignores civ borders entirely. It prefers to start clerics from the city where its members' total Evangelism is highest, and send them to the city where its members' total Conviction is lowest. It also prefers to minimize the distance the cleric must travel. (The relative importance of these three preferences is not obvious.)
3. In all other respects religion-owned clerics act like civ-owned ones.

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

Religions use gold pieces to fund missions, their most powerful tool for expansion.

1. Religious coffers are tracked by the AI.
2. 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).
3. Under religious freedom: Each turn, every city tithes one gold per religion represented, to the respective religions coffers. This comes from the trade stream. To avoid making the burden too great, tithes are subtracted before the corruption calculation. (Since even a cad would hesitate to steal from the church.) In addition, the civs would no longer pay upkeep for religious improvements. Instead, the upkeep fees for all religious improvements are subtracted from the treasuries of the religions, with each religion paying a proportion of the total upkeep proportionate to its share of the civ's population.
4. Under a state religion: The tithe paid by the government is automatically sent into that religion's coffers; the city tithe from religious freedom is disabled.
5. Donations: Religions will ask for donations periodically, and in increasing
amounts.
6. When a religion has built missions in all available cities it continues to collect
tithes and build its coffers.

A religion can loan gold to the civ that possesses its holy city (see Diplomacy, holy
cities, below).

III. Effects of religion

The player will have several options with regard to each religion. He or she may
choose to establish a state religion or have "religious freedom" (no state religion is established.) Regardless of whether there is religious freedom or an state religion, the player may choose to persecute one or more religions.

A. Under religious freedom

1. Effect on happiness, using current system.

a. Civilizations with religious freedom get a +2 Happiness bonus (see the SE thread
for more about the Happiness SE factor). This is equivalent to upgrading 1 citizen
in every city -- one unhappy becomes content, or one content becomes happy.
b. A civ under religious freedom may not build clerics, temples, or cathedrals.
c. Any existing temples or cathedrals have no effect on happiness, and cathedrals grant
no bonus to any religion's Evangelism.
d. Any existing cathedrals _do_ generate an amount of money equal to their normal
upkeep cost; this represents revenue from tourism.

[A few people have proposed systems under which happiness becomes a percentage factor for each city that affects the productivity, and is not an attribute of the citizens. The +2 Happiness bonus of section a would then merely increase that percentage factor in every city. ]

2. Effect of religious freedom on conviction.

Under religious freedom, the Conviction rating for all citizens drops by 20% of the base values.

3. Effect of full toleration.

In addition to the effects listed above, if a civ tolerates all religions represented
within its borders, the civ's Research SE factor improves by +1; this is equivalent to
a 10% bonus to science production, throughout the civ.

B. Establishment of a state religion.

1. General.

Under this system, the state picks one religion as its official state religion.
Establishing a state religion does not imply or require persecution of any of the
other religions within the civ's territory.

2. Effect on happiness

a. The effects on happiness described above under religious freedom cease.
b. If a city has a temple, 25% of the state religion's members residing in the city
are upgraded. [If happiness becomes a city-wide percentage as per 3.A.2, a temple
increases that percentage by 25% * (members of state religion) / (city population).]
It has not been settled whether the number of citizens upgraded should be rounded up
or down; that is, whether the first of four, or the last, should be upgraded.
c. One additional citizen is upgraded if more than 50 percent of the city population
(= a majority) are members of the state religion.
d. The state religion's evangelism factor increases by 20 percent for all conversion
activities within the borders of that civ.
e. If your state religion has a majority in a city you just conquered, the city is
immediately assumed assimilated. The normal assimilation process is just as in SMAC
50 turns of increased unhappiness.
f. If another civ declares war on you, all the citizens in his empire that follow your
state religion get one lower happiness level.
g. Deestablishing the state religion. A civ may deestablish a state religion at any
time. However, deestablishment shall result in a period of Anarchy (see SE thread)
for one turn.

3. Tithes.

A civ that has an established church must pay 20 percent of its total taxes as tithes to the church. In terms of the SE factors, the civ gets –2 Tax.

4. Cathedrals. [Not generally agreed on.]

a. A cathedral is an upgraded temple; it has exactly twice the effect on happiness that
a temple does. In any city containing a cathedral and a temple, the temple has no effect (like the several power plant improvements, only the best one works.)
b. In addition, within any city containing a cathedral, the state religion's Evangelism
receives a 10% bonus.

5. Schisms.

a. Civs may declare a schism in their state religion, even if they are the only civ
having that religion as their state religion. This creates a new religion, to which
most of the citizens belonging to the old religion will convert. A percentage of the members equal to an individual member's Conviction rating (after all bonuses and penalties) remain faithful to the old religion. The remainder join the schism.


C. Persecution.

Under this system, belonging to a persecuted religion is illegal. A government may
persecute any number of religions.

1. A persecuted religion's Evangelism is reduced by 25 percent within the borders
of the persecuting civ.
2. 50% of a persecuted religion's members are downgraded (happy to content, content to unhappy, etc.) [If happiness becomes a city-wide percentage as per 3.A.2,
persecution decreases that percentage by 50% * (members of persecuted religion) / (city population).]
3. For each religion a civ persecutes, its Research SE receives a -1 penalty; that is,
science output is reduced by 10% times the number of persecuted religions.
3. If a civ persecutes a religion, its reputation with any civ that has chosen that
religion as its state religion will worsen, and its reputation with the religion itself
will worsen even more. See section IV (diplomacy) for possible consequences of this.

Persecution has no positive effect other than those that result from the increase in the number of believers in other religions. If there is a state religion, the state religion is likely to be the chief beneficiary of persecution.

IV. Religious diplomacy.


A. Major and minor religions

The diplomatic options available for interacting with a religion depend on the size of the religion.

1. Minor religions.

All religions start as minor religions.

2. Major religion.

A religion becomes a major religion when it has a number of adherents greater than
the total number of citizens in the world divided by the starting number of civs. It
remains a major religion even if an increase in world population or decrease in the
number of adherents results in the religion's share of global population falling below
1/(starting number of civs).

3. Great Shrines. [Not generally agreed.]

a. A civ may build a Great Shrine for its state religion in any city it controls, if no
Shrine for that religion currently exists. The cost of doing so is comparable to the
cost of a wonder.
b. If you control a religion's Great Shrine, and that religion is your state religion,
_all_ members of that religion in the city are upgraded, and their Evangelism receives
a 20% bonus. However, any temple or cathedral in that city is disabled.
c. If you control a religion's Great Shrine and tolerate that religion, 25% of the
religion's members in the city are upgraded.
d. If you control a religion's Great Shrine and persecute that religion, all members
of the religion in that city are downgraded. However, if the last member of the religion in the city is converted, the Great Shrine is destroyed.
e. When a religion first becomes a major religion, and no Great Shrine has yet been
built for it, it will create the Shrine itself in the city where its first prophet
appeared, for free. If that city has since been destroyed, the Great Shrine appears
in the city where the religion's Conviction rating is highest.

B. Diplomatic options for both major and minor religions.

1. Request a donation.

Any religion may request a donation from any civ. If the religion is the state religion
of that civ, refusal to give the donation will have a negative effect on the religion's
attitude toward that civ.

2. Voluntary donation.

Any civ may give a donation to any religion. The donation will be treated as tithes
and used to generate a ministry to a city chosen by the civ. That city may also be
a foreign city. So a player could use this system to prop up religions that another
player is attempting to eliminate, or to subvert another player's state religion.

3. Request a mission.

Any civ may request a religion to build a mission in one of its cities. The religion
will charge an amount of gold equal to its cost of sending a cleric, adjusted upward
or downward depending on the religion's attitude toward the requesting civ and
whether the religion is the state religion of that civ.

C. Additional diplomatic options for major religions.

1. A major religion may:

a. Request a civ to conduct a jihad/holy war against another civ. The religion may offer to fund the jihad from it’s tithes. A religion will ask a Jihad when (1) that civ is persecuting the religion, or (2) a civ that does not have a substantial number of
adherents to the religion has captured the holy city, or, (3) if that civ has
repeatedly done things that harmed the religion’s attitude towards that civ.

b. Request a civ to defend another civ from a jihad.

c. Request a civ to conduct a crusade to take control of the holy city from another
religion.

d. Demand that a civ sign a treaty with another civ.

e. Ask to become the civ’s state religion.

f. Failure to accede to these requests will hurt a civ's reputation with the religion.
The effect will be greater if that religion is the state religion of the civ.

2. A civ may request a major religion to:

a. intervene in a war by demanding that its opponent sign a treaty.

b. pronounce a blessing, which would increase happiness in that civ for a fixed number of turns.

c. send a mission to a city owned by another civ.

d. put another civ under interdict. An interdict is the inverse of a blessing --
happiness decreases while it is in effect.

e. lift an interdict placed on itself.

f. proclaim the civ "defender of the faith". A civ may only request to be made the
defender of the faith for it’s state religion. If it subsequently deestablishes the state religion, it ceases to be the defender of the faith. The defender of the faith pays half of the normal monetary cost for any of the actions it asks the religion to take. If the defender of the faith fails to comply with a request from the religion, it loses its status as defender of the faith and its reputation with the religion suffers
greatly.

g. loan money to the civ.

h. the religion will charge the civ money for options a, b, c, d, e and f and interest
for option g. The amount will depend on the civ's reputation with the religion,
whether the religion is that civ's state religion, whether that civ possesses the
religion's holy city, and whether the civ is the defender of the faith.

<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by MBrazier (edited August 31, 1999).]</font>

[Maniac]

Oh nice. Now we all have our own summary. I hope we're all satisfied.

Have edited my post again a little and it includes some more of your things.
Sometimes I have included two or even three options to reflect our different opinions, since we must think about stop arguing, just writing down our different opinions in the summary and send it to Yin to get in the list. Time is running and I would find it sad that this religion model wouldn't get in the list because of our arguements.

Some questions for you, MBrazier.
b), c) and d) I haven't put (yet) in the 'final post'.

a) How do you think that you can give real-life religions different conversion strength without causing legal problems for Firaxis?

b) About tithing. I explicitly said that that 20% Tax was just an addition to the money the state religion gets from the citizens. Raingoon agrees.

"a. Civilizations with religious freedom get a +2 Happiness bonus (see the SE thread
for more about the Happiness SE factor). This is equivalent to upgrading 1 citizen
in every city -- one unhappy becomes content, or one content becomes happy."

c) Where have you read that? The Happiness factor is totally not like that (one citizen upgraded).
For instance Happiness allows you to control more cities before extra unhappy people appear. So, as in reality, ruling a large empire is easier with religious freedom.
In Civ2 the effects I give to the Hap factor were included under Corruption and in SMAC (where I got the City Limit formula) by Efficiency.

d) If you can't build nor temples nor cathedrals under religious freedom, I think it's never worth choosing. Now the two choices (religious freedom and state religion) are pretty balance since they both have reasonal ways for affecting unhappiness (although State Religion is still slightly better).

Your benefit of cathedrals would make them very bad for small cities (because they don't make a fix number content. Only the half is affected) and too good for large cities (eg in a size 20 city, 10 citizens would already be made content/happy by just a cathedral!).
Very unbalancing. I prefer a fix amount made content.

e) read in my final post why I disagree with the -1 Res penalty for a persecuted religion.

And could you explain that schism loyal % better? Do I get it right that no one will follow the new religion if there are 7 believers (=105, so no one will convert)?

[Stefu]

Gee, boys. Thanks. You saved me a lot of trouble.

1. Have you included all the ideas?
2. Which sumary is the best, or should I send them all to Yin?

[will I]

Stefu:

PLEASE NO! I think all four of us would agree that only one version of the Grand Model should be posted. As you look through them, you'll realize that while we have some significant disagreements, we are in full agreement on about 80 percent of what's there. I would suggest using MBrazier's version as a starting point simply because it's the most recent. Where there is disagreement, state the majority position first, followed by any alternate proposals.

To my pals on this thread, I suggest we let Stefu prepare the final version and that we tell him, section by section, which version we want put in the final model. Here are my votes, with the references being to the MBrazier draft of 27 August, 20:36, the M@ni@c draft of 26 August, 17:50, and the Will draft of 26 August, 14:35.

I. General
I vote for the MBrazier version. (I don't think there's any disagreement here)

II. Religion concepts
A. Origins
MBrazier version.

B. Conversion
1-4. MBrazier version.
5.a. MBrazier version.
5.b. Will version.
6. MBrazier version.

C. Tithing
1-2. MBrazier version.
3. MBrazier version except I believe that a city's tithes should always come from the city's trade stream. I fear that giving religions so much free money would be unbalancing.
4-6. MBrazier version except that the word "ministries" should be replaced by "missions" in number 6.

III. Effects
A. Religious freedom
1. I vote for the M@ni@c version
2. MBrazier version
3. MBrazier version, except that I would propose that the positive effects of full toleration would kick in only after it had been in effect for three turns.

B. State Religion
1. MBrazier version
2. M@ni@c version. I agree with M@ni@c that MBrazier's approach to temples and cathedrals would be disbalancing for large cities.
3. MBrazier version. I disagree with M@ni@c's view that under a state religion, the religion should continue to get tithes described in II.C.3 from the citizens of the establishing civ. I think that would give the religion too much money.
4. M@ni@c version.
5. I think MBrazier combined M@ni@c's III.B.5&6 into one point, Schism. I would keep 5 and 6 of the M@ni@c version. I still like the idea of excommunication and schism being separate options. Although there are similarities, excommunication is more powerful (the excommunicator keeps the Great Shrine), but also costs more, so there's a functional difference.

C. Persecution
1. MBrazier version
2-3. M@ni@c version. I think MBrazier's view of persecution would make it too easy.
3 (second time). This should be renumbered as "4."
The unnumbered paragraph at the end should be number 5.

D. Cathedrals
MBrazier deleted this heading from the M@ni@c version. I would keep M@ni@c's section, along with the text.

IV. Diplomacy.
A. Major and minor religions.
1-2. MBrazier version.
3. MBrazier version.

B. Diplomatic options for both major and minor religions.
MBrazier version.

C. Additional diplomatic options for major religions.
MBrazier version.

I hope this makes your job easier, Stefu.
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by will (edited August 30, 1999).]</font>

[MBrazier]

M@ni@c enquires:

"a) How do you think that you can give real-life religions different conversion strength without causing legal problems for Firaxis?"

The ratings we're working with model a religion's readiness to seek converts, and its ability to keep members in the fold. If Firaxis referred to the historical record when choosing these ratings, nobody could have any grounds for objection. It is not, for instance, offensive to Jews to remark that Judaism has never sought out converts. I note that it _would_ be offensive to rate any religion existing today low in Conviction; but then it would also not be true.

"b) About tithing. I explicitly said that that 20% Tax was just an addition to the money the state religion gets from the citizens. Raingoon agrees."

My mistake -- this wasn't explicit in your summaries, and I guessed wrong. I'll edit my summary accordingly.

"c) Where have you read that? The Happiness factor is totally not like that (one citizen upgraded). For instance Happiness allows you to control more cities before extra unhappy people appear. So, as in reality, ruling a large empire is easier with religious freedom."

I don't follow the SE thread closely; the last time I saw Happiness explained, it worked in exactly the way I stated. What's your current algorithm?

But when you say religious freedom makes it easier to keep large empires together -- really, is that borne out historically? All the large empires I know of have tried to impose religious unity, on the theory that religious dissent readily becomes political dissent. The United States is the first really large country that has permitted dissent of both kinds on principle; and we have technologies the empires lacked.

"d) Your benefit of cathedrals would make them very bad for small cities (because they don't make a fix number content. Only the half is affected) and too good for large cities (eg in a size 20 city, 10 citizens would already be made content/happy by just a cathedral!)."

You can say the same about temples as currently written -- they do nothing for the smallest cities, and are a great help for large ones. (My cathedral is essentially a temple doubled, with the Evangelism bonus thrown in.) Bear in mind that the cost of a religious establishment is also proportional to the size of your citizenry; -20% Tax means precisely that a percentage of your tax revenue goes to your state religion.

In fact this is part of a general idea. Under religious freedom a civ can be assured of a fixed number of happy citizens; under a state religion you are taking a risk, because the source of your civ's happiness is not under your control, but if you manage things carefully you're rewarded with a larger yield. I would be quite happy with secular improvements that upgrade a fixed number of citizens (as in the Civ 2 Colosseum) but all the _religious_ improvements should depend on the size of the state religion's membership.

"And could you explain that schism loyal % better? Do I get it right that no one will follow the new religion if there are 7 believers (=105, so no one will convert)?"

No, that certainly was not my intention. I meant that the percentage staying loyal should be equal to an individual citizen's Conviction -- your basic religion then splits 85-15. The remark "as in passive conversions" means that any bonuses to Conviction that apply within a city shoud be added in before doing the split.

[MBrazier]

Will: I didn't exactly delete III.D; instead I transferred its text into III.A and III.B, as it seems better to me to put all the effects of the two choices under their own headings. It would, I suppose, be equally reasonable to explain religious improvements in _their_ own heading, reserving III.A and III.B for the automatic effects. But that's an editing decision which can be left in Stefu's hands. (Hey, Stefu! Long time no see!)

Similarly, your notion of "excommunication" isn't bad, but I don't think it belongs in the Effects section -- it looks to me like a diplomatic move, best placed in IV.C. Schisms are more far-reaching than any diplomatic negotiation, thus require their own rules and section elsewhere.

Stefu: I agree with Will's opinion on the summary -- what we have here is one basic system with variations, not four different sets of ideas. It should be enough to present the basic outline and note, under the disputed headings, each of our alternatives.
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by MBrazier (edited August 30, 1999).]</font>

[Maniac]

Praise the lord, Allah is great, whatever! Stefu is here!! The long awaited PropheTM.

1. No not all the ideas are included.
Harel wants religion to be included in SE. And I don't think that's possible with the current religion model.

But when you look at the summary of list v1.0 you will see that almost all the ideas are included in the religion model.

2. Certainly DON'T send them all! Waste of HTML pages since most of our ideas are the same.

Will :

Nice to read you again. Just want to say that my model post is the most recent. I have edited it three times, the last time August 28 = most recent.

And instead of saying to Stefu that he should just quote some parts out of one post, I suggests he searches the small differences and tweaks out (he has to do something ) and puts all the options together. So every idea will be included and we will have nothing to complain about. Means no excepts, just all options presented.

The difference between excommunication and schism is that excommunication is done by the religious leader and by the civ's leader.

MBrazier :

"The ratings we're working with model a religion's readiness to seek converts, and its ability to keep members in the fold. If Firaxis referred to the historical record when choosing these ratings, nobody could have any grounds for objection."

Be sure to make that clear to Firaxis.

And you're damn right you don't follow the SE thread. There's been nothing new anyway the last 10 days.

Now, part of Happiness...

Happiness affects the addition of extra unhappy citizens because a civ has exceeded a certain number of cities.
The Happiness formula works as follows a bit as in SMAC:

City Limit = (8 – Difficulty) x (7 + Happiness rate) x MapRoot / 2

Where :

Difficulty = Player’s Difficulty level (0-5)
Happiness = SE Happiness rate
MapRoot = Square Root of # map squares / Square Root of 3200

For each city a civ builds or conquers in excess of this number, one additional unhappy citizen will appear at some random city somewhere in the civ.

Yes indeed most empires have tried to impose a religion. Some failed. Or at least the religion didn't give the citizens a 'national' feeling. Eg Persians (not the Islams but the one before AD 1).

And the Roman Empire was most of the time religious free.

Yes, but if the current use of Cathedral should be altered + the use of Temple, I think there will be too less normal unhappiness squelching improvements. The deletion of the small Temple use isn't that big.

Ok, I agree with your Schism - Conviction % idea.
Whit this, there would also be even more reason for religions to have missions everywhere.
+ new tactic for annoying your neighbour civs.
First ask the religion to establish missions everywhere in your enemy civ and then ask the religious leader to excommunicate the civ's leader. That will give the other civ a hard time on unhappiness when he'll schism.

[raingoon]

M@ni@c, Mbrazier, Will

Apologies for leaving suddenly, and at the endgame. I had promised Diplomacy and Will did a terrific job with it instead. I'm back, and thanks to all of you for your posts this last week -- I was right in assuming you could speak for me.

Except for one thing -- had I hiked out of the California wilderness two days sooner, I'd have jumped into the fray that managed to produce three separate versions of the religion model. Sociologists know that three is an inherently unstable number. At any rate, anybody for a fourth version? Just kidding. Actually, it seems to have all worked out fine. My version would simply be a combination of all three of yours -- which Stefu will apparently do anyway, only his will have discrepancies where mine would reflect my own, wise and sage judgement.

For what it's worth, when it gets down to a debate over the functionality of temples, I know we're in good shape. Of course, there were serious discrepancies. My two cents:

• I prefer M@ni@c's conception of the Great Shrine/Holy City.
• Likewise, Mbrazier's % equation for schism is preferable to me.
• Stefu should be clear that the word "mission" is being used interchangeably with the word "ministry." To be clear, a cleric moving toward a city is said to be on a mission; a ministry is what he intends to establish there. Or lose the word ministry altogether. There's no need for this potential confusion.
• Don't know how the word "grand" got into the title. It's a quibbling note, but I think we all agree that religion should be no more grand than trade. To me the beauty of the model is that it doesn't have an ego -- it fits in nicely with what's going on in the rest of the game.
• M@ni@c, do we need to note in our summary that Harel essentially doesn't think there should even be a religion summary? Or can he express that view by simply including the religion ideas he supports in the SE thread?
• Great Shrines. I agree with parts of each of your versions. I propose the following be submitted to Stefu (or edited into one of the existing posts, if you agree) as a clarification -- I think this is the most contentious issue, if I'm not mistaken. My combination of all three looks like this:
  
  a. a great shrine is the equivalent of a religious "palace." Ergo, a religion's great shrine appears just like a palace does -- automatically, when a religion first reaches major religion status.
  b. it appears in the holy city. AFTER this first appearance, if the great shrine is destroyed by military conquest, or as a result of religious attrition (no believers remaining in the city), a new great shrine may be built by anyone maintaining that religion as its state religion. This denotes the new holy city, and so on... (here I would include Mbrazier's points 3a-d. His point "e" would be precluded by the idea that the shrine appears just like a palace does. I do not agree that a civ can build a great shrine at any time, state religion or not.
  c. there can only be one great shrine at a time.

On all other discrepancies, I'm fine with including differing opinions. The bulk of of the idea, the heart and soul of it, has been agreed upon and I think will make a very effective presentation to Firaxis.

Oh, Will -- what were those books you were reading on religion?
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by raingoon (edited August 31, 1999).]</font>

[raingoon]

Stefu

Let us know if you understand what's being requested, here . A lot of work has been done for you, and don't get me wrong -- I think I speak for all of us when I say that's not a pistol in our pocket, we're actually happy to see you. But we all agree that one final post, with discrepancy notes, is essential to making this worth the trouble we've gone to.

Maybe it would be best if you posted your summary here first, so those who want to be sure their differing viewpoints are being articulated fairly. We may find that in the context of the final post/summary, some differences aren't worth mentioning after all...

[will I]

Everyone:

I'm glad we're going to be working off the same sheet. I think that will make it easier for Stefu, YinShining, and (I hope) Firaxis. As for the general format of the presentation, I too would like to see a single text where we agree and a list of the different proposals for the issues where we do not. I think it would also be appropriate to list the strength of the support for the various suggestions.

As we're preparing the summary, I also think it would probably be helpful to Stefu to have a point-by-point list from each of us indicating which approach we support. That will certainly lessen the chance that he will misunderstand our views.

Raingoon:

Good to hear from you again. I'm quite jealous of your hiking in the California wilderness, as my family and professional obligations don't give me the chance for a getaway.

As for my religious reading, I've done a lot of trawling the web. There are several good sites on Luther, the best of which is run by the University of Wittenberg, his alma mater. I lost the URL, but if I remember correctly, it's accessible throught the web site of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America. I'm also reading a book by Lewis Spitz entitled The Protestant Reformation: 1517-1559. It's a really good overview of the religious history of the development of Protestantism and okay on the Counter-Reformation. It also has chapters on other trends in history and society, but those are pretty worthless.

MBrazier:

M@ni@c is correct about Rome, which tolerated all religions other Christianity for most of its history. Many of the Chinese dynasties (especially the T'ang) were tolerant of foreign religions, although the Confucian ethical system proved to be quite resistant to evangelism. Most of the Muslim empires tolerated Christianity and Judaism.

Although giving the religions different base evangelism and conviction ratings would be interesting, I don't think we could base our figures on history. First, many religions have changed their focus over time. Early Christians began by sending proselytizing exclusively among the Jews, and only later expanded to gentiles. Islam began with a strong proselytization effort that is nowhere near as intense today as it was in the early centuries. Ditto on Buddhism. Even Judaism -- MBrazier's model of low evangelism -- went through an expansive phase. Second, there is no consensus on how expansive different religions are. Some people would surely disagree with my assessment of evangelism by Buddhism and Islam. Therefore, I think that unless the differences were randomly generated, we might run into difficulty.

For the record, I also agree that the conviction level at the time of a schism should affect the number of converts/holdouts.

On the distinction between excommunication/interdict and schism, I think the most important difference is that excommunication/interdict is involuntary to the affected civ, while schism is voluntary.

[Maniac]

Raingoon :

Then assume Grand deleted.

Harel includes his religion category in SE, so I don't think it's necessary here.
I only hope Firaxis will see itself that our religion model AND a SE religion category with names like Polytheism, Loose Monontheism, Fundamentalism etc etc is impossible.

"Maybe it would be best if you posted your summary here first, so those who want to be sure their differing viewpoints are being articulated fairly. We may find that in the context of the final post/summary, some differences aren't worth mentioning after all..."

I Agree. But tomorrow is supposed to be the deathline for summaries. Stefu, could you ask some extra time to Yin?

Will :

"M@ni@c is correct about Rome, which tolerated all religions other Christianity for most of its history. Many of the Chinese dynasties (especially the T'ang) were tolerant of foreign religions, although the Confucian ethical system proved to be quite resistant to evangelism. Most of the Muslim empires tolerated Christianity and Judaism."

So you agree that religious freedom should get the +2 Happiness thus making it more attractive for large empires?

And about what you say about changing eva and conv ratings for religions along histiry, I fully agree.
That was BTW the main reason I disliked giving effects to specific religions.

Uh yes off course you're right about excommunication/interdict and schism.
Excommunication forced to the civ's leader by the religious leader.
Schism done voluntarily by the civ's leader.

[raingoon]

Some further thoughts on finishing this today.

Mbrazier's version, perhaps because it is most recent, seems the most inclusive. Is it possible for each of us to make no more than two suggestions to Mbrazier, and see if he'll re-edit? We might then come up with a single unified model after all, with no discrepancies. Surely we can all make a sacrifice in the name of a united front to Firaxis.

The Religion chapter of the Version 2 Wishlist is essentially shaping up to be our model, which is something I think we all have a right to be proud of. The minute disagreements will be play tested over anyway -- if we're lucky -- so please consider this simple solution. Another reason to try for a unified post of our own, without discrepancies, is that Cormac and others on the Firaxis thread have asked that we post the final religion model there as well. But more than that I would just love for the Wishlist to be able to say, "On the religion thread there was complete consensus behind the following proposal..."

So, on the chance this works, I'll start:

1. If the Great Shrine paragraph were edited per my note above, I'd be happy.

That's it for me. I'll let my second request be represented by the sum of what M@ni@c and Will would like changed. I'm very happy with the whole thing. This truly looks like part of an advanced Civilization game. I think you guys are damn smart and it's been a pleasure hammering this thing out with you, so give this last idea a shot.


<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by raingoon (edited August 31, 1999).]</font>

[Maniac]

Sigh... my version is the most recent (you know, editing) and it's the most inclusive. I even began to include MBrazier's and Will's ideas in it.

Sorry, I haven't got the time today to post and discuss a lot.
Quick this. Don't expect any more response today.

Do with I what you like. We all agree on it anyway.

With II the same. But note I changed that Turywenzists in London example.

About III. I'm kind of strict on changes to that, as you might have noticed...
I have no problem that +1 Res should take some time eg 3 turns to take effect.
And I don't really care how many citizens become unhappy. MBrazier wants 50% of the persecuted citizens, I want all the persecuted citizens and Will wants double the persecuted citizens. And you Raingoon? You decide who gets the majority of votes...

IV. Great Schrines. I have mostly the same as MBrazier. Good enough for me. The only difference I think is that I would give doubled taxes to a tolerated holy city. Not very important.

[will I]

A few notes:

M@ni@c:

I agree with your +2 happiness for religious freedom. I included it in the state religion section in the mistaken belief that you wanted it there, an error that occurred because I tried to string my proposal together over a very short period. As you'll see from my post of 30 August, I agree with your proposal for religious freedom, although I would like to see it spelled out without reference to the SE thread. I also think that some of the advantages -- notably improvements in bribery and the luxury output of entertainers -- are excessive.

Raingoon:
I don't think that having a few areas of disagreement will reduce our credibility. In fact, I can imagine that suggesting alternative approaches -- all of which are well though out at this point -- increases the likelihood that our target audience will see the model as something flexible that can be easily grafted onto Civ2.

That said, if the rest of us opt for a consensus approach based on the MBrazier draft with one amendment, I would change tithes, II.C.3, to read as follows:

3. Under religious freedom: Each turn, every city tithes one gold per religion represented, to the respective religions coffers. This comes from the trade stream. To avoid making the burden too great, tithes are subtracted before the corruption calculation. (Since even a cad would hesitate to steal from the church.) In addition, the civs would no longer pay upkeep for religious improvements. Instead, the upkeep fees for all religious improvements are subtracted from the treasuries of the religion, with each religion paying a proportion of the total upkeep proportionate to its share of world population.

As I've said before, I think the current model creates too much free money for the religions and too much free happiness for the civs. By taking tithes from the trade stream and having upkeep for religious improvements come from the religions, we give the religions something besides missions to pay for, and make the civs pay something meaningful for the happiness benefits they get from religion.

Although I suspect this will not be my last post, I would like to echo Raingoon's sentiment. You have had great ideas and thoughtful, constructive comments on the various proposals. It has been a pleasure working on this project with you. (I'll also add that I've been glad to see that Religion will end up being the second or third most active topic, which I think has surprised everyone, and has come up with an outstanding final product.)

[MBrazier]

Raingoon: no doubt it would be nice to send in a proposal with a note saying "the Religion thread attained consensus on the following model", but unless everyone suddenly agrees with my ideas for temples and cathedrals it isn't going to happen. I do insist on that being included somehow -- but at the same time, I don't want to suppress the others' ideas on that point. That means alternate proposals.

Will: excellent suggestion on II.C.3, and I adopted it into my draft with one change. It seems more reasonable to split the cost of temple/cathedral upkeep according to each religion's share of the civ's population, not the whole world's -- for one thing, it makes no sense to charge a religion for buildings in cities where it has no members at all. (I'd originally thought to split by shares of each _city's_ population, but that would force the calculations to use fractions or accept large rounding errors...)

A point to consider, though: now we have civs with state religions paying upkeep on temples _and_ tithing 20% of their tax revenue. That adds up to a pretty big income for the state religion, nearly all devoted to missionary work. Would it be better to reduce the tithe to 10%, or even 5%?

[raingoon]

Actually, Will has a good point. There is already concensus, and any differences in the details here and there shows a healthy flexibility in the model.

Mbrazier, re your last question re tithes -- I'd say phrase it so that it's clear we think there _might_ be a problem with it being too much, but playtesting would reveal whether 5, 10 or the full 20% would be most effective."

M@ni@c, I was really talking off the cuff, incorrectly assuming the last in order was the latest. Sorry. Look, I'll just retract my proposal and echo you all. Stefu should take the three of your proposals and copy what is the same and note where it's different.

It'd be nice to know if Stefu's following this, but a post from Stefu seems to cost about three thousand dollars a word. Well, what's rare is precious . Stefu, if you're reading this, it would still be nice to get a chance to go over your summary before the turn-in.

Lastly, M@ni@c, regarding the three-way tie on how to implement persecution happiness penalties, for what it's worth I have to split my vote between yours and Mbrazier's. Will, my guess is what you're going for is realistic, but for gameplay and simplicty I'd vote for a simpler cause-effect equation. Thus, I even lean towards M@ni@c's, but I honestly don't think you can know the answer to these minute questions outside of actual playtesting. Put me down for M@ni@c's version if you must. But this is a great place to include differing ideas.

Likewise, whether or not res suffers -1 under persecution. It seems historically founded. Include it as a question to be answered in actual playtesting.

Waiting to hear confirmation from Stefu that his questions on what to do were answered.

[Yes, ia am Stefu.]

Hello.

I've decided my own way of doing it, which is I do it all and you get no credit. No, really, if you think it is worth mentioning, I can say to Firaxis you worked your own summaries and deserve the pat on the head for that. However, I summarize my own. You gotta grant me that, there's few things to drop the ego more than seeing your thread members get to your holy area of work.

Here's few things I recommend to avoid for next list:

1. Religious discussions of flammatory sort.

2. Posting posts from another List thread (Maniac gets kick athwarth the earhole for that!) These are hard to deal with.

3. Combining your own summaries. My ego is hurt, and I get awky feeling. I'm not gonna look to them, I swear I wont. I wont. I wont. Wont.

[raingoon]

Stefu, I don't want to make assumptions, but I'd LIKE to assume you were joking...

Couple things. Don't tell Firaxis I did anything here. That misses the point of what I'm sure all of us agree is the main concern -- namely, WHAT was done. Not who did it. That said, don't you think your tone is a little patronizing in light of the hard work that is evidenced herein? The phrase "pat on the head" reads imperious and diminutive, yes, but more importantly -- it implies you misunderstand what's really important here.

Please note the final outlines we've asked you to look at actually ARE our ideas. I am genuinely concerned if you truly mean to avoid the outlines and look simply at our posts discussing them. A little more straight talk would be greatly appreciated.

<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by raingoon (edited September 02, 1999).]</font>

[will I]

Stefu:

I think you misunderstand. We have all avoided characterizing the model as a "summary." It is not. It is a system for implementing religion within the framework of Civ2 and, in the alternative, for combining religion with some of the more popular suggestions for altering Civ2. All of us have made suggestions, revised our suggestions, and abandoned ideas that did not fit with the model to make it an integrated whole. As such, the separate parts of the model do not make much sense outside of the context of the model. (That was why I called it a "Grand Model," in the sense of a grand total of all of the ideas.)

I think you would be doing a disservice to our ideas by chopping the model up into a list of several items and including them with random thoughts that we have abandoned along the way and unrelated suggestions from other commenters.

[raingoon]

Yeah, uh, second that -- what Will said. Stefu, summarize your brains out if you see fit to do it. It's your thread. But grant the guys who spent all their time here a little credit. That's not a summary outline you're seeing repeated throughout here. That's the model itself.

[Maniac]

Raingoon and Will. Jeeze, (although I am atheist, I use the expression Jeeze quite frequently) I can't believe my own eyes what you wrote. You're joking, right? That isn't Stefu! It's "Yes, ia am Stefu."
Probably some childish imposter who thinks he's funny. Ignore him!

Yes, ia am Stefu. :

Now what you are doing is something I don't like. If you're trying to be funny, go somewhere else. We're doing here serious work and we don't need someone like you.

BTW, if you choose a Username, try NOT to write spelling errors. I hope you know you're sticked with that ridiculous name for as long as you have your present e-mail adress. Cause you can't change your Username, you can only have one name per adress + you can't register with hotmail stuff etc (BTW Raingoon/Will another reason why this isn't Stefu).

Back to Raingoon and Will :

Now that's cleared, the real Stefu still hasn't appeared and I don't think he will. So looks after all we'll have to make the model post ourself and send it to YinShining.

M@ni@c
Will make another post replying to the serious posts soon.

[raingoon]

Well, M@ni@c, that is a very astute point.

Since we were pretty much ready to go with the final model, and just noting discrepancies where necessary, I would suggest we do that, and preface the entire model with any and all other suggestions, and send it in to Yinshining. For that matter, we can compare it to the version 1.0 wishlist religion chapter -- I believe you'll find most of those ideas represented within our model. And those that are not, again, could be part of a "preface" to the model, giving them their due.

OK, I've been thinking some more (groans) Here goes.

PART I: CAUSES OF RELIGION

It seems to be generally accepted that when you start the game, your religion will be animism. Though there are many different kinds of animism, they mainly respect each other and are similar.

As you reach a general technological level, new religions will begin to form. I suggest that each Social technology contribute 1 point to a General Social Advancement Level, and each religion based technology (ie Theology, Mysticism) contribute 3 points. When it reaches a certain level (such as ten points for polytheism), new religions will spring up. I suggest that this be done in the same way that the Golden Age of Philosophy is in Civ2-whatever city gives the final research point that pushes the appropriate tech over the edge is the "center". In my humble opinion, a "center" should not require having members of that religion live there. For example, Jerusalem has always been a major Jewish holy city, even when there were next to no Jews there. So it will be declared the center, and that's it. If you get the tech from a goody hut, then an unoccupied tile will be the holy place. This would be something like Gautama meditating under a once-normal tree which then became a Buddhist center, or the sacred mountains of Hinduism. This would be marked with a little temple icon.

Each religion would have a Conversion Rating. This would be a very small percentage, such as 3%. This would be subtracted from the CR that the original religion of a citizen has to make the possibility that it converts this turn. For example, if I discover Religion A with a 5% conversion rating, and my citizens currently follow Religion B with a 4% rating, there is a 1% chance per turn that a citizen will convert. Each citizen already of that religion in the city adds 1.5% (people want to go with the crowd) If for some reason you wish to encourage a particlar religion, you can build improvements, for example a Baptistry, which will double the percentage chance that each citizen convert to Christianity. You can also build an improvement similar to Capitalization called (Persecution), in which each shield is converted to a percentage chance that citizens will go to whatever religion you want them in.

If a holy center is captured (or, if on an empty square, the square is pillaged) the religion will lose a percentage point or two (the faithful wonder how their god could let such a thing happen)

You can make a unit somewhat like CTP's Cleric, which will go into an enemy (or friendly, if you're on a crusade for religious homogenization) city and actually stay there until expelled, doubling the chance for each enemy citizen to convert.

If you enter negotiations with a rival, your religions immediately become an option for your rival's citizens, and his/her religions become an option for yours. Thus, if you have not yet discovered Islam, but talk to a Civ that does, your citizens might start converting. Obviously, the holy center would be in your rival's possesion, so this would be bad.

PART II: BENEFITS OF RELIGION

Two main ideas have been proposed so far: each religion having a special bonus (like atheism: + 1 science) or there just being a penalty for not having homogenous religion. In order to not insult people with religions that wouldn't have as big bonuses (what do you tell an Islamic person about to buy Civ if it says that the Christians are absolutely better?) I suggest mainly the latter. Here's a list of benefits.

1. For each citizen belonging to a religion, anywhere, the home city gets a trade bonus of that number of arrows (pilgrimage). This might seem overdone, but I don't think so. I mean, look at the Vatican. It's got 800 people and maybe a few tens of millions of tourists who come each year.

2. If a diplomat asks a city to revolt, the price is modified based on religion of the city and of your empire. If your empire is greater, percentage-wise in the city's main religion than the empire you're trying to steal it from, the cost goes down significantly.

3. Some wonders may affect certain religions. For example, Michelangelo's Chapel might say "Makes every Christian in the empire content". This would provide a very strong incentive to get more Christians.

4. You may declare an official state religion. If you do this, the conversion rate of it increases by 1%, and each citizen of that religion generates one luxury (two, of course, are needed to make a discontented citizen happy). Anyone not under that religion will be unhappy (discounting other modifiers.) You can also declare No Official Religion.

OTHER STUFF

Atheism works rather like any other religion. However, it has no holy place. If two religions convert one citizen on the same turn, that citizen soon has no idea whatsoever what religion is right and turns to agnosticism, which is similar to animism for game purposes.

Building educational facilities (school, University) makes exposure to other religions greater. Each religion gets an extra percentage point when on "the offense" (trying to convert someone).

A NEW WAY TO WIN

Godhood. You must switch to the religion "Divine Leader", which has a very low starting conversion rate. You must then make more than half the world accept this religion and proclaim you God. If you manage this, you win.

<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by Giant Squid (edited September 04, 1999).]</font>