Men fearful of the unknown, people eager of feeling special or of in need of power/control, people in need of justification for good actions in this life that don't benefit him instead of just being selfish... Fantasy by all means.

 

But if the "Gods" were to just do random acts that should not mess up the AI nor the choices on has and still allow for temple building and upgrading for a specific "God". The only variable would be  the random acts of the Gods. Could be good ones(beneficial ones) these should be from your chosen God and the rest are either neutral to you or detrimental. I sure would love to fight a battle to the end and just before I was to call it quits my God decides to resurrect my best hero or cause devastation to the moral of the opposing army by a Godly act. All random of-coarse but one would never know for sure when and where a God would decide to get involved making the seemingly lost cause worth doing because the God might just...

Ups double post

Honestly Religion in this would be based around the Sov you'd think since he/she is the giver/bringer of life and an all powerful mage *to the peasants anyway* so i intend to at the very least R.P that my Sov is the god of my people *God Emperor*

Yes.

In Civilization 4.

Edit: I think Fall from Heaven 2 is a better example of a religion-mechanic, even though it is marred by similar issues as those that exists in the main Civ4. Religion has tangible benefits and is an integral part of any overreaching tactic, and it is possible for you to control the spread of religion, either by exporting it in a variety of ways (to serve your purpose) or to clean out opposing religions (Pogroms! Pogroms for all! Come get your pogroms! 50% off on first purchase!) with Inquisitors.

Religions have nothing to do with God(s) and I think including gods is a decidingly bad idea.

That's one religion. One I'd likely share.

There's a whole slew of possible fantasy religions. Some dealing with the Sovereign as the icon of worship, others with the Sovereign as a potential prophet, others completely seperate from the prophet, including religions inspired by Buddhism or Taoism, with one god, no gods, many gods, or living gods, or simply an indifference towards the concept of gods completely.

I'd personally like a religion that claims the Sovereign of the nation as the worshipped diety. A magocratic theocracy.

Just sayin'.

I'd expect Taoism inspiring philosophies and not religions. Being a way of life.

Hoping for some kind of animism too.

Religion is, more often that not, "inspiring philosophies" that are also ways of life. Religion is so much more than the abrahamitic religions and monotheism, or even theism. People really have to stop defining religion as the belief in a supreme diety (or several).

Religion, strictly speaking, doesn't even have to touch upon the supernatural.

I personally like this definition:

But also this, straight from the dictionary:

At a purely game level - build a temple - please the people.  Build the right temple, please your neighbors a little.  if your neighbors build the wrong temple - you have an excuse to kill all the non believers in a neighboring kingdom.  How can you tell the believers from the non believers?  no idea? - kill them all and let the gods decide

some buildings and skills would also be cool.

 

 

The E:EE Team is seriously looking at adding a religion module in now that we know there won't be any real mythos on it. I think I'm going to look at making essentially a "Make a Religion" template and system. Allow you to assign unique unit options, buildings, and magic and name a religion quickly. If we release this modularity with the Religion system, It could save a LOT of mods time in developing a custom religion to use.  It'll be tricky, but based on what I see on the engine as it is now, it should be very do-able. (It would be part of the core E:EE mod as well of course )

Plato was doing religion then? Religions are control forms based on a supreme authority/entity/power, priests being the arbiters between the divine and the mundane which obviously grants them lots of power in societies where other kind of social structures hasn't been developed yet (except those ones who expand in all the areas of a society so they can have total control of it and perpetuate themselves ad astra).

I'll concede to the second definition but not to the Wikipedia one.

Also, Benjamin Franklin was origin of something that would become the most powerful philosophy. Get his ideals, strip them from religious values and what do you get? Capitalism. Or should we consider Capitalism a religion too? Jedi are considered religion in some State of the USA or so I heard.

Jedi... Hmmm Can we have Cheddar Monks in Elemental?

Well that would be the beauty of the system I described. You could set it up however you wanted. Make pretty much any religion system you wanted. This would allow you to quickly create a basic religion which could than be modified however you wanted. It would allow you to easily assign it custom buildings etc. It wouldn't do all the work, but would save modders a TON of time.

Your judeo-christian outlook betrays you again; religion doesn't even necessitate the existance of priests, or control mechanisms, they just tend to have them for a variety of reasons. In many older societies, there weren't even a distinction between the chief and the priest, whilst in others the elder(s) acted as spiritual guides and advisors. One example of a theistic society that weren't oppressed by religion that I enjoy bringing up was the ancient norse, where the stories of the gods and the lessons taught often had much more meaning than the divine personas themselves, and all gods were presented as aspects of man.

And yes, Plato did dabble in religious philosophy, even if I doubt that he defined it as such himself. A lot of philosophy blurs the line between the human and the divine, and deals with it. Many philosophers, including Plato, were religious and proponents of a wide range of religions, and used that outlook in their philosophies.

Plato was thus "doing religion" in the sense that his philosophies touched on the religious, but in no way or form did he propagate or create his own religion. He was merely operating within the confines of his own.

Which is fair enough, because the wikipedia article doesn't offer a definition in that excerpt, it merely offers a general outlook on religion that is very inclusive. The definition is the one from the dictionary, which also happens to be the first paragraph of the wikipedia article.

Heh, funny you should mention capitalism, since it is entirely possible to call capitalism a form of religion, depending on your definition of capitalism (which is, I've found, very diverse). Worshipping monetary wealth and economic progress, satisfaction of the own ego held in high regard, the fullfillment of the self, consumerism as the meaning of life and materialism as the sole judge of earthly value - it quickly starts to sound like a religion. Almost like a.. secular religion.

The UK, if I'm not mistaken.

Also, no.

Not every religion is about control. Some things we call religions were communal stories shared by people of what came before, and what their reckoning of how things could be. Later, we told parables to get our children to behave.

 

- my Soveriegn worshipping religion will be ALL about control.

As soon as I mod in the "God-King" civilization option, that is.

Varenus Bearheart III, God-King and Divine Emperor of the Ursaris Hierarchy.

Sounds good enough.

  strager, I hope the system you envisage will be capable of representing gods and goddesses.  Much like the Deities and Demigods from DnD.  So not only could you be worshipping a cult figure or a abstract religious principles but you could also have the manifestation of a deity/deities or their representatives evolve in the game. 

  Early religious techs could be something like-

  Founding the religion=receive 2 essence, Prestige.  Random # of followers in faction who take to the new 'faith'                            

  Increase of city size(if religion founded in city) to accomodate temple(s)

  Gain access to priest units

  Medium religious techs-

  Priest can convert through honesty, guile or force.  Converted join your faction.

  Temple Complex(allows for large number of followers, High Priests, Prestige)

  Temple Guards(special units that would have some added benefits for combat, units could be unique to each religion

  High level religious techs-

  Summon representatives for quest, warfare or to ask a question(ala Oracle of Delphi)

  Start a 'holy war' where your population follows their High Priest or GodKing on a 'crusade' against..

  Final tech-

  You ask for devine intervention, the enemy are causing trouble and you get...Zeus who appears before his High Priest and says "Priest, your dedication and enthusiasm brings me here.  You are worthy of my Gifts." humbled but determined Priest looks up as Zeus beckons this mortal to come near.  "Here worthy servant take this Bolt of Lightning.  You may use it against your foes. Show them the Judgement of Zeus!"  For the win.. 

  It would also be nice if we could have multiple mythos in one faction.  You might want a cleric of Poseidon.. a monk from a hand fighting school..and a Paladin of Tyr all in the same faction.

  I hope you can mod stuff like this strager.The 3 DnD mods currently under discussion/development need clerics and priests.  Would like to see other peoples ideas on how a religous techs should look/evolve and their repercussions or benefits.

 

 

 

in many cases an ideological form of Severe Nationalism can be considered a religion. One such example is Hitlerian Nazi-ism, although for some people Capitalist Democratic Republic is also such a religion.

Stalinism ... perhaps. All the die-hard communists were killed in the early years of Stalin before WWII, and any communist tendencies were more or less abolished other than the "complete state control" part, so it can't be called Communism, however can be called Stalinism. If anyone was a die-hard fan of his goals and methods, then that too could be considered a religion. However, in the realm of "Communism", Maoism is a far stronger example of a religion based upon Idealogical Nationalism. The Cultural Revolution, and the Religion of Mao's Red Book are clear examples of this.

So, Capitalism (in the veil of Democratic Republics), Fascism(with Japanese Emperor-Shinto, and Hitlerian Nazi-ism as core examples), and Communism( with Stalinism somewhat, but definitely with Maoism) were clearly their own ideological, economic "faiths" during the WWII era which includes the years 1918-1970 (at least). Maoism lasted clearly into the 1970s, and still has a strongly felt cultural significance. Any Chinese government that clearly blames Mao himself for the failures of Communism can certainly expect a civil war. However agents of Mao can be used as scapegoats.

While it is clearly apparent that Nazi-ism and Mao-ism were the ideological "religions" with the most fanatical support, this does not mean that post WWII era Capitalist Democratic Republicanism and Totalitarian Stalinism didn't have their own supporters, or evidence of a religious based system.

The Inquisition led by McCarthy is not a direct evidence of such a religion, however clearly can be said as a by-product of such a thing.

The Internationalist Style of Architecture was certainly a religion of Utopia amongst most all Modernist Architects during the 1915-1960 era, and somewhat ironically were used by both the Capitalists and the Fascists. The idea was shared amongst both ideologies of Social Reform, Social Perfection, and the creation of a new Utopia. Where the dream differed, however, was that ultimately the Capitalists let the people decide, while the Fascists forced their mad dreams upon the populace with the Terror of their military.

If I can get the quality of coders I need for this, here is the plan:

 

We will provide several example religions (the ones that will be in the E:EE Mod itself) . The engine itself should be capable of the following:

 

Creating an easy religion that is either present at the start of the game, or discoverable via quest or technology, or spell.

Allowing those religions to interact with one another - for example the emergence of one religion due to anothers existance.

Unique technologies only researchable by

Individual soverigns, champions, units, cities, and NPCs all are given a religon modifier. Champions, NPCs, etc. can convert to other faiths.

Interacting with several other unannounced modules

 

What you choose those relgions to be is up to you. Here are a few examples:

 

If the Lord of the Elements mod wanted to use this system he could simulate the spread of Saurons influence. Special buildings could be built in cities with the modifier. Troops who truley worship sauron get some bonsues. etc. Kyrge could than further modify the code to provide any specific bouses etc. he wanted to give the religion.

If the Dragonlance or Dark Skies mod wanted to use it they should be able to use the same system to build a whole parthanon of gods each providing different bonuses, unique buildings etc.

Another mod might use it to represent philosphies, or whatever they wanted.

A system like this is vital to the mod community. If your interested in helping out please let me know. We need coders especially for this system, although 3D modellers as always are needed to create various building parts to include (for making temples, etc.) plus some other unique stuff for the religions in the actual E:EE Mod itself.

There could be several advantages to entering a Crusade. Units could train faster, and their equipment could be created with 20% less materials (religious fervor). Existing Units and Armies could be up-kept for half the normal maintenance for as long as the crusade is in effect.

Penalties should also (probably) be in effect somehow ... perhaps all units trained during a crusade are disbanded upon the completion of the crusade? Or perhaps certain buildings would become unbuildable during a crusade (ergo only religious and military buildings could be built). Perhaps negotiations with the victim of a crusade would become impossible (thus making the crusade more or less permanent, leaving one or two ways to end the crusade on a negative note that could have their own set of unfortunate consequences).

Perhaps .... science output could be halved during a crusade? Or something similar in terms of economy.

I have a friend, with the last name "Burrone".  He joined the military and entered Jedi as his religion.  In boot camp his instructor ripped him for it.  Kept calling him Obi Wan Burrone and asking him why he sucked at climbing walls and didn't just use the force to fly over them.

Copy pasted from Wikipedia, "Religion in New Zealand":

Man we live in a screwed up world haha

 

Good, no institutionalized superstition(religion) in games.

While it may be silly, from a realism perspective, not to have religion, I can understand that its on the same level (strategically) as other "real" elements that will not be included in the gameplay.

I will not be surprised if we still have divine spells, temples, ect, but simply no competing form of Organized religion. This is sensible for the main launch, although I wonder how much religion is present within the book or lore ... depending on this will depend on the direction religions should take within the mod mods.

Personally I don't mind Religions/ect in games so long as they are overly done and jarringly different. Akin to Alpha Centauri ... and to a lesser extent Fall From Heaven.