Competing Religions

[tschuschi]

is long, right!
But good thoughts, should also be feasible in the implementation, in principle, an Exel table (?) On the role of a respective priest / shaman should be thought. He is the interface between the supernatural and the mortals. Incidentally, the “Ministry of Public Relations”, think much of his personality will depend. Is he also a teacher / scholar? Is he especially righteous, wise, or cruel, spreading fear?

@Elfryc

I don’t want to play a Civilization/Age of Empire game, where building a barrack gets you instantly 5 warriors, build a sanctuary to Thor and get instantly +10% morale for warriors and makes your citizens Vikings.

Find this system also pretty hackneyed. It has proven itself. Another way could be to define it through the inhabitants themselves. Example: barracks. Each resident has their individual combat strength, some - hunters, for example - are better archers and build a practice site. Children watch the hunters practicing and want to learn that as well. Or example: stonemason. There is a particularly talented stonemason in the village (or a prisoner / migrant) and everyone who works with him for a while is getting better and better. The effect is faster work and more sophisticated architecture, or even statues … Stonemasons, on the other hand, are not so good archers, but with a big hammer dreaded street tusks. They also practice that from time to time (you never know what it’s good for) or hold competitions … It becomes clear that an ax or a spear is not bad at all and you also practice with such tools - and the wicker basket of the woman as a shield (very impractical, which still needs to be optimized)
At some point, a “club” of “berserkers” whose members are feared and yet enjoy great reputation. All young men want to be there, sure. etc. - no idea if it’s fun to play.

[tschuschi]

Just read …

Artificial Intelligence - New Church wants to create AI God Himself

It sounds like science fiction and April 1st, but it seems serious: a new church wants to create a god based on AI.

Künstliche Intelligenz - Neue Kirche will KI-Gott selbst erschaffen

So that is made today

[Elfryc]

Yup, you’re right about the shamans. We’ve got to remember that in a 10 members tribe, this role may be taken by any elder, meaning this character is a living memory of the tribe, and has competencies acquired all along his/her life that he will transmit to next generations, in hunting tactics, house building, defense, medicine, relations to nature and spirits, etc.

Probably with passing time this role may be shared by more proficient people: one character may take in charge the medicine field (becoming the first doctor), then long a time later, when the village has grown to a town, another could make a living on taking medicinal plants in the neighborhood for the 5 doctors and become the first herbalist; another one (probably earlier though) could become the first priest, giving still more attractiveness to the god X number of gods/spirits, etc.

You’re right also for such things as regular drilling for soldiers, filed of Mars, barracks etc. Although this should be more related to later periods/DLC than Neolithic, as in this period there’s very few chances of any standing/semi-professional army like there was in Egypt, Greek cities, Mesopotamia or Rome.

Evidently, I didn’t rejected them entirely, for later periods at least, but that’s probably safer to said it plainly

[Gal2]

It felt like leaving a like was not enough to show my support on your proposal. I like the idea of an animist society, in which the divinities you choose come from the environment you inhabit and the life your people are living. I also like the “heroization” of ancestors in their graves. Nice thinking!

[tschuschi]

Let us establish a religion

[Elfryc]

@Gal2

It felt like leaving a like was not enough to show my support on your proposal. I like the idea of an animist society, in which the divinities you choose come from the environment you inhabit and the life your people are living. I also like the “heroization” of ancestors in their graves. Nice thinking!

I can’t presume what’s underway on the devs’ side concerning religion, but I hesitated quite a bit before posting this, as I feared this may look complicated (but I noted the tiny AC avatar under my post )

But what decided me to do it was the fact that it could be used as a basis in case there would still be a void in this field, that it seemed it could be interesting for the gameplay, may be considered realistic (although needing confirmation from specialists), and one appealing aspect is that it seemed it could be done with minimal script work, based on flags, modifiers and triggers + a bit of interface creation.
Not sure for the AI though, as I’m a total noob far that.

But well, if that is considered a good basis for further discussions, that’s a good thing and my evening would have been well employed

[badbear]

All religions that are practice now and in the past should not be in the game. Why not our civ in Ancient Cites create new gods and religions? I think that would be more interesting.

[lotus253]

I do think starting new religions would be best.
Even the oldest religions we know of today occurred thousands of years before the Neolithic.
There were some extinct religions which occurred a perhaps 1000-2000 years after the game starts, but they are not clearly defined (early Egyptian, Sumerian, etc).

[Elfryc]

@badbear

All religions that are practice now and in the past should not be in the game. Why not our civ in Ancient Cites create new gods and religions? I think that would be more interesting.

I have to officially disagree.

You just can’t understand any society without taking into account its religion – even if that’s official atheism. Look at the news about those countries in any newspaper you may find within 5 minutes, and you’ll see you can’t understand them without taking into account religion: USA, Russia, Poland, Iran, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, USA, France, North Corea, Lebanon, Tukey.

I’d even say that if you propose no past or current religion in the game, that’s because you’re American, living in a country that was created by religious migrants fleeing from a religious-torn England, and if I officially disagree that’s because I’m one of those godamn French living in a state being officially non religious since the 1905 law separating church and state. But in both cases we’re legacies of older eras when religion had different roles and were used and created counter-reactions. That’s history, while being also religious.

Coming back more directly to AC, I think that as we don’t know the names of the gods and spirits for Neolithic, a sensible way to deal with that is what I suggested in my long post above (check under the title “Polytheism: gods/spirits names, etc.” if needed).

For later eras and DLCs, it will be totally impossible to have the Romans without the ludi (them being also a religious event, as former Etruscan burial rites), Egypt without the deified Pharaoh that explains the pyramids and very important power of the temples, or western European Middle Ages without crusades and cathedrals towers competing in height with the lord/king castle towers and the merchants belfries.

One more point: how would you intend to have Neolithic religion(s) being represented in AC? There’s one point everybody seems to agree: people back then were polytheistic. This means if you want any form of political correctness for their religion as you’ll want for later eras and DLCs you’ll have to create a fantasy religion, necessarily monotheistic. That would be totally silly.

[tschuschi]

@badbear

All religions that are practice now and in the past should not be in the game. Why not our civ in Ancient Cites create new gods and religions? I think that would be more interesting.

Would be a consideration, but has several hooks.
We define religion today according to the information that we have from the past. And that’s a huge amount, true, laying, artifacts, etc.
Which brings us to the next catch: is there any religion (and God / gods) that has never existed before? Let’s now look away from the names and treat only the function and properties.
Think, we can only provide the skeletons, mechanisms and mathematical the degree of impact of “religion”. The player (or the NPC’s in the game) must fill them with life. What comes out at the end should not be scripted.

In the implementation of the priestly caste could play a significant role. The interpretation (or call it: their ideas) have shaped the character of a religion, so it could be in their sphere of influence (their craft) to develop religion. The construction kit from which they produce their “art” should be given. Since most players are not so familiar with this issue, a brief explanation should be given about possible excesses before the player / (Prister) makes his choice. Whether it works in the end, will show in the game. (Suggestion)
And rituals are important! Hocus-pocus impresses the masses and unsettles them. Priests should also have a repertoire of tricky and spooky.

[badbear]

First I am not American. (Rats a Quebec subverter )Second I do not understand your response. Why do we have to define anything if this is game? Why cannot Egypt be defined by something else and why call Egypt, Egypt? Could not the game in the Neolithic period have a moment were they find something to worship? Lastly all though I like this idea thinking on it I realize that from a programming perceptive this would be very difficult. My idea was something I put out there.

[Elfryc]

@badbear

First I am not American. (Rats a Quebec subverter )Second I do not understand your response. Why do we have to define anything if this is game? Why cannot Egypt be defined by something else and why call Egypt, Egypt? Could not the game in the Neolithic period have a moment were they find something to worship? Lastly all though I like this idea thinking on it I realize that from a programming perceptive this would be very difficult. My idea was something I put out there.

Ok, I understand now!
You were speaking of randomization, without writing the word.

In that case I’d agree this would be interesting for people liking that sort of things – and I think that’d be quite easy to do, at least in a latter stage. When the devs will have various religions in game (e.g. Egypt, Mesopotamia, Roman era & Neolithic) it may be fun to have checkboxes to define if you want a randomized religion, a randomized map, a randomized era, etc.

As I understood it from your first message, I thought you were speaking about the base game having fantasy religions (“invented” in this case being total fantasy), which would lead the game to be as much accurate as possible for everything save religion.

But I agree when reading you: I understand now I always considered as acknowledged that the game will be set in Western Europe for the first stage, then with the following DLCs it will have a general context being changed to match other areas and periods.
I always thought this would lead to have a different world map – meaning: if you begin a game set e.g. in the Roman era, the world map cannot be like there’s no Roman Empire, and the direct consequence is that there’s necessarily two Consuls or an Emperor above your own starting village. Any other case would drive the game to break the immersion.
But randomization probably would be easy to make for that also.

Conclusion: sorry for having mistakenly considered you an American – not totally false, but not totally wrong neither

[badbear]

Thank you, my fault really. I am a poor writer. Thank you again.

[IncredibleRan]

I think the question whether or not to have historic religions in the game is quite connected to the question whether we want to re-play actual history in this game (with Egyptian pyramids and Christian crusades later on), or if we wanna simulate a believable, yet alternative and unique timeline.

Personally, I’m more for the later, since there already are plenty of city-building strategy games around actual historical cultures (actually most titles in the genre). I’d rather see this game to be kind of a sandbox to simulate an environment for my own tribe’s timeline /based/ on what we know from history. That includes religion.

[Elfryc]

@IncredibleRan

I think the question whether or not to have historic religions in the game is quite connected to the question whether we want to re-play actual history in this game (with Egyptian pyramids and Christian crusades later on), or if we wanna simulate a believable, yet alternative and unique timeline.

Personally, I’m more for the later, since there already are plenty of city-building strategy games around actual historical cultures (actually most titles in the genre). I’d rather see this game to be kind of a sandbox to simulate an environment for my own tribe’s timeline /based/ on what we know from history. That includes religion.

Yup, I concur. The devs still have to launch the debate about realism/plausability/historicity/realism, which should be very interesting.

In my point of view, there’s lot of reasons to prefer plausability over realism, because even if the game is strongly relying on historical & archaeological research and realism, there’s also to take into account that the development intends to take years and multiple DLCs if all goes well, but this just won’t work if the players feel they’re always playing the same game, being only longer with each later era covered with the last DLC. And some the gamer base may only be broader if there’s more possibilities offered.

That’s partly why I proposed here or there something quite basically called decisions, that could become traditions with time.

This or another similar system would allow either to stick to a “common”, or “usual” society for your first games, as this would allow you easier relations with neighboring tribes – which may be quite essential for the surviving aspect of the game.

But later, when you manage to do what you want, either when playing another game or because you feel bored after a few tries, you could try to define a wholly distinct society, with other gods, another economic organizations (why not a “communist” society like the one described by Marxist historians for the Sumerian era in Mesopotamia) – and the benefit is that it could allow a high sense of achievement.

@badbear

Thank you, my fault really. I am a poor writer. Thank you again.

Sh*t, @badbear I forgot to reply to your post before posting mine
No need to apologyse. Whenever there’s misunderstanding there’s necessarily two guilty parties

[lotus253]

As I’ve stated before, one must also consider that just because something is the norm for a culture does not make it exclusive to a culture. Allowing for a little bit of polymorphism will go a long way in game longevity.

[tschuschi]

As far as I understand it correctly, the Neolithic era is a rather slow development over an immensely long period of time. Only in the Bronze Age did the whole thing go up. In this context, the question arises, how thousands of years without significant progress (relatively) in an exciting game is …?
AoE, 0 B.C. and other games skip that by “developing” the next era - costing food, wood, and gold … stupid, but holding the tension.
It would be worth considering whether it is possible to create a new variety through the combination of “religion” in connection with the sewer system of “knowledge”.
Could imagine that otherwise it slides into a kind of tamagoji …

[Matthias]

great post!
Since we don’t know much about Neolithic believes/culture I like the idea that the player is open in customizing/naming his beliefs in the game.
And I totally agree with not wanting a Civ style religion system!

I think understanding belief/religion of the stone age is more shamanistic than our idea of organized religions of later periods. In the stone age humans were living in nature, depending on it, and were trying to explain what they observe around them that seemed very mysterious. So these “religions” should have a lot to do with animals, the elements, weather, landmarks, etc.

[Uncasual]

@Matthias

Since we don’t know much about Neolithic believes/culture I like the idea that the player is open in customizing/naming his beliefs in the game.

There is a basic problem with this approach:
How to handle that situation when future expansions of the game reach ages were religion, or politics, laws, etc… are known. If you customize Rome religions or social uses, is it still Rome?
Or do we remove the customization feature for ages were it is known enough to model them properly?

This is a key issue in the whole game design.
Customization fits very well in Neolithic because we barely know how it was. But beyond Neolithic it breaks the history aspect of the game and can make it a complete “what if” were expansions would be only cosmetic.

This is an interesting topic and we would like to know how what point of view you all have about this problem.

Our proposal is to allow only a small degree of customization that can not break the basic rules of a defined religion, social use etc… For Neolithic this means that we should define that rules based on plausible speculations, so the customization mechanic works as expected for future expansions too.

[lotus253]

I really love the idea of What If.

What if is just so much fun with so many possibilities!!! \o/