Religion

This is very important, I believe.

Religion was probably a very important governing aspect of early Neolithic society. Putting this into a game context, a player could select an area and their villagers could construct a feast/celebration providing a bonus. Proper rituals and events might have effects on outcomes:

Ritual before battle gives moral boost.
Ceremony before planting gives harvest boost.
Fertility ceremony provides population increase or better harvests.

I also like the idea of having choices in your peopleā€™s beliefs. Different paths might value different skills and knowledge. A war deity might aid your warriors while a fertility deity might aid your crops.

Also, you would need priests and priestesses.

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@Alex93it Since we know so little about the actual neolithic religion it good idea to use customization like you say. These people built huge stone temples (I was very impress by the one I saw in Malta) with little stone tools, which could only mean it was a very important part of their life.

@lotus253 I like your idea about ritual/ceremony giving various boost, maybe add a random function to it (sometimes the gods are mercifull sometimes they are not :wink:)

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I think that the boost should be at people level: depending on level of religiosity of the single individual the ceremony should improve the his/her mental status making the single villager more effective. Let me explain better, in case of severe drought the villager will organize a ā€œrain ritualā€ but the effect should not be that the rain will fall, instead should be that some people gains more confidence to survive.

@Gothmog I donā€™t agree with you, CIV religion perks are fictional and fit well in that game but AC should be realistic. A bonus chosen by the player seems a bit too arbitray.
Instead, to differentiate the beliefs, could be nice that some tribes worship more the Sun and so the solstices are very important for them, other tribes follows more the cult of the ancestors and other tribes pray for the god of the water organizing ceremonies on the river banks.

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I thing religion should be very personal, i mean that every game should be very customizable to allow the player to have a individual perfect inmersion and experience every game that he starts
(sorry for my bad english, im not used to write it )

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I agree with VinC, just giving boosts make it more like a magical system and IMHO have no place in this game, they might be fine in Civilization games, because that is an extremely abstract game more akin to chess than to real life history. At least thatā€™s the direction I am hoping the developers have in mind.

Religion in the game should be much more subtle, only giving boost to morale during moments of hardship or allowing better organization of society in classes and easing of tensions and rebellion.

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You are in the right direction :wink:

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I like the idea of religion not being a big part of the game. Overall this is more of a survival game and religion should be more of a choice of the player and not a requirement. Yes there were civilizations that were heavy into religion but others that seem like it was non existent. Maybe itā€™s something that tribal leadership can discover.

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Humans have always marked significant occurrences in life and in nature. These ritual events and explanations give rise to religions over time. The early Bronze Age in 3,000 BCE heralded the first empires of the Egyptians, Hittites, and Assyrians, and might be where using the term ā€œreligionā€ is most suitable. Pilgrimage sites like the megalithic religious complex at Gƶbekli Tepe in Turkey were very influential in antiquity dating back to 11,000 BCE. Early Neolithic cultures would still be considered ritualistic, while having less codified beliefs, unlike modern monotheistic religions.

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If appear a religion in that era, it would be polytheism isnā€™t it? And above all it will be the nature with human caracteristics, i mean that the ā€œgodsā€ would be the thing of the nature personified

religions were often polytheistic in the ancient world, however a lot of the time a town or city would worship a particular
deity above all the others a good example would be Athens from ancient Greece the Athenian patron deity was Athena
and while they still believed in the other gods, Zeus, Ares, ect they would have only had small temples and shrines in comparison to the temple of Athena, so i could see a system were you single out a Deity for your village to worship and gain a small buff of some sort. what gods they would have worshiped in the neolithic period in a good question though i suppose they could just call them the god of health, goddess of fertility, ect and not give a proper name

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Would it be possible to be without religion? Was it possible in past? Then i dont oppose religion, i would love to have ability to shape my own religion/traditions, i would love to make fertility, hunt,fishing,mating,marriage,farming,gathering,ā€¦ rituals/dances/sacrfices? Set dates for it or season, etc.

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There have been tribes in the Amazon found who have no concept of religion or spirituality, so I suspect it is possible this could have occurred.

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That information is amazing by itself, but I bet they do not build big stone structures either :wink:

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Wellā€¦ not really lol
I doubt most tribes were atheist, but it is possible.

Iā€™m not very religious, but I think having a religion for my little villagers would be fun.

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Your post made me think of something. Is religion going to be a, for lack of a better word, mandatory part of gameplay or is it something either the player or their people can choose to include?

We still have not decided if religion will be switchable or not.

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If you decide to have it so that players do not need to include it if they donā€™t want to, would it become something that we can turn off, like raids and disasters? Or would it just mean you would have your people avoid doing anything that might result in a belief system, like building certain structures?

If we decide to allow switch ā€œreligionā€ off then all ā€œreligionā€ in the game will be switched off.
That has a problem because in this times all big structures like wonders have a ā€œreligiousā€ component.
So we still donā€™t know what to do here.

Well people could go for the Imperial Truth and spread it via space mariā€¦ups wrong era

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It sounds like it might be easier to just leave it as part of the game and not have it be a switchable component. It would be in the game whether players want it or not, it would just be up to them how important religion would be to their people.

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