We have to assume that for such ages speculation will be everywhere.
Let’s just try to make those speculations plausible enough.
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I love that word, along with “plausability” when it comes to A.C. 
But don’t say it too much or I’ll have nothing to stand up for in the upcoming historical debate 
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I think the document provides not only plausible but a reasonably well based hypothetical demonstration of Neolithic ritual, with respect to dance. Reading the document in detail reveals the inferential methods used. A second and more thorough reading has revealed a more sound scientific paper then I had originally suspected. In fact I only take one issue with the paper in general.
The clothing shown in the paper is obviously not accurate for the Neolithic. There is a link to the rest of their recreations, and they have some reasonable reproductions of Neolithic clothing based upon what is seen in there art. I take issue with the complexity of some of the woven textiles as well as they’re silly use of components that did not exist for the purpose of modesty, which is belied by their own examples.
I can’t stress enough how unlikely it is that the Neolithic would have more advanced textiles then those found in subsequent.
This is the link to their clothing reproduction. They did a good job of inferential reproduction, but again they are displaying a level of textiles that are probably beyond the Neolithic, and certainly young practicality.
http://cexa-zg.org/costumes.html
I really need to write a paper about this and publish it along with significant research. Because this prevailing belief in complex textiles, for which there is not actually any scientific basis, is annoying to me.
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Religion is relatively simple to implement for the Neolithic.
Primitive people will have ritualised observations of concepts, phenomena or objects mysterious to them. Examples include: Winter, death, rain, blood, snow, trees, sun, motherhood, fire and moon.
Tribes then prioritise of highlight veneration, appeasement or otherwise of their focal topic. Players can then mix and ,match a tribal dogma, and later a tribal pantheon. By making it mix and match there is less room for critics to be triggered, and the whole makes for a logical progression.
Speaking of actual Neolithic religion, I believe it’s probably much more complex than that.
Speaking of how it would be portrayed in the game, I think there is benefit to the suggestion of the simplification/ abstraction of components, allowing reuse as time progresses.
Do I believe it is important to remember that during the Neolithic, song and dance are probably very important and are likely performed throughout the day for many reasons. The previous article I posted on the topic alludes to this, and had brought it up many times.
The inclusion of ritual, to include singing and dancing, in daily activities probably decreases as religion becomes more organized and more authoritarian, which we will see in the iron age. As time progresses, we will see a shift from a left leaning concept of religion to a right-leaning concept of religion, speaking in terms of political science. This will mirror societies shift in the same manner.
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The point I am making is that the religious doctrine can be mix and match. I doubt the devs can afford to include any variety in the ceremonial. There need to be a few animations, for common entertainment or for worship. Say three animated dances that are religious, which are rain worship, which are moon worship and which are maternal dances matter less, and on the next playthrough the same dances might mean hunting, fishing and thunder if those are the religious focal points the player has chosen. Having a specific thunder ceremony and a specific mother ceremony makes sense and is cool, but I think it would be way too much work. Players need to put points into religion or equivalent and highlight foci.
Now later you might have ideology specific monuments or variations between them, or even a specific worship sound or time of day/year. But so long as the base animations are generic you can get away with that.
Say your tribes are sun worshipers and want to build standing stones. You use the same standing stones animations, but these specifically face east and the same worship animations, but the worship is timed at dawn and you might have the priest animation hold up a gold disk or yellowed cloth.
So far all you need is a specific sun worship priest and to switch the ritual timing to dawn.
The next playthrough you build standing stones to the thunder god. You use the same standing stones animations, but they are placed on an exposed hilltop. Worship happens at any time of day, the priest animation holds up a streamer or rattle and the worship music includes drums or cymbals.
How to show a thunder ceremony the devs only need to animate diffierent paraphernalia for the priest, and a different worship music sound effect.
Music sound files are cheap and can be personalised for every ceremony, with actual images used you need to be able to reuse as much as possible. Adding seperate variables such as colour swatches, different locations, different orientations, and differnet ceremony times you can use the same animations to depict seperate focui of worship.
This is important as the game already includes construction animations for things like standing stones, so it will help to find minor differences that don’t effect animations but allow each in game object to mean as many distinct things as possible.
Handled smartly the game could have a massively diverse religious system with full freedom for the player to develop their own pantheon foci and choices, each with some minor variation on the game animations and in game benefits. All the while not overloading the game with specific animations that would be too expensive to produce.
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Your idea of a privatization of religion by the elites is really appealing, as this really seems to fit the archaeological data and it would fit nicely with a Middle Neolithic/gameplay stage.
To make a break from work, I’ve worked today on an article by Marylène Patou-Mathis showing that in the same time, Middle Neolithic, appeared the elites, slavery, a warrior ideology, territorial rivalries, etc. In the very same moment are dated the enclosures, the princely burials, etc. This could be the very moment, also, for the appearance of “priests” replacing shamans, as well as a more organized production chain extending on a number of related sites, like shown by the article on flax in the Aisne Valley.
Having from this Middle Neolithic/game social ceremonies still using dances and banquets in the enclosures (when the big men would need a partial redistribution of wealth to the community to have their power asserted) would make something real coherent gameplay-wise. This could be the moment when dances, instead of being tied to large or broadened rites, could become more oriented to e.g. harvest or entrance in adulthood for the young people in the settlement.
This way, from nearly only inclusive ceremonies linked to every religion aspects, we could slowly progress to exclusive religious ceremonies becoming more detached from community/social ceremonies
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I think I understand what you’re saying, that we need to simply reuse the same animations and resources for different things by abstracting them in removing the specificity. If that’s what you mean, I was agreeing with you from earlier. The only point I was making is that the frequency of ritual would be tremendously higher in the Neolithic than subsequent periods.
The reuse of costly items, such as meshes and animations, while using less costly assets, such as textures and sound files, certainly is a good idea, especially for increasing the richness and diversity of religion for a low-cost.
I simply base that on the trend that we seem to see in the evidence of history. The more organized religion Becomes, typically the more right-leaning it becomes.
For those who aren’t aware of what I mean by right and left in a particular context, hears with those terms mean and political science political science:
Right - Hierarchical structures with distinct leadership and strata.
Left - Equality, egalitarianism. Less rigid structure, fewer levels of leadership.
Authoritarian - Strong control of government, centralization (draconian management)
Libertarian - Weaker control and greater personal freedom, decentralized (laissez-faire management)
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The only point I was making is that the frequency of ritual would be tremendously higher in the Neolithic than subsequent periods.
We need to make some sacrifices for playability and this is likely one of them. A player would not want religion time to crop up too frequently, rituals are better off paced for gameplay. As time scale is entirely abstract there is no additional loss to accuracy in doing this.
It may be disruptive to have religion paced irregularly. What we know so far is that religion has a morale boost for different circumstances depending on the faith. This is likely on a timer of some sorts, the people will tell the player when they need to worship based on the game pacing designed by the devs.
That being said if there is less going on in earlier time periods more religion could be added to fill the time. Neolithic tribes will not be so engrossed in construction or agriculture, so there might be not only more time to worship, but also more time for the player to devote to worship. however this is all dependent on the number of player interactions per minute not the technology. If Neolithic ends up being very hands on for the player it might have the same or even less time for religious content. It will still be there, but buffs might last longer and cues to perform ritual decreased rather than increased. Ultimately the interface will dictate this.
I think I understand what you’re saying, that we need to simply reuse the same animations and resources for different things by abstracting them in removing the specificity. If that’s what you mean,
This is so, but I imply a high degree of subtlety. On a sinple level you could hve say a menhir and a priest, a menhir, the menhir has handprints on it and the priest has a robe. The handprints and robes have different colour swatches. So a red robe and red handprints mean say thunder god, while blue handprints and yellow robes mean sun god etc.
That is possible way of cataloguing each faith separately. and works in games. However for a game trying to be reasonably accurate its an abomination.
However if we do something very similar but make the variables make sense we can still have personalisation with only a few core elements. So a sun priest might have a yellow robe (but only if we can hypothesise a yellow dye), but a sun menhir will face east towards the dawn. A thunder gods menhir will need to be on a windy open hill top and the priest carries something that blows in the wind. Different cults might require sacrifice of different animals. We can make logical inferences in some cases, in others the game can set its own path. Some variables can be set by the player. A player can decided that say - pigs are favoured by the sun god as sacrifices, but cats are favoured by the moon god. With historicity intruding only in later periods and with cities favouring NPC religions from real ancient civilisations.
At some point it may be necessary to make stuffup to fit so long as it is true to the general technology of the time. We know so littl about ancient ritual that there is a lot of room for creativity here. where we are guessing it may behoove the developers to make note in the games wiki as to what content is provinenced and accurate and what content is speculative for purpose of gameplay. What we cannot do is have a game with no ritual because we don’t know the ritual, the priests will have to do something flashy and religious…
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I’m not referring to Major rituals where everybody stops and does that. It’s more likely you would constantly see little tiny, probably individual events occurring. When a group heads over to a field to harvest, they might stop for a few moments do a little quick chant before stepping into the field. You would probably see a lot of that kind of stuff. It’s pretty non- disruptive
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Exactly that 
We could say aside of those minor rituals, “major” rituals could also occur for some peculiar occasions:
- either fixed, regular periods (like harvests, adulthood entrance, etc.);
- rituals linked a peculiar occasion (e.g. the building of a new enclosure or burial).
In the first case, it may only be balanced after testing in game, so no need to worry about that for now.
In the 2nd case, it should be the moment the benefits appear after having invested an awful lot of resources, time and people on the work, so the player won’t cry if the ceremony occur.
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Any observation of contemporary tribal Society that still practices animism, such as a few remaining African tribes as well as some of the Amazon River tribes, I’ll show you that very minor ritual is performed constantly throughout the day. Often in the form of simple chant or song as a function of a task. You should see these constantly performed during the Neolithic, though they will disappear as religion shifts towards him or right-leaning philosophy as hierarchical power structures form and government begins to establish itself at the end of the Neolithic.
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Good point!
From the feeling, I would rather agree with the opinion
In the early game phase, the phenomenon may play a role in changing the faith of individuals into a group belief. The group is doing something in common because it has found a common ground of (some) belief. It makes her feel good and makes her more productive. And they understand themselves more as a tribe / people.
It is known that there were ceremonies for which special places played a role. Stonehenge, for example, also in Scotland, there was such a place, certainly other places. Whole tribes traveled some 1000 km to be at a certain time in this place. (One assumes solstice) It is proven that they carried pigs, as foot and as offerings. This time in the game would be the begii of priests / shamans etc.
I would not speak of religion yet, rather of cult. With everything that goes with it - rituals, sacrifices, cult objects. These could be “compulsory events”, with the nice side effect of getting to know your neighbors. It was certainly good for trade and progress too. And who was not seen there, was not one of them, was, well, associal? hostile? certainly questionable. Real religion, then, I would associate with the beginning of any power / rule. It should probably be more in the (game) stage “people” settled.
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Let the cats out of the game please …
I can tell you that I, for one, hope to see some cats in the game. Cats were not officially domesticated in the time of the Neolithic, but it’s perfectly possible to see them sneak into Villages and steal food at night. There were several large cats available at the time.
The cat in this picture is a Eurasian Wildcat. It looks very much like a modern domesticated cat, but it’s at least twice as big.
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probably a weakness of Google Translator …
Cats - of course!
But not to sacrifice to the moon god …
Bad idea!
I will fight against this people! 
Yes please, no sacrifices of cats. I can guarantee you that will make a lot of people not want to play. I don’t really like dogs very much, but I think the same would be true for them. If there are animal sacrifices, they would need to be animals that are not typically pets. Sorry if that hurts realism in any way, but it is what it is
I so agree, though China might not. 
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Then, just larger cats must for the Chinese here … saber-tooth-tiger …? 
I would suggest, not smaller than Puma or Neofelis