Wredniak2003 wrote:
I'd say no. Don't try to make it Civ 5 clone :P (and even it got it in expansion I believe).



If you really need something like that I'd be more in favor of some morality scale but not necessarily good/evil one. More like kind/strict and lawful/chaotic making it an XY axis (or whatever it is called in English...). Or more along the lines of Virtual and Material Endless principles (I hope I remembered the names right)

virtual and concrete endless



i think a true accomplishment for a religious system is to make it uncontrollable. most religions start out promising similar things, i.e. paradise, salvation, etc. BUT governments on the whole have had little control over it. religions expand, contract, are revived, and die on the whims of individuals. while governments did sponsor things like inquisitions and missionaries, they were responsible for spreading and enforcing religion rather than changing it. it would be interesting, i think, to have religions go in random directions. the best examples i can give here would be different types of people changing their religious ideals to suite themselves, zealots becoming super aggressive, unhappy people reforming, religious schisms, etc. and all in some sort of random event system that may effect populations of cities all over auriga. i have some interesting ideas on this sort of thing but that would take a long time to write.

marceror wrote:
And I believe that you may be getting overly tripped up on semantics. I'll consent that culture isn't the best word here. A better word is race.



There, now everything's fixed.

heh, sorry about that, i'm sometimes a bit of an english nut.

Adventurer_Blitz wrote:
I believe you have been playing Civ too long. Culture is associated with peoples beliefs, customs, rituals, etc. This kind of thing applies to civ because everyone in civ is a human. We can all conform to each others cultures and become gradually assimilated as time passes on. However, what you are describing is different species in the same city changing. This is not possible as one species cannot become another and species will not be able to coexist in the same environment sometimes. I.e. a broken lord will not last without feeding off of others or dust, which they will not be able to do while being conquered, a necrophage will never be able to work in the same system as the vaulters, etc. The racial interactions here can be extremely complex but they are not "culture".

And I believe that you may be getting overly tripped up on semantics. I'll consent that culture isn't the best word here. A better word is race.



There, now everything's fixed.

marceror wrote:
I'm not super in favor of religion, at least, I found it a bit cumbersome in Civ V. What I would like to see is a more developed culture mechanic. If I take over a necrophage city as the vaulters, for example, the necrophage population shouldn't just immediately morph into something indistinguishable from a Vaulter city. This should be a process. Hopefully this is on the list to be developed further.

I believe you have been playing Civ too long. Culture is associated with peoples beliefs, customs, rituals, etc. This kind of thing applies to civ because everyone in civ is a human. We can all conform to each others cultures and become gradually assimilated as time passes on. However, what you are describing is different species in the same city changing. This is not possible as one species cannot become another and species will not be able to coexist in the same environment sometimes. I.e. a broken lord will not last without feeding off of others or dust, which they will not be able to do while being conquered, a necrophage will never be able to work in the same system as the vaulters, etc. The racial interactions here can be extremely complex but they are not "culture".

I think religion would be nice as a small feature, mainly adding to quests and small bonuses to your faction. The bonuses should be a list and you claim one as yours by paying a certain amount of cultural points based on how may cities you have. There can also be a building you construct that increases that bonus and brings in revenue. I'm an atheist but I see Religion as being a good part of the game since intelligent beings are likely to demand and explanation for their existence, religion is a great way to explain this to more primitive societies.

The other question is: what we exacly expect from religion?

Some way to customize faction we play? (set of bonuses)

Path of victory? (Religious victory? Cultural Victory?)



Quite interesting system there was in Warlock 2, when the gods remain little specify (like Chaos, Death...) but some of them was oppozite, and that influence diplomacy. That is something to consider.



Another simple system:

8 Gods each favored by one of faction and dedicated to some value, like Wildwakers-Nature, BL-Order, Necros-Death, Vaulters-Wisdom.

There are 3 techs unlocking religious buildings. Shrine-Cloister-Temple- Grand Temple (only one per empire) and in each city we can build only one such building per tier (1 shrine, 1 temple...) but could befrom different gods.

And if we fallow favored god for our faction we get small bonus.



So there is no religion influence or such. Just some buildings to make your city prietty.

I'm not super in favor of religion, at least, I found it a bit cumbersome in Civ V. What I would like to see is a more developed culture mechanic. If I take over a necrophage city as the vaulters, for example, the necrophage population shouldn't just immediately morph into something indistinguishable from a Vaulter city. This should be a process. Hopefully this is on the list to be developed further.

Considering the multi-species makeup of the game world, I am not sure that I see religion as a viable concept outside of a particular faction's story line quests. I expect that some of those do have a religious aspect to them.

One way to aproach it is to have a wind-star multiaxis with some general ideas, rather than pantheons or beliefs.

Like:

Chaos

Order

Fertile

Death

Possesion

Wisdom

Craft

War

Summer

Winter

(some others)



Good/Evul i would kick out of equotecion, since that depends on which end of stick your are.

Adventurer_Blitz wrote:
heh, sorry about that, i'm sometimes a bit of an english nut.

No worries. I have been known to be guilty of such things too!

As long as i can disable religion as a feature and mechanic in the options. Morale system sounds way better than religions in general.



If Endless Legend gets custom faction creator like in ES - religion and morale could both be traits and come in different types and mechanics, right?

I'd say no. Don't try to make it Civ 5 clone :P (and even it got it in expansion I believe).



If you really need something like that I'd be more in favor of some morality scale but not necessarily good/evil one. More like kind/strict and lawful/chaotic making it an XY axis (or whatever it is called in English...). Or more along the lines of Virtual and Material Endless principles (I hope I remembered the names right)

I'm not sure if i like this.. overrated 'religions' idea, but it may be fitting as ES has events referring to such things.

Please, allow it in similar fashion, like in Civ5; found by naming and choosing it's type, then as the game progresses, add more features to it.

This must be fitting to Endless universe lore, of course.

I noticed some people here draw a parallel to Civ5's method of handling religion and while that's good, great even, I don't feel religion in this game should be the resource it is in Civ. If we take for example the Necrophage's 'Demanding Gods' Era II(I believe) research that allows them to sacrifice people for approval. I personally think we should focus around elements like this where you're not just using religion to buy things(I'm aware that in Civ you can use religion to get gold and food bonus but I'm getting there) but to give you bonuses. What if, perhaps, you could have a 'Religious Feasts' bonus in your religion that works similiar to the Demanding Gods bonus in which you gain approval but instead of losing a person you lose food, or maybe a stock pile. Perhaps the religions could also have passive bonuses in which your approval might descrease by less when you expand or your people generate more industry because they feel that they're working on the will of their God(s).



Religion could even have some negative effects to go along with the positive ones, like you generate less science but your soldiers are stronger.

Nosferatiel wrote:
If there were competing religions with different mechanics or if we were talking about ES, I'd agree.

But lorewise, requiring a rather primitive bunch of minor factions to be faced with magiclike technology and ending up as agnostics seems... farfetched.

I designed my faction around the fact that the religious element seemed missing. As designing a religion seemed out of scope I created the equivalent of angels (or beings transcending to that state). The point is that I agree with Nos that a big chunk of myth and lore seemed missing and there is a load of scope to develop it.



How it could be done is open to discussion, but we'll all have ideas. From beings (factions) that fill some of that space, to competing factions adopting a lore element (seems a possibility in the restricted advanced game options) to some 'Endless' like hero bestowing gifts to the chosen.



Whatever it is though would need a little more thought than designing a new faction as it would impact on all aspects of the game - stacking bonus/penalties, providing new quests, granting a special unit, changing FIDSI, diplomatic relations, perhaps even a victory condition, just for starters.

Nosferatiel wrote:
If there were competing religions with different mechanics or if we were talking about ES, I'd agree.

But lorewise, requiring a rather primitive bunch of minor factions to be faced with magiclike technology and ending up as agnostics seems... farfetched.

No doubt about that, from a pure lore standpoint EL should have religions, beliefs, myths and so on.



In such game, Mesaima would feel at home more then ever, with other races thinking that they're evil spirits possessing people ^_^

PANCZASU wrote:
I don't feel like religion would fit very well with EL but I can be convinced otherwise

If there were competing religions with different mechanics or if we were talking about ES, I'd agree.

But lorewise, requiring a rather primitive bunch of minor factions to be faced with magiclike technology and ending up as agnostics seems... farfetched.



I like to see my cultists as a thought-experiment: What happens if you deprive two extremely powerful beings of all but the most base tools (one ragtag factory, a bunch of minor faction primitives)? How will they survive among a lot more primitive people?

I don't feel like religion would fit very well with EL but I can be convinced otherwise



I'm talking about religion used as a gameplay mechanic in EL, not just a gimmick for one faction ^_^

I just discovered this thread so I am a bit of a latecomer here. I just wanna say this idea is interesting indeed. But I feel that Governments are more appropriate to Endless Legend than Religions. So if any new mechanic is to be introduced in the future, I would prioritize governments and naval battles over religion at this point tbh

Ye religions would help for immersions.. We really do need more choice about the way we build our empire !