TravlingCanuck wrote:

If religion does appear in the game, I'd prefer it be one component of a broader ideology mechanism.  Various ideas have divided peoples over the eras.  Divine Right of Kings versus Will of the People, Protestant versus Catholic, Fascism versus Communism versus Liberal Democracy, etc.  Those sorts of things can spice up diplomacy, shake up alliances, etc.  Though HK may not need this as much as Civ, what with HK's "every era I'm someone new" approach.

Otherwise, I'd prefer religion just be one aspect of your civ's culture.  I'm more interested in hearing how culture overall will be handled in HK.  Will you try to spread your culture to other civs, etc?

I agree a lot with what you've said, but now we have another problem. If religion is an aspect of broader culture, it runs the risk of being oversimplified like it is in ES2 with the political party system. Simply placing religion as opposed to science is also a very western and relatively recent way of looking at the world.

If religion is to be a component of a broader ideology mechanism, it will have to have standing in its own right alongside other "core" cultural aspects. 

Of coarse, a religion system may not be right for HK at the end of the day. 

If you're swapping religions every era... well, that could work too. I guess it'd be just as funny going from ancestor worship> hinduism > ancient judaism > Celtic Polytheism.... Messing with eras and naming would be tricky.... and I still dont like the "player controls the religion" aspect but it's really no different that "player controls culture" core of the game.

I guess there's also culture mechanics in general which we know nothing about. Will HK be messing with somthing akin to the tourism mechanics of Civ? or will "culture wars" manifest in some other way if at all?,,, hrm....

I could see religion being something like an event that the player cannot instigate or fully control, but can react to or leverage for social or political expediency. 

EaglePursuit wrote:

I could see religion being something like an event that the player cannot instigate or fully control, but can react to or leverage for social or political expediency. 

Perhaps even rolled for in response to culture selected and playstyle. We could have interesting moments like Caesar declaring himself a god or Akhenaten trying to change the religion of Egypt.

religion can be made to be somewhat like political parties in Endless Space 2. Each race has innate beliefs, and the mishmash of them make the religion of your civs.
Or maybe that mechanic is reserved for government system.

I see a lot of good points here. Religion really is a part of the broader culture, so they could probably get away with just having some events, and it doesn't make much sense for a leader to so directly influence what their people believe. On the other hand, it isn't like it makes much sense for a leader to wake up one day and say "You know what? I'm tired of being the Egyptians, we're going to be the Romans from now on!", and there have been points in history where religion formed the basis for major societal changes and conflict. I don't think they'll include it at the beginning, although they'll probably include mechanics for it in an expansion.

When they do include it, here's an idea I had. Rather than founding a particular "religion", your culture's religion can innovate One Great Idea, such as the divine right of kings, monotheism, the Ying and Yang, or Absolute Good and Evil. This One Great Idea (1GI) gives mechanical benefits to your culture (divine right of kings leads to greater stability), kind of like beliefs from Civ 6. However, unlike beliefs you can actually gain the 1GI from other cultures as well if it spreads to you, such as adding monotheism to your divine right of kings. Whenever you spread your 1GI to another culture, you get fame, and the farther it spreads the more fame you get. This reflects how in real life history many religions take aspects from ones that came before, such as how Christianity takes a lot from Judaism with a smattering of Greek and Roman thought.

However, every 1GI has at least one other 1GI which is diametrically opposed to it, such as Ying and Yang vs Absolute Good and Evil. In those cases you can't have both at once, and having such opposing world views will lead to diplomatic tension between cultures, but if you can stamp out their 1GI you get a whole lot more fame than if you just added your 1GI to their culture. This will allow for religious conflict, such as the divine right of a central authority vs a belief in an individual connection with the divine leading to the Catholicism vs Protestantism wars.

This system would allow for many different play styles in terms of religion. You can buckle down on your core beliefs and refuse outside influence to keep your opponants from getting fame or listen to them to gain the bonuses. You can try to spread your ideas in order to gain the fame or keep to yourself to keep the others from getting the bonuses. Do you launch a crusade to stamp out heretical beliefs at the source, or do you focus on spreading your 1GI to other neutral players to starve them of places to spread? There are also different possibilities depending on how the system is implemented. Do all the players get 1GI at the beginning of a particular era, or do only a few players get it at first and more get them every era. Do players only get a single Great Idea or do they get more as the eras progress? Heck, if 1GI's are collected over time we could even use this concept for movements outside of standard religion, such as comparing Enlightenment vs Romanticism, or Capitalism vs Communism.

Dinode wrote:

I see a lot of good points here. Religion really is a part of the broader culture, so they could probably get away with just having some events, and it doesn't make much sense for a leader to so directly influence what their people believe. On the other hand, it isn't like it makes much sense for a leader to wake up one day and say "You know what? I'm tired of being the Egyptians, we're going to be the Romans from now on!", and there have been points in history where religion formed the basis for major societal changes and conflict. I don't think they'll include it at the beginning, although they'll probably include mechanics for it in an expansion.

When they do include it, here's an idea I had. Rather than founding a particular "religion", your culture's religion can innovate One Great Idea, such as the divine right of kings, monotheism, the Ying and Yang, or Absolute Good and Evil. This One Great Idea (1GI) gives mechanical benefits to your culture (divine right of kings leads to greater stability), kind of like beliefs from Civ 6. However, unlike beliefs you can actually gain the 1GI from other cultures as well if it spreads to you, such as adding monotheism to your divine right of kings. Whenever you spread your 1GI to another culture, you get fame, and the farther it spreads the more fame you get. This reflects how in real life history many religions take aspects from ones that came before, such as how Christianity takes a lot from Judaism with a smattering of Greek and Roman thought.

However, every 1GI has at least one other 1GI which is diametrically opposed to it, such as Ying and Yang vs Absolute Good and Evil. In those cases you can't have both at once, and having such opposing world views will lead to diplomatic tension between cultures, but if you can stamp out their 1GI you get a whole lot more fame than if you just added your 1GI to their culture. This will allow for religious conflict, such as the divine right of a central authority vs a belief in an individual connection with the divine leading to the Catholicism vs Protestantism wars.

This system would allow for many different play styles in terms of religion. You can buckle down on your core beliefs and refuse outside influence to keep your opponants from getting fame or listen to them to gain the bonuses. You can try to spread your ideas in order to gain the fame or keep to yourself to keep the others from getting the bonuses. Do you launch a crusade to stamp out heretical beliefs at the source, or do you focus on spreading your 1GI to other neutral players to starve them of places to spread? There are also different possibilities depending on how the system is implemented. Do all the players get 1GI at the beginning of a particular era, or do only a few players get it at first and more get them every era. Do players only get a single Great Idea or do they get more as the eras progress? Heck, if 1GI's are collected over time we could even use this concept for movements outside of standard religion, such as comparing Enlightenment vs Romanticism, or Capitalism vs Communism.

This. If the evolution of 1GI was allowed (eg. you can specialize your Divine Right of Kings along the lines of either "God grants the King His powers directly" or "God gave His powers to Church, and Church gave them to the King", check Investiture Controversy in Middle Ages) or abandon them in favour of others just invented or imported from abroad (maybe akin to Institutions in EU4, when they spawn if certain conditions are met and then spread and give bonuses), I would dare to call it a masterpiece both narratively and mechanically.

Mithrill wrote:

This. If the evolution of 1GI was allowed (eg. you can specialize your Divine Right of Kings along the lines of either "God grants the King His powers directly" or "God gave His powers to Church, and Church gave them to the King", check Investiture Controversy in Middle Ages) or abandon them in favour of others just invented or imported from abroad (maybe akin to Institutions in EU4, when they spawn if certain conditions are met and then spread and give bonuses), I would dare to call it a masterpiece both narratively and mechanically.

Aw, thanks. I like the upgrade idea, I bet that would be on a per culture basis, adding one more incentive to get ideas from other cultures early. As for replacing them, if you have enough of it within your culture then sure, especially if the one you were replacing was from a different nation anyway. I don't think you'd want to do that with your own 1GI, since that would quickly lead your rival to stamping it out and give them a ton of fame. Of course, you can have as many 1GIs in your culture as you want so long as none of them are incompatible, unless there's some sort of cap? In fact, if we went that route then upgrading them could take up some of those slots, allowing religious isolationism to be a valid plan.

Aye but now we're running into real world issue of longevity, incompatability and spreadibility.

Divine right died off in the west but remained in Eastern cultures for quite some time (in some areas to this day), because divine right is much more compatable with [to oversimplify] yinyang and its associated consequences than it is with objective good/evil and its consequences.

And then there's cross-culture spreadability.

E.G. Hinduism doesnt survive outside of India due to its reliance upon its home culture and polititics, but Buddhissm spreads much more easily through the change of a single core tennant. Similarly with Samaritainism > Juddaism > Christianity. There's an issue of each [set] of ideas and its objective capacity to spread in the first place. And given how cultures can become increasingly pluralistic or increasingly singular, we're quickly running into a system that's very very complicated. 

Each Big Idea would need a compatability score with others and an affection score to represent how much others like it.... but that quickly leads into entire worldview building. Whats the culture's approach to time? To family? To work?.... ALL of these interact with eachother and each combination leads to other consequences.... but by that point, we're overshadowing the culture swap mechanic...

Perhaps a more salient side question...

Given that religion is being discussed, in all honesty, due to its inclusion as a mechanic in the Civ series

Taking a step back, is there a version of the mechanics that makes sense for Human Kind?

In Civ, you are playing "build a religion" and that combats other religions. It works because you remain as the same leader and the same culture throughout the whole game from cavemen to space travelers.

Build a religion isnt going to work in Humankind due to its culture swap mechanic. I think we're all in agreement that, IF religion is to play a role in HK, it needs to be a part of a broader "culture" system.

So lets talk culture, DOES HK have a culture mechanic in place? How does that work with the Culture Swap mechanic? And you can choose to not swap cultures for a (possible) legend bonus...

I think what im trying to communicate is, on reflection, we may need to get a better feel for the game as a cohesive whole before we theorize how faith could best play a role in HK given how faith (in reality) is very intimately tied to culture yet can be transfered to other cultures...

To that point, the Civ series went a long time without a religion mechanic, and to my mind offered some of it's best games during that period.  Adding more mechanics that don't improve the core game play isn't a positive from my perspective.

On the other hand, offering something "new" is a good way to drum up additional sales, so I get why Civ has offered more and more mechanics as the year's go by.  HK has to avoid not being seen as "incomplete" relative to Civ, but starting with a clean slate, also isn't under any pressure to add new features to distinguish this game from a prior HK.  

So in other words, if the dev team has, as part of it's core vision for the game, an implementation of religion, then I look forward to hearing about it.  But I'll also be quite happy not to hear anything about it.

Well, how about we compare it with something we know the devs have used before: the influence resource. That has always been a catch all term for how much your culture can tell others what to do or believe. Even in games where you can't subsume settlements by generating enough culture it is used to put pressure on other cultures to allow you to make deals with them. Is there anyway we could use that with the culture swap mechanism?

Actually, when you think about it Fame itself is an odd thing to transfer from one culture to another. The Romans aren't famous for things like the Collosus from Greece, even though most of Roman Culture is Greek in origin. If that's transferring from one culture to another I don't see why influence couldn't do the same. As for ways to use it, perhaps amoung other things you could spend it to spread your culture (through missionaries, propoganda, etc.) to other regions, which would probably decrease stability and could even lead to a revolt in the region which could join your side. This would probably be general enough that it could encompass religion without getting too bogged down in the specifics.

TravlingCanuck wrote:

So in other words, if the dev team has, as part of it's core vision for the game, an implementation of religion, then I look forward to hearing about it.  But I'll also be quite happy not to hear anything about it.

Religion has been confirmed for Humankind. That much we know from the initial coverage.

Ananashi wrote:

Religion has been confirmed for Humankind. That much we know from the initial coverage.

Really? Can you give a link?

https://www.reddit.com/r/HumankindTheGame/comments/cw201a/information_from_gamescom_presentation/ 

Mentioned at the very end. Sourcing from a German Gamescom report.

Dinode wrote:

Well, how about we compare it with something we know the devs have used before: the influence resource. That has always been a catch all term for how much your culture can tell others what to do or believe. Even in games where you can't subsume settlements by generating enough culture it is used to put pressure on other cultures to allow you to make deals with them. Is there anyway we could use that with the culture swap mechanism?

Actually, when you think about it Fame itself is an odd thing to transfer from one culture to another. The Romans aren't famous for things like the Collosus from Greece, even though most of Roman Culture is Greek in origin. If that's transferring from one culture to another I don't see why influence couldn't do the same. As for ways to use it, perhaps amoung other things you could spend it to spread your culture (through missionaries, propoganda, etc.) to other regions, which would probably decrease stability and could even lead to a revolt in the region which could join your side. This would probably be general enough that it could encompass religion without getting too bogged down in the specifics.

I like how you've framed the variety of things you can do with the resource.  As long as it has a broad enough application, and can be used for multiple, related purposes, I'd be in favour of it.  I dislike the direction Civ has gone, with every single diplomatic action having it's own bucket to be filled (spies, governors, envoys, diplomatic favour, each of these are recruited from separate buckets).

I would favor a more organic religion fundation. The fundation of religion would be based on a mechanic that alows a religion to be found in your territory but that you as a player found the religion. If the religion acts independently it will force your culture to adopt certain policies on the basis of this religion, sometimes giving way to conflict, depending on the religions influence on your territory, or giving way to benefits depending on wich policies you adopt. You can seek to control the religion or to embrace it via a council, by gaining favor for this religion,  or later via patronage or something that alows to adopt it as a national religion. This would accompanied by a tree were you can choose policies related to religion: divine right, state religion, teocracy, caesaropapism, secularism, freedom or tolerans of religion etc. The main i am proposing is giving the religion an autonomous behaivor that can interact with the player.

there is a religion system at launch, it's really too soon to know how it works