The minimal value from religious tenets and a smattering of civics doesn't make it worth investing anything as significant as an era culture into religion, rendering all those religious focused civs, emblematic districts, and wonders, just pointless.  I'd love to play the Teutons for instance, great era trait "Spurred by Faith" but the emblematic district is just a waste of industry to build and a waste of space to have blocking other districts.  Faith needs a more significant role in the game, it is too bland and meaningless at this point. The AI knows it too so they never build any Stone Rings or anything like that so my faith always overruns everyone's anyway. 

Hmm? I've found most of the Tenets to be pretty useful. Abstain from Intoxicants is 2 Lumber Yards per city, which seems pretty significant imo. +5 Money per Market Quarter via Give Alms seem pretty good too, it basically makes money problems disappear all on its own and is great with EDs that also count as Market Quarters. If the AI is as lackluster at getting Followers as you've described, it should be easy for you to get these bonuses all over your empire for minimal input anyway.

But while I do like HK's Religion model and choices more than Civ6's, I'll agree with you on Religion taking more of a back seat in HK. There's no Religion Victory, and Religion stuff doesn't directly contribute to Fame atm. Even something as straightforward as +100/200/300/400 Fame for getting a Tier 1/2/3/4 Tenet would be welcome. I feel like building a Holy Site should also give Fame as well, maybe 50 Fame each (since each Wonder is 100 Fame).

I'm also not sure why having your religion become the dominant one globally isnt a competiative deed in the deed list. This can be a pretty significant challenge and imo should be worth a decent amount of Fame. Giving pursuing religion another purpose outside of some bonuses.

Fame for tenets sounds fine, for Holy Sites... eh, they're pretty easy to pop out and they come with a hefty stability bonus that early on makes them really worth it. And their cap is tied to Religion Tier, so, imo, it should be either Fame directly for Tiers, or indirectly for Holy Sites, as you'd get more with every tier. But not both.

I'd like the religion to be less volatile, but I have no idea how to do it. As it is now your religion will either flood the world or get flooded, all the playthroughs I had only once was it a tense back and forth between my and AI's religion in the New World, because I had homeland locked. That's why I was wary of starting a trade with them, but once I finally gave up and decided I want the resources more than my religion, it proved to be strong enough to eat their continent whole and through there finally spread to New World for good.

As a complete side note, I'll use this thread as well to advocate for AIs to use the ability to evolve their religion beyond Shamanism/Polytheism, because it's real shame that this stuff exists, various Holy Sites are beautiful and they don't appear in-game unless player chooses them. Ideally we could set our Persona's belief, so they'd try to beeline for particular religion and maybe even try to convert if it's already in the game, or they'd choose Atheism when right era comes.

I think there need to be at least 4 more tenets because if you play with 8 or 10 players you can reach the 4th tenet very quickly and religion is just a passive bonus that you get to keep for the rest of the game.

Oddible wrote:

The minimal value from religious tenets and a smattering of civics doesn't make it worth investing anything as significant as an era culture into religion, rendering all those religious focused civs, emblematic districts, and wonders, just pointless.  I'd love to play the Teutons for instance, great era trait "Spurred by Faith" but the emblematic district is just a waste of industry to build and a waste of space to have blocking other districts.  Faith needs a more significant role in the game, it is too bland and meaningless at this point. The AI knows it too so they never build any Stone Rings or anything like that so my faith always overruns everyone's anyway. 

I cannot agree. The tenets, especialy the first, of my religion influence massively the way I play. You must miss something here.

+2 production, flat, on all forests and woodlands ? It's like 2 forestry automaticaly ! You do not see the value of this ? +2 food on coastal water tiles ? Ports that go from +12 to +36 food ? No value ? A tenet that give you stability on rivers, thus, can help with a lack of luxury ? More of the sweet and precious influence ? A tenet that give +2 money per trade route and thus, can give hundreds of money ? Irrelevant ? +hundreds of science on the last one, thanks to cultural wonders ? Irrelevant ? Base experience on units, just like that, in the early game ? I could, and should go on to realy press the point. Religion IS relevant.

I can understand the want and need for a rework, especialy for conversion, but saying that religion is not relevant is ludicrous. Religion - in this game - saved some of my runs, or made them from good, to stupendusly fun while running away with the game. Nubians + some tenets, from example, allow you to... well. Buy victory. Really.

Yeah, the issue here isn't that tenets aren't significant, well-tailored religion can launch you forward better than some of the LTs, but that it's extremely 0-1 and it's hard to know how it will go, so you can either extremely overdo it or your religion will fall the moment you open your harbors. Part of the problem is that you can easily complete your tenets within borders of a single continent and then there's little reason to open your religion tab again until you meet with your opponents. Then you make sure that your religion is winning (or losing) and can leave the Religion tab unused again.

I think the AI should utilize Faith more and that there should be some possibilities for mid-game turbulence. I haven't seen them take the Atheism and try to spread it even once, though, arguably, going by what we just wrote, taking Atheism is shooting yourself in a foot, but at least you can try to force everyone in the game to do the same to themselves. I was also thinking about Reformation/Heresy, a once-per-game (maybe even globally once per era?) action available to non-leaders (likely costing money/influence) that would give access to limited amount of special tenets you'd swap one of the existing ones for and had your territories flip to new religion, called either "Reformed XYZ Polytheism/something" or, when appropriate, take your culture name - "French Judaism" sounds weird, but I'd be there for it. That would be something the religions which grew powerful early on would need to deal with and would give the ones coming to the table later a weakened opponent to fight against.

Religions are not at all useless. Getting the best traits is important. The +2 industry in forest especially is a game changer.
If you want religion more important, I think we should wait for DLC. ^^

Jojo_Fr wrote:

Religions are not at all useless. Getting the best traits is important. The +2 industry in forest especially is a game changer.
If you want religion more important, I think we should wait for DLC. ^^

Of course, that's why we are discussing religion here, to signal to the devs that we want a DLC where they expand on religion ;)

I rather like how Humankind treats religion. You can see what's going on at any point, if you lose your religion to another empire the game becomes significantly more difficult. You can use the religious districts to shore up stability in your most rebellious cities, and the religion tenets are all priced about right in terms of how much you have to do to unlock them.

The only thing I don't like about it is once you've unlocked tier 4, faith is useless. And there are civs with unique buildings that provide faith in the Early Modern and even Industrial era! If I care about religion at all in a playthrough, I'll have unlocked tier 4 long sometimes prior to going into the Medieval era and certainly by the end of it.

There should be more ongoing uses for faith -- maybe tier 4 is the top in terms of picking a perk, but there should be some ongoing benefit like unlocking additional religious districts or wonders that can only be selected if you generate enough faith.

teatimeG wrote:

I rather like how Humankind treats religion. You can see what's going on at any point, if you lose your religion to another empire the game becomes significantly more difficult. You can use the religious districts to shore up stability in your most rebellious cities, and the religion tenets are all priced about right in terms of how much you have to do to unlock them.

The only thing I don't like about it is once you've unlocked tier 4, faith is useless. And there are civs with unique buildings that provide faith in the Early Modern and even Industrial era! If I care about religion at all in a playthrough, I'll have unlocked tier 4 long sometimes prior to going into the Medieval era and certainly by the end of it.

There should be more ongoing uses for faith -- maybe tier 4 is the top in terms of picking a perk, but there should be some ongoing benefit like unlocking additional religious districts or wonders that can only be selected if you generate enough faith.

Oh, wonders with faith as a prerequisite (instead of a "bonus holy site" benefit) would be interesting, and might keep faith compelling into the later eras.  I could see, if the Relgion mechanic keeps getting developed in later patches/versions/DLC, that some Cultural Wonders might be split off into their own independent Religious Wonders with their own additional or separate requirements involving followers, a religious "Tier"-level, or maybe even specific tenets or the requirement that you have converted at least one other culture to your religion, or that that you yourself are a convert.

Helmar wrote:

...not in any way tied to religion. +50 science?! as early as that comes around that's just nuts. That dwarves all the science stuff up until then.

I'm confused as to how this isn't realistic.  Nearly every single major religion was where most of the learning, scholarship, writing, libraries, etc. were.  

Helmar wrote:

If anything the tenets are way too strong and not in any way tied to religion. +50 science?! as early as that comes around that's just nuts. That dwarves all the science stuff up until then.

Which is especially a problem as religion is basically a waste product of any empire that manages to built an obelisk in the first fifty rounds.

My main issue with religion is that the main issue with religion is that the game does a really bad job at explaining how it spreads and how that can be influenced. In my last two games I basically went the full enlightenment route civics wise, no religious civs, districts, infrastructure and still end up with a religion that covers my continent (in 2nd highest difficulty). Building the obelisks because I you run out of things to build in an early era shouldn't lead to religious domination of my continent without anything else.  Especially not if every civics decision I take is basically "f&§% god & tradition, I'm with science".

There's really no difficulty to religion at all. Build an obelisk wait for the tenet, build another obelisk, repeat. Nothing else. As with the cultural influence there's just too much in the background that happens while you do other stuff. There's no hard decisions or even impactful decisions around religion.

I've never opened the religion overlay outside the four times I picked a tenet. Why would I? Even worse, I pick the industry/science tenets which basically make the obelisk an industry/science building. That it creates a religion is a complete byproduct.

It could be named "Influence of the Egyptian science academy" and it wouldn't change a thing. Religion in humankind right now is basically capped at being an infrastructure building.

And that's my second issue and it becomes glaringly obvious if you compare it with Civ. Humankind doesn't have a religion system that feels like a religion system. Doing away with real world religions and not having the option to roleplay a fantasy religion and having it delegated almost completely to a background mechanism destroys the immersion just too much. By turn 100 I couldn't tell you the name of my religion. By turn 150 I forget that I have a religion.

While Civ IV lightning-in-your-face units are not great at least the religious pressure there and the religious combat that influence cities' religions are transparent. There are literally numbers on the map when a religions unit does something. There are arrows on the religion overview that tell me where the religions pressure comes from. More importantly if I do choose to go for a religious playthrough there I can make the gameplan about that. Rushing stonehenge or a few holy sites to get the prophet. Pick certain tenets to actually spread it everywhere, et cetera. Not to mention that it can be named and gets a logo. "All bow to 'heavenly turtle!'" :-) 

And if the religious units don't cut it I have an actual casus belli to take up arms whenever someone converts my cities. Oh and there are policy cards which buff my units when I fight civs of another faith or on holy ground, around my holy city, et cetera. That is certainly not perfect but's a system which makes the immersion a lot easier that it is actually a faith.

World religions shouldn't come to be because someone erected four obelisks and otherwise forgot about them.

I agree that religion needs a major overhaul. My spouse and I recently examined the Humankind religious system and what we found is that nothing matters except whether you pick Shamanism or Polytheism.

If you pick Polytheism at the beginning of the game, and you attach a few territories you will be able to wipe out a Shamanist nation that is having food issues. However, if you pick Shamanism and retain it, as your nation grows, it will soon overpower any Polytheist religion to the point where there is literally nothing that opponent can do to ward off your religion.

The problem is the way the game calculates religious pressure. The amount of pressure is determined by the sum of your entire nation's faith, and that is determined by whether you picked Shamanism or Polytheism. This pressure is delivered by every city, administration center, and outpost you have. So, if you pick Shamanism and you have 300 followers, every single city, administration center, and outpost is blasting out 300 faith at its neighbors. This is true whether you have a centuries-old city or an outpost you just plopped next to an opponent to heal up your troops. 

Meanwhile, if you picked Polytheism and you have 300 followers spread over 25 territories, you get only 125 faith. If you build a holy site in one city, that city will get 145 faith (not enough to combat the neighboring Shamanist). If you add a religious cultural wonder to the city, say Notre Dame, the city (with holy site and wonder) will now have 165 faith. Not enough to combat the neighboring Shamanist. In fact, without a holy site or wonder, the Polytheist would have to have 60 territories to get 300 faith in all of its cities, administration centers, and outposts. And, it would still be beaten if the Shamanist kept growing to say 400 followers.

Thus, at the beginning of the game, if the Polytheist doesn't take out the Shamanist religion, there will come a point in the mid-game where regardless of how much effort the Polytheist has put into religion, the Shamanist will overtake the Polytheist and annihilate their religion. And, there will be nothing the Polytheist can do about it, even if they've focused on religion through the game up until that point. So, if you're a Polytheist, you don't want a Shamanist showing up mid-game.

This is all the result of a single choice the player made at the beginning of the game. It's a deterministic system that doesn't require any input from the player at all. Click the Shamanist button and grow your population. You'll eventually overtake any Polytheist.

Further, when you take an opponent's city, in spite of their religious support, that city will immediately convert to your religion. This will happen when you occupy the city. Even if you lose it in a forced surrender deal, it will stay your religion. It will begin converting to the original, but the process will be extremely slow because your religion is still in the city exerting pressure.

The whole religious system of this game is entirely broken. If you pick Shamanism and grow your population in a normal fashion, you don't need holy sites, religious wonders, or religious civs to blast out so much religious pressure that your religion is unassailable. 

AOM wrote:

This is all the result of a single choice the player made at the beginning of the game. It's a deterministic system that doesn't require any input from the player at all. Click the Shamanist button and grow your population. You'll eventually overtake any Polytheist.

Wow, I hadn't realized how deterministic it is. Great observation.