Hey everyone!

In the Lucy OpenDev, we had implemented a first set of changes to religion in Humankind to address some of the feedback we had gotten from the Stadia OpenDev. These changes were primarily focused on how to unlock Holy Sites and adopt a named historic religion, with some changes to tenets as some older tenets had become deprecated by the changes.

For the Victor OpenDev, we have focused more on changes to the tenets themselves. We have rebalanced many of them, as well as moved some powerful tenets to higher tiers to make them more difficult to access.

Please let us know what you think about religion in the Victor OpenDev!

I think we should be allowed to start with any tenet/historical religion we want rather than being limited to polytheism/shamanism as a major point of the game us creating your own civilization so you should get to start even that aspect your way. Additionally on a historical level not all civilizations' religions began in this way.

So far I haven't seen the AI do religion at all.

My religion (with only 1 holy site) slowly took over the entire initial continent with about 4 other civs there.

Seeing that, I didn't build any religious buildings or events and just let it by itself - it maxed out about 40 turns before the end.

About the religious civics. I'm afraid to make a decision on the irrreligious one since I'm not clear on the outcome of either side. I remember in the previous open-dev, it made me an atheist society after which there was nothing I could do about religion.

I agree with goldenfalcon123, unless there's something that's determining which religious choice you're getting? (I think I was offered monotheism/shamanism). If there is a reason, great... make it clear what you can do to influence to get one choice or another. If there's no reason, it'd be better to pick than just randomly be assigned two to pick from.

@goldenfalcon123 @RyanAstoria83 

Thanks for the feedback, but to avoid any potential misunderstanding, let me ask for clarity: You are referring specifically to the initial "First founding" event popup, and would like to see the historic religions that are available when choosing a tenet to be present in this event as well?

The-Cat-o-Nine-Tales wrote:

@goldenfalcon123 @RyanAstoria83 

Thanks for the feedback, but to avoid any potential misunderstanding, let me ask for clarity: You are referring specifically to the initial "First founding" event popup, and would like to see the historic religions that are available when choosing a tenet to be present in this event as well?

Yes, the first founding event. 

The Irreligion choice is misleading - State Atheism clearly tells you "All religious Civics are locked and invested Civic points are reimbursed", but choosing Secularism also locks all religion for you, which is both inconsistent (especially if State Atheism explicitly warns me I would expect Secularism to do so too if this happens) and not really logical, as your civ would still have religious people and that religion would have traits, right?

Agreed with the misleading choice with Irreligion. The changes done to religion look nice to me. 

I’m sure I’m just missing something, but what influences when you get to pick your religion? 

Religion feels a bit... ehm, bare bones?
It doesn't feel like religion, it feels like a tiny buff you get by spreading it through out the world :/
It needs more flare, more... well thematic interaction.
Let us design things, more interactions due to our religion.
Choices for how holy sites look.
Maybe choices that impact the events.
More things like that to really flesh it out.

I chose polytheism but I don't know what it provided me as opposed to shamanism, I guess it was written on the religion choice screen but I forgot it. In the end, I made everyone accept my religion as their state religion and all other religions went pretty much extinct. I didn't understand what I earned from this success. I may say they liked me a little because I am the leader of their religion but that didn't make them love me with my aggressive playstyle. On top of that, they also adapted my cool perks like extra military power, which was supposed to give me an edge. So, I don't know if I did anything good or bad by forcing my religion on them through greviences.

Yeah I agree with the others, I've gotten through two playthroughs so far and in both of them religion felt more like an variant of the civics system than its own thing. It's certainly strong enough if you pick your tenets right, but it doesn't feel like it has its own flavor.

There's a tenet which gives you science per pop following your religion on all holy sites. I think it's much stronger than intended: I got +500 science, just from a handful of holy sites.

Also I agree that religion feels very passive. It's mainly a way to get to build powerful holy sites districts (they are much stronger than cultural wonders).

Speaking of holy sites, I don't like that they are so insanely strong regardless of their placement. I'd like them to be adjacency dependend. This would also allow you to replace things like the +1 science per pop tenent with more interesting +1 of X per adjacent desert/mountain/type Y district/etc. which also fixes the balancing issue as you can only ever have a max of 6 adjacent tiles. Furthermore, the tenets could then be much more situational, depending on your terrain. Also agree, unique effects could be more interesting than having religion be a pure source of fims.

I too find it weird that religions aren't linked to fame in some way.

And I hate to say it, but the CIV approach of actively spreading your religion makes it so that you're far more attached to it. You don't necessarily need religious units on the map, but some more player influence on how it spreads. Now religion is just a system on a different UI that will occasionally ask you to choose a tenet and allows you to build holy sites. I'd also agree that maybe the religion of a city should be displayed a bit more prominently. You could also introduce customization for icon/name, that's probably what the generic casual player cares most about anyways.

I think, especially compared to normal civics, which are mostly straight bonuses you choose between, religion should be tradeoffs, should have a cost. For example, there's a tenet that gives industry which is named "refrain from intoxicants" - why doesn't that turn off some luxuries (wine etc.), so that I lose stability on my empire but give a stronger bonus in return? Frankly, there's almost no decision in this game that has negative consequences besides not getting the other bonus, and the one that does (irreligion) doesn't really tell you.

Kind of related to civics, but is secularism really worth it - I clicked it and it mainly disabled the religious aspect of the game entirely. I guess that's what to expect from secularism, but a) I feel that makes it a very bad choice in every sitation and b) you should warn the player a lot more if you keep it in the game.