![]() In the game religions are simply tools that states use to manipulate world politics and generate vast amounts of revenue. Empty Religions are Filled Via State Stance on ReligionĪs a result of the content void nature of religion in Civ 4 the game ends up effectively suggesting that doctrine is irrelevant to the course of history. In any event, the result is that religions in Civ 4 are actually void of any kind of content. One could imagine all kinds of problematic stereotypes about Christians being “hard working” and getting productivity bonuses or Confusianism giving some bonuses to creating an ordered and structured society. While they did not have a problem with modeling all kinds of other differences between different forms of governments or ascribing different advantages to different leaders of world Civilizations (ex, Montezuma and Napoleon are Aggressive and and Kublai Khan and Louis XIV are Creative) they did not want to get into giving some kind of religion specific bonuses. As the disclaimer above explains, the devs did this in an effort to skirt controversy. In Civ 4 the only difference between religions is that people with different religions don’t really like eachother. Each religion functions exactly the same. While the discovery of individual religions is tied to particular technological advances, the actual content of the world religions is empty. So, if you discover meditation first you get Buddhism, polytheism you get Hinduism, monotheism you get Judaism, theology gives you Christianity, code of laws gives you Confucianism, philosophy gets Taoism and divine rights gives you Islam. To found a world religion a player needs to be the first to discover a particular technological advance. Eight World Religions: Each Functionally Identical You can read up on the rest of how religion works in the game in this copy of the manual. I think this decision has interesting implications. In an effort to not offend, the developers made religions each functionally identical. ![]() I see the key take away from this as follows. We offer no value judgments on religion we mean no disrespect to anyone’s beliefs. We do not mean to imply that these religions are more important, better or worse than any other religions. When determining which seven to include, we picked those religions that we thought would be most familiar to our audience. There are seven religions in Civilization IV (testing having determined that seven was the optimal number for gameplay). In fact, all religions in the game have the same effects, the only difference being their requirements. However, given the importance that religions have had in human development, we didn’t want to simply leave them out of the game altogether instead we have tried to handle them in as respectful, fair and even-handed manner as possible. ![]() We at Firaxis have no desire to offend anyone. We know that people have extremely strong opinions about religions – in fact, many a war has arisen when these beliefs collide. It is worth noting that this is really the only such disclaimer in the manual. Under the heading of “Religion in this Game” the manual for Civ IV includes the following comments about religion. With that said, how on earth could anyone come up with a simulated model of religions role in world history that would even remotely please the deeply conflicted ideas about religion in contemporary society? Even further, as Civilization provides a fundamentally materialist vision of history could Firaxis get away with a materialist interpretation of world religion? How Religion Works in Civ IV Clearly Religions have played a critical role in world history. I imagine that the developers have always found themselves in a tricky spot. Civ IV was the first, and at the moment, also the last of the Civilization games to include religion as a component in the games model of history.
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