Perhaps religiousness could be in cycles throughout a playthrough, where a Player’s species has periods of increased religious fervor with subsequent periods of apathy/decline towards it?
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So like how culture seems to cycle (at least in some areas) between being religion-oriented and science-oriented?
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They aren’t mutually exclusive. It is more so having increased focus on religion among other things.
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That’s what I meant and why I didn’t say “science-biased” for instance.
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Would religion and cults be treated separately in the game?
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Maybe there would be some kind of a gradient?
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I’m not sure about the idea of cycles of religious fervor, I think it could be better represented if it was corelated to culture? as in cultures that value religion more than others?
Maybe the player has direct control over the evolution of their culture or maybe it’s the same thing as religion, something they have to adapt to, again depending on if the player is supposed to represent the leadership or the force of history.
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I recall there is supposed to be a “nation editor” in the society, industrial and early space stage so perhaps you’d modify religion stuff in there?
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I think they should be able to view the effects of their religion, but changing it at will seems too “game-y” to me.
It reminds me of one game that’s called “Humankind” and the way they represent the changes in religion is basically, as more people follow the religion that you founded you’ll be able to add tenets to it, but not change it, and you can make your religion spread more with making holy sites that you lose the ability to make after the separation between state and religion.
So something among those lines could work? like maybe at important societal achievements you’d be able to influence the religion (such as the first boat if you’re land based, or the first army) in accordance to your influence over? and depending on your success you’d either change the entire religion, start a schism, anger the people/the holy men ect.
so have the player able to change it but make it fairly difficult?
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What if an alien species never makes the separation?
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Sure didn’t think of that possibility lol. I suppose with the printing press or any way of mass producing accessible information is where the changing of religion stops? maybe some religions are unmodifiable too? or maybe it’s actually rare that a religion changes often and the standard is that it’s always modifiable as long as certain conditions are met to change it on a specific way? as in you can change the way of worship after a long time and/or the accessibility to other faiths ect. but you can only add prohibitions of diet after it becomes culturally unwanted and/or another faith venerates it and such faith is antagonistic ect. but most change would happen outside your control since unless you’re a god-king you wouldn’t have much control (assuming you’re the leadership)
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By the way, how would situations similar to what happened with hellenism be handled, where it eventually started integrating other religions into itself?
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Maybe proximity to other religions would make changes more likely to happen (if random/ out of player control) or make it easier or even allow it (if under player control fully or partially) that seems like a good way to go about it.
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Maybe religions should also have a tolerance value for how much can their followers tolerate those of other faiths?
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That is already a thing in many games that represent religion, so it’s a very good idea to add. It just might be difficult to add, but the whole game is difficult to make so that doesn’t change much.
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Also I recall some religions are region-specific due to their design, would that make them at an advantage in those regions and a disadvantage beyond them?
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If a religion, for example, is about desert folklore or maritime practices then it would most definitely have difficulty spreading to tundras and mountain terrain respectively, both because the inhabitants of the foreign lands wouldn’t relate to it and because the believers of such faiths wouldn’t go to those lands and they most likely won’t have a reason to spread them.
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Would there be conflicts between religions that believe in a higher power, and those religions that don’t? Examples of religions without gods are Bhuddism and Confuciansism.
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I don’t see why those specifically couldn’t get conflicts
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There definitely would be, but the reason I think it didn’t happen irl between Hinduism and Buddhism, for example, is because they share a lot of ideas (like karma if I’m not mistaken) + culturally the indian subcontinent is very welcoming of other religions, things only changed due to recent historical events.
So culture and religion would probably have an even stronger effect on each other.
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