[Freeciv-Dev] Religions in freeciv?

[KORONCZAY David <fu@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

 Hip


 Why does freeciv lack any real religions, like christianity, etc?
I think it shouldn't.

(DISCLAIMER: i hope no-one will take these as an offense.
if someone feels his/her relegious feelings are hurt, then
burn this mail, think of these as a server option that can
be turned off, or make up other rulesets that fit better to him.)


 How I imagine how relegions should be handled:


 Just like govrenment type, every player would have a
religion type. Everyone would start with >animism<,
which should stand for the earliest and most basic
religion/religious beliefs, etc.
Later on, after developing certain technologies
(among them _polytheism_, and _monotheism_,
which would this way receive their fair and realistic
place in the game) other religions would become possible.
For instance, christianity, islam, buddhism, hinduism, etc.
Now, each religion would have its own advantages over the
others, for an example:

- under christianity, higher income would be possible
(representing the popes' wealth and power)
on the other hand, science would receive penalties,
(representing the church's conflict with scholars)
higher birth rates? (maybe by higher food production)
or that could be saved for the mormons?
- under islam, units would have some attacking bonuses
(representing the fast spread of the faith over todays
islam world), and would be harder to >convert< to other
faiths and would be better at converting the others.
- under bahaism, >ethnical/racial unhappinness< would be
nonexistent (i will write about those ideas in an other mail)
- under buddhism, errm, maybe higher science?
vetaran-born units? shaolin units?
- under brahmanism,... hm, though one. maye, representing
the advantages and disadvantages of 'castes',
higher production would be available for smaller nations,
but when grown big (or advanced?), the system would be
rather a drawback on production (by preventing the fast
transferring of people from one field to another in the economy)
- being jewish could probably effect in higher trade?
- confucian
- taoist
further ideas:
- advanced animism? :-), for indians or asian nomads...
- suppression of religions (state atheism?), like it was
under communism (and under nazism??)
this could be just another form of religion a player can chose
- swing away from religion in the modern world.
this happens/happened probably in many western countries.
-> modern "religions" and sects popping up, making destruction
in some or other way.
- and so on.

furthermore, >religious capitals< could be introduced to the game.
like, having Mecca as your religous capital (and being a muslim),
could effect in 
- higher trades in Mecca
- you'd have to build there a religious->central-temple<-thingy improvement,
the equivalent of the palace for the government.
- the effects of the religions in cities could be the function
of the distance of the religious capital.
(maybe the jewish religion could be an exception from this,
representing that they spread over the world very early without
a central will)
- one religion can only have one center! to nations
with the same religion could vie for building the
>central-temple-of-religion-X< improvement. (or wonder?) (or maybe
this is an other cathegory, not an improvement, not a wonder...)
- you could build >missionary< units (waving at Sid's colonization ;-)),
which could bribe enemy cities to change their religion.
This also raises the question: is religion nation-wide or per-city?
Or even more dispersed?
- the trade bonus in the center of the religion could be a proportion
of the number of believers worldwide?

- a city with the same religion would be easier to bribe
- nations with the same religion would be more "friendly", i don't
know if "friendliness" is implemented in the AI.
- it would be a bad/harder thing to wage war on a nation
with the same religion?
I see here i'm contradicting myself, so it's time to stop.

 Of course, all those are generalizations of the religions,
that one could take as an offense, and probably it would only
further spread already living and untrue superstitions about them.
I haven't been thinking much on these rules, and even less
about the effect on playability, but i'm sure that with
good planning and by still keeping the whole thing SIMPLE,
would improve the game.

 Any ideas are welcome, i won't be coding anyway,
just wanted to start a discussion.


 cheers
 david