Religious System based on Tenets

[Alexander Seil]

Spirituality != religious. i would not want the whole religion system tied into the spiritual trait.

Spiritualist Ethos very clearly implies some form of religion (perhaps something closer to an idealized version of Buddhism, though), given the government titles and descriptions. However, it's hard to see what a Universal Religion would look like in a universe full of sentient birds and fungi, and it would be certainly difficult to integrate religions with ethics as they are. The whole point of religion in CK2, aside from historical flavor, is that they tie together multiple states into a loose network and system of interactions. It doesn't make a lot of sense for a human missionary in 2400 to go around spreading the gospel among the heathen mushrooms of Zebulon V, who literally reincarnate every birth cycle

 

[208]

The only effect I can see a religion having in a game the scale of Stellaris is for a religious pop to arbitrarily pick some other (differently) religious pop and cause each other unhappiness being on the same planet. The specifics of the religions would be irrelevant.

 

[TheAtreides84]

I'd argue that humans are spiritualist in Stellaris terms: even though religion is losing its coercive power and people are no longer being taught it as unquestioned fact, doesn't mean that magical thinking and superstitious reasoning aren't something humans do a lot. We see patterns where none exist, which both helps us and hinders us. I'm a scientist and a godless person, but I still catch myself thinking in quasi-spiritual ways a lot. I doubt this will change unless humanity begins to change how our minds work (which is a possibility.)

I definitely agree that most scientists and most developed nations tend to have less "default" religion, but I think that's more a regression to the mean than a decay to zero. Religion has made comebacks in societies which tried to eradicate it, after all.

"The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you..." according to Heisenberg. And it could be argued that some interpretations of quantum mechanics sound way more "spiritual" than newtonian, clockwork-universe physics. So it is plausible that a more advanced species could turn up more religious, not less.

 

[Smiles_]

The only effect I can see a religion having in a game the scale of Stellaris is for a religious pop to arbitrarily pick some other (differently) religious pop and cause each other unhappiness being on the same planet. The specifics of the religions would be irrelevant.

I think there is an amount of RP effect too. But I don't particularly care one way or another.


Smiles

 

[Finnway]

The only effect I can see a religion having in a game the scale of Stellaris is for a religious pop to arbitrarily pick some other (differently) religious pop and cause each other unhappiness being on the same planet. The specifics of the religions would be irrelevant.

I agree with this.

IMO, the only potential value of religion in Stellaris is from an RP perspective. For that reason, I think it should be tied to quests more than anything else. And it should really only effect POPs and relationships with other empires.

A couple examples of quests might be things like:

• Inquisition! Remove heretical religion from a sector.
• Declare Holy Site! Capture a planet and construct a certain structure on it.
• Call Crusade!! Win war against member of a hostile religion.
  

This is how I see religion being implemented. With the option to create your own religion (name, flag, and biography) of course!

 

[Finnway]

Spirituality != religious.

I think people greatly exaggerate the importance of that statement.

While it's true that a spiritual society does not necessarily have organized religion, it's also true that the "Spiritualist" ethos is meant to represent ALL SPECTRUMS of spiritual societies........ INCLUDING organized religion. Pretending there is no correlation between the two is retarded.

 

[zukodark]

I agree with this.

IMO, the only potential value of religion in Stellaris is from an RP perspective. For that reason, I think it should be tied to quests more than anything else. And it should really only effect POPs and relationships with other empires.

A couple examples of quests might be things like:

• Inquisition! Remove heretical religion from a sector.
• Declare Holy Site! Capture a planet and construct a certain structure on it.
• Call Crusade!! Win war against member of a hostile religion.

This is how I see religion being implemented. With the option to create your own religion (name, flag, and biography) of course!

The problem here is that too many races have more than one religion. It would be terrible for many ideas if they were restricted to having one religion, as while that works in some cases, only some cases. Zero is just better. I'd rather keep the normal spiritualism thing, and leave things like religions to mods and such. In a mod, you can go all the way anyways, and make it so religions help roleplay, rather than hinder it.

 

[zukodark]

Another argument against religion is that (well we can only use humanity as an example) a single race may not be homogenous and worship the same religion so that would be difficult to show multiple religions within a population easily.

Did you even read my actual post? That was kind off handled. In humanity's case, the (maximum 6) religions would be Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism. The other two would be debatable, as I don't think the Chinese Folk Religions would have to be represented in the game. If not only the first four, it would probably be two of Taoism, Shinto, Judaism and Sikhism.

 

[EvilTom]

Did you even read my actual post? That was kind off handled. In humanity's case, the (maximum 6) religions would be Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism. The other two would be debatable, as I don't think the Chinese Folk Religions would have to be represented in the game. If not only the first four, it would probably be two of Taoism, Shinto, Judaism and Sikhism.

Oops, yes I did read it, but forgot by the time we got further into the chat.

I wonder what the computational overhead of all those extra religions would be.

 

[Finnway]

The problem here is that too many races have more than one religion.

There are two possible ways to fix that.

(1) Make religions comes into existence after game start a la Civilization. Justify it by saying the religions previously didn't have enough followers to be recognized on a galactic scale, or something.

(2) Let players customize their race's main religion, and procedurally generate the others. Should be pretty simple, considering literally everything in Stellaris is procedurally generated.
Collectivist or Spiritualist empires could start with the majority of their POPs following the player-created religion, and Fanatic Spiritualists could be religiously homogeneous.

I'd rather keep the normal spiritualism thing, and leave things like religions to mods and such. In a mod, you can go all the way anyways, and make it so religions help roleplay, rather than hinder it.

Of course. I'm just brainstorming. The fact that it could be accomplished by modders or by the developers goes without saying.

 

[KingRolan]

We could always just roleplay it, you know.

 

[vyshan]

We could always just roleplay it, you know.

That is what I intend to do. I have three religions for my empire. Though I don't have that many spiritualist pops(being neutral on the scale) this will allow me to flesh out the religions should they swing that way.

1.) Tzavism: Tzavism or Raksana Polytheism is the dominate faith of the empire. It is a polytheistic religion with a strong hero and ancestral worship. I will be using it to name most of my planets, moons and the like.
2.) Satishism: The second largest religion. Satishism is basically Zorastrianism if Zorastrianism had the hirearchy of the Catholic church(and of course was founded by reptilians). There will be a good number of planets from this faith.
3.) Solarianism: The youngest religion, a panentheistic religion that belives that everyone has a divine spark within themselves; there are a few trappings of buddhism for this faith. There will be a couple of planets named from this faith, but not many.

 

[zukodark]

That is what I intend to do. I have three religions for my empire. Though I don't have that many spiritualist pops(being neutral on the scale) this will allow me to flesh out the religions should they swing that way.

1.) Tzavism: Tzavism or Raksana Polytheism is the dominate faith of the empire. It is a polytheistic religion with a strong hero and ancestral worship. I will be using it to name most of my planets, moons and the like.
2.) Satishism: The second largest religion. Satishism is basically Zorastrianism if Zorastrianism had the hirearchy of the Catholic church(and of course was founded by reptilians). There will be a good number of planets from this faith.
3.) Solarianism: The youngest religion, a panentheistic religion that belives that everyone has a divine spark within themselves; there are a few trappings of buddhism for this faith. There will be a couple of planets named from this faith, but not many.

That is also what I'm going to do. Don't misunderstand me. Despite being the OP, I don't want religions to be any more present in the game than they are already are. Not even in DLCs at first, since there is much more important things to implement such as better trade, espionage, etc. But why not brainstorm?

There are two possible ways to fix that.

(1) Make religions comes into existence after game start a la Civilization. Justify it by saying the religions previously didn't have enough followers to be recognized on a galactic scale, or something.

(2) Let players customize their race's main religion, and procedurally generate the others. Should be pretty simple, considering literally everything in Stellaris is procedurally generated.
Collectivist or Spiritualist empires could start with the majority of their POPs following the player-created religion, and Fanatic Spiritualists could be religiously homogeneous.

Of course. I'm just brainstorming. The fact that it could be accomplished by modders or by the developers goes without saying.

I just noticed the latter posts you quoted came out worse than I expected. I don't mean the base game hinders religion roleplaying, but many mod ideas I have seen.