Rationalism, Piety, and Civ5

Not to worry.

Your citizens will be very happy when your nuclear laden bombers fly off to obliterate the backward cities of your theocratic opposition.

Realistically, they aren’t going to have two different game options where one is so clearly superior to the other that it’s the obvious choice.

The reception of Civilization 5 has not been so positive among those of us who play Civilization 4. Personally, I haven’t seen anything in the new game that tempts me to replace the old one, particularly since my computer may not be adequate to run the souped-up graphics that don’t really add anything to the game play.

The best thing about piety is that it contains the word “pie” and pies are delicious.

If I know my Civ — I haven’t played 5 yet because I don’t have a computer that can — then that tech boost will be much more helpful in the long run, because it will include other advances that can improve happiness.

If you advance far enough on the Science tree, Future Science is available, +1 happiness +1 production +1 gold +1 culture. Game winning stuff, even though you’ve already gotten GDRs, and the Spaceship.

Also, you guys will be happy to know that in Civ5, Temples are a building that increases your Culture, but they’re in the very early game. The Museums you can build later have much bigger bonuses. 😀 For purposes of gameplay balance, though, I think you need to have built a Temple and some other culture buildings before you can have a Museum. That makes sense to me, though. Religions have certainly given us no shortage of stuff that belongs in museum displays.

The last time I played Civ was Civ III, but IIRC, ‘happiness’ began with a temple, then progressed to a coliseum, then included libraries and universities.

So, on the whole, there was always more to the overall happiness of your populace than having a temple.

Hmm, completely irrelevant, but Civ 5 has mainly got a good reception from magazines (who get exclusive ‘scoops’ from all the big games companies…), and non-previous Civ players.

It’s bugs, lack of any AI worthy of the name, and most of its changes from previous incarnations have received widespread condemnation amongst all the Civ lovers I know. I know I played a friend’s and certainly won’t buy it! It’s absolutely awful compared to the previous ones. 🙂

There was a mod for the Civ IV religions, IIRC, that added extra religions – one of which was creationism, which added money you produced, but hobbled research… 🙂

While it’s already been mentioned, one of the policies (humanism)generates happiness through the universities that you have built. So rationalism isn’t entirely divorced from happiness.

I know I usually adopt rationalism since I usually aim for a spaceship victory, but some of the upper tier piety policies are pretty essential for a cultural victory. And it’s worth mentioning that one of the final piety policies is freedom of religion.

Adopting piety causes +2 happiness? Really? What about the oppression that comes with theocracy? What about the unhappiness that results from people being guilted all the time or wanting to leave the mainstream faith but being unable to do so for the consequences?

Also, does anyone else think it was tacky of the artists to appropriate the priestly robes of Judaism for the illustration – not to mention put them on a blond person? Nice job with the racial erasure, artists. Kind of unfortunate when you cross-reference the illustration with the Christian Identity movement, no?

I can actually see why Rationalism wouldn’t increase happiness in the short-term, though, since you have to work for your answers.

Greg: that’s a bit unfair: you’re comparing Civ V on release day with, say, IV after 2 expansions and more than a year of patches. Civ IV wasn’t very popular on release either.

V has flaws (and some of them are being fixed in the next patch, such as the inability to see other leaders’ opinion of us, and what’s affecting them), but I think it’s a very good game with a lot of potential — especially after the inevitable expansion packs.

Arkonbey – you’ll hate Civ V then. It’s far more graphics-intense!

Pedro Timóteo:

Actually, I’m not. I know this, because the day all the other Civs were released, I started playing it, and when I finished it, I started a new game, and again, and again, and again, and again, etc. etc. etc.

That one game I played of Civ V, I had to force myself to keep going through out of my love of the other games, hoping that eventually it would come up with at least one redeeming quality.

I could go into just why it is a horrible piece of game design, but here isn’t really the place.

This websites comment section loads slow as shit…

ON topic now, peity is good for war and anexing cities to keep them happy.

Add me to those who played countless hours of Civ III and IV and two games of Civ V.

Loved in Civ IV how religion made a mess of politics in trying to deal with countries of a different religion until you got Free Religion, disposed of your state religion, and peace reigned throughout the world.

One of the most underrated Civ-type games: Alpha Centauri

The religious fundamentalists were usually one of the first factions I wiped out. Way too annoying too deal with. Especially considering that I usually played the University. (though the Gaians are way awesome for their ability to turn xenofungus)

The truth is that no particular social policy is “better” than another.
It really all depends on how you want to play the game and how you plan on winning. There are a variety of different ways to win and for each victory condition there’s plenty of strategies on how to obtain them. Piety can be even more valuable than rationalism, or vice versa, depending on your strategy.

Peity can be unlocked early in the game, since it becomes available in the classic era. The policies are mainly focused around lowering unhappiness and raising happiness, causing you to go into golden ages faster, which boosts the speed of everything, from building, to research, to gold production.

Rationalism is unlocked later in the game, during the Renaissance Era. It serves to both increase happiness and research. A policy like Secularism will cause each scientist you have per city to give you +2 science instead of +1, effectively doubling their worth. Humanism will give your empire +1 happiness for every university you have, and Sovereignty will increase your overall science by 15% as long as your empire is happy.

I don’t think the piety route is all that realistic. For example, Theocracy, which is defined as a political unit governed by a deity, actually lowers your empire’s overall unhappiness by 20%! I guess that means “screw separation of church and state, combining them will calm the nerves of our unhappy citizens!”

I do think this is a better way to do it than the way in Civ IV, where everyone had to rush to be the first to found a religion and spread it to other civilizations. Hey kids! Proselytizing can be fun! Whoever can be the first to convert the nation of Germany to Judaism wins!

Long-time Civ player here. The entire Civ series has always had these little hints of pro-secularism. The only real mention of religion in the first three Civilization games is the Theory of Evolution- it’s treated as a Wonder of the World on par with the Great Pyramids, and it always dramatically advances your science. In Civilization IV, religion really serves only two purposes- making money, and making nations with different religions mad at you. And any Civ 5 player will tell you that the Rationalism track is FAR better than the Piety track. The Piety track gives you piddling bonuses to your Happiness, which almost never needs any special effort to be astronomically high anyway, but the Rationalism track gives you massive bonuses to the most crucial, most competitive stat your empire can have, which is your science.

I do think this is a better way to do it than the way in Civ IV, where everyone had to rush to be the first to found a religion and spread it to other civilizations. Hey kids! Proselytizing can be fun! Whoever can be the first to convert the nation of Germany to Judaism wins!

I have raced to do this several times 🙂

Theory of Evolution- it’s treated as a Wonder of the World on par with the Great Pyramids, and it always dramatically advances your science.

In Civ2, being the first to discover philosophy would thrown you ahead a full free tech advance. But building the Darwin’s Voyage wonder was even more powerful. It completed whatever technology you were working on, then immediately gave you ANOTHER free tech advance!

It can’t go unremarked that they used the incredibly religious Isaac Newton as the face of rationalism. Rationalism certainly decreases piety, but it’s not necessarily mutually exclusive. Especially in the early phases.

But as a game mechanic I get it.

As a political statement, it’s pretty loaded.

As a game mechanic it’s fairly meaningless: it’s clearly heavily weighted towards Rationalism.

I’m surprised that Firaxis would compromise their game’s balance to make a political point: this may win points among atheists, but it won’t earn any among gamers.

also, i found it odd that the freedom of religion policy could only be discovered in the piety branch. either that means that the rationalism branch by default has freedom of religion and doesnt need to be discovered or its like the Reign of terror during the First French Republic. hopefully its the former lol