Religion news

How do I use religions?
Each civ starts out with a certain religion, and has two others as an option. I'll take the Italians as an example:

Catholicism (left) is default, Waldensian Faith (middle) and Orthodoxism (right) are options.

To choose Catholicism as the Italians, the player has to do nothing, the game starts that way. To choose Orthodoxism the player first has to advance to age2, then he can press the button in the Town Center that will change the religion. To choose Waldensian Faith, the player first has to advance to age4, then he can press the button in the Town Center.

What effects do these religions have?
Catholicism is a base religion, which means it doesn't change your civ too much (it doubles Priest HP and halves Priest speed, which is pretty minor), and a player can choose
to keep it that way. However, if he wants another focus, he might want to choose another religion, if that suits him better. Waldensian Faith is a reformed religion, which means it quite drastically changes your game (it doubles villager speed, but sets Priest and Bishop speed and HP to almost 0), and Orthodoxism is another religion with the same severity as Catholicism, it is an outside religion. All civs have one base religion, one reformed religion and one outside religion.

The rollover text of the tech that changes religion from Orthodoxism to Catholicism.

Each religion has one positive bonus and one negative bonus, to make sure religions merely change your game, not necessarily improve it. Also, this way they're always balanced.

What makes religions interesting?
Religions can be infinitely switched. For example, if the Italians choose Orthodoxism instead of Catholicism, they then get an option to revert back to Catholicism, as well as the option to choose Waldensian Faith. It is (for the Italians) like this then:- Catholicism is active: Waldensian Faith and Orthodoxism are available choices
- Waldensian Faith is active: Catholicism and Orthodoxism are available choices
- Orthodoxism is active: Catholicism and Waldensian Faith are available choices

The Town Center UI after choosing Orthodoxism. Catholicism and Waldensian Faith are available. Please note this new UI is still a work-in-progress.

However, to prevent people from endlessly switching religions it costs 1 shipment to do so, and researching these techs also takes 100 trainpoints, as opposed to 30 trainpoints for normal techs, so it takes more than three times as long.

What should I expect to see changed between now and the Prologue?
First of all, raw numbers. The religion system has been coded in, but the bonus percentages for each religion are still being weighed. Also, expect to see a change to the rollover texts, so that they are more user friendly. Ways to do this have already been found, but still need to be coded in. However, since the Italians are only one civ, the main thing you should expect to see is more religions. All Prologue civs together will not have three religion choices, but eight. These also include some smaller but certainly no less interesting religions such as Zoroastrianism.

Summarised.
- Each civ gets three religion choices: one base religion, one reformed religion and one outside religion.
- Each civ starts out with the base religion as active. The outside religion gets unlocked in age2, the reformed religion gets unlocked in age4.
- Religion switches can be made infinite times, but they take a long time to research and cost 1 shipment.
- Each religion has two bonuses, one negative bonus and one positive bonus, which means they're all equally balanced.
- Base religions and Outside religions are little-compromise religions, reformed religions have far more drastic effects.