Religious + Alchemy Gameplay [Video Link Included]

[Lord Funk]

For those who has asked about religion in Millennia, I stumbled across this YouTubers video, called "One Proud Bavarian". I'm sharing this link, since some seemed very interested in how religion works in various posts.

"One Proud Bavarian" choses to go with the "National Spirit" called "Theoligians" in his video. Then later on enter the "Age Of Alchemy".

It does seem to me that religion in Millennia is a valid playstyle. It's not a must. Not like in other games where it's part of your Civilization no matter what, but more of a choice, a branch/route you can chose to go down. You can ignore starting a religion and your empires population will be more indifferent to religion. Not demand religious buildings etc. Like a more secularized society and you chose other more scientific, production, or war like paths to victory without much religious interference. Maybe other civilizations religion can invade you and affect you, of that I am not sure, since his playthrough does not show any of that.

However you can also chose yourself to make your civilization religious. Start a religion, which means your population will have demands on religious buildings and their needs for religion needs to be satisfied. To achieve that you seem to have to chose "National Spirits" like "Theologians" or "Crusaders", or it will be hard to keep your religious population satidsfied and you will build up to a crisis age. If You chose the "National Spirit" of "Theoligians" it comes with special abilities. Like to build Monasteries on hills around your ouposts which increase wealth etc. It can be very powerful.

"One Proud Bavarian" choses "Theoligians" in his playthrough and builds up wealth, then later manages to enter the "Alchemy Era" which can build up even more prodcution as well. His cities looks like they are sprawling with industry and wealth.

One Proud Bavarian - RELIGION can win you the GAME in MILLENNIA!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BESLjvSTa2g

It is hard to follow each detail, since he do edit his video pretty hard to fit all 6 Ages within a 29 min 38 sec video, but it does showcase enough to make at least me intrigued that a religious path does seem to matter as a choice and is an alterative worth considering. From this somewhat superficial look, it does appear (to me at least) to be more interesting than religion is in Civ 5, Civ 6 and Humankind. Although I reserve final judgement until I can play the game myself.

It would be fun to see someone chose "Crusaders" and see how that plays out with religion. Maybe a more war like path to victory under the disguise of religion?

[ThunderNorse]

Originally posted by Lord Funk:

For those who has asked about religion in Millennia, I stumbled across this YouTubers video, called "One Proud Bavarian". I'm sharing this link, since some seemed very interested in how religion works in various posts.

"One Proud Bavarian" choses to go with the "National Spirit" called "Theoligians" in his video. Then later on enter the "Age Of Alchemy".

It does seem to me that religion in Millennia is a valid playstyle. It's not a must. Not like in other games where it's part of your Civilization no matter what, but more of a choice, a branch/route you can chose to go down. You can ignore starting a religion and your empires population will be more indifferent to religion. Not demand religious buildings etc. Like a more secularized society and you chose other more scientific,, production, or war like paths to victory without much religious interference. Maybe other civilkizations religion can invade you and affect you, of that I am not sure, since his playthrough does not show any of that.

However you can also chose yourself to make your civilization religious. Start a religion, which means your population will have demands on religious buildings and their needs for religion needs to be satisfied. To achieve that you seem to have to chose "National Spirits" like "Theologians" or "Crusaders", or it will be hard to keep your religious population satidsfied and you will build up to a crisis age. If You chose the "National Spirit" of "Theoligians" it comes with special abilities. Like to build Monasteries on hills around your ouposts which increase wealth etc. It can be very powerful.

"One Proud Bavarian" choses "Theoligians" in his playthrough and builds up wealth, then later manages to enter the "Alchemy Era" which can build up even more prodcution as well. His cities looks like they are sprawling with industry and wealth.

One Proud Bavarian - RELIGION can win you the GAME in MILLENNIA!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BESLjvSTa2g

It is hard to follow each detail, since he do edit his video pretty hard to fit all 6 Ages within a 29 min 38 sec video, but it does showcase enough to make at least me intrigued that a religious path does seem to matter as a choice and is an alterative worth considering. From this somewhat superficial look, it does appear (to me at least) to be more interesting than religion is in Civ 5, Civ 6 and Humankind. Although I reserve final judgement until I can play the game myself.

It would be fun to see someone chose "Crusaders" and see how that plays out with religion. Maybe a more war like path to victory under the disguise of religion?

Do you know if you can convert other civilizations to your religion?

[Lord Funk]

Originally posted by ThunderNorse:

Do you know if you can convert other civilizations to your religion?

No, unfortunately I don't know that. I only know what I could see in that video. That is why i wrote.

Originally posted by Lord Funk:

Maybe other civilizations religion can invade you and affect you, of that I am not sure, since his playthrough does not show any of that.

With "invade" I also meant be spread, like in a foreign religious invasion affecting your society.

In abother video I could see that when you chose to create/found a religion, there is also was an option to adopt a religion. I think that means you can chose to adopt to someone else religion. Not sure what benefits or what downsides that brings with it? Since to me it seemed like the smart move is either to found your own religion and have control over it, or ignore having a religion all together to avoid your population being unsatisfied due to not having their religious demands fullfilled.

Of course it could also just mean you either set up (found) your own religion, like in naming it and so on, but also have the option to adopt a preset religion. Not adopt another players religion.

It could open up a whole new level if one can spread the religion into others territories and then force that player to start focusing on religious buildings and such, since their population will start to demand all that, now that they too have become more religious. Kind of a way to start chaos in someone elses territories via religion. Imagine spredaing your religion. The opponents population starts to demand more religious actions and buildings. They start to rebel and then you send out your crusaders to "free" their population and bring them in under your one "true" faith. Just my thinking up an imaginary scenario and no idea if that is even a possible scenario with the mechanics in Millennia? I'm probably overthinking the possibilities.

I also don't know if a religion can be "cleansed" and removed by some mechanic? If it can't be spead, no such mechanic is needed I guess, but if it can be spread, there needs to eb a way to counter it and remove it. Just like with "inquisitors" in Civ.

So there are still many questions, but at least from what I saw in this video it looked intriguing and interesting.

[Ryu.82]

Just watched a video on YT that included the later ages (4-6), and yes, you can spread your religion into other nations. The actions that affect religion seem all to be part of the Art-Domain Power, so you need Art-XP to boost your own religion in your territory or spread it into other territories.
As far as I could tell there doesn´t seem to be a method to cleanse religion, I guess that the only way to counter religions is boosting your own religion. But maybe there are more actions behind research or other domains that weren´t shown in the video or that I simply missed.

Also there is an age after the 6. age that you can only access if your religion is spread at more than 30% of the world population. I guess that could be an age for an early victory that allows you to try to gain some kind of religios victory.

I´m not sure how much you can interact with religion in other aspects, but there is the option in diplomacy to demand another nation to convert to your religion, was in the demo. And if I remember correctly if they refused you got some kind of reason to go to war, but I do not know how that is different from declaring war normaly.
And there is a crusader path, that has some boni if your units fight "heretic" enemies and that reduce those "heretic" religions in conquered cities by a certain amount.

So even if the system does not seem to be too deep, there seems to be a victory condition around religion and you can spread it and use it as a reason for war, so I would say it at least has everything that would allow you to roleplay with it if you want to do that.

But since I don´t know what kind of boni having a religion provides I have no idea how powerful it is as a gameplay mechanic. It seemed at least weaker as in Civ, where you were allowed to choose some boni for your religion and customize it that way, didn´t see something like that in the video, so maybe there are no boni to having a religion and it only affects diplomacy and adds a victory condition, or there are boni, but they are fixed and the same for all religions. Or I missed something, since I didn´t pay too much attention and the video was also cut and skipped many things.

[Lord Funk]

Originally posted by Ryu.82:

Just watched a video on YT that included the later ages (4-6), and yes, you can spread your religion into other nations. The actions that affect religion seem all to be part of the Art-Domain Power, so you need Art-XP to boost your own religion in your territory or spread it into other territories.
As far as I could tell there doesn´t seem to be a method to cleanse religion, I guess that the only way to counter religions is boosting your own religion. But maybe there are more actions behind research or other domains that weren´t shown in the video or that I simply missed.

Also there is an age after the 6. age that you can only access if your religion is spread at more than 30% of the world population. I guess that could be an age for an early victory that allows you to try to gain some kind of religios victory.

I´m not sure how much you can interact with religion in other aspects, but there is the option in diplomacy to demand another nation to convert to your religion, was in the demo. And if I remember correctly if they refused you got some kind of reason to go to war, but I do not know how that is different from declaring war normaly.
And there is a crusader path, that has some boni if your units fight "heretic" enemies and that reduce those "heretic" religions in conquered cities by a certain amount.

So even if the system does not seem to be too deep, there seems to be a victory condition around religion and you can spread it and use it as a reason for war, so I would say it at least has everything that would allow you to roleplay with it if you want to do that.

But since I don´t know what kind of boni having a religion provides I have no idea how powerful it is as a gameplay mechanic. It seemed at least weaker as in Civ, where you were allowed to choose some boni for your religion and customize it that way, didn´t see something like that in the video, so maybe there are no boni to having a religion and it only affects diplomacy and adds a victory condition, or there are boni, but they are fixed and the same for all religions. Or I missed something, since I didn´t pay too much attention and the video was also cut and skipped many things.

Sounds interesting. Thank you so much for all that info.

One boni, is of course if you chose the reiligious path of "Theologians" national spirit. You can then build those Monasteries on tiles around your outposts (which you can not without going down that route). That is not a religous boni per se, but there would be little point in chosing "Theologians" unless you are going down a religious route, so it goes hand in hand with having a religion.

[Arkadus]

you can spread your religion to other nations at the cost of Arts XP.

[Lord Funk]

Originally posted by Arkadus:

you can spread your religion to other nations at the cost of Arts XP.