Religion has been a part of the past few Civilization games and while many have had plenty of comments about it in the past, the Civ 7 version may be the worst one to date. We are going to explore why Religion is not great in Civilization 7. Then we are going to discuss what needs to change and why.
In case you were unaware, religion, for the most part, is relegated to the Exploration Age in Civilization 7.
You do found a Patheon in the Antiquity Age, which is used for Altars. These give you pretty strong bonuses but are still ultimately underwhelming in terms of making your empire religious in any significant way.
After this, Religion becomes the focal point during the Exploration Age for the Cultural Legacy Path. It plays similarly to what happened in previous Civilization games. You found your religion and select a few different beliefs. With this, you are then able to start spreading your missionaries and your religion around the globe. You collect relics while building temples and once you reach 12 relics, you have completed the Cultural Legacy Path for the Exploration Age.
Now, if you were someone who did not enjoy religion at all during Civ 6 then this might be the right amount of religion in your gameplay. If you miss how significant religion was, then this is a disappointment to say the least, because religion all but disappears in the Modern Age.
Civilization games have always been about building something and creating your own world history. Sometimes this meant building a massive empire that was great in all ways. Other times, it meant establishing a small but mighty nation that could corner the economic market. Then there were times when your nation felt the need to spread your religion and would do so at any cost.
The slogan for Civilization 7 is, “Build something you believe in” and right now, for religion, that is extremely hard. We have lost the ability to truly make a nation or empire based on religion and if Civ games are still supposed to be historic to some degree then this should be an option.
If they have to lump it in with the cultural path, then that is completely fine. But it should be possible to have religion as a focus throughout the game and right now, this feels like it is impossible.
It is entirely possible that they felt as if religion played too much of a factor in Civ 6 and decided to roll things back.
Now we are onto the suggestions because you can’t ask for changes and not offer solutions. As a reminder, the Civ devs have a track record of listening and making changes to make their games the best version of themselves. We need to be patient, but it is okay to make some requests.
The easiest solution would be to bring back Religion in the way that it was in Civ 6 but maybe without the combat aspects. You could have missionaries and inquisitors who help you to either spread your religion or take it out of certain areas. This could still be a major part of the Cultural path, where your religion takes the next step but with more of a focus on spreading it to the new world.
Then in the modern age, you could fight for control of as much population as possible with a Cultural victory path being that you convert everyone to your religion or at least a majority. This could just be one of the paths that can help you win culturally. In a sense, this would allow for players to pick what style of Cultural victory they would like.
Either you could focus on explorers and finding Artifacts or you could continue to build out your religion. While the religious victory may be a bit tougher, it still would add new gameplay and allow for religion to actually matter in Civ 7. But at this point, Religion is in a state where really it should just not be in the game at all.
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