Civilization 6 - Faith and Conquest - Game Review
By Rev. Philip Stonhouse
It has been a long time since I played any Civilization game, so I was surprised to find that there was a religious element to it. I should not have been surprised by this as faith has been an essential element of civilization since the early settling of humanity, even though its tribal days, so why shouldn’t it be a part of this game. Also, as many of the world's wonders are faith centres, the game would be denying a lot of potential content if they had. That being said as a civilization simulator its use of faith as a way of upgrading your nation's ability and leading to a victory is fairly surface level.
In the main part of the game little is said about particular faiths, in fact, whether you are Buddhist or Christian etc. does not change the game whatsoever. Obviously, this is short-sighted as individual faiths have shaped nations and civilizations for better or worse. This might have been done to avoid any possible backlash or argument that may be created by misrepresenting a religion.
Faith does make a difference to the gameplay, which is helpful in our understanding. The first aspect you choose is a Pantheon. Here monotheistic (believing in one God as Lord over all) communities are not well represented, in fact the history of faith development is not well represented as a faith understanding often came out of a communities experience of God working through the world around them. Judaism represented creation as bringing form to endless water or an endless desert, not surprising. The first nations people of Canada understood creation often in terms of archers, or motherhood, or the trees. They do offer similar things as a choice, but a better option I think would have been to limit a civilizations choices dependent on the locality of their civilization and to create an option for monotheism which creates a generalized benefit. Each pantheon does affect how your civilization gains faith, or culture or science etc. and so in this way does express a really helpful idea that faith has actually often been the source for scientific or cultural or moral progress. The benefits are comparatively a little weak however and so do not represent how faith has been an essential part of civilization growth and development.
There is also a strange limitation that one nation will not be able to develop their own faith. In general national atheism or neutrality is a fairly recent development and so a strange thing to incorporate. It was probably meant as a way to push players to develop their holy sights early. Holy Sights and religious wonders are interesting as well, because these often add some really essential upgrades to your cities or nations, like the pyramids adding to a builders capacity or the Stonehenge creating a prophet (as strange as the correlation is).
In the game you can evangelise cities and by evangelising all of the capitals you can win a religious victory. This is done primarily through missionaries sharing their faith or through religious combat. Historically, these are the two most obvious methods that religions spread, though there is also religious pressure from local cities (this takes too much time to really be a huge determiner on a religious victory). These sources are good starting places, but they also ignore and simplify ideas. Combat and dominance are actually very poor ways of spreading faith. Historically, they have often strengthened the conquered culture’s faith (with Martyrs) or weakened the original faith (with morphings like Voodoo or weakened the Christian doctrines of family, God’s love, mercy etc.); this makes sense when you look at who Christ is. The missionaries ignore the fact that simple pressure and presence are not enough to convert people. There will always be people in every community and nation who refuse to believe or reject complete and essential tenants of the faith. So complete conversion is an impossibility in broken and selfish humanity. Lastly, the spread of faith often works very differently. Judaism and Christianity often spread because of their exile or persecution. As Israel was in Egypt or Babylon or Persia they often met people and shared the faith and found people in those nations that welcomed the Lord and served him. In Jesus’ day Centurians and Gentile Romans often came to Jesus or his disciples. The apostles faith spread because they were persecuted in Jerusalem and forced to move to other places. It was in their weakness that God’s strength was shown. You could also see this with the Vikings, the Mongols, the underground Asian churches and many more.
The biggest description of faith is in the help pages, where CIV 6 does make an attempt to historically describe each faith. Within these descriptions you can see the creators’ limited understanding, which went into their limited ability to represent each faith. The Anglican church is briefly referred to by saying that it only began because king Henry wanted a divorce and remarriage. This is a common misconception as Bishop Cramner had been working with Henry long before this occurred to look at what was important in the Christian faith. This is why shortly after the English split you will find a kind of liturgical revival centered on the still-forming Book of Common Prayer which sought a more faithful original apostolic form of worship; with Vatican 2 in the last century, the Catholic church has now followed a similar kind of liturgical revival 500 years later. The English Protestant split (Anglicanism) was founded on some important tenants, that our faith is determined by Scripture, reason and tradition (the three-legged stool). Scripture and worship in the language of the people lead to much Evangelism and the greatest denominational movement of translation. Though violence and divorce were a part of its history, obviously, the singular comment on Anglicanism falls drastically short.
The same limited and weak description can be said for any of the faiths. Judaism as an adaptation of Babylonian faith created around 3500 BC is ill-founded. Just because a faiths Scriptures that were originally oral comment and reference another faith’s belief’s does not mean that they were offshoots of that faith. As much of the Old Testament/Tenakh (which are basically the same) found its final form in the Babylonian Exile/Second Temple period it is no wonder that the hope of God for His people (which is not just Israel), should express itself in relation to their experience and understanding, which can still speak into our experiences today. The dating is based upon a weak understanding of early people’s genealogy, which was not always an exact historic record of a family tree, but of a familial representation of where we have come from. In this way, the modern interpretation that says the bible tells us the world was created in 4000 BC is also not necessary. The same kind of limited understand is expressed through Catholicism, Orthodox and Protestantism, which I will not go into at this time as there is too much to say on all of this (for example, all of their origins are overly generalized to become unhelpful. The challenge continuously in the church, in academics and in life is how to do a faithful reading of history, so not to misrepresent the truth which God has been offering.
All in all, I enjoy that the game has begun to introduce faith as an aspect of the gameplay, though I believe it should be developed more. It does present an overly generalized representation of faith, which does not do it justice, but prioritizes simple gameplay. In fact, the religious side of the gameplay felt a little too streamlined to be compelling and after winning once, I cared little to repeat that kind of win. I hope that in the next game they will continue to develop this and read more into religious history and experience.
Further Questions:
In the game, faith wonders (along with all wonders), relics, art, writing and music are things that attract tourists. How does faith relate to tourism?
How do some objects or places help our experience of God?
What is a pilgrimage? How do they relate to our journey with God?
Sean Bean’s narration is superb as he describes leaders, ingenuity, wonders, icons and so much more. Most of the quotes present some way of viewing the world. Were there any that stuck out to you? What are they trying to teach you? As an example some of the quotes about weapons seem to elevate them in importance or some of the quotes about wonders mystify the experience.
The benefits to converting a city are mostly early game benefits. Why do you think the game applied these less to later ages?
Does religion offer less benefit later in history?
What does it offer today?
How did it guide us here?
What does the secularization of media, law, government etc. do?
What are the guiding principles of these things now?
War and domination is a big part of this game and helps with practically any kind of win. Did wars actually help religions?
Why were wars started in the name of religion? (look at specifics)
Do you think God wanted these wars? (remember King David was not allowed to build God’s temple because he had too much blood on his hands)
Why is there so much war in the Old Testament? Things to think about:
Abraham couldn’t conquer Canaan (The original people of the promised land) because they had not reached the height of their sin
God is often the one to judge and act - not us
The Philistines and the locals of Canaan gained influence over Israel as they turned away from God and one another (which lead to embittered conflict)
Israel went into exile in Syria, Babylon and Persia because they were self seeking and trusted more in themselves than in God.
The second temple was destroyed (70AD) because Israel didn’t understand or care for God’s plan for them.
What changed in the New Testament? How did God use His new community? Why were things different now?
Relationships are an essential part of the Christian faith. Where are relationships shown, is there any way to express the glory of God in these relationships? How could they be more accurate?
Your view as a player, is that of a general moving pieces on a map (city planning is so basic that you can’t really say that is what it is). How does this present nations’ relationships? What does this teach us about the world?
