The game is clearly designed around christian morals when it comes to expressing the intent of the religious. Christianity is the largest religion, most countries are christian. But with the addition of Japan in game, lot of those links are deleted due to Shintoism. Furthermore Western and Eastern Conservatism while related are different (For example, Eastern conservatism tends to be more ambivalent towards capitalism, and in a few cases outright hostile, and tends to want to increase the power of the state in economics, not to say that there isn’t variation).
Hence, I suggest:
Make a pass at religious policies and revamp them.
Same for conservative policies. Along with adjustments for conservatism in East v West.
Any other changes which maybe necessary to flesh out the religious and conservative.
It would help in challenge too, the game can be adapted to appeal to more player styles, and with most pf the links with the religious deleted in Japan, it would be good to see what new policies can be implemented that would pander to the religious.
I really believe that religion should be shaped around people who actually believe in that religion, anecdotals aren’t 100% inaccurate.
I will forever disagree that some religious policies increase racism even outside of US. The church organizations are vocal about what one believer should believe, like homophobia, I never heard of Christians hitting foreigners in the head as part of Christian love.
Well, I didn’t necessarily mean it like that, I meant it more as, there hasn’t been much focus on religious and conservative policies, and as noticed earlier, they require more attention and ideally a revamp. Especially with the internal contradiction as I see it, where a game with the religious (and conservatives) designed around western christian morality, now have many of those (religious) relations deleted for Japan, now need a whole new and distinct gameplay loop to make it fun and interesting. And there needs to be a similar distinction made for conservatives (East v West) to maintain that fun, but a similar thing needs to happen for western religious and conservatives in game, to make gameplay oriented towards them and the policies they like more viable. If most Western countries are liberal already, it makes playing as a conservative or religious basically to deny democracy, so there has to be, in my opinion some way to make religious and conservative gameplay congruent with democracy, which involves what you have mentioned above, recognizing them as more than their stereotypes, which arguably is what drives emergent behaviour in the game, presumably, stereotypical religious + stereotypical liberal = realistic citizen. It requires, I believe something more than that and what you have mentioned.
