EDIT April: Posted version 1.61, which updates all files to be compatible with the 1.61 patch and fixes a few minor civilopedia issues.

This is a mod to make religion a bit more realistic in the game. No more Hindus eating Cows, Jews and Muslims eating Pigs, Jewish missionaries, etc.:crazyeye:

Obviously fiddling with religion invites controversy, but I attempt to make each faith distinct without making any one of them "better" or "worse" than any other. I've tried to stay away from "this is a militant religion" or "this is a peaceful religion" as stereotypes; the closest thing to this is that I portray Taoism as anti-state, which helps warmongers some of the time and hurts them other times. As I continue to play the mod, I'll tinker with play balance, so if you find one religion always becomes dominant then post here.

Here is a summary of changes in this mod:

1. Confucianism is replaced by Zoroastrianism. Confucianism is much more of a philosophy of ethics than a theology per se, so I've replaced it with the immensely influential Zoroastrianism. This is the faith that pioneered a dualistic monotheism, and it influenced nearly every other major world religion. Wikipedia has a pretty good summary of the faith, which was once the state religion of the sprawling Persian Empire, but is now limited to a few hundred thousand to a few million adherents. Zoroastrian Cathedrals are Fire Temples and their Shrine is Adur Burzen-Mihr, their holiest fire.

2. Renamed Missionary units. What would we call someone who went into an area where a faith was not established and started teaching others? In some faiths, there are words for those who are spreading the faith to those who don't know it. Other religions have special words for teachers of the faith.

Christianity = Missionary
Islam = Da'eiah
Hinduism = Swami
Taoism = Sage
Zoroastrianism = Magi
Buddhism = Acariya
Judaism = Rabbi

3. Added advantages and disadvantages to each religion. These generally involve spread speed, missionary units, and adding effects to Temples to change how resources affect a civ.

Judaism
Disadvantages: No benefit from Pigs, Crabs, and Clams: Jewish Temples produce -1 health for each of these resources (since access to these things produces +1 health, this means the Temple merely "cancels out" the food benefits of the resources; it does not punish the player for having them and hence there is no need to pillage them if you start building Jewish Temples). Monasteries cannot build Jewish Missionaries (it hasn't been a missionary faith for millenia).
Advantages: (unleavened) Wheat, (kosher) Cows, and (gefilte) Fish produce an extra health in cities with Jewish Temples. Free missionary when founded (the only one you'll get!), and thereafter Judaism's spread rate = 125 instead of 100, which is a substantial bump to try to keep the religion viable in the late game. Post if it seems to spread out of control (or if it seems to not spread quickly enough, given the lack of missionaries); I'm actively tweaking this value.

Islam
Disadvantage: No benefit from Pigs and Wine: Pigs produce -1 health and Wine produces -1 happiness in cities with Islamic Temples. I also removed the free missionary unit (Imam) because of the advantageous spread rate I gave Islam. Finally, Islam's ban on usury leads to a small amount of economic inefficiency: -15% trade route income in cities with Islamic Temples.
Advantage: Extra health from (halal) Cows and Sheep in cities with Islamic Temples. Increased spread rate (Islam spread incredibly quickly after its founding): Right now I have it set to 133, which is a major boost from the default of 100. Holy City produces extra three commerce (to simulate the hajj).

Hinduism
Disadvantage: Cows produce -1 food in cities with Hindu Temples.
Advantage: Cows produce +1 happiness in cities with Hindu Temples.

Zoroastrianism
I can think of many ideas for advantages, but few for disadvantages. Offerings of fragrant woods like sandalwood or incense are sometimes made in the Fire Temples, so perhaps incense could generate extra happiness. There are no specific dietary rules for this faith.
Disadvantage: Keeping an eternal flame lit is expensive in the ancient world. Zoroastrian Temples and Fire Temples cost 20% more than other faiths' Temples.
Advantage: To represent its influence on culture and faith, Zoroastrianism adds culture to a city even when it is not the state religion. Fire Temples increase cultural output by 60% instead of 50%.

Taoism
Taoism is in many ways an anti-state belief system, focused on the individual. Of course, it could be promoted by the state like any other faith, but it often coexisted uneasily with beliefs about proper social roles (such as Confucian philosophy). Moreover, Taoist beliefs were often kept secret by families and small shrines might be hidden from the authorities.
Disadvantage: Because the faith is anti-state, it becomes harder to mobilize people for state efforts. Each Taoist Temple increases your hurry costs in all cities (sorry, can't limit it to one city) by 2%. So a civ that emphasizes Taoism and builds 15 temples can expect to pay 30% more to rush build. In addition, Taoist Cathedrals do not generate extra happy faces if Taoism is the state religion.
Sometimes an advantage and sometimes a disadvantage: Taoist Temples (but not other buildings) ALWAYS survive capture of a city, unlike any other religion's Temples. This is good if you think you can retake a city, but bad otherwise.
Advantage:Taoist Cathedrals generate one happy face, regardless of the state religion.

Christianity
The most striking feature of Christianity is its missionary nature.
Disadvantage: -75% spread rate (I think: I set it to 25 instead of 100, which I think reduces the chance by a factor of 4 = 25% of originial chance)
Advantage: Christian Temples allow Missionary building, Missionaries are 50% cheaper, and a player may have up to 10 Missionaries at once instead of 3.

Buddhism
Disadvantage: Buddhism spreads slowly, except for periods when Missionaries (Acariya) are built (Example = Rule of Ashoka's Mauryan Empire in India): Slower spread rate (70 instead of 100, which seems to be around 30% less spread).
Advantage: The image of the "laughing Buddha" is designed to remind believers of the path to happiness. Buddhist Temples produce + 1 happy face for Stone and Marble (think of the giant carved Buddhas in Afghanistan that were destroyed by the Taliban).

4. I changed two non-religious buildings that affect religions differently under my mod.
Grocer
The Grocer no longer gives 1 extra health for wine (until I find a way to shut down the bonus only if your state religion is Islam). Instead, the grocer gives 1 extra health whether you have wine or not (its other effects are unchanged).

Harbor
The Harbor no longer provides one extra health for Fish, Clam, and Crab. Instead, it provides one extra health PLUS one more if you have Fish.

5. NEW IN VERSION 1.6 The technology tree has been slightly altered. While it looks like there are many changes, most of them are simply the result of switching Monotheism and Meditation around to give a more realistic chronology to the emergence of religion. Basically, Hinduism, Judaism, and Zoroastrianism should emerge early in the game, followed by Buddhism and Taoism a bit later, and then finally Christianity and Islam. This better reflects history than Buddhism being the first religion founded every game. I also tried to prevent "knowledge" of another faith's founding tech from being necessary to found a religion that didn't actually interact with or follow from the earlier faith -- there's no reason a civ should have to "discover Hinduism" first in order to found Judaism. Here is the detailed list of changes:
I. To make it more likely for Hinduism to emerge first, Polytheism's cost has been lowered to 80 instead of 100.
II. Monotheism and Meditation swapped places on the tech tree, which means:
A. Monotheism: Now leads to Priesthood and Meditation. Does not start a religion or enable any civics.
B. Meditation: Now leads to Philosophy and Monarchy. Founds Zoroastrianism.
III. Some of the functions of Monotheism were shifted to Priesthood -- it now founds Judaism and leads to Monarchy, Code of Laws, and Theology. It also enables the Organized Religion civic.
IV. Buddhism is now founded with Literature.
V. Code of Laws no longer founds a religion.

6. NEW IN VERSION 1.6 The faiths which receive free missionary units when founded are now limited to Judaism (to offset the fact it can't build more of them), and the two latest religions (Christianity and Islam).

This mod does not modify your existing files in any way. Just unzip to your mods folder (the default is C:\Program Files\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\Mods). Everything is in a folder called abbamouse; if you get tired of the mod just delete the abbamouse folder. To update a previous version of the mod, just overwrite the old files with the new ones.

CHANGES IN VERSION 1.61

All files now compatible with 1.61 patch.
I fixed a few civilopedia errors noted by Houman.
I fixed a bug that allowed three Jewish missionaries to be built.


CHANGES IN VERSION 1.6
Changes to a few early technologies in order to make the prerequisites and chronology of religions a bit more realistic. For details, see # 5 and # 6 above.

CHANGES IN VERSION 1.53
Fixed a graphic bug in the font files. City religion graphics should display fine now.

CHANGES IN VERSION 1.52
I laboriously went through each file changed by the version 1.52 patch and re-altered them for my mod. This ended up being nearly every file in the mod, so I basically had to retype the whole thing. This creates opportunities for typos, so be sure to post any you spot.

CHANGES IN VERSION 1.11

I fixed the graphic bug that was causing leaders' names and scores to be displayed incorrectly when Zoroastrianism was their state religion.
Islamic missionary is now called Da'eiah (plural = Do'ah), thanks to suggestions by Fachy and Elmoro.
Sid's tips now correctly describe Jewish Monasteries. All Monastery descriptions now use the correct term for a religion's missionary units.
Change to Judaism: Judaism now starts with a free Rabbi (missionary), but no further ones can be built. The spread rate of Judaism has been lowered slightly but still kept higher than that of other faiths (125 instead of 100, a substantial boost).


CHANGES IN VERSION 1.10
Changes:

Used updated files from 1.09 patch
Added Spanish, French, Italian, German text, although my translations are probably laughable. The "new" names for missionaries have not been translated.
Mod now contains altered Sid's tips, replacing Confucian references with Zoroastrian ones and mentioning that Rabbis cannot be constructed.


Known issues:

I lack a unique graphic for the Zoroastrian Temple or Monastery, so I reuse the graphics from the Zoroastrian Fire Temple and Adur Burzen-Mihr.
It would also be nice to have a proper Zoroastrian Missionary skin, although the Confucian one is adequate since Zoroastrianism did indeed briefly spread to parts of China.
All religions' missionary units are still called "missionary" or its equivalent in non-English languages
The description of Zoroastrianism in the Civilopedia is English-only; non-English versions will still see the old description of Confucianism.


Under consideration:

Houman's realism mod has religious UUs, and I'm looking at implementing some of them. I'm not terribly comfortable with Jewish spies as special units, since Mossad is a feature of the state of Israel and not Judaism or Jews per se, but I like most of the ideas i that mod and I plan to copy some of them.
I want to find a way to base the effects of religions on the number of adherents in your cities instead of tying most effects to Temples. Maybe the SDK will make it possible to define a new variable like the % of a city with each religion and then use that variable in the Python or xml files to change health, happiness, etc. That would be more realistic, after all.

This is really excellent. While you will no doubt get people who agree/disagree with specific points, I think you're made an excellent first cut (and hey, maybe final cut) at adding character to the religions.

I was wondering if you were considering some broad changes for things like State Religion? I really think civs with State Religion should have some considerably research penalty. I also think that relations between SR civs should be heightened for better and worse.

Great job.

It may be a bit respectless and maybe even dangerous. Likely because people will choose religions for bonusus and leave others behind. On the other hand, the efforts are good and you could do something more. What 'bout adding Shintoism, Asatru and Babbism? What about seperating Christendom? (Catholicism and Protestantism)

My issue is that hardwiring the religions based on the beliefs of a minority will end up reducing realism rather than adding it.

Even if you ignore the fact that there are huge differences within a religion, and people come to practice many different versions of a religion based on circumstance, there's still a key problem with "dietary restrictions". Discovering a religion doesn't reverse the benefits of various goods, let alone their perceived benefits. It's more likely to institutionalize the benefits and drawbacks of said goods as a religious belief. Moreover, you're going to encourage people to dodge certain religions based on their starting location -- which is a very gamey, unrealistic behavior.

Nonetheless, 'religious difference' is something that many players want, no matter what it is. So at least you're filling a niche, with all the innacuracies.

I like the idea :)
Although I guess I think this game doesn't really take into account how most people are secular :)

FANTASTIC!!! I personally salute you! I understand Firaxis's restraint towards "personalizing" religions, but it has somehow just removed most of the "fun" in chosing a specific religion as your state religion...
A further step (and probably a too controversial one) would be to explore the impact of religious wars.... (for instance a civilication with teocratic rule would be extreamly agressive towards you if "you have fallen under a pagan religion")

I personally like it. Thank you for making this mod. (Now I just have to add it to my other ones.....)

Judaism
Disadvantages: No benefit from Pigs, Crabs, and Clams: Jewish Temples produce 1 unhappy face for each of these resources.Which presumably just counteracts the benefit from those as trade goods, right? They still aren't of negative value.
Cannot build Jewish Missionaries (it's just not a missionary faith).Not now, no. For at least 1700 of the past 2000 years, Jews would have gotten themselves lynched if they tried to convert your typical local, so it's only to be expected. But in the heydays of the Davidic and Maccabean Kingdoms? Those were outright theocracies. They banned all other religions. Preventing them from imposing their religion on their own cities (which Civ4 only allows you to directly do via missionaries) just seems wrong.
Advantages: (unleavened) Wheat, (kosher) Cows, and (gefilte) Fish produce an extra health in cities with Jewish Temples.Creative, certainly, but (no offense) it seems you were at a loss for ideas here. See my suggestions below.
Much faster rate of spread (There may not be missionaries, but there is a diaspora, and this helps simulate that.)There wasn't a diaspora until 1,935 years ago, when the Romans destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem. Which brings me to my next point: before then, the Temple was a major part of the religion. Sacrifices were brought there and only there; all Jewish men were required to make a pilgrimage to bring offerings there three times a year, on the three festivals (Passover, Shavuot, and Sukkot). Prior to the erection of Solomon's Temple, sacrifices were permitted to be brought anywhere, but after then they were restricted to the Temple.

As such, the Temple should create a much greater commerce boost than other shrines (except the Muslim one, since Muslims also have a pilgrimage). Two or even three gold per city might be good. But, on the other hand, if your state religion isn't Judaism, it should cause extra unhappiness in the city―Josephus Flavius records that the thrice-annual pilgrimages caused great unrest against the Romans in Jerusalem, as hundreds of thousands of religious men flocked together. I'm thinking maybe one unhappy face for every three or four Jewish cities would be good, half that if you have no state religion.

A note on terminology: prior to the construction of Solomon's Temple, Jewish Temples could represent small altars, and be called Jewish Altars; cathedrals could be Jewish Temples, or possibly someone else can think of something less confusing. The presence of any such structure should significantly increase the value of cows and sheep, since those were offered regularly in thanksgiving, atonement, etc. (so were goats and doves, off the top of my head, but of course neither is present in the game). Wine and incense were also used for various rituals, so they should give benefits as well.

Once Solomon's Temple is constructed, Jewish Altars should be automatically replaced with Jewish Synagogues, and Temples (or whatever) with perhaps Jewish Study Halls. The benefits could remain the same as long as Solomon's Temple exists, for balance reasons. If Solomon's Temple is destroyed, then the benefits from the cows, sheep, and incense (but not wine) should stop, but the Synagogues and Study Halls should produce extra happiness themselves (since as long as you had the main Temple, it wouldn't be as important to have a local place of worship as well).
No benefit from Pigs and Wine: Pigs produce -1 health and Wine produces -1 happiness in cities with Islamic Temples.If possible, these shouldn't be allowed to be traded at all by cities with an Islamic Temple or by a state with Organized Religion/Theocracy and Islam as its religion. Muslims aren't permitted to have anything to do with either of these.
Islam's ban on usury leads to a small amount of economic inefficiency: -15% trade route income in cities with Islamic Temples.I would suggest that banks be the things to take the hit instead. Banks should increase wealth by only perhaps +25% in cities with Islamic Temples and all cities under Islamic Theocracies. It should be noted that both traditional Judaism and traditional Christianity ban usury as well, but only when dealing with other members of the faith; this led, in Catholic Europe, to widespread Jewish bank ownership, since Catholics couldn't run banks profitably. This should reduce the efficiency of banks in cities with Jewish or Christian Temples or Jewish or Christian Theocracies to +40% or +45%.

Philosophically, I would like to note that I think a much better religion mod would completely ignore the actual traits of real-life religions and instead have partially random mixing and matching. This is in the same vein as a Christian China constructing Solomon's Temple in the Jewish holy city of Timbuktu. I think that kind of thing is part of what makes Civ fun.

An example religious trait would pertain to degree of centralization. Highly centralized religions would confer more benefits on the holder of the religion's holy city, but at the cost of making the religion harder to spread as you move away from the holy city. Like all religious traits, this would be subject to change over time; in this case, one major factor that would contribute to reduced religious centralization would be spreading the religion too much when means of travel were inadequate. The ancient Jewish religion was extremely centralized, for instance, but it could only maintain this centralization due to the tiny size of Israel.

I would like to see some sort of "inquisition" unit which could be used ot purge a city of a non-state religion in the same way missionaries can spread it. At the cost of civilian unhappiness for a time though.

I would like to see some sort of "inquisition" unit which could be used ot purge a city of a non-state religion in the same way missionaries can spread it. At the cost of civilian unhappiness for a time though.

Heh, I didn't see this comment, but I'm completely in agreement with you. I have even opened a thread about it: Inquisition Mod (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=141668)

Judaism
Advantages: (unleavened) Wheat, (kosher) Cows, and (gefilte) Fish produce an extra health in cities with Jewish Temples. Much faster rate of spread (There may not be missionaries, but there is a diaspora, and this helps simulate that.) Spread rate = 50 instead of 100, which is really quite a bump. I think it means the chance of spread is doubled. Actually it seems to spread out of control in my playtests so I 'd like to figure out the formula for spread chance.

In the other religions with modified spread rate, you state that lower is slower and higher is faster. :hmm:

Judaism
Much faster rate of spread (There may not be missionaries, but there is a diaspora, and this helps simulate that.) Spread rate = 50 instead of 100, which is really quite a bump. I think it means the chance of spread is doubled. Actually it seems to spread out of control in my playtests so I 'd like to figure out the formula for spread chance.

Islam
Increased spread rate (Islam spread incredibly quickly after its founding): Right now I have it set to 133, which is a major boost from the default of 100.

Christianity
-75% spread rate (I think: I set it to 25 instead of 100, which I think reduces the chance by a factor of 4 = 25% of originial chance)

Buddhism
Slower spread rate (70 instead of 100, which seems to be around 30% less spread).


The Jewish spread rate increases when you drop the number, but the rest behave in the opposite manner?

That's anti-Semitism!!! :joke:

Usury is forbidden true, but Islam is the merchant's religion. :) There's their original concept of profit sharing which gives the same profit as interest rates does. Just check any Saudi Bank or Saudi financed investment companies in Wall Street. The Prophet of Islam was a merchant himself and Qur'an is full of business law and regulations in astonishing details. I know you were thinking to balance the mod somehow and I don't mind it personally, but i was trying to give some insight on your initial comment on Islamic economy. Again: Islam is the religion of the merchants for the merchants and profit making is essential as long as it's fair and as regulated by Sharia (Qur'anic Law). Islamic economy in the ideal is hard to implement in liberal capitalism and communism, but it's somewhat close to socialism a la Scandinavia.

It may be a bit respectless and maybe even dangerous. Likely because people will choose religions for bonusus and leave others behind. On the other hand, the efforts are good and you could do something more. What 'bout adding Shintoism, Asatru and Babbism? What about seperating Christendom? (Catholicism and Protestantism)

Hey

I would also be really appreciative if a mod was done up to include Asatru.

What 'bout adding Shintoism, Asatru and Babbism?

What is Babbism anyway?

Actually, its a unified monotheistic religion. Practicers of Babbism recognize the founders of all monotheistic religions (Such as Mohammed and Abraham) and Hinduism, also they believe in 1 god and in reincarnation (In what you will reincarnate depends on how you lived, just like in Hinduism). Its popular America and loads of European nations and its one of the most youngest religions (Founded in the 1950's I believe, not really sure about that).

I responded to some of the criticisms by editing the Judaism section in my original post. I misstated the spread rate and food effects in the original description.

Here's something to ponder: What if Judaism gained a number of free missionaries (Rabbis) when it was founded, but then had a slow spread and no chance to build more missionaries? Would this be a bit more realistic, or would this be less realistic? Also, would it mess up play balance? The player that founded Judaism could establish a sizable religious following almost instantly, but later in the game it would fall behind other faiths.

As for the Temple of Solomon providing a pilgrimage bonus, that's something to consider. Does Judaism need an additional bonus right now?

Strictly speaking, Acharya and Swami mean the same thing--buddhism being an indian religion, it co-opted all of the hindu religious language for itself. Maybe to distinguish it from hinduism more, you might want to call the buddhist missionaries Lamas or something?

as for zoroastrian disadvantages, they weren't allowed to marry outside their faith, so maybe their spread rate/growth rate is slower?

Here's something to ponder: What if Judaism gained a number of free missionaries (Rabbis) when it was founded, but then had a slow spread and no chance to build more missionaries? Would this be a bit more realistic, or would this be less realistic? Also, would it mess up play balance? The player that founded Judaism could establish a sizable religious following almost instantly, but later in the game it would fall behind other faiths.

I think this would reflect the development far better. It could be spread at once in the own state but has a harder sell later.

To Zoroastrianism - I think it should com earlier than code of law - in this mod Zoro is a later game religion, and i thougt it was the eariest monotheistic religion ? But now it comes after judaism and christanity ... ( at least in most cases )

I agree Judaism missionaries should be renamed Rabbis, be much more expensive to train, and function sorta like Great Artists, only giving tiny culture bonus, maybe like 100. That'd be realistic. But I like abbamouse's idea a lot too.

At no time did Jews have missionaries in the sense that the Christians do. It spread verrrrrry slowly. I'd lower their spread to 100, and up Islam's spread to 150.

Nick
(Jew)

Also can we get Catholicism vs. Protestantism? Ssooo many wars were fought over that! It would really help my scenario.

In the game, I am really dissappointed how religion works. Religion is part of culture and the way how it spreads is just not realistic.

Imagine 2 civilizations both with two cities. Imagine that CIV 1 is highly developed and has a great cultural value, both cities are muslim. The other (neighbouring) civilization hasn't developed well, both cities have buddhism as their religion. Normally when you higher the culture rate, Islam should spread to the two neigbouring cities. What i want to say is that when a city adopts a religion it doesn' t adopt another one automatically, you have to send a missionary. In my opinion it should spread automatically when CIV 2 suffers from the high culture rate of CIV 1.

When I play civ 4 I get frustrated when I see that my cities adopt all kinds of different religions. That' s bull****. When my religion is set, it shouldn' t be so that 90% of the new cities adopt a different religion. Because when they adopt that religion, then no way I can wipe that religion out of my city and I have to send a missionary to that city.

When I would install your mod, it would mean that when a city adopts a different religion than the state religion, i can never change that city to my state religion. Because you modded the game in that way that only christian monasteries allow building of missionaries.

There's their original concept of profit sharing which gives the same profit as interest rates does. Just check any Saudi Bank or Saudi financed investment companies in Wall Street.Dunno who first invented it, but yeah, Orthodox Jews have similar systems. More or less investing in a business rather than loaning money to it. So perhaps the cuts should be reduced somewhat.
Here's something to ponder: What if Judaism gained a number of free missionaries (Rabbis) when it was founded, but then had a slow spread and no chance to build more missionaries? Would this be a bit more realistic, or would this be less realistic?I don't think it would be particularly more realistic.
As for the Temple of Solomon providing a pilgrimage bonus, that's something to consider. Does Judaism need an additional bonus right now?No, but I would revamp its bonuses/penalties entirely, as explained in my previous post. Specifically, I would remove the resource bonuses you now have for Judaism and replace them with bonuses for cows, sheep, incense, and wine. The Temple of Solomon as I described it would be somewhat better than other shrines if your state religion is Judaism, but it would cause trouble if your religion is different, which would present the player with an interesting choice. Again, this all would be subject to tweaking, but the pilgrimage was a major part of the ancient Jewish religion.
as for zoroastrian disadvantages, they weren't allowed to marry outside their faith, so maybe their spread rate/growth rate is slower?Jews, Christians, and Muslims weren't traditionally allowed to marry out of their faith either, incidentally.
I agree Judaism missionaries should be renamed RabbisRabbi is an anachronistic term for any period before around 2000 years ago. Prior to that, care of the religion was largely in the hands of the priests (kohanim, singular kohen), or at least by tradition—the Pharisees weren't too happy with that, and tried to take over the religion. (They eventually succeeded, since the entire Sadducee faction collapsed after the destruction of the Temple; it was mostly a priestly faction, focusing around centralization in the Temple, with the same corruption that the Catholic Church later faced: money for salvation. When that was no longer an option, the Pharisee ideal of less focus on sacrifices and rituals and more on genuine repentance and devotion—embodied in the quote from Hosea, "and we will sacrifice bulls with our lips"—largely won out. But that's somewhat off-topic.)
At no time did Jews have missionaries in the sense that the Christians do.You're absolutely right that they didn't have missionaries the way Christians do, but almost no religion did or does. Still, Abraham sure converted a lot of people, according to the Bible, and the Jewish kingdoms did make life more difficult for gentiles than Jews (spurring conversions for convenience's sake, much as Muslim states have historically done). The point is, all religions should be able to spread themselves without much trouble to their own cities at the very least.
I'd lower their spread to 100, and up Islam's spread to 150.It should be noted that Islam spread in large part through war. The game equivalent would be conquering a city, then converting it, not the city converting after a while by itself.

Simetrical
(Orthodox Jew)

Islam is present in the US, China, India, Europe and largely-Islamic nations span from Indonesia to Morocco. So by late-game I'd expect it spread in most countries.

Islam is present in the US, China, India, Europe and largely-Islamic nations span from Indonesia to Morocco. So by late-game I'd expect it spread in most countries.

<The problem heere is we have 2 different kinds of "spread" - one is conversion, the other is immigration ( since moslems in europe are mainly immigrants, converted europeans are rare ) . Can be tricky to simulate this but a model thattake this into account is may be more realistic thaen the current spread in Civ4 ...

I think you have taken a very difficult issue here and done some amazing things with it. Hats off to you! Here is just some food for thought that I hope is helpful.

I'm not sure I like the fact that Confucianism is replaced by Zoroastrianism. I see your point, but I love having Confucianism in the game because I personally see it as simulating secularism (imagination and all). Moreover, many many people practice a cullmination of taoism and confucianism in their daily lives, thus making confucianism a valid form of worship. All I'm saying is that if you want to add faiths, I'm all for that, but don't take away what is already there.

Lastly, you have a number of checks and balances for all the faiths except hinduism, which is only affected by the cow resource. Hinduism is a very resilient faith as many outside religions attempting to convert hindus have failed time and time again. I would suggest adding a modifier that would make the spread of faiths into cities already practicing hinduism much less likely. Missionaries trying to spread faith 'x' to hindu cities should also face a negative modifier. To counter the resiliency of the faith, maybe hinduism could spread at a slower rate? Just a thought. What do you think?


Tad

Hey, I do enjoy this mod,(although I'm having extreme difficulties in combining it with another mod(superciv.)

However, i did change a few things in your file due to something I heard about Zorastarism coming in later than it should. I changed its position to come at priesthood, and not only made meditation a much more worthwhile technology, but also made Zorasterism an earlier religion.

I am, however, awaiting some more changes to this mod before I start using it primarily.

do you install this into the C:\Program Files\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\Mods folder ?

agree completely with the hinduism being resistant to missionaries. they just keep trying, and hindus just keep on doing what they did before.

On the other hand, while Hinduism is one of the most practiced religions in the world, it's spread beyond India is somewhat less than other religions.(As opposed to say Budhism, which has spread to other areas but doesn't have any one mass of concentration that increases it's total to such high amounts as India.(Or so I believe.)

Perhaps Hinduism should work well with Missionaries but not spread naturally on its own nearly as fast?

@abbamouse,

Just a couple of comments. First it's an historical error to tag Judaism as a "non-missionary" religion. Judaism was once an aggressive seeker of converts. Around the time of Christ, around 30% of the total population of the Empire is believed to have been practitioners of Judaism, many of them converts. In fact a lot of the bad feeling between Jews and Christians arose from the fact that they were competing for converts.

Jews eventually gave up their proselytizing role mainly because of the persecution it triggered from the increasingly powerful Christian community.

So I see no reason why Jews should not also have missionaries.

Secondly, it doesn't make much sense to have an increased spread rate of Judaism due to the "diaspora", when the diaspora was a particular historical event! The whole point of a game like Civ is that is enables you to rewrite history. There is no reason to suppose that the diaspora would have taken place in an alternative history, so an increased spread rate for Judaism seems rather arbitrary.

Finally, I'm not sure if it's fair to give Hindus -1 health for cows, because although Hindus don't *eat* cows, they certainly do use them for dairy products, which is arguably a more efficient use of cattle.

Just my two cents worth.

Islam and Christianity are present in nearly every region in the globe. Judaism is not. Judaism only has a significant presence mostly in USA, Canada, UK, Russia and of course Israel.

Judaism should have a very small spread rate, but an amazing resilance.

Don't forget there is a large Jewish population in Poland.

Catholism and Protestanism is far to broad. Besides the fact that Catholic/Orthodox devisions are deeper and older and probably easier to do since there are fewer inter Orthodox issues. Protestantism is essentially just noncatholic nonorthodox christians. Calvinists, Anabaptists(Hated by most forms of christianity around the time of great Schism), Lutherans and the Church of England being the most prevailent. Lutherans and Catholics were more likely to get along with one another than Calvinists and Lutherans. The Church of England was some what of a divine millieux between Catholism and more radical Protestants like the Puritans. It would be to hard to do a protestant catholic devition of christianity. If you did that You would have to do Catholism, Calvinism, Luthernism, The Church of England (Anglocan), and Anabaptism. A straight up Catholic/Orthodox differentiation would be easier, there is a certain level of religious homoginaiety as the Orthodox church spread from Greece to Ukraine and Poland then on to Russia. The Orthodox church was never part of the Catholic church it is its own brand of christianity founded in Greece (The first non hebrew bibles were Greek not roman). All christianity is derived from the Apostle Peter, hence why he is the first pope, but he didn't concider himself a Catholic, just a Christian. The Catholic Church as it is, is a Roman creation and the Orthodox a Greek creation, there is much more distiction between the two.

I only know more about Christian history since I am a chrstian, it may be just as viable to split up Islam or Hinduism. There are many differnt forms of Islam and i know there are sects of Hinduism dedicated souly to Vishnu (some perticularly to his avatar Krishna) and others to Shiva, and at one time to Brahma too. People are always too hung up on the Catholic Protestant split because it happened in western Europe.

A cool idea if you wanted to do a more modern religion would be to do Deism. Deism could be the result of Scientific Methode or Liberalism. Essentially what it entails is that God set the universe in motion and then just doesn't touch it. It was huge among the Philosophes of the Enlightenment and I am sure accounts for a large ammount of nonreligious simply spiritual belifes. Deism wouldn't be able to build anything like temples or cathedrals but they could build a version of monestaries as many philosophes were freverant anti church figures and willing to spread thier beliefs. As a result only deist monestaries could be the only ones built after Scientific Methode along with that it could give a bonus to science and commerce. You probably call the Deist equivalent of a missionary a Philosophe.

Or you could do state enfored aethism as a result of communism or facsim, it would be very similar to deism in that no church/cathedral could be built. It would cause a lasting sad face for every religion in a city before aethism is enforced but science and commerce and production bonuses would be available as a result. When it comes into effect all religious structures would be destroied and converted to gold. It would have to be spread souly by a type of anti-missionary figure that could only act within the state itself. It would give bonus happiness from wine and grains since alcoholism as a way to escape would rise. It would get bonus effectiveness under police state. Religions present would come back if state aethism colapses but religious structures would have to be rebuilt and holy city special structures would be concidered lost. State Aethism would be bad for happiness but good for production as it was intended. CIvs with organized religion, pacifism and Theocracy civics would hate state aethism more than normal.

If some of you aethists are offended by this take on it, as a counterpart Existentialism as a result of Industrialism or Radio or Mass Media. It would spread like any other religions as it is just a belief. No Churches, cathedral or monestaries for it at all. It would have to have a large spread rate and no missionaries, it itself would give happiness/science/commerce bonuses if the state religion, but it would give sad faces if there is another state relgion as most religions are intolerant of aethists. There would be no sad faces with free religion from it with. It would be the only belief not destroied by state aethism and would spread even faster throughout the state as a result.

A good feature would be to dissallow religions to simply spead over bodies of water without first having radio then the effect of it would be ampilfied by mass media.

Good to hear---I thought they basically all got holocausted :(

Good to hear---I thought they basically all got holocausted :(


That is one reason I can be really proud of my Polish Heritage, they were essentially the only European nation to never treat the jewish people like crap. As Christian I have emmense respect for Judism.

it is a bit odd that i found four out of six religions
good to see someone have made modification on religion issue

it is a bit odd that i found four out of six religions
good to see someone have made modification on religion issue


There are 7 religions in civ 4. YOu are right though, the computer always seems to give up on making any religions after Judism. I am always stuck founding Taoism, Islam and Christianity and more often than not Judism and Confucianism. It always muddles my plans up.

People are always too hung up on the Catholic Protestant split because it happened in western Europe.And because so many very bloody wars have been going on for centuries over this split. The Ireland thing is sorta still going on in fact. Catholics haven't been warring with Orthodox like that.

You've got the 100 years war (England vs. France) over the Catholic vs. Protestant thing.

Ireland. Centuries of war over the Catholic vs. Protestant thing.

You've got all the Spanish vs. England wars over the Catholic vs. Protestant thing, which is represented in my scenario, because this war spread to Florida big-time. And I need it to be represented in my scenario.

Nick

...You've got the 100 years war (England vs. France) over the Catholic vs. Protestant thing.


IIRC, before, during, and for quite a while afterwards, England was Catholic. It was only during Henry VIII's rule that it changed.

Unless you mean France, but I'm sure they were Catholic then, too...


Ireland. Centuries of war over the Catholic vs. Protestant thing.

I thaught the thing in Ireland is more about land, and that the Religion thing was just a factor??? (Of course, there, I'm probably getting mixed up ;) )

Oh, and when I get Civ 4, this mod is getting downloaded!!!

IIRC, before, during, and for quite a while afterwards, England was Catholic. It was only during Henry VIII's rule that it changed.

Unless you mean France, but I'm sure they were Catholic then, too...


I thaught the thing in Ireland is more about land, and that the Religion thing was just a factor??? (Of course, there, I'm probably getting mixed up ;) )

Oh, and when I get Civ 4, this mod is getting downloaded!!!


The catholic protestant thng also has to do with the fact that they sent scottish settlers to colonize Ireland. France was never anything but officially catholic, they had a large calvinist minority but the state religion was Catholism.

Islam and Christianity are present in nearly every region in the globe. Judaism is not. Judaism only has a significant presence mostly in USA, Canada, UK, Russia and of course Israel.

Judaism should have a very small spread rate, but an amazing resilance.Again, this is only because of historical accident. Judaism became an underdog close to 2000 years ago, and it hasn't been able to convert much of anybody.
That is one reason I can be really proud of my Polish Heritage, they were essentially the only European nation to never treat the jewish people like crap.Well, currently Jewish tours to Auschwitz and the like have to go under armed guard to protect the tourists from attacks by anti-Semitic Poles. My sister went on one such tour, and the rabbi of my synagogue used to organize them, so I'm pretty sure of that. The Netherlands, for instance, probably has a cleaner record than Poland regarding the Jews.

Sorry for going off-topic, I just couldn't let that stand. I won't say anything further on the topic.
Catholism and Protestanism is far to broad.All the religions are very broad. Taoism isn't even clearly definable. Judaism would include the Sadduccees, Pharisees, Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, and Reconstructionist at various periods, and the differences in their ideologies are much greater than between Catholicism and mainstream Protestantism (consider the Orthodox believing that all Jews have to strictly obey the Oral Law's hundreds of often seemingly arbitrary commandments, as opposed to the Reform who don't believe in observing almost any of them).
And because so many very bloody wars have been going on for centuries over this split.Many would argue that those simply used the split as an excuse, that it wasn't a reason. It's hard to say exactly; clearly the religious differences weren't the only reasons for the various wars, but whether they were a major contributing factor is up for debate. I would tend to believe that religious differences would generally be important in gaining popular support for the wars, but not so much in initiating them.

i also think that missionary class units should be able to cross culture borders even if an open borders pact does not exist. borders don't seem to stop missionaries in the real world, so why in civ? maybe some additional civics modifications would have to be made in order for that to work, but i think unrestricted movement for missionaries would be more realistic.

Actually I am a Muslim and the Imam (there was only one at a time) actually was sort of the ruler of Muslim empires not the guy who spreads it.

Well Imam means different things to different Muslims. Shia Islam tends to be much stricter about who counts as an Imam than Sunni Islam. Is there a better term that all Muslims would recognize as an ordinary, relatively low-ranking teacher of the faith?

Tad -- borders do stop missionaries. See Japan, China, etc. Rulers are quite reluctant to allow outsiders to proselytize, since they see that religious control may lead to political control. The reason we think missionaries don't respect borders is that Western countries threatened Eastern and other rivals into opening their borders to missionary activity; indeed, sometimes wars were fought over the exclusion of missionaries. Moreover, when religious refugees cross borders they are often prohibited from proselytizing (example: the Parsis were Iranian Zoroastrians fleeing Muslim dominance -- to this day, they don't accept converts because that was the agreement made in return for refuge in India).

Tunch Khan: Islamic societies do indeed find alternatives to interest, but they are less efficient. For example, profit-sharing only substitutes for interest when the bank and debtor have common beliefs about potential profitability. Where the bank is unsure of profitability, it will not lend based on profit-sharing. Similarly, many alternatives to interest rely on joint ownership of businesses; these expose the bank to more risk than merely sitting back and collecting interest does. The result is that banks are reluctant to extend credit to people or businesses that would take out loans at high interest rates in non-Muslim societies, e.g. risky borrowers. Finally, these alternative arrangements involve high transaction costs, which may swamp the potential profits from a small loan to an individual. So there are some limits to Islamic banking, since they can do most things non-Muslim banks can do EXCEPT for charging interest. Fewer economic options = higher chance of inefficiency in the market.

About the whole Jew spread issue...

Judaism shouldn't spread quickly, as Orthodox Judaism states that in order to be considered Jewish, your mother must have been Jewish. And Judaism does not have a missionary tradition.

Perhaps to simulate this, without crippling Judaism horribly, you should get 3 Rabbis on founding it. Rabbis should not be buildable, but cities with Synagogues, and the Temple of Solomon, should automatically produce a Rabbi every x turns. x should be about a fourth to half the number of turns it takes a large city with no wonders (but specialists) to create a great person.

PS: Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think Taoism and Hindu really have missonary traditions either. Perhaps this set-up could work with them, too, but 100% spread rate, and longer missionary creation time.

Well, it's just a thought.

The reason we think missionaries don't respect borders is that Western countries threatened Eastern and other rivals into opening their borders to missionary activity; indeed, sometimes wars were fought over the exclusion of missionaries.Exactly.

See the First and Second Opium Wars (France/England vs. China).

Well, currently Jewish tours to Auschwitz and the like have to go under armed guard to protect the tourists from attacks by anti-Semitic Poles.
Hmm, i've been to Aushwitz a few times and don't recall anything like that. I admit, there are some "anti-Semitic Poles", but you can find them everywhere. You really don't need armed guards though.
The Netherlands, for instance, probably has a cleaner record than Poland regarding the Jews.
Check this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Righteous_Among_the_Nations
Sorry for going off-topic, I just couldn't let that stand.

And about jewish missionaries. There were one nation (Khazar Empire) converted to judaism this way. Check this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khazar

I also would like to express my support for the mod idea. Religions are different and they change a lot (for exaple the influence of buddism on Tibet and Mongolia - formely very aggresive countries).
But i think that confucianism should stay. And for the game-balance I think that missionaries should stay for every religion. You should add rather flavors (like slight commerce bonus or health bonuses) than greatly change the rules. I also like the changes to taoism.
Will give it a try.

Where, exactly, did you get the idea Taoists were "anti-State" ? I've been a practicing Taoist for a long time and i've never heard of such nonsense.

I dont want to sound like one of those "YOU OFFENDED MY RELIGION IN A GAME!", but the Taoism bonus in this mod doesnt make a whole lot of sense.

The problem is no bonus will ever make sense to everyone -- even the adherents of that same religion.

Even the constant statement "judaism is not a missionary religion" is simply untrue if you go back far enough in the religion's history.

Well, currently Jewish tours to Auschwitz and the like have to go under armed guard to protect the tourists from attacks by anti-Semitic Poles. My sister went on one such tour, and the rabbi of my synagogue used to organize them, so I'm pretty sure of that. The Netherlands, for instance, probably has a cleaner record than Poland regarding the Jews.

I find it sad and disturbing that you chose to include this shameless and stereotypical slander in this forum. I have been to Auschwitz myself and I have found that the local populations has a lot of respect for ALL the people that have been murdered in the death camp. No, no one needs "armed guards" and no one conducts "attacks" on the visitors, regardless of their religion. Im really discouradged that you had to include these lies on this forum. Especially since this it has nothing to do with the topic at hand.

I am glad that people are working on religion mods since it is good to see some differences between religions arise.

It is always a touchy issue these days and it is impossible to do perfectly becaue of all the various forms of each of the major religions which have arisen over many centuries but it is good to see some basic implematation.

It would be nice if we could do things like have the different major divisions of some the the religions but that would expand things too much.

Some observations:

Hinduism iin principle is not really supposed to expand beyond India and basically means something to the effect of 'the faiths of those who live in India.' In this way most Hindus regard Buddists as a division within Hinduism. But whoever institutes it sould have little trouble making and keeping all their cities Hindu. It sould also demand that you have a caste system.

Polytheism should be a prerequisite for whatever is to give you Buddism.

Is it possible to make monotheists a big problem when a minority under a different state religion? Historcally this is very consistant. It would be neat if a Jewish city in a non-Jewish Civ tended to try to break away to form their own Civ (Civ IV does not however seem to support break away states) and if Christain cities in a non-Christian Civs tended to be very unhappy to preassure you into becoming Christain. I would have Islamic minorities behave the same as Christain but I would also have it so that Jewish and Chriatain minorities do not mind so much being part of Islamic Civs because they are protected under Islamic law. Christain and Jewish states should be intorerant of others faiths in their boarders until after the Enlightenment, so cities of other faiths should be unhappy until that time.

One religion I would like to see added is something like the "high" paganism of the Roman Empire. I usually play as Hindu and pretend that it is the paganism of Julian the Apostate.

Tad -- borders do stop missionaries. See Japan, China, etc. Rulers are quite reluctant to allow outsiders to proselytize, since they see that religious control may lead to political control. The reason we think missionaries don't respect borders is that Western countries threatened Eastern and other rivals into opening their borders to missionary activity; indeed, sometimes wars were fought over the exclusion of missionaries. Moreover, when religious refugees cross borders they are often prohibited from proselytizing (example: the Parsis were Iranian Zoroastrians fleeing Muslim dominance -- to this day, they don't accept converts because that was the agreement made in return for refuge in India).

i hear what you are saying, but i know of many examples where missionaries from certain faiths have gone undercover and broken laws to proselytize. unwanted missionaries has always been a huge problem, and i thought it could be fun to try and role-play that in the game.

however, i've actually come to be against my idea, but not because of international law. rather, players could find themselves using missionaries as scouts to explore areas where no open borders treaty is in play, and i don't like that idea.


Tad

1. Anti-Semitism was widespread throughout Europe during the last 500 years. Search Google for "Polish anti-Semitism" or "Dutch anti-Semitism" or "_______ anti-Semitism" for examples. To narrow your search add in phrases like "19th century" or "18th century" or "pogrom." No European country with a substantial Jewish population comes out well if you do a little digging.

2. butlerj1982: As for Taoism, I picked up the anti-state stereotype because it was so often oppressed by those seeking to establish state authority through religion. Moreover, academic sites like Stanford's religion pages contain quotes like this:
"Dao-centered philosophical reflection engendered a distinctive ambivalence in advocacy -- manifested in their indirect, non-argumentative style, their use of poetry and parable. In ancient China, the political implication of this Dao-ism was mainly an opposition to authority, government, coercion, and even to normal socialization in values. Daoist 'spontaneity' was contrasted with subtle or overt indoctrination in any specific or social dao."

Likewise, Taoism was often associated with rebellious groups and millenarian movements. I think there is something to the idea of Taoism being anti-authoritarian. One last quote from the same page:
Meantime, "Daoist" religious groups (often rebellious or millenarian movements) emerged in varied forms in each dynasty. Because of its "naturalistic" and anti-authoritarian ethos, the term could encompass virtually any "local" religion with its familiar natural "Gods."

For more about why I made the Taoism/anti-statist connection, see
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/taoism/, where I found the above quotes (although I've read plenty of books on Taoism as well, and they also emphasize its anti-authoritarian philosophy).

Judaism shouldn't spread quickly, as Orthodox Judaism states that in order to be considered Jewish, your mother must have been Jewish.Or you have to be ritually converted, as many people are (although obviously several orders of magnitude fewer than those converted to Christianity).
And Judaism does not have a missionary tradition.It did, however, encourage conversion if you go back to around 150ish BCE (the Maccabean Kingdom, a theocracy) or earlier. The more devout kings would have idolaters executed.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think Taoism and Hindu really have missonary traditions either.I don't think any major religion has a missionary tradition. Not like Christianity does, anyway. Some might favor those of their own religion over others to an extent sufficient to encourage conversion in states controlled by those of the religion, or they might flat-out force conversion where possible, but going around peacefully trying to persuade random strangers through argument that they should convert? I've never heard of such a thing, outside Christianity.
[Hinduism] sould also demand that you have a caste system. Modern-day India has theoretically outlawed the caste system, and it's certainly Hindu.
i hear what you are saying, but i know of many examples where missionaries from certain faiths have gone undercover and broken laws to proselytize.Ideally, I think that if nonmilitary units enter the borders of a state that doesn't have Open Borders with their owners, the one whose territory was violated should have a choice: treat it as a declaration of war, or ignore it. In the former case, it would be treated as a declaration of war for the purposes of Defensive Pacts and the like; in the latter case, the violating units could still be killed/captured by the violated player without triggering war.

But that's a really, really minor issue for the amount of work it would take, and it doesn't have much if anything to do with this mod.

Edit:
Is there a better term that all Muslims would recognize as an ordinary, relatively low-ranking teacher of the faith?Mullah?

I didn't bother to read through the entire thread (sorry), just a few issues I saw when I read your first post:

Harbor produces +1 health for crab and clam and Grocer +1 health for wine. Have you forgotten about that or just haven't found a way to solve it?

Gah, I forgot my second point. But it was a very, very good one.

I find it sad and disturbing that you chose to include this shameless and stereotypical slander in this forum. I have been to Auschwitz myself and I have found that the local populations has a lot of respect for ALL the people that have been murdered in the death camp. No, no one needs "armed guards" and no one conducts "attacks" on the visitors, regardless of their religion. Im really discouradged that you had to include these lies on this forum. Especially since this it has nothing to do with the topic at hand.

Not quite true. There have been news reports of people attacking Jewish tour groups heading to camps such as Auschwitz. However it wasn't the locals doing it. It was Neo-Nazi's and the like who were going to the camps on pilgrimmages to celebrate them. Do a Google search and you should be able to find them. There are some twisted people out there.

Now more on topic, I love this mod! A couple of suggestions though, I'm not sure if they have been mentioned already though.

The Ottoman Empire allowed other religions freely in their state as long as they paid additional taxes. As the Ottomans were the de facto rulers of the Islamic world for quite some time perhaps this should be modelled? Extra happiness for other religions present in a city, or extra tax value for every religion other than Islam?

I'd also like to see additional religions. Christianity split into Catholicism, Orthodox, and Protestantism. That way you could have religious discovery existing longer than just the first 15 minutes of the game and it would allow more diversity. I'm not sure if this is possible though.. game limitations?

Apologies if already mentioned.

Not quite true. There have been news reports of people attacking Jewish tour groups heading to camps such as Auschwitz. However it wasn't the locals doing it. It was Neo-Nazi's and the like who were going to the camps on pilgrimmages to celebrate them. Do a Google search and you should be able to find them. There are some twisted people out there.

OK thats true. But to call them "Poles" I think thats a little racist and stereotypical. Id have no problem if he called them "Neo-Nazis".

I find it sad and disturbing that you chose to include this shameless and stereotypical slander in this forum. I have been to Auschwitz myself and I have found that the local populations has a lot of respect for ALL the people that have been murdered in the death camp. No, no one needs "armed guards" and no one conducts "attacks" on the visitors, regardless of their religion. Im really discouradged that you had to include these lies on this forum. Especially since this it has nothing to do with the topic at hand.

"Sad and disturbing," "shameless and stereotypical slander," "lies?" That's pretty provocative language. Especially since it has nothing to do with the topic at hand.

I have to admit; I too, was a bit miffed by R-A-N-M-A's statement. My family would take issue with the treatment of Jews. But I also appreciate the pride one feels in their heritage. And he has a lot to be proud of. I felt that while it may have been wiser to have let it alone, Simetrical's comments were intended to elucidate and not antagonize.

OK thats true. But to call them "Poles" I think thats a little racist and stereotypical. Id have no problem if he called them "Neo-Nazis".


racist? I was uanaware that the term "Pole" was a derogation. But I did see something racist on the Isramod thread....


Quote:
Originally Posted by ibcoltscrew
Thanks alot for this mods, i can finally kick Sharon's ass I wish someone do Iran and Irak too... Just wanted to save Iraki people from american invasion and support Iran in their nuclear program against Israel and the united state...

I like this mod too, I just found a new worst enemy!!!
Next game I start: Play as america and destroy israel.....
__________________


I think perhaps these posts are better suited on David Duke's or David Irving's websites.

Using the term "Poles" to describe the people conducting these imaginary attacks is derogatory to anyone of Polish origin because it give the impression that all Poles are racist. I thought that this was self explanetory but I guess some people are a little dim. And yeah, I dont agree with Israels raping of the other middle eastern nations with USA's help, oops sorry for having an anti-imperialist opinion. Im just glad I dont live in either of those countries.

PS. I can see where youre opinions are coming from though... I wouldnt expect a memeber of the USAF to have anything but imperialistic ignorance on their mind.

Is there any way to include this mod as a permanent aspect of my game without it ruining any of the other modifications I have done to it?

racist? I was uanaware that the term "Pole" was a derogation. But I did see something racist on the Isramod thread....




I think perhaps these posts are better suited on David Duke's or David Irving's websites.

It is possible to be anti-israel without being anti-semitic. There are Jews that don't like Israel, or Sharon.

However, that misspelling of Iraq is nigh unforgivable.

And here we see exhibit A of why the Firaxis devs did not include any abilities for any religions in the game. It leads to an immeadate flame war; thanks boys.

:(

STFU, this is the mod forum not the hate forum.

I apologize for derailing this topic, and strongly suggest that everyone here stop talking about Poland, Israel, Iraq, etc. and get back on-topic.

I apologize for derailing this topic, and strongly suggest that everyone here stop talking about Poland, Israel, Iraq, etc. and get back on-topic.

Good Idea... so can anyone answer my question from post #63?

Oh, yes it is possible.

Option one, and hopefully what will work for you.

Use windiff to compare the directories of both mods. Hopefully they will have no matches and you can simply take the assets file of the addition and copy and paste it into the other.

Unfortunately, that has happened to me once.

The other way is to compare(using win diff) the files that are the same, and check them against the base file and then see which sections you want to change. Time consuming.

You can try editing the main files, but few would suggest that(I did it with the great person's mod.)

MattJek -- TheFourGuardian posted one solution, but there isn't an easy way to automatically "layer" mods on one another without modifying their files in some way.

I do hope to eventually graft my minor realism mods together into one larger mod, but I want to keep them separate for now. Next up: more realistic civics, then on to arty and nukes....

Gufnork: I don't actually know how to eliminate those bonuses yet. I wonder if I could add in a "if _____ is state religion, then -1 health" counter to the harbor. I'll play around with it and see if I can find a workable and balanced solution.

For people who want splits in Christianity, how about Orthodox and Protestant? Those 2 seem like complete opposites in the same religion...

I have to admit that I did not read through all four pages of posts, but in response to the creator's "under considerations" in his/her original post, why not have the Islamic Missionary be a Sufi? Sufis, if I am remembering right, were missionaries who trained in monastery like buildings. They were responsible for the spread of Islam to Indonesia (in addition to merchants), and I believe parts of Central Asia and western Africa. Don't quote me on the western Africa though. They were compared, I believe, to the the Jesuit missionaries/monestaries of the Christian Catholic Counter-Reformation (I can't remember whether the Sufis were Shi'ites or Sunnis though). Hopefully I haven't mixed up too many facts- if I did and inadvertantly offended you, I'm most sincerely apologetic!

Here's a link to the wikipedia entry on Sufis. There's alot of material, but pertinent information in regards to the role of Sufis as missionaries is in the paragraph I've copied over below (I'm sure there's more in the article, but it's a touch on the lengthy side).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sufism

After having gained influence over the whole of the central Islamic world, the brotherhoods (turuq) became the focus for Islam in the new territories that came under Muslim domination or influence. This included the Indo-Malay territories in the East, and West Africa and Andalusia in the West. The brotherhoods made a significant contribution throughout the centuries in presenting the true face of Islam – the Islam of beauty and love.


By the way, nice idea to include Zoroastrianism, and if I could figure out the technical part of downloading mods (I haven't been able to get any to work so far), I would certainly do so with this one!

One last suggestion, though, perhaps include a "Favored religion" for individual civilizations? You'd have to add another faith- perhaps broadly labled "Pantheism" or other appropriateness for the Aztecs and Incas, and perhaps the Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians as well, although they could be characterized by the Christian and Islamic faiths that the majority of their citizens follow today. This would of course mean that there would be no Jewish civilization, but I can't come up with all the ideas!

Another suggestion for this mod down the road (or any other religion mod): an option to disable certain religions at game start. A new screen during world selection would be ideal. As I said a while back:

It seems to me that there are too many religions in the game if you are only playing a 2-4 civ game. I would like to be able to disable individual religions depending on the game. This would also allow me to disable individual religions which are modded in the future with traits I don't feel like playing against.

Everything sounds good except I'm a bit confused about what this means:

Hinduism
Disadvantage: Cows produce -1 food in cities with Hindu Temples.
Advantage: Cows produce +1 happiness in cities with Hindu Temples

I started my first game with this mod last nite. I discovered hinduism and a built a hindu great city with a prophet. From then on, Hinduism has been spreading to other cities on the same continent (of other civs) like crazy. Is this normal. PS there is no other major religion on the same continent.

Everything sounds good except I'm a bit confused about what this means:

to give a simplified answer, in the hindu faith, cows are sacred and therefore not eaten. that is why they are given no food bonus for them, but receive a happiness bonus instead.

something else that hasn't been answered yet (at least not here, i read all 4 pages, but didn't look somewhere else): is it easy to add religions?

i want to see my atheism included! i even wrote an e-mail to firaxis a couple of months ago before civ was released when i first read about the religions-concept. i didn't get an answer though, as you may rightly guess.

i could even live with the paradoxy of having atheism included as a "religion".

ps: if you tell me what you need, i might provide you with the german names of the different religion's missionaries.

I have to admit that I did not read through all four pages of posts, but in response to the creator's "under considerations" in his/her original post, why not have the Islamic Missionary be a Sufi? Sufis, if I am remembering right, were missionaries who trained in monastery like buildings. They were responsible for the spread of Islam to Indonesia (in addition to merchants), and I believe parts of Central Asia and western Africa. Don't quote me on the western Africa though. They were compared, I believe, to the the Jesuit missionaries/monestaries of the Christian Catholic Counter-Reformation (I can't remember whether the Sufis were Shi'ites or Sunnis though). Hopefully I haven't mixed up too many facts- if I did and inadvertantly offended you, I'm most sincerely apologetic!

Just so, I was going to suggest Sufis as well. And, in response to your question, sufism can be found in Shi'i and Sunni communities.

It basically just means "religious specialist" or "mystic." (Well, literally, it means "wool" because of the simple woolen garments they originally wore.)

If I take Christianity, I would like to be able to build the "Intelligent Design" wonder. It would counter-affect the "Theory of Evolution" from the lost wonder mod.

It will prove to the world that God created the planet, and has an effect of increasing CHRISTIAN religion (prayer in schools), while taking a hit on science. The player does not have to have Christian as the state religion to get the bonus to Christian spread rate.


Since you are taking on a wonderful idea to customize religions! not only does it add flavor to the game, but it makes the choices strategic in nature. I tend to pick whatever religion I actually discover and stick with that, but now I would probably consider more carefully.

However, I also see an opportunity here to wrap within this mod issues that people seem to care about. One at least here in America is the issue of Intelligent Design. Creating this wonder, would be the fruition of the plans of people whose goal it is to institute something that is going to benefit Christianity.

I would dare say you could also consider how the issues of abortion/women's right affect and polarize a society. I think rather than explore "Babbism" or slightly more obscure religions, I'd rather see using religion to explore division in a culture. In the Modern time, this could be simulated by for instance creating "Liberal Christianity" that gets discovered with a modern technology.

Once it is unlocked, it is just like any other religion, but there could be benefits and trade offs to having both the 'original' or what some might call 'traditional/conservative' and the liberal christianity existing in the same city. In addition, certain cultural civic choices, such as woman's suffrage could have either heightened affects or actually negative effects based on the state religion.

IE: Islam and woman's suffrage = oil and water

I thought Sufis were mystics, and that Sufism was often regarded as heresy by orthodox Muslims. At least I seem to recall that from my college religion courses (more than a decade ago, so perhaps my memory fails me).

As for more religions, they're hard to add until we have more tools. There's another thread about this, and the city graphics in particular are difficult to add. That's one reason I replaced a faith in this mod (the other is that I don't want there to be too many religions in the game). I also agree that seven religions is a lot for a small map or a game with few players. I'll add the option to disable one or more religions once I figure out how. This would also allow me to add in more religions (again, once we figure out how to do it well) so people could choose to play with only the faiths that interest them. That would add a lot of play variety.

One last thing: I'd love to add the "religious victory" condition that's been described in other threads, but I want to work out all the kinks (ie how to make things fair for the AI, which doesn't try for a religious victory) before adding it to the mod.

mirorred at http://civilization4.filefront.com/ :)

I seem to have found a bug: if I convert to Zoroastrianism then there's no icon next to my name on the scoreboard but there is an empty space instead (assuming I founded it). If the AI converts to Zoro. after I found it then their entire name vanishes, leaving just their score (which can still be clicked on to bring up the diplomacy interface).

How could I reverse the icon changes so that Zoro. uses the Confucan icons? That would be a temp. fix for the problem and it would also make it easier to spot which cities have converted to Zoro. because the icon included is hard to distinguish against the city background, especially if there are lots of icons there already.

There is a slight problem with judaism and islam..
If some other religion decides to bombard you with missionaries, you're pretty much screwed, no?

Don't forget there is a large Jewish population in Poland.

no there isn't. the holocaust, you know?

[The Poles] were essentially the only European nation to never treat the jewish people like crap.

that has to be the least correct statement EVER in this forum.
the poles were and still are rabid anti-semites. radio marija, a catholic station, routinely issues statements that would land them in jail in countries that forbid racist remarks, like germany and austria.

and, R-A-N-M-A, your statements on the christian faiths are a complete invention. orthodox christianity and ROMAN catholicism (catholic does NOT equal roman) developed from the same roots, where did you GET your "was invented in greece" theory?

Catholic means "universal" in greek, and refers to the nicene creed of 325, "a Christian statement of faith accepted by the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Anglican, and most Protestant churches." (wikipedia). so, the "catholic church" INCLUDES the orthodox one.

SEVEN HUNDRED YEARS later, a change made to the nicene creed, called the filiolique (more here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filioque_clause)) caused the split of the roman catholic and the orthodox church, the great schism of 1054.

Umm...I was wondering if you could include UUs for each religion, other than the missionary unit. Maybe Crusader, Warrior monk...ect.
Patricius

I'm kinda late here coz I didn't realize civ4 could be modified before they released the modifying tool in "early 2006", how did you do that anyway? :D

Ok first I'm a Moslem living in Egypt, and I suggest the name Da'eiah (which means an "outreacher") or the name Shaikh (which is essentially someone high-in-religion in its religious meaning). People call me Sheakh -Egyptian dialect for Shaikh- because I'm growing my beard :)

Btw the word Imam means leader, and it serves for both the one who prays infront of a group of people (in mosques or other places, and can very be a "normal Moslem"). Or the Caliph, who is the leader of the Moslem nation as a whole.

I suggest.. no, I INSIST on someway to make ethnic cleansing and remove undesired religions from your cities on a cost of unhappiness (maybe even riots or destruction of state-religion buildings in some other cities?) + Other civs adopting the persecuted religion might declare war on you or at least hate you alot ---> Which the AI learns to use properly so it's fair!

Also there's a small problem about the general idea of your patch: if a city has, say, 4 relgious-temples in it including hinduism. Then, in that case, cows shouldn't have much of an effect coz hindus compose about 1/4 of the citizens only. I think it should refer to STATE RELIGION to do all these effects... not simply having a temple in the city

Judaism
Disadvantages: ...Cannot build Jewish Missionaries (it's just not a missionary faith)...This can actually result in some of your cities ending up without Judaism.

How about just making them cost twice as much as the missionaries of other religions?

Ranathari -- I'll work on this. I had noticed this as well but I hadn't connected it to the mod (I thought it was a bug in the game). I'll test it out to see what's going on. I have noticed an odd text bug here or there in the building descriptions and I need to hunt those down and squish them.

Cyberchrist -- I'm OK with Judaism being somewhat limited in size, but I agree that there has to be a better way. Perhaps I could give Judaism a few free missionaries when first founded. I could call them the Maccabees or something. I'm still working on play-balance so I'm open to suggestions.

Others -- Many of these suggestions will have to wait until someone who can program better than I rewrites large parts of the python (or perhaps until the SDK is released in 2006). I do intend to pursue the religious UU option, though -- but expect it to take a while before I am able to release a version with them included. I have other bugs to fix first (Taoism is behaving oddly).

Please add a documentation file to the mod.

Zoroastrism could come with Monarchy or Writing - these techs are a bit earlier than Code of Laws.

was wondering about mroe ancient religoins like druidism and shaminism could these be included?

The Islamic missionary could be called "alim." Alims (or Ulama for the proper Arabic plural) were religious scholars but Medieval:Total War uses alims as a way to spread Islam. I'm a Muslim, too, btw.

Abba, what happens if we enter the lines of changed health and happiness into the GameInfo CIV4ReligionInfo.xml file? Would this make the effect for all cities in a civ embracing a certain religion?

'alem, plural 'olama' would rather mean "religious scientist", and he teaches Islam to Moslems not to non-Moslems. The ones responsible for spreading Islam (like Ahmad Didat -may Ullah have mercy on his soul-) are Do'ah, single Da'eiah

And while we're coming up with completely opaque terms for missionaries that probably won't make it into the mod, makriv would perhaps be a Jewish equivalent, or shali'akh (dati) according to my dictionary.

I'm still looking for a better Islamic Missionary name than Imam. Mullah is too high-ranking for the purpose. I need a name for an ordinary teacher of the faith.
[/LIST]

I would propose Da'yeh which is the name Muslims give for some one who teaches the religion with the prurpose of educating people or speading the faith.

Imam is more of a mosque leader who mainly heads the prayer and preach the Friday Prayer.

Sheikh on the other hand is more of a title that is commonly given to religious people whether they have a functional rule in the religion or just being religiously spiritual.

I am a Sunni Muslim myself, though I am confident that the same naming is followed by Shiite Muslims, yet I am not quiet sure if the functionalities are the same.

BTW, good mod you have got there ;)

@Kaenash: Why would Intelligent Design neccessarily favor christianity?
Almost all religions have some sort of creation story that goes against evolution.
Egypt had one, Islam has one (Bahamut isn't just from Final Fantasy ;) ), Judaism has one, even Hinduism has one. Not so sure about Confucianism, Taoism, or Buddhism, but they were around a long while before Darwin, so they probably have creation myths as well.

If you're going to have Intelligent Design as a wonder, you should have it benefit all those religions as well.
And before you ask, personally I believe that evolution is an intelligent design. :lol:

I like Da'yeh -- I'll have to make sure it doesn't mean different things to different Muslims before I make the change. My initial term was Alim, but this can refer to any Muslim scholar so it didn't seem quite right.

Wait until we get to the proper names for religious UUs :)

Fachy: I don't think that will work. I played around with putting the info in different places and the game would never load correctly. It may be possible, but my guess is that something else -- a new schema, some Python changes, or work with the SDK -- will be necessary before we can dispense with the "Temple effects" method of representing religious difference.

Elmoro, you repeated EXACTLY what I said!

abba,
I just figured Islam's spread rate is 75 not 133! I hope that wasn't deliberate? I also think it spreads more as the rate increases not vice versa, since I found christianity was set to 25 not 400 (you said you'd make it spread slower on its own, but uses more missionaries)

Moreover, I didn't find the 2% extra cost in hurry production you said about the taoism temple! In which line is it?

I was wondering what could happen if we changed the line
<StateReligion>NONE</StateReligion>
Would this make the temple only built/effective under a certain state religion?

Question: Does the AI "realize" these changes? For example would a Jewish AI create a temple if it needs more health in a city having kosher cows? If it wasn't then the game wouldn't be balanced

Also abba, PLEASE don't use any prophet names for Islam, it's considared very atrocious to use any real prophets names on games or general depicting, having a great prophet called Mohammad for example (or even Jesus, Adam, or Moses..etc) will stab any Moslem which reads about it, including me

Also abba, PLEASE don't use any prophet names for Islam, it's considared very atrocious to use any real prophets names on games or general depicting, having a great prophet called Mohammad for example (or even Jesus, Adam, or Moses..etc) will stab any Moslem which reads about it, including meActually, I don't think there is a prophet named Jesus in the game. What an odd coincidence, that they thoughtfully leave out the name that could be offensive to a relatively large percentage of their readership but happen to forget the ones that only Muslims will get offended at. :crazyeye:

No there's no prophet named Mohammad in the game either. I was just warning abba of the consequences of modding that, whether it's Jesus or Mohammad or Lot.

There is, however, a prophet named Abo Bakr (who is the most prominent companion of prophet Mohammad) and I already sent 2k games an email about that

No, they haven't replied of course!!

There is, however, a prophet named Abo Bakr (who is the most prominent companion of prophet Mohammad) and I already sent 2k games an email about that
IIRC, Abu Bakr was Arabia's leader in Civ3.
Was his status as a prophet the reason he didn't show up as a leader in Civ4?

I dunno, maybe people like me complained so they decided to make him as a prophet, which is not as significant as a leader, especially after the "kingdom of heaven" was made :D. I removed his name from the prophets' list in my mod

I'm trying to make it impossible to switch religions before 200 turns instead of 5, anyone knows where that line is?

No there's no prophet named Mohammad in the game either.There's a "Mohammed Shah", twentieth Great Prophet listed in civ4gametextinfos_greatpeople.xml. Right after Abu Bakr. Surely that's not some other Mohammed?

Anyway, it would be rather unfortunate if almost all major Jewish names had to be removed from the Great Prophet list (a few could presumably stay, like Rabbi Akiva and whatnot). I mean, no offense to your religious convictions, but I would kind of prefer to see my religion adequately represented in the list, not deprived of having any significant figures from before a few centuries CE or whatever.

The name Mohammad is probably the most dominant name in the Arab world, maybe even in the Moslem world. My name is Ahmad, which is another name for the prophet Mohammad (comes from the same verbal root)

I don't know who Mohammad Shah is, but Shah means king. So perhaps he was a Persian Moslem leader or something

I found the name "Moses" in the prophet list and removed it of course, for respect to prophet Moosa (Arabic name for Moses). I even changed the name of "great prophet" to "great religious guy" all together! To avoid "playing" with "prophets" and depicting them in a game

omg you're a jew??

@Kaenash:

And before you ask, personally I believe that evolution is an intelligent design. :lol:

So a deist, basically. Hey, that's an interesting idea for, if not an actual religion, some sort of proto-religious tech or what have you.

I also wish Shinto were incorporated into the game, but (until the Meiji and Showa periods, where things get state-sponsored and distorted) it's not really a very codified faith, nor a very centralized one. I would, however, like my Japanese civ to be able to have some of the classic shrine architecture and so forth, just for accuracy's sake.

Maybe the Shinto cathedral would be Yasukuni, +1 unhappiness in countries declared war on around 40 turns ago? :crazyeye:

Edit: After reading the posts above mine, I think in general there needs to be more random silliness and idiosyncracies in various religions. It would, of course, be realistic if religious leaders seriously manufacture issues out of controlling polygonal, rudimentary versions of holy guys in a ludicrously oversimplified fictional version of human history. :rolleyes:

I didn't read through the whole thread, but I have an idea for a disadvantage for zoroastrianism: -1 health in cities (or you could make the rate increase with the population) because dead bodies don't get buried, but are left to be eaten by vultures.
You can then add some extra positive effects too.

And by the way, I think that you shouldn't disable the imam just because of the higher spread rate of Islam, since it gets founded much later than the other religions and thus needs a boost to get as many followers as the other religions.

Right now my biggest priority is fixing the graphic bug. The cause of the bug is clear: I can't seem to correctly cut and paste the Zoroastrianism symbols from the font tga files in the Greek World mod onto the Confucianism symbols in the regular font tga files. I'm using the GIMP, but I'm doing something wrong because the borders around the symbols aren't propoerly preserved when I do the cut and paste. Does anyone have a guide up for editing the tga files?

I found the name "Moses" in the prophet list and removed it of course, for respect to prophet Moosa (Arabic name for Moses). I even changed the name of "great prophet" to "great religious guy" all together! To avoid "playing" with "prophets" and depicting them in a game

That's a mature and commendable response to something you find offensive in the game. Someone expecting Firaxis to change the basic game for everyone wouldn't be - it's a game, not reality.

omg you're a jew??

Hmmm. Care to expand on that please?
If someone said "omg you're a muslim?" what would your response be?

Maybe I'm out of turn, but it seems like this mod is running counter to the philosophy of the game slightly in that it is restricting the religious movements in-game to historical implimentations rather than allowing the "what if something else happened" scenarios. One of the specific quotes from the manual was "what if Judaism developed a missionary tradition?" There's nothing inherint in Judaism per-se that restricted that from happening. It's just the way things worked out.

Maybe another approach to take would be to treat religions as having a primary and secondary characteristic ala the civilizations leaders that adds a positive influence on an aspect of the religion? Christianity might have traits like "evangelical" (more, cheaper missionaries) and "organized", Islam "evangelical" and "ummah" (double foreign leader pleasure for same state religion, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ummah), Zoarastrian "philosophical" and "juristic" (decreased maintenance or similar)... etc. You are then not judging a religion as having negatives as much are you are recognizing that the core beliefs of some are given to express themselves in certain ways.

Adding "Atheism" as a religion that is created by the "humanism" advance might also make sense. Actually, it should probably be called "Secularism" or possibly "Positivism" since you shouldn't define something by what it's not. Religions are not necessarily anti-science (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_science) but more than others it may have "scientific" (bonus research) and "material" (bonus commercial) as properties. Positivism's temples may be any social structure that highlights humanism. I'd look for a common municiple element of maoist china, communist russia, and their satelites to see what filled this role.

A world event which creates a schism in an established and spread religion would be an awesome addition as well. What if Budhism had split like Islam? Or what if Hinduism split twice like Christianity (Roman v Greek, Catholic v Protestant) resulting in drastic shifts in forgien policy and sparking continential wars and chaos as your income from the adherents was halved. It would be bad, of course. Possibly caused by warring with a nation of the same faith, or by having a civic despised by the religion. (Christianity: Serfdom?, Islam: Caste?, Hindu: Organized Relgion?)

I love the idea of giving religions a greater depth in the game. I think this mod is a step in the right direction, but maybe just a little more to the left. ;)

(Sorry if this came across as a lecture. I mean no offense to the obvious hard work and deep consideration displayed by the mod's creator)

The name Mohammad is probably the most dominant name in the Arab world, maybe even in the Moslem world. My name is Ahmad, which is another name for the prophet Mohammad (comes from the same verbal root)I thought the commonness came from Mohammad, rather than predating him. That is, I would have thought the many Mohammads of today are named after Mohammad the prophet, whose name would have been fairly unremarkable and uncommon in his name.
I don't know who Mohammad Shah is, but Shah means king. So perhaps he was a Persian Moslem leader or somethingLooking at the dates more closely, you seem to be right. The entries look to be orgainzed by date; "Mohammad Shah" is right after Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225–1274) and right before Tsongkhapa (1357–1419). That puts him around 1274–1357. Unfortunately, while Wikipedia lists (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_kings_of_Persia) several Mohammads who were kings of Persia then, it doesn't have articles for any of them. It just looks weird to me that they would include someone who's surely such a minor religious figure. Oh well.
omg you're a jew??Yup, Orthodox Jew, why?

Ostar: About the firaxis thing, I don't think the gameplay is much less fun if they removed the names of prophets considering it may offend some people. And hey, speaking of fun and offending, making all religions equal shows how freaked Firaxis is when it comes to "gameplay fun vs. offending people"

lol if Moslems have been slaughtering Jews in a certain country for over 50 years I wouldn't be surprised if a Jew went like "omg you're a Moslem??" :)

Simetrical: nothing... just... inquiring...

Judaism WAS a missionizing faith early in its history, before the spread of Christianity and Islam made it illegal for Jews to missionize. There is NO historical reason that the game should restrict Jewish missionizing.

btw, a few suggestions:

1) Remove the penalty on Hindus and cows. Cows are a huge source of food for Hindus, in the form of milk and dairy products.

2) Judaism and Islam are both legalistic religions. Perhaps allow Jewish Yeshivot and Islamic Madrassas (i.e. Monastaries) to double as Courthouses if Judaism/Isalm is the state religion. Both, however, also have more regulations than other faiths. For Judaism, perhaps have 1/7 of hammers become culture (Sabbath rest), and for Islam perhaps have 1/12 of food become culture (Ramadan fasting precluding working in the fields).

3) Islam spread by the sword. If Islam is a state religion, add a % likelihood that conquered cities immediately adopt Islam.

4) Give Christianity a much bigger peaceful (natural) spread rate than other religions, and make Christian missionaries cheaper to build.

lol if Moslems have been slaughtering Jews in a certain country for over 50 years I wouldn't be surprised if a Jew went like "omg you're a Moslem??" :)


Oh, like 50 years of constant terrorism and warfare by Muslims towards Israel -- denying Israel's right to exist, rejecting every peace offer ever made, and sending constant suicide bombers to blow up buses and cafes? Please. You evidently are a bigot, and one so totally indoctrinated in anti-Israel hate that you believe Jews have been "slaughtering" Muslims for 50 years, and are shocked that you are having a conversation with a descendant of apes and piges.

Oh, like 50 years of constant terrorism and warfare by Muslims towards Israel -- denying Israel's right to exist, rejecting every peace offer ever made, and sending constant suicide bombers to blow up buses and cafes? Please. You evidently are a bigot, and one so totally indoctrinated in anti-Israel hate that you believe Jews have been "slaughtering" Muslims for 50 years, and are shocked that you are having a conversation with a descendant of apes and piges.

He actually said thad Muslims have been slaughtering Jews.

This is rapidly turning into a religious debate.

Koh: Cows give milk for everyone, but they don't give hindus meat. So the point was about meat. And could you tell me why aren't jews missionaring NOW, since there are no laws which bans them to do so? Judiasm is both a faith and a RACE, unlike Christianity and Islam

Right so I go into your (britishly colonized) country, make the britts promise me a homeland in return of my help to them in WWI, take lands from your country and kick you out of your house coz "Hitler burned 80 billion Moslems in WWII", how senseful!

Then when YOU defend yourself you're a terrorist!! No wonder, the modern definition of "terrorism" is "resistence" anyway... I guess Hitler was right to crush the french res...oops, terrorism when he invaded France! Those bad Frenches were bombing his poor soldiers *sniff*

And the Jews aren't the descendants of pigs and apes, rather the ones who obeyed God were NOT cursed, and the ones we see today are the descendants of good jews ^.^

And if you were trying to be sarcastic that my religion preaches nonsense, I suggest you take a good look at Genesis and Exodus, mr. rational

I was wondering when somehting like this would finally be done... adds more flavor to religons.
:)

What ads more flavor? Fighting?

...the modern definition of "terrorism" is "resistence" anyway... It most certainly isn't! The modern definition of "terrorism" is ... wait for it ... "terrorism". If you have been made to believe otherwise you have been badly manipulated and you really should think long and hard about the validity of anything else you have been 'taught' from the same source.


Anyway, back on topic, how about making all non state religions cause 1 unhappy each in cities that have them. This would of course be countered by the temples but would remove the ridiculous situation of cities with more religions being happier than the those with fewer.

As for Zoroastrianism then how about Temples causing -1 health pr default due to their open air burial rituals(as someone suggested earlier), but having access to Incense gives +1 health and +1 happiness?

Also, I am not sure the changes to the Grocer and Harbor is a step in the right direction.

What ads more flavor? Fighting?
Yes but more specifically a simple differentiation.

Any difference I think makes it more interesting.


I am hoping that in the future we can sway the game into having religous wars. This is a critical part of human history and should be implimented in the game. Currently it looks a little difficult to impliment but it had potential. I think if we came up with some sort of propoganda skeme that put negative results on certain religons this may work. depends on how the AI reacts to it though....

It most certainly isn't! The modern definition of "terrorism" is ... wait for it ... "terrorism". If you have been made to believe otherwise you have been badly manipulated and you really should think long and hard about the validity of anything else you have been 'taught' from the same source.

Okay so: Palestinian resistence are terrorists, Lebanese resistence are terrorists, Iraqi resistence are terrorists, Afghani resistence are terrorists, Chechnyan resistence are terrorists. WHILE american occupying forces are democracy lovers, israeli occupying forces are peace lovers, russian killing bastards are unity lovers... doesn't sound right to me anyway!!

The very reason I should "wait for it" is that ANY definition of terrorism would certainly make america and israel the biggest terrorizing countries in the world

Oh but wait a minute I almost forgot.. killing Moslems doesn't make you a terrorist, only killing Westerns and Jews make you a terrorist..hmm...


Anyway, back on topic, how about making all non state religions cause 1 unhappy each in cities that have them. This would of course be countered by the temples but would remove the ridiculous situation of cities with more religions being happier than the those with fewer

And how exactly can we do that?

@Fachy:
I don't know why you insist on describing 'resistance' and 'terrorism' as being the same - they are not. I will try to spell out the differences
1) Resistance is fighting foreign forces that have occupied your country - in your own country - in an attempt to end the occupation
2) Terrorism can be any number of violent acts performed to force any larger group of peoples to meet with specific demands. Such acts include (but are not confined to); attacking foreign 'enemies' abroad(full scale war excluded), attacking non-occupying foreign people visiting or legally residing in your own country(tourists, diplomats, peacekeeping forces etc.), attacking your fellow countrymen(civil war excluded), willfully attacking innocent civilians of any nationality(a crime under all circumstances actually)

An 'attack' can be things like - shooting, bombing, kidnapping, taking hostage, hi-jacking, sabotaging etc. etc.


Now, regarding the way to make non-state religions cause unhappiness then in the "CIV4CivicInfos.xml" file you need to change the following in all the Government civics (yes, government):
<iNonStateReligionHappiness>-1</iNonStateReligionHappiness>

The reason you can't do it under the Religion civics is because there is a bug in the calculation of negative values if the <bStateReligion> is set to 1 ... in the same civic.

A small drawback(or maybe not) to this approach is that Religious Freedom civic will now - at best - give 1 less happiness than with a civic allowing a state religion, but that can be remedied by giving the largest cities automatic extra happiness like the Representation civic (or something).

Koh and Cyberchrist: Hindus still get some health from cows' milk, but they have to wait until refrigeration and supermarkets. I always felt that the initial health bonus was eating the meat, as it is with pigs and deer. The second health bonus, on the other hand, is from being able to ship milk throughout the empire due to refrigeration. (Local milk consumption is already accounted for by the tile bonus).

On Zoroastrianism: I'll look into the health effects of the Parsees' disposal of the dead. I'm sure there's an article or two somewhere in the research literature.

On Terrorism: I give my students an assignment which asks them to define terrorism (nature of the acts involved, whether motive matters, whether who commits the act matters, whether the civilian/military nature of the target matters, whether there is a peacetime/wartime distinction, etc) and then consistently apply the definition to historical summaries from which I have removed the proper nouns. Their grade depends only on being consistent with their own definition. They routinely describe the US as committing terrorist acts (support for the Nicaraguan contras always makes the cut, and sometimes the Boston Tea Party does as well -- vandalism of corporate goods because the hated government was favoring the corporation to the detriment of consumers), as well as Syria (sponsorship of some attacks in Lebanon), Israel (the King David Hotel bombing, the assassination of Gerald Bull), Russia (sponsorship of a Bulgarian exile's assassination), and France (bombing of the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior). Oh, and many of them say that wife-batterers are also terrorists (use of violence to provoke fear), as are animal rights and abortion-clinic arsonists. I'm sure if I had more examples I could get them to label virtually any country as terrorist because if you apply a definition consistently it will almost always sweep in more than you expect.

And as for CyberChrist's definition of terrorism, it he has defined resistance in such a way that every act of resistance is an act of terrorism (but not necessarily the other way around). Resistance is a subset of terrorism under this pair of definitions -- a violent attack to force someone to evacuate your country ("meet specific demands").

My definition of terrorism focuses on target choice (civilians), methods (threat of physical harm, not mere property destruction), and goals (political or social change -- i.e., not the mafia trying to extort money or some guy trying to keep his girlfriend from leaving him). This does exclude things like the bombing of the USS Cole, however, which makes some people uncomfortable.

Oh, and I posted a new version of the mod, with fixed graphics, a new name for Islamic Missionaries, and a free Rabbi for Jews :)

Has anyone figured out how to give more than one free unit when you found a religion? I'd like to give Judaism some free Rabbis at the beginning and a slower spread rate thereafter.

Koh and Cyberchrist: Hindus still get some health from cows' milk, but they have to wait until refrigeration and supermarkets. Keep me out of the Hindu Cows debate - my 'beef' is with the Harbor and Grocer changes :p


And as for CyberChrist's definition of terrorism, it he has defined resistance in such a way that every act of resistance is an act of terrorism (but not necessarily the other way around).I am horrified to hear that someone that is educating other people not being able to(deliberately unwilling to?) see the difference between the two as I have described them. Let me try to rephrase.

1) Resistance targets military targets of occupying forces in your own country for the singular purpose of liberating your own country
2) Terrorism is all other acts of violence on any larger/organized scale that is not taking place due to a state of full scale war and/or are directed against civilians - with any kind of political gain/goal being the purpose/reason

Monasteries cannot build Jewish Missionaries (it hasn't been a missionary faith for millenia).

That might be true now, but it was not always the case. Just because Judaism is racially exclusive (to a certain extent) now does not mean that it was always so. In fact, God's command of 'be a light onto the nations' was taken as liberty to convert goys to the faith. Not only that, but the depopulation of the Hebrews at the hands of the Assyrians, Macedonians and Romans meant that proselytisation was required for Judaism to even survive.

At this point I’d like to quote Jospeh Reinach, a French politician of Jewish origin, writing in 1919 for Journal des Debats

The Jews of Palestinian origin constitute an insignificant minority. Like Christians and Moslems, the Jews have engaged with great zeal in the conversion of people to their faith. Before the Christian era the Jews had converted to the monotheistic religion of Moses other Semites, Greeks, Egyptians and Romans in large numbers. Later, Jewish proselytism was not less active in Asia, in the whole of North Africa, in Italy, in Spain and in Gaul. Converted Romans and Gauls no doubt predominated in the Jewish communities mentioned in the chronicles of Gregoire de Tours. There were many converted Iberians among the Jews who were expelled from Spain by Ferdinand the Catholic and who spread to Italy, France, the East and Smyrna. The great majority of Russian, Polish and Galician Jews (the provider, in time, of what might be called political Zionism’s hardcore) descend from the Khazars, a Tartar people of Southern Russian who were converted in a body to Judaism at the time of Charlamagne.

Resistance is a subset of terrorism under this pair of definitions -- a violent attack to force someone to evacuate your country ("meet specific demands").

I think the hair we're splitting is a little off-base. If anything, it underscores the complete lack of consensus in this country as to what "terrorism" is other than a buzzword for politicians to score political points. I disagree, however, that resistance is a subset of terrorism; some forms of resistance do not employ terror. I would go so far as to say that so long as those engaging in violent resistance confine their attacks to military personnel, it probably isn't terrorism. Unfortunate? Reprehensible? Potentially, but that's not necessarily terrorism.

Here's the basis for my distinction: at least under international law, those taking up arms against an occupying force are not guilty of war crimes. Clearly, they can be punished if caught by those occupying powers, but they are entitled to Prisoner of War status. It's the principle of levee en masse. A more detailed explanation can be found here (http://www.crimesofwar.org/thebook/levee-en-masse.html). (Incidentally, the crimesofwar.org (http://www.crimesofwar.org/) page is full of useful information; we recently used the book in several courses on international law).

At any rate, I feel this is all getting just a touch off-topic. I just downloaded the mod and am sincerely looking forward to giving it a go!

That might be true now, but it was not always the case. Just because Judaism is racially exclusive (to a certain extent) now does not mean that it was always so. In fact, God's command of 'be a light onto the nations' was taken as liberty to convert goys to the faith. Not only that, but the depopulation of the Hebrews at the hands of the Assyrians, Macedonians and Romans meant that proselytisation was required for Judaism to even survive.

At this point I’d like to quote Jospeh Reinach, a French politician of Jewish origin, writing in 1919 for Journal des Debats

Btw, Reinach might have said it in 1919, but modern genetic evidence indicates in insignificant contribution of Khazar DNA. On the other hand, you are correct that Judaism was a missionary faith untl the rise of Christianity & Islam made it dangerous for Jews to do so. The genetic evidence indicates, interestingly (or perhaps unsuprisingly, given the circumcision requirement), that most of these converts were women . The end of prostelyization by Jews was a historical accident, not something endemic to Judaism (as Judaism's aversion to pigs, clams, and crabs is).

On the other hand, Judaism has NO monastic tradition, so renaming "monastaries" as "yeshivot" makes sense.

Israel (the King David Hotel bombing, the assassination of Gerald Bull)

The King David Hotel was a legitimate military target - it was British military HQ. It also wasn't done by Israel, but by the pre-state Irgun/Stern Gang (which were banned by the State). That being said, there were at least some civilians at the hotel.

Placing the assassination of Gerald Bull in the terrorism category is totally ridiculous. Bull was a contractor working for a hostile foreign government building weapons to target Israel. He was the very definition of a military target. With the exception of ex-Nazis, Israel has never targeted civilians (civilians have, of course, died as collateral damage in military activities).

Cyber, if the definition of terrorism is so simple why hasn't it been defined yet? Yes that's right.. because the Jews who control the world ('s politics and money) don't want israel to be condemned as a terrorizing county, since all it does is freak civilizians (and resistors, of course)

My (better) idea is to simply bind the temples' happiness with state religion happiness... this way it won't give any :)s unless it matches with the state religion

Btw, I think it's easy to make the first discoverer of a (religious) tech receives 5 (missionary) units, right? We just add more lines I think

Abbamouse, I'd say you're a bit biased because you didn't include any Western terrorism towards Arabs/Moslems like the atrocious assasination of Shekh Ahmad Yaseen or even the British conspiracy to bomb the sect-meeting in Iraq

Karlds: Speaking of POWS, read my signature

Cyber, if the definition of terrorism is so simple why hasn't it been defined yet? Yes that's right.. because the Jews who control the world ('s politics and money) don't want israel to be condemned as a terrorizing county, since all it does is freak civilizians (and resistors, of course)Seems that prejudism and racism are both (sadly) still alive and doing well in this world - and even on this forum. :rolleyes:

But I fear we have long since passed the borders of threadjacking here and I will not post any further on the subject (on this thread anyway).


Back on topic then Temples only giving happiness under state religions wont achieve the desired effect of multiple religions in the same city increasing unhappiness that needs to be countered (with temples).

Accusing me of racism wasn't very convincing... not just because I don't consider it an insult, but also because the whole world has grew (or let's say: remained) racist; spearheaded by israel and her major supporter: the us. Anyway we're not going anywhere with this

Ok, so why do you want to make unhappiness then build temples to counter them, when you can simply make happiness only occur with state religion temples? I don't think we should "punish" the player because they had foreign religions enter their borders, we should just give them bonus when they build temples matching their own state religion. Makes life simpler

Remember that when a new religion enters a city, and converts some of its population (who belonged to the old religion already), that creates tension. SO if a new temple is built: new converts are happy, but old (conservatives) are mad because the gov is acknowledging the new religion's presense. So it really ends off balanced

Cyber, if the definition of terrorism is so simple why hasn't it been defined yet?It has been (http://www.tfd.com/terrorism): "The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons." This definition automatically excludes all states: Israel isn't terrorist, Iraq wasn't terrorist, China isn't terrorist, you name it. No regard to race, just nationhood. And it makes the Palestinians terrorists but the Israelis just fine. Strangely, though, it leaves out the civilian component, which means that even Iraqi militants who exclusively target American soldiers are terrorists, while of course America is just fine.

Of course, this is disputed. The principal alternative definition depends on attacking civilians (or noncombatants, or people not directly aiding a war you disagree with, take your pick), but can possibly include states as well; under this definition, Palestinians who attack Israeli civilians not directly aiding war definitely are terrorists, but those who attack Israeli soldiers definitely aren't. On the other hand, Israelis who attack people they believe to be enemy combatants probably aren't terrorists, but those who attack or threaten to attack people they don't believe to be enemy combatants are. Problem with the latter is, it's hard to say whether any given killing of a noncombatant was made with knowledge of their noncombatant status; those who support Israel would of course be inclined to give the benefit of the doubt, while those who are against it would not be.

However, I submit that this latter definition (which abbamouse endorsed) is clearly flawed. Here is a scenario akin to those abbamouse gives to his students, although a bit more blanked out:
A publicly threatens that if they find out that anyone does X, they will kill him. A later determines that B did in fact do X after being warned, and proceeds to kill him. X is something that A believes is wrong, and A intended to deter it. No state of war is in effect, and no one in the scenario is a combatant under any conventional definition.Everyone apply your definitions, and let's see what it turns out to be. :D
At any rate, I feel this is all getting just a touch off-topic.Well, I figure that as long as the creator of the mod has no problem with it . . . :mischief:
Placing the assassination of Gerald Bull in the terrorism category is totally ridiculous. Bull was a contractor working for a hostile foreign government building weapons to target Israel. He was the very definition of a military target. With the exception of ex-Nazis, Israel has never targeted civilians (civilians have, of course, died as collateral damage in military activities).Well, Bull was an enemy contractor, but not an enemy combatant. Is anyone who authorizes or aids a war a legitimate target for assassination? How about medics, for starters? Or people driving trucks filled with food to give to soldiers? Or is it only people involved in making or transporting actual weapons? Standards vary.

Of course, it's not completely certain (http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=248432&contrassID=1&subContrassID=8&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y) that the Israelis even did it.
Yes that's right.. because the Jews who control the world ('s politics and money) don't want israel to be condemned as a terrorizing county, since all it does is freak civilizians (and resistors, of course)Damn, I wish I controlled the world. ;) Jews don't actually control the world at all. They have a strongly disproportionate effect on it compared to their numbers, but they have zero influence outside the Middle East and a bare few Western nations (the U.S. being the principal example). The United States' support for Israel, furthermore, has a lot more to do with Christians (80% of America, substantial percentage views Israel as the Holy Land and Jews as the former Chosen People of God) than Jews (2% of America, although disproportionate influence as noted).
like the atrocious assasination of Shekh Ahmad YaseenAgain, there are different definitions of terrorism. Yours is not the only correct one, and it is not the only one that does not involve racist double standards. Some would say that advocating terrorism (do you agree by any chance that Palestinians blowing up random Israeli men, women, and children is terrorism?) is itself sufficient to make someone a valid target for assassination. Others would disagree.
Accusing me of racism wasn't very convincing... not just because I don't consider it an insult, but also because the whole world has grew (or let's say: remained) racist; spearheaded by israel and her major supporter: the us.And Israel has attacked only Palestinians and not other Arabs, why? There are plenty of Israeli Arabs, and hey, they even have votes! Surely ideal targets for racist attacks. But, oddly, Israeli attacks have overwhelmingly targeted places that tend to produce people who attempt to attack Israel, haven't they? Not Israeli Arab territory, not territory outside of Israel's de facto control (at least since the Yom Kippur War, when Israel was the one attacked), and not even the Gaza Strip, conveniently enclosed in a lovely fence that stops Palestinian suicide bombers from leaving and, seemingly, Israeli soldiers from entering—even though they have the keys.

Fachy - warned. Nationality (or in this case, religious) bashing is not allowed and will not be tolerated here.

This thread is dangerously off topic. I suggest it gets back to the mod, and quickly.

We have a whole Off Topic (http://forums.civfanatics.com/forumdisplay.php?f=18) forum where you can debate to your hearts content.

Ok, so why do you want to make unhappiness then build temples to counter them, when you can simply make happiness only occur with state religion temples? I don't think we should "punish" the player because they had foreign religions enter their borders, we should just give them bonus when they build temples matching their own state religion. Makes life simplerBecause it makes sense(for both realism and gameplay reasons) that cities with more than 1 religion should suffer unhappiness if they are not allowed to practice their faiths.


Remember that when a new religion enters a city, and converts some of its population (who belonged to the old religion already), that creates tension. SO if a new temple is built: new converts are happy, but old (conservatives) are mad because the gov is acknowledging the new religion's presense. So it really ends off balancedIf the StateReligion + negative NonStateReligionHappiness calculation wasn't bugged then you could make Theocracy civic cause 2 unhappy so that temples would only reduce non-state unhappiness partially. But the only way to accomplish this atm would result in it always being possible to have a state religion - even with Religious Freedom (you switch StateReligion to Government civics and NonStateReligionHappiness to Religion civics).

Simetrical: This definition isn't approved by the UN and I think it's an "informal" definition (one you brought from a dictionary or something). Anyway I think it's also fair to say that terrorism isn't always wrong, depends on who are you terrorizing, bad guys or good guys (which we will always disagree upon) :D. I still don't see why can't a country be a terrorist country, when a group of people can... the act is the same, no?

Turner I wasn't bashing and I think everything I said here was objective to a big extent, anyway >>

Cyber, I still don't understand how do you counter my argument that it remains indifferent: new converts happy to practise their faith, while old converts are mad because of this

Fachy - warned. Public discussion of moderator actions is not allowed. Warned again for off topic comments.

I would suggest you read the Forum Rules (http://forums.civfanatics.com/forumrules.php) before posting again.

I was serious about keeping the posts on topic.

Cyber, I still don't understand how do you counter my argument that it remains indifferent: new converts happy to practise their faith, while old converts are mad because of thisEven if I agreed that religions can't tolerate the presence of other religions at all (which I don't - except from under strict Theocracies), your proposed way doesn't add any consequences of having multiple religions in the same cities at all - mine does ... to minor a degree anyway.

EDIT: If you are suggesting to keep the nonstate unhappiness with no way to counter that then that would be greatly unbalancing imho. Missionaries would become weapons of unhappiness to launch on your opponents to which the only defence would be to have permanently closed borders - something the AI would have clue about

Btw, Reinach might have said it in 1919, but modern genetic evidence indicates in insignificant contribution of Khazar DNA.

What genetic evidence? I wasn't aware that there was a 'Jew' gene, and genetics cannot yet produce a template of what combinations of genes a specific racial group will have. Even there was that level of sophistication, I doubt very much that there is an adequate DNA database on the Khazar people that would allow comparison.

On the other hand, you are correct that Judaism was a missionary faith untl the rise of Christianity & Islam made it dangerous for Jews to do so.

Actually, Jewish conversion efforts continued right up until at least the 15th century (when Ferdinand the Catholic - or Ferdinand II - expelled the Jews from Aragon.

The end of prostelyization by Jews was a historical accident, not something endemic to Judaism (as Judaism's aversion to pigs, clams, and crabs is).

On the other hand, Judaism has NO monastic tradition, so renaming "monastaries" as "yeshivot" makes sense.

So would you then agree that Judaism in Civ4 should have access to Missionaries (however they are named)?

Zulu - warned. Take it to the OT section.

That was the last warning. Continuing to post OT will result in a suspension of your posting privledges. This goes for anyone posting OT.

What are you talking about? I'm providing justification for the mod creator putting missionaries back in the game for the Judaism religion! I'm not breaking any rules, and it's relevent to the mod.

Duh I wasn't discussing your actions I was discussing MY actions!!

Cyber: That's the point.. I don't want everyone to have closed borders inf ear of missionaries, that would suck

Abba did you succeed in adding multiple Rabbi's to the first one discovering monothiesm?

Fachy - 3 day ban.

Cyber: That's the point.. I don't want everyone to have closed borders in fear of missionaries, that would suckYou are not making any sense. My suggestion wouldn't make everyone close their borders as the effects of more religions could be countered.

I guess I will have to wait until after Christmas for your reply ;) :p

I would really appreciate a version of this mod which just adds Zoroastrianism, keeping all religions generic and equal.

Great job. I would like to see Shintoism added as a religion. After all, it's the predom religion in Japan...then and now.

Great job. I would like to see Shintoism added as a religion. After all, it's the predom religion in Japan...then and now.

Shintoism was a response to American demands for seperation of church and state in the 19th Century (the Meiji period). You see, Japan didn't actually have the concept of a church - state-sponsored or otherwise. So the imperial government cobbled together various different sects to form the Shinto religion. Shintoism was a way of appeasing the Americans overtly, whilst still being Japanese underneath. In effect, Shintoism is a foreign, Western creation. Thus, I find it highly amusing that the Japanese National Front call themselves the Nationalist Shintoists.

Shintoism was a response to American demands for seperation of church and state in the 19th Century (the Meiji period). You see, Japan didn't actually have the concept of a church - state-sponsored or otherwise. So the imperial government cobbled together various different sects to form the Shinto religion. Shintoism was a way of appeasing the Americans overtly, whilst still being Japanese underneath. In effect, Shintoism is a foreign, Western creation. Thus, I find it highly amusing that the Japanese National Front call themselves the Nationalist Shintoists.Err no ... Shinto is one of the worlds oldest religions and it has nothing to do with any American pressure. What happened in 1822 was that a ritual that paid homage to the Emperor(making him divine) was required by the citizens, which for all intents and purposes made Shinto the State religion.

That is true to a certain extent. Ancestor-worship was around before the Americans came along. However, Shintoism as an organised religion is a foreign concept. Even to this day, many Japanese perform the rituals of Shintoism but will deny being religious.

The name you picked for Islamic missionaries is not universal and very uncommon. There are not even sufficient resources about the term and it's meaning. All other suggestions made here earlier (Sufi, Alim, Imam, Sheik) are way better in terms of use and practice. There are plenty of other terms used to define various different muslim scholars and religious people which are commonly used among muslims and equally understood by non-muslims such as: Dervish; Mullah; and Hodja which I would recommend.

Khan, I'm an Arab Moslem and I never heard the word Dervish or Hodja! And if it wasn't for Afghanistan war, I'd probably have never heard the term "Mullah" either. Sufi is confined to Sufism only, which is a small sect.

Anyone who likes this mod please check my improved version

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=150574

Khan, I'm an Arab Moslem and I never heard the word Dervish or Hodja! And if it wasn't for Afghanistan war, I'd probably have never heard the term "Mullah" either. Sufi is confined to Sufism only, which is a small sect. Ok, then I suggest you check some mainstream online resources. :) Wikipedia is a good start. Islam, as a culture, is not limited with Arabic terminology. It's a much richer world.

Taoism
Advantage: Taoist Temples (but not other buildings) ALWAYS survive capture of a city, unlike any other religion's Temples.

Umm, isn't this more of a disadvantage to you, by being an advantage to whoever takes over your cities?

It certainly is! I changed that in my mod!

Yes, the whole Taoism temple thing does cut both ways. I'll look at Fachy's version of the mod to see what I'd like to incorporate in the next update. My current priority is updating the files for 1.52 compatibility. My next priority is to begin adding religious UUs. I'm out of town now, so none of this will happen until Jan 5 or 6 at the earliest.

Everybody's bashing at me in my thread nobody likes my mod waaaah :cry:

Everybody's bashing at me in my thread nobody likes my mod waaaah :cry:

Make the game you want to play. Some will like, some won't.

Confucianism is much more of a philosophy of ethics than a theology per se,
I agree this point.
abbamouse, when you update your mod, can you help to fix the Taoism logo?
http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=109121&d=1135761542

Everybody's bashing at me in my thread nobody likes my mod waaaah :cry: It's perhaps because you are closed to positive suggestions? And maybe you think what you have is the best already?

Humph if I went with anybody's suggestions somebody else won't like it. I really like what Kael said :)

Nice to see your post in another thread, Fachy :D
Isn't what Kael sais exactly what I said in your mod's thread ? :rolleyes:
You put a lot of effort to your mod and the poll clearly shows that some people really enjoy playing it (now there's one more enthusiast since I last looked at yours mod thread :goodjob:

And don't :cry: , just be a man and try to improve your mod just a little bit :)

Happy New Year :D

I posted version 1.52 (I always bump up the version to match the latest patch version, even though little changed between 1.11 and 1.52) so everything should be current with the latest patch. Indeed, the mod now requires 1.52 to play. Let me know if anything strange pops up.

Kelvin -- I don't understand what's wrong with the current Taoism logo. The one you posted looks nice, but how is it different than the in-game one, aside from being larger and therefore more detailed?

deleted, it was just a stupid post

I found a graphic bug that popped up in 1.52. Cities weren't properly showing religion icons. I fixed the bug in 1.53 (download from first message in thread).

Hello abbamouse,

I had actually this discussion here in general thread as someone told me about your mod. http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=149110

I tested it yesterday and must say, excellent job!!

Regarding your to-do list for the next version:
The idea of moving Zoroastrism to a earlier stage than Code of Law is great. Zoroastrism is 3700 years old and should be able to be discovered sooner than anything but Juddaism. I am still thinking which technology would make sense.

However I disagree with your idea of penalty for the corpse disposal. The Zoroastrians are actually very strict about health and purity. E.g. there are strict cleaning rituals with ammoniac for the corpse bearers. The corpse was not just laid openly somewhere, but at the top of a special big tower called "Tower of Silence". This Towers were in the barrens far away from the city. The corpse was then eaten up by vultures and the sun. The bones were then buried later. This measurement was taken to not pollute the earth with the corpse.

The Zoroastrians were even in those ancient times some sort of environmentalist. None of the elements were allowed to be polluted. It was forbidden to urinate into a river. If someone disposed a corpse into the river he would have been charged to the dead sentence. Polluting the Air with the wrong way of using a smoky fire was also forbidden. Polluting the holy fire itself was of course also not allowed. If I were you, I would even consider a health bonus to Zoroastrism.

But your other point of making their Fire Temples 20% more expensive is very sharp. Indeed it was and still is quite costly maintaining these temples.

Just for the record: Back to Corpse disposal in the Tower of Silence; this was only done for the laymen. The King and royal family were after their death been embalmed with special oils and wax and buried in mausoleums carved in the hills. (Achamenid until Sassanid era)

You can see here in 3D these mausoleums in the hills from Sassanid era:
http://www.world-heritage-tour.org/midEast/ir/persepolis/kabaZartosht.html
Turn also to the left and have a look at Zarathustra’s House (Ka’beye Zartosht) This was supposed to be a special FireTempel. Maybe a small wonder in our game?


Kind Regards,
Houman

IMHO, temples should trigger their specific advantages and disadvantages only if they are temples of your state religion. let me provide you with an example:

it seems kinda strange that a city with 5 religions already present in it loses 1 health after I spread hinduism and build the corresponding temple... yeah, hindu in that city won't eat cows, but the remaining 99% of the population (buddhist) will, so it's kinda nonsense.

other than that, awesome work.

Back to Christianity, maybe a split-up in Catholic, Orthodox & Protestant would be nice.

First:
A Tech should be implented called "Reformation" or something which allows that all monothestic, polythestic and philosophical religions to be changed to the staatereligion, which must also be monothestic, polythestic or philosophical, by missionarys. Preq .-technology for Protestantism.

Second:
A Tech should be implented called "Inquisition" or something which allows missionarys or inquisitor called additional units to remove other religions as the staatereligion with a certain chance.

Third:
the Catholic way is rather that basic kind of Christianity, so it should have a average spreadrate and missionarys, but their inquisitors are double effective as normal ones.

The Othodox way is the the right and true kind but rather unique to the other both ones, it has no spreadrate of its own, it only can spread to its Missionarys which are double that succesfull than other missionarys.

The Protestant way is mostly more open and emacipated than catholizism, and it should have a higher spreadrate. They still have missionarys to fasten the process up, but they only can reform instead of convert.

At Last:
As long as the founding city of a christian religion is in the hands of civ with that religion as staatereligon, +1 :) in all citys with that staatereligion too, otherwise -1 :mad: .
Christian religions do only have small diplomatic-malus on each other, -1 than -4 in times of peace, but at war this should be rise to -6.


Karen

Gekko, you obviously haven't been reading my posts here nor my thread where which I resolved that problem :)

Gekko, you obviously haven't been reading my posts here nor my thread where which I resolved that problem :)
For several reasons, I prefer abba's religion mod to yours. Perhaps you'd be kind enough to tell us how to change it in this mod, for those of us that choose not to use yours?

Isnt it possible to religions split in the middle of the game, like, first there was Judaism, them same unhappy people, or maybe a great person born (Jesus) and you can use him to create Christianity. Not create through technologies...

Im not good in religion history, but im pretty sure that each one developed from another one...

Maybe when you have many unhappy people on your cities they just decide to create another religion... And you can deal with it or put an heavy army on your cities to stop its spreading...

Just ideias....

Gekko, you obviously haven't been reading my posts here nor my thread where which I resolved that problem :)

well, I've checked out your mod, but it seems a lil bit too much "extreme" to me. I'm happy with abba's changes, but imho even this mod still needs some improvements. I have a question: does every city have different percentages of followers for each religion present ( ex: buddhism and hinduism present, 70% B, 30% H ) , or does it simply know that the city has 2 religions present in it? I suspect it is the latter, which will make my complaints pretty hard to address...

My initial reaction to Fachy's mod -- posted here because it's more of an explanation of why I made certain choices than an indictment of the ones Fachy made.

I think it's great to see someone else trying to make these religions different and interesting. I'm not going to make a laundry list of stuff I like/dislike about Fachy's mod, but I do want to talk about why I won't be following his lead in one critical area.

I've looked through Fachy's stuff using a tool to compare the xml files (since I didn't quite understand all of the description in that thread). As I understand it, the biggest change in his mod is requiring a particular faith as your state religion before you can build its temples or enjoy their benefits. I'm not entirely comfortable with that approach, for the following reasons:

1. If you convert to , say, Taoism, then your Jews effectively cease to exist and you enjoy the benefits and costs of having a 100% Taoist population. Perhaps there are some effects that really should key off of which faith is the state religion, but surely your Jews haven't started eating pork just because the state religion has changed.

2. As far as I can tell, multiple religions are not only useless, but actually bad under Fachy's mod. In order to prevent people from simply choosing no state religion (whereupon the game lets them build buildings that would otherwise require a particular state religion), you have to introduce some sort of penalty for having no state religion. Moreover, Fachy also introduces a penalty for each religion in a city, which is partially offset by the one temple that will be active at any time. So what's the problem?

a. Free Religion becomes a terrible choice, offering big unhappiness penalties without the usual advantages of the civic. Since I'm interested in realism, this would imply that we should see societies with freedom of religion being the most strife-torn nations on the planet. In fact, the reverse seems to be true -- most free-religion countries seem quite peaceful. Indeed, most of them experienced far more strife when they had a state religion (provoking violent opposition from nonstate religious groups) than after they adopted free religion.

b. Religious diversity becomes a source of unhappiness. This makes intuitive sense to many people, since it takes two to fight and therefore at least some diversity is required for conflict. However, I study civil wars for a living and the best available evidence suggests that religious diversity usually decreases the risk of civil strife. While there are certainly some religious wars out there, countries with lower levels of religious diversity actually have a slightly higher chance of civil war than countries with a high level of religious diversity. We rarely hear news stories that say "Muslims and Christians in Guinea didn't kill each other last week" -- but that is the normal state of affairs. Moreover, many of the most bitter "religious" wars are actually fought between co-religionists who disagree on some arcane point of doctrine (often these wars are really about who gets to exert religious-political authority, not really about the doctrinal disputes at issue). The best work on this issue was done by a team funded by the World Bank; some notable papers were written by Collier, Hoeffler, Sambanis, and others I forget. Other papers, including one by Fearon using different data and methods than the World Bank scholars, have reached the same conclusion. While much of this research was published in peer-reviewed journals, you can get most of the important papers by simply Googling for "risk of civil war" AND "religious diversity" -- search for those phrases in the text if you don't know how to read tables of statistics. Here's a few links for the curious (warning: these papers are dense, filled with statistics and math -- focus on the conclusions, which are pretty easy to follow):

Collier and Hoeffler -- Greed and Grievance in Civil War (http://www.csae.ox.ac.uk/workingpapers/pdfs/2002-01text.pdf)
Fearon -- Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War (http://www.yale.edu/leitner/pdf/PEW-Fearon.pdf)

There are several dozen of these studies, although most of them focus on similar data and are written by a handful of researchers. Now there are a few studies that say that religious diversity plus state repression of nonstate religions increases the risk of conflict, but even these effects are quite weak compared to the effect of economic and strategic variables.

To summarize: I'm not implementing a "religious diversity is bad" element because it wouldn't be realistic, and I'm not tying Temples to state religion because that leads to bizarre outcomes when you choose Free Religion or switch state religions.

This really isn't intended to be a negative post, so now I'll pose a question. I do think Fachy's approach has a lot of interesting elements to it, even though I don't want to do exactly the same thing as him for the reasons I just gave. What I would like to do is tie most of the effects of a religion to the number of people with that religion in a city. I don't think this is possible yet, because many of the interesting values (i.e. health from Pigs) can only be integers (unlike health from forests, which gets to be .4 instead of 0 or 1). Moreover, I don't even know if there exists a variable that says what % of a city is each faith. I suppose that 1/(number of faiths in a city) would do in a pinch, but there is no way to define and use that variable in the game yet. The SDK may change this, and I'm still poking around in the Python files and others' mods to see if someone else has solved the puzzle.

My point? I'm looking for more ideas about how to implement things realistically. I recognize the problems that come up when you tie everything to Temples as I've done, but I haven't been able to find a solution that doesn't create more problems than it solves. I hope Fachy and others continue to pursue their mods, because that increases the chance that one of us will stumble across the perfect solution to these problems.

What I would like to do is tie most of the effects of a religion to the number of people with that religion in a city. I don't think this is possible yet, because many of the interesting values (i.e. health from Pigs) can only be integers (unlike health from forests, which gets to be .4 instead of 0 or 1). Moreover, I don't even know if there exists a variable that says what % of a city is each faith. I suppose that 1/(number of faiths in a city) would do in a pinch, but there is no way to define and use that variable in the game yet. The SDK may change this, and I'm still poking around in the Python files and others' mods to see if someone else has solved the puzzle.

that's also what I would like to see in your mod. Thanks for the quick and clear answer. I agree with everything I quoted. keep up the good work :goodjob:

Gekko']that's also what I would like to see in your mod. Thanks for the quick and clear answer. I agree with everything I quoted. keep up the good work :goodjob:
Ditto. :goodjob:

Great !! Congratulations abbamouse ! :)

I made some proposal, but your mod is far less controversial, but no less enjoyable.

Regards

I'm thinking about changing the techs that grant certain religions. Here is how the history breaks down:

Hinduism: Elements as early as 2000 BCE, writing in 800 BCE. A number of sites give a figure of 1500 BCE for a complex faith containing many of the elements of modern Hinduism.

Buddhism: 500 BCE or so -- founded by Buddha, who had been educated in Hindu thought (so of course Buddhism was a response to Hinduism, and thereofre was informed by it)

Judaism: As with Hinduism, there is huge disagreement over the age of Judaism. For example, there is no archaeological evidence of Kings Solomon and David or any of their predecessors. If there was an Egyptian captivity, it seems most likely to have been around 1200 BCE, give or take a century. We have clear archaeological evidence of Israelites somewhere around 900 BCE. So a range of 1500 BCE to 900 BCE for Judaism seems to be pretty reasonable. There was probably some cultural influence from Zoroastrianism on Judaism's development during the Babylonian captivity, but most scholars seem skeptical of claims that Jewish theology was greatly altered by Zoroastrianism.

Zoroastrianism: While elements of this faith seem to be quite old -- linguistic eveidence suggests perhaps as early as 1500 BCE -- the "traditional" dates given for Zoroaster's/Zarathushtra's life would have him teaching around 600 BCE (a date considered improbably recent by most historians). Somewhere betwen 1500 BCE and 1200 BCE would be a reasonable origin date for this faith.

Taoism: Elements of it date from around 400 BCE, although some works like the Tao Te Ching may have been written as recently as 200 BCE. It was certainly a organized movement by 100 BCE, however. So a date of 400BCE - 200 BCE seems reasonable.

Christianity: The Gospels seem to have been written down sometime around 70 CE, although we might have trouble recognizing their authors as Christian today. Still, a time-frame of 30 CE - 70 CE seems pretty reasonable. Christianity was obviously an offshoot of Judaism when it was founded.

Islam: From about 610 CE to 632 CE, Islam was explicated by Mohammed. There is plenty of historical evidence to support these dates. Islam drew from both Jewish and Christian traditions, recognizing both as "people of the book."

Implications:
1. The order in which religions appear should be something like:

Oldest:
Hinduism (1500 BCE, give or take 300 years)
Judaism (1500 BCE - 900 BCE)
Zoroastrianism (1500 BCE - 1200 BCE)

Old:
Buddhism (around 500 BCE)
Taoism (400 BCE - 200 BCE)

New:
Christianity (pre-100 CE)
Islam (600s CE)

2. A faith which was clearly informed by another prior to its establishment as a distinct religion should require the prior religion (or rather, its associated tech) as a prerequisite. So:

Hinduism = no prereqs
Judaism = no prereqs
Zoroastrianism = no prereqs
Buddhism = Hinduism prereq
Taoism = no prereqs
Christianity = Judaism prereq
Islam = Judaism and Christianity prereqs

So combining these two, the tech tree's religion elements should look something like this:

Hinduism ---------------> Buddhism
--Judaism ------------------------->Christianity----------------->Islam
----Zoroastrianism
-----------------------------Taoism

Right now, the tech tree looks more like this:

Buddhism------------------->Taoism
|----------------------->Zoroastrianism
-Hinduism---->Judaism--->Christianity----->Islam

So here are the problems:
A. Buddhism appears too early, usually before Hinduism
B. Buddhism doesn't require Hinduism's tech
C. Judaism requires Hinduism and comes a bit too late
D. Zoroastrianism comes too late
E. Zoroastrianism shouldn't require Buddhism and Hinduism (actually, you can already doge this if you go the Currency route to Code of Laws instead of the Priesthood route, but this rarely results in getting the tech first and founding Zoroastrianism)

Here's the outline of a solution:
Move Zoroastrianism earlier
Move Buddhism later, to a tech that requires Hinduism's
Judaism shouldn't require any other faith's prerequisite
Buddhism and Taoism should appear at a similar time
Christianity should then follow, and then Ilsam (as is already the case)

Specific suggestions:
* Hinduism stays where it is, but Polytheism's cost is lowered to 80 instead of 100 so it might actually be the first religion founded in more games.
* Swap Monotheism and Meditation on the tech tree, which allows players to research Monotheism at the beginning.
* Since Priesthood now has Monotheism as a prereq, have Judaism founded by first to discover Priesthood.
* Allow Meditation to be researched if the civ already knows Monotheism -- and have the first to discover Meditation found Zoroastrianism.
* First to discover Literature founds Buddhism
* Theology now requires Priesthood rather than Monotheism

Any thoughts on this system before I implement it?

sorry to say abbamouse you are wrong with buddhism, i just took a whole(boring) course on Buddhism and I most clearly remember that Buddhism came way Before Hinduism actully Buddhism is split into 2 main branches, one is the strict Buddha monks the other is the lay people(do not have the names right off hand something like Himanaya and Mayiana, my spelling is off) my point is the branch of Buddhism for the lay people is where the Hinduism derived from...and about Sidhartha(Buddha) himself being a Hindu is that a joke, Buddhism is a way of life not truly a religion anyway, i have books on this if you need any help.... this is just some creative criticism....

Specific suggestions:
* Hinduism stays where it is, but Polytheism's cost is lowered to 80 instead of 100 so it might actually be the first religion founded in more games.
* Swap Monotheism and Meditation on the tech tree, which allows players to research Monotheism at the beginning.
* Since Priesthood now has Monotheism as a prereq, have Judaism founded by first to discover Priesthood.
* Allow Meditation to be researched if the civ already knows Monotheism -- and have the first to discover Meditation found Zoroastrianism.
* First to discover Literature founds Buddhism
* Theology now requires Priesthood rather than Monotheism

Any thoughts on this system before I implement it?


is this realistic and historically accurate? if yes, go for it :D

AWolfe: If you prefer Abba's mod then ask him not me :p
Abba: Islam was founded in a basically pagan society, only had some jewish minorities and very very few christians in it.

I have thought of a tech tree something like this:

* Mysticism (no requirements)
* Priesthood (req Mysticism) founds Zoroastrism

* Polytheism (req Mysticism) founds Hinduism
* Meditation (req Polytheism AND Priesthood) founds Buddhism
* Philosophy (req Meditation AND Literature) founds Taoism

* Monotheism (req Priesthood AND Writing) founds Judaism
* Theology (req Monotheism AND Literature) founds Christianity
* Divine Right (req Theology AND Monarchy) founds Islam

That should fix the chronology, and allow the ability to choose the Abrahamitic or the Dharmic path.

Geebo: Not even the Buddhists claim that Buddha was born earlier than the 600 BCE range. Indeed, many of them are beginning to think he may have been born a bit later. See
http://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/history/b_chron-txt.htm
for a more or less standard set of dates. I suspect we are in rough agreement on the date for Buddhism.

So the notion that Hinduism is not as old as Buddhism can only be true if Hinduism is relatively young. I think the disagreement among scholars stems from disagreements over the definition of Hinduism. I identify Hinduism as emerging with its "scriptures" or constitutive texts such as the Vedas -- and there is little doubt that the Vedas preceded Buddha by at least several centuries. Some argue they were composed in 1000 BCE - 1300 BCE, while others argue for a more "recent" date of 800 BCE or so (still prior to Buddha). Now if you insist that Hinduism is more than its scriptures and some sociocultural traditions, then it is true that many "doctrines" of Hinduism post-date Buddha. Indeed, some authors have gone so far as to argue that British colonialism a few hundred years ago is what really sparked the emergence of "modern" Hinduism that recognized a common basis for its many disparate beliefs and practices. But I don't think Hindus would have any trouble recognizing the practices of people 2800 years ago as being distinctly Hindu (ie as close to Hindu as the Christian Apostles were to modern Christians). So while you know a lot about Buddhism, I don't think many Hindus would agree with your view of Hinduism.

If you search the old thread where I planned this mod, one of my biggest priorities has been to avoid giving offense to people when they look at their own faith (of course, plenty will be offended by the overly positive portrayal of other peoples' faiths, but this cannot be avoided). I think Hindu being really old avoids offending Hindus (and is likely correct), and I think a date of around 600 BCE for Buddhism avoids offending Buddhists. Buddhists may not like the Hindu date and vice versa, but that's not important to me as long as the decision is supported by available empirical evidence. As far as Buddha being a "Hindu" -- well, he was surrounded by Hindu practices (or Vedic ones, if you prefer). That doesn't mean he was a Hindu, but he saw Hindus and interacted with them because those were the people around him. When he rejected prior approaches, he was implicitly rejecting the beliefs he had seen in his travels.

Well, I went ahead and coded a few changes to the tech tree. I'm still open to discussion, and changing prerequisites and techs really isn't that hard once you've planned everything out. So this is a "first cut" of a revised tech tree; expect revisions over time.

Well, I went ahead and coded a few changes to the tech tree. I'm still open to discussion, and changing prerequisites and techs really isn't that hard once you've planned everything out. So this is a "first cut" of a revised tech tree; expect revisions over time.

so now monotheism only founds judaism and not a single other benefit? that's cruel. let it have at least another one good effect, otherwise it will be the only tech in the game that's only useful for founding a religion...

aside from that, I like the changes. they make sense. :goodjob:

I didn't notice that, Gekko. I'll see what I can do to change it.

I agree with having a seperate tech for religion, like a couple of mods did before. Founding a religion (at least a late one, according to my mod :p) is very useful

Zoroastrianism: While elements of this faith seem to be quite old -- perhaps as early as 1200 BCE -- the usual dates given for Zoroaster's/Zarathushtra's life would have him teaching around 600 BCE. Somewhere betwen 1200 BCE and 600 BCE would be a reasonable origin date for this faith.


@abbamouse,

The only reason why the tradition of Zoroastrians nowadays uses the date of 600 BC is that the script as such was used much later in the ancient Persia. The reason for that, as explained the books below, is that the priests thought the written form of the religion can be misinterpreted as soon as someone tried to write it down. For this reason the priests were trained from age of 5 to memorize the whole concept. The written form (called Avesta) came much later into place.

The date 600 BC came only into existence because at the time of the third Persian dynasty no one really knew when Zarathustra had lived. No one knew of a great event for the beginning of the calendar than the birth of Cyrus the Great who freed the Jews in Babylon.

It is impossible to think that Zarathustra had lived 600 BC while the Persian entered 50 years later Babylon and freed the Jews. Zoroastrism could not have been spread in only 50 years all over the empire. We know that this is impossible since the early beginning of Zarathustras message is being told in Avesta as a very slow progress of more than 10 years until it could take over only one state.

The Gathas, which contains 17 hymns of Zarathustra, is part of the Avesta the holy Book of Zoroastrians. Linguists in the beginning of the 20th century have proven that the Gatha is written in such an archaic dialect that is in total contrast to all other parts of Avesta. Through intense research they have proven that Gathas that is written in the "Old Avestan" amazingly close to the Indian Vedic. Only because of the early isolation of Zarathustra’s tribe, the language has evolved differently or slower than Vedic India. Prof. Mary Boyce shows even one sentence in both languages than only very few letters differs from each other.

This theory is now accepted very widely that Gatha is the only part of Avesta that is deriving directly from Zarathustra himself. The Age of this language is 3700 years ago (1700 BC). [Not 1200 BC]

Sources:
Prof. Marry Boyce (Zoroastrians)
Samuel Nigosian (The Zoroastrian Faith)

P.S. Your idea about the changes is excellent!

Houman -- Thanks for the info. I'm always a little leery of linguistic dating, particularly when it comes to ancient languages. The techniques used for estimating linguistic drift over time are pretty crude. Moreover, the dating of languages in central and south Asia is extremely politicised. Nevertheless, I should alter the date range to "1500 BCE to 1200 BCE" since that seems to be the range of estimates for the origin of the faith itself. It doesn't really matter to the game, though, because Zoroastrianism is already one of the first faiths to appear in my mod (roughly the same time as Judaism, and only slightly after Hinduism). The tech tree is a pretty crude instrument for mimicing history, so a difference of half a millenium is barely noticeable :)

Sorry Abbamouse, I did a mistake in the numbers (it is 1500 BC, and not 1700 BC anymore). I Had the wrong year in my head. :( I typed the complete foreword as proof. :) You are right though, it won't change the mod much, since you have placed it already as the oldest category. I think it can be very informative to set the records straight in the game's description. Since it is a good way to learn for kids and for adults. ;)

Regards
Houman

Foreword to this Edition
"Zoroastrians: Their Religious Believes and Practices"
Prof. Mary Boyce


There have been notable advances in the study of Zoroastrianism since the book was published in 1979, and although a number of corrections were made in the text in the second edition reprint of 1983, it now seems desireable to indicate cetrain large developments which needs to be borne in mind during a reading of the early chapters.

The approximate date first proposed for Zoroaster, of 1700 BC, has already been modified, partly because the earliest compilation of Rigvedic hyms is now assigned to about 1500 BC, and the 'Old Avestan' language spoken by the prophet is very close to Vedic. It may be, however, that it evolved more slowly, because his people apear to have been more settled and conservative than their Indo-Aryan cousins; and calculations based on the language and content of the 'Old Avestan' and 'Young Avestan' texts suggest a date of about 1200 BC for former, and not later than 800 BC for the latter. Archelogists, however, have been led by their findings to assign the main movements by Iranians into the land that came to be called after them, 'Iran', to about 1000 BC, so that attributing the date of 1200 BC to Zoroaster still means that he lived before these movements took place, somewhere, therefore, on the Inner Asian steppes. Sites have been excavated in northern Kazakhstan which may, it is thought, have belonged to ancient Iranians of about this time. Thei inhabitants were sedentary pastoralist with a mainly Stone Age culture, but making some use of bronze.

I'm loving simply the discussion of this topic- I will play the mod. I had been thinking of doing something with the idea of giving the different religions some unique character. I realize that it is a sensitive issue, but then to have religions in a game without paying holmage to the uniqueness of each makes no sense.

I was split between giving access to one of any of the religions up front, or allowing the normal progression (given that I am not much of a code warrior, the easiest mod would simply be to follow the convention of research, but add flavor at each level).

Nonetheless, it would enhance game value if while your state religion was perhaps Buddhism each of your cities with it recieved an additional happiness, and had in increase in Great Person growth rate, Where as a Taoist civilization may tend to be more healthy, and better organized (as if the 'financial' leadership were in effect).

I think trying to give more specific effects too each particular faith's buildings is certainly an interesting avenue, but it sort of over emphasizes diversity and would lead to some very hot debate over what's in or out as a bonus item or disadvantage.

I also like the notion of removing religions, but at present the stock game's treatment of these really doesn't promote any need to do so... by confering a global bonus, each religion would be similar to a civic and by switching between the various state religions, or even a 'no state religion' option you would in effect be 'killing off' a religious influence.

I like the idea :)
Although I guess I think this game doesn't really take into account how most people are secular :)

Is 16% most?

http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html

Unless you mean France, but I'm sure they were Catholic then, too...

Heugenots: French Protestants

What about "Greco-Roman Polytheism" as the 8th religion ?

Should be useful for Greece and Rome :D

I haven't sifted through oll the responses yet to see if anyone responded about "Babbism", but I'm going to pitch my two cents into this one-

The "Bab'i" Faith (as this is properly known) lasted less that two decades of the nineteenth century under this name. After the martyrdom of the Bab'i leader (The Bab), the Faith underwent various changes which resulted in the emergence of the Baha'i Faith (which you have more likely heard of).

The fellow known as "The Bab" (meaning "The Gate" in Farsi) could be viewed as generally analagous to the preChristian John the Baptist. The Baha'i leader who was promised by The Bab was known as Baha'u'llah (meaning "The Glory of God") and is analagous to Christ himself. Baha'u'llah taught that human beings had sullied the good name of Islam and encouraged a radical reform which could reconcile the world's religions. This was the first relgious worldview, concieved from the beginning as addressing the modern global situation- the Baha'i Faith emerged in 1854, the same year that Samual Morse sent the first electronic message by telegraph. Baha'u'llah taught unity of religion, races, and God- plus ethics of compassion, pacifism, gender equality, removal of extremes of wealth and poverty, international collective security, and global representative democracy.

I'm a Baha'i, and certainly in favor of seeing this religion included in future releases of this mod. I'm also willing to contribute any information which might facilitate that aspect of modding (eoo2@duke.edu).

However, I also recognize that Civ4's creators balanced the game for a limited number of religions and Baha'i probably just doesn't doesn't rank high enough in terms of player interest or sheer numbers of believers (there are only between 5 and 6 million Baha'i's worldwide).

This mod is awesome! The attention to reforming relgious history timelines and including Zoroastrianism shows great sensitivity toward modeling a complex topic. Congratulations on developing an excellent project!

Abbamouse,
I have tried the mod, playing once through the founding of Christianity, and the second time through the founding of Islam.

Both games standard map, 13 civs, normal speed, 4 continents, prince level.

First game I was Hapshetsut of the Egyptians. Usually she can found a religion. But on this game I failed. Lost out on all the early religions then went for Christianity, but lost out on that too. On my continent there were no religions, they seem to have been discovered by a different civ on a different continent

Second game I was Saladin. I missed out by a turn on Hinduism, but landed Judaism then Zoroastrianism very quickly--indeed I had only one city at the time. I also landedChristianity and then Islam. Judiasm spread very slowly. My neighbor Mao adopted it when it spread to his capital but he converted to the Big Z after a few visits from my Magi. Indeed, though I worked on converting Mao, even before I succeeded Zoroastrianism had spread like wildfire over the rest of the continent and the neighboring continent. Indeed by the time I paused last night my continent and the continent next to me were all Zoroastrian civilizations.

My two worries about the great mod:

It is too easy for the Arabs to monopolize all the early religions. It is too likely that the spiritual civs that start out with the prerequisites will land a monopoly or near monopoly on the religions. You should think about changing the tech tree so that it is harder to get all the early religions. Can Zoroastrianism for example be pegged to a completely different tech? Like Bronze working or some such?

Also the prohibition on Jewish rabbis is just too tough. I like how you have changed the cost and allowed number of Christian missionaries. I think you should just make Jewish rabbis really expensive. It handicaps the religion far too much to have no way to control its spread.

Great mod. Keep up the good work.

edit: clarity, typo

How about Greco-Roman Polytheism ???

Or Animism ???

I'm shying away from extra religions until I can find a way to implement some sort of checkoff system (or perhaps limit # of religions by # of players). I do think some sort of Mediterranean polytheism would be a great addition, but there are game balance issues as well -- to be realistic, it needs to emerge early in the game and there are plenty of early religions already. I bet a REALLY modern religion wouldn't unbalance things, although players might not see much point in it.

I would like to point out that the Zoroastrianism icon is a bit buggy. The Icon I am talking about is the one you find on the top of the city name bar. The background of the Icon is not transparent.

I have posted a screenshot of the bug.

I would like to point out that the Zoroastrianism icon is a bit buggy. The Icon I am talking about is the one you find on the top of the city name bar. The background of the Icon is not transparent.

I have posted a screenshot of the bug.



For Gods sake, CivGeneral, are you using the Iranian Post-Revolution Flag in your game? Do you know how many people they have killed, suppressed and assassinated sine 1979? Please take the Iranian flag without this swastika in the middle. That makes me so sad...

Of course it is your game and your decision, but because of this fundamentalist government 6 Mio people have fled the country since 1979. They suppress the free speech and free thoughts. Your screenshot is so funny, having this Islamic fundamentalism swastika within your flag and on the other hand having the Zoroastrianism as religion in the city.

This flag is from Times of Cyrus the Great:
http://www.riseofpersia.com/screenshots/icons/persia.png

Or at least take the modern Iranian Flag without that Islamic swastika in the middle.

I know it is not my business, sorry about that....

You're right, it's kinda not your business. I am totally against nazism and fascism, but maybe one day I will want to add Hitler to my game and play as him and kill everyone. so what? It's a game for god's sake... ;)

and on that note, I think "Nazism" would be an interesting religion (off of Fascism tech) to add for the modern age. But new religions should only be added if there is a way to disable individual religions, so that some sort of practical players/religions ratio can be maintained.

Keep up the good work abbamouse!

The Zoroastrianism icon is not a bug -- I had a transparent background earlier and dropped it because it was really hard to see against the background. The colors of the bird (farahvahar) blend in with the terrain. I may play around with it a bit more to make it look nicer, however.

For Gods sake, CivGeneral, are you using the Iranian Post-Revolution Flag in your game? Do you know how many people they have killed, suppressed and assassinated sine 1979? Please take the Iranian flag without this swastika in the middle. That makes me so sad...

Of course it is your game and your decision, but because of this fundamentalist government 6 Mio people have fled the country since 1979. They suppress the free speech and free thoughts. Your screenshot is so funny, having this Islamic fundamentalism swastika within your flag and on the other hand having the Zoroastrianism as religion in the city.

This flag is from Times of Cyrus the Great:
http://www.riseofpersia.com/screenshots/icons/persia.png

Or at least take the modern Iranian Flag without that Islamic swastika in the middle.

I know it is not my business, sorry about that....
Dang, who knew that there were controversies in regards to the use of [url=http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=136905]Bad Ronald's Custom Color and Flags[/quote]. I mainly perfer to use modern flags since I tend to associate early Civs with their modern counterparts. Again, its not my work, I am only using Bad Rondald's flags and plus its my game and just a game. Nothing to get fillibustered about :).

@abbamouse - Did not know about that.

First of all, thanks so much to abbamouse for actually making religion an interesting factor in Civ4 and contributing to a much more diverse game world for all of us.

I'm in the process of building a combination mod, and have combined your religion mod, with Zoroastrianism replacing Confucianism, with the bonus resources of the Greenmod. My only problem now is that I need Greenmod's gamefonts.tga files for the bonus resource icons and your files so that Zoroastrianism shows up on the stategy map instead of Confucianism.

My question is an either/or: does anyone a) know of someone who's combined these two mods and made a combined gamefonts files? (gekko, the author of TotalExperience mod, has not) or b) could you recommend a good freeware graphics editor program and give me a hyperlink if possible? I've been through the process of downloading several graphics editors, only to find that most of them didn't work on tga files (even when they claimed to), and photofiltre, which worked, crashed the game when I tried to use the modified files.:sad:

It's crazy -- the mod works just fine, but I just can't bear to see that confucian symbol on the map when it should be Zoroastrian!:mad: Please help!

Later religion ? Freemasonery - the best choice. :))

Regards

Freemasonry (and Scientology) are Cults.

hi, I've just tried your mod, I like it except that some (majority of) text files appearing on the screen have become French :( Not that I don't understand them:) , but a bit annoying anyway. Moreover, when I restarted game without the mod, French has not gone!
I must add I use a Polish unofficial version; wouldn't mind changing back to English but...

First of all I must say that you have done a wonderful job man!! Second, I think as Persian I can give you a good tip for the disadvantage of Zoroastrianism which is actually very historic. Despite several moral advatages of Zoroastrianism, it could be easily and effectively used to justify the caste system in the Sasanid dynasty. This caste system along with factors like a long and bloody war with roman empire was factor that Persians didn't show strong resistane to 30,000 thousands Arabs who had been reinforced with the Islamic faith and in this way glorious Sasanid dynasty was wiped out. I know that this is a raw idea and it should be modelled somehow. For example that if Zoroastrianism is state religion, by using Cast system civic the cities adjacent to rival civilization might sweep easier or that under caste system the civ with state Zoroastrianism can't draft soldiers from cities (which in turn weakes it against foreign attacks).

First of all I must say that you have done a wonderful job man!! Second, I think as Persian I can give you a good tip for the disadvantage of Zoroastrianism which is actually very historic. Despite several moral advatages of Zoroastrianism, it could be easily and effectively used to justify the caste system in the Sasanid dynasty. This caste system along with factors like a long and bloody war with roman empire was factor that Persians didn't show strong resistane to 30,000 thousands Arabs who had been reinforced with the Islamic faith and in this way glorious Sasanid dynasty was wiped out. I know that this is a raw idea and it should be modelled somehow. For example that if Zoroastrianism is state religion, by using Cast system civic the cities adjacent to rival civilization might sweep easier or that under caste system the civ with state Zoroastrianism can't draft soldiers from cities (which in turn weakes it against foreign attacks).


Dear imraniana,

As an Iranian myself who has put more than 8 years of his life in Zoroastrian Studies, I can assure you that there was no caste system in the Sassanid Era. (Source: Zoroastrians by Prof. Mary Boyce, The Zoroastrian Faith by Prof. Samuel Nigosian) The Caste system is a remaining of the Aryans (Farmer, Priester, Warrior) that only took place in India but never in Iran. For a long time this argument was used as a reason why the Zoroastrian Faith got almost completely wiped out by Islam. This argument is according to various sources wrong. The main reason why it happened has been already mentioned by yourself. It was done by conversion through force and through the additional poll-tax. But still despite these it took 300 years until the majority of Iranians became Muslims.

Kind Regards
Houman

Freemasonry are Cults.

No.

and Scientology

Yes.

No.
Freemasonry is a cult. If you don't agree then you don't know enough about the organization. Do some research into their practices, of the oaths they must swear to (and the basis behind the oaths), and of their history as an organization leading back to their founding.

To abbamouse: sorry for the OT reply, but some things are too important to let slide. Ignorance is dangerous. Always has been, always will be.

I give up. I have no idea why I can't get this to work. I extract the abbamouse folder to my mods folder and yet nothing changes. Nobody else in this thread has had a problem so I must just be an idiot. What am I doing wrong?

Hephaistion: I used GIMP to modify the files. The trick is to turn off compression when saving the image. Also, alpha transparency won't show up right on the screen (but if you copy and paste from files where it already exists, it should work anyway). GIMP is hard, but it is free.

radzik: This mod probably uses some of the same files as the Polish mod since I made a point of updating all the tips and help files. So when you load this mod, my files are loaded instead of the Polish ones. That's my guess.

Freemasonry/Scientology guys: I'm not sure what the difference between a religion and a cult is, so I have no opinion on that whole debate.

HotblackDesiato: I don't know why it wouldn't work. Are you selecting the abbamouse mod with the Play a Mod menu? You need to do that and then the game should restart with the mod loaded. This mod doesn't load automatically (although you can create a desktop shortcut to do so); the user must select it.

I'm waiting to see if there'll be another patch before making more changes. It's such a pain to re-mod all the files every time a new patch emerges.

HotblackDesiato: I don't know why it wouldn't work. Are you selecting the abbamouse mod with the Play a Mod menu? You need to do that and then the game should restart with the mod loaded. This mod doesn't load automatically (although you can create a desktop shortcut to do so); the user must select it.

Oh geez, you're right. I was looking in the Scenario menu. I had no idea the Mod menu existed. :blush:

I am going to take over the Realism mod from now, since Kristine dropped it.

Do you allow me to include your Mod into the next version?

Thanks
Houman

Abbamouse, quick question for you: do you know if there is a way to make it so that having a religion in your city makes the city lose gold? Would this be a government civic kind of thing or something moddable in the actual religion screen? This would essentially be tithing. Either 10% or a fixed amount for the city seems interesting to me. I don't really want to attach it a temple, although I'd consider it if nothing else worked.

I ask because I've considered trying to make some modifications to the Europa Europa mod (which I love), and I have a very vague notion that if having a religion in your city provides you with a real penalty, the AI might try to get rid of it with an inquisitor (although I really doubt it, since I don't think they know what the inquisition does). Still, having a penalty could open up other ideas for semi-inquisitions - like just an inquisitor's building which would offset the negative and positive effects of having the religion...

Thanks, if you get time to answer.

Is there any chance that the Inquisitor mod (not the Mylons, but that from the Green Mod) will be included?

I really want to have the possibility to kick the foreign religions out of my cities ;)

Houman -- I don't understand the question. Who is Kristine?

Hamtastic -- I believe you can set a per-city commerce change based on state religion, but not (yet) based on the mere existence of a religion in that city. I.e. you can double the gold output of every Taoist city when Taoism is the state religion, but you can't just say that every city with Taoism gets 20% more gold as far as I know. I use Temples to achieve such effects, but that requires the player to actually build a Temple in each city with the religion.

Winner -- I have no current plans to include the Inquisitor, but that could always change. Right now, I think it would make things a bit less realistic rather than more realistic. But I'm open to persuasion.

FIRAXIS: WHERE IS THE SDK?!?!?!

Right now, I think it would make things a bit less realistic rather than more realistic. But I'm open to persuasion.

Less realistic because the AI doesn't fully understand it? Certainly religious 'intolerance/persecution' has a historical basis, as does the Catholic Inquisition itself.

Winner -- I have no current plans to include the Inquisitor, but that could always change. Right now, I think it would make things a bit less realistic rather than more realistic. But I'm open to persuasion.

The history is full of persecution on the basis of religion - St. Bartholomew's Day massacre for example was aimed at eradication of religion, which hasn't been favoured by the ruling elite.

I think player should have the option to remove religion he doesn't like (from whatever reason). It would be pretty historically accurate. The inquisitor unit could be made expensive and the effect of inquisition could be made very annoying (for example -4 happiness in the city and -1 happiness on the continent, as in the GreenMod inquistion).

@Abbamouse

1) Kristine is the lady who took over the Realism: Resurrected Mod, after Jaynus had dropped it:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=151947

Now because of lack of time has she dropped it and gave it to me.
The 0.64 version will be published this week. I am working now on v0.65 with Abbamouse included. Is that ok for you? The credits will go to you of course and I will mention it.

2) I have found a bug. The Jewish can still build up to 3 Rabis. I war playing a game yesterday, the AI was faster in developing the Judaism and it spread after a while into my capitol. Eventhough I haven't converted into Judaism, I was able to build up to three rabis in my affected city.

I checked the files:
CIV4UnitClassInfos.xml


<UnitClassInfo>
<Type>UNITCLASS_JEWISH_MISSIONARY</Type>
<Description>TXT_KEY_UNIT_JEWISH_MISSIONARY</Description>
<iMaxGlobalInstances>-1</iMaxGlobalInstances>
<iMaxTeamInstances>-1</iMaxTeamInstances>
<iMaxPlayerInstances>3</iMaxPlayerInstances>
<DefaultUnit>UNIT_JEWISH_MISSIONARY</DefaultUnit>
</UnitClassInfo>



iMaxPlayerInstances should be one and not 3. Second I didn't get a free Rabi in my city..but I assume I would only get the free Missionary unit, if I convert to Judaism correct?

3) Another bug, Code of Law still says it will find Zoroastrinism. You have to delete this part of line.
file: CIV4GameText_Strategy.xml

<TEXT>
<Tag>TXT_KEY_TECH_CODE_OF_LAWS_STRATEGY</Tag>
<English>The first to research this tech founds [COLOR_HIGHLIGHT_TEXT]Zoroastrianism[COLOR_REVERT]....


Cheers
Houman

Is there any new update coming?

I haven't abandoned the mod, but I haven't had much time to work on it either. I'll probably get it updated when/if we see the SDK and another patch. Then again, I may wait to see if some other people can develop a few "widgets" with the SDK that I could use in this mod.

I will fix the bugs Houman identified, but I think they're pretty non-critical so I'll wait until the next full update.

Abba,

I have implemented your Mod into the Realism mod. I have extended some stuff, if you are interested in.

- Reskined Zoroastrian Temple (red brick skin on Confucian Temple model)
- Reskined Zoroastrian Monastery (red brick skin on Confucian Monastery model)
- Replaced the Shrine (Adur Burzan-Mehr) by taking the neutral Tempel Model (The one that has a fire place on the top) and reskinned it nicely with red bricks.
- Reskinned the Magi to white cloth with golden endings.
- Implemented the second unique religious unit for each state religion:
Christians get the Crusader (City invader)
Muslims get the Jihad fighter (Unit killer)
Zoroastrians get 2 Dastur (each can provide a great work in any city with +80 culture) reskinned in complete white (no golden endings)
Taoist get one Chi Unit, that can build a single special ACADEMY_FENGSHUI.
Hindus get one Guru, that can hurry up a project in the nation.
Buddhists get max 4 Siddhas, that is Medic II and can heal the units.
Jewish can build 4 Amma spies, that can spy around.

If you like any of them, I could provide you with the files.
Regards
Houman

I might take issue with your statement that Daoism is inherently an anti-state religion, if you look into Daoism's history you'll see the case is considerably more complex. There have been many cases in Chinese history where Daoism was in fact sponsored by the state (for instance most famously during the Tang Dynasty). Indeed after the fall of the Han Dynasty the Celestial Masters sect started their own state, and started referring to the concept of the celestial bureaucracy! While certainly there have been anti-state movements in Daoism's religious history they have largely been aimed towards the establishment of theocratic states following the toppling of the government (The Yellow Turbans are of course the most famous example). Anyhow, it's hard to pin down what exactly Daoism is, but if I could point to a common thread it would be the emphasis on health in the religion (through accumulating and refining Qi, using medicines, driving out evil spirits that cause you to become unhealthy etc.), therefore maybe you would want to take that into consideration.

How about religions spreading two ways: immigrants (as a unit) and missionaries?

Immigrants are built like settlers, halting the growth of your city. They should be expensive. They can bring religion to any city. One could even consider them crossing closed borders, and they might add one population (just brainstorming here).

Missionaries are only be able to bring their religion to cities that have no religion yet. A special ability for the Christian faith, and Islam, might be that they are able to use their missionaries to bring their religions to cities that do already have a religion.

So a possible implementation of theis idea would be that Jewish states would have to build expensive immigrants if they want to spread their religion, while Christians and Muslims could convert the world if they wanted to.

What does monotheism do? I can't see any reason to get this tech. No tech requires monotheism. What is it for? Sorry for my ignorance.

This is a great mod. Ignore all the boring history of the religions and what you are left with is a creative, exciting mod which should be encouraged. Well done and keep up the good work!

Houman -- That stuff sounds exciting.

Everyone -- Now that the latest patch and SDK are out I plan on another couple of updates. The first update will be sometime in the next week and will fix a couple of bugs and update everything to the 1.61 patch. At that point, I'll see about Houman's stuff to see what should be added to this mod. After a few months, I expect to do a third update which will incorporate work people have done with the SDK by then. Off to work on the next update....

I am glad you are back. Download my Mod and everything you need is yours. We have done lots of more changes regarding the spreadrate and missionaries because of game balancing.

Houman

I posted version 1.61, which fixes the issues Houman found and makes everything compatible with patch 1.61. Does anyone know what happened to the Japanese, Russian, Chinese text lines in the civilopedia? They seem to have been dropped from the latest patch. I decided to keep them in for now, since they don't seem to cause any problems and I'd hate to have to add them again later.

Next up: Religious UUs, largely stolen from Houman's mod :)

hehe, no problem. ;)

Take also the new skins for Zoroastrian Temple, Monastery and Shrine. The shrine looks quite interesting.

We are implementing a python solution for more realistic spreadrate of Judaism.

Taoist have been modified completely, since we had some argues about the anti-state or state-supported aspect of it.

I tried downloading this mod, put it in the Mod folder, and ran it from the Mod menu, but I got a STRING of error messages and I had to exit the program. Can anyone tell me why this didnt' work?

OOps :blush: Figured out what happened--I had an earlier version of Civ4. Oh well, it works fine now. Thanks for putting together this mod!

With all due respect: what makes your mod so different than CIV IV, rather than the cosmetic religious items here?

Houman -- I got the skins working (rather easy to do). I'm interested in your approach to Taoism and to Judaism. Both of those are admittedly imperfect in my mod, but I haven't come up with anything better yet. It's great to see others trying to tackle the same issues.

strategyonly -- You hit the nail on the head. This is not supposed to be a radical deprture from the game. My goal is to make "Civ IV, but with more uniqueness between religions." That's it. I want it to feel like Civ IV in every respect except which faith a player pursues.

(often these wars are really about who gets to exert religious-political authority, not really about the doctrinal disputes at issue)
An insightful point.

this game doesn't really take into account how most people are secular
Most people live secularly, but are ostensibly adherents to some faith.

I'll add my $0.02

- You should incorporate the SettlerReligion mod into your mod

- Christianity should have a 100 spread rate. Christianity spread very quickly after it was discovered (like Islam did). Being this is a "late" religion in the game, it *should* over power the older faiths.

The way I see it, the newer faiths should overpower the older faiths by a small margin (nothing excessive). The advantage the older faiths have is that they're already established in the world, so they're influence is already spread out. The newer religions need a little bit of an edge to compensate.

- Buddihism, Zoro and Hinduism should have a slower spread rate. While Buddihism and Hinduism are two of the largest religions in the world (based off of population), they're not that "spread out" across the globe. Mainly they're concentrated in Asia (India, China, Japan, etc). Zoro is pretty much obsolete these days. The slower spread rate would represent this. Perhaps have some kind of health bonus for Hinduism and Buddihism to simulate rapid population growth?

Of course the newer faiths (Christianity and Islam) should have the faster spread rates, as their influence is spread all across the globe.

- Here are som suggestions for the tech tree. It could go like this:
-- Mysticism leads to (Priesthood, Monothiesm and Polythiesm).
-- (Monothiesm OR Polythiesm) leads to Meditation
-- (Monothiesm OR Polythiesm) and Priesthood leads to Monarchy
-- The religions could stick with the vanilla Civ4 techs

This is a great mod, I only have one problem though. Monotheism is a worthless tech.
My suggestion is make monotheism a requirement for priesthood. This would improve two things, A: Monotheism would be worth something, and B: It would make it a little harder for whoever gets Hinduism to also get Judaism

I've been following this mod for a couple months intending to try it out once it was more fully polished. Abbamouse, you seem to have a great handle on religions and i admire and appreciate your work on this mod. Have you abandonned it? I hope not.

- feydras

Abbamose could you ad some religons such as African tribal worship and Native American Shamanism???

Zoroanstianism is not obsolte they have 2.6 millon followers today in India.

it always annoyed me that the state religon could hindu and cows would be a resource:goodjob:

I don't plan on updating this mod for quite a while. I'm teaching 4 new classes this semester, and I haven't even purchased Warlords. I'll try to find time to update around Christmas...

For those that are interested in this Mod Component and would like to have an update. I recommend playing the Total Realism in meanwhile until abbamouse is back.

From beginning I have followed enthusiastically his mod and have implemented his excellent realistic Religion mod into the Total Realism. It was been updated in meanwhile quite a lot with new textures, units, values and soundtracks.

Just for your information that his work will always stay alive in the Total Realism Mod. :)

In the next release we will improve the speed by quite a bit so that even those with older computers can play this excellent mod.

Best Regards
Houman

To abbamouse and Houman,
GREAT JOB! Wow, as a Persian I loved how Zoroastrianism was included in your mods. I'm new to the PC Civ world and I've been looking around here recently, I found some stuff about each religion having another special unit. I think each religion having a very very very strong defensive unit in a city that has the shrine. Said unit could also give a happiness advantage to that city. You could have Knights Templar for the Church of the Nativity, Mujahid for Islam, etc. These units have no mobility and can withstand very strong attacks in all ages. Also, do the shrines have to be destroyed when you conquer a city?

Lastly, to Houman, thank you for finally creating a true immortal unit! (except, below the tips of their spears should have a shape of an apple- i found this in the encyclopedia iranica...which actually gives very detailed accounts of what the troops used to wear). Another source for the Persian units that you can use is the video of the 2500th year anniversary of the Persian Empire thrown by the Shah back in '71. The famous Persian horse archer with its feared Persian Shot should resemble a Parthian horseman (imagine a cataphract with a cone shaped helmet and mesh head and neck covering underneath). You'll even see what the Persian musketeers and knights would look like during the Safavid shows.

Lastly, how can port just the religion mod aspect and the immortal unit and commando to Warlords?

Hmm... seems to almost be a dead mod. I was wondering, were you thinking of adding Inquizitators (I mean a way to remove a religion from a city), and if not, could I be directed to a mod that does?

Total Realism mod does it. :D

This mod was really my first inspiration for modding religions for HephMod, but it has dropped out of my versions since Warlords because I've never found satisfactory the difficulties introduced by the "negative health to compensate for positive health" system. It doesn't just affect Harbors, which abbamouse changed to give a blanket +1 health and an additional +1 health to Fish. It affects Marketplaces (Islamic marketplaces still get an extra +1 happiness for wine) and Supermarkets (Jewish and Islamic supermarkets still get +1 health for Pigs and Hindus for cows).

Sure, one could still take a "split the difference" approach and give Supermarkets a blanket +1 health and one additional point for sheep and deer only, and/or give Marketplaces a blanket +1 Happiness and then exclude Wine from the bonus happiness list, but this is still an inelegant system IMO. One advantage this approach has is to simulate the coexistence of multiple religions in a single city ... what if Judaism and Hinduism are in the same city; then cows return to their normal bonus because the temple bonuses cancel out, representing an "average" health bonus.

I had hoped to utilize the new NoBonus tag introduced in BtS, used for National Parks to exclude Coal from the city in which it is built, but AFAIK (and know how to do) you can only exclude a single resource. This, however, does solve the problem with Wine in Islamic marketplaces. It introduces a new problem with Hindus and cows, however, since Hindu temples get -1 health and +1 happiness for cows (if cows are NoBonus-ed, then the city can't get a happiness bonus for them). One could rationalize, however, that just because a city has a temple of a religion doesn't mean that everyone actually follows its strictures: how many Jews are actually kosher? How many Muslims actually refrain from alcohol? According to this logic, marketplaces and supermarkets also represent an advancing tide of cultural pluralism and cosmopolitanism (or, if you like, decadence), which often has an undermining effect on piety ...

Any thoughts? Does anyone know how to NoBonus multiple resources? Has anyone done any work refining this system?

any version for bts 3.17?
is it multiplayer compatible?

any version for bts 3.17?
is it multiplayer compatible?

The next version of HephMod Beyond will include this mod and is 3.17 compatible, but it won't be uploaded for another day or two. I also do not (yet!) incorporate Zoroastrianism in my BtS mod.

I actually have no idea whether my mod is MP compatible!

Hi, I was just wondering how I get this mod to work? Could someone please give me a thourgh explanation:) thanks!