Compatible with v1.52
NOTE: THE FILE HAS BEEN UPDATED @ 30 Dec, 11 PM GMT to prevent Cathedrals from being built except @ their state religions

Also updated @ 2 Jan 8 AM GMT to fix an error where Xian temples gave sadness from wine not vice versa

Based on AbbaMouse's Realistic Religions mod, I really didn't like tying everything to temples, so as when a city builds multiple-temples it has multiple effects and more happiness. This mod handles this problem, gives more of a special flavor to each religion, and also grants slightly more advantages to later religions since they cost more for research.

So if you want to see fewer but smarter Jews, more and less war-weary Moslems, less technologically advanced but culture-oriented Hindus and much more, keep reading!

Disclaimer: I don't mean to insult/criticize any religions here. This mod is based on my imagination and knowledge (which happens to be very poor regarding East Asian religions, being an Egyptian). I also added some cute musical alternatives for about 6-7 sounds

As a general rule for the mod: Temples are only effective when existing under their relative religions. Exceptions for that are culture (which makes sense), and Confucian temple (because Confucism is a philosophy, so it can co-exist with any religion). The way I forced Moslems and Jews not to eat pigs and Moslems not to drink wine..etc using their temples caused that; cities with these temples cannot convert back, or they'd be shut down till they re-convert to these religions. Islamic & Jewish temples cause -100 unhappiness, countered by +103 happiness @ that temple's state religion, which makes sense since there has never been a massive converting out of Islam or Judiasm. Also, the Globe Theater has been modified to give +50 happiness instead of no unhappiness, to prevent it from being abused to that temples' thingy.

Civics:
Becuase there's a bug which gives any city all the traits of the religions existing in it if that civ has has no-state-religion, I had to do something to:
1) Prevent many religions from existing in a city
2) Make life hard for the ones choosing the Free-religion civic

That's why any non-state-religion will cause +2 :mad: in a city, while state religion will cause +4 :) counter-balancing that effect --> to encourage civs to adopt religions. Also note that the CIVICS file contains less merits for enviromentalism (+3 health not 6, -5% gold & research), all gov types can hurry gold except despotism, and fascism can hurry population. Sorry they're irrelevant but I was too lazy to remove them (coz I use them in my mod) :p. Also Free religion doesn't give 10% research bonus (I mean, why??), and it takes 3 culture points from each of your cities/turn! Not only that, but Free Religion causes +1 happiness per non-state religion (which causes -2 happiness remember?) So it's a desperate solution for nations with 15 religions/city or something to soften the bad effect of multiple religions in 1 city. Also you cannot build missionaries without monastries anymore.

Monasteries:
All monastries give +5% research, except Islamic/Jewish = +10%, Hindu = +0%. This lessens the benefits from switching religions and building their monastries. You must have the religion a state religion in order to build its monastry, except for the hindu one. I personally use a mod to increase religious-switching anarchy to ~10 turns to make it even harder to switch religions. I suggest you do the same

Now the really cool thing about missionaries is this: Hindu monastery becomes obsolete by monothiesm (what, only 1 God exists??). Jewish monestry obselete by theology (omg, the Massaiah has arrived!). That addition solved the problem of us wanting to limit those religions from spreading, yet they can safely arrive to all their founders' cities (as in real life)

Temples:
Only Islamic/Jewish temples can be built @ state religion. Base temple happiness is 3 (to make up for the lack of temples' effect, since you can only live with 1 effective instead of potentially 7), but these 3 :) are only provided @ state religion of course.

Cathedrals
Can only be built @ state religion (of the given cathedral)

Missionaries:
Islamic & Tao: Nothing stops the faithful Moslem (Da3eya) from letting the world know about the word of God, no terrain costs.
Christian: It's very easy to convert people to Christianity in every part of the world. Costs 20 shields only, 3 movements/turn.
Buddhist: There's nothing such as a buddhist missionary! Replaced that with a high spread rate
Rabbi, Confucian, & Hindu missionary: It's really hard to spread religions at these old days eh? 1 movement only. Rabbi costs 50 shields, while Hindu missionary costs only 30 (remember 30 is expensive considering it's an early religion found at small forgless cities, and shall quickly be obselete by monothiesm)

Spread rates (original is 100):
Judaism & Hinduism: 10 (shouldn't spread after their obseletion)
Xianity: 50
Confucism: 100
Islam & Taoism: 140
Buddhism: 200 (no missionary remember?)

SHRINES:
Jewish shrine cannot be caught (Nabukhath Nusr!). It provides gold for its owner (foreign Jews helping their state)
Christian shrine brings gold (indulgence money), obselete with Scientific method of course :)
Islamic shrine brings gold (pilgrimage)
Hindu shrine brings gold (hindus give jewellery to their Mahraja?)
All other shrines don't bring gold.

Culture/Holy city, culture/city, and cities: (original is 4 & 1)
Note that any third value is only effective when that city has the religion AND it's the state religion (exception if the no-state-religion bug which I talked about earlier)
Jewish: 10 & 5 (Jews have a very significant culture)
Hindu: 12 & 3 (but OOPS), -1 research/city!. Also holy city brings 1 more culture from each city hinduism enters (like gold). Very useful for expanding borders early in the game, better than CREATIVE trait!
Confucism: unchanged & unchanged. +1 research/city
Taoism: unchanged & unchanged. +5 research/city. Holy city brings 1 more research as it spreads (like hindu's culture). This was illustrated by my virtual Tao scientists meeting every year to discuss new enlightment ideas - bleh
Islamic, Christian, & Buddhist all unchanged.

----> Note that all these values are base values. That is, as far as I know, are multiplied with markets/banks/libraries etc etc

RELIGIONS:
Ok I'm sure everyone has been like "ok ok what the <snip> has changed with the religions? get on with it :mad:" There you go, temples:

Islamic: -1 health from pigs, -1 :) from wine (if you have these resources, your cities with Islamic temples will be unchanged because it'll be +1 & -1, so better use them for trade!). +1 health from sheep & cow. Also stores 20% of food after growth (Islam is the fastest growing religion on earth), 3 XP points to military units (think suicide bombers), -150% war weariness! Moslems just love to fight heathens!
Jewish: -1 health from pig, crab, clam (I didn't know crab & clam was forbidden in the jewish creed, I copied this from abbamouse's mod :p). +1 health from cow, sheep, & fish. -50% food kept after growth (yup, Jews aren't so many), -50% military unit production (nor are their armies morally strong), BUT +50% research, and +3 trade routes/city! If you decide to be Jewish, don't adopt mercentalism! I wanted to give - war weariness for jews too, but I thought that 1/2 of the society will be upset because they depend mainly on trade routes (which are now closed by war)
Christian: +1 happiness from wine. Also the Christian temple provides +6 happiness (@ state religion of course), this shows the Christian tolerance to other creeds (err... pre 9/11)
Buddhist: +4 happiness (instead of base 3, read 3rd paragraph)
Hindu: +3 happiness (normal)
Confucian: +3 happiness in state religion cities, but +1 :mad: if built under other state religion (what? we're listening to that heathen's teachings??). Confucius was a man of war, so +3 XP/unit
Tao temple: unchanged

Units:
Same problem, too lazy to remove; workboat, great artist, & great merchant are all capturable.

Altered names:
For anti-blasphemous reasons (I'm a Moslem), I ultered the name of "Great Prophet" to "Great Religious Guy", I also exchanged the names of Moses & Abu Bakr with other names. Islamic Missionary is called Da3eya, Jewish Missionary called Rabbi, and Confucian Missionary called Confucian Teacher

I might have forgotten to mention any other minor changes. If you catch any, please let me know. Also I welcome any suggestions / comments / complains / praises :D But please please please, don't post till you have read/skimmed the previous posts! I try to reply to each message and it's frustrating to have people repeat the same things over and over again

It took me a great deal of effort to write this text and to make sure everything is working fine. The reason I felt obliged to post that mod, beside wanting to look like a smart guy of course, was to repay the benefits that I've made from this site, which has made this mod possible.

Acknowledgments:
Abbamouse: I based my mod on his, stolen many ideas!
Gr3y, & the guys who explained how to mod time and how to mod religion XMLs (sorry I don't remember their nicks!)
Anyone who've answered a question for me on this forum

Deleted for discussing moderator actions.

I can't say I'm terribly fond of these changes. The game takes one extreme of making religions more of a collectors item and this seems to take another extreme in keeping nations strictly mono-theistic, removing/reducing the benefits of religions, reducing the ability to use missionaries, ect. I like that you added flavor to the religions (though some religions could be considered to be given an unfair bonus/penalty), but given how religion is already a bit of a gamble... I can't say I'm terribly fond of being locked into whatever religion I can secure for my civilization.

My conceptual objections from the other thread still apply, as do my comments on appropriate bonuses for Judaism. Two things that wasn't covered in the other thread:
Jewish: . . . -50% food kept after growth (yup, Jews aren't so many), -50% military unit production (nor are their armies morally strong)Religious Jews tend to have lots of children. I know many families with six or seven children or more, some with over ten children. This is a demographic problem for secular Jews in Israel—they're currently the most influential political faction, but they reproduce at a much lower rate than both Israeli Arabs and charedim, so both of those groups are steadily catching up. I suspect there's not a bad chance of Israel becoming a borderline theocracy within fifty years or so.

The other issue with this is that Jews are not in any way pacifistic. They fight. From Biblical times onwards, Jews have been surprisingly determined warriors.

The Bible, of course, describes all sorts of overwhelming Israelite victories against the Canaanites and some later powers. This was followed by a centuries-long decline in Jewish power, but then the Maccabean Revolt overthrew the crumbling Seleucid Empire's hold on them, and the Maccabees defended themselves against periodic Seleucid and Ptolemaic attacks for about a century. Finally the Romans conquered Judea, only for it to become one of their most rebellious provinces. The Jews revolted time after time, multiple legions had to be stationed in Judea, and finally the Romans got fed up, destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem, and banned large religious gatherings.

Then, eventually, came the State of Israel. No offense to Egypt, but Israel is a regional superpower. Israel has won six wars against the Arabs, at least one (the 1948 war) without substantial aid from the U.S. Yeah, okay, its high-tech armament is assisted greatly by American aid, but regardless of the source, it's a power to be reckoned with, and it seems like your mod would cause Jews to be crushed militarily by anyone else.

I like abbamouse's version. It's fun and playable and works with 1.52. I read through your description and quite frankly it seems a bit dreary. Perhaps it's just a reflection of your world view.

For the Jews being a nation of 3000-4000 years old, and their current global number standing at ~15 million I do think you have some wrong statistics here!

Remeber that the Jews had the support of the UK since 1917 (Balfour declaration to give them a homeland in Palestine, which was a British colony at the time) till about 1936. Anyway illustrating their power in the game would make more sense to me via "hurry production" (they got the moneys!)

Cyber: Abba's version had alot of logical mistakes, which the game normally had. Such as -and I mentioned them before on 2 threads- giving more potential happiness/culture/research to cities with more religions, when reality is the opposite. My mod limits that to a big extent

Generally speaking - it's a good idea to spice up the religions thread, but I've got one NEGATIVE comment - doin' some temples or monasteries obsolete, and thus killing some religions is absolutely historically false, reducing many alternate world evolution in game and (last but not least) - just unfair. And why Islam is the final religion ??? Just because you're a Muslim ??? I mean no offense towards you, but there's something wrong with it, IMVHO...

Shortly speaking - I suggest to remove other religions temples becoming obsolete feature.

Another point is the religious bonuses - many of them are too punitive, I think. It's perfectly ok to give penalties for pigs & wine etc. for religions, which forbid using them, it's ok to adjust spreading rate and missionaries, depending on religion, but why culture decrease for free religion ??? Should be increase, that's obvious, I think. Why not cutting some temples/monastery bonuses or war weariness in this particular civic instead ?

Like Simetrical wrote - I agree there shouldn't be military bonuses/penalties depending on religion - these should depend on civics, IMO. Maybe adding more civics related to religion would be a good idea ?

Concluding - I suggest to give up the idea of obsolete temples and missionaries, not decreasing culture because of religion type, but adding more civics related to religion (some of them even should desrease culture if there's a non-state religion) instead, no military build rate changes or war wearines bonuses depending on religion TYPE, but managing them through civics too.

Simetrical: For the Jews being a nation of 3000-4000 years old, and their current global numbers standing at ~15 million I do think you have some wrong statistics here!

Fachy, the unfortunate problem here is that in our world, the one we are currently living on and which our reality encompases, Judaism had three crushing moments:

1 - Jews believing in Jesus and his followers, converted to the earliest form of Christianity with the help of the Roman Empire.

2 - The Prophet Muhammad with the help of his followers after his death converted a significant number of Arabic speaking people who had been, if not fully, then partially raised on the on the Jewish traditions. The first Muslims were not all "godless heathens", having had to come from somewhere. Compare parts of the Pentateuch and the Qur'an, but be careful about asking questions. :(

3 - A large number of European Jews were killed between the 1920s and 1950s. Both through Nazi genecide and the Soviet Union's anti-communist, pro-religious extermination.

To put it bluntly, the Jews got royally @*#%ed. I don't think it should be like that every time around.

Concerning the mod, while it looks like you went through a lot of trouble changing a whole host of equations and formulas, there are a lot of balance issues with this mod. For starters, the AI is not built to handle any of these changes. While human players will eagerly trade off those resources that are useless to them, the computer will hold on to them. Another thing I don't like is that you effectively made 3 religious shrines useless. I'm not going to go into the spread rates or the various stats of each religion, because these in themselves are unbalancing traits by modifying them and thus places the pace of your civ in the luck of the draw on technologies. Better luck with your next try at the mod. Jollyroger3 has some good points.

The other issue with this is that Jews are not in any way pacifistic. They fight. From Biblical times onwards, Jews have been surprisingly determined warriors.

How about puting a defence modifer like City walls have on the Jewish temple, say 25% that would make the city a bit harder to concour and fit well with the history of Jews fighting doggedly to defend against countless invading armies both anchient and modern (no value judgments here just saying they do a good job holding onto territory regardless of legitimate ownership of said territory)

Also I see some people are conserned about the randomess of religion, I recently got a little python script working which imediatly removes the Holy City when its founded. You still get some anoying messages but for all practicaly purposes religions are no longer founded by discovering a Technology. The next step will be to move to a Shrine and Propher (um I mean "religions guy") based system. This will give the player complete control over when/ware/what religion is founded.


Overall I realy aplaud the thoughtfull work going into these religion mods, better to have a controversy then the vanilla religions Firxaxis gave us.

This is some...interesting...work you've done here.
In concept many of your ideas will make for interesting gameplay mechanics...however I do see the same religious slant that others see here, and I also recognize some almost blatant...hmmm...not racism...is there a word for racism when its against a religion instead of a race? Relgionism? Heh...

At any rate I didn't come here to bash you or your mod, it is clear that you have some preconcieved notions about various religions and it has resulted in a mod with some strong biases. I like some of your choices and find others amusing. I like the lakc of missionaries for Buhddists, although I think the spread rate is a bit exaggerated...The Pnelaty for pork is an exaggeration as Jewish people do not get sick from pork and shellfish, they simply get no benefit from them. I would reccomend changing this from a negaitve to merely NO bonus at all. Or instead of a Helth bonus change it to a monitary bonus to reflect that all that can be done with this resource is to trade it way if you are Jewish.

As a general suggestion, I would reccomend you bring some other people in on this project to give it more of a sense of religious balance. As one who has studied most of the religions out there to some degree, I know that none of them is "The" religion and every single one has its own faults and virtues. As a Muslim you will obviously desire certain things in a religious MOD, however these things may not accurately portray the muslim religion as it exists in a non-contextual historical and evolutionary sense. I would reccomend a panel for a MOD like this: 1 Person from each religion, 1 Atheist, 1 Agnostic. The potential arguments would be stellar, but if you could reach a healthy consensus, the result would be an objective and reasonable mod that may indeed accurately reflect the religions of the world in a non-contextual or biased way.

Remember you must protray the jews without any of their history.
You must protray the Christians and the Muslims the same way.

For the player there never was a Holocaust because its the year 4000BC...there may never be one unless things unfold in a certain way.

For the player there has yet to be a Crusade, and unless things occur in just the right way it may never happen within their game.

When history is in the hands of the player, religions must be designed without a historical context.

I have to aggree with Simetrical. Jews have historically been very warlike at times, it just that they were always outnumbered. American Jews are peaceful, but then so are all religious people in America. In Israel, where Jews have enemies nearby, they are quite militaristic*.

In any case, I'm more of a fan of letting different religous civics represent differences between religons. That way there can be different denominations within a particular religion that give different characteristics. Maybe you could change the diplomacy so you only get the bonuses for same religion if you're running the same religious civics, to create denominational tensions within a religion.


* Before someone accuses me of being antisemitic, I mean this in a morally neutral manner. It's a debatable question whether militarism is a virtue or a vice under the circumstances.

Nice work. Very thought out. But, in my opinion, the wrong direction to go.

Actually, I think the designers got it right. Religion is a tool that rulers use to persade the populus to adhere to there wishes. The basics are the same. We worship/meditate. We like/help others like us. We dislike/hurt others not like us.

Everything else is details stemming from random influences of the span of time since the inception of Religon.

Nice work. Very thought out. But, in my opinion, the wrong direction to go.

Actually, I think the designers got it right. Religion is a tool that rulers use to persade the populus to adhere to there wishes. The basics are the same. We worship/meditate. We like/help others like us. We dislike/hurt others not like us.

Everything else is details stemming from random influences of the span of time since the inception of Religon.


Well put, and concise!

Not to trash your thread, but I think Abumouse is closer to what folks are looking for concerning gameplay balance and religions in this CIV game.

Simply put you done out thunk yourself. Less is sometimes better.:king:

Mylon How do I keep the nations monthiestic?? I gave alot of advantages to Taoism for example (~+30% research) and Christianity (+6 :)) I don't see your point. You might want to answer my question on your mod in your thread btw

Jolly I'm not killing the religion, I'm merely stopping its spreading, which is historically accurate for both Hinduism & Judaism

And what do you mean why Islam is the final religion?? It's the final religion in the game, and in history. You haven't been playing Civ4 for a long time have you?

The temples are never obselete!! Please read what I've said again. Regarding culture decrease, there's a gameplay reason which I mentioned in my first post. And there's a real reason which is multi-religions states tend to have less of a culture (think usa, Canada, Australia, for example)

Katz I'm not sure about the AI understanding the effects, we need a professional programmer to answer the point here. But the values do change even in the civiplopedia, and the AI knows what it needs to build to get what. Remember that the AI, for example, can very well convert to a religion once it enters all its cities, which reveals it has some "thinking" and knows what is best for it

About the Jews, fine, I'm sure a good number of them quit the religion via converting to newer religions (xianity, Islam). Even almost all Christians in Islamic countries converted (the very living example is Egypt). But still how do you suggest I show their small number?

Finally, Jolly's points only shows he didn't read/understand my post. His question about "why Islam is the last religion" obviously shows he never played the game anyway

Impaler The Qor'an (Islam's holy book) spoke of the Jews that they refused to fight with Moosa (Moses) and told him "Go with your Lord and fight, we're staying here till they exit the city" (they = the enemies whom took their land and their children). So I don't know if we should put that...

And I'm sorry but I didn't quite understand what you said about the Shrines and Pro.. um.. religious guys? Could you explain it again? :)

Fex That's what I did! Pork gives NO bonus in cities with Jewish temples. It's +1 -1 health remember? (read my first post well)

Racism/Religionism is a must when you want a decent and realistic gameplay. I mean how did you like the Vanilla version of religions? *puke* it SUCKS! All religions are the same is totally unrealistic and was very un-entertaning for me. Religion is responsible for, say, no less than 50% of wars in our history, whether directly (we hate you coz you're heathens) or indirectly (we'll take their oil coz they're terrorists)

About your suggestion with many ppl doing a mod: I'm not good @ team work, and we'll never agree anyway. The best thing is have everyone of those do his mod, and then the player uses the one he sees fits more for his view of reality/gameplay. I mean, surely a Jew won't like my mod where I show the Jews can build armies more difficultly, coz they see themselves as brave warriors etc etc

And I partially agree with removing historical contexts. I mean, even in the core of Islam, Moslems should have many children and should fight bravely (which was, and is, implemented historically). In Christianity, you should love all others etc etc (and I totally ignored the actual fact that Christians almost never did that in real life), and so on maybe except for Judaism which I'm kinda biased against I admit :p

Gato That's funny if anyone accuses you of being anti-semitic, Semitic means the sons of Sam, the son of Nooh, which includes BOTH Jews and Arabs! (that's why we -The Jews and the Arabs- are cousins). We are the descendants of Esma'eel ("Eshmael" in the bible I think), and they come from Esahaq (Isaac), both are the sons of Ibruheem (Abraham), may peace be among all of them - the prophets I mean!

As it has been said before... some very nice ideas.

But... before I start, don't get me wrong. You did a very nice effort, and I thank you for it. While I will not agree in many points, your work is really appreciated. So, now onto the critics, first of all...

There is a clear bias towards Islam. And there are well... slightly offensive comments in the initial posts, even when, I admit, some of them are against your own religion (the one for suicide bombing in Islam made me cringe, to be honest, the 11/9 reference, too). Still, the vision on the rest of the religions you put in your mod is... well... quite islam-o-centric, if you allow me to say so. So I don't think the stated objective in the tittle of the thread 'Very realistic' is really accomplished. Actually it should be called 'Religions from a self-moderated islamic point of view'. I am quite sure from what I have seen that anybody here who is not muslim might probably feel more or less the same about this mod.

I do agree that real religions are a lot more varied than in the game (with late religions getting just a difference of one initial free missionaire), but still I would try to rather generalize the types, than particularize every one. If anything, I would suggest this division:

- Ancient religions: more localized impact, difficulty to spread, it's just a pain to see that the majority religions at the end of the game are usually hinduism and budism, 9 out of 10 times in my games. About the nature of ancient religions, Judaism is a very clear example. Buddism and hinduism just happened to be founded in a more populated areas. It's a pity they agrouped under 'paganism' religions that had a lot more impact in the world that now appears obvious, such as mitraism and greek polytheism (which was far more complex, specially in the Roman era, than simple Norse or Aztec paganism), and of course zoroastrianism, to put forward an example of this.

- Modern religions: I would say that there would be a clear division between Confuncianism and Taoism, and then Christianity and Islam. While the former where non-proselithist in nature, the later are rabidly so. Seeing something in this direction would be nice. Still, I don't really find an objective difference between Islam and Christianity. The current 'tolerant' stance of chistianity was not so much in the, le't say XI-XVI centuries, and the religion should be the same through all time, I rather think that the religion civics are there to reflect the changes of that nature rather than aiming it the way you do in your mod.

- I like the restrictions on multiple religions in the same city. Frankly, there should be a possibility to try to wipe out non-state religions from your cities, as it happened historically and get a benefit from it. Having non-official religions in your cities should be BAD news in some ways, except maybe under free religion or pacifism religious civics.

- Customization. I like to have little details to give a little colour to the religions (like the pig thing, and adding a little commerce to the islamic shrine, for example), but they should only be that: colour, not rather religion defining.

- Free religion: I agree free religion should receive an overwhaul... it's just too good the way it is now. I would not go as far as giving one unhappy face by religion. Rather it should have no impact on happiness... it should rather help a bit with culture rather than happiness, in fact. Research is not a bad idea, since freedom for religion has reputedly increased freedom for thought and thus scientific thought. I would rather leave then the research bonus, and replace the happiness bonus with a 10% GP bonus for each different religion in the same city or any other similar bonus (and all this counting with a clear restriction of having more than 2 different religions in the same city).

- A particular comment on one of your replies "And there's a real reason which is multi-religions states tend to have less of a culture".

I must say you can't be further from the truth. If you think U.S.A.'s culture is not significative... well, I don't think you have seen much of the world. Movies, books, nearly the bloody whole internet movement, food and drink(unfortunately for the world in this point, I feel obliged to say), fashion, architecture... the list is endless, and there are enough unique elements to distinguish it from generic 'western civilization'. And you can feel it from Japan to Chile, passing through any other country (and this including islamic countries... and if you don't think so just look at the commercial buildings and clothing). And it's not all about the military power, and only because it comes toguether, with financial might. While, well, you can't really feel the cultural influence of, let's say, Saudi Arabia out of any non-islamic country. Gosh, the very proof of USA's cultural influence is that you are playing an american game, with

The thing with culture, in its forms and influence, is that it's a subjective thing. Its definition can't be restricted, so I feel a bit annoyed when I hear people comment on the U.S.A.'s 'lack of culture' (particularly from fellow europeans).

While there are a lot of other hints, I think this comment captures the biased essence of your 'realistic' approach.

Since I guess you must guess I do have a bias myself, let me detail my own origins, being Spanish, from a 99% catholic country (well, not so that much now with all the immigration in the last decade, but it was like that when I was born). But, being actually quite gnostic, myself.

this shows the Christian tolerance to other creeds (err... pre 9/11)

Actually, Christians have always been savage towards non-Christians and heretics, persecuting and criminalizing them.

Islam is not a FINAL religion in vanilla Civ 4 - it's just the one latest found - and that IS a difference :rolleyes: Writting "final" religion I meant you make Islam in fact the last standing religion with possibility to spread and there's no technology or building which can stop that - that causes serious lack of balance between religions - other's religions cant't spread since some considerable time, while Islam can still spread and nothing stops that.

You ask how long I've played Civ4 - let's say long enough to see a lot just from a tech tree and bonuses from technologies ;) Whatsmore - I've played your mod and this religious imbalance really occurs...

In your mod you favor Islam, cutting the possibility of better spreading of other religions by changing the tech tree - I just think it's not the best way. Much more realistic should be to work on some religious civics. CIVICS, CIVICS and again CIVICS is the way to influent the spread ratio and other religious bonuses, IMO.

Of course you can skip reading my post, ignore my suggestions or whatever, but I just think that would be a loss to all civ players not having a good, well-balanced, religions affecting mod to play, and thus not necessary waste of all the efoort you put to creating the mod ;)

So I'd like to encourage you to develop the mod just showing you some exagerrated features in it which affect negatively the gameplay or are much too far from reality - that's the aim of my words. Of course you may create a mod in which Islam is the only reasonably religion because of severe penalties for every other religion, but then the mod will be playable only for you and some Muslims - I think that's not your point :)

[Spread rates (original is 100):
Judaism & Hinduism: 10 (shouldn't spread after their obsoletion)

What do you mean, these religions shouldn't spread after their "obsoletion"?

I can assure you Hinduism is anything but obsolete, and I doubt you'll find many practicing Jews who agree that their religion is "obsolete" either. What do you fancy obsoleted them?

Fex That's what I did! Pork gives NO bonus in cities with Jewish temples. It's +1 -1 health remember? (read my first post well)

Racism/Religionism is a must when you want a decent and realistic gameplay. I mean how did you like the Vanilla version of religions? *puke* it SUCKS! All religions are the same is totally unrealistic and was very un-entertaning for me. Religion is responsible for, say, no less than 50% of wars in our history, whether directly (we hate you coz you're heathens) or indirectly (we'll take their oil coz they're terrorists)

About your suggestion with many ppl doing a mod: I'm not good @ team work, and we'll never agree anyway. The best thing is have everyone of those do his mod, and then the player uses the one he sees fits more for his view of reality/gameplay. I mean, surely a Jew won't like my mod where I show the Jews can build armies more difficultly, coz they see themselves as brave warriors etc etc

And I partially agree with removing historical contexts. I mean, even in the core of Islam, Moslems should have many children and should fight bravely (which was, and is, implemented historically). In Christianity, you should love all others etc etc (and I totally ignored the actual fact that Christians almost never did that in real life), and so on maybe except for Judaism which I'm kinda biased against I admit :p


At least you admit your Biases and try not to hide them or deny them. As to your assertions about each religion I could not really disagree with you more. The prime purposes of any and all religions regardless of what color they paint them is to 1) Spread itself(Be Fruitful and multiply) to the exclusion of all others, and 2) Control/succor the general population(Religion is the opiate of the masses).

I disagree that Rascism/religionism is a must when implementing religions. Firaxis already did so by imcluding a -4 modifier to relations for anyone of the wrong religions. I think certain things could be done to improve the implementation of this without making different religions inhernetly weaker than others. The biggest complaint is not that you have failed to make all religions the same (as they are in vanilla Civ) but that the religions are no longer balanced. They should all balance out. You know anything about accounting or math. Each religion should have certain attributes, but they should be equal but different attributes granting no real advantage other than a flavor.

In truth no religion is better than any other from a non-historical perspective. They all choose an invisible man(or men) in the sky to Blame for everythign good and bad they cannot explain by other means. They all lay down rules and laws which their members must obey or suffer some form of punishment either in this life or an assumed afterlife. The Root for all religions is the great unknown of what happens to us when we die, and mythology, cautionary tales, rules, and regulations which must be observed to prevent the "eafterlife" from being unpleasant.

The only "religion" to fall even a little outside of this mold is Buhddism as at its core it requires devotion to no particular god. Merely the recognition of a higher power of some sort. The rest of Buhddism is a philophical way of looking at life and dealing with the enevitability of death. In this, buhddism ends up being the same. Its about death.

Other than not being able to eat pork, or no meat on fridays, or no use of caffiene...which are all relatively sound dietary suggestions from a strictly medical viewpoint...no religion has said or done anything of importance towards the advancement of the human race other than serve as a birthplace for common law. Relgion invents nothing. Religion's prime products are a general sense of well-being and a resentment of those who are of another religion. Granting serious penalties, or giving serious advantages to one religion over another is fallacious and silly!

Inherently:
Jews make no better or worse warriors than Muslims.
Christians are not more rascist than any other religion.

Historically:
Jews have been stomped on more than any other religion due to location, and circumstance.
Christians have done more stomping than any other religion.
Muslims have shown they know how to hold a grudge better than just about anyone on the planet.

The problem is that you have given the religions traits based on history.
How about putting Islam at a severe disadvantage during the medieval era and giving christianity huge advantages during that period to help encourage the crusades to take place?
How about giving the Jews huge advantages financially during the industrial era so that during the modern era you can stage the holocaust and then turn several major religions against them?

Oh and I see my logic error on what you did with Pigs/Shellfish, I thought you made them -1 instead of +1...you just gave them -1 in addition to +1 so that they cross cancel. That makes sense!

And back to what I was saying earlier...for every negative give a posotive and no one can really complain. For the Jews you give them too many negatives and barely any positives. You cripple them militarily, you cripple them on three resources, You stunt their growth... This is a lot of negatives...where are their positives? You give them a couple extra cuture points, and bonus health for cows, fish and sheep, and a slight bonus to research from temples...Cripling their military and their growth outweighs these benefits by a lot.

I must say you can't be further from the truth. If you think U.S.A.'s culture is not significative... well, I don't think you have seen much of the world. Movies, books, nearly the bloody whole internet movement, food and drink(unfortunately for the world in this point, I feel obliged to say), fashion, architecture... the list is endless, and there are enough unique elements to distinguish it from generic 'western civilization'. And you can feel it from Japan to Chile, passing through any other country (and this including islamic countries... and if you don't think so just look at the commercial buildings and clothing). And it's not all about the military power, and only because it comes toguether, with financial might. While, well, you can't really feel the cultural influence of, let's say, Saudi Arabia out of any non-islamic country. Gosh, the very proof of USA's cultural influence is that you are playing an american game, with

I agree with Fachy here, multi-ethnic multi-religion states are going to have less cultural influence because they absorb culture from outside so easily. American music is basicaly African, foods and language are mostly European ect ect. The Mylon mod dose a nice job of portraying this having culture pass from city to city on Trade routes. A nation with lots of trade will see a lot of forign culture in its cities. Further more if we interprit history as a game of Civ the US is has built Broadway, Rock n' Roll, Hollywood and the Internet and is currently way ahead on the score graph, but this is only one game and you cant say the US is inherently culturaly strong from one game. That along with lots of Commerce being aplied to Culture production puts the US ahead in total culture points but the % of that culture thats American is going to be rather low.

As to my plan to change religion founding and HolyCities. As I said the first step was to prevent holyCities from being created, I have a somewhat messy python script that will do that. Next I remove holy City requirments from all the Shrines and added a Tech requirment that coresponds with the Religion. So for example the Buddest Shrine requires Meditation. Now the player must actualy build the Shrine using a Great Prophet to get a religion introduced to their Civ. I think I will also add some free Great Prophets to some of the Techs so you dont have to wait so long to get thouse Shrines built. I could come up with another script that puts the HolyCity ware the Shrine is built but I was thinking of saving that for a new Wonder that I someone sugjested.

Islam is the last religion ever,
Wow! Get your facts straight. Islam was made in the 600 ADs. Well, we have Sciencetology, founded in 1952 A.D.. A bunch of Protestant Christian religions were founded in the 1000 A.D.s Falun Gong was created in the Seventies. There are a lot of religions that came after Islam.
BTW, I think this mod is very racist against Hinduism and Judaism. This mod is based on what you think the world is like, not what the world really is like.

Face it: offering to create something that depicts any religion--much less several--"realistically" is asking for a steaming pile of trouble. ;)

Face it: offering to create something that depicts any religion--much less several--"realistically" is asking for a steaming pile of trouble. ;)

Which is EXACTLY why I suggest that all such "diversification of religion" mods should really DITCH naming the game's religions after real religions, and come up with doctrines or theologies as the names. "Messianism", or "Revealed Truth" for a couple examples. You get all the benefits of new combinations and abilities, without offending anyone and without having to interpret what the real religions stand for.

Additionally, it avoids creators not knowing jack about the religions they are trying to portray... for instance Hinduism. There's no such thing as "the Hindu religion". There's dozens of faiths, with vastly differing schools and thelogies, from monotheists to pantheists to polytheists to what-have you, ALL of whom are properly described as Hindu.

I totally appreciate your effort in makin a religions mod,but I think that modifying religions that way will take a part of the whole gameplay fun,in my opinion,half of the fun of civ comes 4m creating a whole customizable world, not that related to the reality,only created in the brain of the player,I could play with islam and be a pacifist or an agressive country,that depends on me not on some bonuses or penalties.
Also,the whole historical features of religions were created by civics not by the religions themselves,e.g all the invasion of north n south america was done by christian countries,but that was done due to certain political causes not due to being "christian",so I can't force a jewish player to be the weakest country in the military side or he'd choose another religion,or tell a hindus player that he should abandon his religion after it becomes obsolete,that would simply makes him never use the mod,and I don't think that it was your goal after all that effort,n that's why the game designers didn't open up the whole religions differences at all (who would want all the indians or the jewish never to buy the game)
Anyway I repeat it again,U've really done a great effort there,but I think the next mod you should create is a civics mod that could really affect not only the religion but the other systems of the gameplay same time,which is what happens in the real world.
And by the way I'm Egyptain and muslim also,so I didn't say what i said due to religious difference,but it's what I think only about the whole mod thing.

Funny you mentioned "Reveald Truth" as I was working on a personal mod that replaces ALL of the RL relgions with some simular to what we saw in AC. "Revealed Truth" is just one of the names I have come up with too. :D

The one thing I wanted to do was to tie some of the bonuses to food like Abumouse did in his mod, but make sure there is no link to RL religions. I think an effective balanced model like this could be an effective sub for what we have now.

Religion in this game not balanced anyway. Christianity and Islam are at a clear disadvantage if you want to play with those religions as a founder as they come later and timing becomes that much more difficult. Plus the fact that you are trying to spread to cities that could have 3-4 religions already.

I like a more felxible model that reduces some of the overwhelming benefits for the founder of the religion and focuses more on the benefits of having a certain religion that is more based on strategy and gameplay style.

This way you can have those differences that would benefit say religion A in a military way +1 exp for units if state religion is A or no benefit from certain foods without the stereotype and offense that has gone on so far. NOt to hard to do IMHO.

I'm beginning to understand exactly why Firaxs made religion the way they did :)

In reality, as mentioned before, all religions are fundamentally the same thing anyway. The only significant differences between them are really in their histories, considering this is a game that lets you re-write history...

The idea of differences between the religions is good, but it would be best if those differences could be developed in the game, not by some preconceived notions of a designer with their own personal beliefs.

Perhaps the best bet is to make a mod that assigns known religions to the appropriate civilization when a "religious" technology is discovered. For example if I am playing the Arabians and discover Meditation first I would found Islam. Then, bonuses or penalties could be applied based on when the religion is founded rather than which religion. Other effects such as denying the use of a particular resource could be used to offset the benefit of having a religion. So, if I was playing as India and founded Hinduism, and had no access to wine at the time, wine would become a "forbidden" resource, or maybe even the other way around. Anyway, the point is that you can't take a game where none of this history has happened and try to apply historical influences to it.

Sulla I don't understand why do you say that. I mean, I made Tao's & jews very scientifically advanced. I made christian cities happier... that's my view on the world's religions. And like I also said, Islam is the most expensive tech in the religions (divine right), so it HAD to have some advantages! If I haven't told you that I'm a Moslem you probably wouldn't have said all that

About your suggestions: I did exactly what you said about ancient religions (difficult to spread), modern religions are differentiated just as you said too! Read posts previous to yours to see my understanding about theoretical vs practical religions (as example to christian tolerence)

About purging non-state religions from your cities, there's a mod for that. But I'm almost sure the AI can't use it (since it causes unhappiness too, so it can't "weigh" it without python).. so i'm waiting for a "fair" mod

I answered twice why free religion had to have a disadvantage, please go read the previous posts!

About american culture: you can tell when you see weird-looking houses that ur in China, people wearing turbans that you're in india, people wearing large white dresses that you're in the Persian gulf area.. etc. But what will you say when you see people wearing jeans? It's everywhere! Same goes with food: hamburgers? It's just everywhere! etc etc

Mayan I was trying to go with the theoretic teachings of the religions rather than the actual practises :D

Jolly You're really stressing on my nerves jolly! 5/7 religions can spread to each city till the game ends! I even gave christian missionaries 3 movements where Islamic missionaries had only 2! What's your problem??? :mad: Even Islam has a lesser chance of spreading since it comes in late in the game!

"Changing the tech tree"? What the <snip> are you talking about? There's not a tech xml file in my mod in the first place!! :mad: :mad:

I'm not ignoring your post as you can see, but 99% of what you're criticizing (and I say 99% to be polite) is not in my mod in the first place! Gosh!

screw read all of my first post and you'll understand what is meant by their "obseletion"

Fex Are you saying christians, who made the crusades (ancient & current) are not less tolerent than buddhists, who're supposed to love everyone??

And don't speak of Moslems holding grudges till you read the jewish history! They tried to poison prophet Mohammad 1400 years ago, and they're stealing Palestinian lands today! Although when Europe treated them as a plague in the middle ages, they sought refuge in the Islamic countries and lived in them until the first 1/2 of the 20th centurie peacefully where nobody picked on them

For the jews I gave 2 positives (research & trade routes) and 2 negatives (small number and small military power), what are you complaining about?? I cripple them on 3 resources but I double their benefits from the other 3 resources! Totally balanced!! Gee you're looking at the mod with one eye only!! They can use extra gold from their trade routes and selling their techs to hurry production of military units thus counter their small numbers!

Impaler It always makes sense to have a prophet, who builds a shrine, to establishe a religion, not the other way around :)

AlCosta Islam is the last religion in the GAME! Judiasm and Hinduism are NOT spreading anymore, and have not been spreading for centuries! These are my views, as well as statistical facts ok? While till today, 50,000 americans convert to Islam annually. People in east Asia conver to Christianity till today too. So it IS realistic

Nour Egyptian? Give me a PM to MP sometime :)
No el yahood can be the strongest player! They can sell their techs to generate gold + their trade routes and hurry production of military units! zyy ma bye7sul begad

And if you enjoy non-realistic religions, or to create your own world as you say, then you shouldn't be using any religious mods. Not mine nor abbamouse's... just use the vanilla game, which sucks in my opinion because I go with the total opposite (I don't like to "create my game")

Seven Read my reply to nour + your idea prevents civs who never found a religion to ever found one when they research a religious tech. Though I admit it's kinda weird to see hindu americans and Moslem chinese. But it's not less weird than seeing Isabella building the pyramids!

AlCosta Islam is the last religion in the GAME! Judiasm and Hinduism are NOT spreading anymore, and have not been spreading for centuries! These are my views, as well as statistical facts ok? While till today, 50,000 americans convert to Islam annually. People in east Asia conver to Christianity till today too. So it IS realistic

No, but you earlier say that it was the last religion ever created. Which isn't true. Judaism and Hinduism are still getting converts just not as much as Islam and Christianity. When you put that in the game, whoever ends up getting stuck with Hinduism and Judaism is going to be doomed from the beggining. Essentially, you are creating a world that will be dominated by Chrisitianity and Islam. Again, a reason Judaism isn't spreading is because millions of Jews died in Europe during the fourties. It's hard to spread a religion with so many of your own people dead.

Those religions get an early start, thus an early bonus. And to balance things out, they had to have a late penalty. Again, just in real life. And if I could make their missionaries cost much more in the late game I would, but that's not an option (unless I invent new techs and new buidlings etc etc). And 5/7 religions can spread till the game ends, not just xianity & Islam.

Judaism isn't spreading because it's not a multi-race faith, unlike many others. Jews are not TRYING to convince anyone with Judaism anyway, that has got nothing to do with the holocaust (<snip>). And even if current jews were 15 million + 10 million, that's still a very small number compared to the billions of Moslems and Xians, who try to include as many as possible from all other races into their faiths

Which is EXACTLY why I suggest that all such "diversification of religion" mods should really DITCH naming the game's religions after real religions, and come up with doctrines or theologies as the names. "Messianism", or "Revealed Truth" for a couple examples. You get all the benefits of new combinations and abilities, without offending anyone and without having to interpret what the real religions stand for.

Yes, that's not a bad idea. I too feel a bit uncomfortable with the portrayal of actual religions in the game, especially since their depiction is so inaccurate and misleading.

Additionally, it avoids creators not knowing jack about the religions they are trying to portray... for instance Hinduism. There's no such thing as "the Hindu religion". There's dozens of faiths, with vastly differing schools and thelogies, from monotheists to pantheists to polytheists to what-have you, ALL of whom are properly described as Hindu.

I wouldn't quite agree with your interpretation of Hinduism but I do agree that they got Hinduism very wrong in the game.

[screw read all of my first post and you'll understand what is meant by their "obsoletion"

I did read all of your first post, and the rest of your posts, and it still isn't in the least clear what you mean.

You said Hinduism is made "obsolete" by Monotheism but I can't imagine what you mean by that. Do you mean that monotheism is more spiritually advanced than polytheism?

If so, then you are another one who has fallen for the mistake Firaxis made in associating Hinduism with Polytheism. Hinduism is not polytheistic, it's MONistic. Go and look up monism on Wikipedia so you know what it means. And while you're there, I suggest you go and read the entry on Hinduism as well.

If on the other hand, you mean Hinduism and Judaism are "obsolete" because they no longer make converts, you are wrong on two counts. First, you are wrong to think that the practice of Hinduism is not spreading. It IS spreading, in the West, alongside Buddhism.

Second, you are confusing actual history with potential history. Civ is not about replicating history as it happened, it's about asking "what if" history had happened a different way.

For example, if it hadn't been for the Roman Emperor Constantine officially adopting Christianity around 300AD, Judaism might well be a major world religion today. About 30% of the Roman Empire was Jewish in the post-Christian era, and Jewish proselytes were numerous and effective. But when Christians gained political power they quickly put a stop to the spread of Judaism.

If the Emperor Constantine had *not* adopted Christianity, then the history of Judaism might have been very different.

A religious mod should not reflect what actually happened in history, but what MIGHT HAVE happened under different circumstances. Your mod presupposes a given historical outcome, ie the situation that exists today, and that is not appropriate for a game of this type.

Ok, Fachy, I see your point...

You're right - your mod is perfect, all the 34 persons, which voted that it needs more work are completely wrong (not mentioning that 10/36 (27%) called you a jerk - I was not one of them), because the only good answer for the poll is - "Man, you're a genius! The game wasn't playable before I used it!"

So the 2 votes - 5.5% - (one of them is yours, I suppose) are much more important and represent better players opinion than 34 worthless votes (94.5%)

I realy don't get the point of allowing more than one answer in the poll - I suppose it was just to give it an appearance of a real poll :goodjob:

I didn't mean you changed the tech xml file - just that your chcanges are visible in tech tree - that's why I wrote "changing the tech tree" - please don't pick some small pieces of my posts just to try to proove I'm one of these 34 persons, who are completely wrong in opposite to the 2 righteous votes.

I don't see any point in this discussion, in which everybody except you is wrong.

Screw Obseletion means they lose their ability to spread. So "obseletion for the potential persons to whom that religion could be introduced to" if you prefer that sentence :)

About those religions spreading, then sure ya, every faith might be getting at least 1 convert per year, without exceptions, but that's not a reason not to obselete their spreading in the game. Why? Read my reply to Al Costa in my previous post (which had no nicks in it) - first paragraph

Jolly Just because most people see it needs modification doesn't mean I need someone who doesn't know or doesn't want to read to bash at things that are not even in my mod. Criticize all you like, provided that you mention things that I actually included in it.

You're bringing things out of the blue, assume I put them in the mod, then criticize them. Then when I'm mad you go like "ok you're mod is perfect and we're all stupid"!

If I'm wrong, I challenge you to explain every point you made and tell me WHERE is it in my mod, but you won't do that. Nor would you ever confess that you were wrong and that you actually accused me of creating features I never created. Now about the techs, what have I "changed in the tech tree"?

1. Fachy - maybe it was my fault to read your posts about things you changed carefully, if I didn't I probably wouldn't "assume you put them in the mod". You asked twice or so all the people to read your posts before commenting - did you read your posts ? There are some contradictory information in them...

2. I don't criticize your work at all, nor you as a person, just try to point out things, which need to be rethinked - please, read my posts carefully ;)

3. Your wrong claiming that I would ever admit I was wrong - I made an confusive mistake. I read and thought "Monastery" and wrote "Temple" - that is, I suppose, the reason you tell I write about the things you didn't include in your mod. I'm really sorry for this misunderstanding, blame on me...

4. About the tech tree - I meant 2 changes:
a) Monotheism obsoletes Hindu monastery - Monotheism didn't affect Hinduism so much, that they razed or stopped to use their monasteries
b) Theology obsoletes Jewish monastery - Jews still are waiting for Messiah, Christianity didn't affect their religion in that poin at all - Jews just don't believe in Jesus, who is the awaited Messiah according to Christianity - so Jews didn't ruin their Synagogues neither.

All I'd like you took under consideraton is not to try mirror some historical events in the rules, but give a POSSIBILITY for them to occur - and the only reasonably way to do this is adding more religious civics - to give a player a CHOICE, more possibilities, not making the game follow as much political events as possible - in civ4 it's the player who creates these events. I hope you know what I mean - just that trying to include history of faith in religion rules is not the way :)

5. All I wrote above doesn't change the fact, that your mod is not well balanced and all religions excluding Islam are too weak - I'll tell oce more - it's not the TYPE of religion, what gives war, scientific or spreading advantage, but the way in which the ruler uses faith or believes of his nation - so it's a proper CIVIC. It's not the Islam, which push people to perform suicidal strokes, but the way religious leaders use this faith, it's not the Judaism, which makes Jews earn money, but the attitude of religious leaders, it's not the Christianity, what caused the Crussades, but religious leaders - all these events and bonuses were because of particular CIVICS. Consider this when your anger drops :)

doin' some temples or monasteries obsolete, and thus killing some religions is absolutely historically false, reducing many alternate world evolution in game and (last but not least) - just unfair

And why Islam is the final religion ??? Just because you're a Muslim ??? I mean no offense towards you, but there's something wrong

Shortly speaking - I suggest to remove other religions temples becoming obsolete feature

Writting "final" religion I meant you make Islam in fact the last standing religion with possibility to spread and there's no technology or building which can stop that - that causes serious lack of balance between religions - other's religions cant't spread since some considerable time, while Islam can still spread and nothing stops that.

In your mod you favor Islam, cutting the possibility of better spreading of other religions by changing the tech tree - I just think it's not the best way

Looks more than just mixing the words "temples" and "monasteries" to me jolly. Could anyone, jolly or other, explain to me how does all that occur in my mod? Maybe he's right after all.. perhaps I haven't been reading my posts nor playing my mods, so I mistakingly included all that in my mod! So I'm seeking assistance from you guys

Now dear Mr Jolly, back to the tech tree issue:
4a) This is called changing buildings not changing techs. Even the very xml line is included in the buildings not the tech. And even if you know nothing about xml programing, you should've easily figured it out yourself since my mod has no technology xml file

4b) Many of the Jews beleived in Jesus as the Massaiah, thus converted and became Christians. Same thing happened with prophet Mohammad when many Christians and Jews believed he is a real prophet (and it happens till now). And just because some Jews didn't doesn't mean they don't beleive in him. And Judaism stopped spreading practically after the death of prophet Moosa (Moses) probably by a few years. Even when the Jews lived in Egypt after prophet Yoosof (Joseph) called them in, they lived as a closed sect and didn't try to convince Egyptians with their creed

If you want to remove history from the game to be able to re-write it, then your problem is not my mod being unbalanced, it's my mod existing. The vanilla version is perfect for you and you can re-write history all you like using it. If you think civics is the way, I'd be glad to see your "Jolly's Balanced Religious Civics" mod thread soon, and be sure I'll add alot of positive feed back in your thread then (heh heh just wait and see!)

If you read your own posts, as you recommend to others, you'll find it all in them - I didn't make a single thing up. :mad:

Oh my, I've just noticed that it's possible to check who voted for which answer... :rolleyes:

I swear I didn't KNOW your vote is the half of these 5.5 % claiming your mod is perfect - if I knew I would never use this fact in public :D

So the truth is that only 2,75 % of civ4 players build up your self-complacency... :goodjob:

I read them and haven't found what I quoted you claiming in my previous post.

I also didn't claim my mod is perfect on a public basis. And it's natural for me to think that on a personal basis, since I'm the very one who programmed it. And the poll -which is supposed to show what people think on a personal basis- is open for everyone, including me

And I'd LOVE to see you quoting me with 5 quotes (or say 3, since you admitted the third one was your mistake already, and 2-3 of them overlap) that shows how that is in my mod

Again for the tenth time: My problem is not you saying the mod is bad/incomplete, it's you saying it's bad for things that are not even in it How many times would I need to repeat that? Now I'm seriously demanding that you quote me, or quote lines in my mod, that prove your allegations. If you fail to do that, I want an admittance with your errors. Otherwise it's pointless to continue speaking on no basis

As a general rule for the mod: Temples are only effective when existing under their relative religions.


1) Prevent many religions from existing in a city
2) Make life hard for the ones choosing the Free-religion civic



So it's a desperate solution for nations with 15 religions/city or something to soften the bad effect of multiple religions in 1 city. Also you cannot build missionaries without monastries anymore.

15 religions in a city while only 7 are available in the game :mischief:
Cannot build missionaries without monasteries, and the monasteries become obsolete - if not say "bad idea at all" it can be said "definetely too quick"


You must have the religion a state religion in order to build its monastry, except for the hindu one. I personally use a mod to increase religious-switching anarchy to ~10 turns to make it even harder to switch religions. I suggest you do the same

in 10 turns my monasteries (if I was quick enough to build at least one) will become obsolete because next religious tech obsoletes them.


Hindu monastery becomes obsolete by monothiesm (what, only 1 God exists??). Jewish monestry obselete by theology (omg, the Massaiah has arrived!).

As I wrot in previous post - Hinduists neither Judaists didn't raze their monasteries :mischief:


[OUOTE=Fachy]
Spread rates (original is 100):
Judaism & Hinduism: 10 (shouldn't spread after their obseletion)
[/QUOTE]

And in next post you claim no religion becomes obsolete... :eek:

Really, quoting out of context is very easy, so you didn't impress me with quoting my sentences, as you see I can do the same...

If you want some quotes from more of your posts I'll gladly help :D

1) Temples obseletion: What you said in your post had to do with "killing some religions", and "unfair", please explain under the light of that. And temples being effective under a certain religion doesn't make it obselete, because you can always switch back to that religion and have them effective again (with 2 exceptions which I've mentioned)

2) ?

3) I can't beleive you didn't realize I was being sarcastic. You're.. weird. Again my comment is another "?" since that wasn't a disputed point, I never refused THAT POINT being in my mod!

4) That's crazy man!!!! This point is ALSO not disputed about, in the sense of "you claming it's in my mod and me denying it's in my mod"! Anyway the 10-turn thing was a mere suggestion, not even in the mod.

And if you didn't know, your scientific research stops while in anarchy so you can't have the monestary obselete!!!!! (this guy is driving me crazy). It becomes obselete when YOU discover monotheism not when anybody does, unlike in civ2 & civ3. Gosh, do you even have civ4????

5) Who said anything about razing? I said they simply become ineffective! So they can't build missionaries anymore and spread their faith to more foreign cities argh!!!

6) You used the word "obselete" unlike me using it. I obviously meant "obselete" = its monestery obseletes = the rel cannot spread. Not like "it became too old to be good like an old PC" or something

You're quoting things totally irrelevant to what I have asked for. I said, "you claimed 1, 2, 3, 4, & 5. Show me where did I say that". You turned the whole thing into a rediculous discussion about the core of the mod again, and not whether I mentioned them or not. Nice try, but I, and anyone reading us (which I seriously doubt), weren't born yesterday

This whole thing, I noticed, has gotten out of hand. Perhaps this mod heavily favors Islam, but I don't think it was originally Fachy's intent to somehow promote his religion. The benefits that Islam recieves, while great from a gameplay perspective, is quite insulting considering what he based those bonuses on. He basically poked fun at his own religion by calling it bloodthirsty. :lol:

Here's some advice when trying to tinker with the religions that probably wouldn't insult somebody. You can attach only positive bonuses to religions. Think of how this works with the civilizations in the game. FDR for America is Industrious and Organized. Does anyone get offended America doesn't have the Creative trait? "America not cultured enough for ya!" Or that they don't have the Spirtual trait? "I go to church every Sunday!" No we just smugly say "Yes we are quite industrious and organized" :D

Dishing out penalties can be a problem. You can give the Muslims a bonus for warfare, but giving Jews a penalty will cause people to focus on the negative. By giving Jews a bonus to research, you effectively compliment their scholarship without, at the same time, calling the Christians neandertals attracted to shiny objects.

Get it? Try it out. See if it works.

Are you sure that is not Derek Smart ? The crappy develloper ? :p

He basically poked fun at his own religion by calling it bloodthirsty. :lol:
That was totally out! Just because Moslems happen to be supreme fighters (expanded from China to Spain in less than a 100 years) doesn't make them blood thirsty. And I said they love to fight heathens, which is true. But on the other hand we don't fight nations whom don't fight us. The very obvious example from my previous postings if middle-ages jews sought refuge in Islamic countries after they've been kicked/persecuted in "civilized" europe

Now about positive traits, you have a good idea... for Firaxis! I'm not a company, and I don't care if I offend people for the sake of making a realistic mod (from my point of view, of course)

doing some admendment to the current religious system is encourage, but seriously, not this way

I think this thread has gotten totally off track, either balance mod out or not. :sad:

But stop pushing one Religion over another, :mad: that is not what the game is about.

THIS GAME IS A "WHAT IF", NOT NECESSRY A REPEAT OF HISTORY. :rolleyes:

Balance it or not, but don't claim what you have now is a balaned GAME. In your own words, you show favor in one religion over the others, but its your right. I don't have to believe you nor do others have to believe your ideas either.

THIS IS A GAME, IT SHOULD TO BE FUN. LET'S GET BACK TO THE FUN PARTS!!! :):beer:

Cyber: Abba's version had alot of logical mistakes, which the game normally had. Such as -and I mentioned them before on 2 threads- giving more potential happiness/culture/research to cities with more religions, when reality is the opposite. My mod limits that to a big extent

Hi Fachy,
You've gotten some really good feedback from others. Keep working at the balance of things. I really like the idea of reworking the religions. I completely understand why Firaxis did things the way they are. Ideally the best way to accomplish your task might be to get input from other religious points of view. As an example, I'd like to share an oversimplified generalization from my observations. Hindus, Buddhist (and others) are based in fear of the spirit world. Judaism and Islam tend to be somewhat depressing because they feel the one all-powerful God is angry with them. Chrsitianity, I'm biased, is the only religion based on hope. So I see these religions having a tendency toward fear, sadness and hope. I think Firaxis didn't want to go down this road and I undestand why. However, I appreciate your work and may give it a try one of these days when I feel it will make the game fun for me to play. I don't want to play a depressing game. :)

THIS GAME IS A "WHAT IF", NOT NECESSRY A REPEAT OF HISTORY. :rolleyes:

Balance it or not, but don't claim what you have now is a balaned GAME. In your own words, you show favor in one religion over the others, but its your right. I don't have to believe you nor do others have to believe your ideas either.

Bingo.

The game isn't supposed to repeat history (why would you want to? The US would "win" every single time). As such, there's no reason to essentially destroy any of the religions.

Even then, it would pay to get your facts straight about non-Islamic religions. There are 750 million Hindus in the world and well over 500 million Buddhists. Neither religion is "obsolete" in any sense of the word.

Cyber You have misconceptions on Islam at least. Islamic scholars say Moslems must live with both fear and hope, and that fear and hope are like 2 wings for a bird. Coz if you're only afraid, you're sure you're going to hell, thus would never do anything good. Vice versa for if you're always optimisitc and sure you're going to heaven no matter how bad you become

A practical problem with "current christianity" is that it basically says "beleive, then do whatever you want". And I read several gospels and can show you exactly which verses say that if you don't know them

Zurai I hate to repeat myself. And I said "obselete" means "stop to spread", gosh!! Read the darn previous posts before posting please??

To everyone fascinated with the idea of re-writing history Your problem is not a balanced or unbalanced religious mod guys, your problem is having a religious mod! I mean, if you totally want to re-write history, then you might wanna assume that Judaism allows pigs, and Islam doesn't encourage its followers to fight heathens, Hinduism keeps spreading till the day of judgement, etc etc etc then just play the vanilla game!.

I expected a constructive feedback to some extent, but 1/2 of the messages go like "that's just repeating history and we want to create it". Fine, create it with exactly similar religions then! Coz any little advantage/disadvantage would be faced with extreme anger from someone. Exactly like the crappy "spiritual" and "organized" traits in vanilla (which I have given them stronger effects in my personal mod)

Zurai I hate to repeat myself. And I said "obselete" means "stop to spread", gosh!! Read the darn previous posts before posting please??

Buddhism is one of the fastest spreading religions in the world.

As for the rest of your post - it's quite possible to make religions different without making them completely and utterly imbalanced. Little things like the health bonuses/penalties don't imbalance the game. Destroying several religions by forcing all of their buildings to become obsolete a third of the way through the game, or by preventing them from spreading (which removing missionaries does - religions ONLY spread naturally to cities with NO religion. You must use a missionary to spread a religion to a city that already has one) does.

*cries* buddhism doesn't stop spreading in my mod. Did you read the mod's description zurai? It's very early religion, and so likely to spread to many cities with a rate of 200% before these cities become occupied with other religions (if they ever did)

The alternative was building a buddhist missionary which is total crap for me, and again, I gave it a +200% spread rate to make it up

Ok, can you update your mod for more depth ? :)

Your religious mod is the best but not ultimate and needs improvement

But my hope is to find an overall mod for all aspects of the game

I think that civ 3 is not as realistic as i hoped :goodjob:

Although this is my first post here I've been reading both religion mods threads with great interest on from the beginning. I don't want to drop in the "which is the better" religion discussion but want to say a few words about the "very realistic".

As has been pointed out several times in both threads there is confusion between "realistic" and "historically accurate". It might be historically accurate, that Jews have been spread all over the world after their Temple had been destroyed by the Romans (this was stated in the other thread). To be realistic the mod should take into account that this could have happened to any religion organised around a central city (take Rome and Mekka) and regardless of which nation actually captured the sanctuary (i.e. even if it were the Romans in Jerusalem in history, Aztecs in Rome could have had the same consequences).

My second objection is a more general one. Civ is a game after all so you can't possibly expect it to realistically simulate such an abstract concept as religion. Reducing a faith to "spread rates" and the diet of its followers does not even come close to the meaning of religion.

Lachlan Suggestions?

Yellow You're mistaken about the shrines destruction becaaaause the jewish shrine, in my mod, brings gold coz it's Jews helping their state religion. Once it's captured (say by Romans or Aztecs), they obviously won't pay the conquerors any gold!! This is different for both Makka and Vatican city. If someone caught Makka (God forbid), they would still keep it to get the pillgrimage money. Same goes for the Vatican, to get the indulgence money

About your second point; again I disagree. And the whole point of this mod is to make the game as close as possible to real life. And in real life religions forbid you from using certain resources. Even in the vanilla version it gives :) bonus to incesne in the cathedrals, is this unrealistic too?

Lachlan Suggestions?

Yellow You're mistaken about the shrines destruction becaaaause the jewish shrine, in my mod, brings gold coz it's Jews helping their state religion. Once it's captured (say by Romans or Aztecs), they obviously won't pay the conquerors any gold!! This is different for both Makka and Vatican city.

Really? The Jewish Temple was destroyed (twice), but Jerusalem continued to be a centre of pilgrimige for Jews, except during the centuries when her Muslim or Christian rulers banned Jews from the city. Not really any different than any other holy city for any other religion, and no differences should be reflected in the game (or the mod).

As has been pointed out several times in both threads there is confusion between "realistic" and "historically accurate". It might be historically accurate, that Jews have been spread all over the world after their Temple.

Actually Judaism spread throughout much of the world long before the (2nd) Temple was destroyed. At the time of the destruction, there were gigantic Jewish communities in Egypt (indeed, there were probably more Jews in Egypt than Judea), Asia Minor, Babylonia, Persia, and emergent communities in Spain, Rome and Tunisia -- among other places.

If the game's "spread" rate at least partially reflects the spread of minority religions (since a city can have all 7 religions, theoretically), than a 10 spread rate is ubsurdly low for Judaism, and probably reflects Fachy's admitted anti-Jewish biases more than anything, just like his Mod's ridiculous limitation that Judiasm can't spread after Christianity (when, in fact, it kept spreading quite rapidly until persecution by Christian and Muslim governments ended most conversion to Judiasm). In reality, of course, there were Jewish states with large convert populations in Yemen, Ethiopia, and Khazaria that existed for hundreds of years at various times between 0 and 1400 c.e.

This <snip> calls certain religions "obsolete" and then, as a Muslim, attacks the Jewish military? Makes sense that you would attack the Jewish military considering that the Israeli military has whipped the ass of nearly every Muslim country over and over. Giving military experience points to Muslim military units is not only historically ignorant but completely unbalancing for Civ.

What's next, Christians, Jews and others making their own religious mods to promote their own religions? What fun! I'm glad Firaxis had the sense not to play into garbage like this.

This idiot calls certain religions "obsolete" and then, as a Muslim, attacks the Jewish military? Makes sense that you would attack the Jewish military considering that the Israeli military has whipped the ass of nearly every Muslim country over and over. Giving military experience points to Muslim military units is not only historically ignorant but completely unbalancing for Civ.

What's next, Christians, Jews and others making their own religious mods to promote their own religions? What fun! I'm glad Firaxis had the sense not to play into garbage like this.

Now Xavier you seem to be having a little trouble expressing yourself. Tell us all how you "really" feel LOL! :eek:

Kohel I didn't say the holy city will be removed. And if the jews re-captured the holy city they can always use a great religious guy to have their shrine back

Give me a break Kohel, Judaism almost never spread to people out than the offspring of propeht Ya'qoob (Jacob) who is also called Isru'eel (Israel).

Xavier You're the <snip> because you haven't read my definition of "obselete" about 97 times in this thread before posting. And there has been virtually no jewish military for the last 2000 years, save the last 70 years only. And I shouldn't banish 2000 years for the sake of 70 don't you think? (assuming you have the ability to think)

Judaism isn't spreading because it's not a multi-race faith, unlike many others. Jews are not TRYING to convince anyone with Judaism anyway, that has got nothing to do with the holocaust (assuming it happened).


I stopped reading after that

Sorry Fachy, I forgot about the logic in giving Muslim military soldiers more experience automatically because of the great empire that Egypt has been for the last 2000 years. First, you were the Roman's <snip>, then the Ottoman's <snip>, then the <snip> of the British. After obtaining your independence, you promptly got your asses kicked by the Israeli's. But oh yes, Islam deserves military advantages in Civ4 because the best unit you've ever created is one that blows itself up attacking civilians! Smart!

Fachy's reply: "But I'm Muslim so I want to give them stuff because I'm Muslim!"

Yeah, great mod. Snicker.

I think this thread has got well off hand with direct insults between forum members and such a grave thing as holocaust denying. Which is a crime in several countries, by the way. Is not there a 'report to mods' button in this forum?

About the issue of automatic promotions: I feel somebody here is mistaking the initial arabian civilization with muslim religion, if you want to consider past history. Current muslim countries military have had a terribly bad reputation in the last century, specially confronted with western powers. And just think the biggest muslim power in the XIX century was already known as the 'sick man of the west'.

Oh my, what a mess... :satan:

Fachy, I see you're more and more nice and polite with each post not agreeing with your vision of the world, or - at least - your mod in the form it is for now...:clap:

Have you seen your poll ? You got a few more votes for the third answer...:rolleyes:

Maybe it's high time to read the hints some people were giving you in first posts and consider applying them ?:sleep:

PS. I. I wrote it just for fun of feeling your hollow anger in your posts, because I don't believe you'll ever consider any constructive critic in this thread and get to work - you're obviously absolutely happy with your mod as it is now - I wish you many great victories and conquests in civ4 - honestly. :spear:

PS. II. Not only you have the ability of being sarcastic - my post with quoting you was nothing more but a sarcastic and ironic reply :smoke:

Well, this was a little controversial. I think you have to many things that are actually not because of religion in this mod. If the three God-religions followed the ten commandments, then you shouldn't be able to build armies (Thou shalt not kill). It is the civic options that change society, most religions are quite peaceful. The Crusades were not entirely because of religious differences, it was a way for the Pope to unite Europe against a common enemy. You could have some kind of relations bonus between Islam and Christianity, and between Islam and Judaism, because Muslems should respect other God-worshippers. Maybe a little anti-semitism for the Christians too, but then again, it is more of a civic choice.

I think I wasn't able to bring my point across, maybe because I'm not a native speaker of English... And then the mutual insults became more interesting than a post on topic...

The scenario I was heading at goes as follows:

You are a citizen of the holy city of a given faith, lets say Jerusalem, and you are an follower of that faith, lets say a Jew, and some other nation, lets say the Romans, conquers your city and forbibs you to practice you religion. So what you have to do if you want to keep your lifestyle, is to fly to other cities with more tolerant population, thus "spreadig into the whole world" as I admittedly simplyfied it.

I'm not sure if this is what really happened, at least it is what I read out of some posts in this very forum. Anyway the point is, that all the specifics (Jerusalem, Jew, Romans) could be exchanged e.g. (Rome, Christian, Aztecs) without being unrealistic. It only would be historically inaccurate which is not the same thing. So there is no real reason to give any advantage or disadvantage to a particular religion, but any religion that suffers the loss of its sanctuary should also suffer consequences like this.

That would be more realistic (just because it didn't happen, it does not mean it could not possibly have happened) and it would also solve a lot of the "you favour one religion over another" problem. Of course you are free to favour Islam, but you can't deny that this does unbalance the game and you should know from what has been written here, that most people prefer a balanced game, that is, they will not play your mod.

Maybe you have noticed that this text is manly about gameplay, not about ideology. I'd be glad if anyone could adopt this standard, it would help the discussion in my opinion.

I can't tell you how much fun I'm having reading this. During the Christmas season, I had forgotten how nasty people can be to each other. In any case, with intention to offend, here is my two cents...

It's extremely hard to tell how religions grant different bonuses to nations who use them. Obviously, they all grant significant culture bonuses and they have played their part in diplomatic relations. I really don't know much about Confucianism, Hinduism, Buddhism, or Taoism, but I know that the "People of the Book" Christians, Jews, and Muslims, have all kicked ass in their times. All have stifled scientific development. All have persecuted other religions. All three can be taken to differing interpretations. In each there is a fanatic side that says, "All the rest are heathens, so convert them or kill them," a side that says, "Show them the way by our toleration and love," and, from a monarch's standpoint, "I don't care what they believe, but I need that land!"
Perhaps it would be better to differentiate here, having a fanatic, tolerant, or free religion civic. Wait, that's already what we have... Hey, those guys at Firaxis sure make a great game! Excuse me while I lose myself in wiping Mansa Musa off the planet!
Also, you need another choice in your poll that says, "I liked it best before" because I clicked on your post on purpose and I don't think it's okay.

:( THIS THREAD IS GOING NOWHERE!!!:mad:

You're not listening to anyone, not even to people who just want tell YOU different ways to make your mod better and balanced. You have JUST turn this into a FIGHT over religion, your ideas not everyone's.

THIS IS A GAME, TO BE FUN, AN ESCAPE FROM REALITY, BUT ONLY A GAME. A GOOD "WHAT IF" GAME THAT ALLOWS US TO HAVE FUN, AN ALTERNATE LOOK OF WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN. :confused:

WE DON'T NEED MORE DISCONTENT AND HATEFULNESS OVER A GAME.

GIVE US BALANCED MOD, GIVE US A CHOICE.
OFFER DIFFERENT VERISIONS, ONES THAT DEAL WITH RELIGION VIA CIVIC's.

SHOW US WHAT YOU CAN DO, NOT YOU RELIGIOUS DOGMA. :rolleyes:

Judaism isn't spreading because it's not a multi-race faith, unlike many others. Jews are not TRYING to convince anyone with Judaism anyway, that has got nothing to do with the holocaust (assuming it happened).

:eek: Dude shame on you. Shame , shame. :(

This is to everyone who is defending or bashing any religion:

Virtually every religion ever to exist has had one thing in common:
They all portray God as a Geographically isolated bigot who has "chosen" one group of people over all of the others, (which humorously he will admit to creating, but for some reason no longer likes them as much as his "chosen" group) and to whom he will then bestow wisdom and blessings which he will deny to all others...Unless they convert to a set of doctrines which he will only give to his "chosen" and uncourage them to convert others...

I have some major problems with the portrayal of God by his followers.

This is an ignorant and small minded portrayal of the entire concept of an omiscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, creator of everything!

Who here thinks God hates everyone who doesn't eat a cracker on sunday?
Who here thinks God hates anyone who fails to bow to the east?
Who here thinks that God hates people who eat pork?

Who here thinks God hates anything other than small-minded morons who think of Him as a geographically isolated bigot?!?

I find the very idea that God would single out a small group of people in some sparesly populated desert and bestow upon them the wisdom of the ages and tell everyone else to burn in the netherworld, offensive! Yet no less than three of the worlds major religions insist this is exactly what occured!

I believe in God.
I dont believe in any of his followers.

Fachy, I think that you may have stepped into a minefield here. It seems that you are drawing far too many stereotypes for all of these religions and because of that, it makes your mod unbalanced

First off, why did you make it a bad thing to have free religion? That's quite closed-minded of you. In my games, i love to give my people the freedom to worship whatever they want.

All in all, I just think you're treating all religions besides Islam with carelessness and I think it makes the mod very unbalanced.

The religions in the game should be given a blank slate, and they shouldn't be based on anything that happened after the advent of the religion, because that's what you are there for in the game, you are there to forge the path for your religion

Xavier Islam spread from the Arabian peninsula to China's borders, and to France's borders, in less than a century. And israel would have never won anything if it wasn't for the uk and usa's support

Now what has Egypt got to do with anything??

RedShame on me because I'm not assuring the holocaust happened? Whatever!!

and such a grave thing as holocaust denying. Which is a crime in several countries
So much for the first ammendment. A simple proof that the jews do control the world politically

Sulla Islam has stood strong for about 8 centuries, practically dominating the world, at the time when Europe was only pig farms and crazy people burning witches and people who claimed the earth wasn't the center of the universe. So don't focus on the last 2 centuries only, same goes for the Jews. Be fair.

Mrop If you think Judaism does not encourage killing, I suggest you read chapter 20 in Duetronomy. And Islam have no such thing as "the 10 commandments".

Anyone thinks I'm favoring Islam In my current game I chose to convert from Buddhism to Taoism coz it gives much more scientific bonus. I found my cities don't need growth rate, and my army is strong enough without the extra experience points. I mean every religion has its pros and cons, so stop bashing about me making Islam the supreme power (though historically it has been, as I said, for 8 centuries)

David Read my post which had in bold "anyone enthusiastic about re-writing history" or something, it answers your point

Fex Jews say they're God's chosen people. But I haven't heard of any other religions claiming that :)

Lumir I answered why did I make it a bad thing in my initial post, and in about 2 posts after that, and I'm not repeating it

If you think I gave Islam too many bonuses read this post. And you also need to read my post saying "to everyone crazy about re-writing history"

RedShame on me because I'm not assuring the holocaust happened? Whatever!!

So much for the first ammendment. A simple proof that the jews do control the world politically

Oh no Fachy please do not mistake me saying shame on you as an attempt to deny your rights to speak your mind.

However, even the most ignorant closed minded anti semetic idiot would not deny that the holocaust happened, or would they? :rolleyes:

You are not even trying to comprise or take ideas. :wallbash: Its seem to me, that it's you way and everyone else wrong. :crazyeye:

Ok, don't change your mod. Its Is Yours do whatever you want or feel like. I just don't think it is worth the fight. :wallbash: :rolleyes:

I and many others will just have to wait for the "Abbamouse Realistic Religions Mod" to be fixed for v1.52 and shaped into some thing the Forums members can agree on. ;)

He is at least taking suggestions from Forums members and in the end, that is what matters. :hammer:

No one is forced to use your mod and the better of these two mod will be used by the most players. :yeah: :groucho:

:king: That will be the best method of chosing the BETTER Mod. :D

However, even the most ignorant closed minded anti semetic idiot would not deny that the holocaust happened, or would they? :rolleyes:
Of course they won't, for the very reason you said, they're closed minded idiots beleiving whatever the media says :lol:
Anyway I can't be anti-semitic since I'm semitic myself ^.^

David I don't recall abbamouse taking any suggestions except for renaming the Islamic missionary into Da'eya instead of Imam :s If doing that in my mod would make you think I'm open minded, I can do it just for you :)

And I don't like your definition of better as "most popular", anyway we cannot define "better" :D

What is with this media thing you keep referring to in your thinly vailed attempt to say that the holocaust did not occur? Are you saying it was all made up by the media? If so then just man up and say it. Stop trying to hide your true self and just admit the obvious concerning your bias and prejudice.

So much for the first ammendment. A simple proof that the jews do control the world politically

Sulla Islam has stood strong for about 8 centuries, practically dominating the world, at the time when Europe was only pig farms and crazy people burning witches and people who claimed the earth wasn't the center of the universe. So don't focus on the last 2 centuries only, same goes for the Jews. Be fair.

First ammendment? What has the US has to do with this? I was mentioning the cases of several European countries, where the jew populations is nearly equal to nil. I remind you, I am not American. I'm Spanish. I don't give a damn about the US constitution, except as culture value.

Islam has dominated strong for 8 centuries... oh, god... so much from brainwashing

Islam never dominated its known world, not a *SINGLE* islamic country has ever been *the* world power (before the XVth century the term did not have a real sense, and then that role went to Spain in the XVI-early XVII centuries, France in the late XVII and XVIII centuries and periods of the start of the XIX century, England in the XIX century, US/URSS during the XXth century, and USA in the late XXth and starting XXIst century, with periods of equilibrium and transition from one time to other). Islam did expand significatively from the VIII to the XI century in a cohesive political unity. Still, when encounted significative ressistance, such as Byzantine Anatolia and past the pyrinees, it did not advance. These are 4 centuries at most, and again, advancing only through zones that had fallen in civil disarray or outright civil war (such as Visigothic Spain, or the decadent Eastern Roman Empire).

Anyway, speaking about 'islam' about being a 'power' is a contradiction in terms, from the moment the turks arrived. The seljuk empire or the ottoman empire maybe were dominant in their areas of influence, but 'islam' as such was not. It was a religion, something that you are quite, quite forgetting.

The first person who actually proposed heliocentrism was Aristotle (Greek and thus part of the Western tradition), and then the first one to actually propose a theory was Aristarchus (270 BC, again Greek). The only philosophers that referred to heliocentrism during the middle ages, dominated by the ptolemaic theory were Aryabhata and far later Bhaskara, who where from India and were not muslim.

The first person to actually finish a theory with empirical calculations was... Copernicus. Just go fancy. He nearly gets burnt from it, but his theory sticked.

Saying that Europeans had only pig farms (which I assume has an intended offensive implication) is completely false. Roman tradition and engineering was dormant, but was there, and was in many issues far superior to the muslim countries. By the XIIth century, christian european military science, land doctrine specially, were already significativelly superior. The crusaders only actually failed because of a still deficient immigrational techniques and movements, and having its real bases in Europe just too far away (and still, even in such accounts as the battle of Hattin, the christian soldier was far superior to the muslim one, who needed a good superiority in numbers to defeat small christian numbers). And the muslim war effort had already been destroyed by succesive invaders from the East. The turks, who converted, and the pagan mongols, who swiped through middle east and actually razed baghdad... it's a wonder that all so powerful muslims, the most powerful men in the world in that era, could not defend the supposed political center of their faith. And the mongols would only be defeated by the mamluks, which were a marginal and ex-slaved ethnics, and not the central ethnics or people who had really represented the center of the islam (truly the turks in a way and the mameluks were nearly as barbaric and certainly far more barbaric than the raising european people).

The swan song of superiority in any possible way of a muslim country was XV-XVII century Ottoman Empire. And then, after its initial expansion and millitar superiority (who was always marginal compared to their european neighbours) it was contained, then defeated, then pushed back at every term.

Still, by XVI century, western christian civilization was already neatly superior in every field (mathmatics, philosophy, architectury, art, economy, millitary) to their muslim neighbours. If anything, christian countries had been able to absorb succesfully any muslim advance during the middle ages, while any muslim countries revealed themselves pathetically ineffectual in doing the same with christian origin advancements.

So much for your mod being realistic.

About the holocaust, there were Spanish Republican exiled prisoners in concentration and death camps such as Matthausen. They were Christian and did not have any reason at all to lie about the holocaust (not even guilt), and their testimony is undeniable. The holocaust happened. Dennying it is not only irresponsible... but revealing a miserable spirit and aim.

Personally, I consider that anyone who tries to minimize or deny a genocide (not only this one, but any other) for any political reason is purely and simply pig excrements.

Feel free to play your mod, but don't try to tell us that is realistic or historical in any way, because it's clearly not, and any mantained claim that it is is simply self-dellusional.

Fex Jews say they're God's chosen people. But I haven't heard of any other religions claiming that :)


You are babbling semantics now.

This was why "Chosen" was in quotes.
Both Judaism and Christianity (which utilizes the old testament which by definition contains the pentatuch (sp?)) use the term "chosen people" specificially, but every religion believes themselves the true believes, the chosen people, the favored, etc etc etc.

And you are a true zealot. Your ridiculous assertion that there is even a possibility that the holocaust was some false conspiracy is astounding in the 21st century! How about those people with the numbers on their arms? I suppose they were in on it? How about the GIs who witnessed it? All just a lie? I doubt it...ever seen Band of Brothers? One of the guys that show was about lives here in my town, I'v e met him shopping at my local grocery store. He was there, he personally bore witness to the release of prisoners from the death camps, oh wait he must be in on the conspiracy right? How about those who confessed to the atrocities? I supposed they were coerced? You know I bet those people they rescued at the end of WWII volunteered to be starved until their belly's caved in just so they could be in ojn the conspiracy! Psst, Hey! Lets not eat for a few weeks and then when the Army arives we'll claim we were tortured! That aughta be fun!

Idiocy.

But you know what, you go ahead and believe the Holocaust was a lie.

I'll just have to start a belief that the Crusades never happend, and that the crusades are just an excuse by the middle east to hold resentment against the west. All a media hoax. Never happend. No Crusades. Just a lie.

And speaking of ridiculous and Crusades...

I laughed my butt off when the middle east went wacky over Bush using the word crusade! I mean its so funny since a Crusade is absolutely the exact same thing as a Jihad! Crusade = Holy War. Jihad = Holy War. And every other week the west hears the word Jihad from some nut in a robe over there, but one person in the west says crusade...and in this case it was even contextually different, meaning not a holy war but a campaign against a percieved wrong, and the middle east freaks out!

I bet the middle east hates Batman too!
Afterall he is the Caped Crusader!
He must be a tool of the great satan used toindoctrinate its children against islam!

:P

Stop being ridiculous Fachy!

So much for the first ammendment. A simple proof that the jews do control the world politically

Good point. Everyone should have free speech, right?
Some might find that image offensive, and trolling. Removed.

Your right, "most popular" doesn't equal better. :hmm:

As for being Popular, your own poll should tell you the results there; 5% like it (including you), 57% its ok but it needs modifed (includes me) and 38% think your a "jerk" ie. don't like your mod or your idea of religious mod.

By "better" I mean more useable, but I don't care any more. :sad: Your not going listen or to change you ideas.

You have got more posts from me than any other thread I read. If that was your goal here. :goodjob: If it was to produce a useable mod that does the job for the Forum, :rolleyes: well 5% liking is not that Great.

But I like so many others, I will just keep on reading this wonderful "saga" :lol: to see how it finally comes out. :crazyeye:

What is with this media thing you keep referring to in your thinly vailed attempt to say that the holocaust did not occur? Are you saying it was all made up by the media? If so then just man up and say it. Stop trying to hide your true self and just admit the obvious concerning your bias and prejudice.
omg! How dare me deny the holy holocaust? Of course I can't say that. Please forgive me if you got me wrong or falsy thought that I DON'T BELEIVE IN THE HOLOCAUST :lol:

Sulla Is this a lesson in Roman numericals? Ok I'd be glad to know who was the major world power (and who inherited basically all the Roman and Persian dominated lands) between the 8th - 16th cen.. oops, I mean between the VIIIth and the XVIIIth centuries :lol:

Fex Every religion think they got the true way.. not only every religion, every line of thought in general (political, economical, social..etc). BUT when it comes to the best race that's where the jews kick in. They think their RACE is God's chosen people. Just like the Nazis thought. It's not just about faith that's what I'm saying. For Islam for example, an African Moslem is "as superior as" a Chinese Moslem. But even in the jewish community you've got "castes" where European jews are superior to black jews.. etc

Just coz jews were persecuted and thrown into labor camps (like the Soviets were treated or any other persecuted folk) doesn't mean 6 darn million of them was gased to death, that's plain rediculous

The holocaust was supposed to be "a big secret" till the Soviets arrived from the East and "discovered the hidden camps" which "the nazi regime wanted to hide its traces"... gasing 6 million people to death doesn't exactly seem to be hide-able.. at least from my point of view. And by the way that's the common thought in the Arab world

The problem with bush saying "crusade" is his assertion it being a "re-9/11 strike" and "anti-terrorism" and all that bogus. But when a Moslem uses the term Jihad, he isn't hypocreticla about it, and so you can't "catch" him if you know what I mean

David 4 people only liking it? Then why did I get more than 100 downloads (the file has been replaced twice so two-loads has been removed)

Hardly anything in the world is perfect, if anything at all. Yet everyone has things he like, though he acknowledges they're not perfect :king:

6 miilions jews being gased is not ridiculous, it's the truth, plain and simple

All the profs have been exposed over and over and over, and I do not understand how someone intellignet could deny them.

Yes, the nazis had an agenda to extermine the jews,
yes they did build labour camp, and extermination camp for the sole purpose of exterminating the jews,
yes, they used the ressource of german heavy industry (gaz chambers, crematorium,...) to coldly and methodically apply their pal,
yes, six milliosn jews, and thousands of tzigans were exterminated during the world war 2

If you dare open your eyes, all the proofs, testimonies, writings can be found everywhere, just get yourself informed

Sulla Is this a lesson in Roman numericals? Ok I'd be glad to know who was the major world power (and who inherited basically all the Roman and Persian dominated lands) between the 8th - 16th cen.. oops, I mean between the VIIIth and the XVIIIth centuries :lol:

Roman provinces like... Transalpine Gaul, Cisalpine Gaul, Ulterior Iberia, Citerior Iberia, Italia, Sicily, Sardeny&Corsica, Britania.... Of course, Acaia, Dacia, Iliria, and Panonia were in muslim hands all the way from the VIIIth to the XVIII century, sure... :rolleyes: Some of this were in muslim hands only partially for 4 hundred years... most of them were not at all. Your claim for that range of time is ridiculous.

As I said, there was NO possible major world power until the XVI century. Because, simply put, there was no world scale communication until the european age of discovery. In 1600, the Japanese or the chinese had, at best a nebolous idea of the Ottoman Empire and Islam, but they had quite a definite one about the Spanish Empire and christendom, and felt (suffered) its influence, while they could not influence back. That's what is really being a world power.

From circa 1500 to 1625, it can be said without many fear of getting it wrong, that Spain was the first world power. It dominated an overseas empire and had such a massive militar land doctrine advantage that the Spanish power could intervene or influence in any given scenario. Be it the French wars of religion, shattering completely the Ottoman naval power in the Easter mediterranean (and I mean *completely*, after the battle of Lepant it would not start to recover for a generation), or force christian missionaires in the far east, or yes, helping the German emperor (who was the Spanish king, first, and then his uncle or cousin in the following generations) to repel the turks from Austria (and then proceed to push them out from Hungary and the balkans).

The main muslim country in this time is the Ottoman Empire, without the shadow of a doubt. While it had gained tremendous territorial advances in the balkans in the first half of the XVI century (specially after Mohacs, against a country that was not by far so advanced as the western powers), it was stopped quite suddenly in the gates of Viena. And slowly it was pushed back. Any attempts for naval dominion were completely shattered. Their tries to get past the conquest of a simple thin patch of territory at the beach stopped short at the north-western african shore. Apart from Piracy, they could not accomplish more, and again, Spanish and Italian roads shattered the pirate bases (such as Red-Beard's, allied to the Ottoman power).

With the war of the thirty years, France finally defeated and exhaustes Spain, who, while still holding a huge overseas empire, clearly could not impose its way of things in Europe or when in conflict with France in other overseas scenarios.

During the late Richelieu, and then Louis XIV and Louis XV, the French kingdom could be the referee of Europe. The middle east and northern Africa were now clearly backward and impoverished areas (so much for muslim good management). A brief revival of the Ottoman Empire was crushed by... the austrians, who were still shattered after the chaos of the 30 years war and the Polish, who were starting to become already, thanks to their 'Libellum Veto' policy in the most anarchic kingdom in Europe.

This centuries saw the rising of Persia and the Mughal Empire. But apart from being a pain in the butt for the Ottomans (Persia, that is), they were never more than a local power. During this time the Ottoman empire fell in decadence, and started to earn their nickname: "The sick man of the West". So much for the most powerful muslim country in the world. By the time the English gained dominance, everybody could go and pick up on them, at will, even wage their wars in a former ottoman province like Egypt had been.

Now, if we consider who was the major world power during the middle ages, we could only refer to an specific theater of operations. Never a world scale power. While the Abbasid caliphate was the only power in the middle east in the IXth century, it would not even dream of intervening in Germany or France (and the opposite way, too). While the mongol empire and their Golden Horde and Il-Khanate sweeped through the russian steppes, and their Il-Khanate to reach Palestine, after devastating Persia, the Iraqi region, Transaxonia, Syria and Anatolia, they could not reach into Germany, for several reasons (and their stated objective was... world domination, unlike many other powers of the time).

Any other history lessons needed? you seem to be severely lacking in that field... you just stop at the 'funny roman numerals'.

Your attitude towards the jewish holocaust is... despicable at best. It would even be remotely suspicious if it was not for the fact that other communities were there with the jews (slavic people, gipsies, leftist and/or communist politicians, homosexuals... or even just disabled people). Not only millions of jews died... but also millions of non-jews died in the Nazi death camps. Your denial of that fact is insulting to their memory.

Fachy - your denying the holocaust represents the reality of your mod the best, I think... :rolleyes:
I invite you to my country - Poland - to visit Oświęcim (Auschwitz).
No more comments...

Lucius Sulla - really nice lesson of history, indeed. :goodjob: But the law in Poland of that time allowing to cancel some regulations by one person in parliament is named "Liberum Veto", , not 'Libellum Veto' ;)

Thread closed, at least temporarily. The lot of you have gotten out of hand. When I can find the time to clean up the abuse, I will reopen it.

Xavier Von Erck, see your warning on the previous page.