religion as it is used in vanilla Civ 4 is as a good source of happiness, some coin via founding temples, some production via monasteries, and some foreign knowledge if a religion you founded (whose holy city you still control) spreads into a foreign city.

the SotM mod currently does not use religion.

the purpose of this thread is figure out to add religion to the SotM mod.

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this following post is copied from post 850, page 43, of main SotM mod forum.

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suggestion - alien religions . . .
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Have you figured out what to do with the religion(s)? The only thing I can think of is replacing them with "Lunar Political Parties," which would make the mod sound like a joke.

a way to introduce aliens into SotM is by having all religions derived from past aliens who lived on the moon. in that case stumbling across an artifact rather than fulfilling a tech would found the religion.

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one problem, with a Terra map (a non Moon-map version of the game) most of the moon is not the primary land masses, but rather a dimpled golf ball of islands in the midst of a vast "dust ocean."

with such a map this would make it imperative to explore the entire Moon since by random chance the religion sites would likely be on remote islands in the "dust ocean."

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I just saw the graphics for Sir Aragorn's UFO units and that gave me a new idea. if the religious artifacts are to be restricted to large land masses, they could be in a cluster such as the UFO's he created for his thumbnail shot. this would mean a unit would have to "explore" each of the shapes to determine which one has the alien artifacts in it to found a new religion. each different alien religious artifact could randomly be in a set of identical UFO looking structures.

:band:

Religions were originally going to be Ideologies, but we couldn't agree on how to handle that. In the end this could be a mechanic that simply doesn't get used since it has some overlap with civics and traits.

You could have a religion of Greens, Gold Diggers, Gun Nuts, ect but are they needed when a civic choice does the same thing.

Definitely up for debate.

Alien religions gives me an idea. Instead of a religion, it could be a sort of allegiance. For example, one faction could research or build contact with the Centaurans, and now they are loyal to the Centaurans. There couldbe maybe four other "religions" like this, and then there is one that is different, this is my idea, it could be a sort of Faith in Self-Sufficiency. This "religion" would provide a better happiness and maybe even a production bonus, while the drawback is that you get bigger diplo penalties from other factions that have a different ideology. The other ideologies would provide large commerce bonii due to interstellar trade with the aliens and also large research bonii, but, randomly, an alien race could become at war with another one, for example the Zetans could be at war with the Centaurans, and his would drag all of the Zeta allied factions into war with the Centauran allied factions. Self Sufficient civs don't suffer from these random wars. This seems a bit convoluted like my other ideas, but it seems possible.

Alien religions gives me an idea. Instead of a religion, it could be a sort of allegiance. For example, one faction could research or build contact with the Centaurans, and now they are loyal to the Centaurans. There couldbe maybe four other "religions" like this, and then there is one that is different, this is my idea, it could be a sort of Faith in Self-Sufficiency. This "religion" would provide a better happiness and maybe even a production bonus, while the drawback is that you get bigger diplo penalties from other factions that have a different ideology. The other ideologies would provide large commerce bonii due to interstellar trade with the aliens and also large research bonii, but, randomly, an alien race could become at war with another one, for example the Zetans could be at war with the Centaurans, and his would drag all of the Zeta allied factions into war with the Centauran allied factions. Self Sufficient civs don't suffer from these random wars. This seems a bit convoluted like my other ideas, but it seems possible.

this fits in with a framework that uses left behind Alien artifacts to create religions.

I previously was thinking only of religion as it is used in vanilla Civ 4, namely as a good source of happiness, some coin via founding temples, some production via monasteries, and some foreign knowledge if a religion spreads into a neighboring city.

what you are proposing is tha each of these sects be tied back to an alien race that may be war with another alien race. this scenario is not in vanilla Civ 4. whether or not it is doable depends on the amount of new code this would create. anyone coders out there want to give us some clue to this?