I check here oft for info on the game - but no one has said much of anything about my favorite addition in BtS:

Gods of Old!

BtS is fun and all without this mod loaded, but since trying it I can't make myself play without it. It must appeal to me on an old 1984 D&D geek level or something.

I love the added level of planning and it does not seem unbalanced to me (but I am no expert).

So I am just asking, anyone else addicted to the mod?

I love the fact that religions actually are differentiated and somewhat strategic in this mod. I suppose they figured that nobody would be offended by their portrayal of ancient mesopotamian deities.

I was wondering if it has any bugs like Next War is full of.

Apparently not. Can you outline what the different victory condition is?

Something about destroying all the other shrines isn't it?

I check here oft for info on the game - but no one has said much of anything about my favorite addition in BtS:

Gods of Old!

BtS is fun and all without this mod loaded, but since trying it I can't make myself play without it. It must appeal to me on an old 1984 D&D geek level or something.

I love the added level of planning and it does not seem unbalanced to me (but I am no expert).

So I am just asking, anyone else addicted to the mod?

Heck yeah, I've just played this and Next War Mod so far. I'm hoping that some clever modder might even combine the two, you know something like "Mechs O' Potamia (Dennis Moore came up with that one, not me!).

While I think some of the documentation is a little scarce, as Tom Chick pointed out in his review at www.quartertothree.com, I really like the idea of a Civ game where the various Gods grant you unique powers.

From the mod's description I always just assumed you're supposed to just pledge your loyalty to ONE of the Gods but can one get more benefits if they mix things up and found multiple religions?

I was wondering if it has any bugs like Next War is full of.

Apparently not. Can you outline what the different victory condition is?

Something about destroying all the other shrines isn't it?

I'm not 100% sure on this but I believe its if you can work it so the only remaining Shrine is under your control (not sure if it needs to be your current State Religion), you win.

More or less thats it.

When you found a religion your "Religious Victory" is tied to that religion being the last one standing. You found a religion by making a Shrine to that god (only one in the world allowed). That makes that city the Holy City. You have to plan out the Tech that allows the Shrine you want to be built, and then the race to be the first to get it built. And of course, you cant found but the single religion during the entire game.

Then come Hell or High Water, the other Shrines must be destroyed to win. Burn the city, or stamp it down with an Inquisitor, it's all a means to an end.

The random events are set on the God's followers getting bonuses (like Astrology kinda), and each God's nation gets a specific sort of unit promotion. Add in the Great Prophets raining down God Specific doom on your enemies, and you have pretty sweet Holy War (if you do a custom game and turn off all victory conditions except Religious!) :yeah:

More or less thats it.

When you found a religion your "Religious Victory" is tied to that religion being the last one standing. You found a religion by making a Shrine to that god (only one in the world allowed). That makes that city the Holy City. You have to plan out the Tech that allows the Shrine you want to be built, and then the race to be the first to get it built. And of course, you cant found but the single religion during the entire game.

Then come Hell or High Water, the other Shrines must be destroyed to win. Burn the city, or stamp it down with an Inquisitor, it's all a means to an end.

The random events are set on the God's followers getting bonuses (like Astrology kinda), and each God's nation gets a specific sort of unit promotion. Add in the Great Prophets raining down God Specific doom on your enemies, and you have pretty sweet Holy War (if you do a custom game and turn off all victory conditions except Religious!) :yeah:

Actually, having read the Civilpedia its that simple with the only extra caveat that this victory condition does not come into play UNTIL there are at least two Holy Shrines have at least been created since otherwise it would simply be the first person to make a shrine wins.

Does this mean if somehow I build the first 2 shrines I just need to quickly purge myself of one of them for the win? I guess they put the Inquisitor far enough down the food chain that most of the religions have already had a chance to take root before they get removed.

I just started a game where I founded Enki and set it as my state religion, but it isn't giving me the +1 food per city that it promised me (I spread it to my cities as well). Bad god!

Ramesses II is a beast on this mod, with all the Great Prophet points he can get from the obelisk and quick wonders.

Ki's movement speed promotion is niiiiice.

I just started a game where I founded Enki and set it as my state religion, but it isn't giving me the +1 food per city that it promised me (I spread it to my cities as well). Bad god!
You will need to build Cathedral of Enki to get +1 food from water tiles

Boudica + Inanna is another fun combination

You will need to build Cathedral of Enki to get +1 food from water tiles

Boudica + Inanna is another fun combination

According to the civilopedia, you get +1 food per water tile for the cathedral, but also +1 food per turn if you have enki in a city and it's your state religion. I'm not getting that +1 food :(

So is it clear how to win this yet? If I found religion A and another guy founds religion B, we each build our religion's shrines, and then I have to go burn the city that holds his shrine to the ground to win?

So if there are 6 religions, each with its own shrine? I have to burn all those cities down to win? Kinda lame.

It must be interesting to play a game where getting Great Prophets all the time is a good thing.

I just started a game where I founded Enki and set it as my state religion, but it isn't giving me the +1 food per city that it promised me (I spread it to my cities as well). Bad god!

I hate to pop your bubble but I think you misinterpreted it. Each God's Civilpedia entry lists or at least sums up ALL of the benefits that might be gained from the God in question. So that Enki food bonus is not something to be counted twice, they were just talking about that Cathedral bonus you could earn down the road there. Read the other God's descriptions and I'm sure you'll see them mentioning abilities that you don't get immediately but can eventually get through worship of this God.

So is it clear how to win this yet? If I found religion A and another guy founds religion B, we each build our religion's shrines, and then I have to go burn the city that holds his shrine to the ground to win?

So if there are 6 religions, each with its own shrine? I have to burn all those cities down to win? Kinda lame.

Kill them before all 6 are formed then.

If, after at least after two Holy Cities are created, it later ends up that only ONE Holy City remains, the owner of that city has won the game.

Soooo, you could race to found multiple religions early on, maybe even in the same well defended city (not sure if a city can have more than one shrine, though). This way it will be easier to root the other Gods out if YOU already control their shrines in your own cities.

What isn't to clear is can a destroyed shrine be rebuilt, I'd assume not. Perhaps a fun/annoying event could be some destroyed shrine popping back up in a random city.

It must be interesting to play a game where getting Great Prophets all the time is a good thing.

See obsolete's threads in the Strategy&Tips forum. Apparently some people swore by them in Warlords :)

if you also found all of them first i think that's a win too...though i doubt that's possible since the AI's somehow make them SO fast...

When you found a religion your "Religious Victory" is tied to that religion being the last one standing. You found a religion by making a Shrine to that god (only one in the world allowed). That makes that city the Holy City. You have to plan out the Tech that allows the Shrine you want to be built, and then the race to be the first to get it built. And of course, you cant found but the single religion during the entire game.

Then come Hell or High Water, the other Shrines must be destroyed to win. Burn the city, or stamp it down with an Inquisitor, it's all a means to an end.

if you also found all of them first i think that's a win too...though i doubt that's possible since the AI's somehow make them SO fast...

Well, is it possible to found more than 1 religion or not?

Well, is it possible to found more than 1 religion or not?

You can found one religion per city. If you starts to build one shrine, then shifts to another in the same city, the hammers of the first one will be wasted.

You can found one religion per city. If you starts to build one shrine, then shifts to another in the same city, the hammers of the first one will be wasted.

So to win a religious victory you could found 2 religions in 2 cities then let a barb raze one of those 2?

So to win a religious victory you could found 2 religions in 2 cities then let a barb raze one of those 2?

Did not try. But some other civ usually has founded another religion before you found your second.

So to win a religious victory you could found 2 religions in 2 cities then let a barb raze one of those 2?

Nah, at least it isn't that difficult, Inquisitor units act like ANTI-MISSIONARIES, sacrifice them to remove all religions but your current state religion in a city.

I love this mod, though I wish the standard random events still occurred. Anyway, since I usually play as China, one of the religions very nicely complement their UU.

I love this mod, though I wish the standard random events still occurred. Anyway, since I usually play as China, one of the religions very nicely complement their UU.

I'm pretty sure the default game events are still in there. I play this mod almost exclusively and have had plenty of random events and quests (I thought it was this mod at least). Actually I still think this is true as if you look at where the events would be handled in the mod that file is MISSING...which I think means that the mod just uses the default events. If this mod were to have NO EVENTS I'm sure they would have included at least a dummy version of that XML file with no events.

I've never had any random events, and the Civ4EventInfos XML in the mod is only this:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!-- edited with XMLSpy v2005 rel. 3 U (http://www.altova.com) by Soren Johnson (Firaxis Games) -->
<!-- edited with XMLSPY v2004 rel. 2 U (http://www.xmlspy.com) by Ed Piper (Firaxis Games) -->
<!-- Sid Meier's Civilization 4: Beyond the Sword -->
<!-- Copyright Firaxis Games 2006 -->
<!-- -->
<!-- Event Infos -->
<Civ4EventInfos xmlns="x-schema:CIV4EventSchema.xml">
<EventInfos/>
</Civ4EventInfos>

Which I'm fairly sure makes it that dummy file you were talking about.

EDIT: Also, I don't think the default events would work properly anyway, since the religions and religious buildings are classified differently.

I've never had any random events, and the Civ4EventInfos XML in the mod is only this:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!-- edited with XMLSpy v2005 rel. 3 U (http://www.altova.com) by Soren Johnson (Firaxis Games) -->
<!-- edited with XMLSPY v2004 rel. 2 U (http://www.xmlspy.com) by Ed Piper (Firaxis Games) -->
<!-- Sid Meier's Civilization 4: Beyond the Sword -->
<!-- Copyright Firaxis Games 2006 -->
<!-- -->
<!-- Event Infos -->
<Civ4EventInfos xmlns="x-schema:CIV4EventSchema.xml">
<EventInfos/>
</Civ4EventInfos>

Which I'm fairly sure makes it that dummy file you were talking about.

EDIT: Also, I don't think the default events would work properly anyway, since the religions and religious buildings are classified differently.

Ouch, okay, you may be right then. I've been playing this and the Next War mod almost exclusively...perhaps I only had events in Next War mod then. Well, GRRR.

This mod sounds awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ramesses II is a beast on this mod, with all the Great Prophet points he can get from the obelisk and quick wonders.

How about the Byzantines? They sound pretty good in this mod too.

For some reason the AI will not found the Sun God. I found him to destroy him, which is quite annoying, it really takes out the fun.:(

Ouch, okay, you may be right then. I've been playing this and the Next War mod almost exclusively...perhaps I only had events in Next War mod then. Well, GRRR.

... Am I the only one thinking of the possibilities of a combined Next War/Gods of Old? Dreadnoughts of Ki!

Unfortunately, I have no idea how to go about doing that...

... Am I the only one thinking of the possibilities of a combined Next War/Gods of Old? Dreadnoughts of Ki!

Unfortunately, I have no idea how to go about doing that...

Nope, we are MANY. Dennis Moore still is credited with the best name for this potential hybrid mod, "Mechs o' Potamia"!

Nope, we are MANY. Dennis Moore still is credited with the best name for this potential hybrid mod, "Mechs o' Potamia"!

Thank you, but I must however give some credit to the Jon Stewart show, as his regular updates on the Iraqi war are headlined "Mess O'Potamia".

Thank you, but I must however give some credit to the Jon Stewart show, as his regular updates on the Iraqi war are headlined "Mess O'Potamia".

Fair enough then.

Gods of Old is cool. But i built the shrine of Inana and im kinda of disapointed, i cant seem to cast any kind of cataclism with my great prophets, and all i get is 1 xp from my temples. Also, i had this problem:

http://img292.imageshack.us/img292/2473/civ4screenshot0001uo0.th.jpg (http://img292.imageshack.us/my.php?image=civ4screenshot0001uo0.jpg)

A Tsunami reduced my city to size zero. It stills produces some gold, beakers and culture, but the production has stopped and, well, its kinda of a useless city. But im paying no maintance, and getting the free gold/beakers, and still counts as a city so my longbow can defend it better. I think its a good deal but still :p

Gods of Old is cool. But i built the shrine of Inana and im kinda of disapointed, i cant seem to cast any kind of cataclism with my great prophets, and all i get is 1 xp from my temples.

This I guess is a trade off due to the cool unit promotions and generally useful war related powers Inanna grants you (also, according to the mythos, a minor diety).

Just completed a game of Gods of Old for the first time, won a religious victory. Thought it was a really nice tweak to the main game and I greatly enjoyed it. As ever with things I love, I'm motivated to point out problems and potential improvements:

Problems:

1) As already pointed out, the AI won't found Utu

2) The AI wastes catastrophes on An-worshipping civilizations

3) The AI goes crazy for building inquisitors. Non-state religions are often good things, and it just seems a big waste of production for the AI to be spending so many hammers on them.

4) It seems strange that missionaries can't be be built without Organized Religion after Scientific Method. I mean, gods are such an important part of this mod, I think missionaries should always be available, especially with all these inquisitors about. In my game cities in certain civs regularly became devoid of any religious belief at all because of over-zealous inquisitor activity.


Suggested Improvements:

1) The gods of this mod are supposed to be jealous and intent on becoming number one right? But at the moment I have no incentive to suppress other religions (except the holy shrine, and even then only at the last moment). I think it would be great if having a non-state religion caused an unhappiness penalty and maybe a culture penalty in its city. Also, I think you should only get great prophet bonuses for temples which are of your state religion. That way I have an incentive to suppress rival religions throughout the game, instead of at the final moment if I decide to go for a religious victory. Needless to say, this would mean the AI enthusiasm for inquisitors would be justified.

2) I think to win a religious victory, in addition to destroying all other holy cities, you should also have to make your religion cover like 70% of the world's population or something like that, just to give a greater sense that your religion is number 1.

3) It would be great if someone made a mod like this for the normal world religions. But I know that would be very controversial so it would have to be entirely unofficial :D. The problem with ancient pagan gods is that they weren't actually very jealous and their worshippers were perfectly happy with worship of other gods.

i can noy play this mod
not sure what is happing
it starts then crashes some video error
anybody getting this
i have the most recent patch

i can noy play this mod
not sure what is happing
it starts then crashes some video error
anybody getting this
i have the most recent patch

I had the same problem. Set no videos option, in the graphics tab.

Personally, I love this mod, but after playing only a few rounds with the random events from the standard BTS, I just can't seem to enjoy this mod as much since it doesn't have the random events.

If random events are added to this mod, I personally think the god that you choose to follow should have some impact on what events happen. An example would be if your state religion is Enki you have a better chance for positive sea-based events to happen (source of whales appears, getting +1 gold from a source of clams with black pearls), and a decreased chance of negative sea-based events (hurricane hits your city).

Oh, and Mechs-O-Potamia sounds like a great idea, Assault Mechs and Dreadnaughts versus great prophets. Just a quick question, since one religion (Nanna I believe) gets Meteor-strikes (radiation free nukes), would improvements such as bomb shelters and Arcology Shielding affect how much damage these Meteor strikes do? (Its probably already in the coding for Gods of Old for the bomb shelters at least, but haven't tried to look in the games code before).

Couple o' comments.

I went with Innan, or whatever the +1XP god is. Since you can't trigger a natural disaster, Great Prophets are pretty much useless. You CANNOT settle a Super Specialist Preist. I used them for increased research, but late game Prophets are completely useless for this god. Lame.

I was playing 'Only Religious Victory'. I took a few Holy Cities. One I kept and put an inquisitor in and while the Shine stayed (and got the gold bonus), the "Holy cities left" count went down by one. Sweet. So I could hold on to a holy city, just purge the religion. Then Wang Kon asks to be a vassal of mine. I agree. I sent a Inquisitor to his holy city. I am able to use his function. The city becomes only Inanna, and the star mark of his religion is gone. Yet, the holy city count did not go down. Bug? My only choice was to reload, since I now had to destroy the city and couldn't break the Vassal agreement.

Yeah, no events..otherwise interesting mod.

Hi,

I just win my first religious victory in God Of Olds.
A very strange victory, in fact, because AI give me the victory !

After crushing several holy city, with my Trebs and some Cho-Ko-Nuh, only Kanka Mousa and me hold a holy city.
I play as China in World - 18 civs map, so making my road to Kanka Mousa from China to Africa will be a long trip for my new canons...

But no, victory is very easy and I do not understand how !
Kanka Mousa converts to my religion, without any interventions from my missionaries or any demands for my diplomats.
Not only he converts but it seems that he also rids his own religion from his capital, destroying his holy shrine and giving me the victory !

By the way, this mod is very cool and Inanan bonuses are awesome !

Overpowered bonuses, for Inanan, I think, because it permits you to use your prophets to find sciences while you are sure other civs use them for temporary effects (that can be devastating to you !).

Another point ;
I think this mod his not suitable to play with more civs than religions (i.e. : 6 civs including the player). In the map I choice, there are 18 civs. Four civs can cast horrible spells on other civs, the 5th can resist and the last cannot cast spells but his a powerfull warrior.
With 18 civs, there is no chance that a terrible plague or a tsunami hit your country and your people. Somebody else will take the doom for you !

David

How do you play this mod? I start the game, choose advanced, load a mod, choose Gods of Old, and there are no scenarios for it. In the PublicMaps folder is a 1K file with no map, players or teams.

Do you simply start a single player game? I tried that and it crashed.

How should I be able to start a game with this mod. Any help would be appreciated.

How do you play this mod? I start the game, choose advanced, load a mod, choose Gods of Old, and there are no scenarios for it. In the PublicMaps folder is a 1K file with no map, players or teams.

Do you simply start a single player game? I tried that and it crashed.

How should I be able to start a game with this mod. Any help would be appreciated.

As far as I know you just start a single player game, same as normal. It doesn't crash for me. Keep trying, or maybe a clean reinstall.

Well what do ya know? ..... simple and it works. Thanks.

How do I sacrifice an inquisitor? I built two of them but can't figure out how to remove religion with them...

How do I sacrifice an inquisitor? I built two of them but can't figure out how to remove religion with them...

You put them in one of your cities with a religion in it that is not your state religion and an option should pop up.

Been playing some more GoO (well, technically Mechs O Potamia), and I've noticed that Utu's blight ability is perhaps the most useful god power out there. It lets you terraform in Civ 4! If you get stuck either far north of far south, don't worry about ice or tundra because blight can fix them.

So far I've figured this much out about Blight:
-affect all tiles within a distance of 2 to 3 (not exactly sure, sometimes it affects tiles a bit further away than usual, but the effect is stronger closer in) including diagonals.

-turns ice into tundra, tundra into grasslands, and grasslands into desert

-melts packs of sea-ice

-destroys tile improvements on the tile you target directly

So far, I've found this to be a great way to turn formerly barren yet resource heavy arctic and antarctic lands into bountiful and resource heavy lands.

Nah, at least it isn't that difficult, Inquisitor units act like ANTI-MISSIONARIES, sacrifice them to remove all religions but your current state religion in a city.

So what happens if you use an Inquisitor and you're running the Free Religion civ? (I'm currently trying GOO but haven't tried that yet.)

-- WC

I tried this scenario and rather liked it. The bonuses of the different religions give some extra spice to the game. I mostly stayed in the Inanna (+25% city attack) religion, but when I got a golden age I switched over to Utu and use my 2 great prophets to blight my main competitors' capitals. :D

I won an easy religious victory in 1655. It was on an archipelago map, so I just built 10 galleons, packed them with units and went straight for the shrines. Bombardment was quite ineffective in this game, so instead I used spied to cause the cities to revolt. I then razed the city and moved over to the next target. The same round I razed the final shrine, I used 2 Inquisitors to remove the extra shrines I had myself, leaving only Inanna.

So what happens if you use an Inquisitor and you're running the Free Religion civ? (I'm currently trying GOO but haven't tried that yet.)

-- WC


Not sure. But I will have to ask a follow-up question. Why in the heck would you be running free religion in GoO. Your state religion and your sole worship of it is the whole point of the game. Free religion just doesn't make any sense at all on this mod. Unless maybe you had too many civs, couldn't found a religion, don't want a religous victory, and want the bonuses.

I have a strange bug in this mod. I start the game using New Game (I'm not changing any settings) and when the game starts, the interface is hidden. If I hit Enter to end my turn, whether or not I found a city, it then says "You have won a religious victory".

I can only assume it has to do with some mod I have installed - I have BUG, FfH2, Orbis, and Fall Further.

A lot of Firaxis Official mods have issues with BUG customassets folder in terms of interface ( Crossroads is other that I know ) ... the best you can do is to say to the mod to ignore code in the custom assets folder:

Open Gods of Old.ini file with a text editor and change:
; Custom XML and Python from user folder are not loaded
NoCustomAssets = 0
the 0 value to 1. This has the side effect of also blocking some sets of terrain graphs installed in the customassets folder ( like Blue marble )....

A lot of Firaxis Official mods have issues with BUG customassets folder in terms of interface ( Crossroads is other that I know ) ... the best you can do is to say to the mod to ignore code in the custom assets folder:

Open Gods of Old.ini file with a text editor and change:
; Custom XML and Python from user folder are not loaded
NoCustomAssets = 0
the 0 value to 1. This has the side effect of also blocking some sets of terrain graphs installed in the customassets folder ( like Blue marble )....

That worked.

Damn tsunamis.

Just tried this mod for the first time.

Seems very unbalanced, I'm afraid. I saw I could build shrines, but thought those to be very expensive at the start of the game. Built settlers and axemen instead.

To my surprise every other Civ races to build a shrine for itself, forgoing expansion as well as protection.

When my closest neighbor finally got his first Settler out; I had four cities and he met my Axe army on the way to his capital. So instead of building my own shrine, I simply took the others. His religion and shrine seemed to work as good as if I started my own.

(I'm a Monarch-level player, and I am always beat when it comes to getting Settlers out. Not being out-expanded meant the game was a cakewalk.)

This makes playing with this mod considerably easier; perhaps two whole difficulty steps or more.

Perhaps there's something special about shrines you built yourself (=religions you founded yourself)? If you can only win a religious victory with a self-founded religion, then I can see the mod working, with a "religious win only" setting. (If slightly broken, because if you fail to get at least one shrine it's game over for you).

But otherwise I'd say the mod is not thought through properly. It makes me realize the brilliance of the regular game; where founding religions is "free" (in that you more or less need the techs anyway).

I like the idea behind this mod; but without a tweak to the AI (or the xml settings) it's plain broken.

Okay, so enough complaining: this should be fairly easy to remedy!

Here's one solution; perhaps you have a better one?

I propose all shrines to additionally require some later-than-Antique-era tech to be built; this should make AIs behave as "normal" for the crucial early expansion - later, you can invest those hammers without having a human player race ahead by not doing so...

You're forgetting the fact that if you build your own shrine you can pick the religion. All religions in Gods of Old are not equal, the special abilities of great prophets are different depending on your state religion.

Okay, so you are saying that the benefits of certain gods are so great that they can compare to the benefits of conquering a few (depending on difficulty, of course) neighboring kingdoms and pick from their gods?

Frankly I find that hard to believe.

Remember; on Monarch level I can easily get triple the score of the best AI in the ADs (by conquering three neighbors; something I never pull off during a normal game), so the benefits of this god (over the others) must be wildly spectacular.

Indeed, if your suggestion is true, I feel confident in saying that god's benefits are broken too.

I tried something else: Advanced Start*, thinking perhaps the AI would then build a decent start before getting side-tracked with those shrines.

Well, perhaps it was slightly harder, but it was still way too easy. Even though I didn't get Copper until my third city, I still had time to chop an enormous Axe Army. Then it was easy to find a Copper-less neighbour and take all of his cities (thus maintaining parity with the other civs; as well as being able to adopt a cool religion + shrine), as well as paying a visit to the board leader to get rid of that expensive Axe army in a con/de-structive way: before it got eradicated, I managed to burn the two major cities of a dangerous opponent (both containing Shrines of competing religions).

This time I couldn't quite declare victory in 1500 BC, but still, my only real challenge is to fund my scattered empire... I have plenty of "home" land to expand into, so I predict an easy win.


Zapp

*) I couldn't find this setting when the mod was loaded, but luckily the designer forgot to turn off a setting already set, so the way I got Advanced Start up and running together with Gods of Old was to start a normal game with Advanced Start; then load the mod - it will not allow you to set this parameter, but it will also not auto-reset it to "off". So start another Advanced Game (now with the mod loaded) and you should get an Advanced Start.

My conclusion: designing a game to include Wonder-costly buildings that all AI will want to build sometimes before their first Settler :eek: and at the same time leaving another (human) player to forego that heavy hammer investment is utterly broken.

My Monarch game feels easier than I remember Noble was...

If the xml were to be modified to make those buildings unavailable until most civs have reached the end of their first expansion phase (3-6 cities) AI's blindly building them won't spell certain doom against an opportunistic human player. :goodjob:

Okay, so you are saying that the benefits of certain gods are so great that they can compare to the benefits of conquering a few (depending on difficulty, of course) neighboring kingdoms and pick from their gods?

Frankly I find that hard to believe.

Remember; on Monarch level I can easily get triple the score of the best AI in the ADs (by conquering three neighbors; something I never pull off during a normal game), so the benefits of this god (over the others) must be wildly spectacular.

Indeed, if your suggestion is true, I feel confident in saying that god's benefits are broken too.

I don't know how balanced each is, but I'd prefer a "fun" ability like meteors, blight, or plague to simply being protected or a promo on some units.

To kazapp

it seems as though your problem will only occurOn a Terra or pangea map. With continents or islands you won't have this problem.

My thoughts on this mod:

1. There are som powerful god and civ combos. My favorites are enki (water god) with the Dutch or portugese not only does it give you a chance to give your UU a movement bonus, but you can turn any army into an amphibious fight machine! Building wise the dike or the fietoria (sp?) coupled with the enki cathedral gives you 1+ food an 1+ gold or hammer depending on your civ. Throw in the colossus and you will have one he'll of a city!

2. Even though there are powerful combos (above and another is the war god and Rome) the gods are definately unequal. Utu can practically destroy a populas capital and turn it into a desert wasteland only good for minerals. An will shield you from anything which is arguably the best power.

3. Although some of you might not like it (yeah right) it will be near impossible to win a diplomatic victory. Even if you adopt free religion if you make friends with one civ you will make any other coalition that hates that civ or that religion will begin to hate you.

4. This mod makes free religion which is the most advantageous civic to increase research, worthless.

5. The apostalic palace has soooooo much more power in this mod. Instead of weak stop the war against such and such you can have full out creusades against the infedels. So get it or be of the religion that foundsit andgrow so your votes can control it.

I would be interested in seeing a modmod of this having a map of the fertile cresent with Sumer, babylonia, Assyria, and any other FC ancient civs.

To kazapp
5. The apostalic palace has soooooo much more power in this mod. Instead of weak stop the war against such and such you can have full out creusades against the infedels. So get it or be of the religion that foundsit andgrow so your votes can control it.

I tried this but it didn't work, everybody keeps purging your religion from their cities so the AP becomes pretty pointless.

After 2 games of GoO I have to agree that it's too unbalanced. Am early rush is ridiculously easy, even at deity the AI is building a shrine for 30 turns.

Too bad, because it has some fun aspects, although getting acquinted with blight on the receiving end isn't that fun.. [One of my best cities suddenly turned into a permanent wasteland, 3 vital resources just disappeared into dust [that's when I started my second game BTW ;)]].

Lightning is also pretty devastating, point it at an opponents city [no war required] and destroy a few of it's best buildings, just check the top 5 cities of the world, pick the first that isn't yours and blast away, it's gone from that list now. That makes it maybe one of the most devastating uses a prophet can have, destroying a few wonders + other buildings and a few pop in 1 turn. Better than a nuke.]

The Africa map is pretty cool but also totally unbalanced, when playing with 8 civs, 2 of them in the north get really bad positions, really really bad.

So, final verdict: somewhat fun but not challenging if you're playing for the easiest win.

I tried this but it didn't work, everybody keeps purging your religion from their cities so the AP becomes pretty pointless.

After 2 games of GoO I have to agree that it's too unbalanced. Am early rush is ridiculously easy, even at deity the AI is building a shrine for 30 turns.

Too bad, because it has some fun aspects, although getting acquinted with blight on the receiving end isn't that fun.. [One of my best cities suddenly turned into a permanent wasteland, 3 vital resources just disappeared into dust [that's when I started my second game BTW ;)]].

Lightning is also pretty devastating, point it at an opponents city [no war required] and destroy a few of it's best buildings, just check the top 5 cities of the world, pick the first that isn't yours and blast away, it's gone from that list now. That makes it maybe one of the most devastating uses a prophet can have, destroying a few wonders + other buildings and a few pop in 1 turn. Better than a nuke.]

The Africa map is pretty cool but also totally unbalanced, when playing with 8 civs, 2 of them in the north get really bad positions, really really bad.

So, final verdict: somewhat fun but not challenging if you're playing for the easiest win.

Two thoughts. The AP still helps to control others who are in your religion. Nice for holy wars, etc. I don't do much priest bombing, fuguring it'll be my city soon anyway.

Also, I believe that you get the temple benefits (maintenance, etc.) whether or not your running that religion as your state religion. If you're not trying the new religious victory, the benefits can really add up from having more than one religion in your city.

Two thoughts. The AP still helps to control others who are in your religion.
I don't know exactly how the AP works, it seems somewhat broken sometimes, if too few people have your religion you can't do anything except trade-bans. [Which in the end only results in you and your loyal vassal trading together..]


Also, I believe that you get the temple benefits (maintenance, etc.) whether or not your running that religion as your state religion. If you're not trying the new religious victory, the benefits can really add up from having more than one religion in your city.

True, but like I said, In GoO the AI seems possessed with cleansing your religion from their cities. Indeed a stupid move because the benefits are great. [So good, that the AI is even worse off in GoO]. I had my easiest deity win ever on it.