Discussion of Religion modules.

I think we could add at least another 7 religions and have Zebra 9's Religion MOD COMP that allows the game to randomly select however many religions you want.

This as with everything else is all dependent on other modders, not us.

There is no way in the world we can convert everything while developing the WoC Standard as well....so other modders will have to help.

Discussion of Religion modules.
How to add another some religions? A specific approach Mody ...

Theres several parts to adding a religion, you got Buildings. Temples, Monasteries, Cathedrals, and Shrines. You have a Missionary unit. The religion's symbols need added to the Gamefont Tga's. Johnny Smith is a expert at adding these to the game. Heres his thread. http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=240440. we are working on integrating it to WoC.

If you can, add in the Wicca and the Scientology religion into the game as well, those are the two new religions on today's world, so you can add those in.

Hello!

Adding new religions is not the actual problem; currently, there are no special abilities for such modern religions. If nothing special apart from the default religion abilities is desired for Wicca/Scientology, please provide suggestions for the art work.

Regards,
Fabian Aichele

If you can, add in the Wicca and the Scientology religion into the game as well, those are the two new religions on today's world, so you can add those in.

If you can, add in the Wicca and the Scientology religion into the game as well, those are the two new religions on today's world, so you can add those in.

Wicca is 'just' a modern form of Paganism, so I guess having Paganism would be enough (or at least an alternative).

As to Scientology, it is too young and insignificant a religion for my taste to include. There are plenty of old religions which have vanished again which were imo more important and are not in civ either, all those have the same right to be there, the only thing Scientology has as an advantage is that it is 'still' practiced today ;)

But hey, that should not keep anyone from adding either, the more the merrier (and the player can decide which to actually use) :D

Rapture is an extra mod that runs on the WoC being worked on at the moment. The WoC just has the same typical setup for religions, but many more available spaces open on the font files.

Well with what we are working in Rapture the plan is to make different styles of religions. Pagan religions would be completely different than what the religions are now, and then the normal religions that are there now would have denominations. As for future era religions I am still open to the idea. I just want them to be different in some way.

For example pagan religions can create sacrifices is the idea now in Rapture, and is planned to have different commerces from these. Normal religions go through schisms, and give a spiritual commerce. So as for the future ones I was thinking a blend of things.

This is just an example does not mean I am exactly thinking this. Wicca could give a spiritual commerce that acts as a way of stabilizing things, and Scientology could give research. I mean this instead of culture.

But at the moment we are working on get just some basic ones done with SDK changes. So after that the idea is anyone can add what they would want to these. As for normal religions at the moment they are grouped into 7 different groups with 30 denominations at the moment.

The 7 groups are Iranian, Jewish, Christian, Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist, and Chinese. Others religions for example like Shintoism is planned to be a pagan religion at this point. Anyway that is just what we are working on. I hope it does not sound too crazy.

Would anybody be interested in creating a module that would make founding a religion optional? I am one of those pesky fellows who really dislikes the way religions are founded in CivIV. It would be so nice to be able to choose whether or not to found a religion, for numerous reasons. I have begged for such a mod, and there seems to be a strong resistance to the idea. There are a few ways it might be done:


Add a "none" option to the "choose religion" feature. I don't know exactly how that works; that could require complex scripts, or it might even be hardcoded into BtS, and so cannot be altered. It is such a shame that Firaxis didn't do that to begin with!


Make religions like corporations – upon discovering a prerequisite tech one will be able to use a great prophet to found a religion.


Incorporate the method of Gods of Old – upon discovering a prerequisite tech a civilization can build the religion's shrine, thus founding the religion.


Use Stony-D's method – religions are separated into their own techs, so upon discovering a prerequisite tech one will have to spend an extra turn or two researching the religion (technically this creates new techs with the same name and icon as the religions, with the stock spiritual techs as prerequisites for the new techs).


A would the simplest method from the player's perspective, but might be the most complex to create (or it might be the easiest; I don't know how that feature works).

The first three have the advantage of not cluttering up the tech tree. One little thing I disliked about Amra's mod is that it added a bunch of techs just as prerequisites for religions. This actually made it harder to avoid accidentally founding a religion. Additionally they would allow multiple religions to share the same prerequisite, so both Judaism and Zoroastrianism could branch off of Monotheism, and all the pantheons could come off of Polytheism, etc.

SD's system would also allow religions to share prerequisites, but it would clutter up the tech tree. If there are several pagan pantheons, one might have to add a whole column just for them. However, for those concerned about changing the game's mechanics, this would be the most seamless. Religions would still be founded by researching technologies, but one wouldn't have to forgo researching useful techs just to avoid founding unwanted religions.

I'm not necessarily interested in a complex mod that changes the way religion works, like Abbamouse's mod or Gods of Old. All I want is the freedom to choose whether or not I found a religion. Is that so much to ask?

Hello!

We thought about altering the way religions get founded already as well, though not by entirely removing prerequired technologies.
The current idea looks like this: Technologies still enable religions, but instead of founding them immediately after the first player discovers the necessary technology, we added an additional commerce type called "spirituality", which is created by priest specialists/religious buildings. Religions will have a certain minimum amount of spiritual commerce assigned to them which is necessary to found them. The first player possessing the necessary technology plus the necessary amount of spirituality will found the religion.
Apart from that, the upcoming Rapture mod contains two additional ways of founding a religion:
- Via a schism (either as a Great Prophet mission, or based on game turn)
- For pagan religions: These aren't founded, but are available for civs from the start of the game, and these only spread to newly founded or conquered cities.

As for making founding a religion completely optional: That is possible, most simply via the first of your options from the a programmer's point of view. We just didn't think about that yet for the Rapture mod.

Regards,
Fabian Aichele

Would anybody be interested in creating a module that would make founding a religion optional? I am one of those pesky fellows who really dislikes the way religions are founded in CivIV. It would be so nice to be able to choose whether or not to found a religion, for numerous reasons. I have begged for such a mod, and there seems to be a strong resistance to the idea. There are a few ways it might be done:


Add a "none" option to the "choose religion" feature. I don't know exactly how that works; that could require complex scripts, or it might even be hardcoded into BtS, and so cannot be altered. It is such a shame that Firaxis didn't do that to begin with!


Make religions like corporations – upon discovering a prerequisite tech one will be able to use a great prophet to found a religion.


Incorporate the method of Gods of Old – upon discovering a prerequisite tech a civilization can build the religion's shrine, thus founding the religion.


Use Stony-D's method – religions are separated into their own techs, so upon discovering a prerequisite tech one will have to spend an extra turn or two researching the religion (technically this creates new techs with the same name and icon as the religions, with the stock spiritual techs as prerequisites for the new techs).


A would the simplest method from the player's perspective, but might be the most complex to create (or it might be the easiest; I don't know how that feature works).

The first three have the advantage of not cluttering up the tech tree. One little thing I disliked about Amra's mod is that it added a bunch of techs just as prerequisites for religions. This actually made it harder to avoid accidentally founding a religion. Additionally they would allow multiple religions to share the same prerequisite, so both Judaism and Zoroastrianism could branch off of Monotheism, and all the pantheons could come off of Polytheism, etc.

SD's system would also allow religions to share prerequisites, but it would clutter up the tech tree. If there are several pagan pantheons, one might have to add a whole column just for them. However, for those concerned about changing the game's mechanics, this would be the most seamless. Religions would still be founded by researching technologies, but one wouldn't have to forgo researching useful techs just to avoid founding unwanted religions.

I'm not necessarily interested in a complex mod that changes the way religion works, like Abbamouse's mod or Gods of Old. All I want is the freedom to choose whether or not I found a religion. Is that so much to ask?

Your mod sounds neat, but that's really more complex than what I'm wishing for. I don't want to change the way religions work. I don't want pagan pantheons to be a separate class from extant religions. I don't want denominations, except maybe for specific scenarios. All I want is to make founding a religion optional (besides several new religions of course). If adding a "none" option would be so simple, might you do it up as a separate module? I would be eternally grateful.

If the "choose religion" feature is always turned on, would there be any bugs in using a tech as a prerequisite for several religions, i.e. having Greek, Germanic, Egyptian, and Mesopotamian religions all tied to Polytheism along with Hinduism?

Hello!

The World of Civilization project, which is the foundation for Rapture, is highly flexible when it comes to activating or deactivating mods (or parts thereof); I could add an option that only enables the selection of founding a specific religion after researching the necessary tech, or not to found one at all.
There's just two concerns: I never tried to have more than one religion tied to the same required tech, and the AI will cling to founding a religion after researching the required tech nevertheless without further modifications.

Regards,
Fabian Aichele

hey guys another bug report
attached is a save when you hit enter the Oracle will be built if you choose COL you will be able to found a religion ,when you do CTD :mad:
i do have the first new religon mod loaded
If you choose another tech the game will play until COL is discovered then the founding of a religon CTD :cry:

Ok thanks, do you have logging enabled by chance? That would tell me what modules you have in, so i can match it, did 3 test games so far, but im shooting blindly if i dont know what modules are in. I will try the save game next.

RR
here are the modules i have loaded
Game concept
Civic
WW
resources
Ancient tech (boating unloaded still loading same x ,y coor on grid as sailing)
religions
art styles
buildings (museum boat unloaded misspellings in xml -wrong art in civilipedia )

ok thanks let me load those up and see whats up.

Also you can redownload the buildings its fixed, it was missing a dependency and the museum/retired ships works now, same link.

Durn i still cant get your save to load, i get a runtime error and crash. We are going to have to think how to post bugs in a better way. Do you still have the same Woc Assets setup? if so can you zip it and send to me in a pm?

Durn i still cant get your save to load, i get a runtime error and crash. We are going to have to think how to post bugs in a better way. Do you still have the same Woc Assets setup? if so can you zip it and send to me in a pm?

For some reason i cant figure out how to attach a file to a pm
I have the woc assets folders zipped (win rar.) excluding the 2.exe files
tried to attach it to a posts but i guess it was to big
so pm me your address i can attach it to a regular e-mail

I can see where bug chasing will be really difficult in a system that by design allows each user to completly customize it :crazyeye:

Even though it's not really a "religion", I think someone, if no one has already, should make an atheism religion mod. The concept of atheism exists similar as any other religion; in a sense, one could think of all religions as just philosophies, so atheism can be considered a religion in this sense and should be added to this game, that way, there would be no need to add a "atheist state" civic in the religion civic systems since you could have an Organized Religion civic with atheism as your state religion.

I've also been interested if anyone has made or has been thinking about making a mod for religious branches, just to further make the game concept of religion even more complex.

Hello!

Adding atheism as a religion ;)?
Well, certainly possible, and shouldn't require separate handling in the SDK or Python; that is, if there aren't further special ideas about atheism having different effects than a default religion.

As for religion branches: The WoC project contains the beginnings of a religion mod named "Rapture" which features a couple of denominations (religion branches, as you name them) for each of the main religions in the game. These become founded via schisms that either occur automatically in a certain time frame in the game, or can be triggered by a Great Prophet.

Even though it's not really a "religion", I think someone, if no one has already, should make an atheism religion mod. The concept of atheism exists similar as any other religion; in a sense, one could think of all religions as just philosophies, so atheism can be considered a religion in this sense and should be added to this game, that way, there would be no need to add a "atheist state" civic in the religion civic systems since you could have an Organized Religion civic with atheism as your state religion.

I've also been interested if anyone has made or has been thinking about making a mod for religious branches, just to further make the game concept of religion even more complex.

So your saying you have it so their can be Catholic and Protestant Christian denominations?

Hello!

So your saying you have it so their can be Catholic and Protestant Christian denominations?

In fact, there already are, complete with reskinned missionary/inquisitor and buildings.

Oh cool that is awesome for scenarios and also adds lots of new possibilities to game play

Hey guys, i just confirmed that having the choose relgion option is causing the crash. Now i dont know why yet, but I suspect its because zoro is added.

Just confirmed its a woc thing. 2 test games, one bts choose relgion option on, no crash. 2nd test game with Woc/ no zoro, choose relgion option on. I founded a relgion b4 i built the Oracle, and chose a religion and crashed. Conclusion is something missing in the sdk/ woc core. It has nothing to do with zoro being in or not, but the Choose Religion Option. Its noted and on the Bug Tracker.

Oh is this a new game option? i haven't seen it before. Was this a option in 3.13?

So your saying you have it so their can be Catholic and Protestant Christian denominations?

Ya here is an alpha to look at for Rapture. But it has 30 denominations sets now.

What Johny meant to say is that here, is his religion mod for WoC, http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=10440

Updated 1st relgions module pack, Fix from Johny for Zoro Missionary effect. Same download link.

Game crashed when I tried to select Zorostrianism. Downloaded all current mods yesterday except the Graphics mods. Much more detailed post is here. (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=7243487#post7243487)

Thank you.

woc core version 1.0 will crash with the choose religion option. we have a fix for it for 1.1 which is in testing now.

So I will be unable to research any religions until the next version?

no you can still research regions, just cant choose what to call them, uncheck the choose religion option in custom game, that's all.

Hello!

The "Choose Religion" option is broken in WoC; this is a confirmed bug, though the actual C++ code used for it is exactly the same as in BtS patch 3.17 (which works without problems); I already have an idea for a fix, but this will likely be breaking multiplayer mode. As Roger already pointed out, no problems arise when you switch this option off.

Hi Guys,

I read above about the grand plans for a religious mod that enables 100 or more faiths with cults, schisms etc. It all sounds wonderful. However when you stop and think about it and imagine your normal sized map with say 80 cities on it then it should be apparent that the result is going to be multiple faiths in every city. Now that is realistic enough however I worry that they all seem to carry equal weighting once founded in a city. For example if a city has 1 religion then 100% of its people follow it. If it gets another then the split becomes 50-50. This is not at all realistic. The idea that I can send a Christian missionary from England to Islamic Persia and instantly convert an entire city to my faith is simply wrong.

Did anyone ever play Medieval II total war? The religious spread ideas there are a little better. Things are gradual in their pace and a regions religion can be influenced by several things not just missionaries.

One idea would be to accord religious % to each city individually and to link this % level to whether or not that religion is accepted in that city or not. We could set a threshold for the purposes of construction that religions buildings etc of say 15-20%. This % can be altered positively or negatively by trade routes, civics, nearby cities, events, foreign relations, events or missionaries (though I think a missionary alone should not be able to spread the faith in a distant city or a city with a strong faith already- instead contributing a % less than the threshold or establishing a mission which gradually converts the populance).

I also have a hearty dislike of the apostolic palace and how it functions. having the pope hail from France does not mean that he will listen to the king of France when it comes to policy. Popes historically were frustratingly independent. Again MTW II has a better solution here. Each Civ should have cardinals which are appointed to the college of cardinals according to the % of their population that follows that faith (change cardinal to mullah, guru or whatever according the the faith). These cardinals (under player control) then vote for a pope who will be like an AI and not under player control. Of course his attitude towards his native Civ will be very good to begin with but he is not under their control. He should be able to do stuff like ask you to stop a war or go on crusade and of course threaten you with excommunication - which gives a happiness penalty in all cities. He could also suggest policies to you such as on birth control or religious instruction in schools. These could appear as events in the game for players whose state religion is the same as the apostolic palace and like most events have a number of choices.

I am not a modder so I realize that some of these ideas may be hard to integrate into the game so they are just suggestions.

Many of the ideas here and indeed mod components such as resources are great ideas. The problem with them resides in the essential fact that even the GEM is too small to realistically accommodate them all. Until we can play on maps maybe 3 to 4 times larger than the current GEM (yes I love big maps) then I suggest limiting the number of religions to no more than a 1:1 ratio with the civs played.

Imperium

Your are referring to Rapture. And it is not planned to play like a normal game if you did not get that yet. You can not find all of the religions. And religions go away automatically is the plan. The percent per population if could be done is not easy at all. Apostolic Palace is going to be redone how is still in question because of all of the plan changes to religions. In Rapture there is going to be a new spiritual commerce in play, and basically if the more you fund one religion it spreads more and the others go away. There is a limit to how many religions can stay in city. And the plan is for the religions to cause chaos and revolutions.

So let me explain better there are 30 religions in the game that are like what you are thinking, but like I said that will go away automatically. Then there are 64(edited) religions that can not easily gotten by all. 16 of those are based on a group of what civilization you have and you receive only a small bonus for those. Only one building possible for those. Then the other 48(edited) are founded if you have one of the 16 first religions and build a wonder. And then you get no more buildings just bonuses for those. So anyway it is not 100(94 actually) religions like you are use to playing anyway.

Plus I am extending the game earlier for the other semi religions. Anyway the default game mechanics are being thrown out and rewritten. So just hold off on deciding till it is finished please.

Edit: may changes to the numbers sorry

Johny,

I am in no way anxious to rush to judgement on your mod and I applaud your efforts in revamping the religious aspect of the game.
However from what I have read from your postings there will be at least 94 religions in the game - with up to 194 possible. I understand that some are faiths, some are cults etc and they are different in some way. You also mentioned the notion of religious decay which will reduce the number of religions in play. I am curious as to how this will work in practice. Lets say I get a religion and it spreads to an AI city. Later I cut my spiritual funding for that religion and it dies out (does it die out across my civ or is spirituality set on a city by city basis?) in my cities. So its dead in my civ but still alive and kicking with the AI does this not give rise to the possibility that any one civs cities could be home to 20 or more faiths at one time? What with me founding my own and others spreading through missionaries and trade routes i just see it as a bit of a nightmare keeping track of them all. When you come to check out a city you will see all the religions that it is home to on the main map. Will everyone be able to recognize which of the 94+ it corresponds to without checking further? Now i can recognise which faith a missionary belongs to by sight. I think with rapture I will need to be scrolling over them a lot to be sure.

How many religions can one city hold? 5 seems to me to be a good number. Since you can get some benefit from all of them and building benefits from most of them then allowing too many in each city makes the game a lot easier in terms of generating extra culture, science ( specialists with representation)and monastaries, gold and production ( specialists with Ankor Watt). Making things easier is a problem that extends to other areas of the WoC mod as well and is in no way confined to religion. The effect of the new buildings and wonders is more pronounced. I recently played one GEM game and had my capital generating 2400+ beakers per turn by turn 435 on marathon speed. The effect was that I spent 2/3 of the game researching future tech.It's not a problem unique to the religious mod but it is an area that deserves attention.

I also read that certain wonders will now be linked to faiths. My understanding is that if I am greek then I will have hellenism to start and then I may churn out the statue of Zeus and found a cult. All well and good but if I am not Greek what then? Does that mean that I won't be able to go for the parthenon, Artemis, oracle, or statue of Zeus? All of them relate to specific Greek deities. As someone who operates a wonders based strategy with Industrious leaders (none of whom are Greek) this is not good news. Moreover why stop at the Greek wonders? That hardly seems fair. Many of the wonders in the game are linked to specific faiths (chitzen Itza , Ankor Watt, king Richards Crusade and the spiral minaret) to name but a few. Are these also to be restricted to the appropriate faiths? One of the things I love about Civ is the freedom it affords the player. If you begin with a religious family like hellenism as you not somewhat locked in to what wonders you can build? Please correct me if I am wrong.

Anyway I am in favour of reforming the religious aspect of the game and I admire anyone with the ability and devotion to give life to such a mod.
I really think that when you look at modifying the apostolic palace wonder you should take a look at Medieval II total war. The way the papacy is handled there is not at all a bad starting point.

Thanks for all your hard work.

Imperium30

Well basically what you suggested is already in the works.

I planned for 4 at most in a city at this point. And the religion is actually removed from the city period, but holy cities would be another factor of removing that we are still working on. You will be able to tell which is which by the name of course but the denominations are recolored from the original missionary so by sight you can tell which group. For example catholic is a recolored christian missionary. So the shape of the unit is the same but the colors are changed.

As for the wonders like you suggested I am working on. I plan to have an equal appropriate wonder to replace what you are loosing, but not the same effects of course. I am thinking for example Templo Mayor for Chaac the MesoAmerican god, and some sort of super sacrifice penalty reduction.

And if the game is out of balanced from it I will rebalance it of course in some way, but we have a lot of things going on besides the religions. So I need to take all in account. Ya I need to look into more ideas for the Apostolic Palaces. We do plan to have one for each major normal religion group though at this point. For example I am working on adding for a test game a Buddhist one and a Christian one. But any ideas for wonders I am looking for suggestions and if you got any please post them in the Rapture thread or send me a PM. I hope that makes more sense anyway and thanks for your interest.

Edit: sorry counted up the first number wrong 16 first ones and 48 after that for each god. So 64 pagan ones in all and 30 nonpagan equals 94