Hi, I'm kinda new here, so forgive me if I ask something that has already been answered (I checked the forum and didn't find it, so...).

My idea is to make a completely religion-free mod for Civ 4 BTS, but, so far, I can't find out how to do it. I managed a little trick, by modifying some XML files and putting them into the CustomAssets folder (basically, I changed the TechPrerequisites for all religions to 'FutureTech'), but that's not very clean, and that's not what I intended to do int he first place.

So, my request is : If someone here would know how to make this into a clean and working mod, I would be very, very grateful.

To answer the inevitable question, why? I'd say : Why not?

--edit--
Game experience can, actually, really be enhanced, as I say in my latest post
--/edit--

Thank you for your help

I apologize for the minor necropost, but I was thinking about this at work today. A quick search of the C&C forum reveals nothing of the sort in existence yet, so I think this might make for an interesting project.

It's worth noting that there are a lot of implications for removing religion. Religion Civics, Priests/Great Prophets, and a number of Wonders come to mind. I don't have any modding experience beyond basic XML tinkering, but I've programmed in C++ before and I might be interested in getting this started.

On another note, this topic should probably go in the main C&C forum.

My idea is to make a completely religion-free mod for Civ 4 BTS, but, so far, I can't find out how to do it. I managed a little trick, by modifying some XML files and putting them into the CustomAssets folder (basically, I changed the TechPrerequisites for all religions to 'FutureTech'), but that's not very clean, and that's not what I intended to do int he first place.

XML is all you need. You only need to do something slightly different.

Instead of assigning the religions to FutureTech, copy the entry for FutureTech in techinfos and paste it after FutureTech, making a new tech. Rename it TECH_PLACEHOLDER. Set this tag as follows:

<bDisable>1</bDisable>

Now assign all your religion's prerequisite techs to this. No religion will ever spawn because no one will ever get this tech.

Customassets is one way but if you want a distributable mod, you have to create a new folder under "mods", and place your edited civ4techinfos.xml and civ4religioninfos.xml in the folder using the same path (eg (gamedir)/mods/NoReligion/Assets/xml/gameinfo and assets/xml/Technologies).

Getting rid of religious wonders, great prophets, and religious civics are similarly simple xml tasks. There's no need for C++ or anything like that - in fact, I can't see how a dll mod would remove religions and religious things in the game without going through all of the xml steps anyway. And then the only point of a dll mod would be to clean up a little code that's not going to affect anything anyway ...

I know that it's easy to simply get rid of everything, but it would be nice to have proper replacements. A few of the ideas I had might involve a bit more complexity than XML can provide.

thanks for the answers, any suggestions on how to replace religious buildings/units by something else ? Maybe some international trade empires ;-), precursors of the corporations... Or something totally different...

Actually, I find that playing without religions can be very ... different. More difficult to keep your citizens happy, but easier to keep fairly good diplomatic relations. Science can also become more strategic. Getting rid of the religions can give you a very good game experience, so, why not ?

I have a mod that I worked on a little less than one year ago that removes the different religions from the game and replaces it with a different concept.

The mod is only for Warlords (that's the version I have), and it is purely cosmetic so as to allow the games to be 100% compatible with all other Civ IV games. This is to allow me to play games that I might want to download from the internet (which I never actually did :) ).
A few of the changes include:
* All 7 religions are replaced with 7 "world cultures"
* All respective, icons, 3d buildings, and units have been changed.
* All respective sound effects have been changed.
* All respective text has been changed.
* Some additional changes were also added in not directly related to this mod, as noted in the paragraph below.
The mod was made for my own use (though I considered releasing it while making it). I made it because I do not feel right playing with the concept of religion and removed it from the game so that I could play Civ. I am honestly afraid to release the mod because the mod also contains the addition of some Christian aspects to some parts of the game and few a changes here and there (again all cosmetic); considering the anti-Christian nature of most people I encounter here and other places, I really don't feel like arguing over why or being made fun of for the changes I put in place (reason for my reluctance to even make the mod public knowledge). However, if someone really needs this mod for some reason, I suppose I could share it.