Is anybody willing to work on a project to make a modcomp changing religions in RFC?

My idea is to have more than 7 religions, but having religions being able to be removed from cities and even die out.

The under Theocracy and Organised Religion we could have a slow rate at which none-state religions would slowly die out, along with unhappiness for none-state religions and an inquisitor unit to allow religions to be removed.

Also more stability boosts for having more of your cities with your state religion and more penalties for having more with none-state religions (for theocracy and organised religion ONLY) would also be cool if people like it.

We could then have some of the following religions;
Greek Pantheon
Egyptian Pantheon
Zoroastrianism
Nordic Pantheon
Hinduism
Buddhism
Toaism
Confucianism
Islam
-Sunni
-Shiit
Christianity
-Catholicism
-Orthadoxy
-Prodistantism
Other

The names of the pagan religions could of course change but I am finding it difficult to find appropriate names.

Now I think we should only have religions that were the state religion of civs we have in the game for long enough for them to have an effect on gameplay. I have put the list up on the poll to see which ones are popular but what I am realy asking for is someone with a knowlage of coding and modding who is willing to work on this community project for a more accurate rhye's.

Now if anybody has any ideas that they would like to bring to the table that would also be welcome. :) Hopefully this will change the way religion works in RFC for the better.

I did intend a poll but I messed it up so instead just post suggestions about the religion list if you dont like it. :)

EDIT:

This is what I feal we have (kind of) come to so far. The civics are the most contested I feal. If you dont like anything or have suggestions then keep posting ;)

Current Religion List;
Religion - Tech Required - Best Founder (as in the civ we want to found it)
Greek Pantheon - Metal Casting - Greece
Egyptian Pantheon - Masonary - Egypt
Zoroastrianism - Monarchy - Persia
Celtic Pantheon - - Vikings? Celts?
Hinduism - Polythiesm - India
Buddhism - Meditation - India
Confucianism - Mathematics - China
Toaism - Calander - China
Mesoamerican Cults
Islam - Divine Right - Arabia
-Sunni - Divine Right - Arabia
-Shiit - - Persia
Christianity - Theology - Rome or Greece
-Catholicism - Philosophy - Rome
-Orthadoxy - Philosophy - Greece
-Prodistantism - Printing Press - Germany

Current Civic Changes;
Changing Pacifism for Leader Cult;
1. Adding 1 + happiness per city if you're either in monarchy or police state
2. Decreasing military upkeep by half
3. Additional stability if also in police state/nationhood or occupation; negative stability with representation/US or free speech
4. Making it available at Monarchy and no later

Current Game Mechanic Changes
Schism mechanic for Christianity and Islam
% Chance of religions leaving in Organised Religion and Theocracy
Making later religions grow faster and die out slower than old ones in order
Inquisitor unit (possably only for Organised Religions and/or Theocracy)
Religions Spread naturally to cities that already have a religion
Islamic Missionaries have access to Independant Cities
Down sides to the AP through inteferance from the Papacy

This would be really cool.

I think you should add Shinto and Celtic or Gaelic paganism. Celtic and Gaelic should be the same religious group. The Celtic or Gaelic religious group would have a decent effect on the Britons and northern europe.

Further, you can probably do away with the Nordic Pantheon, since it doesn't really affect anyone but Vikings, and by the time they are founded its basically already time for them to convert to Christianity.


You also should provide a religion for Amerindians, and Mali. This could be simplified into a single archetype of tribal/shamanistic religions, but I'm not sure if that's ideal.

IMO too many religions spoil the diplomatic broth. Conflict between Asians, Muslims and Europeans is good, but when you get into conflict between Greece and France and England because of religion, tech pace will be slowed due to less trading and more wars.

The greek pantheon tech could be available with metal casting, seeing as the greek civ gets that tech so much earlier than others.

One thing that I think should be in play, is that religions should be able to spread naturally to a city that already has a religion in it.

Good ideas from everybody.

@kbk;
I figured the were enough eastern religions, or should we swap confucianism for shinto? That area isnt really my expertise.

About the Cealtic/Gealic Polythiesm you suggested, thats the same kind of effect as I was hoping the nordic pantheon would have, an apponant to early christianity in northern europe. I don't mind swapping Nordic polythiesm for Gealic though if its more accurate.

@ Quotey;
About too many religions, the would not be all of those religions at any one point in time, just like civs they would rise and fall dynamically.

By the time Christianity is breaking into different sects most of the ancient polythiestic religions should be extinct for example. Another example is the far east. If we have Confucianism, Taoism, possibly Shinto and Buddhism in China and Japan, most of these will fade out of importance or existance, as there are only limited factions in that region.

@monolith94;
Metal Casting sounds good the whole thing will nead balanceing but thats a good starting point for the greeks.

I also like your second suggestion about religion spreading. As it will help balance the ability to remove religions.

@Everyone;

Keep the ideas comming. Also any coding volunteers would be great ;)

What happened to religious tolerance? The Romans were fairly tolerant of other religions unless you don't worship the Emperor or if your religion was a threat to the state. If religions slowly die out, it makes free religion much harder later. Pacifism comes too late to be helpful. I would vote for giving paganism some more benefits (like more happiness from more religions) until you're able to go to free religion.

A good point pacifist.

What do you think would work better, a more powerful Paganism, an earlier pacifism or both? Also what Tech for Pacifism if its brought forward?

Does +1 :) per religion and +1 :culture: per religion sound good enough to rival Organised Religion early game without being overpowered?

Finally although Religions can get wiped out and leave cities there are more religions altogether so they should balance out and we can fiddle with spread rates and dissapearance rates when its done if the are too many or not enough religions late game.

This could come up with some decent results. The more I think about it, the more I believe Taoism can go and be replaced by something else...

Communism! :D

Thats an interesting thought. Whats the public view on having 'Personality Cult' or 'Athiesm' as a religion civic?

Further, you can probably do away with the Nordic Pantheon, since it doesn't really affect anyone but Vikings, and by the time they are founded its basically already time for them to convert to Christianity.

Um, Elves and Dwarfs? Williams the Conqueror's (1066 and all that) favourite curse was "Loki's Bones". They maintained a form of polytheism for quite some time (to this day Polytheists in India will have an idol to Jesus and an idol to a Hindu God or Goddess [seen them]). "Dancing around the Christmas tree" also comes from the Scandinavians. So yes, Norse and Germanic (closely related) could be included

I don't like the idea of paganism being portrayed as a form of Free Religion civic. Roman records talk about religious wars among the Egyptians even when they were ruling them (around 1st century). And of course Jezebel of Bible fame had many of Israel's prophets murdered and brought in her own Baal and Ashteroth prophets. There are plenty of other examples. The Romans idolized the Greek Culture which is why they thought so highly of the Greek Gods but this did not mean they counted as tolerant.

What would be accurate (don't know if possible) would be to set old religions as being replaced by new one's (maybe the new one's even taking over the old one's buildings, Vatican was a "holy place" long before Jesus walked the earth after all). If its possible then to prevent unbalancing it could be set that only certain religion could replace certain others (for instance if you have Zoarasterianism it would be replaced by Hinduism or Islam [yes, I KNOW they are still around in India, but their heartland has been taken over by Islam]). You could set the Old European's as being replaced by "Christianity" but Judaism wouldn't be able to replace any so you wouldn't have the massive Judaism we usually get.

I'd imagine this applying as a Modern religion starting and each time it spreads to a city it automatically kills off any Ancient religions that are set to die before it (e.g. Greek and Egyptian Polytheism with Zoarasterianism in city, in comes Christianity and it kills the Greek and Egyptian polytheism but can't touch Zoarasterianism. But later Islam comes and it replaces the Zoarasterianism).

PROBLEM: Cathedrals don't come till much later so no problem with them but Monastery's and Churches would pose difficulties. If you just destroy them then there's no point in making them. But if you pass them to the new religion you could have multiple copies Christian monasteries in same city.

Possible soloution. Limit buildings Ancient Religions can so greek poly build becomes Chris monastery while Egypt build becomes Chris church. But that would be difficult for coding and balancing.

Alternatively just be more cruel about how many religions can be in a city.

My views on atheism on the game is that there isn't enough of it. Seriously, does every civ (barring Netherlands and India) really need a state religion by 1950?

I think Atheism can be represented fairly well as a religion, but with some problems. Buildings would not be relevant. Atheism also isn't a major factor in the diplomacy of modern countries. So I don't really see a benefit of adding a modern religion of that sort.

This is the broader sense in which religion needs to be useful in the game. There's not much point to including, say, Germanic/Norse beliefs if only one or two states could realistically adopt those.

The solution might be to allow temples to be built by any civ for their "national religion" - but only after discovering a certain time criteria or tech, so it can't be just a replacement for regular religion. It would be most useful for the national religions without a non-domestic missionary tradition, from Egyptian mythology to Japanese Shinto-Buddhism.

If this project is going anywhere, I can give a hand. I've already coded a small religion mod with a schism dynamic that might be useful.

@FenrirWolf
About paganism, it would encourage more religions to spread in your cities but at the same time you would still have a 'state religion' and so would still have diplo penalties with nahbours. Also paganism is a broad term and so hard to represent, but I think the examples you gave would be better discribed as Organised Religion than Paganism civic-wise, although the religion itself was pagan.

Religions changing by scripted events I think arn't flexable and dynamic enough. It would be unfair for your religion to be suddenly gone, holy city et al, just because its 'replacer' has appeared. Slow deterioration is better in my oppinion than religions auto-dying. With the obvious exception of Shisms, which are special.

@Panopticon
How about instead of Athiesm being counted as a religion we had it as a civic (say an earlier changed form of Pacifism? extra great people but no religious benifits and penalties for religion instead of the military penalty?) then it would literally be the absence of a religion

Thanks also for the offer of help.

Also @Everyone
What religions should the be in mesopetamia? Zoroastrianism, Egyptian, none or its own?
And what about a native american religion? It would be cool but might just slow down christian expansion in the region...

Atheism is not historical, i.e. it is really a mid 19th century re-invention; even though there were Greek and Indian schools of thought on the subject, it was never a historical, cultural phenomenon like religion was.
Regarding the benefits of paganism, it is really too weak to just have 1 happy and 1 culture because early cities are too small to benefit from them. Maybe we should replace it with the civic polytheism (just like the tech) which gives 5% more money (more religions meaning more religious trade) in addition to the happiness and culture. To quote the wikipedia on the Temple of Artemis:

The Temple of Artemis was located at an economically robust region, drawing merchants and travellers from all over Asia Minor. The temple was influenced by many beliefs, and can be seen as a symbol of faith for many different peoples. The Ephesians worshiped Cybele, and incorporated many of their beliefs into the worship of Artemis. Artemisian Cybele became quite contrasted from her Roman counterpart, Diana. The cult of Artemis attracted thousands of worshipers from far-off lands.

Um, Elves and Dwarfs? Williams the Conqueror's (1066 and all that) favourite curse was "Loki's Bones". They maintained a form of polytheism for quite some time (to this day Polytheists in India will have an idol to Jesus and an idol to a Hindu God or Goddess [seen them]). "Dancing around the Christmas tree" also comes from the Scandinavians. So yes, Norse and Germanic (closely related) could be included


Sorry, I was more talking about in game than historically accurate. Of course the Nordic pantheon played a large role in Norse culture and expansion and as a result in modern culture. But, in game, we're talking of a span of about 50 turns from when the Vikings spawn, to when we want to start to see Christianity making a dent. Not sure how this is related to Hindu polytheism...

Of course you see Christianity spread at different rates in Viking lands depending on the random seed, but my point is the arc of the game for simply having a Norse religion is so small compared to many of the other time frames for other religions. Certainly the Nordic religion has roots well past around 600 AD, but in game terms, that area is completely unoccupied, or occupied by unplayable Celts and Barbarians.

A solution may just be to have a generic European pagan religious group, but of course, that's a gross oversimplification.

How about Hero-worship/Personality Cult/God-King then? The Ceasers had a personality cult, the pharoahs were worshipped as gods too...

Polythiesm sounds good, but I think they should still have a state religion, so those diplo-bonuses are saved for free religion.

How about diplo bonuses for polytheism if the AI has religions like Hinduism (definitely polytheist) /Confucianism (if it even has gods)/Taoism (more like pantheist)/Greek and Norse paganism (polytheist)

BUT negatives for monotheist/bitheist ones (the more common ones) like Christianity, Islam, Zoro and Judaism?

Sounds good as long as it wasn't too complex. What do you think about the Leader Cult idea as an alternative to Athiesm to replace Pacifism?

Regarding dieing out of Religions :

Variant No1 :

If a new major religion is founded it will replace older religions, so in this case you could maintain more religion without having more religions :

E.g. if Christianity is founded then it will slowly replace Greek Panthenism, Nordic Cults, MesoAmerican Cults etc.

If Islam is founded then it will replace Zoroastrism, Isis Cult and so on.

When I say slowly then I mean that

See not all Religion are founded at the same time. So you could have up to 6 Religions in Ancient Times, but then when the 7th one is founded (lets say Jewism) then I will start replacing 2 or 3 of these old religions. At first just slowly, but then when the 8th religions is founded then 1 old religion (best the smallest one) is forced to die out and is replaced by its successor (that was already starting to replace it)..

would you prefere that sort of scripted, pre-determined extermination to an organic one, where the old religions die out because they are no longer state religions, but still have a chance to servive (say you play as rome and dont switch to christianity when the AI would)?

The leader cult idea is good but it doesn't last long or spread like a religion (i.e. there has been no leader cults that actually persisted, other than the pharaoh god-kings which in RFC turns last only the first 80-100 moves in Egypt).

I would not replace pacifism or make it earlier because you alter the tech rate if there are lots more great people early on.

Well if we had leader cult as a civic then it wouldnt spread like a religion. Maybe if we set it up so that they got the negetive diplo for a different religion with everyone but had no state religion, the great people but no religious bonuses and hope that less trading from people not liking them will counter the great people?

Well if we had leader cult as a civic then it wouldnt spread like a religion. Maybe if we set it up so that they got the negetive diplo for a different religion with everyone but had no state religion, the great people but no religious bonuses and hope that less trading from people not liking them will counter the great people?

That's is a good compromise. Remembering Moses vs. Pharaoh, Jesus vs. Caesar, your negative diplo makes sense, in fact I would even consider penalizing for additional religions present in the city. It is actually a strong argument to switch away from leader cult (which I suppose will replace paganism) as soon as you get religion. Maybe extra happiness with monarchy to combat the unhappiness?

It would be nice to be able to choose initially whether one wants leader cult or polytheism to start with.

We really need at least 6 religion categories:
leader cult
polytheism
OR
theocracy
pacifism
free religion

I think we need the first civic in each catagory to do nothing (I dunno why its just the way the games set up) Which means we could have;
Paganism
Organised Religion
Leader Cult
Theocracy
Free Religion

Leader cult would be pacifism with the military upkeep swapped for diplo penalties (except with people with free religion) and a penalty per religion.

Also I am keeping chart of the progress in the first post so ideas dont get lost in the debate.

As it is done right now I wouldn't use leader cult at any time, since happiness is so paramount for stability. I would consider:

1. Adding 1 + happiness per city if you're either in monarchy or police state
2. Decreasing military upkeep by half OR giving exp points to new troops (boosting of morale by the charismatic leaders)
3. Additional stability if also in police state/nationhood or occupation; negative stability with representation/US or free speech
4. Making it available at Monarchy and no later

I can agree to all that, but with the less upkeep rather than the XP boost to differentiate it from theocracy. Also if we have it so they can deliberatly remove religions but they dont leave naturally in Leader cult that might help simulate them struggeling to control the native religions. (especialy if you lose a pop when you remove a religion).

What techs would be good for spawning the new religions?
Metal casting has already been suggested for the Greeks (early, greeks get it first and makes sense as greeks made statues of their gods out of metal)
Does Philosophy sound good for the Orthadox/Catholic split? That was used in a previous religion mod and came at the right time I think. Also should it be Catholicism first and then Orthadoxy or Orthadoxy and then Catholicism? I went on wiki and it just said they both think their the original one, which doesn't really help.

I think it's Catholicism, but I'm biased! If the Pope is taken as the symbolic leader of Christianity before the great schism, then Orthodoxy should probably be the new religion.

Protestantism founds pretty much on time with Printing Press, if a little bit early, and even if you have a problem with the timing it's easily the best technology for Protestantism in flavour terms.

Yeah I think that Printing Press is the best for Protistantism.

Does Masonary sound good for the Egyptian Pantheon?

What Tech does Persia always get first for Zoroastrianism?

Shia and Sunni Islam is an interesting question as they should fragment rather quickly.
What is we set the whole Persian area to shism say 5 turns after any civ discovers Divine Right? Representing the Death of the original founder and arguments over succession. Shisms I don't mind being too scripted as they are a special case...

Also how do we fix (Sunni) Islam not spreading fast enough? Too high a spread rate would lead to some very wierd areas becoming Muslim (I often see portugal and Vikings Muslim) Whilst at the same time certain areas never or seldom become Muslim (Indonesia, Central Asia, Turkey) Although with the ability to remove none state religions this could become less of a problem as Islam in europe would slowly leave before free religion.

How about if in order to compensate the late arival of Islam, Islamic Missionaries were allowed to enter Independant Cities without Open Borders? If this is possible it might work well.

I also agree with a previous suggestion for all religions to be able to naturally spread to cities that already have a religion.

My solution to the "Islam Problem" has been to boost the spread rate, even before Rhye upped it himself. More broadly, it's linked to a failure of the Arabia AI to colonise historical areas like Indonesia and the Maghreb quickly.

I think in terms of "which religion gets which founding tech", we should follow Deng Xiaoping and "seek truth from facts". The Zoroastrianism mod probably handles Zoro's founding well.

And to be honest, I don't know how you can handle the Sunni/Shi'a split well.

The first Zoro mod used a scripted event to autofound but I think others used Monarchy. Also we can up Islam a bit more now as it will leave unhistoric areas (like the odd city in europe or the far east) as those civs will have other state religions.

Well I think that solves about everything but Northern European Paganism, Islamic Schisms, balancing Christian Schisms and whos going to make it.

I think that we should add a downside to the Apostolic Palace to counteract the extra :hammer:'s. Otherwise the seems little point in changing Denomination when the Schisms break out across europe. Boosting the other Christian factions makes Free Religion too powerfull and gets messed up if Catholicism isnt the AP Religion. So I think a small penalty to the AP should help balance something to do with diplomacy sounds good to me as the Vatican wouldn't like inter-Catholic violance.

How about one of these two as ideas to limit it more;

If your Catholic (assuming the AP is Catholic of course, otherwise whatever the AP is) and you declare war on another Catholic civ then after 2 turns the is an emergancy vote between all AP members where each nation will vote for which of the following they want to happen
1)Allow the war
2)Force a Peace
3)Excommunicate the agressor (+3 :( in all cities for X turns)
4)Excommunicate both Factions
5)Excommunicate the Agressor and declare a Holy War to protect the defending nation

If this is too complex to code then how about just having a small chance for other Catholic nations to declare war on the agressor instead? (So one extra civ on average will defend them but it might be more or less)

Any other suggestions are welcome too. :)

I believe the Protestantism bonus should be a large one-off payment for the confiscation of the monasteries, as it was known in Britain. Alternatively, create a hammer bonus for Protestant buildings, to repeat Max Weber's old meme.

- Northern European paganism is so minor that you don't really need to worry about it.
- The problem with Shi'a is, who is going to spread it? It started within the Arabian Empire, which will presumably remain Sunni.
Perhaps Shi'a could simply be an alternative flavour of Islam, with a shared holy city, and functionally identical buildings, but with different names. I don't know if that is possible.

Do you think that doing this;
What is we set the whole Persian area to shism say 5 turns after any civ discovers Divine Right? Representing the Death of the original founder and arguments over succession. Shisms I don't mind being too scripted as they are a special case...
is too scripted?

Also I dont think boosting the other religions to compensate for the AP is the right way to go, I think a drawback would work better.

Divine Right pops up when Arabia is founded, right? So the chances of Islam having spread to Persia after five turns are really low. You would probably need to wait 15+ turns for that strategy to work, and that's a long time in game years.

I meant that they just gain the religion automatically, even if Islam wasn't their before.

would you prefere that sort of scripted, pre-determined extermination to an organic one, where the old religions die out because they are no longer state religions, but still have a chance to servive (say you play as rome and dont switch to christianity when the AI would)?

Definitivly,

See Christianity didnt get popular, because it became state religion in the Roman Empire, but it became state religion, because it got popular !

You get the difference.

An AI that has the choice (or humans for that matter), will always keep the existing alternative rather then switching to something. Hence you must make the old religion die out artificially in order to force the AI to switch.

In the same way as the new Civs replace the old civs by some tweaks and hidden boni, so also the new religions must replace the old ones by tweaks and hidden boni ..

I think we have a bit of a missunderstanding.
I thought you meant that new religions should automatically remove pagan religions when it entered a city.
I agree with "tweaks and hidden boni". For example Pagan religions should have a very slow spread rate and a high natural decay rate (dissapear relativly fast in not state religion). Modern Religions should have a High spread rate (christianity has spread to every continent, egyptian polythiesm didn't even make it to france) and a low decay rate. More effective missionaries for later religions as well I wouldn't mind. But those kind of hidden bonuses and tweaks I dont mind. But each player/civ should always be presented with a choice and not hive his/her religion automatically dissapear in one turn and ancient religions should have a chance to hang on for a while in remote areas (Paganism in northern europe took a while to go) or even stay untill the end of the game (like Hinduism has done.)

By changing the strength of each religion indevidually we should be able to make the computer simulate history when left alone 09% of the time, whilst at the same time allowing some varience and the ability of the player to change history. (like performing a Muslim invasion of Europe, or a Christian Crusade into the Middle East or rejecting Christianity as the Roman Empire, etcetra)

Also what do people think of my idea for the Islamic Schism (not perfect I know). And should we have a Mesoamerican Religion?

Hello,

see you can play with Babylon even up to 1950 if you manage to survive. However it is not easy. So I am also fine if you wanna worship the Askardians till 2000.

My idea was to eliminate the smallest religions forcefully if too many religions are in the game. As long as only 7 religions are there you can have your Walhalla.

So in the same way as Persians or Arabs are designed to potentially take out Babylon I would design Christianity to potentially take out the Ancient Med. Polytheism, the Nordic Cults and the Mesoamerican Cults. BUT if you somehow managed that both Taoism and Shintoism get replaced by Confucianism, then there could be a slot free for the Nordic Cults.

So there must be lets say 5 final religions that can not be replaced, e.g.

Christianity
Islam
Jewism
Confucianism
Buddhism

in this case 2 slots would be left for Other Religions/Ancient Religions

Also there must be hidden boni, so lets say Hinduism would be succeeded by Buddhism but would still spread in all Indian Cities even when independent, hence it never gets small enough to be replaced.

Nevertheless then still some other religion could survive. Could be Taoism, or could be Zoroastrism or could be Nordic Cults.

Following Example :

It is 600 AD and Islam gets founded :

We already have Christianity, Jewism, Hinduism, Buddhism,Zoroastrism,Confucianism and Taoism.

Islam requires a new slot. Christianity, Buddhism, Confusionism, Jewism are final. Hinduism has more worhshippers than Zoroastrism. Z. has more than Taoism. So Taoism becomes history.

Lets say it is 1200 and the Aztecs spawn :

We already have Christianity, Islam, Jewism, Hinduism, Buddhism,Zoroastrism,Confucianism. Now the Mesoamerican Cults hit the floor. So they force an extinction.

Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, Jewism, Confusionism are out of discussion. Hinduism is bigger than Zoroastrism so the Parsis bite the dust.

It is 1600 and the Protestants enter the floor.

They force an extinction of the Mesoamerican Cults etc ...

Of course you could also have 8 religions in the game, that would allow for more flexibility. However I believe 8 is REALLY the maximum.

I don't think it should be limited that much, we can keep the number of religions down without coding it that strictly. Although your right Christianity should kick the Pagans out of Europe and the Americas but it should do so because of factors to inherent in the religion rather than because we told it to do so.

The Arabs take out Babylonia because they are in a similar region and have a lot of troops not becasue the Babylonian army randomly vanishes. Christianity should replace religions because they are both in the area and christianity spreads faster and leaves slower. Plus other civs will have christianity only 1 or at most 2 civs will have the same pagan religion so they will change for diplomacry reasons too. And I know this influences the AI from watching Christian Mali every game.

We should simulate the factors that cause the effect we want rather than just forcing the effect itself into the game.

Ok guys so I think we have most issues cleared up. We could do with Vulanteers to help make it though. Panopticon you kind of hinted you could help is that still the case? My msn for Panopticon and anyone else who wants to help is kairob@hotmail.com for IM chat or if you prefere I check my email kairobinson (at) gmail.com and my pms pretty regularly.

I like this idea, but 3 quick questions/comments:

1) How fast will religions spread? Ex. For Islam which only spreads to Arabia and maybe 1 or 2 other civs, and this new division further weakens the standing of Islam in the world.

2) The diplomacy system for religions MUST change. I propose that religions be put under a dynamic system. Ex. The Catholic Church will hate protestants during the rennaissance/industrial age, but for the modern age, this penalty should be reduced or given a small boost in relations.
Also, some religions would prefer some over another. Religions should be grouped with Islam, Christianity, and Polythesism. I'm pretty sure that Catholics get better along with protestants than Islam. And I don't think Saladin would be pissed off enough to get a -12 furious just because Persia was Shiite.

3) How will UHV's be affected? Will Arabia's UHV count Sunni + Shiite or just Sunni? And how about the Khmer UHV (if you consider breaking up Buddhism into sects (Shinto-Buddhism and Mauryan Buddhism). I also am thinking of the Chinese UHV of building those cathedrals. There should be a period of no dying out to keep major religions that are critical for civs like Khmer that need a religion to have a chance to survive.

Also, I could do a little XML stuff (but not the best at it) but I think there are plenty of other people that could do it better than me.

Balance like that should be tweeked after the core coding changes are in effect. But to answar your queries;

1) This mod should help Islams spread by breaking up christianity, allowing us to increase Islams spread rate now that it spreading to odd cities is less anoying and by allowing the removal of non state religions means other religions will leave areas the Arabs and Turks control.
2)This is an interesting idea, I'll think it over, if its popular it could be added but its low priority atm.
3)Som UHV's will be different, but not unbalancingly so. Khmer for example, will be harder due to more religions, but easier as non-state religions can leave cities of buddhist civs, leading to a higher % for them. Arabias UHV I think will just be Shiite, but we can fiddle for balance and maybe include Sunni too if Shiite is hard. Like I said this sort of balancing we can tweak once we have a working code.

Also, some religions would prefer some over another. Religions should be grouped with Islam, Christianity, and Polythesism. I'm pretty sure that Catholics get better along with protestants than Islam.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Ireland

Good point in general, though.

Then again, there could be even more complex mechanics. For say, if Vikings never laid eyes on Saladin and his Muslim friends, the system could be tweaked for Ragnar to be more angry at Catholics/Orthodoxy/Protestant depending on what Ragnar's religion is.

As for Northern Ireland, I believe that is the case but this was more of a domestic thing rather than foreign affair. It may be a random event in the code though (not sure, just assuming)

The Maya, Aztec, and Inca do not yet have a religion catered to them. There should be some form of paganism that would spread throughtout all three. Their special religious building could be a sacrificial altar.

As for the European civs, the Reformation sounds like a fantastic idea. However, we have to be careful with inquisitors and religion-removing units so that protestantism isn't killed before it picks up steam.

Mesoamerican Cults will be in and don't worry the way the Reformation works Protistantism won't get wiped out.

Then again, there could be even more complex mechanics. For say, if Vikings never laid eyes on Saladin and his Muslim friends, the system could be tweaked for Ragnar to be more angry at Catholics/Orthodoxy/Protestant depending on what Ragnar's religion is.

As for Northern Ireland, I believe that is the case but this was more of a domestic thing rather than foreign affair. It may be a random event in the code though (not sure, just assuming)

You could view it as a Catholic community in a state with a Protestant state religion. That causes instability in Rhye's.

If you're going to use pagan religions you might want more poetic names for them. "Olympianism" rather than "Greek Pantheon". "Pharonism" instead of "Egyptian Pantheon". "Asgardianism" and so on.

If you're going to use pagan religions you might want more poetic names for them. "Olympianism" rather than "Greek Pantheon". "Pharonism" instead of "Egyptian Pantheon". "Asgardianism" and so on.

Those words are pretty abominable. Why not go with something more pleasing to the eyes and ears?

So, Cult of Amun-Ra or Isis instead of Egyptian, Cult of Wotan for Norse, Cult of Apollo for Greek.

In fact, if I were going to make this mod, I'd play with the prevalence of syncretism in Europe and the Near East and have a single polytheistic religion that spawned Cults of X where X = any classical, norse, egyptian, what-have-you polytheistic deity. They'd all be part of the same overarching polytheistic group, with individualized city names. This is perfectly accurate -- Cults of Isis and Mithras, to name a few, could be found as far from their home turf as Roman Britan. Some historians speculate that there were Cults of Apollo as far afield as India!

There'd be a couple of benefits from this:

-You wouldn't end up with FoReligion as a late game supercivic due to a proliferation of pagan religions

-You'd not have to deal with excessive numbers of early game temples mucking up balance -- Just one Cult Center, in each town.

-Flavor. Most cities in your empire would have their own individual patron deity, giving them a badly needed distinguishing element. You also wouldn't have the game littered with a bunch of generic sounding religions, such as Egyptian Pantheon, or ugly words, like "Pharonism".

-Reduction in the amount of work needed for civilopedia, GP list, etc. More coding though!

So, Cult of Amun-Ra or Isis instead of Egyptian, Cult of Wotan for Norse, Cult of Apollo for Greek.


I think Set, Loki and Dionysus would not be happy to be left out. :p

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_ancient_Greece#Terminology

While the greeks had no specific name for their religion, or even for the world "belief" in the english definition, they had words that came close, such as "Nomos" and "Nomizein" (both analagous to the english "custom"). Those could easily be used as names for the greek mythology.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_pantheon

The case is the same with Egypt, albeit a little more complicated. Egyptian mythology was not common across egypt, but varied from region to region and different palettes of gods existed in different places of egypt. Some of these sub-religions were named, such as the Ennead (meaning "The Nine") and the Ogdoad.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norse_paganism#Terminology

Norse mythology is a bit harder, because most of the names for mythology are derogatory (all equating to "Heathenry" in english). Forn Siðr (Forn Sed) is possibly the only non-derogatory name given to the religion in medieval Iceland. The derogatory names include Hedendom, Heidentum, Heathenry and Pagan.



Mesoamerican religion was considerably harder to find information on, and I found absolutely no names for the religion. However, names for primary mesoamerican gods and heroes could be used, such as Inti, Quetzalcoatl, etc.

I would merge Greek and Egyptian Pantheon into a Mediterranean Polytheism religion, which would also include Roman and Mesopotamian/Phoenician Pantheons.

I think we need the first civic in each catagory to do nothing (I dunno why its just the way the games set up) Which means we could have;
Paganism
Organised Religion
Leader Cult
Theocracy
Free Religion

Leader cult would be pacifism with the military upkeep swapped for diplo penalties (except with people with free religion) and a penalty per religion.

Also I am keeping chart of the progress in the first post so ideas dont get lost in the debate.

You should change the name of Theocracy -at least-, with something like Inquisition or whatever word would be suitable to the actual gameplay function of the civic, since this has no direct connection with Theocracy, which is actually a form of government.

What about Judaism? We started the monotheistic belief, we should have a place somewhere in this addition. Ex: Judaism won't spread as fast as other religions, but is very hard to remove.

Judaism shouldn't be in for quite a large amount of reasons.

It has too few followers. Jews are outnumbered by Sikhs, Neopagans and followers of Juche who believe Kim Il Sung is God.
To be realistic it would only ever be in one city as although the are Jews in other cities the are so few that in order to put Judaism into for example London, London would also have to have Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism and just about every religion in the game, which would mess up game balance as everyone would use free religion and nothing else.
None of the Civilizations that we have in the game have at any point used it as their state religion. This is kind of the main reason TBH.

Now this isn't an insult to Jews or the Jewish faith it is just that we only wanted large religions that were used as state religions by one of the civilizations in the game.

On Monotheism:
Judaism professes that the Hebrews are the elected people (ethinicity) by God. It is quite obvious why it wasn't/isn't widespread. However, if you look at ancient polytheistic religions such as the Egyptian one, you'll see that cities (ie: the ancient social communities) would worship in many cases only one Deity. To this regard, I don't see a lot of differences with the monotheistic faiths, the only differences I see with these are that these Deities didn't "claim" a supremacy over all other possible Deities and that therefore they had a more specific "role" in the Universe. But I consider these to be arguments for theologians, for the common people living in ancient Heliopolis would mainly worship Atum, the Patron Deity of the city, just like common people living in ancient Jerusalem would worship "God". Other inhabitants of Heliopolis may have worshipped different egyptian deities, or even foreign ones; so in the end the main difference is mostly in the tolerance of people and of their religion. Judaism, Christianity and Islam are intolerant religions, since each one of them proclaims that its God is the only true God. The philosophists/thelogians call them monotheistic religions, I personally call them intolerant religions, and I wouldn't boast about mine being the first intolerant religion recorded in human History and therefore being a must in RFC.

Touché.

A bit strong perhaps, but I wouldn't have expected anything less from you onedreamer. :mischief:

for Norse mythology: Odalism, altough this could be linked to extreem right and neo-nazi stuff and the church burnings by black metal extremists.

On Monotheism:
Judaism professes that the Hebrews are the elected people (ethinicity) by God. It is quite obvious why it wasn't/isn't widespread. However, if you look at ancient polytheistic religions such as the Egyptian one, you'll see that cities (ie: the ancient social communities) would worship in many cases only one Deity. To this regard, I don't see a lot of differences with the monotheistic faiths, the only differences I see with these are that these Deities didn't "claim" a supremacy over all other possible Deities and that therefore they had a more specific "role" in the Universe. But I consider these to be arguments for theologians, for the common people living in ancient Heliopolis would mainly worship Atum, the Patron Deity of the city, just like common people living in ancient Jerusalem would worship "God". Other inhabitants of Heliopolis may have worshipped different egyptian deities, or even foreign ones; so in the end the main difference is mostly in the tolerance of people and of their religion. Judaism, Christianity and Islam are intolerant religions, since each one of them proclaims that its God is the only true God. The philosophists/thelogians call them monotheistic religions, I personally call them intolerant religions, and I wouldn't boast about mine being the first intolerant religion recorded in human History and therefore being a must in RFC.

Dude, my belief may say there is only one god. Doesn't make it intolerant. Its just our belief, and to call us intolerant for that is just, shows your intolerance. Tell me one war of "intolerance" the Jews have had against any of the polytheistic religions back then. You can't because our religion tells us to accept anyone no matter who they are. That everyone is equal ans should have the same rights, even if they choose to believe in more than one god. If you want to point your finger at someone and call them intolerant, then you should be talking about the polytheistic religions back around the time of the founding of Judaism. Think about Egypt, Babylon, Assyria, Macedonia, Rome, etc. What did they all do? Tried to conquer us and destroy us, just because we believed in what we decided to believe. And they failed, because, I'm still here today, everyone throughout history that has tried to kill us has failed. And to have people like you still here today that can't still grasp other people believing in other things is okay. Calling them intolerant, calling other religions above other just because of their beliefs, that is the definition of intolerance. Maybe we shouldn't be in the game we are small, but you can't deny that if we weren't here a lot of what is here today wouldn't be. I'm not putting my religion above others, I'm just saying how people in this day and age still can't accept the fact that other people can believe in what we wish, and go along proclaiming how intolerant we are just because what we believe in. Just giving you a perspective you will never had, being a a minority group that hasn't been accepted since we began, and to still see people calling us insignificant, it really hurts.

Dude

dude, avoid calling people "dude" on forums if you wanna have a civil discussion. Calling a person "dude" on a forum is like manifesting your "superiority" toward that person. So if you really care about appearing tolerant, please forget about this term, thank you.

my belief may say there is only one god. Doesn't make it intolerant. Its just our belief, and to call us intolerant for that is just, shows your intolerance.

actually, I said in my opinion the religion (not you) is intolerant. This is my belief. Does this make me intolerant ? Maybe... I do think I am not tolerant, but not because of this petty reason, rather because human beings are not tolerant by nature. If you were tolerant, you'd accept someone thinking your religion is not tolerant.

Tell me one war of "intolerance" the Jews have had against any of the polytheistic religions back then. You can't because our religion tells us to accept anyone no matter who they are.

I don't understand the question: if you think that wars are fought for religious intolerance however you are quite mistaken; especially wars in the ancient and classical age.

and to still see people calling us insignificant, it really hurts.

Someone called your people insignificant ? I need a revision to my english vocabulary then.


PS: I would include Judaism in the religious modmod btw :P

Basically I don't want Judaism in the Modcomp as it is very small, is only a religious majority in 1 city and none of our civs ever had it as their state religion. Because of none-state religions slowly being removed Judaism would not last very long and even if it did last it would not have any real effect on game play.

This isn't attacking your religion and I am not calling your religion insignificant, I am sure that it is very significant to you and many other people and the development of other religions it's just that it is not suitable for the mod for reasons I posted above. Sikhism, Neo-paganism, Juche, Mormonism, Celtic polytheism, Shamanism, Rastafarianism, Jainism, African Paganism and many others are also not in the modcomp for very similar reasons.

dude, avoid calling people "dude" on forums if you wanna have a civil discussion. Calling a person "dude" on a forum is like manifesting your "superiority" toward that person. So if you really care about appearing tolerant, please forget about this term, thank you.



actually, I said in my opinion the religion (not you) is intolerant. This is my belief. Does this make me intolerant ? Maybe... I do think I am not tolerant, but not because of this petty reason, rather because human beings are not tolerant by nature. If you were tolerant, you'd accept someone thinking your religion is not tolerant.



I don't understand the question: if you think that wars are fought for religious intolerance however you are quite mistaken; especially wars in the ancient and classical age.



Someone called your people insignificant ? I need a revision to my english vocabulary then.


PS: I would include Judaism in the religious modmod btw :P


Sorry onedreamer, didn't mean to interpret what you were saying a wrong way. But I still don't see why this religion shouldn't be in the mod. Judaism has had a big impact on history, without its very hard to imagine were the world would be right now if it had not happened. My suggestion for the mod is that it would probably stay in Jerusalem. But to reflect history anyone who captures the city from the Independents will have a high chance of revolt if their state religion isn't Judaism or if their not running the pacifism civic. This actually happened in history with the Romans, the Greeks, etc. But this will add to game play as this is were Christianity will be founded too. Giving more reasons to capture the city, like in the crusades and such. When the city goes into revolt a small amount of independent units will pop up and try to take the city back. This also reflects history with the Jewish revolts under the Roman empire, and 30 years of standoff between the Romans and the Jews in each one. And if the empire captures the city back it will cause the Jewish religion to spread to random cities, slowly(diaspora). This is just and idea to fit Judaism into the game.

Personally I think that the world would be much better without organized religions. We would have a better world if men would understand that spirituality and faith are something very intimate and personal, and that religions are just a crowd control mean.

Gone. Ideas sucked.