Let's compare again:

Greek World featured:

Judaism
Christianity
Zoroastrianism
Hinduism
Mesopotamian Polytheism
Greek Polytheism
Egyptian Polytheism


The Ancient Mediterranean features:

Judaism
Christianity
Zoroastrism
Animism
Mesopotamian Gods
Olympian Gods
Heliopolitan Gods



This is my list instead:

Judaism
Christianity
Zoroastrianism
Triplism (Celtic Polytheism)
Mesopotamian Polytheism
Olympian Polytheism (Greek)
Heliopolitan Polytheism (Egyptian)



Greek World, IIRC, dropped cathedrals, monasteries and shrines. Religion wasn't that important in classical age, and there's some lack of buildings.
There were only church, synagogue, fire temple, mandir, ziggurat, temple, obelisk.
Maybe now we could have more material to work on.
What do you think?

I think your list is spot-on. I'm not sure about including the Celtic faith but why not? It must be there for a reason.

I'll have to ask how this affects the shrines, though. Should Holy Cities receive X amount of additional culture for every city affected by the same faith or ditched altogether? I wouldn't mind a more secular mod for a change.

During this time period, it seems that religion was more strongly linked with:
1. nationality, and
2. social elites
than in the period of RFC. That is to say, religion was strongly tied to the country itself, and mass participation was limited. I'm thinking especially of the Egyptian religion. This divide between the standard perception of religion and the practice of religion in the classical world is clear when we see proposed religions that are essentially "Celts", "Carthage", "Greece/Rome" and "Egypt". There is something counter-intuitive about a Greek city without Olympian religion, or an Egyptian city without its local cult, that doesn't seem so strange in the context of later civilisations.

What I am trying to say is that religion was an "expression" of "nationality" in the classical world, with a minor role for specifically missionary activity independent of ordinary migration, and that needs to be taken into account.

I don't see why we need four different types of polytheism, other than for diplomatic purposes, unless we introduce changes in religious game mechanics that justify the diversity of religion. For instance, changes to stability, or the likelihood of rebirth of a dead civ, should depend on whether a non-state religion is present. Civs closely associated with a religion should be severely punished if they switch, whether through unhappiness or instability - Greece shouldn't be able to switch to Baal-worship without negative consequences. We will also need some role for the dynamic removal of religions.

World Wonders linked to religion, maybe not all of them, but for some...

Pyramides, statue of Zeus,...

I think maybe only 1 religion should be available to each city, so if say the Greeks conquer Egypt they will send their Olimpyan missionaries to the Egyptian cities and spread the religion there, also eradicating the old Egyptian religion.
It could work well with how the Greeks (or rather Macedonians) spread their religions across the middle east and later on the Romans spread their religion to Gaul and Iberia.
If we're looking at religions as something that represents only the elite of the city, makes even more sense, as if the Greeks conquer Egypt, they'll send people to govern their cities and their religions will stay the same as in Greece, thus affecting their governing skills and decisions.
What do you guys think?

For RFA, I searched other mods for their religious buildings. I have never played GW (I didn't discover mods until way after I got BtS), so I don't know what buildings you had back then.


Religions will probably be the easiest thing to do in Ant. We already have all the buildings we need for 6 different religions in different mods:
RoM
Extra
That Warlords mod with the Sumerian religions.

Religions:
-Sumerian
-Amon Ra
-Hellenism
-Zoroastrianism
-Judaism
-Christianity- So far, game is set to end in 50 BC. Christianity is now voided.

I have been researching a lot, so leave the Etruscans to me.

Finally finished finding the buildings for the religions proposed.
http://i189.photobucket.com/albums/z311/SHARPCLAW117/RFCAReligions.jpg
Top image is from Gods of Old.
Bottom left and bottom right are from Extra.
Middle is from Rise of Mankind.

I don't exactly like a lot of the Greek buildings in this pic, but I think we can use the
Statue of Zeus as the Holy Shrine.

Statue of Zeus as the Holy Shrine.

Good idea, but if we go along those lines we'd have to have the pyramids for Egypt as well.;)

I, for one, don't mind it. We'll have to have something different for Mesopotamia, though.

During this time period, it seems that religion was more strongly linked with:
1. nationality, and
2. social elites
than in the period of RFC. That is to say, religion was strongly tied to the country itself, and mass participation was limited. I'm thinking especially of the Egyptian religion. This divide between the standard perception of religion and the practice of religion in the classical world is clear when we see proposed religions that are essentially "Celts", "Carthage", "Greece/Rome" and "Egypt". There is something counter-intuitive about a Greek city without Olympian religion, or an Egyptian city without its local cult, that doesn't seem so strange in the context of later civilisations.

What I am trying to say is that religion was an "expression" of "nationality" in the classical world, with a minor role for specifically missionary activity independent of ordinary migration, and that needs to be taken into account.

I don't see why we need four different types of polytheism, other than for diplomatic purposes, unless we introduce changes in religious game mechanics that justify the diversity of religion. For instance, changes to stability, or the likelihood of rebirth of a dead civ, should depend on whether a non-state religion is present. Civs closely associated with a religion should be severely punished if they switch, whether through unhappiness or instability - Greece shouldn't be able to switch to Baal-worship without negative consequences. We will also need some role for the dynamic removal of religions.I'll have to agree here. The religions of that time were grounded in locations(often cities) and specific states, so the religions dynamic will have to be changed.
Of course Judaism, as an example of a very early "personal" portable religion, could use the old religion system.

I'll have to agree here. The religions of that time were grounded in locations(often cities) and specific states, so the religions dynamic will have to be changed.
Of course Judaism, as an example of a very early "personal" portable religion, could use the old religion system.

Yes, as should Christianity and Zoroastrianism. Even though Judaism and Zoroastrianism were also strongly tied to specific civs in Greek World, they had sufficient diaspora populations to justify being treated more like typical Civ religions.

I have never played it, but go to Johny Smith's Rapture Project thread. You will like what you see.

while i mostly agree with what everyone is saying, i have a few ideas:

1) we should somehow represent the "Amarna Heresy" of Akhenaton, which was possibly the first monotheistic religion in the world (cult of the Aton). this allowed Akhenaton to centralize power on an unparalleled level in Egyptian history (other than the beginning of the monarchy) it also gave Akhenaton lots of wealth in land and funds that he took from the temples that he shut down. it made lots of people upset overall, but it gave him a lot of power during his rule. this makes me think:

2) maybe we should have religion represented as a civics thing rather than going too much into different religions. for example, polytheist could decrease maintenance costs slightly, add happiness, but take away from the income and scientific progress of a civ while monotheism would increase the income and production but cause instability. there could be more options later like theocracy, tolerance, etc. but these are just ideas.

3) for sumeria i think it would be cool if the holy shrine could be picked up and moved a la the Dragons Hoard of Fall From Heaven. Sumerian wars often centered around taking the shrine of another city's primary god to show your dominance or that this god favored you. you would have to launch a campaign to retrieve this shrine if it was taken... as in real life. Also, i think that the sumerian religion should have +1 exp per city with religion, rather than +1 gold.

while i mostly agree with what everyone is saying, i have a few ideas:

1) we should somehow represent the "Amarna Heresy" of Akhenaton, which was possibly the first monotheistic religion in the world (cult of the Aton). this allowed Akhenaton to centralize power on an unparalleled level in Egyptian history (other than the beginning of the monarchy) it also gave Akhenaton lots of wealth in land and funds that he took from the temples that he shut down. it made lots of people upset overall, but it gave him a lot of power during his rule. this makes me think:

2) maybe we should have religion represented as a civics thing rather than going too much into different religions. for example, polytheist could decrease maintenance costs slightly, add happiness, but take away from the income and scientific progress of a civ while monotheism would increase the income and production but cause instability. there could be more options later like theocracy, tolerance, etc. but these are just ideas.

3) for sumeria i think it would be cool if the holy shrine could be picked up and moved a la the Dragons Hoard of Fall From Heaven. Sumerian wars often centered around taking the shrine of another city's primary god to show your dominance or that this god favored you. you would have to launch a campaign to retrieve this shrine if it was taken... as in real life. Also, i think that the sumerian religion should have +1 exp per city with religion, rather than +1 gold.

This could be addressed with a "Heresy" mechanism, because it applies to lots of religions (e.g. Socrates in Athens, Arian Chistianity). I think the RFC Europe team discussed heresy along the way, so they would know about the details of such a mechanism. The civics idea would work for the classical polytheist religions - certainly you could represent "Atenism" as Egyptian Monotheism. But I don't see how a Christian country should be allowed to run the Polytheism civic.

As other people have said, religion in ancient polytheistic societies was different to the way we understand it. It was more like state-sponsored folklore, there certainly weren't polytheist missionaries or crusaders running about. Even ancient Judaism wasn't a religion in the full sense of the world as it is used today. It had some elements: monotheism of course, a moral code, an organised priesthood and the recognition and exclusion of "heretics". But it was still inherently nationalistic. The Jews never proselytized and that's crucial for civ.

I think the best way is to make generic polytheist temples available to civs with no religion and only use the civ religion system in the late game when it becomes relevant. In which case you'd only include Judaism and Zoroastrianism (but try to stop them from spreading outside of their home civ too often) and then perhaps just Christianity which later on would be a bit of a threat because it would cause instability when it spread and challenged the existing order.

Polytheisms were essentially all the same, with different civs giving different names to Gods. Cities would have a Patron Deity, as it still happens in most christian countries, since Christianity itself is a merge of those polytheisms with judaism and some new -for the time- ideals.
The only worth distinction besides the first three IMHO is between Animism and Polytheism.
IMHO the religion system should be changed to represent the fact that it was a city matter, not a national one... if we also consider the fact that in this time period the gov. and administration was highly decentralized.

maybe for the early religions there should be some wonders like the pyramids and the statue of zeus that could allow some religious buildings in all the cities of the civ that builds them...so every early religion could be tied to only one civilization...

Maybe using the corporations as polytheistic religions?

All your quarries can be solved by Johny (http://forums.civfanatics.com/forumdisplay.php?f=353). You can look at the Hellenistic, Iranian, Mesopotamian, Egyptian, and Celtic Threads.
It adds the Hannah Montana to the game: Individual Religious Identity, and Unified Religious Identity. We don't have to code it, Johny has taken care of it. I bet none of us will get used to it right away, but it can be a new feature. Please check it out.

While this may be hard to code, perhaps when founding a city as a Poly. Civ, you can chose which god to devote it to (God of Wisdom, War, Afterlife, ect), which would grant a specific building to that city, which would give a small bonus. For example, all new units built in the City whose patron is the God of War get +1 experience.

While this may be hard to code, perhaps when founding a city as a Poly. Civ, you can chose which god to devote it to (God of Wisdom, War, Afterlife, ect), which would grant a specific building to that city, which would give a small bonus. For example, all new units built in the City whose patron is the God of War get +1 experience.

All you would need is a random event that triggered when you found a city, if you have the correct religion. The options would have a building built for each god.

Dune Wars did something similar (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=328864) on completing a building.

I want to agree that the religion system as we have it doesn't make much sense. And as stated, the Gods were practically the same, only the name changed and each civ had its own... gods were taken over (like apollo) or abandoned. I don't want to see "Greek Polytheism", it's rather easy to simulate that by civics:

Natural Religions - Polytheism (all god are equal) - Henotheism (all gods exist, but this one is special for my city/country/people) - Monotheism - Tolerance and Cults (like in late rome with the battle between christianity and mithraism)

The question rather needs to be asked what effect the religions should have (culture, produce civ antagonism, happiness, ???) ? If you want to simulate culture groups you can do that with "religions", but what do you do with the "unique religion-civs" like Israel (Judaism) or Persia (Zoroastrism). It seems a bit pointless? (and besides, what's the point in making Rome and the Greeks like each other better?)

As for Christianity, it simply comes too late to be effective, I would thus revamp the corporations system to "movements that spoke to the individual and had less of a city wide communal aspect". Meaning Cults (and Philosophies). The seven here could include

Christianity
Mithraism
Zoroastrism (was tried to be spread elsewhere)
Manichaeism
(Judaism - similar effect as others, but way earlier?)
(Aton - confined area?)
----
Stoa
Epicureism
another philosophical strand....

I wouldn't use the religious civics at all instead, and leave it all to buildings. The religious civics are already senseless in Civ4, but in this mod would be even worse, first because coming up with different boni for those categories would be a challenge, second because the civic system in Civ4 is designed so that civic options improve with "time" (tech advances), but in this case it would be just plainly wrong. Plus who would want to see a monotheistic greek civ just cos the AI chose a historically silly option in the religious civic tree ?

I would make up to 6 different buildings for poly. religion to represent 6 different gods, like god of sea, god of sun, fertility, etc. Finding boni for these that make sense will be much easier, and only one can be built in a city.
The other 3 religions can have peculiar religious buildings with boni that are appropriate historically. Finally, I'm thinking that religions should be hard coded for civs, and civs would only be able to convert to Christianity. I also disagree that it would be too late, since the last turns are closer in date, and it all depends on what it will give. Even modern armors or the internet come late in Civ4, but they're all but uneffective.

Like in Gods of Old (top part of post #6), or Rapture?

onedreamer, what about the many converts to Hellenism? Also Zoroastarism should spread in Persia and some other parts of Mesopotamia, with civs converting from old polytheistic religions.
How about Civs with Polytheistic religions can convert to any religion but Monotheistic religions can't convert to Polytheistic ones?

Hellenism ? Is that a religion ?
with "the other 3 religions" I meant Judaism, Zoroastrism and Christianity.

Hellenism is not a religion, but a cultural phenomena which includes the Greek religion (but also dressing style, architecture, philosophy, language) which spread to the whole Eastern half of our map during Alexanders reign. I think that should be represented somehow. Especially as we don't really have many religions.

But I like your suggestion as it is, especially now that we have more late game turns which makes it worthwhile. You're right about the henotheistic religions (what you call polytheism)*, the system would work. I see different phases:

"the polytheistic phase": Several gods which you can chose from
"the low-polytheistic phase": Polytheism still exists, but is more of a cultural ritual and is somehow replaced with "philosophical" ideas.
"the real religions": In the late game, several cults (Christianity, Zoroastrism, Mithras,) spring up and battle for the dominance against each other in the Roman and Persian empire.

Summing up, this could be simulated by:

Corporations system for the old Gods/: ~4-5 "gods" (fertility, war&sea, culture&commerce, diplomacy&espionage) and 3 philosopical strands (Stoa, Epicureism and perhaps Heliocentrism). These two types give direct bonusses a la corporation and you cannot have two corps of the same kind in the same city.

Religion system for the religions and cultural phenomena: Judaism, Hellenism, Zoroastrism, Mithras, Christianity. Other possibilities are "Semitism" representing the cultural area from phoenicia, carthage, israel and egypt (?), and Mesopotamian, basically the last two of rhyes ideas. This way you have 4 early religions that have a low spreading rate (except hellenism which is macedonias up and the greek cities that flip to rome) and 3 late ones which ignore present religion and spread like hell.

* The difference is that in Henotheism, one god is preferred over all the others, which is what you simulate with only being able to build one "tempel" in each city.

good stuff Mitsho, I think your proposed solution is definitely good.

I like the idea of splitting religion into two game mechanisms (corporations for polytheistic gods, religions for later 'cults') but I'm still not convinced 'Hellenism' should be in the latter category. Sure, Alexander's empire spread Greek gods, philosophy and language around the world. But then the Roman empire spread Roman gods, philosophy and language around the world, as did the Persian, Phoenician and every other Empire in history. This is already represented in game (albeit poorly) by captured cities slowly being converted to the conquerors culture. I would stick to Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Mithraism and Christianity for the religions. Maybe add the Cult of Isis or split Christianity into Catholicism and Arianism if four isn't enough.

I'm a bit confused, what would the religion for Carthage and Phoencia be, since there is no good reprsentation of there religion of the worship of Baal, and I would have to disagree that religion was not important in the Classical age, in fact I would even say that it was very important due to the fact that for a long time the empires of mesopatamia and egypt were theocracies.

"the low-polytheistic phase": Polytheism still exists, but is more of a cultural ritual and is somehow replaced with "philosophical" ideas.

I would have to disagree with you over this phase of philosophical ideas due to the fact that only Greece and to a later extent Rome were the only civilizations to have such a deep culture of philosophy while the vast majority of civilization was still VERY religious, so having this philosophical phase would have to only reprsent greece and maybe Rome

good stuff Mitsho, I think your proposed solution is definitely good.

Let's just hope that Rhye thinks similarly ;-)

@Umarth fair point. The thing was just that Rhye had them in his original post and it really seems to be that the Greek and Roman (Hellenistic) style seemed to convert more than the Persian or Egyptian equivalents. We can easily drop it though ;-) I only thought it would be a neat way to represent the spread of Greek culture everywhere which it really did (in comparison to Persian one), the Roman then is just a variaton of the Greek culture...

Both works probably.

I really like the Cult of Isis idea (which btw was merged into Christianity and resulted in the "virgin mary"/madonna-cult that still exists).

@Turk What do you mean with "What are the religions for Phoenicia/Carthage?" The thing I proposed was more of a "cultural group" in opposition to the Hellenistic culture group. This can be reduced to a heliocentrism only for Egypt. You are right, the religions are important, but they work different than they do in the normal game. That's why I proposed the different model.

EDIT: As you see in my proposal (regarding second quote), the "low-polytheistic phase" is merged into the first ;-) And if you look at the map, most of the map was actually greek, roman or persian at that time. It's more of a design question than one of historicity, which we could continue discusing forever.

I'm sorry but I'm still very confused on what this "philosophical" stage would entail? Could you please further explain on your idea

Oh, and I would not allow Zorastrianism to try to spread everywhere due to the fact that it was strongly confined to Persia and maybe a bit into Mesopatamia (ie. Babylon)

Please look at the Rapture thread. It really has some innovative work which we can feature as a well... new feature to the game, along with stability, spawns, dynamic names, and plagues. It took us a while to get used to plagues, but most of us like the feature, except jgbaxter. It has all the religions we are looking for!


Rapture: (http://forums.civfanatics.com/forumdisplay.php?f=353)
Hello and welcome to Rapture.

What is Rapture? It is a spiritual expansion to BtS. It is not just religions. Of course it is about religions, but it adds a whole new commerce just like espionage or research. It is spiritual commerce. Everything is based on whether or not you have the spiritual points. The entire mechanics of the game will be change on how religions are found.

First of all there is a split into what types of religions are planned so far. This is minus any future or modern religions at this point. There are 4 groups.

1.Families--These are basic culturally related religious beliefs. These are the names you see as Nordic for example. These are the first stages of religion, and are founded at the start of your civilization building its first city. Basic mythology

2.Cults--These require a family in order to be made. Similar to how religions are in the Gods of Old mod. Each are focused on one god from the family. These will require a building to built similar to Gods of Old. Like in the case of the Mythra cult in Rome.

3.Faiths--These are the standard religions as found in BtS. These are founded via a technology. These from the parent in a parent child relationship with the child being the denominations. For example Catholic being a parent and Protestant being a splinter off of Christianity.

4.Denominations--These are like the faiths but are founded by a prophet performing a religious schism. Schisms can occur in two ways: Via a prophet mission, and based on game years.

Spread and decay of the religions are based on spiritual commerce. In case of families the spiritual commerce determines the holy city.

Now to try to explain why the ideas versus normal BtS. The earlier aka pagan religions were not spread as present day religions are. Most older religions were simply related to particular group of people, and even could be argued for some of the present religions. I wanting a civilization to spread cults in these times. For example Rome did not convert to a Persian or Vedic religion just because they took in Mithra nor did they loose faith in their other gods because of this new cult.

If a religion was not commonly spread through missionaries converting people and it is a very old religion attached to a culture group then it is considered pagan in Rapture. If a religion is a secret group and/or focusing on one particular god while at the same time accepting other gods it is a Cult. I plan to give a list of all religions in development for Rapture. I hope for suggestions on improvement.

WoC Lite Rapture Download thread.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=321507

Some screenshots.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=221289&d=1247862323
http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=221290&d=1247862323
http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=221291&d=1247862323



Mesopotamia (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=323886):
-Generic
-Sumerian
-Assyrian
-Marduk

Hellenism (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=323884):
-Generic
-Apollo
-Athena
-Zeus

Egyptian (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=323883):
-Generic
-Horus
-Osiris
-Ra

Iranian (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=325616):
-Zoroastrianism (Generic)
-Zurvanism
-Manichaeism
-Bahá'í Faith

Do you see? We can have both cultural unity per civ, and individual city state identity.
These are four religions. One is a mythology of a region. Then there 3 to a specific god called cults. You only get the mythology by being a particular civ. The cults can be only founded by having a mythology. You can get a cult by another civ spreading it to your civ.

Olympian is not a proper name for various Mediterranean religions. This is not a Greek exclusive religion. Hellenism mythology goes beyond the borders Greece. It is not Olympian nor is it a religion that builds cathedrals, monasteries, and shrines. You cannot spread Hellenism in my mod.

What do you think?

I'm still not convinced 'Hellenism' should be in the latter category.

Well I didn't notice Hellenism in the list of "regular" religions. First I reiterate that Hellenism isn't a religion, second I agree that it should just be in the polytheism/henotheism category. Besides the Greek religion was heavily based on the middle eastern ones.

I'm a bit confused, what would the religion for Carthage and Phoencia be, since there is no good reprsentation of there religion of the worship of Baal.

Phoenicians didn't worship just one god. It would be polytheism... if I am not wrong both the phoenician and mesopotamian religions had three "major" gods and other minor ones.

The thing was just that Rhye had them in his original post and it really seems to be that the Greek and Roman (Hellenistic) style seemed to convert more than the Persian or Egyptian equivalents.

I'm not totally sure about this matter, but I doubt it's a matter of conversion, rather of conquest and colonization, fields in which Romans and Greeks were respectively more successful than Persians and Egyptians.


On further thoughts on your proposal, I have seen some technical problems concerning the use of Corporations. Obviously, these would need to be heavily modified. First off, the income in the corporate HQ would need to be scrapped, along with maintenance costs and probably even corporate agents. Not a big deal to modify these. The technical problems concern the creation and HQ of corporations. Let's suppose that Polytheistic cults (corporations) would be made available with an early tech such as Polytheism, or each cult would be made available with different early techs (stupid examples: Cult of Fertility with agriculture, Cult of the Sun with mysticism, etc), the problem is that there would be a founding Civ and a city with the Cult HQ, while, as far as I understood, we want each early polytheistic civ to be able to choose which cult (corporation) to install in its cities (I suppose on founding them).


About the "regular" religions, I think Zoroastrism and Judaism shouldn't have missionaries. All the 3 religions should have different effects. The cult of Mithras was more of a cult than a religion so I am unsure how it should work and even if it should be a religion rather than a corporation. I think religions should be called such in our game when a civ has made of one the "state religion".

I think religions should be called such in our game when a civ has made of one the "state religion".

I agree that's an important distinction. Even Christianity had all the trappings of a late antique "oriental cult" until it gained the support of the state. The problem is that in game terms that severely limits our options. Aside from Judaism, Zoroastrianism and Christianity I'm pretty sure the only other cults/religions which gained the exclusive support of a state were situations where a particular despot would take a liking to one cult figure -- Aten, Elagabalus, etc. -- and they never lasted. I suppose maybe Sol Invictus is an exception.

True but I don't think that's a problem, IF we want religion to be realistic.
Consider that if Zoroastrism and Judaism aren't allowed missionaries, they will just be the religions for Israel and Persia while the other civs make use of the Cults. With the advent of Christianity, civs can convert to it and spread it where they want (only if they have it as state religion, IMO).
This is as close as we can get I think, the only problem is making corporations work as we want.

Consider that if Zoroastrianism and Judaism aren't allowed missionaries, they will just be the religions for Israel and Persia while the other civs make use of the Cults.

Ya I have to agree with you on this one we wouldn't want Zoroastrianism spreading to Carthage for example, oh and by the way what is the time span for this game because I think it would be really cool if we could have Christianity spring up, but if it doesn't allow it then thats ok

So.... what do you guys think of my posts? You wouldn't even have to worry about that issue!
Jeesh!!!
(Amanda Show moment... sry)

Perhaps we could go the other way, let them have missionaries but don't let them spread "naturally", so Judaism and Zoroastrianism will only spread if the player/AI makes a conscious effort to do so. I think that's more realistic, Henotheistic religions weren't likely to be adopted by neighbours without any prompting and I'm sure I remember reading somewhere that there was a time when the Persian state actively tried to spread Zoroastrianism.

I'm sure I remember reading somewhere that there was a time when the Persian state actively tried to spread Zoroastrianism.

The Persians trying to spread Zoroastrianism outside of Persia OR the Persians trying to spread Zoroastrianism within Persia, because you have to remember that the Persian Empire was very religiously tolerant with Cyrus II even making the first Human Rights declaration not to mention freeing all the Jews in Babylon to go back to Jerusalem.

Within Persia I expect, it's not really my area.

Zachscape is right, what he's proposing is the best idea I've heard so far and most of the modifications you propose can easily be added to it. It has the most depth and can represent basically everything brought up in this thread so far. I propose we use it as the base religion system for this mod and we can modify it as we wish. If you take a good look at it, I honestly think it has the most potential.

I think that that mod would be a nice addition to RFC, but doesn't fix this context.

I am implementing the following:

- No generic cathedrals, monastery or shrines
- No missionaries


- 3 temples as national wonders, each one with different bonuses.
As follows:

Judaism
Synagogue???
Temple of Solomon
???
Christianity
Church???
Cathedral???
Monastery???
Zoroastrianism
Atash Dadgah???
Atash Adaran???
Atash Behram???
Triplism
Temple of the Matres
Temple of Taranis
Temple of Epona
Mesopotamian Polytheism
Temple of Ba'al
Temple of ???
Temple of ???
Olympian Polytheism
Temple of Zeus
Temple of Poseidon
Temple of Hades
Heliopolitan Polytheism
Temple of Ra
Temple of Isid
Temple of Seth


- When polytheistic religions spread, they delete any monotheistic religion in a city. When monotheistic religions spread, they delete any other religion in a city, except if it is the holy city of another monotheistic religion.



Please fill the ???

How about Ashur and Marduk for Mesopotamia? One to represent Babylon and one to represent Assyria. We already have Ba'al for Phoenicia and Israel should be Jewish.

And we can always snip buildings from the God of Old mod from Warlords.

I think Synagogue is more of a new-age term for temple. If it's going to be a national wonder (only 1 per civ) Then I think there's a building that'll fit perfectly for ancient Israel I just forgot it's name >_<.
For the 3rd one, it could be sort of a project, which will be called "Ark of the Covenant", I don't know what it's effects could be though, allow all religious civics? (remember even though it's a national wonder so everyone can build it only Jewish civs can build it so only Israel and perhaps one in 10 games someone else will build it).
However a project cannot be stolen or taken I've heard, and the Ark was indeed taken, most people thing it was taken by Egypt and somehow made it way to Ethiopia but there aren't any proofs of where it could be.

Christianity could go with

Church of Nativity
Hagia Sophia
Apostolic Palace

(of course, with different effects from the original)

We need 3 real ancient jewish buildings in Israel

Perhaps Solomon's Temple or Herod's Temple as one of the Jewish buildings?

I think most of Apostolic Palace is medieval. St Peter's Basilica is probably better.

As for Judaism:

Solomon's Temple (First Temple)
Second Temple
Herod's Temple

Perhaps we could go the other way, let them have missionaries but don't let them spread "naturally", so Judaism and Zoroastrianism will only spread if the player/AI makes a conscious effort to do so. I think that's more realistic, Henotheistic religions weren't likely to be adopted by neighbours without any prompting and I'm sure I remember reading somewhere that there was a time when the Persian state actively tried to spread Zoroastrianism.

I disagree, polytheism is a heritage from before the age of civilization, basically any civ would be polytheist or animist in absence of other alternative, it wouldn't need to be spread to anyone, Judaism and Zoroastrism are (some of) the exceptions, but even if they did try to have foreign proselities, it doesn't appear that they were succesful to the point to justify missionaries, and actually a natural spread would be more realistic than missionaries.
In fact, in our proposal Polytheism wouldn't be a religion but a corporation in game terms, and it shouldn't follow the spreading rules of regular religions.

Though I'm not an respected poster like most other persons in this thread, I dare to suggest something radical:

Scrap the whole religion concept as it is implemented in vanilla civ and RFC, and replace it with a concept of cultures spreading between cities.

Let me explain why this is both more accurate and more interesting for the game:

First, it has already been discussed that ancient religions were always tied to certain peoples or cultural groups: the Romans had Jupiter's pantheon, the Greeks had Zeus' pantheon and so on. For every ancient polytheistic religion, there are no historical examples of religions spreading to another culture and becoming its dominant religion. So if we'd want to represent them correctly, we would have to code them to be restricted to their respective civs. That's silly if you consider the gameplay reasons for having a religion (see below).
Judaism behaves also like this, although it later spread to Rome. But it would be really weird if we represent small Jewish minorities in cities with its religion being there. Did a Jewish temple really increase the Roman's happiness?

Instead, there is something that played a much bigger role in antiquity: cultural groups and their extending influence. We have several examples for this. When Persia conquered Mesopotamia, its way of life and government spread there. Even more notable are of course the periods of Hellenisation (after Alexander's conquests Greek culture came to Asia Minor, the Levant and Egypt) and Romanisation. Naturally, this also meant a spreading of this culture's corresponding religions, but it was always the religion spreading with its culture, and never alone.

So I think we should start with the following "cultures":

Egyptian culture: Is founded when Egypt spawns.
Mesopotamian culture: Is founded when Babylonia/Assyria spawns.
Persian culture: Is founded when Persia spawns. Note that this also includes Zoroastrianism (which was the religion tied to Persian culture, it simply wasn't polytheistic).
Greek culture: Is founded when Athens spawns.
Roman culture: Is founded when Rome spawns (debatable how big the difference between Greek and Roman culture really is, but I think it would be fun to have a culturally divided Roman Empire like in reality).
Celtic culture / Germanic culture: Don't know if they are really necessary, although the spread of Germanic culture into the Roman Empire was very important in the Dark Ages.
Judaism: Founded when Israel spawns.

Of course, temples like in vanilla can still be built and give the normal +happiness bonus. They are now only tied to cultures, not to religions (e.g. Romans can build "Temple of Zeus", Egyptians can build "Temple of Ra" etc.).
Adopting a culture to be your "state culture" also gives the usual benefits.

The only difference is how culture spreads. When you found a city, it immediately gets your state culture. But conquered cities keep their culture and get an angry face for every present culture as long as your "state culture" isn't present as well. Each time you construct a building in this city, there is a chance that your "state culture" is spread to this city (the smaller the city, the higher the chance). This represents efforts of the conquerors to establish their way of life.

Okay, now Christianity comes into play. Christianity should be the only religion that behaves as in vanilla. It should spread by itself (and rather fast) and be able to construct missionaries. As long as you don't adopt it as your state religion, it causes huge happiness problems (maybe two angry faces in every city). If its your state religion, you get an angry face for every other culture present in your cities (now representing oppressed pagan faiths). So you have to decide and clean your cities from other cultures (via an "inquisitor" unit), which causes "We cannot forget your cruel oppression".

I think you get my idea. Even if you don't like it, please consider there should be a distinction between the ancient, culturally tied faiths and Christianity. They are not comparable at all and the arrival of Christianity should cause a lot of domestic problems, just as it did in reality.

Leoreth, what you're proposing sounds similar to the Warring States Period scenario, in Warlords, I think. It's another scenario in which conventional religion would have been inappropriate, so they replaced it with "bloodlines" that confer influence.

I agree with Leoreth...this system could be integrated with the one rhye is working at...

So following Leoreth's suggestion, the civic system would include a Culture civic row, with such stars as Assimiliation and Tolerance.

That's a great Idea, Leoreth, however, I do have one problem.

Christianity shouldn't be able to destroy the "Juadisic" Culture for A couple of reasons:

1. Jesus was actually a Jew himself, so I can't see the religion based after him destroying his own religion.
2. If the Juadisic culture was destroyed like you said, then it would probably be a dead religion instead of having an entire country based off of it. (Compare to Zoroastrianism, which is a dead religion)
3. The holy cities would overlap.

Also due to that, maybe Juadistic culture won't cause :mad: with Christianity is state religion?

That's a great Idea, Leoreth, however, I do have one problem.

Christianity shouldn't be able to destroy the "Juadisic" Culture for A couple of reasons:

1. Jesus was actually a Jew himself, so I can't see the religion based after him destroying his own religion.
2. If the Juadisic culture was destroyed like you said, then it would probably be a dead religion instead of having an entire country based off of it. (Compare to Zoroastrianism, which is a dead religion)
3. The holy cities would overlap.

Also due to that, maybe Juadistic culture won't cause :mad: with Christianity is state religion?

Well, in theory, yes, most of what you said would be true. However, persecution of the Jewish population was very common with Christian states, even at the time. Also, Zoroastrianism is not even close to dead. And considering that this is not a supposed to diverge from the exact historical events, the fact that there is a 61-year-old country that is three-fourths Jewish is not too important. Judaism could have become a dead religion.

Now, with that in mind, I think that Zoroastrianism should be similar to how Christianity will be organized. Judaism should probably be a bit more like Christianity. Also, cultures should be harder to remove than religions.

Judaism could have become a dead religion.

But that is extremely unlikely. The only difference between the two is that one believes Jesus is the Messiah, and one doesn't (To avoid a flame war, I know there are other differences, but that's the only main difference).

If two extremely similar religions exist, they usually Co-exist (Think Confucianism and Taoism. There weren't much fighting between the two, yet they were so closely placed together). Yes, The Crusades happened, I can not deny that, but it was more of a political War to expand the Church's power (It mostly weakened it, especially after The Templars were accused of Hearsay.)

Either way, this can be a very touchy topic, I don't want this to go out of control.

Your Idea is still godd either way.

But that is extremely unlikely. The only difference between the two is that one believes Jesus is the Messiah, and one doesn't (To avoid a flame war, I know there are other differences, but that's the only main difference).

If two extremely similar religions exist, they usually Co-exist (Think Confucianism and Taoism. There weren't much fighting between the two, yet they were so closely placed together). Yes, The Crusades happened, I can not deny that, but it was more of a political War to expand the Church's power (It mostly weakened it, especially after The Templars were accused of Hearsay.)

Either way, this can be a very touchy topic, I don't want this to go out of control.

Your Idea is still godd either way.

The important difference in gameplay terms is that Judaism only spread out of Palestine once the Jews were scattered in the Diaspora.

But that is extremely unlikely. The only difference between the two is that one believes Jesus is the Messiah, and one doesn't (To avoid a flame war, I know there are other differences, but that's the only main difference).

If two extremely similar religions exist, they usually Co-exist (Think Confucianism and Taoism. There weren't much fighting between the two, yet they were so closely placed together). Yes, The Crusades happened, I can not deny that, but it was more of a political War to expand the Church's power (It mostly weakened it, especially after The Templars were accused of Hearsay.)

Either way, this can be a very touchy topic, I don't want this to go out of control.

Your Idea is still godd either way.

I'm not saying that Judaism and Christianity aren't very close religions. I'm just saying that since they were so close, pointing out the differences created more tension, which caused unsettlement and persecution.

Now, something that could be implemented is the split of Christianity from Judaism. Perhaps the Bar Kokhba Revolt. Or would the time frame be too short?

By the way, Taoism and Confucianism, from what I know, are conflicting belief systems. There was certainly unsettlement and coexists today pretty much only in Chinese traditional Buddhism.

"Conflicting" is a very strong word to describe the major Chinese religions. They have, by-and-large, existed syncretically. People take portions of each of the three major religions as part of their religious structure.

It helps that at their highest level (where the great thinkers do their writings) the three have different focuses: Taoism is scientific and philosophical; Buddhism is metaphysical; and Confucianism is ethical and behavioral. Those are major, major, major generalizations, of course.


This is what happened when an actual "conflicting" religion showed up in China: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiping_rebellion

First, it has already been discussed that ancient religions were always tied to certain peoples or cultural groups: the Romans had Jupiter's pantheon, the Greeks had Zeus' pantheon and so on. For every ancient polytheistic religion, there are no historical examples of religions spreading to another culture and becoming its dominant religion.

although I like your idea about cultures, I disagree with this statement. First off, it would be like saying that "God" and "Deus" are different gods. They are the same God called with different names in different languages. There is no Jupiter or Zeus pantheon, they are exactly the same with different names. The "stories" of the Gods were also the same... Now, other polytheistic religions had Gods with different stories, but the main figures are present in any polytheistic pantheon: the God of universe, of sun, of fertility, of war, of fire, etc.
For this exact reason I think we shouldn't be talking of different polytheistic religions, it is in essence just one and that is why no ancient polytheistic religion spread to other cultures already adopting a polytheistic religion: because they were essentialy the same there would be no reason for this to happen.

It is theorized that all classical pantheons (even the Celitc, Mesopotamian, Egyptian ...) have derived from the same Indo-European proto-pantheon. So there are of course many similarities, but they're still not the same gods with different names: Hermes and Mercury are different, for example: while the former was seen as god of travelers and shepherds, the latter was rather a god of trade and commerce.

What the Romans and Greeks of course did, was to identify some of their gods with the other's (because it was obvious to do so in many cases). They tried to do that across the whole Mediterranean, but it became more ridiculous the farther its region as away from Greece (the Ptolemys tried to identify Ra with Zeus, which doesn't work for various reasons, the Seleucids even claimed Ahura Mazda = Zeus ...).

But your point stands, the Greek and Roman pantheons are so similar, that it would be a necessary abstraction to set them equal. That was one of the reasons I actually started to think that using cultures would make more sense here. Because Greek and Roman cultures are different, and their difference was important throughout the Roman Empire and had effects deep into the Middle Ages.

After looking at Leoreth's suggestion, I decided I would make a very rough prototype of the culture system just to test it out. At the moment, it's programmed in Python. However, if this system gains approval, it's best if my additions were scrapped and were later re-written into C++ because I feel the code isn't very efficient.

List of things added:
-State religion/culture spreads when a city is settled
-Constructing buildings in a city has a 25% chance of removing any foreign cultures and adding your culture into the city.
-No holy city for any culture (except Christianity ofc). Instead, when a civilization is born, only their very first city settled automatically has culture spread to it. If the civilization adopts that as the state culture, then any cities settled later will also receive that culture.

The default names are (still!) being used for the religions, so below is each culture with their corresponding civilizations. I also took the lazy option and moved all religions up the tech tree to Stealth so they are never founded manually.

Egyptian Culture (currently Buddhism) - Egypt
Greek Culture (Islam) - Sparta, Athens, Macedonia
Mesopotamian Culture (Hinduism) - Carthage, Phoenicia, Babylonia, Hittites
Judaism - Israel
Persian Culture (Confucianism) - Persia
Roman Culture (Taoism) - Rome, Etruria(temporary)
Christianity is unchanged.

As there are only 7 slots, I didn't have enough space to add in Celtic/Germanic culture.
If you want to make any changes to the code, all of the code I've added is under onCityBuilt and onBuildingBuilt on CvRFCEventHandler.py, so feel free to make any changes. Only files changed are: CVRFCEventHandler.py and CIV4ReligionInfo.xml.

EDIT: Fixed to show correct %

This is great! I'll start plugging and playing soon. May be able to put it in the next version.

Good to hear. Tell me what you think of it. At the moment, Persia occasionally decides to follow Mesopotamian culture since they flip their cities at spawn, but this can be fixed later so all cities that are flipped convert to Persian culture on spawn.

I think that would only be appropriate. Should that be default for all flips?

Yeah, it would be better for Rhye to add that in though since I'm not fully sure how to go about it.

I agree with that idea,

I like the concept of defining cultures rather than religions. However I would incorporate a civic "Religion" where you could define the parameters of worship,e.g. Polytheism, Monotheism etc.

I don't know, it seems like it would be hard to simulate the rise of Christianity if religion were mainly in the civics.

What about Roman Polytheism? It isn't extremely different from Greek Polytheism, and I'm not sure if it's such a good idea. But, if it wasn't in then wouldn't they end up worshipping Greek gods most of the time? Maybe Greek and Roman Polytheism can be represented as one.

Judaism and Zoroastrianism should have holy cities.

I kinda agree with fdgsgds. Also, what culture are the Byzantines? Greek or Roman? Having a Greco-Roman culture would solve the dilemma (if you consider there is one). And it would allow for a Celtic/Etruscan culture (I have the feeling those two are similar, but I may be completely wrong). On the other hand, having 5 civs with the same culture is perhaps a bit much.

After doing some thinking, I realise now Rod's suggestion is a good one. Christianity as a "culture" could be removed so there is just Egyptian Culture, Greek Culture, Mesopotamian Culture, Israelite Culture, Persian Culture, Roman Culture, etc. Religions can instead be represented by civics, Polytheism, Monotheism; etc. Monotheism as a civic could be available after a certain technology. Perhaps, Israel can have it earlier than other civilizations due to its UP or starting techs.

After a certain year, and provided the technology for monotheism has been discovered, there could be random events that create buildings (Christian Dwelling?) that give +3? unhappiness and some instability when the civic Polytheism is running. This forces civilizations to switch to Monotheism and upon doing so, they may suffer a stability hit (to help Rome collapse). Under monotheism, the polytheistic temples will provide no benefits.

Byzantines, I imagine, would be Roman since they did call themselves the "Roman Empire" as well use their language and their system of government. Although, the option to switch back to Greek would always be there (just like what happened in real life, the Byzantine Empire adopted greek customs) We could make a separate culture for them though; the Byzantine culture. This would make the Western Roman Empire and Eastern Roman Empire more separate. I don't think we should use a generic Greco-Roman culture though; there are too many differences between the two cultures.

Especially if we tie culture to certain unit creation - like Greek to Hoplites.

Removing "religion" totally is bound to be controversial, and not a decision to be made lightly. Many, many people see the birth of Christ and the spread of Christianity as some of the most important events in human history.

Particularly with the timeframe of the mod - the 600CE end makes it difficult to ignore Xtianity.

We could focus a little more on the Monotheism civic and expand it so it is 3 civics instead for it, Judaism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism, with each limited to only certain cultures. I imagine some events for flavour could also be added in.

However, you're right, it's something that should only be implemented if enough people agree on it.

as I bystander, I can only half heatedly accept it, I like the idea, but I was just wondering how would the cultures spread? Would they spread like normal religions? Because then what happens is that you might have some civ's culture in a totally random city.

It was mentioned a bit earlier in the thread.
But conquered cities keep their culture and get an angry face for every present culture as long as your "state culture" isn't present as well. Each time you construct a building in this city, there is a chance that your "state culture" is spread to this city (the smaller the city, the higher the chance). This represents efforts of the conquerors to establish their way of life.
So, to answer your question, culture wouldn't spread like normal religions.

I love the idea of cultures, but I do think that the spread of Christianity needs to be shown. How about have the spread of Christianity done through corporations? I don't see how else Corporations can really be used during the time period. Perhaps you could have Judaisim and Zoroastrianism too.

Perhaps certain civics could then modify the effects that the corporation has. For example, ordinarilly it would provide a small :( penalty, but with monotheisim that would change to +1 :), and perhaps some gold or so on.

This way you get Cultures and Religions, and the Religions not included (various Pantheons) can just be assumed to be worshipped in civs under polythesism with the appropriate culture. For example, Rome under polythesism, even with some amount of Christianity present, has the Roman Pantheon as a state religion, Rome under Monothesism will still retain a roman culture, but now with Christianity as a state relgion.

If we're using cultures to build units, the most historically accurate way for them to spread would be via military victories. When everyone realized that Roman-style swordsmen were winning all the battles, they starting building Roman-style units. Likewise hoplites a few hundred years earlier.

Also corporations are a valid possibility.

Also corporations are a valid possibility.

Will preserving the Christian populace in your realm cost you some upkeep cost then?

The upkeep costs would probably need to be removed, I'm sure it can be.

Will preserving the Christian populace in your realm cost you some upkeep cost then?

It would probably make more sense to have the corporations take the place of culture and the religions be religions, simply in a logical sense.

AIs normally convert to the first religion that spreads to their cities. So, something would need to be done about that to prevent civilizations becoming monotheistic too early.

Which is why I think Cultures should use the Religion mechanic (so you can have a ''state'' culture, allowing cultural units and so on to be produced), while religion should use the corporation mechanics and therefore avoid these things. The civ's attitude to Christianity would be represented through civics. Christianity could exist as a minority, spread in a small number of cities, without the civ immediately adopting it as state because they don't understand that their Culture represents their traditional faith, and therefore think they have no religion.

Also, another thing is that allowing cultures to be adopted as state culture would allow you to base city and improvement graphics on culture, so culturally Roman, Greek and Persian areas would all look the part and different from each other. FFH does this and it's a great effect.

Which is why I think Cultures should use the Religion mechanic (so you can have a ''state'' culture, allowing cultural units and so on to be produced), while religion should use the corporation mechanics and therefore avoid these things. The civ's attitude to Christianity would be represented through civics. Christianity could exist as a minority, spread in a small number of cities, without the civ immediately adopting it as state because they don't understand that their Culture represents their traditional faith, and therefore think they have no religion.

Also, another thing is that allowing cultures to be adopted as state culture would allow you to base city and improvement graphics on culture, so culturally Roman, Greek and Persian areas would all look the part and different from each other. FFH does this and it's a great effect.

I like the idea of Culture using the religion mechanic and Religion using the corporation mechanic, since it's very flexible. We could make the corporation headquarters the holy city of the religion.

Sometimes logic isn't the best way to go about things. If most people think that that's an effective way to do it, so be it.

Don't corporations have to be built intentionally, however? Why would Rome (or a vassalized Israel) want to "build" Christianity with a GP?

Perhaps it could be a fixed event?

Sometimes logic isn't the best way to go about things. If most people think that that's an effective way to do it, so be it.

Don't corporations have to be built intentionally, however? Why would Rome (or a vassalized Israel) want to "build" Christianity with a GP?

First off, "religion" is only a hard-scripted method of tying a civilization to follow a certain belief or tradition in Civ IV. There are mods that replace religion in Civ IV with ideology (think of Road to War) and I see no reason why RFGW couldn't tie international politics together with tradition rather than something as controversial as religion. If it works and makes sense, I see no problem with it. It's just a line of code given the concept "religion". "Belief", be it political or spiritual, would be fine enough. (Besides, people like to see new things in mods, nothing should be considered too sacred.) Actual religions in this case should be more newer concepts, like corporations are - not necessarily tied with any country. In this sense, some real religions work as corporations and you could control a Culture/Religion civic row to deal with them, like suggested.

With that said, I think birth of Christianity works best as a fixed event. It's up for debate what people think would be the best, allowing player to decide how things should be settled with this "Joshua" fellow or only with his followers.

Actually, it's pretty simple to push a corporation's creation. First, if it's the AI, program them to push towards it. If it's a human, make it a UHV.

Nevermind wrong place to post. Sorry