The Sword of Islam: RFC Medieval Middle East

Re: Buddhism

To sum up:
- originally minor presence in Margiana, Sogdiana (Merv etc.), Tocharistan, Hindu Kush, Gandhara, and most of India
- in decline during 8-12th due invasions of Muslim Arabs and Turks, who destroyed most temples etc. It stayed the longest in Gandhara and Northern India, up to about 1200 (rooted out by Ghaznavids & Ghorids)
- resurgence under Ilkhanate in 13th century; Buddhism becomes the official religion in most of Iran and Mesopotamia, hundreds of Stupas are built; later Il-Khans become Sunni, stupas are destroyed and Buddhists in Persia are faced with the option to convert or die.

I'd propose leaving Bamiyan statues as they are initially - spreading Buddhism; aslo Buddhism would be pre-placed in Peshawar and maybe Delhi. Then from about 1000 to 1100 the spread factor of Buddhism will decline to 0 (which means the Statues simply won't work anymore from 1200 on).

Additionally Buddhism should randomly disappear from 2-3 cities in and around Afghanistan around 11-12th cent OR maybe better solution is to raise Ghaznavid's and Ghorid's fondness for massacres...

Stupa would be a normal temple with +1 +1 and.. and extra +1 Great Prophet Rate? Buildable only under Hinduism.

Since Ilkhanate is not a major or even minor civ in the mod, I guess the 13th century resurgence of Buddhism should just be skipped.

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Doodlefish said:

'Control' means to have at least one city in each province, and no one else can have cities there. In this case, the problem is that you don't have a city in Kars.

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ah, now I found it, it´s not a very good spot to found a city there in that province, thank you for your help

embryodead said:

Re: Buddhism

To sum up:
- originally minor presence in Margiana, Sogdiana (Merv etc.), Tocharistan, Hindu Kush, Gandhara, and most of India
- in decline during 8-12th due invasions of Muslim Arabs and Turks, who destroyed most temples etc. It stayed the longest in Gandhara and Northern India, up to about 1200 (rooted out by Ghaznavids & Ghorids)
- resurgence under Ilkhanate in 13th century; Buddhism becomes the official religion in most of Iran and Mesopotamia, hundreds of Stupas are built; later Il-Khans become Sunni, stupas are destroyed and Buddhists in Persia are faced with the option to convert or die.

I'd propose leaving Bamiyan statues as they are initially - spreading Buddhism; aslo Buddhism would be pre-placed in Peshawar and maybe Delhi. Then from about 1000 to 1100 the spread factor of Buddhism will decline to 0 (which means the Statues simply won't work anymore from 1200 on).

Additionally Buddhism should randomly disappear from 2-3 cities in and around Afghanistan around 11-12th cent OR maybe better solution is to raise Ghaznavid's and Ghorid's fondness for massacres...

Stupa would be a normal temple with +1 +1 and.. and extra +1 Great Prophet Rate? Buildable only under Hinduism.

Since Ilkhanate is not a major or even minor civ in the mod, I guess the 13th century resurgence of Buddhism should just be skipped.

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'Think that I prefer the latter option: "...raise Ghaznavid's and Ghorid's fondness for massacres...". It seems more dynamic/believable than Buddhism just "disappearing" from cities...

You *could* model the 13th century resurgence of Buddhism, by having it spread in ares historically controlled by the Ilkhanate... if you're going to have Buddhism disappear via scripted event(s), the 13th century resurgence should probably be modeled too....

I like your proposal about the Bamiyan statues... but if they spread Buddhism, you ought to enact some restrictions on where it spreads to. Otherwise, it could end up in some unbelievably remote location... ((Egypt? Rhodes??))

The Buddhist Stupa as a "normal temple with +1 +1 and.. and extra +1 Great Prophet Rate, Buildable only under Hinduism." Sounds nice, but maybe a trifle over-powered?? Could you balance this with some addtl. negative effect... maybe have it increase the war-weariness in hosting cities?? Buddhism is a pacifistic creed, after all...

incognet said:

I like your proposal about the Bamiyan statues... but if they spread Buddhism, you ought to enact some restrictions on where it spreads to. Otherwise, it could end up in some unbelievably remote location... ((Egypt? Rhodes??))

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This is already in place so you don't see Buddhism in Egypt. Apart from distance, which makes it unlikely, each civ has its own spread factor, which is very low for Buddhism and non-Indian civs.

The Buddhist Stupa as a "normal temple with +1 +1 and.. and extra +1 Great Prophet Rate, Buildable only under Hinduism." Sounds nice, but maybe a trifle over-powered?? Could you balance this with some addtl. negative effect... maybe have it increase the war-weariness in hosting cities?? Buddhism is a pacifistic creed, after all..

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Well, lets not forget about the Buddhist Mongol rulers and whole cities massacred and razed to the ground Not a bad idea, nonetheless! (though remember the +1 Happiness only mitigates the unhappiness from non-state religion)

embryodead said:

Well, lets not forget about the Buddhist Mongol rulers and whole cities massacred and razed to the ground Not a bad idea, nonetheless! (though remember the +1 Happiness only mitigates the unhappiness from non-state religion)

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Point taken Any bonus/penalty you assign (to a particular faith) will be a generalization... and any major religion will have considerable "diversity" (and contradictions) after 2000+ years. No wonder (vanilla) Civ 4 made no distinction between the various religions... WAY too much potential controversy (especially for the Abrahamic faiths)

Anyhow, another mild "penalty" that might be appropriate= reduced troop build speed. It could be very small, on the order of 10%. If this seems unbalanced, increase the culture produced by a Stupa.

Honestly, I would love to tinker with all the various religions/religious structures... just to further differentiate them.

embryodead said:

This is already in place so you don't see Buddhism in Egypt. Apart from distance, which makes it unlikely, each civ has its own spread factor, which is very low for Buddhism and non-Indian civs.

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I thought so, but there was one particular incident, playing as Jerusalem (.20, before the inclusion of Antioch), where Hinduism actually spread to one of my cities (I forget which) after I massacred the Sunni inhabitants (leaving it without a religion). Quite a surprise to see Hinduism in W. Mesopotamia...

I think we should just scrap the whole "resurgence" of Buddhism. Come on people, let's be a bit realistic here, do you REALLY think that Buddhism made HUGE gains in conversions in the Middle East? I would personally urge you to just scrap the idea. BUT, I think Buddhism needs to be more affluent in the beginning of the game, in India/ Pakistan, because, its really non-existant in these areas.
By the way, does Kashgar start with Sunni Islam and Buddhism? Because it should.

As for the Stupa's, I think its a good idea to have them be only built by cities with a state religion of Hinduism and Buddhism present in that city. As for the stupa's benefits, we could give them +1 culture, +1 great priest, +1
happiness but other than that, but balance it out with increased war weariness. Although why you don't think it should do that (because of the Mongol issue), actual Buddhists, wouldn't support butchery like that, I mean I highly doubt the Mongol's displayed the true virtues of being good Buddhists, and besides, the Mongols also had a lot of Nestorian Christian values. Did you know, that after the Mongols sacked Baghdad, they spared all the Christians, and placed a short lived Christian ruler as the ruler of Baghdad, the same happened later on in the Levant. So my point is that the stupa should increase war weariness in that city. (but just by a small amount only)


And yes, I agree, you should increase the massacre rate for the Ghaznavids and Ghorids (especially the Ghorids)

That Hinduism requirement sounds not as bad except that Buddhism only spreads to areas Hindus never reach.

corovanrobber said:

That Hinduism requirement sounds not as bad except that Buddhism only spreads to areas Hindus never reach.

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And that's EXACTLY what we're going to change!

Okey, I have to agree with the Turk that the Timurids have some issues.

-First of all their UU is too weak, there is just no way for it to fight against the Seljuks and their Marksmen (which is BTW a bit overpowered). Maybe it could be changed into Timurid Horse Archer with strength 9 or a bonus against archery units? Also couple more Horse Archers wouldn't hurt them. No siege weapons though, like the Turk suggested, because isn't the idea to quickly roll over empires with the fast cavalry?

-Three turns after the flip my stability was a whopping -37. I had switched into Islam, but that was earlier and it only rose closer to -30 during next turns, though there was other indicators as well.

-The Turkoman Heavy Horse Archers. What I thought I was the barbarian horde? Perhaps they shouldn't spawn after the Timurids?

-However, all this was greatly influenced by my unlucky start including a superpower Seljuks that had more 11% of the world's territory and Delhi Sultanate not far behind. Seljuks had Mesopotamia and Makkah too. If somebody wants to see pictures, I can upload.

The Turk said:

*snip*
@civ_king
Sorry, forgot to respond to your comment
Yes I understand that Catholicism, does not ONLY mean Roman Catholic, that's why I said that Catholicism should represent the Maronites of Lebanon, who follow the Church of Rome. I am no Catholic, so please correct me, but the way I understand it, is that all Catholics sects follow the Pope. In this case, the Copts, don't follow the Pope, they are IF ANYTHING closer to Orthodox Christianity, and although it would be more convenient to make a separate Coptic (Monophysite) Religion, doing so would be a relative waste of Embryodead's time. And so having Catholicism present in Alexandria still does not make sense, because there were no (to my knowledge), any Catholic sects in Egypt, (if not just a minority)
*snip*

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The Coptic Catholic Church is one of the groups in Full Communion with the See of Rome, however the Coptic Orthodox Church as the same suggests are probably closer to the Orthodox Churches (however it is Oriental Orthodox and became schismatic before the East West split in 1056)

Trying something new, and playing as the Saminids. Interestingly enough while there are plenty of resources, there are not many that provide growth.

With lack of city size, production gets hurt which means its harder to get the economy going and build an empire

First off, I agree with Barak, the Samanids, are really quite weak, BUT then again, they should remain quite weak, as we don't want to create a monster, like the Ak Konylu are (they end up dominating the late game).

Anyways, I want to add this to my critique, so if you could just respond to this when you respond to my critique that would be great

So I was watching a documentary about the partition of India, when they began starting talking about the Punjab, it all of a sudden struck me! You HAVE to add Sikhism as a minor religion!! You would have it spawn in 1537 (This could be changed, but its the death of Guru Nanak Dev), and you can have it be founded in Lahore OR have Amristar spawn, with the "Golden Temple" wonder in it. And you could have an independent Sikh state, which tries to attack the Muslim neighbors (Muslims and Sikhs are historically enemies)

Is Ak Konylu supposed to have such a bad capital city? First try as them and settled Diyaabakir where my units spawned.

Treat them as Turks in RFC, their capital is bad, but there's a few good cities nearby that you can move it to. They're supposed to be weak too, I've never seen them as anything close to a "powerhouse".

@The Turk
Independent Sikhs don't belong to the mod's timeline. The actual state existed in 19th century, and some rebel factions in the late 18th. One rebel city in 17th c. is simply not substantial enough to be a separate civ in a mod that ends in 1700. There's several larger factions that I didn't include. I'll add a few Sikh barbs spawning in Punjab from mid 17th c. onwards.

I massacred some Shias, and I got the -1 modifier for the Shia Zengids. However, when they switched to Christianity the modifier still remained.

The flank attack for the Norman knights wasn't working for me against Archers.

Shouldn't the Venetian/Genoan Quarters disappear if the companies leave a city?

Did you program the Abbasids to build the House of Wisdom in Damascus? They always seem to build it there for some reason.

Philaretos Brachiamos shows up as TXT_KEY_GREAT_PERSON_PHILARETOS_BRACHIAMOS

Why is Abu Muslim Khorasani a rebel Great General instead of an Abbasid GG?

Jusos2108 said:

-However, all this was greatly influenced by my unlucky start including a superpower Seljuks that had more 11% of the world's territory and Delhi Sultanate not far behind. Seljuks had Mesopotamia and Makkah too. If somebody wants to see pictures, I can upload.

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I'd like to see that.

Really?

You don't understand, those are Sufis of St. John.

MessageMan said:

I massacred some Shias, and I got the -1 modifier for the Shia Zengids. However, when they switched to Christianity the modifier still remained.

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Alright, that can be fixed.

The flank attack for the Norman knights wasn't working for me against Archers.

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I'll just think of another ability for this UU, this one is lame.

Shouldn't the Venetian/Genoan Quarters disappear if the companies leave a city?

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They like to appear and re-appear so this would be annoying. I'm not sure if they stop working though.

Did you program the Abbasids to build the House of Wisdom in Damascus? They always seem to build it there for some reason.

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It's just their most productive city, the only way to make them build it in Baghdad is to add more hills to Baghdad.

Why is Abu Muslim Khorasani a rebel Great General instead of an Abbasid GG?

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Great People are per-culture (when possible) not per civ. Abbasids, Rebels and most Muslim civs used the same pool.