[Request] Religion addon for ViSa 3

I have a request for a religion mod addon for Visa 3 for Warlords.

First and foremost, I would like some alternate way to found religion. I don't like automatically founding religions as a side effect of progressing up the tech tree. I've only used SD Religion, but True Prophets looks interesting too.

I would like to see Zoroastrianism and Shinto. Replacing Taoism and Confucianism isn't a problem, but adding new religions would be fine too.

It would be nice for religions to have different effects and characteristics, as in Abbamouse's mod.

It would be neat if there could be some way to have different polytheistic religions, with culturally specific pantheons, so Egypt would have the Ennead, Greece and Rome the Olympians, Germanics the Æsir, etc. Each would have its own religious wonder, with the Temple of Zeus at Olympus becoming a religious wonder. Perhaps, upon discovering Polytheism, one would be given the option of choosing a pantheon, or one would be randomly chosen by the game. Ideally each pantheon would have unique temple styles. In fact, the original impetus of this specific request was the desire to have polytheistic Romans or Egyptians without Hindu temples. Of course, I realize that this is very ambitious and will probably never happen.

The main thing I want is an alternate way for founding religions. I hate accidentally founding religions, sometimes two or three if I get ahead of the other civilizations. If anyone would be willing to make such a mod addon for Visa, or merge and update a couple of existing mods, I am sure an awful lot of players would be eternally grateful.



Mods that contain some of these features:

SD Religion
abbamouse Realistic Religions mod including Zoroastrianism
Tori Gate Mod with Shinto
True Prophets

I absolutely have to agree with this! While I don't know much about Zoroastrianism, I definitely would like to see Shinto (I do have to research more on that religion... my interest in Japanese culture has been on the rise, lately). One thing that kind of bothers me is the fact that they limited the number of religions, and claim more would hurt gameplay... I just wish that more was an option. Also, the fact that many of the religions are spawned from other religions already in the game. More on that later! Oh, and I will have to be educated on the Visa 3. Is that a mod? Personally, I'd like to see these changes as a seperate mod that could be easily incorporated into other mods at the user's wim and fancy.

Anyway, as for the polytheistic religions, I have been considering trying to take some of the religions from the Rise of Rome Scenario (at least the Roman religion... a little personal bias) and creating a mod with that. (See my thread Religion Edit -http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=220195) However, it would be the most advanced mod I would have ever attempted and I am having a hard time figuring out what to do and how to do it.

As far as the fact of requiring another way for a religion to be founded, I agree with that too. My idea is to have other requirements besides just the technology that have to be met, such as a bonus and/or another condition (like a certain number of certain buildings <Monuments, perhaps> must be present in the civilization). In the case of a resource, it could even be further strict by making so that the item has to be within the cultural boundaries of the civilization (not accessed through trade). Incense would be an obvious choice here, but others could possibly be used or created for this purpose.

Along those lines, with the religions that were spawned from other religions, I would add that the first religion has to be present in the civilization before it can be founded. An example would be in order to found Christianity, not only does a Civ have to research Theology, but they need to have Judaism in their borders (not necessarily a state religion). With this, it would stop, say Judaism from being founded by one religion, and Christianity from being founded by a different Civ who has never met the first Civ as they are on an unreachable continent on the other side of the world. I know that many will say that it's not suppose to be realistic... it's a game! But there are certain limits to artistic licensing. Also, The related religions could have less of a diplomatic strain on relations between nations than completely unrelated religions.

Lastly, and maybe an optional feature, the religions could be limited to certain civs for cultural reasons. Like I said, this could be a toggable option silmilar to cultural starts in Civ 3. Basically to cut down on the Aztecs founding Islam, Spain from founding Buddhism, and the Mongols from founding Judaism.

All of these would help to stop religion hogs and to give a little variety and depth to the religous game.

And one more thing... a Civ should not be able to convert to another religion until the religion is present in the capital. It makes no sense for a civ to adopt a religion as it's state religion if the people in the capital city (the center of the state) do not practice it.

Thorburne said:

Oh, and I will have to be educated on the Visa 3. Is that a mod?

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Yeah, sorry, I just assumed regulars here would know it. ViSa is a huge modpack that merges many smaller mods and adds tons of original content, new civics, techs, units, improvements, wonders, etc. With Servo abandoned, it is probably my favorite big mod.

Unfortunately, the modders refused to touch religions. They say that they only want to add to the game, not change the fundamental mechanics. Three of the mods I mentioned are listed in their player request thread, but they said there is little chance that they will incorporate them.

To make matters worse, most of the religion mods seem to be pretty old, and their authors are no longer active on the board, so I don't see the point in resurrecting those threads to request merging them with Visa. There are a couple of religion mods that are still active, but most are small, just adding a religion, and one is very big and complicated, and I don't think it could be easily merged with Visa. As I said, first and foremost I want an alternate way to found religions. Making religions a bit more unique would be nice, but I'm not really interested in drastically changing the way they work, other than pagan polytheism, and that's really more of a distant dream than a real expectation.

Personally, I'd like to see these changes as a seperate mod that could be easily incorporated into other mods at the user's wim and fancy.

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I did manage to partially merge Stone-D's mod with the previous version of Visa and separate the religions from their parent techs, but I couldn't change the tech tree or add any other features. I'm not a modder and I basically worked by trial and error, comparing and merging sections of the XML's without actually understanding what the text meant. My attempts to add Zoroastrianism or rename Confucianism failed utterly. Unfortunately, merging mods myself, especially big, complicated mods, is difficult if not impossible. Doubtless this is true for many, many players.

Thanks, I am a regular here, but I am in and out, so that's probably why I never heard of Visa.

Anyway, I definitely understand what you said about the difficulties of modding, as I am in the same boat. About the most I have been able to accomplish is the changing of certain statistics like yields, unit and building costs, and unit movement, etc. If I do make an attempt at religions, it would most likely be a simple mod, like adding (or more likely changing) a religion. That's if I can figure out how to do it!

After checking out Eusebius' mod, I think the simplest thing would be to stick to Stone-D's method of just making religions separate techs that have to be researched after the prerequisite tech. In fact, this method might make it easier to implement additional pantheons, as discovering polytheism could open up several religions for research, and the player could just pick the one he wants. The same could be done for monotheism, allowing either Judaism or Zoroastrianism, and then Christianity and Islam could be options from theology. Maybe paganism could open up Shinto, since it's not quite as organized as other polytheistic systems. Having a ton of different temple styles might still be overly ambitious, but I'll take what I can get. Anybody interested?