OrionVeteran
Deity
Hi Aussie,
It’s really nice to converse with you again. Since the time when TheLopez developed the inquisition Mod for Warlords, I’ve had a straight forward vision to add several capabilities and prerequisites to make this mod more historically accurate. At the same time, I believed the Inquisition Mod should be thoroughly debugged to make it one of the most desired mod components for CIV4. We have come a long way since 2006, by adding a new religious victory condition (with 6 prerequisites), adding an XML option for limited religions and denying Inquisitors to Civs having the religious civics of Pacifism and Free Religion. Yet, there are still some additional prerequisites and features to add. For example:
1. Foreign inquisitions, with three prerequisites
• There must be an open borders agreement with your civilization.
• The state religion of the civilization must match yours.
• Your state religion must be established in the city.
2. Adding a prerequisite building for the inquisitor - The temple (not as easy as I first thought).
3. Adding gold to compensate for the cost of conducting an inquisition.
Throughout all of this, I have kept true to the distinction between Missionaries, Inquisitors and Spies.
1. Missionaries are used to spread or proselytize a state religion into other cities throughout your civilization and those, which have an open borders agreement with you.
2. Inquisitors are used to eliminate/remove any non-state religion and any associated non-state religious buildings that may exist in any city throughout your civilization and in any foreign city, where that nation has the same state religion and an open borders agreement with you.
3. Spies are used to conduct covert actions against rival civs to gain intelligence information, to sabotage enemy infrastructure or to steel gold or even technology.
I have great respect for you and think you deserve a thorough and detailed analysis. So here are my thoughts on your suggestion: If I understand you correctly, the scenario is: Civ A sends out a Missionary to a city owned by Civ B.
1. If the city shares the same religion as the missionary, then the use of the missionary changes the religious civic for that one city from Organized Religion to Pacifism.
2. The resulting action of this missionary would result in 1 turn of anarchy in Civ B’s city.
3. Civ B’s city would loose the gold income that would normally be provided by the Shrine.
4. Civ B's city looses the benfits it normally would receive from the religious buildings it has.
5. Civ A would start receiving the city gold benefit that once belonged to Civ B.
I have three simple questions to ask you. If you were Civ B and were attempting to achieve Religious Unity for a religious victory, would you be happy if a renegade missionary came from another civ into one of your cities and caused anarchy that resulted in a one turn suspension of all production? Would you be happy, if your empire no longer received the shrine gold benefit from that city? Would your city be happy if you took away the happiness normally gained by their places of worship? Clearly, the answer to all three questions is no. In fact, I would venture to say, you would be very angry over this covert action conducted by a supposed ally (Civ A), whose actions have stolen your gold and stopped city production. I believe this kind of covert action is more suited to a spy, not a missionary. That’s my honest opinion. My recommendation: Add a new mission for the spy to steel city shrine gold and a second mission to force a religious civic change in a rival city. I think those missions would better meet your desired goals.
Very Respectfully,
Orion Veteran
