C2C - Religions discussions and ideas

Thunderbrd said:

I haven't really reviewed the coding regarding how AI nations select their state religion, just how they choose to spread religion, so its hard to give you an answer to that question DH. I believe diplomacy factors are weighed out against favorite religion against self-founded religion as all three are valid reasons and in play I've seen the ai using elements of all three motives to determine their state religion. If you spread enough of your religion early enough into an opponent's territory to the point that it gains the greatest persuasion, generally the ai seems to select that religion for its state religion. When they found a religion of their own, they often try to spread it so that ends up putting it as the priority for state religion. How favorite religion plays into that is hard to say without looking directly at the codes that determine the choice for state religion.

Obviously, a little coding to get the ai to care a bit more to spread their 'favorite religion' would lead to them more commonly selecting that religion as a priority. Keep in mind that on Divine Prophets, they will seek to found their favorite religion and that will most likely naturally lead to them declaring it as a state religion down the line. I may have found a tweak that could have been getting in the way of them actually doing so as I've been reviewing and tweaking some of the DP codes to make it work better for non-choose religion play.

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Would it work better if i took out the favorite religions from each LH, i have been doing that with some of the new add=ons for civics, keeping them at NONE??
Just trying to figure out what happens if NONE is in there what happens etc???

Nothing would happen to DP I don't think, though it could create a slight error that would remain processable I believe. Nevertheless, I'd think it'd be far preferable to have a favorite religion established for every leader. If we find we can't think of the best one for a given leader, perhaps that means we need a new religion

What i wish we could implement is JohnnySmiths religious set-up he has, but its strictly dll, it breaks down religions to even minor religious factors.

I think he has like 100 or so religions listed.

strategyonly said:

What i wish we could implement is JohnnySmiths religious set-up he has, but its strictly dll, it breaks down religions to even minor religious factors.

I think he has like 100 or so religions listed.

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Not an easy idea to implement in C2C. It will require changes to everything to do with religions. He also does not have the same spread of religions so we would need to remove some religions from C2C and add others. One of the things I hoped to come up with while away was a "C2C theory of religion" which would make religions evolve with time and need. I was even considering a radicel notion which would see all named religions go to be replaced by something completely different but with a similar outcome as far as buildings etc are concerned.

Either way these are huge changes which will require a great deal of work.

Dancing Hoskuld said:

Not an easy idea to implement in C2C. It will require changes to everything to do with religions. He also does not have the same spread of religions so we would need to remove some religions from C2C and add others. One of the things I hoped to come up with while away was a "C2C theory of religion" which would make religions evolve with time and need. I was even considering a radical notion which would see all named religions go to be replaced by something completely different but with a similar outcome as far as buildings etc are concerned.

Either way these are huge changes which will require a great deal of work.

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HUH, not a bad idea at all really, infact sounds very intriguing

I think I had suggested some evolutionary evolvement methods earlier too but yeah... implementing will take a lot of planning and execution. A major project that will definitely impact how DP should work as well.

you know, the total war mod acually handled religion in an instersing way you might check it out for ideas....

basically, it in away that you research spiritual components instead of a tech that founds the religions, and the more you get, the more bonuses you have ( like money and production).
when you have a certain amount of spiritual components you found a religion using a certain amount of "faith points" which you can use to further enhance your religion.

pretty awesome if you ask me

Dancing Hoskuld said:

Great so if they don't found their favorite religion they ignore it. So what is the point of favorite religion then?

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Hi DH. The point of favourite religion in C2C as I see it now is twofold: to have a religion spread to your country in case you didn't manage to found one, and to have a target religion to aim towards getting.
But all things aside favourite means only that it is preferred if possible without too much negative transitions. Otherwise I'd say it'd be boring if every time you played every leader always had the same religion as in every game. Favourite shouldn't mean they HAVE to utilise that religion as their state whenever possible. I'd see that as a downgrade and increasing the repetitiveness of games.

strategyonly said:

Would it work better if i took out the favorite religions from each LH, i have been doing that with some of the new add=ons for civics, keeping them at NONE??
Just trying to figure out what happens if NONE is in there what happens etc???

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My thought is basically that if you have most leaders with a favourite religion then all should have that. If you compound it to that only leaders with certain traits have a favourite religion then not all need to have a favourite religion.

Most but not all having it means a disadvantage to those that don't as in Limited Religion Option those with get two religions to build monasteries for while those without only get the one they found themselves. Even without Limited Religion Option those with get a slight advantage over other middling to late bloomers if a tech leader or two is hogging all religions as they at least get one religion to build buildings for.

Having it with certain traits means it's a choice to have a favourite religion instead. Spiritual comes to mind but if people already feel it's too powerful that might not go over well.

Cheers

I'd just like to drunkenly weigh in on this tonight. Civ was always a what-if scenario. What if the Egyptians built Stonehenge? What if the Chinese developed democracy? What if Germany had never become a world power? Have they missed the mark on some of these scenarios? Hell yes. But it made the game good.

Would it be hard to have an option like DP but without free great prophet, so you can found any religion you have the tech for but have to generate a great prophet normally. Those who want to have more religions just have to focus on GP and the tech leader don't have all religions without being limited to only founding one. Maybe also add an event that auto found an unfounded religions to avoid having civ that just can't get a great prophet (I don't think it will be a problem seeing as GP is one of the easiest great person to have especially early.)

robomani said:

Would it be hard to have an option like DP but without free great prophet, so you can found any religion you have the tech for but have to generate a great prophet normally. Those who want to have more religions just have to focus on GP and the tech leader don't have all religions without being limited to only founding one. Maybe also add an event that auto found an unfounded religions to avoid having civ that just can't get a great prophet (I don't think it will be a problem seeing as GP is one of the easiest great person to have especially early.)

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I've been considering this extensively. Wondering if Divine Prophets should just remove the free prophet handouts and see what happens. Would definately make getting a religion a real challenge. I was also thinking it would benefit from having some early cheap buildings that create some GP pts or revamping the entire building line-up to have many add some GP pts even if not wonders. This would force players to specialize cities and take some major sacrifices to get the Great People they want so as to avoid corrupting the potential Great Person results or they'd end up with a total crapshoot. When religions (and eventual corporations) are on the line when GPs are born, that'd make for a more strategically difficult decision. You'd really have to go out of your way to make a prophet only birthing city (a religion center so to speak) but then it would also suffer from not having quite as many overall GP pts and would have a hard time keeping up with your more generic cities that build just about everything and total up a lot more GP pts that way. You'd probably then want to build the National Wonder in your religious center and get overall less GPs unless you're the gambling sort and go for massive amts of GP birthing in a highly populated 'build everything' style city. This style would likely not produce many Prophets. So yeah, I'm thinking this through but:

I have a few issues to work out first.
1) I'd make it an additional option that is nicely compatible with DP (No first-to-tech bonuses) The thinking extends to all first-to-tech benefits such as free technologies as well and overall would be a game for those who want to see more balance between the laggers and the leaders. I'm also debating making all wonders, national and otherwise, require a particular GP to build (since it will have so many more GPs being born overall and to give the non-prophets just as strong a cause to be born.) That's going to take a hell of a lot of planning and work and our building system keeps racing at a pace I can't currently keep up with so when that slows down I'll have more leeway here.

2) There are some AI considerations to make here. The AI needs to understand the option and play wisely in this environment (specializing their cities, moving the Divine Prophets they get to the right city for founding a religion (currently they just found where they are born which is conveniently in the capital if they got it from being first to the religious tech), some tweaks to how they utilize all other GPs to make sure they are building wonders in rational locations, etc...) Some of that stuff is still mysterious to my limited programming skills.


I mean... I could make a modified Divine Prophet option much as you suggest and just leave it as is. But for the ai, it would become a little too much of a random affair as to whether they ever get a religion (most of the prophets born are based on religious wonder buildings, many of which come from having religions chosen so it becomes conceivable they may never get a prophet without some ai tweaking... in otherwords, it would completely imbalance the usefulness of a prophet with the other forms of GPs and the ai would not be aggressive enough to understand this imbalance to their fullest advantage. It would take tweaking I'm not really prepared to do for such a minor project, if that makes any sense.) It would also be yet another incompatable option with Divine Prophets and Limited religions and I want to see an eventuality where DP and LR are fully compatible, bringing us back to a state where all options may be completely compatible when mixed and matched. (something I'll be working on here... possibly even this weekend.) I'd rather have an additional option that, when combined with DP, becomes much like the scenario you suggest, with some additional features to make all GP forms equally valuable even when balanced to the religion founding power of the Great Prophet.

So the next step down that road after creating complete compatibility between LR and DP would be to give us the No First-to-Tech benefits option that would trigger many buildings to be offering GP pts they currently do not but only when the option is on, and to disable the gifting of free techs, prophets, and other benefits for the first to reach a technology. This would make Prophets a touch imbalanced as they'd be the primary type you'd want to get.

Then add a Wonders require the Wonderful option that limits all wonders to being built by GPs, which would put all GPs in balance with one another. (I mean heck, many times an artist or an engineer would be a great result to help you get more prophets!)

I've been thinking about this mod plan for a while now and I just haven't moved forward much on it. It's quite an undertaking but could be very rewarding, providing very new ways to play with whole new dimensions of strategy in city design and nation management. It's perfect for C2C with all the added buildings and religions and such... would be really cool to implement, but its not going to be overnight at all.

I think that a more dynamic system would include religious schisms, and corresponding religions: i.e. Greek Orthodox, protestantism, Shia, Sunni and etc... In addition there should be some form a Council of Nicaea technology that would turn Christianity into Catholicism. Not to be that close to history but the fact the Mormonism is the only denomination separate from Christianity is kind of upsetting.

With the latest SVN I and DP off I am finding very hard to get Great Prophets.

wonderlego said:

I think that a more dynamic system would include religious schisms, and corresponding religions: i.e. Greek Orthodox, protestantism, Shia, Sunni and etc... In addition there should be some form a Council of Nicaea technology that would turn Christianity into Catholicism. Not to be that close to history but the fact the Mormonism is the only denomination separate from Christianity is kind of upsetting.

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All we need is graphics and some wonders that set them apart. However, saying that, I am looking into Sevo's "Faces of God" mod which basically means your version of religion X will different to anyone else's version. So I may be able to get rid of all the later named religions anyway.

I have had a chance to look into Sevo's faces of God mod. Although only a shallow examination of the XML and Python code. Basically you can choose the way your state religion "works". I have not checked for if there is AI yet.

Once your state religion has spread to 60% of your nation you get a "Holy Founder". Changing state religion will remove the "Holy Founder" and any buildings based on the previous choice of direction.This unit can build a special building that directs the way your religion will go. Options are:-

• Convert or Kill - not openly supported by the state; you can built zealots (your enemies will call them terrorists). All other religions should be wiped of the face of the Earth.
• Science and Education
• Harmony with the World
• Law
• Holy Crusade - state openly supports removal of all other religions
• Idols
• Religious Life

As you can probably guess there are some issues with merging this with C2C, besides only having graphics for the 7 BtS religions. For starters the ones which want to remove all other religions will need a boost to counter the loss of the other religion buildings.

I've been considering similar concepts but for the AI primarily, to define the leader's different takes on religion. If this is somehow implemented, however, it would certainly be capable of interacting with that and could actually give me some categories to work with. I'm not planning on it immediately though since I have some other efforts to come first and that kind of overall ai strategy considerations are an entirely different code research project. Still... working this kind of thinking into the mod is certainly something I am for. And it may be interesting to give a subtle penalty to switching religions willy-nilly to keep players from doing what I currently do, switching religions to capture as many of their wonders as possible.

A system for religious evolution is something I really want to do during this effort as well and it will basically take the creation of a LOT of new religions to make it work. The difference will be that not all religions will be able to be in play simultaneously due to them overriding and replacing other religions as they 'evolve'. I've been giving that some extensive thought but its not on the immediate radar either since it really will be a fairly large inter-modder project to arrange and carry out. If you get to a point where you really want to address it though we can start working on planning it whenever you like.

Thunderbrd said:

...And it may be interesting to give a subtle penalty to switching religions willy-nilly to keep players from doing what I currently do, switching religions to capture as many of their wonders as possible.

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Switching religions to suit your current needs, like civics, was part of AAranda's intent with the extra religions.

Thunderbrd said:

A system for religious evolution is something I really want to do during this effort as well and it will basically take the creation of a LOT of new religions to make it work. The difference will be that not all religions will be able to be in play simultaneously due to them overriding and replacing other religions as they 'evolve'. I've been giving that some extensive thought but its not on the immediate radar either since it really will be a fairly large inter-modder project to arrange and carry out. If you get to a point where you really want to address it though we can start working on planning it whenever you like.

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Looking at the "Rapture" and "RoH" mods the idea appears to be (in C2C) terms as you go through the tech tree culture tech you make choices that determine your city and unit art style and your base culture. Yes you choose to be African or European or whatever. Then you make decisions so that your religion is "ancestor worship" or "ancestor intercede with gods". If the latter each city gets a "god cult" based on your chosen base culture. Each city has a different god, it can build a cult temple to that god and then make missionaries to spread the cult to other cities where they can build minor temples.

Later along comes a Great Prophet that merges the city gods into a single polythiestic religion. At this point things get less well defined. You still have the Cult temples and the minor temples to a god but you build "missionaries" that spread the main religion not the cults. When it spreads you can still build the minor temples but you can also build a temple and later monastery and cathedral. At some stage the minor temples fall from use and disappear. Cult Temples stay around until you change religion when they disappear for good.

As you can see there are all sorts of problems with this including getting enough gods to go around if everyone chooses the same base culture.

Additionally, even advanced religions can evolve, split and merge. I've seen the rapture mod and liked the thinking in it but we may be able to make something even more advanced. I'll eventually write up a proposal and put it forward for feedback. It should be similar and encompassing to what you just explained but with some additional considerations. Some good stuff there!

I built a limited missionary mod but I am not happy with it. In the back of my mind I have always had the Rapture mod idea of the number of missionaries available to you should reflect how much the religion feels about spreading itself. The problem with the Rapture mods implementation is that it does not fit with the C2C ideology of having any religion viable all the time.

My current idea is:-
I am not sure I can implement this fully but I think it is worth a try.

Shouldn't switching religions too much cause instability, like swapping civics too much? Or am I misunderstanding something?

Rasma said:

Shouldn't switching religions too much cause instability, like swapping civics too much? Or am I misunderstanding something?

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It should cause the same amount of anarchy as changing civics, unless you are changing to your favorite religion.