Uses of Faith for a player with no religion

Lately I'm thinking about the uses of faith (renamed to mana in my fantasy mod) for a player that hasn't founded a religion. There will be some units in the game that can be "summoned" (purchased for mana), and "city enchantments" (buildings purchased for mana), but if the player has enough of them, mana becomes useless.

I'm wondering if it would be possible (without DLL modding) to enable purchasing Great People for faith. Perhaps some Lua code that generates a Great Person when enough faith has been accumulated? But I'm not sure if it should be a random type or Great Person, or the player should be able to choose it (the mod never reaches the industrial era, which allows purchasing them in the base game). Ideas are welcome, but they should work both for the human player and the AI.

i have tried to create the pagan buildings mod but with no success
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=532704
even the whowards' dll didnt help.

automatic faith purchases would be trivial though
at the start of the turn, check for faith and create a unit, then substract faith.
use functions:

ps: hmmm maybe i should make those pagan buildings auto-purchased..

killmeplease said:

i have tried to create the pagan buildings mod but with no success
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=532704
even the whowards' dll didnt help.

automatic faith purchases would be trivial though
at the start of the turn, check for faith and create a unit, then substract faith.
use functions:

Code:

if player:GetFaith() >= X then
    player:ChangeFaith(-X);
    player:AddFreeUnit(GameInfoTypes.UNIT_GREAT_SOMEONE);
end

ps: hmmm maybe i should make those pagan buildings auto-purchased..

Click to expand...

It ought to work if they were auto purchased and you just did City:SetNumRealBuilding(Building, NumberBuildings). Though you would probably want to see for an individual city if the building was already there 1st.

Though the way most CIV human-players seem to be such control-freaks over such things, the average subscriber might not like the idea of not being able to choose which city gets the building, and if there were more than one type of building available to acquire this way, which one. AI's in this case might actually be easier to code for: after all, they can't leave you comments complaining about the way you did something.

I didn't mean cities with no religion, just a player that hasn't founded one - other civs' religions will eventually spread to its cities, but then it doesn't make sense to use prophets/missionaries/inquisitors to spread a religion, so a large amount of faith that is normally spent on these is not used. Using prophets for holy sites doesn't make much sense too, as it generates even more faith. Btw does a player that can't found a religion get prophets? I can't remember it, so please remind me - if so, then perhaps I can make my Lua code replace the prophets with some other kind of great people. If not, then these great people should be generated according to the current amount of faith, but I don't really know how to implement progression, so every great person costs more faith than the previous one.

Another question: How to create a building or unit that cost faith per turn to maintain? The only option that comes into my mind is using Lua code that checks for their existence every turn and subtracts some faith from the player. I'm afraid such code can have a negative impact on performance...

I guess I don't understand. Do you mean a civ that has not yet founded a religion? Or are you planning a civ that is never allowed to found a religion?

Unmodded, so long as the max number of allowed religions within a game have not been founded any civ can start their own religion once they get a great prophet (by whatever method they acquire one). Faith that is not spent (prior to Industrial Era) is used to 1st get a pantheon, and thereafter to spawn a great prophet automatically unless a player selects to auto-use it on something else -- but I think they pretty much have to have founded a religion already in order to select anything other than a prophet. To be honest I'd have to play a game trying to not get a prophet to be sure anymore if there are any practical means by which to avoid it.

I mean a civ that has not founded a religion, and can't found one due to the maximum number of religions on map being reached.

PawelS said:

I mean a civ that has not founded a religion, and can't found one due to the maximum number of religions on map being reached.

Click to expand...

a phrophet does not spawn in this case (and not available to buy from industrial era)

It does require DLL modifications to make Great People purchasable with faith without both a religion and the prereq Policy finisher, however, you could also build your own UI from which a player can select to spend faith on a GP (and the AI can just do it automatically) which wouldn't. LastSword does something similar with one of his civs - he has a custom button that only appears in the cityview that allows you to purchase units with faith even without the Holy Warriors belief.

Thanks for the information. I thought about some kind of "alchemy" (converting faith to gold), but I'm not sure if it's a good idea, and it can be hard to implement (especially in case of the AI). Generating extra great people seems the best option to me. As for the cost progression, I'm thinking about using the Player:GetNumFaithGreatPeople() and Player:SetNumFaithGreatPeople() functions, as a way to store information, so I don't have to add mod data to the savegame (which would complicate things).

You might also want to set up some prerequisite trigger mechanisms or requirements, so that the buying of great people doesn't start happening until X, Y, or Z condition is met. Or some combination of X, Y, Z. Otherwise the lua might auto-buy great people when it is really game-breaking or otherwise disadvantageous for it to happen.

Haven't thought anything more much through, but I'd think you'll have to consider whether players who have founded a religion will also be able to buy great people through the same or a similar mechanism, and what the trigger requirements for them ought to be, if different from the trigger requirements for the non-founder civs. Since you aren't allowing the game to progress to the normal Industrial Era mechanism.