Religions: Asatru and Shinto

With the understanding of the other main modders on this project, I am going to start adding Asatru and Shinto to AND. I am going to walk through this entire project very carefully so that there are no surprises and if I made something too strong, it can be corrected. I won't upload anything until the entire process is at least complete to a first approximation with the necessary assets in place and all that is left is to adjust the numbers.

One of the advantages to doing this is that the necessary graphics/movie/sound assets have been created at one point or another by someone else, and I can just incorporate them. But I can create new XML and maybe even create a couple completely new things.

Here is the list of what is going to be created:

• Some basic statistics for the religion.
• A Missionary unit.
• A Monastery building.
• A Temple building.
• A Cathedral building.
• A Shrine.
• A World Wonder.
• A Promotion that is only available if you are running the target religion.

I really do not want to add any more religions than these two. In general, I am of the opinion that not everything needs to be included in AND. Every culture has traditions that can be called "religious", but I don't believe that said traditions necessarily rise to the level of being called a religion.

There are also three other things I want to avoid by limiting the new religions to just these 2, and these two will both be in the early Medieval Era. I'll show off the exact techs when I do basic stats.

• Beelining: This applies especially to the Ancient Era. Any Ancient Era religion is pretty easy to beeline directly to and ignore everything else, and so Polytheism/Dualism is the earliest place where I would put a religion.
• Clustering: In the late Ancient/entire Classical Eras, there aren't a lot of techs and a lot of religions. Adding up the late Ancient and Classical Era gives 42 technologies and 8 religions. Putting any more religions in this area would probably lead to putting two religions on adjacent techs, which I want to avoid if I can. Yes, I did put Hinduism (Literature) and Taoism (Philosophy) on adjacent techs, but I couldn't find ANY better option.
• "Rich get richer": This is for the Renaissance and onward (which is why I would not want to include Sikhism in this mod). By the Medieval/Renaissance Era, the game has generally settled into leaders and left-behinds, and the civs with a religion are pretty much the leaders. If Revolutions is OFF, there is no downside to founding another religion, and even it is on, a Renaissance Era civ can generally handle the instability of multiple holy cities.

If I recall, you originally suggested Rudder for Shinto? (Nice to see it's finally coming to the game ^^)

Where would Asatru be placed?

I wanted to do this as a modmod. I already have it in my games in a fairly alpha state
I imported the stuff from C2C.

A few things I already observed and suggest:

Asatru:

• Rename Asatru Missionary to Gothi
• Asatru Cathedral should be Asatru Pantheon instead
• Remove the many +Xp to melee units from the buildings
• We don't need Altar of Thor, move the free Mjolnr promotion to Monastry.
• Get a better name for the Monastry, change -10% military production to +10% (like Hellenic Gymnesia).
• Get a better icon for the religion. In C2C it is a purple(!!) Valknut. A hammer, a Mjolnir would be better, more epic.

Shinto:

• IMO there is no need of every shinto building giving -x% maintanance.
• Only 1 Bushido promozion is enough.

FYI, Asatru was designed for RoM by AAranda, I merged Shinto into RoM. Both were done as modmods. AAranda's design was meant to encourage you to change your religion as you went through the game adopting the one that you want for the stage of nation development you were in.

Dancing Hoskuld said:

FYI, Asatru was designed for RoM by AAranda, I merged Shinto into RoM. Both were done as modmods. AAranda's design was meant to encourage you to change your religion as you went through the game adopting the one that you want for the stage of nation development you were in.

Click to expand...

I know they were modmods. I even found some "designer's notes" in the modules subfolders

Vokarya said:

With the understanding of the other main modders on this project, I am going to start adding Asatru and Shinto to AND. I am going to walk through this entire project very carefully so that there are no surprises and if I made something too strong, it can be corrected. I won't upload anything until the entire process is at least complete to a first approximation with the necessary assets in place and all that is left is to adjust the numbers.

One of the advantages to doing this is that the necessary graphics/movie/sound assets have been created at one point or another by someone else, and I can just incorporate them. But I can create new XML and maybe even create a couple completely new things.

Here is the list of what is going to be created:

• Some basic statistics for the religion.
• A Missionary unit.
• A Monastery building.
• A Temple building.
• A Cathedral building.
• A Shrine.
• A World Wonder.
• A Promotion that is only available if you are running the target religion.

I really do not want to add any more religions than these two. In general, I am of the opinion that not everything needs to be included in AND. Every culture has traditions that can be called "religious", but I don't believe that said traditions necessarily rise to the level of being called a religion.

There are also three other things I want to avoid by limiting the new religions to just these 2, and these two will both be in the early Medieval Era. I'll show off the exact techs when I do basic stats.

• Beelining: This applies especially to the Ancient Era. Any Ancient Era religion is pretty easy to beeline directly to and ignore everything else, and so Polytheism/Dualism is the earliest place where I would put a religion.
• Clustering: In the late Ancient/entire Classical Eras, there aren't a lot of techs and a lot of religions. Adding up the late Ancient and Classical Era gives 42 technologies and 8 religions. Putting any more religions in this area would probably lead to putting two religions on adjacent techs, which I want to avoid if I can. Yes, I did put Hinduism (Literature) and Taoism (Philosophy) on adjacent techs, but I couldn't find ANY better option.
• "Rich get richer": This is for the Renaissance and onward (which is why I would not want to include Sikhism in this mod). By the Medieval/Renaissance Era, the game has generally settled into leaders and left-behinds, and the civs with a religion are pretty much the leaders. If Revolutions is OFF, there is no downside to founding another religion, and even it is on, a Renaissance Era civ can generally handle the instability of multiple holy cities.

Click to expand...

Looks really great! Can't wait to have those 2 religions in the game.
On another subject, have you got my PM Vokarya? What do you think?

An other proposal is to add an option to found a religion not by being the first to discover a tech, but by the one "building" the religion's HolyBook.
Here is the list:

• Asatru: Eddas
• Buddhism: Tripitaka
• Christianity: Bible
• Confucianism: The Five Classics
• Kemetism: The Book of the Dead
• Helenism: Homeric Hymns
• Hinduism: Vedas
• Islam: Quran
• Judaism: Talmud
• Nahuatl: The Borgia Group codices
• Shinto: The Kojiki
• Taoism: Tao Te Ching
• Zoroastrianism: Avesta

Sogroon said:

An other proposal is to add an option to found a religion not by being the first to discover a tech, but by the one "building" the religion's HolyBook.
Here is the list:

• Asatru: Eddas
• Buddhism: Tripitaka
• Christianity: Bible
• Confucianism: The Five Classics
• Kemetism: The Book of the Dead
• Helenism: Homeric Hymns
• Hinduism: Vedas
• Islam: Quran
• Judaism: Talmud
• Nahuatl: The Borgia Group codices
• Shinto: The Kojiki
• Taoism: Tao Te Ching
• Zoroastrianism: Avesta

Click to expand...

Not really. Holy scriptures usually come after when the members wanted to condense and codify their beliefs. For example, Torah was created when Jews were in captivity in Babylon and New Testament portion was created and canonized few centuries after Christ died. Etc. so better to leave Found game mechanic.

Though, personally, I think it would be cool to have Realistic Religions like Realistic Corporations. Rationale is the same.

os79 said:

Not really. Holy scriptures usually come after when the members wanted to condense and codify their beliefs.

Click to expand...

It is (half) true. The goal is not to perfectly mimic reality (as it is said all too often), but to add a feature that has (enough) connection to reality.

os79 said:

For example, Torah was created when Jews were in captivity in Babylon and New Testament portion was created and canonized few centuries after Christ died. Etc. so better to leave Found game mechanic.

Click to expand...

Half true again. The Torah is the 5 books by Moses before the Israelites entered the promised land. I is the Talmud that was created in Babilon.
The Christian Greek Scriptures (aka New-Testament) was written from about 41 to 98 CE.

But this is no theologigal thread

os79 said:

Though, personally, I think it would be cool to have Realistic Religions like Realistic Corporations. Rationale is the same.

Click to expand...

In this one I can agree. I would be satisfied with such an option also.

Sogroon said:

I wanted to do this as a modmod. I already have it in my games in a fairly alpha state
I imported the stuff from C2C.

A few things I already observed and suggest:

Asatru:

• Rename Asatru Missionary to Gothi
• Asatru Cathedral should be Asatru Pantheon instead
• Remove the many +Xp to melee units from the buildings
• We don't need Altar of Thor, move the free Mjolnr promotion to Monastry.
• Get a better name for the Monastry, change -10% military production to +10% (like Hellenic Gymnesia).
• Get a better icon for the religion. In C2C it is a purple(!!) Valknut. A hammer, a Mjolnir would be better, more epic.

Click to expand...

The Valknut icon needs to stay. I like it because I think it's very distinctive and it's already in the gamefont icons, and it's necessary for a particular graphics effect. I'll show it off. I'm doing something similar with the Monastery.

Sogroon said:

Shinto:

• IMO there is no need of every shinto building giving -x% maintanance.
• Only 1 Bushido promozion is enough.

Click to expand...

I'm effectively starting from scratch for effects when it comes to Shinto. I'm not calling the promotion Bushido. It's too cultural, not religious. I have another idea.

os79 said:

Not really. Holy scriptures usually come after when the members wanted to condense and codify their beliefs. For example, Torah was created when Jews were in captivity in Babylon and New Testament portion was created and canonized few centuries after Christ died. Etc. so better to leave Found game mechanic.

Though, personally, I think it would be cool to have Realistic Religions like Realistic Corporations. Rationale is the same.

Click to expand...

There is something else I want to do with Holy Books later on, as part of a really big project. There is some groundwork that needs to be laid first, and I'd like to get some of my other ideas completed first.

Vokarya said:

I'm not calling the promotion Bushido. It's too cultural, not religious. I have another idea.

Click to expand...

That reminds me of other things. I think there are too many "-ism"s. Some religion's names are too cultural. What I mean:

• Kemetism: Kemet means Egypt, so literally it is Egyptianism. Could we use Pesedjet instead?
• Hellenism: Same as above. Hellen=greek. Name? Maybe Olimpian Cult? Don't know.
• Nagualism: Maybe just Nagual so it won't feel so artificial.

Sogroon said:

It is (half) true. The goal is not to perfectly mimic reality (as it is said all too often), but to add a feature that has (enough) connection to reality.



Half true again. The Torah is the 5 books by Moses before the Israelites entered the promised land. I is the Talmud that was created in Babilon.
The Christian Greek Scriptures (aka New-Testament) was written from about 41 to 98 CE.

But this is no theologigal thread



In this one I can agree. I would be satisfied with such an option also.

Click to expand...

I'm an atheist so I don't really have theological points to make. They ere simply historical facts as understood currently in the field. However, we can agree to disagree and leave it alone.

Glad you like my Realistic Religions idea .

When it comes to any religion, there are a few base values that need to be established. We need a starting tech, a spread factor, a state religion commerce bonus, and a holy city commerce bonus. This is the absolute minimum needed in the file Civ4ReligionInfos.xml. There are a couple of other statistics that are defined here, but I will get to them when they are actually used. We also need an icon, sound effects and a movie. Icons are in the font file already, and I'm pulling them directly.

There are movies available, and I think they look pretty good. I think the Asatru one is especially neat.
View attachment 379599
View attachment 379600

Asatru's starting tech is Rudder.
View attachment 379596

Shinto's starting tech is Civil Service.
View attachment 379597
Note: I'm using this green background for Shinto's icon on other buildings. I found I needed something to make the Shinto icon visible on the tech icon choosing bar (see below) and then I want to use the same shade of green for consistency.
View attachment 379598

I want both of these religions to be founded in the early Medieval Era because that is when Asatru reaches its peak before the Christianization of Scandinavia and when Shinto becomes formalized. The traditions were around long before, but I think this is a better fit. For gameplay purposes, I want to avoid anything before the early Medieval, and I also want to avoid Feudalism. In my last few games, I have seen the AI always go Feudalism-Guilds to transition to the Medieval Era. I want to reward going off in other directions. (I find it pretty easy to sweep up Music-Theology-Holy War-Papacy and get the Great Artist, Christianity, King Richard's Crusade, and the Apostolic Palace.) On top of that, the dramatic increase in cost between Classical and Medieval techs should make it harder to sweep up more than one of these new religions.

Spread factor covers how quickly the religion spreads. It increases with how late the religion is founded. I never adjusted Hinduism's factor, so it's pretty low. I might bring it up to about 35 to place it with the other religions. This is the current mix.

I want Asatru to be a vigorous, spreading religion and Shinto to be a little more insular.

• Asatru has a spread factor of 60.
• Shinto has a spread factor of 45.

I'll do the rest in the next post.

Vokarya said:

There is something else I want to do with Holy Books later on, as part of a really big project. There is some groundwork that needs to be laid first, and I'd like to get some of my other ideas completed first.

Click to expand...

Hmm, I'll be looking forward to see your ideas on the Books then .

Sogroon said:

That reminds me of other things. I think there are too many "-ism"s. Some religion's names are too cultural. What I mean:

• Kemetism: Kemet means Egypt, so literally it is Egyptianism. Could we use Pesedjet instead?
• Hellenism: Same as above. Hellen=greek. Name? Maybe Olimpian Cult? Don't know.
• Nagualism: Maybe just Nagual so it won't feel so artificial.

Click to expand...

I disagree on renaming Hellenism. It is quite common to see the greek religions referred to as Hellenistic or Hellenism.

Afforess said:

I disagree on renaming Hellenism. It is quite common to see the greek religions referred to as Hellenistic or Hellenism.

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Agreed. For game reason it's a religion. However, historically it's more complicated. The point is, I'll agree with Afforess on that one. The other names can be changed but honestly it's like Civics in that the nuances can be discussed to death. However, for the game it's labor-intensive to modify terms to satisfy nuances.

Every religion provides some small bonuses before any other building is considered. These bonuses take the form of additional commerces (not generic commerce). A quick explanation: in the XML code, food/hammers/commerce are yields. Gold/science/culture/espionage are commerces. So I've gotten very used to the term.

Here are the values for the current religions. They vary all over, but the most common is a small culture bonus for all cities and a larger culture bonus for the Holy City.

As I don't see Asatru as a religion that focuses on these kinds of bonuses, I am setting it at +1 for all cities and +3 for the holy city (+3 is pretty much the default). Shinto gets a little more culture, with +2 per city and +3 in the holy city.

So the second step to making a religion is making a Missionary unit. All Missionaries are built to a very similar plan:

• Base cost 40
• No strength
• Speed 2
• Requires appropriate Monastery or Civic
• Spreads appropriate religion

In fact, the only non-aesthetic differences that I could find between Missionaries are a hidden variable called <iReligionSpread> which is set at 30 for Kemetism, Zoroastrianism, and Naghualism and 40 for all other religions, and whether or not the religion starts with a free Missionary. Technically, you can set any number of free Missionaries, but for the existing religions in AND, the only choices used are 0 and 1. Early religions get no free missionaries, while later religions do get one. Asatru and Shinto will get 1 free Missionary each.

The Asatru missionary is indeed called the Gothi. One of the first things I did when I started working on this was to go find an appropriate name for the missionary. I keep vacillating a little between Godhi with a D and Gothi with a T, but I think Gothi is the correct conversion into the letters normally available, since the actual spelling uses a ð and I don't want to fight with the gamefont files. (Some of my screenshots still say Godhi. They were from an earlier version.)
View attachment 379713

The Shinto missionary is the Kannushi.
View attachment 379714

Here are both missionaries on the map.
View attachment 379715

One of the reasons why I wanted use existing icons for these two religions is that we want these religions to be completely indistinguishable from the existing 11 religions. One thing that I never really paid much attention to is that there is a surprisingly interesting effect when a missionary spreads a religion that shows the religion's icon floating in the sky above the city. It took me a while to understand exactly when this effect is called (the trigger is actually buried in the unit's NIF files) but they do exist for both of these religions, so I have included them. If I changed the icon, I would probably have to cut the effect completely, and that would not do.
View attachment 379716View attachment 379717

Vokarya said:

As I don't see Asatru as a religion that focuses on these kinds of bonuses, I am setting it at +1 for all cities and +3 for the holy city (+3 is pretty much the default). Shinto gets a little more culture, with +2 per city and +3 in the holy city.

Click to expand...

iirc the reason the buildings gave exp was because having the religion in the city does not give the usual culture boosts nor does having it as a state religion. At least I think
that was the way it was designed. We I may have changed it over time at player requests. It was part of the uniqueness of that religion.

Vokarya said:

The Asatru missionary is indeed called the Gothi. One of the first things I did when I started working on this was to go find an appropriate name for the missionary. I keep vacillating a little between Godhi with a D and Gothi with a T, but I think Gothi is the correct conversion into the letters normally available, since the actual spelling uses a ð and I don't want to fight with the gamefont files. (Some of my screenshots still say Godhi. They were from an earlier version.)

Click to expand...

You just need to remember that the "t" and "h" are pronounced as separate letters not as the one "th" sound. Or was it the other way round. It is so long since I studied the Sagas.