Modular Religions

It was a pain, but I finally managed to swim past the errors and inconsistencies to have each religion (even the ones from vanilla Civ4) nicely sorted out with its files in its own folder in Modules\Custom_Religions.

It means that now you can play with any religion you want, you just have to go in Modules\Custom_Religions\ and either remove the religions you don't want or edit the MLF_CIV4ModularLoadingControls there to chose which ones you want to load. Adding a religion without forgetting obscure effects should also be easier by looking at what's in other folders.

I have tested several combinations without any problem (including all active and none active), but I obviously can't test them all and I've seen some really weird stuff when untying the big bag of knots so maybe some combinations or religions still have obscure issues. Hopefully not though (and it should be easy to fix from there).

To install it, two steps:
- Delete your current Modules\Custom_Religions folder. This is important, don't forget it, otherwise there might be some leftover files that won't be overwritten.
- Unpack the .7z directly in your Caveman2Cosmos\Assets folder. It has many files reaching deep in the folder tree, but it follows the current folder tree so just say yes when you're asked whether to merge folders and overwrite files.

I hope this can make it to the SVN since there are a LOT of files involved (including in core XML/) so it will quickly become obsolete if the main files are changed. Note to Dancing Hoskuld: it includes (and supersedes) the updated BuildingInfos and TechInfos files that I posted in the XML investigation thread.


Enjoy your equally valid religions!

I would put this into the svn but i'am not sure about many changes in those files since it's not just Modular Religions. It includes lots of other changes and i can't verify all of them or there they discussed before?


Edit:

One example why should a BUILDING_AGROFOREST reduce Crime?

alberts2 said:

I would put this into the svn but i'am not sure about many changes in those files since it's not just Modular Religions. It includes lots of other changes and i can't verify all of them or there they discussed before?

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There shouldn't be any gameplay change, even for the religions... (save for a few events which had triggers for the new religions but effects only for the old religions so I made it consistent)

However there was a mixup with the properties (long story short properties for a buildings were applied to another because removed religious buildings shifted things ), I've updated the fixed version. Sorry about that :/

Rwn said:

There shouldn't be any gameplay change, even for the religions... (save for a few events which had triggers for the new religions but effects only for the old religions so I made it consistent)

However there was a mixup with the properties (long story short properties for a buildings were applied to another because removed religious buildings shifted things ), I've updated the fixed version. Sorry about that :/

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Thanks that explains all those changes i try it again with the updated version later today.

This seems like a candidate for an SVN upload, sharpish. I'd love to be able to turn off some of those religions.

Flails Arms Wildy while shouting, "Danger Will Robinson, Danger Will Robinson!"


JosEPh

Why would you want to turn off some of the religions? I do not have as much as experience as you guys, are they imbalanced?

Furoncrypto said:

Why would you want to turn off some of the religions? I do not have as much as experience as you guys, are they imbalanced?

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The AI doesn't seem to use religions and religious buildings all that well. Ngai and Yoruba are available early and give really decent buildings. Shinto is great for money, Voodoo is solid too, and Tengri is a massive early culture boost. This is before you consider the wonders, which are dominated by Buddhism, Confucianism, Hindu, and the hokey ancient Egyptian religion. Asatru if you like roleplaying that TV show about Vikings. Taoism, Christianity and Islam are latecomers who end up being delicious icing on the religion cake.

Yet, I have never seen the AI build the decent buildings. Even when they have them as their state religion. My own response is to turn up the difficulty setting, let natural AI cheatiness make up for me taking as many religions as I can and building all their wonders. Still though, never seen the AI build the Temple of Osiris. It's a national wonder!

Mormonism should not be in the game, unless we're going to highlight all the major religious denominations, and Scientology is not a religion in the first place. Those are my first two candidates, definitely.

JosEPh_II said:

Flails Arms Wildy while shouting, "Danger Will Robinson, Danger Will Robinson!"

JosEPh

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Furoncrypto said:

Why would you want to turn off some of the religions? I do not have as much as experience as you guys, are they imbalanced?

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Not really (well, who knows, it was impossible to play without religions until now ), it's mostly a matter of taste. Some religions are deeper than others, you may only want to keep those. Say you're in a 10-civs game, you may not want to have 26 religions available. Or maybe you just want to make getting religions more difficult. Or have a religion-free game for a change. Or play a C2C game on a low-spec computer and deactivate as many things as you want. Or maybe you just don't like a given religion. Many potential reasons.
It makes it also easier to add a custom religion by copying what's in another folder and tweaking it without forgetting things that are currently spread in many different files.

Arakhor said:

Mormonism should not be in the game, unless we're going to highlight all the major religious denominations, and Scientology is not a religion in the first place. Those are my first two candidates, definitely.

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Mormonism isn't really a Denomination imo. It adopted a whole additional book, which makes it as different to Christianity as the Muslims and Christians are to Judaism.

Scientology is a religion. A strange one perhaps but it IS a religious worldview. If you're saying it's more of a business I would argue the same for many other religions.

Rwn said:

It makes it also easier to add a custom religion by copying what's in another folder and tweaking it without forgetting things that are currently spread in many different files.

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I'd argue for more things being (actually, genuinely) modular, rather than the mishmash we have going on right now.

Arakhor said:

Mormonism should not be in the game, unless we're going to highlight all the major religious denominations, and Scientology is not a religion in the first place. Those are my first two candidates, definitely.

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Well, my own definition of a religion requires them to at least attempt a genuine genocide. You can lie, cheat, steal, kidnap, torture, evade tax, rape, murder, blackmail, brainwash, commit pedophilia, exploit, con, cover for people committing pedophilia, manipulate, and do whatever to people, but you're still only a cult until you attempt a genocide.

So Scientology and Mormon, while handily fulfilling each and every other criteria, never actually did the proper genocide thing, and as such are still mere cults. Unless the LDS did something to the Native American tribes in Utah that was so carefully covered up that no one heard about it.

IronClaymore said:

Well, my own definition of a religion requires them to at least attempt a genuine genocide. You can lie, cheat, steal, kidnap, torture, evade tax, rape, murder, blackmail, brainwash, commit pedophilia, exploit, con, cover for people committing pedophilia, manipulate, and do whatever to people, but you're still only a cult until you attempt a genocide.

So Scientology and Mormon, while handily fulfilling each and every other criteria, never actually did the proper genocide thing, and as such are still mere cults. Unless the LDS did something to the Native American tribes in Utah that was so carefully covered up that no one heard about it.

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That's an... interesting... way to define a religion! Sheesh! Most have a more... positive view.

Thunderbrd said:

Mormonism isn't really a Denomination imo. It adopted a whole additional book, which makes it as different to Christianity as the Muslims and Christians are to Judaism.

Scientology is a religion. A strange one perhaps but it IS a religious worldview. If you're saying it's more of a business I would argue the same for many other religions.

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Aaaand the good thing is, you can make as many religions modmods as you want, from Calvinist reformed church to Yazidi, Flying Spaghetti Monster, Satanism or Adoration of the Great 1$ Green Bill, you don't have to argue whether it's truly a religion, people are free to use them or not

Actually, what could be fun at some point would be to define how many religions you want in the game and they are randomly chosen. So you're not sure which religion will be in and you'll be forced to adapt if you're used to always pick one - a bit like having random AI civs and personalities.

Thunderbrd said:

That's an... interesting... way to define a religion! Sheesh! Most have a more... positive view.

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I define it as a mental disorder, but let's leave it at that, my opinion is not worth further investigation. ^^

EDIT: I actually own a physical edition of the official flying spaghetti monster bible. It's an entertaining reading.

Thunderbrd said:

That's an... interesting... way to define a religion! Sheesh! Most have a more... positive view.

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I came up with it ages and ages ago as an adolescent in my cliched "angry internet atheist teenager" phase. So I never considered Buddhism in the calculations. Then you get all this current news out of Myanmar and yeah even Buddhism is a proper religion now. But I only hang onto the idea because of snarky comedic value.

Caveman 2 Cosmos is helping with my positive view though. I need all these temples to keep my education property level in positive numbers. Having a low education level is a disaster! All of my cities will have cathedrals!

[Edit:] This is also a factor in disabling certain religions. You'll lose positive sources of the education property.

VVV you get a 3/5. Good attempt, but the whole "10,000 pages" thing ruined it. Actually you ruined it in the first sentence, and the second sentence, but I wanted to see where you were going. It's religions in a game though, they only exist to generate commerce and culture. Like my spaceship will need lasers to fight off Xenu or something...

Arakhor said:

Mormonism should not be in the game, unless we're going to highlight all the major religious denominations, and Scientology is not a religion in the first place. Those are my first two candidates, definitely.

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Scientology is a bona fide religion. There is a lot of hate against Scientology going around, but if you look at religions, ANY religion has had a lot of hate against it in the first 100 years of its existence. I've studied over 10,000 pages of Scientology writings, and have done several courses, so my opinion carries more weight than that of the multitude of cynics, gossipers, "journalists" and people who actually think that South Park is a reliable source of information.

Scientology is a non-theist religion, and has some parallels with Buddhism and Taoism, but is unique enough to be considered a separate religion and not a split-off of some other religion.

I do agree that the game needs a way to simulate religious schisms. You only need to look at the current Shia vs Sunni civil war that is currently heating up in the Middle East to see why.

Noriad2 said:

Scientology is a bona fide religion. There is a lot of hate against Scientology going around, but if you look at religions, ANY religion has had a lot of hate against it in the first 100 years of its existence. I've studied over 10,000 pages of Scientology writings, and have done several courses, so my opinion carries more weight than that of the multitude of cynics, gossipers, "journalists" and people who actually think that South Park is a reliable source of information.

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Well, if one is to believe the claims of brainwashing, intimdation and other such cult tactics, then perhaps that is precisely why your opinion might not carry more weight.

alberts2 said:

Thanks that explains all those changes i try it again with the updated version later today.

Click to expand...

I found a few small unintentional changes but i can't verify all the changes in the core CIV4TechInfos.xml because you reordered all the techs. I hope you understand that i don't want to put anything into the svn if i don't know what it does.